Pat Barker - The Eye in the Door

Rivers smiled. ‘I walked into that one, didn’t I? Do you remember what was there?’

‘Bedrooms.’

‘No, I mean on the landing.’

‘Nothing, there wasn’t… No, the barometer. That’s right. The needle always pointed to stormy. I didn’t think that was funny at the time.’

‘Do you remember anything else about it?’

‘No.’

‘What did you do when your father came in drunk?’

‘Put my head under the bedclothes.’

‘Nothing else?’

‘I went down once. He threw me against the wall.’

‘Were you badly hurt?’

‘Bruised. He was devastated. He cried.’

‘And you never went down again?’

‘No. I used to sit on the landing, going PIG PIG PIG PIG.’ He made as if to pound his fist against the other palm, then remembered the burn.

‘Where were you exactly? Leaning over the banisters?’

‘No, I used to sit on the top step. If they started shouting I’d shuffle a bit further down.’

‘And where was the barometer in relation to you?’

‘On my left. I hope this is leading somewhere, Rivers.’

‘I think it is.’

‘It was a bit like a teddy-bear, I suppose. I mean it was a sort of companion.’

‘Can you imagine yourself back there?’

‘I’ve said I —’

‘No, take your time.’

‘All right.’ Prior closed his eyes, then opened them again, looking puzzled.

‘Yes?’

‘Nothing. It used to catch the light. There was a street lamp…’ He gestured vaguely over his shoulder. ‘This is going to sound absolutely mad. I used to go into the shine on the glass.’

A long silence.

‘When it got too bad. And I didn’t want to be there.’

‘Then what happened? Did you go back to bed?’

‘I must’ve done, mustn’t I? Look, if you’re saying this dates back to then, you’re wrong. The gaps started in France, they got better at Craiglockhart, they started again a few months ago. It’s nothing to do with bloody barometers.’

Silence.

‘Say something, Rivers.’

‘I think it has. I think when you were quite small you discovered a way of dealing with a very unpleasant situation. I think you found out how to put yourself into a kind of trance. A dissociated state. And then in France, under that intolerable pressure, you rediscovered it.’

Prior shook his head. ‘You’re saying it isn’t something that happens. It’s something I do.’

‘Not deliberately.’ He waited. ‘Look, you know the sort of thing that happens. People lose their tempers, they burst into tears, they have nightmares. They behave like children, in many respects. All I’m suggesting is that you rediscovered a method of coping that served you well as a child. But which is —’

‘I went into the shine on the glass.’

Rivers looked puzzled. ‘Yes, you said.’

‘No, in the pub, the first time it happened. The first time in England. I was watching the sunlight on a glass of beer.’ He thought for a moment. ‘And I was very angry because Jimmy was dead, and… everybody was enjoying themselves. I started to imagine what it would be like if a tank came in and crushed them. And I suppose I got frightened. It was so vivid, you see. Almost as if it had happened.’ A long pause. ‘You say it’s self-hypnosis.’

‘I think it must be. Something like that.’

‘So if I could do it and tell myself to remember in theory that would fill in the gaps. All the gaps, because I’d bring all the memories back with me.’

‘I don’t know if that’s the right thing to do.’

‘But in theory it would work.’

‘If you could become sufficiently aware of the process, yes.’

Prior was lost in thought. ‘ Is it just remembering?’

‘I don’t think I know what you mean.’

‘If I remember is that enough to heal the split?’

‘No, I don’t think so. I think there has to be a moment of… recognition. Acceptance. There has to be a moment when you look in the mirror and say, yes, this too is myself.’

‘That could be difficult.’

‘Why should it be?’

Prior’s lips twisted. ‘I find some parts of me pretty bloody unacceptable even at the best of times.’

The sadism again. ‘There was nothing I saw or heard last night that would lead me to believe anything… terrible might be happening.’

‘Perhaps you’re just not his type.’

‘“ Mister Prior.’”

A reluctant smile. ‘All right.’

Rivers stood up. ‘I think we’ve got as far as we can for the moment. Don’t spend the day brooding, will you? And don’t get depressed. We’ve made a lot of progress. It’ll do you much more good to have a break. Here, you’ll need this.’ Rivers went to his desk, opened the top drawer, and took out a key. ‘I’ll tell the servants to expect you.’

Prior woke with a cry and lay in the darkness, sweating, disorientated, unable to understand why the grey square of window was on his right, instead of opposite his bed as it should have been. He’d been with Rivers for over a fortnight and yet he still had these moments when he woke and couldn’t remember where he was. Footsteps came padding to his door.

‘Are you all right?’ Rivers’s voice.

‘Come in.’ Prior put the lamp on. ‘I’m sorry I woke you.’

‘You cried out. I couldn’t think what it was.’

‘Yes, I know, I’m sorry.’

They looked at each other. Prior smiled. ‘Shades of Craiglockhart.’

‘Yes,’ Rivers said. ‘We’ve done this often enough.’

‘You were on duty then. Go on, get back to bed. You need the rest.’

‘Will you be able to get back to sleep?’

‘Oh, yes, I’ll be all right.’ He looked at Rivers’s exhausted face. ‘And you certainly should. Go on, go back to bed.’

The dream had been about Mac, Prior thought, as the door closed behind Rivers. He couldn’t remember it clearly, only that it had been full of struggling animals and the smell of blood. Rivers seemed to think it was a good sign that his nightmares had moved away from the war, back into his childhood, but they were no less horrifying, and in any case they were still about the war, he knew they were. Rivers made him talk endlessly about his childhood, particularly his early childhood, the rows between his parents, his own fear, the evenings he’d spent at the top of the stairs, listening, words and blows burnt into him till he could bear it no longer, and decided not to be there. He could still not remember what happened in the childhood gaps, though now he remembered that there had been gaps, though only when he was quite small. Once, in sheer exasperation, he’d asked Rivers how he was getting on with his own gap, the darkness at the top of his own stairs, but Rivers had simply smiled and pressed on. One always thought of Rivers as a gentle man, but Prior sometimes wondered why one did. Relentless might have been a better word.

The nightmares, though, were not about the rows between his parents. The nightmares were about Mac. And that was strange because most of his memories of Mac were pleasant.

An expanse of gritty asphalt. A low building with wire cages over the windows. Smells of custard and sweaty socks. The singing lesson, Monday morning, straight after Assembly, with Horton prowling up and down the aisles, swishing his cane against his trouser leg, listening for wrong notes. His taste had run to sentimental ballads, ‘The Lost Chord’ a firm favourite. This was the time Mr Hailes was inculcating a terror of masturbation, with his lectures on Inflamed Organs and the exhaustion which followed from playing with them. Horton sat down at the piano and sang in his manly baritone: