by Pat Barker
‘Grief at the death of his friends. Horror at the slaughter of everybody else’s friends. It isn’t clear to me why such emotions have to be ignored.’
‘I’m not saying they should be ignored. Only that they mustn’t be allowed to dominate.’
‘The protopathic must know its place?’
Rivers looked taken aback. ‘I wouldn’t’ve put it quite like that.’
‘Why not? It’s your word. And Sassoon does seem to be a remarkably protopathic young man. Doesn’t he? I mean from what you say, it’s “all or nothing” all the time. Happy warrior one minute. Bitter pacifist the next.’
‘Precisely. He’s completely inconsistent. And that’s all the more reason to get him to argue the position –’
‘Epicritically.’
‘Rationally.’
Brock raised his hands and sat back in his chair. ‘I hope you don’t mind my playing devil’s advocate?’
‘Good heavens, no. The whole point of these meetings is to protect the patient.’
Brock smiled, one of his rare, thin, unexpectedly charming smiles. ‘Is that what I was doing? I thought I was protecting you.’
Part 2
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8
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Prior had lost weight during his time in sick bay. Watching the light fall on to his face, Rivers noticed how sharp the cheekbones had become.
‘Do you mind if I smoke?’
‘No, go ahead.’ Rivers pushed an ashtray across the desk.
The match flared behind Prior’s cupped hands. ‘First for three weeks,’ he said. ‘God, I feel dizzy.’
Rivers tried not to say, but said, ‘It’s not really a good idea with asthma, you know.’
‘You think it might shorten my life? Do you know how long the average officer lasts in France?’
‘Yes. Three months. You’re not in France.’
Prior dragged on the cigarette and, momentarily, closed his eyes. He looked a bit like the boys you saw on street corners in the East End. That same air of knowing the price of everything. Rivers drew the file towards him. ‘We left you in billets at Beauvois.’
‘Yes. We were there, oh, I think about four days and then we were rushed back into the line. We attacked the morning of the night we moved up.’
‘Date?’
‘April the 23rd.’
Rivers looked up. It was unusual for Prior to be so accurate.
‘St George’s Day. The CO toasted him in the mess. I remember because it was so bloody stupid.’
‘You were in the casualty clearing station on the…’ He glanced at the file. ‘29th. So that leaves us with six days unaccounted for.’
‘Yes, and I’m afraid I can’t help you with any of them.’
‘Do you remember the attack?’
‘Yes. It was exactly like any other attack.’
Rivers waited. Prior looked so hostile that at first Rivers thought he would refuse to go on, but then he raised the cigarette to his lips, and said, ‘All right. Your watch is brought back by a runner, having been synchronized at headquarters.’ A long pause. ‘You wait, you try to calm down anybody who’s obviously shitting himself or on the verge of throwing up. You hope you won’t do either of those things yourself. Then you start the count down: ten, nine, eight… so on. You blow the whistle. You climb the ladder. Then you double through a gap in the wire, lie flat, wait for everybody else to get out – those that are left, there’s already quite a heavy toll – and then you stand up. And you start walking. Not at the double. Normal walking speed.’ Prior started to smile. ‘In a straight line. Across open country. In broad daylight. Towards a line of machineguns.’ He shook his head. ‘Oh, and of course you’re being shelled all the way.’
‘What did you feel?’
Prior tapped the ash off his cigarette. ‘You always want to know what I felt.’
‘Well, yes. You’re describing this attack as if it were a – a slightly ridiculous event in –’
‘Not “slightly”. Slightly, I did not say.’
‘All right, an extremely ridiculous event – in somebody else’s life.’
‘Perhaps that’s how it felt.’
‘Was it?’ He gave Prior time to answer. ‘I think you’re capable of a great deal of detachment, but you’d have to be inhuman to be as detached as that.’
‘All right. It felt…’ Prior started to smile again. ‘Sexy.’
Rivers raised a hand to his mouth.
‘You see?’ Prior said, pointing to the hand. ‘You ask me how it felt and when I tell you, you don’t believe me.’
Rivers lowered his hand. ‘I haven’t said I don’t believe you. I was waiting for you to go on.’
