Pat Barker - The Eye in the Door

Rivers pretended to look. ‘No-o. There isn’t one behind it either.’

Manning laughed. ‘The thing was he was extremely bright. And I don’t know whether it was snobbery or… or what it was, but I’d been assuming he wasn’t. Actually I don’t think it was snobbery, it was just he was so bloody bad at everything. You couldn’t believe there was an intelligent mind behind all those… cock-ups. But there was.’ His expression became momentarily remote. ‘After that, I noticed him more. I thought —’

‘What did he get?’

‘At the court martial? Two hours’ field punishment a day. When everybody else was resting — uh! — he’d be cleaning limbers, that sort of thing. I used to stop and have a word with him. I don’t think it helped because it took him away from the other men, and in the end it’s the other men who keep you going.’

‘Go on. You say you thought —’

‘I thought he was clumsy. And then after this talk I watched him, I watched him at bayonet practice, running in and lunging and… missing . You know, the thing’s this big, and he was missing it. And suddenly I realized it was nothing to do with clumsiness. He couldn’t switch off. He couldn’t… turn off the part of himself that minded. I’m quite certain when he finally got the bayonet in, he saw it bleed. And that’s the opposite of what should be happening. You know I saw men once… in close combat, as the manuals say, and one man was reciting the instructions. Lunge , one, two: twist , one, two, out , one, two… Literally, killing by numbers. And that’s the way it has to be. If a man’s properly trained he’ll function on the day almost like an automaton. And Scudder was the opposite of that. Somehow the whole thing had gone into reverse. I think probably because of the breakdown, because I can see the same sort of thing happening to me. Like red — the colour red — whatever it is, even if it’s a flower or a book — it’s always blood.’

Rivers had gone very still. He waited.

‘When I was out there, I could be in blood up to the elbows, it didn’t bother me. It’s almost as if instead of normal feelings being cut off, there aren’t any divisions left at all. Everything washes into everything else. I don’t know if that makes sense.’

‘Very much so.’

A pause. ‘Anyway, we moved forward. It was raining. I don’t know why I bother to say that. It was always raining. The heavens had opened. And we were told to report to the graveyard .’ Manning laughed, a genuine full-blooded laugh. ‘I thought, my God somebody’s developed a sense of humour. But it was absolutely true. We were billeted in the graveyard. And it was extraordinary. All the tombs had been damaged by shells and you could see through into the vaults, and this was in an area where there were corpses everywhere. The whole business of collecting and burying the dead had broken down. Wherever you looked there were bodies or parts of bodies, and yet some of the younger ones — Scudder was one — were fascinated by these vaults. You’d come across them lying on their stomachs trying to see through the holes, because the vaults were flooded, and the coffins were floating around. It was almost as if these people were really dead, and the corpses by the road weren’t. Any more than we were really alive.

‘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.’