Life Class

by Pat Barker

  Doesn’t summer seem a long time ago? When I try to think back all I can see is a huge blue-black cloud chasing its own shadow over the shining fields. And I see us on the lawn – Catherine and me – drinking disgusting warm cider from a bucket under the sink that never really kept it cool. All those lovely golden bubbles streaming to the surface and our thoughts flowing with them, though really when I think of the things we talked about. Why do angels wear clothes when they’re free from original sin? Do they have private parts? What do they need them for? Do they even have to have wings? There’s that strange bit in the Bible where two angels come to visit Lot and a crowd gathers outside shouting for them to be brought out so they can ‘know them’. I didn’t realize at first that means ‘have sexual intercourse with’, but of course it does. So obviously they didn’t have wings. They must have been just two extremely beautiful young men. If the Parish Council could have heard us talking about naked angels they’d have thought Catherine’s being a German was the least of their worries. That still makes me angry.

  Oh dear, this isn’t a very good letter, I do try. I think what gets in the way is the sense that whatever we do here is so much less important than what you’re doing over there. I can’t imagine your world. You can pop your head back inside mine any time you like, it hasn’t changed much, though now it must feel like a doll’s house to you. Is she still going on about that? you think. But that was ages ago – decades.

  There are changes. When I look down into the quad – where you say you remember Catherine and me walking up and down with our arms around each other’s waists – I see wheelchairs. Men in blue, some with missing legs. Arms as well sometimes. They wheel them here from the hospital on fine days – it’s still quite warm – though I think some of the men look cold. They can’t move around to keep the circulation going and they’re sometimes left out a long time. I walk past them on my way in and again on my way back, and either I walk quickly with my head down or extra slowly and give them a big cheery smile and say hello. I watch them watching me noticing the missing bits, looking at the empty trouser legs or, equally awful, not looking at them. And I feel ashamed. Just being what I am, a girl they might once have asked to dance, is dreadful. I feel I’m an instrument of mental torture through no fault of my own. And then I’m ashamed of feeling that because after all what do my feelings matter? I think the world’s gone completely mad.

  I’m looking out of the window now. If I narrow my eyes and make a rainbow with my lashes the men in wheelchairs disappear and I see you as you were last winter in that long black coat of yours. I used to call it your cassock, do you remember? (That was before I knew you better!)

  I hope you find a lovely room. It’ll make all the difference to have somewhere quiet where you can draw or read. Paint even.

  Write soon. Love, Elinor.

  Twenty-one

  The woman who came to the door looked to be in her early forties, with a clear brown complexion marked by two lines of force from the nose to the corners of her mouth. She kept her left arm folded at the waist, under her pinafore so it bulged out in front of her like a pregnancy.

  ‘I’ve come about the room,’ he said.

  She stood aside to let him in. ‘For you?’

  ‘Yes, but I wouldn’t be here all the time. I live at the hospital. I’m looking for somewhere to paint.’

  If she was surprised she didn’t show it. Instead she led the way upstairs.

  ‘A lot of steps,’ she said, unnecessarily, on the third floor. He was gasping for breath and they were still climbing. The stairs ended in a door, which opened to reveal a narrow corridor. The floor was covered in dingy brown linoleum and the row of small windows on his left gave hardly any light. He was getting ready to explain why the room was unsuitable when she threw open the door at the end of the corridor. The room was full of light.

  As he followed her in, he realized why. They were above the rooftops and there were two windows: one at either end of the room, which was long and narrow, running the width of the house. He went straight to the back window, admiring the sloping roofs, the angles, the sheen of light on grey tiles, the warmth of red brick. He opened the window and a moist green smell came rushing in. Far below was the garden, handkerchief-sized from this height, with a row of outbuildings leaning against the far wall.

  Madame Drouet directed his attention to the bed, the chair, the wardrobe, the washstand with its blue-and-white jug and bowl and matching chamber pot in the cupboard underneath. No running water – a major defect – and the privy was at the foot of the garden. But the room was beautiful: though the walls were limewashed, the rugs threadbare, no-coloured, and the curtains so skimpy that even drawn they’d let in most of the light, none of it mattered.

  ‘How much?’

  In English money she was asking five shillings a week, half what he’d have had to pay for a studio in London. Though this wasn’t exactly a studio.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, at once. ‘I’ll take it.’

  He walked away from the house excited, full of joy. He knew he could paint there, but it was more than that even, it was privacy, normality, his own mind back. He was almost hugging himself as he pushed open the door of a café, planning how he would go back to the hut after lunch and move a few clothes and books and his drawing equipment. He’d send for his paints, make it a proper studio, or as close as he could get. His happiness was almost painful, like circulation returning to a dead leg.

  Over his coffee, he pulled out a writing pad and started to tell the one person who’d understand what the room meant.

  It’s nothing, really. The sort of room that would be given to a maid, very plain and bare, and the door has a stable latch, not a proper knob like the rooms downstairs. Curtains and rugs a bluish grey, though only because they’ve faded to that colour, I don’t think they started out that way. The bed takes up most of the space, which is rather a pity since I shan’t be using it, but I can push it back against the wall. Even dismantle it, I suppose. I don’t think the landlady minds what I do. She’s only too glad she’s got a taker.

