Pat Barker - The Eye in the Door

The first two taxis went past. Spragge’s face, in the brown air, looked dingy, but less obviously bloody than it had in the flat. He stood, swaying slightly, apart from the noise and heat, the passing crowds, the sweaty faces. He was visibly nursing his bitterness, carrying it around with him like a too full cup. ‘Lode offered me a passage to South Africa. Did you know that? All expenses paid.’

‘Will you go?’

‘Might.’ He looked round him, and the bitterness spilled. ‘Fuck all here.’

Prior remembered there were things he needed to know. ‘Did Lode tell you to follow me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Were you following me when I went to see Hettie Roper?’

‘No, not there.’

Either Spragge was a better actor than he’d so far appeared, or he was telling the truth. Spragge started waving and shouting ‘Taxi!’

It pulled up a few paces further on. ‘I’ll need money,’. he said.

Prior dug in his breeches pockets. ‘Here, take this.’

Spragge bent down and said, ‘Marble Arch.’ He wasn’t going to give an address while Prior was within hearing.

‘You must have been following me,’ Prior said. ‘It was you who told the police where to find MacDowell.’

Spragge looked up from the dim interior. ‘Not me, guv.’ His tone was ironical, indifferent. ‘Lode says it was you.’

In the Empire Hospital Charles Manning surveyed the chess-board and gently, with the tip of his forefinger, knocked over the black king.

‘You win,’ he said. ‘Again.’

Lucas grinned, and then pointed over Manning’s shoulder to the figure of a man in army uniform, standing just inside the entrance to the ward.

Manning stood up. For a second there might have been a flicker of fear. Fear was too strong a word, perhaps, but Manning certainly wasn’t at ease though he gave the usual, expensively acquired imitation of it, coming towards Prior, offering his hand. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘This is a surprise.’

‘How are you?’

‘Getting better. Let’s go along to my room.’

Manning chatted easily as they walked along the corridor. ‘Remarkable chap, that. Do you know, he can’t remember the names of any of the pieces? But, my God, he knows how to play.’

Manning’s room was pleasant, with a bowl of roses on the bedside table, and a bright, yellow and red covered book lying face down on the bed.

‘A name you’ll know,’ Manning said, picking it up.

Prior read the title, Counter-Attack , and the name, Siegfried Sassoon.

‘You must’ve been at Craiglockhart at the same time,’ Manning said.

‘Ye-es. Though I don’t know how much of a bond that is. Frankly.’ Prior closed the book and put it on the bedside table beside a photograph of Manning’s wife and children, the same photograph that had been on the grand piano at his house. ‘He hated the place.’

‘Did he?’

‘Oh, yes, he made that perfectly clear. And the people. Nervous wrecks, lead-swingers and degenerates.’

‘Well,’ Manning said, waving Prior to a chair, ‘as one nervous, lead-swinging degenerate to another… how are you?’

‘All right, I think. The Intelligence Unit’s being closed down, so I don’t quite know what’s going to happen.’

Manning smiled. ‘I suppose you want to stay in the Ministry?’

‘Not particularly.’

‘Oh? Well, that might be a bit more difficult. I’ve got a friend at the War Office — Charles Moncrieff — I don’t know whether you know him? Anyway, one of his jobs is to select instructors for cadet battalions. I suppose that might be a possibility?’

Prior leant forward. ‘Hang on a minute. I didn’t come here to brown-nose you or your fucking friend at the War Office. What I was going to say — if you wouldn’t mind listening — is that I want to talk to you about something.’

‘What?’

‘Who. A woman called Mrs Roper. Beattie Roper.’

Manning was looking puzzled. ‘ The Mrs Roper? Poison-plot Roper?’

‘Yes.’ Prior got a file out of his briefcase. ‘Except she didn’t do it.’

Manning took the file from him. ‘You want me to read it?’

‘I’ve summarized it. It’ll only take you a few minutes.’

Manning read with total concentration. When he finished he looked up. ‘Can I keep this?’

‘Yes, I’ve got a copy. I’ve got copies of the documents as well.’

‘You mean you’ve made personal copies of Ministry files?’ Manning pursed his lips. ‘You certainly don’t play by the rules, do you?’

‘Neither do you.’

‘We’re in the same boat there, aren’t we?’ A hardening of tone. ‘I would have thought we were in exactly the same boat.’

The merest hint of a glance at the photograph. ‘Not quite.’

Manning got up and walked across to the window. For a while he said nothing. Then he turned and said, ‘Why? Why on earth couldn’t you just come in and say, “Look, I’m worried about this. Will you read the report?” All right , you’ve got the opening to do so because of… There was no need for anything like that.’

Prior had a sudden chilling perception that Manning was right. ‘Rubbish. Beattie Roper’s a working-class woman from the back streets of Salford. You don’t give a fuck about her. I don’t mean you personally — though that’s true too — I mean your class.’

Manning was looking interested now rather than angry. ‘You really do think class determines everything, don’t you?’

‘Whether people are taken seriously or not? Yes.’

‘But it’s not a question of individuals, is it? All right, I don’t know anything about women in the back streets of Salford. I don’t pretend to. I don’t want to. It doesn’t mean I want to see them sent to prison on perjured evidence. Or anybody else for that matter.’

‘Look, can we skip the moral outrage? When I came in here, you assumed I was after a cushy job. I didn’t even get the first bloody sentence out. Are you seriously saying you would have made that assumption about a person of your own class?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘No, I would.’

‘You get dozens of them, I suppose, begging for safe jobs?’

‘Yes,’ Manning said bleakly.

Prior looked at him. ‘Golly. What fun.’

‘Not really.’

They sat in silence, each registering the change in atmosphere, neither of them sure what it meant. ‘You’re right,’ Manning said at last. ‘It was an insulting assumption to make. I’m sorry.’

At that moment the door opened and Rivers came in.

‘Charles, I — ‘He stopped abruptly when he saw Prior. ‘Hello. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you had a visitor.’ He smiled at Prior. ‘I hope you’re not tiring my patient?’

‘He’s wearing me out,’ Prior snapped.

‘What did you want to see me about?’ Manning asked.

Rivers said, ‘Nothing that can’t wait.’

He went out and left them alone.

There was a short silence. ‘I’m sorry too,’ Prior said. ‘You’re right, of course. Class prejudice isn’t any more admirable for being directed upwards.’ Just more fucking justified. ‘Do you think I should show that to her MP?’

‘Oh, God, no, don’t do that. Once they’ve denied it in the House, it’ll be set in concrete. No, I’ll have a word with Eddie Marsh. Only don’t expect too much. I mean, it’s perfectly clear even from your report she was sheltering deserters. That’s two years’ hard labour. She’s only done one.’

‘She wasn’t charged with that.’

Manning said, ‘They’re not going to let her out yet.’