Pat Barker - Life Class

‘So-so.’

‘I volunteered for ambulance driving.’

‘Me too. I think they must be short of ambulances. I don’t really know, nobody tells you anything.’ He moved towards the door. ‘Let’s talk later, shall we? I ought to be getting back.’

‘Wait, I’ll get my torch.’ Lewis was almost stammering in his eagerness. ‘Oh, where’s the …?’

‘Behind the hut.’

Paul waited again, none too patiently, while Lewis disappeared round the side of the hut, no doubt expecting to find another similar hut containing the bathroom facilities.

A minute or so later he was back, head down, fumbling with buttons.

‘If you get desperate for a bit of civilization, there’s a hotel in town where you can get a bath.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘What don’t you understand?’

‘ This.’ He looked around at the gulf of darkness, the dull blue lights of the station quavering as they always did on windy nights. ‘Where’s the hospital?’

‘There isn’t a hospital.’ Paul felt weighed down, resenting the need to explain. ‘Look, there’s a lot of huts built round a covered goods yard. I suppose the wounded were dumped there initially because it was the end of the line. I can’t think of any other reason. When the Red Cross took over there were over a thousand men lying on straw in their own shit. Half a dozen orderlies, no medicine, no bedpans, no anaesthetics. You name it, they hadn’t got it. They weren’t even being fed. They hadn’t had their wounds dressed, some of them, for a fortnight. So however primitive you think this is, remember it’s been a hell of a lot worse.’

Lewis nodded, soaking it in.

‘And you did volunteer.’

His head went up immediately. ‘I’m not complaining.’

They walked on in silence. When they reached the ambulances’ turning circle, Lewis stopped and stared longingly at the three parked vehicles. In the moonlight, the red crosses stood out black against their pale canvas sides. No sign of the drivers, who’d be over in the canteen having coffee, waiting for the next call.

‘Come on,’ Paul said. ‘You can look at them later.’

He pushed hard against the hut door. Warm air tainted with gangrene gushed out to meet them. Behind him, he felt Lewis take an involuntary step back.

‘We’re in a quiet patch,’ Paul said, glancing over his shoulder. ‘You’re lucky.’

Sister Byrd greeted Lewis briskly, then turned to Paul. ‘You’d better take him round with you. Show him the ropes.’ She pointed to a man a little way along the row. ‘Start with him.’

After fetching scissors from the sterilizing room, Paul led Lewis across to the patient. Pulling back the blanket, he saw that the man was naked from the waist down, his groin padded with a heavily stained dressing that was stuck to the skin. He set to work with the scissors, aware of Lewis watching him. Lewis was breathing with his mouth open, his rather full lips cracked and dry. Easing the lower blade under the bandage, Paul snipped close to the skin, trying to disturb the area as little as possible. Inevitably the scissors tugged and every time the man twisted and writhed. Paul stopped for a moment. He noticed Lewis had put one hand on the man’s wrist, a firm, steady pressure.

After a moment he began cutting again. A few minutes later he’d reached the point of pulling the dressing away. This had to be done slowly and carefully. Speed would have been more merciful, but risked doing further damage. He clenched his teeth as if he were in pain, though the pain was not his and never could be. He eased the dressing off. Shrapnel had come through from the back and severed the penis at the base. As they watched, urine welled up from the hole in his groin, hot acid spreading over raw flesh. The man arched his back and groaned again. Morphine. ‘Stay with him,’ he said, standing up and looking around for Sister Byrd. She was quick. She was always quick. Lewis watched her filling the syringe, flicking it, preparing to inject, with as much eagerness as if the pain had been his.

When the patient had settled a little, she said, ‘It’s gone through the intestines. He won’t last.’

‘Will they operate tonight?’ Lewis asked.

Sister Byrd looked at him consideringly. How much use are you going to be? was the question written on her face. ‘There’s not much they can do.’ Beat. ‘Once the morphine takes effect we’ll clean him up and see what Mr Burton says.’ She waited, watching Lewis closely. ‘Would you want to live?’

‘If it was me?’ For a second he stared into the abyss, then shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’

It was what passed for a quiet evening. Three men died but they’d been expected to, and did so quietly and without fuss. Mess tins full of grey stew were carried up and down the rows of stretchers. Lewis fed several patients who couldn’t feed themselves. He kept yawning, more from shock than tiredness, but Sister Byrd chose to regard it as the effect of his long journey.

‘Look, why don’t you go across to the huts and get settled in? We can manage.’

Lewis blinked, from surprise, probably, that this experience had an end. Paul knew the feeling. When you first started a twelve-hour shift could last for ever.

An hour later Paul followed him across to the hut, the weak, sickly circle of torchlight playing across thronging weeds and stacks of abandoned sleepers. There was no light under the door. Cupping his hand round the beam of the torch he opened the door on a smell of damp socks and unwashed blankets. Lewis was awake. He could see the whites of his eyes among the flickering shadows but then with a squeal of springs he turned away.

Paul undressed quickly and got under the blanket before the slight warmth of his clothes could evaporate. He lay with his arms clasped across his chest, fingertips tucked into his armpits, doing everything possible to conserve heat. Sleep would come anyway — he was worn out — but it would last longer and stand a better chance of being dreamless if he could keep warm. He was aware of Lewis, breathing quietly, awake in the darkness. The pressure of that other consciousness was intolerable. Resigned, he turned heavily on to his side and set the candle on the floor between them.

‘How many of them die?’ Lewis asked.

‘Thirty per cent.’

‘Per cent?’

Paul was puzzled, then realized Lewis was questioning his coldblooded way of talking about it. ‘That’s good. When the Red Cross first arrived it was much worse than that. Now seventy per cent survive.’

‘You know the very young one who died?’

Paul frowned into the darkness. No, he couldn’t remember any of the three who’d died. Not their faces. He could remember their positions in the hut, because he’d taken note of where the spaces were so that he could direct stretcher-bearers to them as quickly as possible, when the next batch came in.

‘Sister Byrd said he had gas gangrene, but I thought the Germans haven’t used gas?’

‘They haven’t. It’s when tiny organisms in the soil get into a wound, they produce gas.’

‘And that’s the smell?’

‘You get used to it.’ Paul was struggling to keep his eyes open. This was no time for a tutorial. ‘Look, there are three ways you can tell if it’s gas gangrene. One, the smell. And then there’s a kind of crackling under the skin. It’s … It’s quite hard to describe, but you’ll know it once you’ve felt it. I’ll show you tomorrow if I get a chance.’

He was turning away as he spoke.

And the third?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘You said three things.’

‘Did I? The third thing is they die.’

Despite his exhaustion, Paul couldn’t sleep. He was too aware of Lewis, now lying on his back in the darkness with his arms folded behind his head, not even trying to sleep. Eventually Paul nodded off, then woke, and spent the next hour wandering along the edge of sleep, afraid of plunging in, in case the freshening-up process that Lewis had started should extend to the deeper layers of his mind and reawaken the nightmares. During his first fortnight on the wards every horror had followed him into sleep. During the day he managed to lower a safety curtain that protected him from the worst of it, but at night it failed him. Then gradually — he didn’t know how because no conscious effort would have done it — he’d somehow extended that protection into his sleep. Now he was afraid that wounds and mutilations would start pursuing him again.