Pat Barker - Life Class

When, eventually, he was led upstairs and found her lying on the bed in a room that seemed to be all pink and shiny, like intestines, he couldn’t think of anything to say.

‘Come in,’ she said, weariness trapped behind her smile. ‘I wondered when you’d come.’

After counting notes at the dressing table, he undressed, washed and climbed on top of her, smelling her powder and the sweetness of stale urine in the pot under the bed. The sex was much as he’d expected. Afterwards, he pressed his face against the creases in her neck and closed his eyes. She tolerated his weight for a second, then heaved him off. There was a queue, he understood. However tactfully things were managed, there was a queue. He fumbled into his clothes as fast as he could and clattered downstairs, out on to the slushy street, feeling as if he’d committed a small, unimportant murder.

The clock opposite the door showed twenty minutes to midnight. They’d been on duty six hours, though so far only one ambulance team had been called out.

‘Shall we go and play cards?’ Lewis said, nodding towards a group in the corner.

‘No, I don’t think I will, thanks. I’ve got a bit of a sore throat. You go.’

Paul spent the next two hours huddled under a blanket in a chair by the wood stove. From time to time he dozed, only to jerk awake as rain spattered against the one intact window. The beds had been pulled together in the centre of the room. The sacking that draped the broken windows kept the worst of the rain out, but you still woke cramped with cold to find the upper blanket damp. Every time he surfaced, his sore throat felt worse. Despite his proximity to the stove, he was shivering. He’d had a dream of falling into cold, rat-infested water and he knew it was connected with his discovery of the British officer. His visit to the prostitute — as he now thought of her — seemed merely to have driven the chill of that moment deeper into his bones.

It was still dark when the call came. He was going to be driving with Lewis. One of the advantages of relatively quiet nights was that you had the luxury of a second driver. Walking out to the ambulance, they were cold, yawning, stiff from sleep in cramped positions. Their breath whitened the air. Lewis was stamping his feet and clapping his hands against his shoulders, like a ham actor portraying the idea of extreme cold. Paul was fingering the swollen glands in his neck, though he made himself stop when he saw Lewis watching him.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Fine. No, actually, I’m cold, tired and pissed off beyond belief.’

‘Normal, then?’

As they turned into the village’s main street, they saw scribbles of black and yellow smoke low in the sky. The darkness had begun to thin. Dawn was the most dangerous time to be on the road. When they reached the main road they had to wait to let a column of motor lorries go past. Once on the road they made slow progress. Motor lorries and ambulances were slowed to walking pace because the road was clogged with horse-drawn limbers taking the morning rations up to the line. A column of men who’d been relieved were trudging towards them. Lewis wound down the window, and a powerful yellow stench came into the cabin. Helmets bobbed beneath the window the faces beneath them drained and almost expressionless. Once they were past Lewis should be able to overtake the limbers. At last the way was clear and they pulled out. Ahead of them the column of motor lorries was moving slowly in a cloud of spray.

‘I’ll never get past,’ Lewis said. ‘I’m going to slot in behind them.’

Paul nodded. You weren’t supposed to join convoys of military vehicles, but sometimes it was the only way to make progress. Another column of men marched past and then the lorries accelerated, the rear vehicle sending up a sheet of water that sloshed on to the ambulance windscreen.

The road wound uphill from this point on. As they neared the crossroads, the pits in the road became deeper and the pace of the convoy slowed. At the top of the slight crest the motor lorries stopped. Lewis muttered under his breath as the ambulance’s sluggish brakes let them slide almost into the rear lorry’s tail. Lewis jumped down to see what was happening. He walked a little way along the column, peered into the darkness, came back shaking his head.

Paul was leaning out of the open door. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Don’t know. Can’t see.’

A column of black smoke hung over the road ahead. Ahead of him men jumped down from the lorries, but none of them seemed particularly concerned, more glad of a chance to stretch their legs.

‘I’ll see if anybody knows what’s happening,’ Lewis said, and disappeared round the corner of the lorry in front. Paul could hear him asking the driver what was going on. He got down himself, his legs numb and threatening to collapse under him. He’d had nothing to eat and was buzzing from too much coffee on an empty stomach, that exhausted, stale, irritable alertness. He took a deep breath to freshen himself and simultaneously there came a long whistling roar so close it seemed to be caused by the movement of his chest.

When he was next aware of himself he was staggering around in smoke with the screams of wounded men all around him. The motor lorries ahead of him were on fire. From somewhere men came running and started trying to pull men out of the burning vehicles but there were too many of them in a crowded space. He could hear an officer shouting at them to get back. Lewis. He started pushing forward against straining, jostling backs. Men were milling around the stricken vehicles, beaten back by the flames. His leg felt different. He put his hand down and brought it back up covered in blood but there was no pain and he walked on. At one point he collapsed against the side of a lorry only to find himself being dragged away by the same young officer he’d heard shouting at people to get back. He found himself being hauled down the side of the road into a declivity, wrenched so hard he stumbled and fell and rolled the rest of the way. Immediately he was up on his knees and crawling forward. The officer tried to hold him back. ‘Fuck off!’ His voice sounded strange and he realized he’d gone deaf, which must be why everything was muffled, the shouting and cries, the explosion of petrol tanks, the crump of shells bursting further up the road, the slosh of boots through mud, all smothered, adding to the unreality of shock and fear.

He went round assessing the damage to some of the men lying screaming on the ground, quickly selecting those who stood the best chance of life. It was easier to keep calm now he was doing what he knew how to do. One man was lying on the ground cradling his intestines in his arms as tenderly as a woman nursing a sick child. Another was trapped inside a burning lorry. Sheathed in flame his face appeared at the shattered windscreen screaming for help. Paul grabbed an officer’s arm and pointed. ‘For Christ’s sake, shoot the poor sod.’ He had no way of knowing if it happened or not, he was already moving forward again. The smell made him gag, but his mind was clear. At last he saw Lewis, sitting by the side of the road. His cap had fallen off and Paul recognized him by the wet-wheat colour of his hair. ‘I’m blind,’ he kept saying to anyone who would hear. He was unaware of Paul’s presence until he felt the touch of his hand. ‘No, you’re not.’ There was a wound at the front of his head, not serious though blood was streaming out of it, and another in the lower abdomen. No apparent damage to the eyes, but he daren’t risk exploring and disturbing any shell fragments that might be lodged in there. He hauled him to his feet and half carried him back to the ambulance. He was turning to go back and collect more wounded, when he stumbled and fell. His left leg wouldn’t work. A moment later hard hands lifted him by the armpits and seemed to want to put him into the ambulance. ‘No.’ He fought them, deaf, mad, blind, covered in blood he didn’t know was his own, until they pushed him on to a stretcher and strapped him down.