  The café overlooked the main square. It was market day, the busiest of the week. Paul loved this scene and often sat in the window to watch it. Most of the women of the town were out doing their shopping with bags or baskets over their arms, looking at the food on the stalls, still quite plentiful, their eyes shrewd, fingers shiny from long immersion in hot water, rubbing the coins before they parted with them. They enjoyed their marketing, the little haggles they had with stallholders, the small triumphs, the stopping for chats and gossip. The younger women had children hanging on to their hands, whining for things that couldn’t be afforded. Now and then you saw an impatient tug or a slap, but mainly it was a happy scene.

  At the edge of the square ambulances roared past. Only a layer of thin canvas divided the men inside from the people in the square. The stallholders and the shoppers couldn’t see the men inside, but surely they must be able to hear them, the cries torn out of them at every bump and hollow in the road. Perhaps they’d switched off. Perhaps they didn’t hear the cries any more than they noticed the flicker and rumble of guns. It’s the hardest thing in the world to go on being aware of somebody else’s pain. He couldn’t do it, so he was in no position to criticize others who couldn’t either.

  Two miles up the road to hell. No point blaming those women because they can’t imagine it. He can hardly realize it himself, sitting there by the window, stirring his coffee, bubbling with excitement about his room, the work he intends to do there and the new idea that’s beginning to take root in his mind.

  On the other side of the glass, a woman is walking along the pavement with her child, a toddler. Every few steps she stops and waits for him to catch up. He’s tired, he keeps pulling at his ears and whimpering, but he won’t let his mother pick him up, he’s a big boy now, too big to be carried. He dances on the spot with rage, not knowing what he wants. Exasperated, his mother scoops him up and carries him off, the boy cr
ying as if his heart will break.

  Watching the small everyday drama, Paul thought, If it’s safe for that woman and her child …

  I’ve had an idea. Why don’t you come out here? Oh, not to nurse – I know you’d hate that – but just for a few days. The town’s full of women and children, it’s never been shelled, I really can’t see there’d be any risk, and you’d be interested. It mightn’t be possible to get here, though. We’re in the forbidden zone. Which sounds awfully dramatic, but really just means civilians (other than residents) aren’t allowed, except on approved business. For women, approved business means nursing. (Though there is one other profession that’s welcomed, or at least tolerated. I expect you can guess what it is.) It’s the wives and mothers they want to keep out. Too big a reminder of other responsibilities: heavy work needing to be done on the farm, roofs leaking, boys running wild, etc.

  Don’t reject the idea out of hand. I know it sounds preposterous, but I do think you’d enjoy it. You could stay in my room. Please, please, consider it. You probably won’t be able to manage it – in fact the more I think about it the less likely it seems – but at least give it a try. Honestly, I look out of the window now and the place is full of women and children and they’re in no danger at all.

  There must be masses of other things to tell you, but I can’t think of any of them now. I can only think about you coming here and I want to get this in the post as fast as possible. Obviously, I’d have to keep working, but I could swap shifts if necessary so we’d have every evening together, and I could arrange to take my day off while you were here. So we would see quite a lot of each other. And on your terms, of course. I hope you don’t feel there’s any pressure. I can always sleep in the hut. Do please say yes.

  Ever your Paul.

  Twenty-two

  Lewis impinged on him more and more. His breathing, his habit of humming while he shaved, the way he tapped the razor on the edge of the bowl … Every second of the time they spent in the hut, Paul was aware of him as a physical presence. He even caught himself watching Lewis while he slept, and the longer he stared the odder Lewis seemed. That blotched skin, it didn’t look human. Once, as Paul bent over him, Lewis’s eyes opened unexpectedly. They were pale blue, with flecks of another colour, brown or green. For Christ’s sake, even his eyes were freckled.

  Paul arrived on duty to find a patient just being brought back from theatre. He’d had his left leg amputated three days ago but then further surgery had been required to try to eradicate gangrene. The stump had to be irrigated with hydrogen peroxide. Not the pleasantest of jobs. Gloved, gowned and masked, Paul concentrated on trying to work fast. He couldn’t bring himself to say any of the soothing anodyne things people did say, It’ll soon be over. It wouldn’t ‘soon be over’ and even when it was there would only be a few short hours before the next dressing. Once the man arched his back, but he made no sound. Not a groan did he utter from beginning to end.

  As he took off his mask Paul became aware of Burton standing beside him, still in scrubs though he must have finished for the night. He was pulling at his chest and arm hair, something he often did, either a constant irritable tugging or sometimes a fastidious fixing of the hair between index and middle finger like a barber lining it up for the scissors. Somewhere inside Burton was a hairless pre-pubescent boy who’d never got over the shock.

  ‘Well done,’ he said.

  The words jarred. The patient wiped sweat off his upper lip, his only small concession to the pain. There was never enough morphine. It was a disgrace what these men had to endure without anaesthetic, and this one was going to die anyway.

