Pat Barker - Toby's Room

Once, the train stopped just before dawn, after an unusually long stretch without a break, and everybody clambered down on to the track to relieve themselves. Steam from three hundred jets of piss rose into the cold, clear air. What a sight. Remembering it, he felt his own bladder start to leak, his piss pleasantly warm at first, then cold and wet. A hand went down and fumbled with his cock, then, finding it moist and sticky, drew back with a little tsk of disgust. A moment later the hand was back, small, cool, cramming his prick unceremoniously into the neck of a bottle. In or out? Bugger it, had to let go. A satisfying warmth spread over his groin.

‘Oh, God,’ a girl’s voice said. ‘Now I’m going to have to change the sheets.’

The train had stopped again. Neville pressed his muzzle to the gap between the slats, sniffing the dawn wind, and found himself looking straight at Brooke. He was standing at a distance from the other officers and smoking a cigarette. At that moment, as if he felt himself being observed, Brooke turned and looked straight at Neville, an unresponsive stare that struck a slight chill. It felt like a rebuff, until Neville realized he was invisible inside the darkness of the truck. A second later Brooke dropped the stub of his cigarette and ground it out under the toe of his boot.

Grey skies, darkening. It was raining when, at last, the door at the end was thrown open and they jumped down on to the track. One man fell because his legs had gone to sleep; others walked up and down stamping their feet to get the circulation going. Neville was quickly off to one side, trying to imprint it all on his brain: lumbering figures in the gloomy light, water streaming down rain capes, round helmets gleaming. Running a little way up the slope, he looked down on metal mushroom-heads and ached to draw them. Too late. The command ‘Form Fours!’ ran along the track. They’d arrived, then, though this place looked no different from any of the other places they’d stopped.

They marched off, heads lowered into the wind that threatened to snatch the breath from their mouths. Neville was second from the right, shielded, therefore, from the worst gusts of rain that swept across the column. Soon the fitful singing fell away and they trudged in silence, except for the swish and rustle of capes and the slushing of boots on muddy ground. In one place the steep banks on either side had produced a river. They splashed through and emerged drenched to their knees. ‘ Bloody hell! ’ he heard somebody say, but for the most part they saved their breath.

At either end of the column, lanterns on poles threw shadows of marching men over hedges and fields and the gable ends of farmhouses. Shadow-giants sixteen feet tall leapt over walls into the nothingness beyond. Once they passed through a wood where overhanging branches dripped water on to the backs of their necks, another small discomfort added to the general misery. Intimate misery. Neville hadn’t been able to wipe himself properly after his last shit and his arsehole was getting sorer by the mile. And then when they arrived, hoping for decent billets, there were only barns with bales of straw and the roofs had holes in them and most of the straw was wet.

Miraculously, it seemed, hot stew was produced and served on tin plates. In civilian life, he’d have sent it back to the kitchen with a few choice words; now he not only scraped his plate clean, but sucked his teeth afterwards, savouring every last lingering morsel.

Afterwards they pulled straw out of the bales and made themselves nests. Nobody had the energy to say much, so overwhelming was the longing for sleep. Neville found a space between two bales where he felt safe. As he settled down, he became aware of a desire to scratch himself. At first he attributed this to the sharp ends of the straw, but then realized he’d been invaded by lice. For ten minutes he itched and clawed, thinking he’d never get to sleep, but then fell, abruptly, into a sleep so deep and dreamless that when he woke no time at all seemed to have passed, though it was beginning to get light. A silver wall of rain fell steadily beyond the open barn door.

He wouldn’t get to sleep again now — not with this bloody itching starting up again — and anyway he needed a fag. Clambering over recumbent figures, he made his way to the barn door. Hollyhocks and foxgloves still grew in the farmhouse garden though the people who’d owned it were gone. A cockerel and three hens, disgruntled by the downpour, fluffed out their feathers and throatily, morosely, clucked. They wouldn’t last long. Foraging was strictly forbidden, but it was amazing how many chickens fell victim to enemy shelling even this far behind the line. Roast chicken for the officers; soup for the stretcher-bearers, if they were lucky. Stopping by the water butts, he lit a cigarette, then crossed the yard and wandered down a narrow lane to where scrubby willows fringed a small pond.

Out in the middle, beneath the scum of dead leaves and weeds, some kind of disturbance was going on. The water suddenly boiled and broke around a wet head and glistening shoulders. Mad, whoever he was, swimming in all that muck. Green turds of duck shit lined the edges of the pond; you’d need to walk through that just to get in. Something about the figure — he was wading out now, wiping water from his eyes — compelled Neville’s imagination. Perhaps it was the silence and the dim light. The furthest ripples were only now beginning to break against the reeds. Neville backed away into the shadows, watching as the naked, gleaming man teetered across the duck shit and began scraping his feet clean on the grass. Elinor Brooke’s brother, emerging from a farmyard pond with duckweed in his hair.

As the hospital came into view, Elinor heard a rumble of engines and saw two motor ambulances turning into the drive. She stepped on to the grass verge and watched them go past, before following along behind them in a fug of petrol fumes.

By the time she reached the main building, their doors were open and a cluster of white-coated doctors and nurses were supervising the unloading of the wounded. One young nurse was struggling to support a patient who had bandages wound round the lower part of his face and some kind of metal contraption on his legs.

‘YOU!’

Elinor realized this was addressed to her.

‘Help Nurse Wilson take that man to the ward.’

‘But I’m not —’

The sister had already turned away. Elinor threaded her way through groups of men to where Nurse Wilson was holding on to the man with callipers. He seemed to be asleep on his feet. There was oil in his hair, and the blood that had seeped through his bandages was as black as the oil. On his chest was a label: ‘Queen’s Hospital, Sidcup, Kent.’

‘Can’t we get him a stretcher?’ Elinor said. ‘Or a wheelchair?’

‘They’ve all gone, I think.’

Elinor took the man’s other arm and draped it across her shoulder. ‘Where are we taking him?’

‘Ward One. Admissions.’

They set off. The man kept tripping over his feet, and every time his head jerked forward the area of blood on the bandages increased. Elinor made soothing noises, got only grunts in reply. Nurse Wilson’s childishly round face was rigid with effort. At last, they turned the corner of the building and Elinor saw before her row after row of huts: raw, almost brutal, in their uncompromisingly square functionality. This, she realized, not the graceful building behind her, was the real hospital.

They staggered along a covered walkway that linked the huts, their footsteps clumping along wooden boards. Everything smelled of creosote. ‘Not far now,’ Nurse Wilson kept saying. Somewhere near by a gramophone was playing. Your nose, your mouth, your cheeks, your hair,/ Are in a class beyond compare./ … You’re the loveliest thing I ever knew … Elinor fought back a desire to laugh. Her arm had gone numb. At this rate, she might easily topple over and bring him down with her.