Regeneration (5 page)

Sassoon’s determination to remember might well account for his early and rapid recovery, though in his case it was motivated less by a desire to save his own sanity than by a determination to convince civilians that the war was mad. Writing the poems had obviously been therapeutic, but then Rivers suspected that writing the Declaration might have been therapeutic too. He thought that Sassoon’s poetry and his protest sprang from a single source, and each could be linked to his recovery from that terrible period of nightmares and hallucinations. If that was true, then persuading Sassoon to give in and go back would be a much more complicated and risky business than he had thought, and might well precipitate a relapse.

He sighed and put the poems back in the envelope. Looking at his watch, he saw that it was time to start his rounds. He’d just reached the foot of the main staircase when he saw Captain Campbell, bent double and walking backwards, emerge from the darkened dining room.

‘Campbell?’

Campbell spun round. ‘Ah, Captain Rivers, just the man.’ He came up to Rivers and, speaking in a discreet whisper that was audible the length and breadth of the corridor, as Campbell’s discreet whispers tended to be, said, ‘That fella they’ve put in my room.’

‘Sassoon. Yes?’

‘Don’t think he’s a German spy, do you?’

Rivers gave the matter careful consideration. ‘No, I don’t think so. They
never
call themselves “Siegfried”.’

Campbell looked astonished. ‘No more they do.’ He nodded, patted Rivers briskly on the shoulder, and moved off. ‘Just thought I’d mention it,’ he called back.

‘Thank you, Campbell. Much appreciated.’

Rivers stood for a moment at the foot of the stairs, unconsciously shaking his head.

4

__________

‘I was walking up the drive at home. My wife was on the lawn having tea with some other ladies, they were all wearing white. As I got closer, my wife stood up and smiled and waved and then her expression changed and all the other ladies began to look at each other. I couldn’t understand why, and then I looked down and saw that I was naked.’

‘What had you been wearing?’

‘Uniform. When I saw how frightened they were, it made
me
frightened. I started to run and I was running through bushes. I was being chased by my father-in-law and two orderlies. Eventually they got me cornered and my father-in-law came towards me, waving a big stick. It had a snake wound round it. He was using it as a kind of flail, and the snake was hissing. I backed away, but they got hold of me and tied me up.’

Rivers detected a slight hesitation. ‘What with?’

A pause. In determinedly casual tones Anderson said, ‘A pair of lady’s corsets. They fastened them round my arms and tied the laces.’

‘Like a strait-waistcoat?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then?’

‘Then I was carted off to some kind of carriage. I was thrown inside and the doors banged shut and it was very dark. Like a grave. The first time I looked it was empty, but then the next time you were there. You were wearing a post-mortem apron and gloves.’

It was obvious from his tone that he’d finished. Rivers smiled and said, ‘It’s a long time since I’ve worn those.’

‘I haven’t recently worn corsets.’

‘Whose corsets were they?’

‘Just corsets. You want me to say my wife’s, don’t you?’

Rivers was taken back. ‘I want you to say—’

‘Well, I really don’t think they were. I suppose it is
possible
someone might find being locked up in a loony bin a fairly
emasculating
experience?’

‘I think most people do.’ Though not many said so. ‘I want you to say what you think.’

No response.

‘You say you woke up vomiting?’

‘Yes.’

‘I wonder why? I mean I can quite see the sight of me in a post-mortem apron might not be to everybody’s taste—’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What was the most frightening thing about the dream?’

‘The snake.’

A long silence.

‘Do you often dream about snakes?’

‘Yes.’

Another long silence. ‘Well, go on, then,’ Anderson exploded at last. ‘That’s what you Freudian Johnnies are on about all the time, isn’t it? Nudity, snakes,
corsets.
You might at least try to look
grateful,
Rivers. It’s a gift.’

‘I think if I’d made any association at all with the snake – and after all what possible relevance can my associations have? – it was probably with the one that’s crawling up your lapel.’

Anderson looked down at the caduceus badge of the RAMC which he wore on his tunic, and then across at the same badge on Rivers’s tunic.

‘What the er snake
might
suggest is that medicine is an issue between yourself and your father-in-law?’

‘No.’

‘Not at all?’