  They walked to the end of the ward together. Burton seemed inclined to talk. You often found that on night duty, people opened up in a way they wouldn’t dream of doing by day and there was less awareness of rank. With the wards darkened and night pressing in around the huts, people clustered round whatever light they could find.

  ‘What we really need to do is operate sooner. Very few of them, you know, are on the operating table within twenty-four hours – that’s what we need to look at. You can pour hydrogen peroxide and carbolic into the wound till you’re blue in the face, but if the infection’s well established you’re not going to shift it that way. Browne was saying, in the Boer War he’d seen men with terrible injuries – sometimes they’d lain out in the veldt for days with no medical attention whatsoever and yet they survived. But that was on sand. You know, everybody talks about machine guns and shells, but it’s not bullets and shrapnel that are killing the men in there. It’s the soil.’

  ‘So what can you do?’

  ‘What can I do?’

  ‘No, generally.’

  ‘Turn the Casualty Clearing Stations into theatres. At the moment they just patch them up to get them here, but that’s no use. You’ve got to do the surgery there. Excise the wound. And if a shell lands on your head while you’re doing it, too bloody bad. As to what I can do … Oh, God knows. Get out of here.’

  ‘Why?’

  Burton looked surprised. ‘It’s not much fun, you know, day after day doing amputations, when you know they could have been avoided.’

  ‘So what would you do?’

  ‘Research, I suppose. There’s got to be something we can do that’s better than pouring hydrogen peroxide into a wound. Or I could join the army, but then I risk getting stuck in a base hospital. They might think I’m too old for the front line’

  ‘And the whole point is to get to the front?’

  ‘Oh, yes. A base hospital would drive me mad.’ He looked into his mug as if he suspected it of emptying itself. Ah, well, better be getting back.’

  Paul was unsettled by this conversation, and not merely because applying hydrogen peroxide to an infected wound now seemed pointless as well as unpleasant. Burton was thinking about the war and how he could best make a contribution. He saw alternatives. Paul had been plodding along like a donkey for weeks. Now and then something would catch his eye and he’d reach for a drawing pad, but that was as natural and unreflective as breathing. He hadn’t allowed himself to think how long his present way of life would go on.

  The next two hours were busy. He went round the ward, dispensing sleeping powders, fetching bedpans, straightening sheets, taking round the bedtime cocoa. The tattooed man lay still. The other patients drank their cocoa and one by one slipped into a drugged sleep. The guns were loud, rocking the water in the glasses by each bed.

  At last the ward settled down. Paul’s eyelids were drooping. The change from day to night duty was always hard until the body adjusted. He filled in the hourly record, summoned Sister Roper to give a morphine injection, changed the sheets on a bed where a patient had vomited coming out of the anaesthetic, and then sat for a while with his head in his hands, his mind simultaneously blank and busy.

  When he looked up, Lewis was sitting by one of the beds. At first he thought he must be hallucinating: Lewis ought to be asleep in the hut, but, no, there he was. It would have been natural to go and ask him what he wanted, but something made Paul hold back. He recognized the patient now. It was the suicide, the one who’d fought them all the way to the operating table and when he recovered faced a firing squad. Now and then his head jerked and he shouted out. The other patients, dragged out of their heavy, drugged sleep, yelled at him to shut up.

  What on earth did Lewis think he was doing? What could he hope to achieve, without even a language in common? Still he sat there. An hour, two hours. Eventually Paul made tea and took it across to him. He started to say, ‘You know you shouldn’t be here, don’t you?’ but then stopped. Lewis was drenched in sweat. Not the light sweat that follows exercise, but a drenching that darkened his shirt and made it stick to his chest. His skin was white under the golden-brown freckles. Even his eyes looked paler than usual.

  ‘I think he’ll sleep now,’ he said, taking the cup.

  Over the next few nights Paul became steadily more aware of Lewis’s obsession with the suicide, who
se name was Goujet though nobody ever used it. Lewis would arrive at the beginning of the night shift and sit with him, and again at the end. Nobody else paid Goujet any attention. The truth was his presence depressed them. The patients resented him because he was noisy and demanding and because he had tried to escape from circumstances that they had also found unbearable, and gone on bearing. The staff resented having to nurse somebody back to health in order for him to be shot. Obviously this might be the fate of many of the patients, but only on the battlefield. It was the firing squad that made the irony of their efforts inescapable.

  Goujet lay with one eye closed and the other, blind eye, wide open. As the hours passed this eye seemed to shrink deeper into its socket, to become small, white and shrunken. The sun in winter looked like that seen low in the sky over frosty fields. It was hard to walk past the bed and not meet this eye that stared out oblivious to your presence. In his rare moments of clear consciousness he seemed full of hate, though he never said anything, not even beyond the few mangled words he spat at them whenever they tried to get him to eat. He wouldn’t take food. If he accepted water it was only a couple of sips, and then he’d turn his head away.

  Lewis would sit beside him, clasping his wrist. At first Goujet struggled to free himself, but then abandoned the attempt, though more from weakness, Paul thought, than because he found the contact acceptable. Something had to happen to stop this. If he’d noticed this then Sisters Byrd and Cope would certainly have noticed it too.