‘You know those men who lurk around in bushes waiting to jump out on unsuspecting ladies and – er-um – display their equipment? It felt a bit like that. A bit like I imagine that feels. I wouldn’t like you to think I had any personal experience.’
‘And was that your only feeling?’
‘Apart from terror, yes.’ He looked amused. ‘Shall we get back to “inhuman detachment”?’
‘If you like.’
Prior laughed. ‘I think it suits us both better, don’t you?’
Rivers let him continue. This had been Prior’s attitude throughout the three weeks they’d spent trying to recover his memories of France. He seemed to be saying, ‘All right. You can make me dredge up the horrors, you can make me remember the deaths, but you will never make me feel.’ Rivers tried to break down the detachment, to get to the emotion, but he knew that, confronted by the same task, he would have tackled it in exactly the same way as Prior.
‘You keep up a kind of chanting. “Not so fast. Steady on the left!” Designed to avoid bunching. Whether it works or not depends on the ground. Where we were, it was absolutely pitted with shell-holes and the lines got broken up straight away. I looked back…’ He stopped, and reached for another cigarette. ‘I looked back and the ground was covered with wounded. Lying on top of each other, writhing. Like fish in a pond that’s drying out. I wasn’t frightened at all. I just felt this… amazing burst of exultation. Then I heard a shell coming. And the next thing I knew I was in the air, fluttering down…’ He waved his fingers in a descending arc. ‘I know it can’t’ve been like that, but that’s what I remember. When I came to, I was in a crater with about half a dozen of the men. I couldn’t move. I thought at first I was paralysed, but then I managed to move my feet. I told them to get the brandy out of my pocket, and we passed that round. Then a man appeared on the other side of the crater, right at the rim, and, instead of crawling down, he put his hands to his sides, like this, and slid down on his bottom. And suddenly everybody burst out laughing.’
‘You say “came to”? Do you know how long you were unconscious?’
‘No idea.’
‘But you were able to speak?’
‘Yes, I told them to get the brandy.’
‘And then?’
‘Then we waited till dark and made a dash for the line. They saw us just as we got to our wire. Two men wounded.’
‘There was no talk of sending you to a CCS when you got back?’
‘No, I was organizing other people there.’ He added bitterly, ‘There was no talk of sending anybody anywhere. Normally you go back after heavy losses, but we didn’t. They just left us there.’
‘And you don’t remember anything else?’
‘No. And I have tried.’
‘Yes, I’m sure you have.’
A long silence. ‘I suppose you haven’t heard from the CO?’
‘No, I’d tell you if I had.’
Prior sat brooding for a while. ‘Well, I suppose we go on waiting.’ He leant forward to stub his cigarette out. ‘You know, you once told me I had to win.’ He shook his head. ‘You’re the one who has to win.’
‘This may come as a shock, Mr Prior, but I had been rather assuming we were on the same side.’
Prior smiled. ‘This may come
as a shock, Dr Rivers, but I had been rather assuming that we were not.’
Silence. Rivers caught and held a sigh. ‘That does make the relationship of doctor and patient rather difficult.’
Prior shrugged. Obviously he didn’t think that was his problem. ‘You think you know what happened, don’t you?’ Rivers said.
‘I’ve told you I don’t remember.’
The antagonism was startling. They might’ve been back at the beginning, when it had been almost impossible to get a civil word out of him. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t make myself clear. I wasn’t suggesting you knew, only that you might have a theory.’
Prior shook his head. ‘No. No theory.’
A short, dark-haired man sidled round the door, blinking in the sudden blaze of sunlight. Sassoon, sitting on the bed, looked up from the golf club he’d been cleaning. ‘Yes?’
‘I’ve b-brought these.’
A stammer. Not as bad as some, but bad enough. Sassoon exerted himself to be polite. ‘What is it? I can’t see.’
Books. His book. Five copies, no less. ‘My God, a reader.’
‘I wondered if you’d b-be k-kind enough to s-sign them?’
‘Yes, of course.’ Sassoon put the golf club down and reached for his pen. He could have dispatched the job in a few moments, but he sensed that his visitor wanted to talk, and he had after all bought five copies. Sassoon was curious. ‘Why five? Has the War Office put it on a reading list?’
