Pat Barker - Regeneration

‘I thought discrediting my views was what you were about?’

Rivers smiled wryly. ‘Let’s just say I’m fussy about the methods.’

Rivers had kept two hours free of appointments in the late afternoon in order to get on with the backlog of reports. He’d been working for half an hour when Miss Crowe tapped on the door. ‘Mr Prior says could he have a word?’

Rivers pulled a face. ‘I’ve seen him once today. Does he say what’s wrong?’

‘No, this is the father.’

‘I didn’t even know he was coming.’

She started to close the door. ‘I’ll tell him you’re busy, shall I?’

‘No, no, I’ll see him.’

Mr Prior came in. He was a big, thick-set man with a ruddy complexion, dark hair sleeked back, and a luxuriant, drooping, reddish-brown moustache. ‘I’m sorry to drop on you like this,’ he said. ‘I thought our Billy had told you we were coming.’

‘I think he probably mentioned it. If he did, I’m afraid it slipped my mind.’

Mr Prior looked him shrewdly up and down. ‘ Nab. Wasn’t your mind it slipped.’

‘Well, sit down. How did you find him?’

‘Difficult to tell when they won’t talk, isn’t it?’

‘Isn’t he talking? He was this morning.’

‘Well, he’s not now.’

‘It does come and go.’

‘Oh, I’m sure. Comes when it’s convenient and goes when it isn’t. What’s supposed to be the matter?’

‘Physically, nothing.’ Two l’s, Rivers thought. ‘I think perhaps there’s something he’s afraid to talk about, so he solves the problem by making it impossible for himself to speak. This is… beneath the surface. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.’

‘If he doesn’t, it’ll be the first time.’

Rivers tried a different tack. ‘I believe he volunteered, didn’t he? The first week of the war.’

‘He did. Against my advice, not that that’s ever counted for much.’

‘You didn’t want him to go?’

‘No I did not. I told him, time enough to do summat for the Empire when the Empire’s done summat for you.’

‘It is natural for the young to be idealistic.’

‘Ideals had nowt to do with it. He was desperate to get out of his job.’

‘I think I remember him saying he didn’t like it. He was a clerk in a shipping office.’

‘That’s right, and getting nowhere. Twenty years wearing the arse of your breeches out and then, if you’re a good boy and lick all the right places, you get to be supervisor and then you sit on a bigger stool and watch other people wear their breeches out. Didn’t suit our Billy. He’s ambitious, you know, you mightn’t think it to look at him, but he is. His mam drilled that into him. Schooled him in it. She was determined he was going to get on.’

Rather unexpectedly, Rivers found himself wanting to leap to Billy Prior’s defence. ‘She seems to have succeeded.’

Mr Prior snorted. ‘She’s made a stool-arsed jack on him, if that’s what you mean.’

‘You make it sound as if you had no say.’

‘I didn’t. All the years that lad was growing up there was only one time I put my oar in, and that was when there was this lad at school picking on him. He was forever coming in crying. And one day I thought, well, I’ve had enough of this. So the next time he come in blubbing I give him a backhander and shoved him out the door. There he was, all tears and snot, yelling his bloody head off. He says, he’s waiting for us, our Dad. I says, go on, then. You’ve got to toughen ’em up, you know, in our neighbourhood. If you lie down there’s plenty to walk over you.’

‘What happened?’

‘Got the shit beat out of him. And the next day. And the next. But — and this is our Billy — when he did finally take a tumble to himself and hit the little sod he didn’t just hit him, he half bloody murdered him. I had his father coming round, and all sorts. Not but what be got short shrift.’

He seemed to have no feeling for his son at all, except contempt. ‘You must be proud of his being an officer?’

‘Must I? I ’m not proud. He should’ve stuck with his own. Except he can’t, can he? That’s what she’s done to him. He’s neither fish nor fowl, and she’s too bloody daft to see it. But I tell you one person who does see it.’ He pointed to the ceiling. ‘Oh it’s all very lovey-dovey on the surface but underneath he doesn’t thank her for it.’ He stood up. ‘Anyway I’d best be getting back. His nibs’ll have a fit, when he knows I’ve seen you. Wheezing badly, isn’t he?’ He caught Rivers’s expression. ‘Oh, I see, he wasn’t wheezing either? Not what you could call a successful visit.’

‘I’m sure it’s done him a lot of good. We often find they don’t settle till they’ve seen their families.’

Mr Prior nodded, accepting the reassurance without believing it. ‘Any idea how long he’ll be here?’

‘Twelve weeks. Initially.’

‘Hm. He’d get a damn sight more sympathy from me if he had a bullet up his arse. Anyway…’ He held out his hand. ‘It’s been nice meeting you. I don’t know when we’ll be up again.’

Rivers had completed two reports when Miss Crowe put her head round the door again. ‘ Mrs Prior.’

They exchanged glances. Rivers threw down his pen, and said, ‘Show her in.’

Mrs Prior was a small upright woman, neatly dressed in a dark suit and mauve blouse. ‘I won’t stay long,’ she said, sitting nervously on the edge of the chair. She was playing with her wedding ring, pulling and pushing it over the swollen knuckle. ‘I’d like to apologize for my husband. I thought he was just stepping outside for a smoke, otherwise I’d’ve stopped him.’

A carefully genteel voice. Fading prettiness. Billy Prior had got his build and features from her rather than the father. ‘No, I was pleased to see him. How did you find Billy?’

‘Wheezing. I’ve not seen his chest as tight as that since he was a child.’

‘I didn’t even know he was asthmatic.’

‘No, well, it doesn’t bother him much. Usually. As a child it was terrible. I used to have to boil kettles in his room. You know, for the steam?’

‘You must be very proud of him.’

Her face softened. ‘I am. Because I know how hard it’s been. I can truthfully say he never sat an exam without he was bad with his asthma.’

‘Did he like the shipping office?’

Her mouth shaped itself to say ‘yes’, then, ‘No. It was the same docks as his father and I think that was the mistake. You know, his father was earning more as a ganger than Billy was as a clerk, and I think myself there was a little bit of… You see the trouble with my husband, the block had to chip. Do you know what I mean? He’s never been able to accept that Billy was different. And I think there might have been a little bit of jealousy as well, because he has, he’s had a hard life. I don’t deny that. A lot harder than it need have been, because his mother sent him to work when he was ten. And no need for it either, she had two sons working, but there it is. What can you say? He worships her’ She was silent for a moment, brooding. ‘You know sometimes I think the less you do for them, the better you’re thought of.’

‘Would you say Billy and his father were close?’

‘ No! And yet, you see, the funny thing is our Billy’s…’ She sought for a way of erasing the tell-tale ‘our’ from the sentence and, not finding one, gave a little deprecatory laugh. ‘All for “the common people”, as he calls them. I said, “You mean your father?”’ She laughed again. ‘Oh, no, he didn’t mean his father. I said, “But you know nothing about the common people. You’ve had nothing to do with them.” Do you know what he turned round and said? “Whose fault is that?”