by Pat Barker
‘We were shelled that night. Three men wounded. I was organizing stretcher-bearers – not easy, as you can imagine – and I’d just finished when Hines walked up and said, “Scudder’s gone.” He’d just got up and walked away. The other men thought he’d gone to the latrine, but then he didn’t come back. We got together a search-party. I thought he might have fallen into one of the vaults, and we crawled round calling his name, and all the time I knew he hadn’t. I decided to go after him. I know, not what a company commander ought to have done, but I had a very good second in command and I knew he couldn’t have got far. You see, everything was coming forward for the attack, and the road was absolutely choked. I hoped I could get to him before the military police picked him up. He’d have been shot. We were far enough forward for it to count as desertion in the face of the enemy. I was struggling and floundering along, and it really was almost impossible, and then I saw him. He hadn’t got very far. When I caught up with him, he didn’t even look at me. Just went on walking. And I walked beside him and tried to talk to him, and he obviously wasn’t listening. So I just pushed him off the road, and we slithered down and stopped on the rim of a crater. There’s always gas lingering on the water. When you get close your eyes sting. He was blue. And I tried to talk to him. He said, “This is mad.” And I said, “Yes, I know, but we’ve all got to do it.” In the end I simply named people. Men in his platoon. And I said, “They’ve got to do it. You’ll only make it harder for them.” In the end he just got up and followed me, like a little lamb.’
Manning stirred and reached for another cigarette. ‘We went forward almost as soon as we got back. The orders were full of words like “trenches” and “attacking positions”. There weren’t any trenches. The attacking position was a line of sticks tied with bits of white ribbon. We were late arriving, and it was getting light. If we hadn’t been late, we’d’ve crawled straight past them in the dark. The “line” was a row of shell-craters, filled with this terrible sucking mud. And you just crouched beneath the rim, and… waited. We advanced. No close work, but machine-guns directly ahead up the slope. A lot of casualties. A lot, and no hope of getting them back. It was taking the stretcher-bearers a couple of hours to go a hundred yards. So there we were, crouched in another row of shell-holes exactly like the first. And all hell was let loose. As soon as it died down a bit, I tried to crawl from one hole to another. It took me an hour to crawl between two holes. And in the other hole I found four men, none of them wounded, and I thought, thank God, and then suddenly one of them said, “Where’s Scudder?” Well, there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t move, the shelling was so heavy. And then there was a lull, and we heard a cry. It seemed to be coming from a crater slightly further back, not far, and we crawled along and found him.
‘He’d either slipped or been blown down the slope. Blown, I suspect, because he’d got quite a way in. He was already up to his chest. We tried to get him out, but even forming a line and holding out a rifle we couldn’t reach him. He could just get the tips of his fingers on the butt, but his hands were slippery with mud and they kept sliding off. I could see if we went on trying somebody else was going to slip in. And Scudder was panicking and… pleading with us to do something. I have never seen anything like his face. And it went on and on. He was slipping away all the time, but slowly. I knew what I had to do. I got the men lined up and told him we were going to try again, and while he was looking at the others I crawled round the other side, and fired.’ Manning closed his eyes. ‘I missed. And that was terrible, because then he knew what was happening. I fired again, and this time I didn’t miss.
‘We spent the rest of the night there, in that hole. It was very odd. You know, I don’t think any of the men would have said, “You did the wrong thing. You should have let him die slowly.” And yet nobody wanted to talk to me. They kept their distance.’
A long silence. ‘His mother wrote to me in hospital. To thank me. Apparently Scudder had written to her and told her I’d been kind to him.’
Rivers said firmly, ‘You were.’
