Pat Barker - The Ghost Road

Rivers pointed to himself and then to the coconut oil. Njiru nodded, poured oil into his palms and began the massage, chanting, rocking… Once again that curious hypnotic effect, a sense of being totally focused on, totally cared for. Njiru was a good doctor, however many octopi he located in the colon. The fingers probed deeper, the chanting quickened, the movements of the hands neared a climax, and then — nothing. Njiru sat back, smiling, terminating the physical contact as tactfully as he'd initiated it.

Rivers sketched the movement Njiru hadn't made. 'You no throw… nggasin?'

A gleam of irony. 'You no got nggasin.'

* * *

But you have, Rivers thought, sponging yesterday's black lines off Moffet's legs.

'And tomorrow,' he said authoritatively, measuring with his forefingers, 'this area will be normal.'

Moffet glared at him. 'You are consciously and deliberately destroying my self-respect.'

'I think you'll find that starts to come back once you're on your feet.'

Sister Carmichael was hovering on the other side of the screens, waiting to snatch the trolley from him. She was shocked by his insistence on doing everything himself, including the washing off of the previous lines. Consultants do not wash patients. Nurses wash patients. She would have been only marginally more distressed if she'd come on to the ward and found him mopping the floor. What he could not get across to her was that the rules of medicine are one thing, the rules of ritual drama quite another.

Wansbeck had had a bad night, she said, once the trolley had been snatched away. Temperature of 103, and he kept trying to open the window.

'All right, I'll see him next.'

The nurses had just finished sponging Wansbeck down, and he lay half naked, his skin a curdled bluish white against the snowy white of the sheets. As Rivers watched a shiver ran along his arms and chest, roughening and darkening the skin. They finished drying him, covered him up, and he was free to talk, though too weak to manage more than a few words.

Rivers was beginning to feel concerned about Wansbeck. Spanish influenza was quite unusually virulent and he had it badly, and yet he seemed indifferent to the outcome. Rivers grasped him firmly round the wrist. 'You know you've got to fight this.'

Probably 'fight' was the only word he understood. 'Done enough of that,' he muttered, and turned away.

* * *

In Westminster the leaves were already beginning to turn. Not to the brilliant reds and golds of the countryside, but a shabby tarnished yellow. In another few weeks they would start to fall. The worst thing about London was that summer ended so soon.

'You know, sometimes,' Rivers said carefully, his glasses flashing as he turned back from the window, 'it helps just to go back and try to to to to… gather things together. So. Let's see if I've got this right. You were in hospital after a riding accident—'

'Yes, that's right. I didn't notice the mare—'

'Yes. And while you were there, one of the nurses cut your penis off and put it in a jar of formaldehyde in the basement.'

Telford shook his head. 'I didn't say for for…'

'Formaldehyde. No, I know you didn't. They don't use pickling vinegar.'

'Ah, well, you see, you'd know that.'

A deep breath. 'Why do you think she did that?'

Telford shrugged. 'Dunno.'

'But you must have wondered. I mean it was quite an astonishing thing to do, wasn't it?'

'Wasn't for me to ask questions.' Telford leant forward, delivering what he obviously thought was the coup de grace. 'You wouldn't want me teaching you your job, would you?'

At the moment he'd have welcomed assistance from any quarter. 'Didn't the doctor say anything?'

'Not a dicky bird.'

'Telford.' Rivers clasped his hands. 'What do you pee out of?'

'M'cock, you stupid bugger, what do you pee out of?'

Rivers concentrated on straightening his blotter. 'I wonder if it would help if we talked a little about women?'

It might have done. He was never to know. A few minutes later Telford said, 'I can't say I care for the tone of this conversation, Rivers. It may have escaped your notice, but we're not in a barracks.' He stood up. 'God knows, the last thing I want to do is pull rank, but I'd be grateful if you'd address me as Major Telford in future.'

He went out, slamming the door.

* * *

Moffet lay back, eyes closed, grinding, ' Yes, yes, yes, yes,' as the pin pricked his skin.

The usual routine, and yet something was different. The air of indifference had gone. Deliberately, Rivers let the pin stray across the line on to skin that should still have been numb.

'Yes, yes, yes!’

The pin stopped. Moffet opened his eyes and smiled wearily. 'You can go all the way down if you like.' He closed his eyes again. Rivers moved the pin down the leg at intervals of two inches. 'Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.' Wearily now, each 'yes' coming precisely at the moment the pin touched the skin. Over the shin, across the arch of the foot, down to the tip of the big toe. 'YES.'

Moffet had yelled the word. Through the gap in the screens, Rivers saw the other patients turn and stare at the shrouded bed. He put the pin down. 'Well.'

He wasn't particularly surprised: the removal of hysterical paralysis was often — one might almost say generally — as dramatic as the onset. Moffet lay still, his face sallow against the whiteness of the pillow, making no attempt to hide his depression, and indeed why should he? His sole defence against the unbearable had been taken away and nothing put in its place.

'When did this happen?'

'First thing.'

'Have you tried to walk?'

'Not yet.'

'Do you want to?'

'Seems the logical next step. So to speak.'

'Can you swing yourself round? Sit on the side.'

Rivers knelt and began massaging Moffet's calves, chafing the slack flesh between his hands.

'I suppose I'm expected to be grateful.'

'No.' He stood up. 'All right, shall we try? Put your hands on my shoulders.'

Moffet levered himself off the edge of the bed.

'How does it feel?'

'Don't know. Weird.'

'Do you want to try a few steps?' Awkwardly, like untalented dancers, they shuffled across the floor, the curtains ballooning out around them. Rivers put his hands up and loosened Moffet's grip. 'No, you're all right, I've got you.' Two steps, then Moffet fell forward into his arms. Rivers lowered him back on to the bed. 'I think that's probably enough for now.'

Moffet collapsed against the pillows.

'It's important to keep at it, but I wouldn't try it just yet without an orderly.' He hesitated. 'You know we're going to have to talk about why this happened.'

He waited, but Moffet remained stubbornly silent.

'I'll be along again later.'

* * *

Later that afternoon, Major Telford — as he must now remember to call him — sidled up and tapped him discreetly on the shoulder. 'Yes, Major Telford, what is it?'

A conspiratorial whisper. 'Spot of bother in the latrines.'

Rivers followed him into the wash-room, wondering which bit of Telford's anatomy had dropped off now.

Telford pointed to the bathroom. 'Chap's been in there ages.'

'Yes, but—'

'Keeps groaning. Well, he did — stopped now.'

Rivers rattled the handle. 'Hello?'

'Tried that, it's locked.'

It couldn't be — there weren't any locks. Rivers lay down and looked under the door. A lot of water had slopped on to the floor, he could see an arm drooping over the edge of the bath — a puffy, white arm with blood oozing from the wrist. A chair had been wedged under the door handle. He tried pushing it, but it was no use. He stood up and kicked. The door was hardly thicker than cardboard — the bathrooms were mere cubicles put in cheaply when the War Office adapted the hospital for military use — and the second kick broke the hinges. He burst into the room, startled by his own face in the looking-glass. Moffet lay in the bath, pink water lapping the shining belly as it rose and fell. Breathing anyway. His head had slipped to one side, but his nostrils were clear of the water. A whisky bottle skittered across the floor as Rivers knelt by the bath. Cuts on both wrists, superficial on the right — deep on the left. Loss of blood probably fairly heavy, but you can never bloody well tell in water. He pushed Moffet's eyelids up, smelled his breath, felt for the pulse…