‘They’re f-for m-my f-family.’
Oh, dear. Sassoon transferred himself from bed to table and opened the first book. ‘What name shall I write?’
‘Susan Owen. M-y m-mother.’
Sassoon began to write. Paused. ‘Are you… quite sure your mother wants to be told that “Bert’s gone syphilitic?” I had trouble getting them to print that.’
‘It w-won’t c-come as a sh-shock.’
‘Won’t it?’ One could only speculate on the nature of Mrs Owen’s previous acquaintance with Bert.
‘I t-tell her everything. In m-my l-letters.’
‘Good heavens,’ Sassoon said lightly, and turned back to the book.
Owen looked down at the back of Sassoon’s neck, where a thin line of khaki was just visible beneath the purple silk of his dressing gown. ‘Don’t you?’
Sassoon opened his mouth and shut it again. ‘My brother died at Gallipoli,’ he said, at last. ‘I think my mother has enough on her plate without any searing revelations from me.’
‘I s-suppose she m-must b-be c-concerned about your b-being here.’
‘Oh, I don’t think so. On the contrary. I believe the thought of my insanity is one of her few consolations.’ He glanced up, briefly. ‘Better mad than a pacifist.’ When Owen continued to look blank, he added, ‘You do know why I’m here?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what do you think about that?’
‘I agreed with every w-word.’
Sassoon smiled. ‘So did my friend Graves.’ He opened the next book. ‘Who’s this one for?’
Owen, feeding the names, would have given anything to say one sentence without stammering. No hope of that – he was far too nervous. Everything about Sassoon intimidated him. His status as a published poet, his height, his good looks, the clipped aristocratic voice, sometimes quick, sometimes halting, but always cold, the bored expression, the way he had of not looking at you when you spoke – shyness, perhaps, but it seemed like arrogance. Above all, his reputation for courage. Owen had his own reasons for being sensitive about that.
Sassoon reached the last book. Owen felt the meeting begin to slip away from him. Rather desperately, he said, ‘I l-liked “The D-Death B-Bed” b-best.’ And suddenly he relaxed. It didn’t matter what this Sassoon thought about him, since the real Sassoon was in the poems. He quoted, from memory, ‘“He’s young; he hated War, how should he die/When cruel old campaigners win safe through?/But death replied: ‘I choose him.’ So he went.” That’s beautiful.’
Sassoon paused in his signing. ‘Yes, I – I was quite pleased with that.’
‘Oh, and “The Redeemer”. “He faced me, reeling in his weariness,/Shouldering his load of planks, so hard to bear./I say that He was Christ, who wrought to bless…”’ He broke off. ‘I’ve been wanting to write that for three years.’
‘Perhaps you should be glad you didn’t.’
The light faded from Owen’s face. ‘Sorry?’
‘Well, don’t you think it’s rather easily said? “I say that He was Christ”?’
‘You m-mean you d-didn’t m-mean it?’
‘Oh, I meant it. The book isn’t putting one point of view, it’s charting the – the evolution of a point of view. That’s probably the first poem that even attempts to look at the war realistically. And that one doesn’t go nearly far enough.’ He paused. ‘The fact is Christ isn’t on record as having lobbed many Mills bombs.’
‘No, I s-see what you m-mean. I’ve been thinking about that quite a b-bit recently.’
Sassoon scarcely heard him. ‘I got so sick of it in the end. All those Calvaries at crossroads just sitting there waiting to be turned into symbols. I knew a man once, Potter his name was. You know the miraculous crucifix stories? “Shells falling all around, but the figure of Our Lord was spared”? Well, Potter was so infuriated by them he decided to start a one-man campaign. Whenever he saw an undamaged crucifix, he used it for target practice. You could hear him for miles. “ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR, Bastard on the Cross, FIRE!” There weren’t many miraculous crucifixes in Potter’s section of the front.’ He hesitated. ‘But perhaps I shouldn’t be saying this? I mean for all I know, you’re –’
‘I don’t know what I am. But I do know I wouldn’t want a f-faith that couldn’t face the facts.’