Manning looked at him and then quickly away. ‘We were relieved the following night. I reported back to Battalion HQ and they expressed extreme displeasure. Apparently we’d been a bulge in the line. We’d been sitting in the wrong shell-holes. They were having dinner, veal and ham pie and red wine, and suddenly I realized they weren’t even going to offer us a fucking drink. I had Hines with me, he was dead on his feet. So I leant across the table, took two glasses, gave one to Hines and said, “Gentlemen, the King.” And of course they all had to struggle to their feet.’ He laughed. ‘And then we got the hell out of it before they could work out how to put an officer on a charge for proposing the loyal toast. We staggered down that road giggling like a pair of schoolboys. We were still laughing when the shell got us. I got this. Poor old Hines… I crawled across to him. And he looked straight at me and said, “I’m all right, Mum.” And died.’
Rivers stirred. He was about to speak when he heard bugles in the streets. ‘Let’s have the curtains open, shall we?’ he said.
He pulled the heavy curtains back, and grey dawn light flooded into the room. Manning flinched. He got up and joined Rivers by the window, and was just in time to see a taxi drive along the other side of the square. Rivers opened the windows, and the sound of birdsong filled the room.
‘You know,’ Manning said, ‘when Ross told me they sounded the all-clear by driving boy scouts with bugles round the streets in taxis, I didn’t believe him.’
They watched the taxi leave the square. Manning said, ‘I used to find a certain kind of Englishness engaging. I don’t any more.’
FOURTEEN
Sarah was coming. The thought buoyed Prior up as he walked along the Bayswater Road to the underground station. Only when he was on the train, staring sightlessly at his reflection in the black glass, did his thoughts turn to Spragge. He hadn’t seen him face to face since that evening in the park, but he’d suspected more than once that Spragge was following him. Possibly it was just nerves. His nerves were bad, and the intolerable sticky heat didn’t help. The gaps in his memory were increasing both in length and frequency, and they terrified him.
Like the undiscovered territory on medieval maps, Rivers said. Where unknown, there place monsters. But a better analogy, because closer to his own experience, was No Man’s Land. He remembered looking down a lane in France. The lane had a bend in it, and what was beyond the bend was hidden by a tall hedge. Beyond that was No Man’s Land. Beyond that again, the German lines. Full of men like himself. Men who ate, slept, shat, blew on their fingers to ease the pain of cold, moved the candle closer, strained their eyes to read again letters they already had by heart. He knew that, they all knew it. Only it was impossible to believe, because the lane led to a country where you couldn’t go, and this prohibition alone meant that everything beyond that point was threatening. Uncanny.
Something about the lifeless air of the underground encouraged morbid thoughts. Above ground, in the relatively cool, coke-smelling air of King’s Cross, he felt more cheerful. Please God, he thought, no gaps while Sarah’s here.
He waited by the barrier, sick with excitement. The train slid to a halt, grunted, wheezed, belched, subsided into a series of disgruntled mutters, and then all along its length doors swung open, and people started to get out. The sheer excitement of knowing he was going to see her stopped him seeing her, and for one terrifying moment all the women on the platform were Sarah. Then his mind cleared, and there was only one woman, walking straight towards him.
He caught her in his arms and swung her off her feet. When, finally, he set her down they stared at each other. He noticed the yellow skin, the dark shadows round her eyes, the fringe of ginger hair which was not her own colour, but some effect of the chemicals she worked with.
‘Well?’ she said.
‘You look beautiful. But then you always do.’
He took her bag and steered her towards the taxi rank.
‘Can’t we go on the underground?’ she said, pulling back.
He looked surprised.
‘I’ve never been on it.’
Her face lit up as she stepped out on to the descending staircase. She was too excited to talk until they were on the train, and had stopped at several stations, and the first novelty of hurtling in a lighted capsule through dark tunnels had worn off. Then she turned to him and said, ‘You look a bit tired. Are you all right?’
‘It’s the heat,’ he said. ‘I haven’t been sleeping well.’
‘You will tonight.’
He smiled. ‘I was hoping not to sleep at all tonight.’
But that was too direct. She smiled but looked away.
‘How’s your mother?’
‘The same. The shop’s not doing too well. No demand for second-hand stuff these days.’
