Pat Barker - Regeneration

The sky darkened, the air grew colder, but he didn’t mind. It didn’t occur to him to move. This was the right place. This was where he had wanted to be.

By late afternoon Burns’s absence was giving cause for concern. The nurse who’d seen him walk out, wearing his coat, blamed herself for not stopping him, but nobody else was inclined to blame her. The patients, except for one or two who were known to be high suicide risks, were free to come and go as they pleased. Bryce and Rivers consulted together at intervals during the day, trying to decide at what point they should give in and call the police.

Burns came back at six o’clock, walking up the stairs unobserved, trailing mud, twigs and dead leaves. He was too tired to think. His legs ached; he was faint with hunger yet afraid to think of food.

Sister Duffy caught him just as he was opening the door of his room and bore down upon him, scolding and twittering like the small, dusty brown bird she so much resembled. She made him get undressed then and there and seemed to be proposing to towel him down herself, but he vetoed that. She left him alone but came back a few minutes later, laden with hot-water bottles and extra blankets, still inclined to scold, though when she saw how tired he looked, lying back against the pillows, she checked herself and only said ominously that Dr Rivers had been informed and would be up as soon as he was free.

I suppose I’m for it, Burns thought, but couldn’t make the thought real. He folded his arms across his face and almost at once began drifting off to sleep. He was back in the wood, outside the circle now, but able to see himself inside it. His skin was tallow-white against the scurfy bark. A shaft of sunlight filtered through leaves, found one of the magpies, and its feathers shone sapphire, emerald, amethyst. There was no reason to go back, he thought. He could stay here for ever.

When he opened his eyes, Rivers was sitting beside the bed. He’d obviously been there some time, his glasses were in his lap, and one hand covered his eyes. The room was quite dark.

Rivers seemed to feel Burns watching him, because after a few moments he looked up and smiled.

‘How long have I been asleep?’

‘About an hour.’

‘I’ve worried everybody, haven’t I?’

‘Never mind that. You’re back, that’s all that matters.’

All the way back to the hospital Burns had kept asking himself why he was going back. Now, waking up to find Rivers sitting by his bed, unaware of being observed, tired and patient, he realized he’d come back for this.

Rivers started his night round early. Sister Rogers was in her room, drinking the first of the many cups of coffee that would see her through the night. ‘Second-Lieutenant Prior,’ she said, as soon as she saw him.

‘Yes, I know, and there’s nothing I can do about it.’ Prior was a new patient, whose nightmares were so bad that his room-mate was getting no sleep. ‘Has he spoken to anybody yet?’

‘No, and if you speak to him he just stares straight through you.’

It was unlike Sister Rogers to take a dislike to a patient, but there was no mistaking the animosity in her voice. ‘All right,’ Rivers said, ‘let’s have a look at him.’

Prior was lying on his bed, reading. He was a thin, fair-haired young man of twenty-two with high cheekbones, a short, blunt nose and a supercilious expression. He looked up as Rivers came in, but didn’t close the book.

‘Sister tells me you had a bad night?’

Prior produced an elaborate shrug. Out of the corner of his eye Rivers saw Sister Rogers’s lips tighten. ‘What did you dream about?’

Prior reached for the notepad and pencil he kept beside his bed and scrawled in block capitals, ‘I DON’T REMEMBER.’

‘Nothing at all?’

Prior hesitated, then wrote, ‘NO.’

‘Does he talk in his sleep, sister?’

Rivers was looking at Prior as he asked the question, and thought he detected a flicker of uneasiness.

‘Nothing you can get hold of.’

Prior’s lips curled, but he couldn’t hide the relief.

‘Could you get me a teaspoon, sister?’ Rivers asked.

While she was out of the room, Prior went on staring at Rivers. Rivers, trying to keep the meeting from becoming a confrontation, looked around the room. Sister Rogers came back. ‘Thank you. Now I just want to have a look at the back of your throat.’

Again the pad came out. ‘THERE’S NOTHING PHYSICALY WRONG.’

‘Two l’s in “physically”, Mr Prior. Open wide.’

Rivers drew the end of the teaspoon, not roughly, but firmly, across the back of Prior’s throat. Prior choked, his eyes watered, and he tried to push Rivers’s hand away.

‘There’s no area of analgesia,’ Rivers said to Sister Rogers.

Prior snatched up the pad. ‘IF THAT MEANS IT HURT YES IT DID.’

‘I don’t think it hurt , did it?’ Rivers said. ‘It may have been uncomfortable.’

‘HOW WOULD YOU KNOW?’

Sister Rogers made a clicking noise with her tongue.

‘Do you think you could give us ten minutes alone, sister?’

‘Yes, of course, doctor.’ She glared at Prior. ‘I’ll be in my room if you need me.’

After she’d gone, Rivers said, ‘Why do you always write in block capitals? Because it’s less revealing?’

Prior shook his head. He wrote, ‘CLEARER.’

‘Depends on your handwriting, doesn’t it? I know, if I ever lost my voice, I’d have to write in capitals. Nobody can read mine.’

Prior offered the pad. Rivers, feeling like a schoolboy playing noughts and crosses, wrote: ‘Your file still hasn’t arrived.’

‘I SEE WHAT YOU MEAN.’

Rivers said, ‘Your file still hasn’t arrived.’

Another elaborate shrug.

‘Well, I’m afraid it’s rather more serious than that. If it doesn’t show up soon, we’re going to have to try to get a history together — like this. And that’s not going to be easy.’

‘WHY?’

‘Why do we have to do it? Because I need to know what’s happened to you.’

‘I DON’T REMEMBER.’

‘No, not at the moment, perhaps, but the memory will start to come back.’

A long silence. At last Prior scribbled something, then turned over on his side to face the wall. Rivers leant across and picked the pad up. Prior had written: ‘NO MORE WORDS.’

‘I must say it makes Dottyville almost bearable,’ Sassoon said, looking up and down the station platform. ‘Knowing you don’t have to be vomited over at every meal. I’d eat out every night if I could afford it.’

‘You’ll have to spend some time in the place, Sass.’ No reply. ‘At least you’ve got Rivers.’

‘And at least Rivers doesn’t pretend there’s anything wrong with my nerves.’

Graves started to speak and checked himself. ‘I wish I could say the same about mine.’

‘What can I say, Robert? Have my bed. You live with a herd of lunatics. I’ll go back to Liverpool.’

‘I hate it when you talk like that. As if everybody who breaks down is inferior. We’ve all been’ — Graves held up his thumb and forefinger — ‘that close.’

‘I know how close I’ve been.’ A short silence, then he burst out, ‘Don’t you see, Robert, that’s why I hate the place? I’m frightened.’

‘Frightened? You ? You’re not frightened.’ He craned round to see Sassoon’s expression. ‘Are you?’

‘Evidently not.’

They stood in silence for a minute.

‘You ought to be getting back,’ Graves said.

‘Yes, I think you’re right. I don’t want to attract attention to myself.’ He held out his hand. ‘Well. Give everybody my regards. If they still want them.’