‘No.’

Another long silence. Anderson said, ‘It depends what you mean by an issue.’

‘A subject on which there is habitual disagreement.’

‘No. Naturally my time in France has left me with a certain level of distaste for the practice of medicine, but that’ll go in time. There’s no
issue.
I have a wife and child to support.’

‘You’re how old?’

‘Thirty-six.’

‘And your little boy?’

Anderson’s expression softened. ‘Five.’

‘School fees coming up?’

‘Yes. I’ll be all right once I’ve had a rest. Basically, I’m paying for last summer. Do you know, at one point we
averaged
ten amputations a day? Every time I was due for leave it was cancelled.’ He looked straight at Rivers. ‘There’s no doubt what the problem is. Tiredness.’

‘I still find the vomiting puzzling. Especially since you say you feel no more than a
mild
disinclination for medicine.’

‘I didn’t say mild, I said temporary.’

‘Ah. What in particular do you find difficult?’

‘I don’t know that there
is
anything
particular.’

A long silence.

Anderson said, ‘I’m going to start timing these silences, Rivers.’

‘It’s already been done. Some of the younger ones had a sweepstake on it. I’m not supposed to know.’

‘Blood.’

‘And you attribute this to the ten amputations a day?’

‘No, I was all right then. The… er… problem started later. I wasn’t at Étaples when it happened, I’d been moved forward – the 13th CCS. They brought in this lad. He was a Frenchman, he’d escaped from the German lines. Covered in mud. There wasn’t an inch of skin showing anywhere. And you know it’s not like ordinary mud, it’s five, six inches thick. Bleeding. Frantic with pain. No English.’ A pause. ‘I missed it. I treated the minor wounds and missed the major one.’ He gave a short, hissing laugh. ‘Not that the minor ones were all that minor. He started to haemorrhage, and… there was nothing I could do. I just stood there and watched him bleed to death.’ His face twisted. ‘It pumped out of him.’

It was a while before either of them stirred. Then Anderson said, ‘If you’re wondering why that one, I don’t know. I’ve seen many worse deaths.’

‘Have you told your family?’

‘No. They know I don’t like the idea of going back to medicine, but they don’t know why.’

‘Have you talked to your wife?’

‘Now and then. You have to think about the
practicalities,
Rivers. I’ve devoted all my adult life to medicine. I’ve no private income to tide me over. And I do have
a wife and a child.’

‘Public health might be a possibility.’

‘It doesn’t have much…
dash
about it, does it?’

‘Is that a consideration?’

Anderson hesitated. ‘Not with me.’

‘Well, we can talk about the practicalities later. You still haven’t told me when you said
enough.’

Anderson smiled. ‘You make it sound like a decision. I don’t know that lying on the floor in a pool of piss counts as a decision.’ He paused. ‘The following morning.
On the ward.
I remember them all looking down at me. Awkward situation, really. What do you do when the doctor breaks down?’

At intervals, as Rivers was doing his rounds as orderly officer for the day, he thought about this dream. It was disturbing in many ways. At first he’d been inclined to see the post-mortem apron as expressing no more than a lack of faith in
him,
or, more accurately, in his methods, since obviously any doctor who spends much time so attired is not meeting with uniform success on the wards. This lack of faith he knew to be present. Anderson, in his first interview, had virtually refused treatment, claiming that rest, the endless pursuit of golf balls, was all that he required. He had some knowledge of Freud, though derived mainly from secondary or prejudiced sources, and disliked, or perhaps feared, what he thought he knew. There was no particular reason why Anderson, who was, after all, a surgeon, should be well informed about Freudian therapy, but his misconceptions had resulted in a marked reluctance to reveal his dreams. Yet his dreams could hardly be ignored, if only because they were currently keeping the whole of one floor of the hospital awake. His room-mate, Featherstone, had deteriorated markedly as the result of Anderson’s nightly outbursts. Still, that was another problem. As soon as Anderson had revealed that extreme horror of blood, Rivers had begun tentatively to attach another meaning to the post-mortem apron. If Anderson could see no way out of returning to the practice of a profession which must inevitably, even in civilian life, recall the horrors he’d witnessed in France, then perhaps he was desperate enough
to have considered suicide? That might account both for the post-mortem apron and for the extreme terror he’d felt on waking. At the moment he didn’t know Anderson well enough to be able to say whether suicide was a possibility or not, but it would certainly need to be borne in mind.

