Pat Barker - Regeneration

‘That’s all right. I can’t stay here for ever.’

Rivers hesitated. ‘Is there any sign of your wife managing to get up?’

Mrs Anderson’s visit had been much talked of, but had still not occurred.

‘No. It’s difficult with a child.’

Others managed. Rivers left Anderson to get dressed and went back to his own room to finish shaving. Now that the surge of excitement had worn off, he felt tired and unwell. Quite unfit for work, though the day would have to be got through somehow.

Willard was his first patient. He was following a regime which involved early-morning exercises in the pool, and was wheeled into the room, wet-haired and smelling of chlorine. He started at once. ‘I can’t share a room with that man.’

Rivers went on kneading Willard’s calf muscles.

‘Prior.’

‘You’re not sharing a room with him, are you? You just happen to be in the sick bay at the same time.’

‘In effect I’m sharing a room.’

‘That feels quite a bit firmer. Does it feel firmer to you?’

Willard felt his calf. ‘A bit. He wakes up screaming. It’s intolerable.’

‘No, well, I don’t suppose he likes it much either.’

Willard hesitated. ‘It’s not just that.’ He bent towards Rivers. ‘He’s one of those.’

Rivers looked and felt stunned. ‘I really don’t think he is, you know. You mustn’t take everything Prior says seriously. He likes to tease.’

‘He is. You can always tell.’

‘Press against the palm of my hand.’

‘I don’t suppose you’d consider moving him?’

‘No. And again. He’s ill, Mr Willard. He needs the sick bay. If anybody moves out, it’ll be you .’

Willard was followed by an unscheduled appointment with Featherstone, also demanding a change of room, though with more reason. Nobody could be expected to share with Anderson, he said. The nightmares and vomiting were too bad, and the loss of sleep was beginning to affect his nerves. All of this was true. Rivers listened and sympathized and promised Featherstone a change of room as soon as the September Boards had introduced some leeway into the system. At the moment the hospital was so crowded there was no hope of a room change for anybody.

Next, Lansdowne, an RAMC captain, whose long-standing claustrophobia had been uncovered by his inability to enter dugouts. A particularly testing session. Lansdowne was always demanding, though Rivers didn’t mind that, since he felt he was making progress. Then Fothersgill, Sassoon’s new room-mate, a fanatical Theosophist. He spoke throughout in mock medieval English — lots of ‘Yea verilys’ and ‘forsooths’ — as if his brief exposure to French horrors had frightened him into a sort of terminal facetiousness. He was forty-three, but with his iron-grey hair, monocle and stiff manners he seemed far older. He didn’t take long. Basically, he was suffering from being too old for the war, a complaint with which Rivers had a little more sympathy every day.

Then a meeting of the Hospital Management Committee. Fletcher, one of the two patient representatives, was a highly efficient, conscientious man whose stay in France had ended when he’d developed paranoid delusions that the quartermaster was deliberately and systematically depriving the men of food. This delusion he had now transferred to the hospital steward. The meeting went well enough until the standard of hospital catering came under discussion, and then Fletcher’s delusions came to the fore. Tempers became heated, and the meeting closed on an acrimonious note. It was an unfortunate incident, since it would certainly fuel the administration’s view that patients should take no part in the running of the hospital. Bryce, supported by Rivers, believed that patient participation was essential, even if this meant that Craiglockhart committee meetings sometimes developed a flavour all of their own.

After lunch, Rivers went along to Bryce’s room to discuss Broadbent. Broadbent had been to see his sick mother twice in recent months. Towards the end of the second visit a telegram arrived from Broadbent, saying that his mother had passed on, and asking permission to stay for the funeral. Naturally, permission had been granted. In due course Broadbent came back, wearing a black armband, and — rather less explicably — the red tabs of a staff officer. The red tabs disappeared overnight, but the black armband remained. For some days after that Broadbent sat around the patients’ common room, pink-eyed and sorrowful, being consoled by the VADs. This happy state of affairs came to a close when Mrs Broadbent arrived, demanding to know why she never heard from her son. Broadbent was now upstairs, in a locked room. It was not easy to see how a court-martial could be avoided.

The rest of the afternoon was spent on a succession of young men. Rivers, by now feeling quite ill, was carried through it only by his perception that some at least were showing signs of improvement. One young man in particular, who’d broken down after finding the mutilated body of his friend, had become dramatically better in the last few weeks.

After dinner, Rivers decided to abandon the paperwork he ought to have been doing and have an early night. No bath tonight, he decided, he was too tired. He got between the sheets and stretched out his legs, thinking he’d never been so glad to be in a bed in his life. After a while he pushed the window further open and lay listening to the rain, a soft hushing sound that seemed to fill the room. Soon, still listening, he drifted off to sleep.

He was woken at two am by a pain in his chest. At first he tried to convince himself it was indigestion, but the leaping and pounding of his heart soon suggested other, more worrying possibilities. He pulled himself up, and concentrated on breathing slowly and quietly.

The wind had risen while he was asleep, and rain pelted the glass. All over the hospital, he knew, men would be lying awake, listening to the rain and the wind, thinking of their battalions sinking deeper into the mud. Bad weather was bad for the nerves. Tomorrow would not be an easy day.

An hour later he would have given anything for tomorrow to arrive. He was getting all the familiar symptoms. Sweating, a constant need to urinate, breathlessness, the sense of blood not flowing but squeezing through veins. The slightest movement caused his heart to pound. He was relieved when dawn came and it was possible to summon the orderly.

Bryce arrived shortly afterwards, brisk and sympathetic. He produced a stethoscope, and told Rivers to take his pyjama jacket off. The stethoscope moved across his chest. He sat up, leant forward and felt the same procession of cold rings across his back. ‘What do you think’s wrong?’ Bryce asked, putting the stethoscope away.

‘War neurosis,’ Rivers said promptly. ‘I already stammer and I’m starting to twitch.’

Bryce waited for Rivers to settle back against the pillows. ‘I suppose we’ve all got one of those. Your heartbeat’s irregular.’

‘Psychosomatic.’

‘And, as we keep telling the patients, psychosomatic symptoms are REAL. I think you should take some leave.’

Rivers shook his head. ‘No, I —’

‘That wasn’t a suggestion.’

‘Oh. I’ve got the September reports to do. If I do nothing else, I’ve got to do those.’

Bryce had started to smile. ‘There’s never going to be a convenient time, is there? Three weeks starting this weekend.’

A mutinous silence.

‘That gives you time to do the reports, provided you don’t see patients. All right?’ Bryce patted the coverlet and stood up. ‘I’ll tell Miss Crowe to put a notice up.’

Rivers was going on leave. He hadn’t been down to dinner for the past few days, but he was there tonight, Sassoon saw, looking rather better than he’d done recently, though still very tired. The MO’s table was the noisiest in the room. Even at this distance you could distinguish Brock’s high, reedy voice, MacIntyre’s broad Glaswegian, Bryce’s Edinburgh, Ruggles’s American, and Rivers, who, when he got excited in a discussion, as he often did, sounded rather like a sodawater syphon going off. Nobody, listening to him now, would have thought him capable of those endless silences.