Pat Barker - The Eye in the Door

‘You know, what I don’t understand,’ Rivers said, ‘is how you could possibly have been wounded there.’

‘I was in No Man’s Land.’

‘No, I meant under the helmet .’

‘I’d taken it off.’ An awkward pause. ‘We’d been out to lob some hand-grenades at a machine-gun, two of us, they were getting cheeky, you see, they’d brought it too far forward, and so we…” He smiled faintly. ‘Reestablished dominance. Anyway, we threw the grenades, I don’t think we hit anybody — by which I mean there were no screams — and then we set off back and by this time it was getting light, and I was so happy .’ His face blazed with exultation. ‘Oh, God, Rivers, you wouldn’t believe how happy. And I stood up and took the helmet off, and I turned to look at the German lines. And that’s when the bullet got me.’

Rivers was so angry he knew he had to get away. He walked across to the window and stared, unseeing, at the road, the railings, the distant glitter of the Serpentine under the summer sun. He had been lying to himself, he thought, pretending this was merely one more crisis in a busy working day. This anger stripped all pretence away from him. ‘ Why? ’ he said, turning back to Siegfried.

‘I wanted to see them.’

‘You mean you wanted to get killed.’

‘No.’

‘You stand up in the middle of No Man’s Land, in the morning, the sun rising, you take off your helmet, you turn to face the German lines, and you tell me you weren’t trying to get killed.’

Siegfried shook his head. ‘I’ve told you, I was happy.’

Rivers took a deep breath. He walked back to the bed, schooling himself to a display of professional gentleness. ‘You were happy?’

‘Yes, I was happy most of the time, I suppose mainly because I’ve succeeded in cutting off the part of me that hates it.’ A faint smile. ‘Except when writing poems for the Nation . I was… There’s a book you ought to read. I’ll try to dig it out, it says something to the effect that a man who makes up his mind to die takes leave of a good many things, and is, in some sense, dead already . Well, I had made up my mind to die. What other solution was there for me? But making up your mind to die isn’t the same as trying to get killed. Not that it made much difference.’ He touched the bandage tentatively. ‘I must say, I thought the standard of British sniping was higher than this.’

‘ British sniping?’

‘Yes, didn’t they tell you? My own NCO. Mistook me for the German army, rushed out into No Man’s Land shouting, “Come on, you fuckers,” and shot me.’ He laughed. ‘God, I’ve never seen a man look so horrified.’

Rivers sat down by the bed. ‘You’ll never be closer.’

‘I’ve been closer. Shell landed a foot away. Literally. Didn’t explode.’ Siegfried twitched suddenly, a movement Rivers had seen many thousands of times in other patients, too often surely for it to be shocking.

‘You can’t get shell-shock, can you?’ Siegfried asked. ‘From a shell that doesn’t explode?’

Rivers looked down at his hands. ‘I think that one probably did a fair amount of damage.’

Siegfried looked towards the window. ‘You know, they’re going on a raid soon, Jowett, five or six of the others, my men, Rivers, my men , men I trained and I’m not going to be there when they come back.’

‘They’re not your men now, Siegfried. They’re somebody else’s men. You’ve got to let go.

“I can’t.’

Rivers had been invited to dinner with the Heads, and arrived to find the Haddons and Grafton Elliot Smith already there. No opportunity for private conversation with Henry or Ruth presented itself until the end of the evening, when Rivers contrived that he should be the last to leave. It was not unusual after a dinner with the Heads for him to stay behind enjoying their particular brand of unmalicious gossip, well aware that his own foibles and frailties would be dissected as soon as he left, and sure enough of their love for him not to mind.

Not that he was inclined to gossip tonight. As soon as they were alone, he told them about Siegfried, clarifying his own perception of the situation as he spoke.

‘Excited, you say?’ Henry asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Manic?’

‘Oh, no, nowhere near. Though there was a hint of… elation, I suppose, once or twice, particularly when he was talking about his feelings immediately before he was wounded. And the afternoons are his best time. Apparently the nights are bad. I’ve promised I’ll go back. In fact, I ought to be going.’ He stood up. ‘I’m not worried . He’ll be all right.’

‘Does he regret going back?’ Ruth asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Rivers said. ‘I haven’t asked.’

After seeing Rivers off, Head came back into the living-room to find Ruth gazing reflectively into the fire.

‘No, well, he wouldn’t, would he?’ she said, looking up.

‘He might think there wasn’t much point,’ Henry said, sitting down on the other side of the fire.

A long, companionable silence. They were too replete with company and conversation to want to talk much, too comfortable to make the move for bed.

‘He came to see me last year, you know,’ Henry said. ‘Almost a sort of consultation. He got himself into quite a state over Sassoon.’

‘Yes, I know. I didn’t realize he’d talked to you about it.’

Head hesitated. ‘I think he suddenly realized he was using… his professional skills, if you like, to defuse a situation that wasn’t… medical . There’s really nothing else you can do if you’re a doctor in the army in wartime. There’s always the possibility of conflict between what the army needs and what the patient needs, but with Sassoon it was… very sharp. I told him basically not to be silly.’

Ruth gave a surprised laugh. ‘Poor Will.’

‘No, I meant it.’

‘I’m sure you did, but you wouldn’t have said it to a patient.’

‘I told him Sassoon was capable of making up his own mind, and that his influence probably wasn’t as great as he thought it was. I thought he was being… I don’t know. Not vain —’

‘Over-scrupulous?’

‘Frankly, I thought he was being neurotic. But I’ve seen him with a lot of patients since then, and I’m not so sure. You know how you get out of date with people if you haven’t seen them for a while? I think I was out of date. Something happened to him in Scotland. Somehow or other he acquired this enormous power over young men, people generally perhaps, but particularly young men. It really is amazing, they’ll do anything for him. Even get better.’

‘Even go back to France?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

Ruth shrugged slightly. ‘I don’t see the change. But then I suspect he’s always shown a slightly different side to me anyway.’ She smiled. ‘I’m very fond of him, but —’

‘He is of you.’

‘I sometimes wonder why we even like each other, you know. When you think how it started. You going to Cambridge every weekend so he could stick pins in your arm. I never had a weekend with you the whole of the first year we were married.’

‘It wasn’t as bad as that. Anyway, you got on all right.’

‘Do you think he still thinks Sassoon went back because of him?’

Head hesitated. ‘I think he knows the extent of his influence.’

‘Hmm,’ Ruth said. ‘Do you think he’s in love with him?’

‘He’s a patient.’

Ruth smiled and shook her head. ‘That’s not an answer.’

Head looked at her. ‘Yes, it is. It has to be.’