Pat Barker: The Ghost Road

— What do you expect? Prior said, when Owen complained. He's lost two sons. And who shows up instead of them? Couple of twitching Nancy boys from a loony-bin in Scotland.

Silence from Owen.

— That's what he thinks, you know.

As he reached the entrance to the barracks, a squad of men in singlets and shorts, returning from a cross-country run, overtook him and he stood back to let them pass. Bare thighs streaked with mud, steam rising from sweaty chests, glazed eyes, slack mouths, and as they pounded and panted past, he recognized Owen at the head of the column, turning to wave.

'Good heavens,' Mather said, as Prior pulled off his shirt. 'You haven't been getting much outdoor exercise, have you?'

'I've been working at the Ministry of Munitions.'

Mather was middle aged, furrow-cheeked, sandy-haired, shrewd.

'All right, drop your drawers. Bend over.'

They always went for the arse, Prior thought, doing as he was told. An army marches on its stomach, and hobbles on its haemorrhoids. He felt gloved fingers on his buttocks, separating them, and thought, Better men than you have paid for this.

'I see you've got asthma.'

There? 'Yes, sir.'

'Turn round.'

Another unduly intimate gesture.

'Cough.'

Prior cleared his throat.

'I said, cough' The fingers jabbed. 'And again.' The hand changed sides. 'Again.'

Prior was aware of wheezing as he caught his breath.

'How long?'

Prior looked blank, then stammered. 'S-six months, sir.'

'Six months? But it says—'

'I mean, the doctor told my mother I had it when I was six months old, sir.'

'Ah.' Mather turned over a page of the file. 'That makes more sense.'

'Apparently I couldn't tolerate milk.'

Mather looked up. 'Awkward little bugger, weren't you? Well, we'd better have a listen.' He reached for his stethoscope and came towards Prior. 'What were you doing at the Ministry of Munitions?'

'Intelligence, sir.

'Oooh, very impressive. Catch anybody?'

Prior looked bleakly ahead of him. 'Yes.'

'Patrol here caught a German spy on the cliffs.' Mather snorted, fitting the stethoscope. 'Tickled a local yokel with their bayonets more like.'

Prior started to say something, but Mather was listening to his chest. After a few minutes, he straightened up. 'Yes, you have got a bit of a wheeze.' His attention was caught by the scar on Prior's elbow. He turned the arm towards him.

'The Somme,' Prior said.

'Must've hurt.'

'The expression "funny bone" didn't seem appropriate at the time.'

Mather went back to the desk, sat down. 'Now let's see if I've got this straight. You were invalided home with shell-shock. That right? April last year?'

'Yes, sir.'

'And you were sent first to Netley and then to Craiglockhart War Hospital, where you remained till… November.' He looked up. 'I suppose you get a lot of dipsomania, in places like that? Alcohol , man,' he explained, as Prior continued to look blank.

'Didn't see any, sir. If I had I'd certainly have drunk it.'

'So what were your symptoms?'

'I was mute, sir. Some people found it an improvement on the basic model.'

But Mather was reading, not listening. 'W. H. R. Rivers,' he said. 'I knew him. He was two years ahead of me at Bart's. Paralytic stammer.'

Prior looked puzzled. 'No.'

'Ah? Got his own voice back too. He must be good.' He tapped a sheet of paper. 'The discharge report says asthma'.

'I had two attacks while I was there.'

'Hm.' Mather smiled. 'Any problems with the nerves now?'

'No.'

'Appetite?'

'I could eat more than I get.'

'So could we all, laddie. Sleeping all right?'

'Not last night. Bloody tent leaks.'

'Generally?'

'I sleep all right.'

Mather sat back in his chair. 'How did you get in?'

'Through the flap.'

Mather's forefinger shot up. 'Watch it, laddie. How did you get into the army?'

A brief struggle with temptation, ending as Prior's struggles with temptation usually did. 'I lied to the doctor, Doctor.'

Surprisingly, Mather laughed, a short bark.

'Everybody lied,' Prior said.

'So they did, I remember it well. I saw men who'd climbed out of the window of the workhouse infirmary to come and enlist. Syphilis, epilepsy, tuberculosis, rickets. One lad — little squeaky voice, not a hair on his chin, fourteen, if that — looked me straight in the eye and swore on his mother's life he was nineteen.' Mather smiled, revealing brown teeth. 'Not one of them got past me.'

Oh fuck.

'Gas training,' Mather said.

Silence.

'Well?'

'Terribly good idea,' Prior said earnestly.

'Did you go through the huts?'

'No.'

'You must be affected at very low concentrations?'

'I was known as the battalion canary, sir. Partly that. Partly my pleasant, cheerful personality.'

Mather looked at him. 'Get dressed.'

'The point is I managed perfectly well for three years. I didn't once report sick with asthma or the effects of gas.'

'Yes, laddie.' Mather looked unexpectedly compassionate. 'And it might be said you've done your bit.'

A twitch of the pale, proud face. 'Not by me.'

'And the asthma never played you up in France?'

'Never.'

'Two attacks in Craiglockhart. None in France. I wonder why?'

'Open-air life suited my chest, sir.'

'We're not running a sanatorium, laddie. Go on, get dressed. Then you go left along the corridor, turn left at the end, and you'll see a row of chairs. Wait there.'

Mather went into the adjoining room and started on his next victim. Prior dressed, pausing to wipe the sweat off his upper lip. Like going over the top, he thought. No, it wasn't. Nothing was like that. Civilians seemed to use that expression all the time now. I went a bit over the top last night, they said, meaning they'd had a second glass of port. Prior peered into the small looking-glass behind the washbasin, checking the knot in his tie. If they didn't send him back he was going to be awfully lonely, marooned among civilians with their glib talk. His reflection jeered, Lonely? You? Oh, c'mon, duckie. You can always split in two. At least the Board didn't know about that. Or rather they didn't, provided Rivers hadn't written to them. A paralytic stammer.

Not just any old stammer. Paralytic. Interesting, Prior thought, letting himself out of the room.

The place smelled like a barracks. Well, it was a barracks, but the Clarence Gardens Hotel, after months of army use, had not smelled anything like this. His nose twitched, identifying armpits, feet, socks, oil, boot-polish, carbolic soap, the last blown in bubbles between the raw fingers of a boy scrubbing the floor. Rear-end like a truck and a face to match, but Prior produced a charming smile, nevertheless, because he owed it to himself, and strode on, leaving a trail of muddy footprints across the wet floor.

One man waiting. Owen.

'The O's and the P's again,' Owen said, picking up a pile of John Bulls from the vacant chair and dumping them on the floor. They'd last waited together like this at Craiglockhart, at their final board.

Prior jerked his head at the door. 'Who's in?'

'Nesbit. He's been in thirty minutes.'

'What's taking so long?'

Owen hesitated, then mouthed, 'Clap.'

Well , Prior thought, that was one way of getting out of it. And then he thought, You uncharitable bastard, how do you know he got it deliberately? And then he thought, Well, I am an uncharitable bastard.

'I won't take long,' Owen said. 'I'm GS already.'

'Then why are you here?'

'Irregular heartbeat. I added my name to the draft, but when I had the final medical they promptly took it off again.'