The smell of chlorine became stronger as they reached the bottom of the stairs. Sassoon felt Graves hesitate. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I could do without the smell.’

‘Well, let’s not bother—’

‘No, go on.’

Sassoon pushed the door open. The pool was empty, a green slab between white walls. They began to undress, putting their clothes on one of the benches that lined the end wall.

‘What’s your room-mate like?’ Graves asked.

‘All right.’

‘Dotty?’

‘Not visibly. I gather the subject of German spies is best avoided. Oh, and I’ve found out why there aren’t any locks on the doors. One of them killed himself three weeks ago.’

Graves caught sight of the scar on Sassoon’s shoulder and stopped to look at it. It was curiously restful to submit to this scrutiny, which was prolonged, detailed and impersonal, like one small boy examining the scabs on another’s knee. ‘Oh,
very
neat.’

‘Yes, isn’t it? The doctors kept telling me how beautiful it was.’

‘You were lucky, you know. An inch further down—’

‘Not as lucky as you.’ Sassoon glanced at the shrapnel wound on Graves’s thigh. ‘An inch further up—’

‘If this is leading up to a joke about ladies’ choirs, forget it. I’ve heard them all.’

Sassoon dived in. A green, silent world, no sound except the bubble of his escaping breath, no feeling, once the shock of cold was over, except the tightening of his chest that at last forced him to the surface, air, noise, light, slopping waves crashing in on him again. He swam to the side and held on. Graves’s dark head bobbed purposefully along at the other side of the pool. Sassoon thought, we joke about it, but it happens. There’d been
a boy in the hospital, while he was lying there with that neat little hole in his shoulder. The boy – he couldn’t have been more than nineteen – had a neat little hole too. Only his was between the legs. The dressings had been terrible to witness, and you had to witness them. No treatment in that overcrowded ward had been private. Twice a day the nurses came in with the creaking trolley, and the boy’s eyes followed them up the ward.

Sassoon shut the lid on the memory and dived for Graves’s legs. Graves twisted and fought, his head a black rock splintering white foam. ‘Lay off,’ he gasped at last, pushing Sassoon away. ‘Some of us don’t have the full complement of lungs.’

The pool was beginning to fill up. After a few more minutes, they climbed out and started to dress. Head muffled in the folds of his shirt, Graves said, ‘By the way, I think there’s something I ought to tell you. I’m afraid I told Rivers about your plan to assassinate Lloyd George.’

Rivers’s round as duty officer ended in the kitchens. Mrs Cooper, her broad arms splashed with fat from giant fryingpans, greeted him with an embattled smile. ‘What d’ y’ think of the beef stew last night, then, sir?’

‘I don’t believe I’ve ever tasted anything quite like it.’

Mrs Cooper’s smile broadened. ‘We do the best we can with the materials available, sir.’ Her expression became grim and confiding. ‘That beef was
walking
.’

Rivers got to his room a few minutes after ten and found Sassoon waiting, his hair damp, smelling of chlorine. ‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ Rivers said, unlocking the door. ‘I’ve just been pretending to know something about catering. Come in.’ He waved Sassoon to the chair in front of the desk, tossed his cap and cane to one side, and was about to unbuckle his belt when he remembered that the Director of Medical Services was due to visit the hospital some time that day. He sat down behind the desk and drew Sassoon’s file towards him. ‘Did you sleep well?’

‘Very well, thank you.’

‘You look rested. I enjoyed meeting Captain Graves.’

‘Yes, I gather you found it quite informative.’

‘
Ab
.’ Rivers paused in the act of opening the file. ‘You mean he told me something you’d rather I didn’t know?’

‘No, not necessarily. Just something I might have preferred to tell you myself.’ A moment’s silence, then Sassoon burst out, ‘What I can’t understand is how somebody of Graves’s intelligence can can can have such a shaky grasp of of
rhetoric.
’

Rivers smiled. ‘You were going to kill Lloyd George rhetorically, were you?’