Pat Barker - The Eye in the Door

The hands came down. Mac looked… as people do look who’ve had repeated disagreements with detention camp guards.

‘On your feet,’ the guard said.

‘No,’ Prior said sharply. ‘Leave us.’

The man looked startled, but obeyed. It was a relief when the door clanged shut behind him. Prior had been dreading a situation where Mac refused to salute him, and the guards spent the next half hour bouncing his head off the wall.

‘Well,’ Prior said.

No chair. No glass in the window. A smell of stale urine from the bucket, placed where it could be seen from the door. And behind him… yes, of course. The eye.

‘I didn’t expect to see you ,’ Mac said. Neither his voice nor his manner was friendly, but he showed no obvious rancour. Perhaps, like a soldier, he’d become accustomed to the giving and receiving of hard, impersonal knocks. There was no room for emotion in this.

‘At least they’ve given you a blanket.’

Mac was naked underneath the blanket and the cell was cold even in summer.

‘For your visit. It goes when you go.’

Prior sat down at the foot of the plank bed and looked around him.

‘One of the main weapons, that,’ said Mac conversationally. ‘Marching you about the place naked. Especially since they don’t give you any paper to wipe yourself with and the food in here’s enough to give a brass monkey the shits.’ He waited. ‘The arsehole plays a major part in breaking people down, did you know that?’

‘You look as if they’ve worked you over.’

‘ Work? Pleasure. One of them…’ Mac raised his forearm. ‘Hang your towel on it.’

‘Is that over now?’

‘The beatings? They’re over when I give in.’

A uniform was lying, neatly folded, on the end of the bed.

‘Can I ask you something, Billy? Do you talk about the war in the trenches? I don’t mean day-to-day stuff, pass the ammunition, all that, I mean, “Why are we fighting?” “What is it all for?”’

‘No. We’re ‘ere because we’re ‘ere.’

‘Same in here.’

Prior looked puzzled. ‘There’s nobody to talk to .’

Mac smiled. ‘Morse code on the pipes. I take it I can rely on you not to tell the CO?’

‘Of course.’

‘“Of course”, Billy?’

‘It wasn’t me.’

Mac smiled and shook his head. ‘Why come here if you’re going to say that? Why come at all? I don’t know. Do you just want to see what you’ve done?’

Prior opened his mouth for a second denial, and closed it again. ‘I’ve got something for you,’ he said, digging into his tunic pocket and bringing out two bars of chocolate. He watched Mac’s pupils flare, then go dead. ‘Yes, I know. It’s contaminated. I’ve touched it.’ He held the chocolate out, using his body to screen Mac from the eye. ‘But you have to survive.’

Mac aligned himself exactly with Prior so that he could take the chocolate without being seen. ‘That’s true.’

‘You’d better eat it. They’ll search you.’

‘They won’t. That would mean doubting your integrity. An officer and a gentleman, no less. All the same I think I will have some.’ He slit the paper with his fingernail, broke off a piece and started to eat. The movements of his mouth and throat were awkward. Hunger had turned eating into an act as private as bishop-bashing. Prior tried to look away, but there was nothing to look at. His eyes could only wander round the cell and return to Mac.

‘Nine steps that way. Seven this. I do a lot of walking.’

‘How long are you in for?’

‘Solitary? Ninety days. If I reoffend — which is my intention — back in. Another ninety.’

Prior looked down at his hands. ‘And no letters?’

‘No.’

Mac managed a smile between mouthfuls. ‘Why did you come, Billy?’

‘To find out what you thought.’

‘About you? What a self-centred little shit you are.’

‘Yes.’

‘I didn’t believe it. The sergeant in Liverpool told me it was you, I mean, he mentioned your name. He was standing on my scrotum at the time, so, as you can imagine, it had a certain ring to it. I still didn’t believe it, but the more I thought about it the more I thought, yes.’ Mac was speaking intently, and yet almost indifferently, as if he didn’t care whether Prior listened or not. Perhaps speaking at all was merely a way of salving his pride, of distracting Prior’s attention while the all-important business of devouring the chocolate went on. ‘And then I thought, he told you. Do you remember in the cattle shed I asked you what you’d have done if you’d found a deserter in Hettie’s scullery and you said, “I’d turn him in. What else could I do?” And then I remembered a story I heard, about a man who found a snake half dead and nursed it back to life. He fed it, took care of it. And then he let it go. And the next time they met it bit him. And this was a very poisonous snake, he… knew he was going to die. And with his last gasp, he said, “But why? I saved you, I fed you, I nursed you. Why did you bite me?” And the snake said, “But you knew I was a snake.”’

A long silence. Prior moved at last. ‘It’s a good story.’

‘It’s a fucking marvellous story. Only…’

Prior waited. ‘Only what?’

‘Now shall I be greedy, and eat it all?’

‘Make sure of it. I would.’

‘I probably hate you a lot less than you think. Not that I’d say we were bosom pals exactly, in fact if I meet you after the war I’ll probably try to kill you…” He smiled and shook his head. ‘Was it all a lie about wanting to help Beattie?’

‘No, it was all true.’

‘You know what I’d like? I’d like you to look me straight in the eye, put on that phoney public school accent of yours, and say, yes I told the police where to find you, and I’m not ashamed of that. It was my duty.’

‘I can’t.’

Mac was watching him intently. ‘Then I don’t understand. I thought you’d finally worked out whose side you were on.’

‘There was never any doubt about that,’ Prior said, raising his sleeve. ‘People who wear this. More or less with pride.’ He stood up. ‘I shan’t say I’m sorry.’

Mac looked up at him. ‘Don’t. Chocolate’s too precious to bring back.’

Prior knocked, and waited impatiently for the guard to appear. He realized the painted eye must be looking straight at his belt buckle. Surreptitiously, he put his finger into the hole until it touched cool glass. Towers’s eye, he remembered, lying in the palm of his hand, had been warm.

The guard appeared and, with one backward glance, he followed him along the iron landing and down the stairs. He had the rest of the day to get through before he could talk to Rivers, but he was glad of that. It was right that the first confusion and pain should be borne alone. He did not doubt for a moment that Mac’s story was true — Mac had no reason to lie. Though he still had no memory of doing it, he had betrayed Mac.

He remembered an occasion when he’d held out a shaking hand to Rivers, stuttering something totally incoherent about Towers’s eye, how the memory of holding it in his hand had become a talisman, a reminder of where the deepest loyalties lie. That was still true. And yet he could not justify what he had done to Mac. Even if his other self hated Mac for refusing to fight, for trying to bring the munitions factories to a halt, it remained true that in arranging to meet Mac he had in effect offered him a safe conduct — for Beattie’s sake. Even leaving aside the childhood friendship, there had been a personal undertaking given in the present, trusted in the present, betrayed in the present. He could not, whether to satisfy Mac or console himself, say, ‘I did my duty.’ What had happened was altogether darker, more complex than that.