Sassoon became aware that Owen was standing at his elbow, almost like a junior officer. ‘Why don’t you sit down?’ he said, waving him towards the bed. ‘And tell me your name. I take it this one’s for you?’
‘Yes. Wilfred. Wilfred Owen.’
Sassoon blew on his signature and closed the book. ‘You say you’ve been thinking about it?’
Owen looked diffident. ‘Yes.’
‘To any effect? I mean, did you reach any conclusions?’
‘Only that if I were going to call myself a Christian, I’d have to call myself a pacifist as well. I don’t think it’s possible to c-call yourself a C-Christian and… and j-just leave out the awkward bits.’
‘You’ll never make a bishop.’
‘No, well, I think I can live with that.’
‘And do you call yourself a pacifist?’
A long pause. ‘No. Do you?’
‘No.’
‘It’s funny, you know, I never thought about it at all in France.’
‘No, well, you don’t. Too busy, too tired.’ Sassoon smiled. ‘Too healthy.’
‘It’s not just that, though, is it? Sometimes when you’re alone, in the trenches, I mean, at night you get the sense of something ancient. As if the trenches had always been there. You know one trench we held, it had skulls in the side. You looked back along and… Like mushrooms. And do you know, it was actually easier to believe they were men from Marlborough’s army than to to to think they’d been alive two years ago. It’s as if all other wars had somehow… distilled themselves into this war, and that makes it something you… almost can’t challenge. It’s like a very deep voice saying, Run along, little man. Be thankful if you survive.’
For a moment the nape of Sassoon’s neck crawled as it had the first time Campbell talked about German spies; but this was not madness. ‘I had a similar experience. Well, I don’t know whether it is similar. I was going up with the rations one night and I saw the limbers against the skyline, and the flares going up. What you see every night. Only I seemed to be seeing it from the future. A hundred years from now they’ll still be ploughing up skulls. And I seemed to be in that time and looking back. I think I saw our ghosts.’
Silence. They’d gone fur
ther than either of them had intended, and for a moment they didn’t know how to get back. Gradually, they stirred, they looked round, at sunlight streaming over beds and chairs, at Sassoon’s razor glinting on the washstand, its handle smeared with soap. Sassoon looked at his watch. ‘I’m going to be late for golf.’
Immediately Owen stood up. ‘Well, thanks for these,’ he said, taking the books. He laughed. ‘Thanks for writing it.’
Sassoon followed him to the door. ‘Did you say you wrote?’
‘I didn’t, but I do.’
‘Poetry?’
‘Yes. Nothing in print yet. Oh, which reminds me. I’m editor of the Hydra. The hospital magazine? I was wondering if you could let us have something. It needn’t be –’
‘Yes, I’ll look something out.’ Sassoon opened the door. ‘Give me a few days. You could bring your poems.’
This was said with such determined courtesy and such transparent lack of enthusiasm that Owen burst out laughing. ‘No, I –’
‘No, I mean it.’
‘All right.’ Owen was still laughing. ‘They are quite short.’
‘No, well, it doesn’t lend itself to epics, does it?’
‘Oh, they’re not about the war.’ He hesitated. ‘I don’t write about that.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘I s-suppose I’ve always thought of p-poetry as the opposite of all that. The ugliness.’ Owen was struggling to articulate a point of view he was abandoning even as he spoke. ‘S-Something to to t-take refuge in.’
Sassoon nodded. ‘Fair enough.’ He added mischievously, ‘Though it does seem a bit like having a faith that daren’t face the facts.’ He saw Owen’s expression change. ‘Look, it doesn’t matter what they’re about. Bring them anyway.’
‘Yes, I will. Thank you.’
Anderson, following Sassoon into the bar of the golf club, knew he owed him an apology. At the seventeenth hole, afraid he was losing, he’d missed a vital shot and in the heat of the moment had not merely sworn at Sassoon, but actually raised the club and threatened to hit him with it. Sassoon had looked startled, even alarmed, but he’d laughed it off. At the eighteenth hole, he’d been careful to ask Anderson’s advice about which iron he should use. Now, he turned to Anderson and said, ‘Usual?’