‘What about Dr Lawson’s Cure for Female Blockages and Obstructions? I bet she’s doing a roaring trade in that.’
‘Geraway, man. It’s all sixpenny ticklers these days.’
‘Is it?’ Prior asked innocently.
She smiled and eventually laughed.
‘How was your trip home?’ she asked after a while.
‘Not bad. I met a few old friends.’
‘Did you tell your mam about me?’
He hesitated.
‘You didn’t,’ she said.
‘I prepared the ground.’
‘Billy. You think she won’t like me, don’t you?’
He knew she wouldn’t. He had a very clear idea of the sort of girl his mother wanted him to marry. One of those green-skinned, titless girls who wore white lawn blouses and remembered their handkerchiefs. The Ministry was full of them. The extraordinary thing was he did find them attractive, though not in a way he liked. They woke his demons up, just as surely as making love to Sarah put them to sleep. ‘It’s not that,’ he said.
‘Isn’t it?’ She smiled, and he realized she simply didn’t care. ‘What about your dad?’
‘I don’t tell him anything.’
‘Do you think he’d like me?’
He’d never thought about it. As soon as he considered it, he knew his father would like her, and she’d like him. She wouldn’t approve of the old sod, but she’d get on all right with him. Instantly the idea of taking her home became even less attractive. ‘There’s plenty of time,’ he said.
Leading her down the steps to the basement he was ashamed of the overflowing bins and the smell, but he needn’t have worried. Sarah was delighted with the flat. He realized, as he took her from room to room, that it could have been twice as dark, twice as stuffy, and she would still have been pleased with it. For two days and nights this would be their home, and that was all that mattered.
She ended the tour sitting on the single bed in his room, unselfconsciously bouncing up and down to test the mattress. Then she looked up and found him watching her, and her face was suffused with a blush that banished the yellow from her skin. His breath caught in his throat, and he swallowed hard. ‘If you’d like to get washed or or bathed, it’s next door.’
‘Yes, I–’
‘I’ll get a towel.’
Prior wished sometimes he didn’t know what it was like to be groped, to be pounced on before you’re ready. As he pulled a towel out of the airing cupboard, he heard the bathroom door open and then felt her arms come round him and clasp his chest. She pressed her face between his shoulders, her mouth against his spine. ‘Can you feel this?’ she asked. And she began to groan, deep noises, making his spine and the hollows of his chest vibrate with her breath. He pushed her gently away. ‘You must be tired,’ he said.
She giggled, and he felt her laughter in his bones. ‘Not too tired.’
They did have a bath, eventually. Afterwards, lying on the bed, she traced his ribs with the tips of her fingers, propped up on one elbow, her hair screening them both. ‘You know the part of men I like best?’ she said, moving her finger down.
‘Men?’ Cupping his hands around his mouth, he called into the passage, ‘George? Albert? Are you there?’
She smiled, but persisted. ‘This part.’ Her finger slid into the hollow beneath his ribs and down across his belly.
‘There?’
‘Yes.’
‘Uh? Uh?’ he said, thrusting his hips upward.
‘Oh, that.’
‘“That”!’ He struggled to sit up, only to subside as she slid down the bed and took his flaccid penis into her mouth.
She looked up and smiled. ‘He’s nice too.’
‘He’s a bloody disgrace at the moment. Look at him.’
‘You can’t expect miracles.’
He closed his eyes. ‘Go on doing that you might just get one.’
Hanging over her, watching the stretched mouth, the slit eyes, the head thrown back until it seemed her spine must crack, he remembered other faces. The dying looked like that.
‘What shall we do?’ he asked. ‘Are you hungry?’
‘Not really.’
‘We could go to Oxford Street. Look round the shops.’
‘Don’t sound so enthusiastic.’
‘Or Kew.’
‘What do you want to do?’
‘Kew, I think. The weather can’t last and we can do indoor things tomorrow.’
‘More? You’ll wear me out.’
‘Other things.’
‘Oh.’
