Pat Barker - The Eye in the Door

‘Let’s have a look. Do you mind?’ Prior picked up a sheet of paper. ‘Rivers, do you realize this is the graphic equivalent of a stammer? I mean, whatever it is you couldn’t say, you certainly didn’t intend to write it.’

Rivers pointed his index finger. ‘You’re getting better.’

Prior smiled. Without apparent effort, he read a sentence aloud: Thus, a frequent factor in the production of war neurosis is the necessity of restraint of the expression of dislike or disrespect for those of superior rank . ‘There’s no hope for me, then, is there? I wonder why you bother.’ He pushed Rivers gently off the chair. ‘Go on, you get on with something else.’

Rivers shook his head. ‘Do you know, nobody’s ever done that before.’

‘I’m good at breaking codes.’

‘Is that a boast?’

‘No. Pure terror.’

As Rivers turned the corner, he saw a man leaving Sassoon’s room. They met face to face in the narrow corridor, and stopped.

‘Dr Rivers?’

‘Yes.’

‘Robert Ross.’

They shook hands. After a few pleasantries about the weather, Ross said, ‘I don’t know whether Siegfried’s talked about the future at all?’

‘I believe he has various plans. Obviously he’s in no state to do anything very much at the moment.’

‘Gosse has some idea he could be useful in war propaganda, you know. Apparently Siegfried told him his only qualification for the job was that he’d been wounded in the head.’

They laughed, united by their shared affection for Siegfried, then said goodbye. Rivers was left with the impression that Ross had wanted to tell him something, but had thought better of it.

Siegfried was sitting up in bed, a notepad on his knees. ‘Was that you talking to Ross?’

‘Yes.’

‘He looks ill, doesn’t he?’

He looked worse than ‘ill’. He looked as if he were dying. ‘It’s difficult to tell when you don’t know the person.’

‘I shan’t be seeing him next week. He’s off to the country.’

Rivers sat down by the bed.

‘I’ve been trying to write to Owen,’ Sassoon said. ‘You remember Owen? Little chap. Used to be in the breakfast-room selling the Hydra .’

‘Yes, I remember. Brock’s patient.’

‘Well, he sent me a poem and I praised it to to the skies and now it’s been passed round…’ Siegfried pulled a face. ‘Nobody else likes it. And now I look at it again I ’m not sure either. The fact is…’ he said, putting the pad on his bedside table, ‘my judgement’s gone. And not just for Owen’s work. I thought I ’d done one or two good things, but when I look at them again they’re rubbish. In fact, I don’t think I’ve done anything good since I left Craiglockhart.’

Rivers said carefully, ‘You think that at the moment because you’re depressed. Give yourself a rest.’

‘Am I depressed?’

‘You know you are.’

‘I don’t know what point there is in it anyway. What’s an anti-war poet except a poet who’s dependent on war? I thought a lot of things were simple, Rivers, and…’ A pause. ‘Eddie Marsh came to see me. He thinks he can find me a job at the Ministry of Munitions.’

‘What do you think about that?’

‘I don’t know.’

Rivers nodded. ‘Well, you’ve got plenty of time.’

‘I don’t even know whether I’m going back to France. Am I?’

‘I shall do everything I can to prevent it. I don’t think anybody expects you to go back this time.’

‘I never regretted going back, you know. Not once.’ He sat up suddenly, clasping his arms round his knees. ‘You know what I’d really like to do? Go to Sheffield and work in a factory.’

‘In a factory?’

‘Yes, why not? I don’t want to spend the rest of my life wrapped up in the sort of cocoon I was in before the war. I want to find out about ordinary people. Workers.’

‘Why Sheffield?’

‘Because it’s close to Edward Carpenter.’

Silence.

‘Why not?’ Siegfried demanded. ‘ Why not? I did everything anybody wanted me to do. Everything you wanted me to do. I gave in, I went back. Now why can’t I do something that’s right for me? ’

‘Because you’re still in the army.’

‘But you say yourself nobody expects —’

‘That’s a very different matter from a General Discharge. I see no grounds for that.’

‘Does it rest with you?’

‘Yes.’ Rivers got up and walked to the window. He had hoped this time to be able to use his skills unambiguously for Siegfried’s benefit. Instead, he was faced with the task of putting obstacles in the way of yet another hare-brained scheme, because this was another protest, smaller, more private, less hopeful, than his public declaration had been, but still a protest.

Behind him Siegfried said, ‘There was a great jamboree in the park yesterday. Bands playing.’

Rivers turned to look at him. ‘Of course, I was forgetting. August 4th.’

‘They were unveiling some sort of shrine to the dead. Or giving thanks for the war, I’m not sure which. There’s a Committee for War Memorials. One of the committees Robbie had to resign from. Can’t have the Glorious Dead commemorated by a sodomite. Even if some of the Glorious Dead were sodomites.’

‘You’re very bitter.’

‘And you’re right, it’s no good. You can ride anger.’ Siegfried raised his hands in a horseman’s gesture, forefingers splayed to take the reins. ‘I don’t know what you do with bitterness. Nothing, probably.’

Rivers caught and held a sigh. ‘There’s something I want to say. In my own defence, I suppose. If at any time you’d said to me, “I am a pacifist. I believe it’s always and in all circumstances wrong to kill”, I… I wouldn’t have agreed with you, I’d’ve made you argue the case every step of the way, but in the end I’d’ve done everything in my power to help you get out of the army.’

‘You don’t need a defence. I told you, I never regretted going back.’

‘But then you have to face the fact that you’re still a soldier.’ Rivers opened his mouth, looked down at Siegfried, and shut it again. ‘You know, you really oughtn’t to be lying in bed on a day like this. Why don’t you get dressed? We could go out.’

Siegfried looked at his tunic, hanging on the back of the door. ‘No, thanks, I’d rather not.’

‘You haven’t been dressed since you arrived.’

‘I can’t be bothered to dazzle the VADs.’

‘ Dazzle? Isn’t that a bit conceited?’

‘ Fact , Rivers.’ Siegfried smiled. ‘One of life’s minor ironies.’

Rivers walked across the room, took Siegfried’s tunic from the peg and threw it on to the bed. ‘Come on, Siegfried. Put it on. You can’t spend the rest of your life in pyjamas.’

‘I can’t spend the rest of my life in that either.’

‘No, but you have to spend the rest of the war in it.’

For a moment it looked as if Siegfried would refuse. Then, slowly, he pushed back the covers and got out of bed. He looked terrible. White. Twitching. Exhausted.

‘We needn’t go far,’ Rivers said.

Slowly, Sassoon started to put on the uniform.

It was easier for Prior to arrange a visit to Mac than he had expected. He still had Ministry of Munitions headed notepaper, having taken a pile with him when he cleared his desk. But probably even without it, the uniform, the wound stripe, the earnestly expressed wish to save an old friend from the shame of pacifism, would have been enough to get him an interview.

Mac was sitting on his plank bed, his head in his hands.

Prior said, ‘Hello, Mac.’