Pat Barker: The Eye in the Door

‘Do you want to be cured?’

‘No.’

‘What does he do?’

‘Talks. Or rather, I talk. He listens.’

‘About sex?’

‘No, not very often. The war, mainly. You see that’s where the confusion comes in because he took one look at me and decided I was neurasthenic. I mean, I can see his point. I was in quite a state when I came out of hospital. A lot worse than I realized at the time. One night at dinner I just picked up a vase and smashed it against the wall. It was quite a large party, about twelve people, and there was this awful… silence. And I couldn’t explain why I’d done it. Except the vase was hideous. But then my wife said, “So is your Aunt Dorothea. Where is that sort of thinking going to lead?”’ He smiled. ‘I can’t talk to anybody else, so I talk to him.’

Prior put his hand on Manning’s arm. ‘Are you going to be all right? I mean, are they going to leave you alone?’

‘I don’t know. I think if they were going to bring charges they’d’ve brought them by now.’ His voice deepened. ‘“At that moment there was a knock on the door…”’

Prior was thinking. ‘All the same, it’s rather convenient, isn’t it? That you’re neurasthenic?’

‘Not particularly.’

‘I meant for Rivers. He doesn’t have to talk abou —’

‘I don’t know what Rivers thinks. Anyway, it’s the war I need to talk about. And even with him, you know, there are some things I couldn’t—’

‘You will.’

They lay and looked at each other. Manning said, ‘You were going to say which part of the ministry—’

‘Yes, so I was. Intelligence.’

‘With Major Lode?’

‘Yes. With Major Lode. And you?’

‘I’m on the fifth floor.’

Evidently the location was the answer. Manning turned and threw his arm across Prior’s chest. ‘Do you fancy a bit of turn and turn about? Or don’t you do that?’

Prior smiled. ‘I do anything.’

Charles Manning left the Ministry of Munitions two hours earlier than usual and went to his house, where he’d arranged to meet a builder who’d promised to repair the bomb damage. It was mid-afternoon. A surprisingly sticky day for spring, warm and damp. When the sun shone, as it did fitfully, emerging from banks of black cloud, the young leaves on the trees glowed a vivid, almost virulent green.

He was walking abstractedly past the bombed site, when the crunch of grit and the smell of charred brick made him pause, and peer through a gap in the fence. The demolished houses had left an outline of themselves on either side of the gap, like after-images on the retina. He saw the looped and trellised bedroom wallpaper that once only the family and its servants would have seen, exposed now to wind and rain and the gaze of casual passers-by. Nothing moved in that wilderness, but, somewhere out of sight, dust leaked steadily from the unstaunchable wound.

Suddenly a cat appeared, a skinny cat, one of the abandoned pets that hung around the square. It began picking its way among the rubble, sharply black and sleek, a silhouette at once angular and sinuous. It stopped, and Manning was aware of baleful yellow eyes turned in his direction, of a cleft pink nose raised to sift the air. Then it continued on its way, the soft pads of its feet finding spaces between shards of glittering glass. Manning watched till it was out of sight. Then, thinking he must get a move on, he swung his stiff leg up the steps to his house and inserted his key in the lock, remembering, with a faint smile, that he must pull and not push.

There was an envelope in the post-box. He took it out and carried it through into the drawing-room, his eyes gradually becoming accustomed to the darkness. A heavy smell of soot. There must have been another fall: chimney-sweeping was another job one couldn’t get done. He looked down at the envelope. Typewritten. Tradesman, probably. His family and friends all knew he was staying at his club. He put the letter down on the dust-sheet that covered the sofa and walked to the other end of the room, where he opened the shutters, letting in a flood of sickly yellow light.

He went to look at the crack above the door. Is it a load-bearing wall? the builder had asked. Manning thumped with his clenched fist. It didn’t sound hollow or feel flimsy, but then these houses were very solidly built. He crossed to the front wall, banged again and thought perhaps he could detect a difference. Not much in it, though. He went back to the crack and noticed that the whole surround of the door had been loosened. In fact the more closely one examined it the worse it appeared. That looks ominous, Prior had said, smiling slightly. Odd lad. Even as he felt himself begin to stir at the recollection of the evening, Manning’s mind was at work, categorizing. At first, noting Prior’s flattened vowels, he’d thought, oh yes. Temporary gentleman. A nasty, snobbish little phrase, but everybody used it, though obviously one tried not to use it in connection with people one liked. But the amazing thing was how persistent one’s awareness of class distinction was. The mind seemed capable of making these minute social assessments in almost any circumstances. He remembered the Somme, how the Northumberlands and Durhams had lain, where the machine-guns had caught them, in neat swathes, like harvested wheat. Later that night, crashing along a trench in pitch-blackness, trying desperately to work out where the frontage he was responsible for ended, he’d stumbled into a Northumberlands’ officer, very obviously shaken by the carnage inflicted on his battalion. And who could blame him? God knows how many they’d lost. Manning, sympathizing, steadying, well aware that his own nerves had not yet been tested, had none the less found time to notice that the Northumberlands’ officer dropped his aitches. He’d been jarred by it. Horrified by the reaction, but jarred nevertheless. And the odd thing was he knew if the man had been a private, he would not have been jarred, he would have handled the situation much better.

As the evening with Prior had gone on, the description ‘temporary gentleman’ had come to seem less and less appropriate. It suggested one of those dreadful people — well, they were dreadful — who aped their betters, anxious to get everything ‘right’, and became, in the process, pallid, morally etiolated and thoroughly nauseating. Prior was saved from that not because he didn’t imitate — he did — but because he wasn’t anxious. Once or twice one might almost have thought one detected a glint of amusement. A hint of parody, even. All the same, the basic truth was the man was neither fish nor fowl nor good red herring. Socially . Sexually too, of course, though this was a less comfortable reflection. He had a girl in the north, he said, but then they all said that. Manning had suggested they should meet again, and Prior had agreed, but politely, without much enthusiasm. Probably he wouldn’t come, and probably it would be just as well. His working at the Ministry brought the whole thing rather too close to… well. Too close.

Manning looked at his watch. Ten minutes before the builder was due. He walked across to the piano, lifted the dust-sheet and brought out the photograph of Jane and the boys. Taken last summer. What a little podge Robert had been. Still was. He’d always be a round-cheeked, nondescript sort of child. He was clutching the boat as if he suspected somebody was planning to take it away from him. No doubt James had been. He’s like me, Manning thought, looking at Robert. He felt an almost painful love for his elder son, and sometimes he heard himself speaking too sharply to the boy, but it was only because he could see so much of himself. He knew the areas of vulnerability, and that made him afraid, because in the end one cannot protect one’s children. Everybody — Robert too, probably, that was the sad thing — assumed James was his favourite. It wasn’t true. His love for James was an altogether sunnier, less complicated emotion. He had more fun with James, because he could see James was resilient. He had his mother’s dark, clearly defined brows, her cheekbones, her jaw, the same amused, direct look. The photograph didn’t do her justice; somehow the sunlight had bleached the strength out of her face. Probably she looked prettier because of it, but she also looked a good deal less like Jane. ‘It was hideous. ’ The vase he’d thrown at the wall. ‘So is your Aunt Dorothea. Where is that sort of thinking going to lead?’ Typical Jane. It sounded unsympathetic, but it wasn’t. Not really. She was a woman who could have faced any amount of physical danger without flinching, but the shadows in the mind terrified her.