Once in the gardens they wandered aimlessly, more interested in each other than in the plants. As the afternoon wore on, the heat thickened until there was a brassy glare in the sky, as if a furnace door had opened. Still they walked, each adjusting to the other’s stride, hardly aware when their linked shadow faded from the grass.
Drops of rain striking their faces startled them out of their absorption. They looked around, dazed. The rain began to beat down, lashing their heads and shoulders. In less time than seemed possible, Sarah’s hair was hanging in dark, reddish-brown strands and the sleeves of her blouse had become transparent. Prior looked for shelter, but could see only some trees. They made for those and stood under them, but there was little protection. Rain streaked the trunks and splashed through the leaves on to the backs of their necks.
Sarah was beginning to shiver with cold. Prior didn’t know where they were. He could see a little mock Grecian temple on a grassy mound, but that was open to the wind. From his previous visits he remembered the Palm House, which was certainly warm. That would be the best place if he could manage to locate it. He worked out where the main gate was, and thought he could remember that you turned left. ‘I think we should make a run for it,’ he said. ‘This isn’t going to go over.’
They ran, heads bent, Prior with his arm round Sarah, splashing through puddles. Rivulets of mud, washed out of flowerbeds, ran down the paths. Sarah refused the offer of his tunic and strode through it all, drenched, skirt caught between her legs, blouse transparent, hair stringy, skin glowing, with a stride that would have covered mountains. She had decided to enjoy it, she said.
The lake was a confusion of exploding circles and bubbles, too turbulent to reflect the inky sky. They ran the last few yards and entered the Palm House. Prior felt a rippling effect on his face and neck and then, immediately, an uncomfortable wave of damp heat. He began to cough. Sarah turned to him. ‘Isn’t this bad for your chest?’
‘No,’ he said, straightening up. ‘In fact it’s ideal.’
The aisles were crowded, so much so it was difficult to move. Thick green foliage surrounded them, and towered to the dazzling glass roof above their heads. Smells of wet earth, of leaves dripping moisture, a constant trickle of water, and somewhere a trapped blackbird singing. But as they moved deeper into the crush, it was the smell of people that took over: damp cloth, wet hair, steamy skin.
Prior took Sarah’s arm and pointed to the gangway above. ‘Come on, it’ll be less crowded.’
He had a dim feeling there might also be more air up there, for in spite of what he�
��d said to Sarah he was finding the atmosphere oppressive. Sarah followed slowly, wanting to look at the plants. She tugged at his arm and pointed to a flower that had the most incredibly pink penile-looking stamens. ‘Isn’t he beautiful?’
‘I thought you were a rib-cage girl?’
‘Not ribs. The –’
He laughed and pulled her to him. They were standing at the bottom of the spiral staircase. She slid her hand between his legs and rubbed. ‘I could be converted.’
He pressed her more closely against him, his mouth buried in her wet hair, looking over her head, focusing on nothing. Suddenly his eye registered a familiar shape. The green blur cleared, and he found himself gazing, through the branches of some tall plant with holes in its leaves, into the face of Lionel Spragge. There could be no mistake. They stared at each other through the foliage, no more than four or five feet apart. Then Spragge turned and pushed into the crowd, which swallowed him.
Sarah looked up. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Let’s go upstairs.’
He took her hand and pulled her towards the staircase. At every turn he looked down through the green leaves of the canopy at the heads and shoulders below, until eventually they ceased to look like individual people. As they climbed higher, the sound of rain on the glass roof grew louder. The windows were misted up, and a steamy, diffuse, white light spread over everything. He looked down on to the gleaming canopy of leaves. And then at the aisles, searching for Spragge’s broad shoulders and square head. He thought he saw him several times as he and Sarah walked round the gangway, but could never be sure. At first Sarah exclaimed over the different shapes and patterns of the leaves, which were indeed beautiful, as he acknowledged after a cursory glance. Then, gradually, sensing his withdrawal, she fell silent.