Pat Barker: Regeneration

‘Campbell?’

Campbell spun round. ‘Ah, Captain Rivers, just the man.’ He came up to Rivers and, speaking in a discreet whisper that was audible the length and breadth of the corridor, as Campbell’s discreet whispers tended to be, said, ‘That fella they’ve put in my room.’

‘Sassoon. Yes?’

‘Don’t think he’s a German spy, do you?’

Rivers gave the matter careful consideration. ‘No, I don’t think so. They never call themselves “Siegfried”.’

Campbell looked astonished. ‘No more they do.’ He nodded, patted Rivers briskly on the shoulder, and moved off. ‘Just thought I’d mention it,’ he called back.

‘Thank you, Campbell. Much appreciated.’

Rivers stood for a moment at the foot of the stairs, unconsciously shaking his head.

‘I was walking up the drive at home. My wife was on the lawn having tea with some other ladies, they were all wearing white. As I got closer, my wife stood up and smiled and waved and then her expression changed and all the other ladies began to look at each other. I couldn’t understand why, and then I looked down and saw that I was naked.’

‘What had you been wearing?’

‘Uniform. When I saw how frightened they were, it made me frightened. I started to run and I was running through bushes. I was being chased by my father-in-law and two orderlies. Eventually they got me cornered and my father-in-law came towards me, waving a big stick. It had a snake wound round it. He was using it as a kind of flail, and the snake was hissing. I backed away, but they got hold of me and tied me up.’

Rivers detected a slight hesitation. ‘What with?’

A pause. In determinedly casual tones Anderson said, ‘A pair of lady’s corsets. They fastened them round my arms and tied the laces.’

‘Like a strait-waistcoat?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then?’

‘Then I was carted off to some kind of carriage. I was thrown inside and the doors banged shut and it was very dark. Like a grave. The first time I looked it was empty, but then the next time you were there. You were wearing a post-mortem apron and gloves.’

It was obvious from his tone that he’d finished. Rivers smiled and said, ‘It’s a long time since I’ve worn those.’

‘I haven’t recently worn corsets.’

‘Whose corsets were they?’

‘Just corsets. You want me to say my wife’s, don’t you?’

Rivers was taken back. ‘I want you to say—’

‘Well, I really don’t think they were. I suppose it is possible someone might find being locked up in a loony bin a fairly emasculating experience?’

‘I think most people do.’ Though not many said so. ‘I want you to say what you think.’

No response.

‘You say you woke up vomiting?’

‘Yes.’

‘I wonder why? I mean I can quite see the sight of me in a post-mortem apron might not be to everybody’s taste—’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What was the most frightening thing about the dream?’

‘The snake.’

A long silence.

‘Do you often dream about snakes?’

‘Yes.’

Another long silence. ‘Well, go on, then,’ Anderson exploded at last. ‘That’s what you Freudian Johnnies are on about all the time, isn’t it? Nudity, snakes, corsets. You might at least try to look grateful, Rivers. It’s a gift.’

‘I think if I’d made any association at all with the snake — and after all what possible relevance can my associations have? — it was probably with the one that’s crawling up your lapel.’

Anderson looked down at the caduceus badge of the RAMC which he wore on his tunic, and then across at the same badge on Rivers’s tunic.

‘What the er snake might suggest is that medicine is an issue between yourself and your father-in-law?’

‘No.’

‘Not at all?’

‘No.’

Another long silence. Anderson said, ‘It depends what you mean by an issue.’

‘A subject on which there is habitual disagreement.’

‘No. Naturally my time in France has left me with a certain level of distaste for the practice of medicine, but that’ll go in time. There’s no issue. I have a wife and child to support.’

‘You’re how old?’

‘Thirty-six.’

‘And your little boy?’

Anderson’s expression softened. ‘Five.’

‘School fees coming up?’

‘Yes. I’ll be all right once I’ve had a rest. Basically, I’m paying for last summer. Do you know, at one point we averaged ten amputations a day? Every time I was due for leave it was cancelled.’ He looked straight at Rivers. ‘There’s no doubt what the problem is. Tiredness.’

‘I still find the vomiting puzzling. Especially since you say you feel no more than a mild disinclination for medicine.’

‘I didn’t say mild, I said temporary.’

‘Ah. What in particular do you find difficult?’

‘I don’t know that there is anything particular.’

A long silence.

Anderson said, ‘I’m going to start timing these silences, Rivers.’

‘It’s already been done. Some of the younger ones had a sweepstake on it. I’m not supposed to know.’

‘Blood.’

‘And you attribute this to the ten amputations a day?’

‘No, I was all right then. The… er… problem started later. I wasn’t at Étaples when it happened, I’d been moved forward — the 13th CCS. They brought in this lad. He was a Frenchman, he’d escaped from the German lines. Covered in mud. There wasn’t an inch of skin showing anywhere. And you know it’s not like ordinary mud, it’s five, six inches thick. Bleeding. Frantic with pain. No English.’ A pause. ‘I missed it. I treated the minor wounds and missed the major one.’ He gave a short, hissing laugh. ‘Not that the minor ones were all that minor. He started to haemorrhage, and… there was nothing I could do. I just stood there and watched him bleed to death.’ His face twisted. ‘It pumped out of him.’

It was a while before either of them stirred. Then Anderson said, ‘If you’re wondering why that one, I don’t know. I’ve seen many worse deaths.’

‘Have you told your family?’

‘No. They know I don’t like the idea of going back to medicine, but they don’t know why.’

‘Have you talked to your wife?’

‘Now and then. You have to think about the practicalities, Rivers. I’ve devoted all my adult life to medicine. I’ve no private income to tide me over. And I do have a wife and a child.’

‘Public health might be a possibility.’

‘It doesn’t have much… dash about it, does it?’

‘Is that a consideration?’

Anderson hesitated. ‘Not with me.’

‘Well, we can talk about the practicalities later. You still haven’t told me when you said enough.’

Anderson smiled. ‘You make it sound like a decision. I don’t know that lying on the floor in a pool of piss counts as a decision.’ He paused. ‘The following morning. On the ward. I remember them all looking down at me. Awkward situation, really. What do you do when the doctor breaks down?’

At intervals, as Rivers was doing his rounds as orderly officer for the day, he thought about this dream. It was disturbing in many ways. At first he’d been inclined to see the post-mortem apron as expressing no more than a lack of faith in him, or, more accurately, in his methods, since obviously any doctor who spends much time so attired is not meeting with uniform success on the wards. This lack of faith he knew to be present. Anderson, in his first interview, had virtually refused treatment, claiming that rest, the endless pursuit of golf balls, was all that he required. He had some knowledge of Freud, though derived mainly from secondary or prejudiced sources, and disliked, or perhaps feared, what he thought he knew. There was no particular reason why Anderson, who was, after all, a surgeon, should be well informed about Freudian therapy, but his misconceptions had resulted in a marked reluctance to reveal his dreams. Yet his dreams could hardly be ignored, if only because they were currently keeping the whole of one floor of the hospital awake. His room-mate, Featherstone, had deteriorated markedly as the result of Anderson’s nightly outbursts. Still, that was another problem. As soon as Anderson had revealed that extreme horror of blood, Rivers had begun tentatively to attach another meaning to the post-mortem apron. If Anderson could see no way out of returning to the practice of a profession which must inevitably, even in civilian life, recall the horrors he’d witnessed in France, then perhaps he was desperate enough to have considered suicide? That might account both for the post-mortem apron and for the extreme terror he’d felt on waking. At the moment he didn’t know Anderson well enough to be able to say whether suicide was a possibility or not, but it would certainly need to be borne in mind.