Pat Barker - The Eye in the Door

‘He was after you , wasn’t he?’ Prior asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Do you think she meant to kill Lloyd George?’

‘Nah. You know Beattie. She finds a spider in the sink, she gets a bit of newspaper and puts it in the yard.’

‘Hmm. I just wonder what she’d do if she found Lloyd George in the sink.’

‘Run the fucking taps.’

They looked at each other and burst out laughing.

‘Look, if there was anything, the idea came from Spragge. And I think helping people escape from a detention centre sounds about right. And Spragge had tried it on before.’

‘Who with?’

‘Charlie Greaves, Joe Haswell. He offered them explosives to blow up a munitions factory. Said he knew where he could get some. Well, for God’s sake. They’re not exactly lying around, are they? As soon as they said no, he started backing off. Pretended he hadn’t meant it.’

‘And you still sent him to Beattie?’

‘This is hindsight , man. It sticks in my mind now because of what happened. At the time I just thought, oh God, another mad bugger.’

‘Could you get them to write it down? With dates, if possible.’

‘I don’t even know where they are.’

‘It’s for Beattie, Mac.’

Mac let out a sharp breath. ‘What do you want it for?’

‘To discredit Spragge, of course.’

‘They won’t reopen the case.’

‘Not publicly. But they might let her out. Quietly. She’s going to die in there, Mac. She won’t last anywhere near ten years.’

A dragging silence.

‘I’m not asking them to incriminate themselves. All they have to do is say “He offered us explosives and we refused.”’

‘And you think they’re going to be believed?’

‘I think there’s a better chance than you might think. There’s a lot of questions being asked about the way spies are used in munition factories. Some of them are better at starting strikes than you are, Mac.’

‘All right.’ Mac stood up. ‘It’ll take a few weeks.’

‘As long as that?’

‘I’ve told you. I don’t know where they are.’

‘Where can I contact you?’

Mac laughed. ‘You fucking can’t. Here, give me your address.’

Prior took the notepad and pencil, and scribbled. ‘All right?’

‘Don’t write to Hettie. The post’s opened. And one more thing.’ Mac came very close, resting his hands heavily on Prior’s shoulders. ‘If this is a trap, Billy, you’re dead. I’m not a fucking Quaker, remember.’

For a moment the pressure on his shoulders increased, then Mac turned and strode away.

Prior decided to take the short-cut home across the brick fields. This patch of waste land always reminded him of France. Sump holes reflected a dull gleam at the sky, tall grasses bent to the wind, pieces of scrap metal rusted, rubbish stank, a rusting iron bedstead upreared itself, a jagged black shape that, outlined against the horizon, would have served as a landmark on patrol.

One of the ways in which he felt different from his brother officers, one of the many, was that their England was a pastoral place: fields, streams, wooded valleys, medieval churches surrounded by ancient elms. They couldn’t grasp that for him, and for the vast majority of the men, the Front, with its mechanization, its reduction of the individual to a cog in a machine, its blasted landscape, was not a contrast with the life they’d known at home, in Birmingham or Manchester or Glasgow or the Welsh pit villages, but a nightmarish culmination. ‘Equally not at home in either,’ Mac had said. He was right.

Prior lingered a while, listening to the night noises, remembering the evenings in his childhood when he’d sat on the stairs, unable to sleep, until his father had come in and gone to bed, and he knew his mother was safe. Engines rumbled, coughed, whistled, hissed. Trucks shunted along, bumpers clanged together. A few streets away a drunk started singing: ‘There’s an old mill by the stream, Nelly Dean.’

He ought to be getting back. He’d already been away much longer than he’d meant. He began walking rapidly across the brick fields. One moment he was striding confidently along and the next he was falling, sliding rather, down a steep slope into pitch-black. He lay on his back at the muddy bottom of the hole and saw the tall weeds wave against the sky. He wasn’t hurt, but the breath had been knocked out of him. Gradually, his heart stopped thumping. The stars looked brighter down here, just as they did in a trench. He reached out for something to hold on to, and his groping fingers encountered a sort of ledge. He patted along it and then froze. It was a firestep. It couldn’t be, but it was. Disorientated and afraid, he felt further and encountered a hole, and then another beside it, and another: funk holes, scooped out of the clay. He was in a trench . Even as his mind staggered, he was groping for an explanation. Boys played here. Street gangs. They must have been digging for months to get as deep as this. But then probably the trench was years old, as old as the real trenches, perhaps. He clambered out, over what he suspected was No Man’s Land, and there, sure enough, were the enemy lines.

Smiling to himself, unwilling to admit how deeply the bizarre incident had shocked him, he walked on, more cautiously now, and reached the railings at the far side. He was trembling. He had to hold on to the railings to steady himself.

The shock made him rebellious. He decided he wouldn’t go straight home after all. Witnessing these nasty little rows between his parents did them no good, and him a great deal of harm. The time had come to call a halt. He would go to the pub. Which pub? His way home took him past the Rose and Crown, whose brass door flashed to and fro, letting out great belches of warm beery air. He would go there. He would do what other men do who come home on leave. Get drunk and forget.

He was greeted by a fug of human warmth, so hot he felt the skin on his nose tingle as the pores opened. He stood looking round at the flushed and noisy faces, and in the far corner spotted Mrs Thorpe and Mrs Riley with a great gaggle of other women. He decided he ought to stand them a drink. After all, they’d stood him many a drink in their day. A cry of recognition greeted him as he approached, and the whole boozy crowd of them opened up and took him in.

Two hours later Harry Prior was stumbling home, gazing in bleary appreciation at the full moon, riding high and magnificent in the clear sky. He paused on the bridge that spanned the canal to take a quick leak and admire the view. The moon was reflected in the water. He looked down at it, as a jet of hot piss hit the wall and trickled satisfyingly between the cobbles, and wondered why it should be bobbling up and down. He checked to see the real moon was behaving itself, then peered more closely at its reflection.

It wasn’t the bloody moon at all, it was an arse. My God, the lad was going at it. Harry had half a mind to cheer him on, but then he thought, no, better not. A person might very easily be mistaken for a peeping Tom. He leant further over, pressing himself against the rough granite, wishing he could see more. All he could see of the woman was knees. Who the bloody hell wants to watch a male arse bobbing up and down? Bloody golf-balls. Still, it didn’t half give you ideas. Bugger all doing at home, knees glued together. He rubbed himself against the wall for comfort, then wandered disconsolately on.

‘There’s somebody on the bridge.’

Prior turned, but he couldn’t see anything. He listened to the fading footsteps. ‘They’re going.’

She’d gone tense and braced herself against him. He’d have to start from the beginning. He kissed her mouth, her nose, her hair, and then, lowering his head in pure delight, feeling every taboo in the whole fucking country crash round his ears, he sucked Mrs Riley’s breasts.