Pat Barker - Regeneration

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, obviously delighted.

‘Having my chest examined.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘Fine — thanks to you. What are you doing here?’

‘I’m with Madge. Her fiancé’s been wounded.’

‘Is he all right?’

‘Yes, I think so.’ Her face darkened. ‘I’ve just seen some that aren’t all right. There’s a sort of conservatory round the back. They’re all sat in there. Where the rest of us don’t have to see them.’

‘Bad?’

She nodded. ‘You know I used to wonder how I’d go on if Johnny came back like that. You always tell yourself it’d make no difference. Easy said, isn’t it?’

He sensed the anger and responded to it immediately. She might not know much about the war, but what she did know she faced honestly. He admired her for that. ‘Look, do you have to wait for Madge?’ he asked. ‘I mean, how long do you think she’ll be?’

‘Ages, I should think. She was virtually in bed with him when I left.’

‘Well, can’t you tell her you’re going? She can walk back by herself all right, can’t she? It’s broad daylight.’

She looked at him consideringly. ‘Yes, all right.’ She started to move away. ‘I won’t be a minute.’

Left alone, Prior bought two bunches of chrysanthemums, bronze and white, from the barrow near the entrance. They weren’t the flowers he would have chosen, but he wanted to give her something. He stood craning his head for the first sight of her. When she arrived, smiling and out of breath, he handed her the flowers, and then, on a sudden impulse, leant across and kissed her. The flowers, crushed between them, released their bitter, autumnal smell.

They were burning leaves on Hampstead Heath where Rivers walked with Ruth Head on the second day of his visit. Acrid smoke drifted across their path and below them London lay in a blue haze. They stopped by one of the ponds, and watched a coot cleave the smooth water. ‘You see over there behind those houses?’ Ruth said. ‘That’s the RFC hospital. And then over there — just in that dip there — that’s the Big Gun.’

‘I’m glad you and Henry don’t take refuge in the kitchen every night. Everybody else seems to.’

‘Can you imagine Henry cowering under the kitchen table?’

They smiled at each other and walked on.

‘Actually the air raids are my guilty secret,’ Ruth said.

‘You mean you’d rather be under the table?’

‘Oh no, quite the opposite. I enjoy them. It’s a terrible thing to say, isn’t it? All that damage. People killed. And yet every time the siren goes, I feel this immense sense of exhilaration. I’d really like to go out and run about in it.’ She laughed, self-deprecatingly. ‘I don’t of course. But I get this feeling that the… the crust of everything is starting to crack. Don’t you feel that?’

‘ Yes. I’m just not sure we’re going to like what’s under the crust.’

They started to walk towards Spaniard’s Road. Rivers said, ‘You know last night I got the distinct impression that Henry was plotting something.’

‘About you? If he is, it’ll be something to your advantage.’

‘You mean you know and you’re not going to tell me?’

Ruth laughed. ‘That’s right.’

By Spaniard’s Road, men in blue hospital uniforms sat in wheelchairs, waiting for someone to come and push them away. Ruth was silent for a while after they’d walked past. ‘You know there was something I didn’t say last night.’ She looked up at him. ‘I think Sassoon’s absolutely right.’

‘Oh dear, I was hoping I might be able to introduce you. But if you’re going to be a bad moral influence —’

‘ Seriously. ’

‘All right, seriously. Suppose he is right? Does that mean it’s a good idea to let him go ahead and destroy himself?’

‘Surely it has to be his choice?’

‘It is his choice.’

Ruth smiled and shook her head.

‘Look,’ Rivers said, ‘I wear the uniform, I take the pay, I do the job. I’m not going to apologize for that.’

‘I’m not suggesting you should. All the same,’ she said, turning to look at him, ‘you’re tearing yourself in pieces as well as him.’

They walked in silence for a while. Rivers said, ‘Is that what Henry thinks?’

Ruth laughed. ‘Of course not. You want perception, you go to a novelist, not a psychiatrist.’

‘I’m sure you’re right.’

‘No, you’re not. You don’t believe a word of it.’

‘At any rate, I’m too cowed to disagree.’

That evening, left alone with Henry after dinner, Rivers watched him massage the triangle of skin between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. ‘Does that still bother you?’

‘A bit. Cold weather. Do you know, I don’t think I’d have the courage to do that now.’

‘No, I look back sometimes, and… I’m amazed. What are you doing these days?’

‘Gross injuries to the spinal cord. We’ve got a lot of interesting material.’ Head’s mouth twisted. ‘As we call the poor sods.’

Rivers shook his head. He’d seen Head too often on the wards to believe him capable of that particular kind of research-orientated callousness.

‘It’s an interesting atmosphere,’ Head said. ‘Dealing with physical trauma and war neurosis in the same hospital. You’d like it.’

‘I’m sure I would.’ A trace of bitterness. ‘I’d like London.’

‘There’s a job going if you want it.’

‘You mean there’s a vacancy?’

‘No, I mean there’s a job for you if you want it. I’ve been asked to sound you out. Psychologist with the Royal Flying Corps. At the Central Hospital, Hampstead.’

‘ Ah. I wondered why Ruth was so keen on the Heath.’

‘I imagine you’d find it interesting? Apparently there are some quite striking differences between the rate of breakdown in pilots and in other branches of the service.’

‘It sounds marvellous.’ He raised his hands and let them drop. ‘I just don’t see how I can.’

‘Why not? You’d be closer to your family, your friends, your research contacts, you’d be able to get back to Cambridge at weekends. And… I don’t suppose it matters , but we’d be able to work together again.’

Rivers buried his face in his hands. ‘O-o-o-oh. “Get thee behind me, Satan.”’

‘I am behind you. I was thinking of giving you a shove.’

‘I couldn’t leave Bryce.’

Head looked incredulous. ‘You mean, your CO?’

‘He’s in a difficult situation. We’re in for a general inspection, and… it all goes back a long way. Bryce is determined this time he’s not going to play their game. He’s not going to parade the patients, or polish the bottoms of the frying-pans, or pretend to be anything other than just an extremely busy, overcrowded and I think bloody good hospital.’

‘What do they want?’

‘They want a barracks. It’s got all the makings of a really nasty confrontation. I think Bryce may have to go.’

‘Well, I hate to sound harsh, but wouldn’t that rather solve the problem? Your problem, I mean.’

‘If it happened. Meanwhile, I think I can be… of some use to him.’

‘When is this inspection?’

‘End of the month.’

‘We’d need to know about the job… Well. Three weeks?’

‘I’ll think about it.’

‘Good. And don’t be too altruistic, will you? You’re isolated up there, it’s not good for you.’

‘I don’t know about isolated. I never have a minute to myself.’

‘ Precisely. Come on, let’s find Ruth.’