Pat Barker - Regeneration

Ada paid the bill, counting out the coppers with those thin, lined hands that Sarah could never see without pain.

‘You know Billy?’ Sarah asked suddenly.

‘No, I don’t, Sarah. I’ve not had the pleasure of an introduction.’

‘Well if you’ll just listen. If he gets slung out the hospital this time, he’ll have a bit of leave, and we thought we might… We thought we might drop in on you.’

‘Really?’

‘Is that all you can say?’

‘What am I supposed to say? Look, Sarah, he’s an officer. What do you think he wants you for?’

‘How should I know? Breath of fresh air, perhaps.’

‘Bloody gale.’

‘If he does come, you will be all right with him, won’t you?’

‘If he’s all right with me, I’ll be all right with him.’ Ada slipped a penny under the saucer. ‘But you’re a bloody fool.’

‘Why am I?’

‘You know why. Next time he starts waving his old doo-lally around, you think about that pin.’

Sassoon arrived late to find Graves sitting by himself in the bar. ‘Sorry I’m late.’

‘That’s all right. Owen was keeping me amused, but then he had to go. Somebody coming to see the printer.’

‘Yes, that’s right. I’d forgotten that.’

‘Good game?’

‘Not bad.’ Sassoon detected, or thought he detected, a slight chill. ‘It’s the only thing that keeps me sane.’

‘Last time you wrote you were complaining about playing golf with lunatics.’

‘Ssh, keep your voice down. One of them’s just behind you.’

Graves turned round. ‘Seems fairly normal to me.’

‘Oh, Anderson’s all right. Throws a temper tantrum whenever he looks like losing half a crown.’

‘You’ve been known to do that yourself.’

‘Only because you were fooling around with a niblick instead of playing properly.’ He raised a hand to summon the waiter. ‘Have you had time to look at the menu?’

‘I’ve had time to memorize it, Siegfried.’

At the table Graves said, ‘What do you find to talk to Owen about? He says he doesn’t play golf. And I don’t suppose for a moment he hunts.’

‘How acute your social perceptions are, Robert. No, I shouldn’t think he’d been on a horse in his life before he joined the army. Poetry, mainly.’

‘Oh, he writes, does he?’

‘No need to say it like that. He’s quite good. Matter of fact, I’ve got one here.’ He tapped his breast pocket. ‘I’ll show you after lunch.’

‘He struck me as being a bit shaky.’

‘Did he? I don’t think he is.’

‘I’m just telling you how he struck me.’

‘He can’t be all that shaky. They’re throwing him out at the end of the month. He was probably just overawed at meeting another Published Poet.’

A slight pause.

‘Aren’t you due to be boarded soon?’

‘The end of the month.’

‘Have you decided what you’re going to do?’

‘I’ve told Rivers I’ll go back, provided the War Office gives me a written guarantee that I’ll be sent back to France.’

‘I wouldn’t have thought you were in much of a position to bargain.’

‘Rivers seems to think he can wangle it. He didn’t say “wangle” of course.’

‘So it’s all over? Thank God.’

‘I’ve told him I won’t withdraw anything. And I’ve told him it’s got to be France. I’m not going to let them put me behind a desk filling in forms for the rest of the war.’

‘Yes, I think that’s right.’

‘Trouble is I don’t trust them. Even Rivers. I mean, on the one hand he says there’s nothing wrong with me and they’ll pass me for general service overseas — there’s nothing else they can do — and then in the next breath he tells me I’ve got a very powerful “anti-war complex”. I don’t even know what it means.’

‘I’ll tell you what it means. It means you’re obsessed. Do you know, you never talk about the future any more? Yes, I know what you’re going to say. How can you? Sass, we sat on a hill in France and we talked about the future. We made plans. The night before the Somme, we made plans. You couldn’t do that now. A few shells, a few corpses, and you’ve lost heart.’

‘How many corpses?’

‘The point is…’

‘The point is 102,000 last month alone. You’re right, I am obsessed. I never forget it for a second, and neither should you. Robert, if you had any real courage you wouldn’t acquiesce the way you do.’

Graves flushed with anger. ‘I’m sorry you think that. I should hate to think I’m a coward. I believe in keeping my word. You agreed to serve, Siegfried. Nobody’s asking you to change your opinions, or even to keep quiet about them, but you agreed to serve, and if you want the respect of the kind of people you’re trying to influence — the Bobbies and the Tommies — you’ve got to be seen to keep your word. They won’t understand if you turn round in the middle of the war and say “I’m sorry, I’ve changed my mind.” To them, that’s just bad form. They’ll say you’re not behaving like a gentleman — and that’s the worst thing they can say about anybody.’

‘Look, Robert, the people who’re keeping this war going don’t give a damn about the “Bobbies” and the “Tommies”. And they don’t let “gentlemanly behaviour” stand in the way either when it comes to feathering their own nests.’ He made a gesture of despair. ‘And as for “bad form” and “gentlemanly behaviour” — that’s just suicidal stupidity.’

Over coffee, the conversation changed tack.

‘There’s something I didn’t tell you in June,’ Graves said.

‘Do you remember Peter?’

‘I never met him.’

‘No, but you remember him? You remember about him? Well, he was arrested. Soliciting outside the local barracks. Actually not very far away from the school.’

‘Oh, Robert, I’m sorry. Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘How could I? You were in no state to think about anybody else.’

‘This was in July, was it?’

‘Same post I got your Declaration in.’ Graves smiled. ‘It was quite a morning.’

‘Yes, I can imagine.’

Graves hesitated. ‘It’s only fair to tell you that… since that happened my affections have been running in more normal channels. I’ve been writing to a girl called Nancy Nicholson. I really think you’ll like her. She’s great fun. The… the only reason I’m telling you this is… I’d hate you to have any misconceptions. About me. I’d hate you to think I was homosexual even in thought. Even if it went no further.’

It was difficult to know what to say. ‘I’m very pleased for you, Robert. About Miss Nicholson, I mean.’

‘Good, that’s all right, then.’

‘What happened to Peter?’

‘You’re not going to believe this. They’re sending him to Rivers.’

This was a bigger, and nastier, shock than Sassoon knew how to account for. ‘Why?’

‘What do you mean, “Why?”? To be cured, of course.’

Sassoon smiled faintly. ‘Yes. Of course.’

The munitions factory at night looked like hell, Sarah thought, as she toiled down the muddy lane towards it, and saw the red smouldering fires reflected from a bank of low cloud, like an artificial sunset. At the gate she fell in with the other girls all walking in the same direction, all subdued, with that clogged, dull look of people who’d just switched to night shift and hadn’t yet managed to adjust.

In the cloakroom, donning ankle-length green overalls, pulling on caps, dragging at a final cigarette, were thirty or forty women. Smells of sweat, lily-of-the-valley, setting lotion. After a while conversations sprang up, the women appeared more normal, even jolly for a time, until the supervisor appeared in the doorway, jabbing her finger at the clock.