Pat Barker - The Eye in the Door

Rivers followed him into the room. ‘How bad is he?’

‘The wound — not bad at all. In fact, I can show you.’ He took an X-ray from a file on his desk and held it to the light. Sassoon’s skull stared out at them. ‘You see?’ Saunders pointed to the intact bone. ‘The bullet went right across there.’ He indicated the place on his own head. ‘What he’s got is a rather neat parting in the scalp.’

Rivers breathed out. ‘Lucky man,’ he said, as lightly as he could.

‘I don’t think he thinks so.’

They sat at opposite sides of the desk. ‘I got a rather garbled message, I’m afraid,’ Rivers said. ‘I wasn’t clear whether you ’d asked me to see him or — ‘

‘It was me. I saw your name on the file and I thought since you’d dealt with him before you might not mind seeing him again.’ Saunders hesitated. ‘I gather he was quite an unusual patient.’

Rivers looked down at his own signature at the end of the Craiglockhart report. ‘He’d protested against the war. It was…’ He took a deep breath. ‘Convenient to say he’d broken down.’

‘Convenient for whom?’

‘The War Office. His friends. Ultimately for Sassoon.’

‘And you persuaded him to go back?’

‘He decided to go back. What’s wrong?’

‘He’s… He was all right when he arrived. Seemed to be. Then he had about eight visitors all at his bed at the one time. The hospital rules say two . But the nurse on duty was very young and apparently she felt she couldn’t ask them to leave. She won’t make that mistake again. Anyway, by the time they finally did leave he was in a terrible state. Very upset. And then he had a bad night — everybody had a bad night — and we decided to try a single room and no visitors.’

‘Is he depressed?’

‘No. Rather the reverse. Excitable. Can’t stop talking. And now he’s got nobody to talk to .’

Rivers smiled. ‘Perhaps I’d better go along and provide an audience.’

Deep-carpeted corridors, gilt-framed pictures on the wall. He followed Saunders, remembering the corridors of Craiglockhart. Dark, draughty, smelling of cigarettes. But this was oppressive too, in its airless, cushioned luxury. He looked out of a window into a deep dark well between two buildings. A pigeon stood on a window-sill, one cracked pink foot curled round the edge of the abyss.

Saunders said, ‘He seems to have a good patch in the afternoon. He might be asleep.’ He opened the door softly and they went in.

Sassoon was asleep, his face pale and drawn beneath the cap of bandages. ‘Shall I —’ Saunders whispered, pointing to Sassoon.

‘No, leave him. I’ll wait.’

‘I’ll leave you to it, then,’ Saunders said, and withdrew.

Rivers sat down by the bed. There was another bed in the room, but it was not made up. Flowers, fruit, chocolate, books were piled up on the bedside table. He did not intend to wake Siegfried, but gradually some recollection of whispered voices began to disturb the shuttered face. Siegfried moistened his lips and a second later opened his eyes. He focused them on Rivers, and for a moment there was joy, followed immediately by fear. He stretched out his hand and touched Rivers’s sleeve. He’s making sure I’m real, Rivers thought. A rather revealing gesture.

The hand slid down and touched the back of his hand. Siegfried swallowed, and started to sit up. ‘I’m glad to see you,’ he said, offering his hand. ‘I thought for a mo —’ He checked himself. ‘They won’t let you stay,’ he said, smiling apologetically. ‘I’m not allowed to see anybody.’

‘No, it’s all right. They know I’m here.’

‘I suppose it’s because you’re a doctor,’ Siegfried said, settling back. ‘They wouldn’t let Lady Ottoline in, I heard Mrs Fisher talking to her in the corridor.’

His manner was different, Rivers thought. Talkative, restless, rapid speech, and he was looking directly at Rivers, something he almost never did, particularly at the beginning of a meeting. But he seemed perfectly rational, and the changes were within normal bounds. ‘Why won’t they let you see anybody?’

‘It’s because of Sunday, everybody came, Robert Ross, Meicklejon, Sitwell, oh God, Eddie Marsh, and they were all talking about the book and I got excited and —’ He raised his hands to his forehead. ‘FIZZLE. POP. I had a bad night, kept everybody awake, and they put me in here.’

‘How was last night?’

Siegfried pulled a face. ‘Bad. I keep thinking how big it is, the war , and how impossible it is to write about, and how useless it is to get angry, that’s such a trivial reaction, it doesn’t, it just doesn’t do any sort of justice to the to the to the tragedy, you know you spend your entire life out there obsessed with this tiny little sector of the Front, I mean thirty yards of sandbags, that’s the war, you’ve no conception of anything else, and now I think I can see all of it, vast armies, flares going up, millions of people, millions, millions .’

Rivers waited. ‘You say you see it?’

‘Oh, yes, it just unfolds.’ A circling movement of his arms. ‘And it’s marvellous in a way, but it’s terrible too and I get so frightened because you’d have to be Tolstoy.’ He gripped Rivers’s hand. ‘I’ve got to see Ross, I don’t care about the others, but you’ve got to make them let me see him, he looks awful, that bloody bloody bloody trial. Do you know Lord Alfred Douglas called him “the leader of all the sodomites in London”? Only he said it in the witness-box, so Robbie can’t sue.’

‘Just as well, perhaps.’

‘ And he’s been asked to resign from all his committees, I mean he offered, but it was accepted with alacrity. I’ve got to see him . Apart from anything else he brings me the reviews.’

‘They’re good, aren’t they? I’ve been looking out for them.’

‘ Most of them.’

Rivers smiled. ‘You can’t write a controversial book and expect universal praise, Siegfried.’

‘Can’t I?’

They laughed, and for a moment everything seemed normal. Then Siegfried’s face darkened. ‘Do you know we actually sat in dug-outs in France and talked about that trial? The papers were full of it, I think it was the one thing that could have made me glad I was out there, I mean, for God’s sake, the Germans on the Marne, five thousand prisoners taken and all you read in the papers is who’s going to bed with whom and are they being blackmailed? God .’

‘I’ll see what I can do about Ross.’

‘Do you think they’ll listen to you?’

Rivers hesitated. ‘I think they might.’ Obviously Siegfried didn’t know he’d been called in professionally. ‘How’s the head?’

A spasm of contempt. ‘It’s a scratch. I should never’ve let them send me back, do you know that’s the last thing I said to my servant, “I’m coming back.” “Back in three weeks,” I yelled at him as I was being driven away. And then I let myself be corrupted.’

‘ Corrupted? That’s a harsh word, isn’t it?’

‘I should’ve refused to come back.’

‘Siegfried, nobody would have listened to you if you had. Head injuries have to be taken seriously.’

‘But don’t you see, the timing was perfect? Did you see my poem in the Nation? “I Stood with the Dead”. Well, there you are. Or there I was rather, perched on the top-most bough, carolling away. BANG! Oops! Sorry. Missed.’

‘I’m glad it did.’

A bleak sideways glance from Siegfried. ‘I’m not.’

Silence.

‘I feel amputated. I don’t belong here. I keep looking at all this…’ The waving hand took in fruit, flowers, chocolates. ‘I just wish I could parcel it up and send it out to them. I did manage to send them a gramophone. Then I got… ill.’