Pat Barker - Toby's Room

‘I’d like you to have a look at my chest.’

‘Why, what’s wrong?’

‘Dunno, really. My heartbeat’s irregular, feels as if I’m choking, sometimes I can’t breathe …’

‘All right, get your tunic off.’ Brooke’s tone was cold. He went to the table, poured water into a bowl, soaped his hands and dried them on a towel, managing, somehow, to imbue each of these simple actions with deep scepticism. ‘Let’s have a look at you, then.’ The stethoscope moved across the pallid flesh. ‘Breathe. And again. Again. Deep breaths …’

When, finally, he took the stethoscope away he remained unnervingly silent.

‘The thing is I had rheumatic fever when I was a child, I couldn’t play games for a year, and then when I went to enlist I was told my heart wasn’t up to it, and —’

‘Who told you?’

‘Bryson. He’s a good man. Harley Street.’

‘So it wasn’t the army that rejected you?’

‘No, Bryson told me not to bother trying to enlist.’

‘I see.’

‘I did volunteer for the Belgian Red Cross instead.’

‘Well, I can’t find anything wrong with you. You do have a few skipped beats but they’re quite common — doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with your heart. You tend to get them with worry, tension, tiredness … Too much coffee. Too much alcohol. All of which is true of you.’

You cold-blooded little prick. He wasn’t going to plead — he’d see Brooke in hell first — but then something went wrong, something slipped, and he heard himself pleading anyway. That awful whining, so familiar from sick parades, now coming out of his own mouth; the humiliation.

‘I just can’t take it any more. You can call me a coward if you like, I don’t bloody well care. I’ve reached the end of the road. I cannot go on.’

‘You can’t say that. It ends when it ends.’ He went to the door, obviously wanting the conversation to be over, but then turned back. ‘What do you want me to do? Send you back to base with a heart problem that doesn’t exist? I can’t do that.’

‘You won’t.’

‘There’s no quick exit. And please don’t do anything stupid …’

‘Like crawling round No Man’s Land rescuing dead bodies? God forbid.’

‘We’re all frightened, every single one of us. It’s what you do with it that counts.’

‘And what do you do? Drink too much? Slope off to a brothel when you think nobody’s looking?’

‘I ride. Horses.’

‘’Course you do.’

Suddenly losing patience, Brooke seized Neville’s tunic from the back of the chair and threw it at him.

‘Time to get back to work, I’m afraid. It’s your night duty or had you forgotten?’ He turned on his heel and was about to leave when he said, ‘Oh, and keep an eye on Kent, will you? Wake me up if he gets any worse.’

Slowly, Neville put on his tunic and buttoned it up, before walking along the corridor to the large parlour that served as a temporary hospital.

Hen Man looked up from his crossword.

‘You all right?’

‘Fine. More to the point, how’s he?’ He nodded towards Kent, who was propped up in bed on four pillows with his head drooping to one side. He was one of the older men and had been in the sick bay with chest infections several times before this latest crisis. ‘No better?’

Hen Man pulled a face. ‘Bit worse if anything.’ He folded the newspaper and stood up. ‘Well, I hope you have a quiet night. But if you don’t, don’t wake me.’

Night duty. On the ward, Neville’s wide awake, the morphine beginning to wear off just as the other patients are settling down to sleep. Peering along the row of beds, he sees the night nurse sitting at her table. She’s got her head propped up on her hands and seems to be nodding off. He tries to turn on to his side, and realizes he can’t move. Of course, his hands are tied to the bed, to prevent him touching the tube that’s stuck in the middle of his face. Boss-eyed, he squints down at it, but it’s only a blurred shape on the periphery of his vision. He closes his eyes because that’s the only way he can ignore what’s been done to him. Instantly, the morphine he thought was gone reaches out clammy hands and tries to smother him.

Somewhere quite close there’s a sound of tortured breathing. Where’s the bloody nurse? Why doesn’t she do something? The man’s obviously suffering. Lazy cow. He opens his mouth to shout ‘Nurse? Nurse?’ but other words come out.

‘Calm down. Now I want you to sit forward, that’s right, put your arms forward as well, like this, look, now breathe, that’s right, and again. Deep as you can, and now I want you to hold the next breath and cough. Can you do that for me?’

A stream of green phlegm, enough to fill the small bowl he was holding.

Kent fell back against the pillows, a yellow doll with cavernous pits above his collarbone.

‘It ought to feel a bit easier now. Try to sleep …’

Kent’s eyes flickering upwards so that for a few seconds there was only white. Bloody hell , Neville thought. I’ve got to get Brooke .

When he was sure Kent was settled, or as settled as he could be, he set off down the corridor, dogged by his own pale shadow in the lamplight. Boiler muttered a protest as he felt the light on his face. Quickly, Neville passed through into the room he and Brooke shared. Brooke’s bunk was empty: must’ve gone for a pee or something. Couldn’t be anywhere else at this time, it was two o’clock in the morning. Neville waited, but he was aware, all the time, of Kent alone in the sickroom, of the urgent need to get back to him, and so when, after a few minutes, Brooke still hadn’t appeared, he set off in search of him.

The lantern, held high above his head, showed slanting lines of rain disappearing into thick mud. Sploshing and slithering, he crossed the yard to the stables. Brooke was worried about his lame horse, that’s where he’d be. Amazing how horses need rest, and men don’t. The door was open. Inside, the noise was deafening; the wind hurled rain on to a corrugated-iron roof. No wonder the horses were restless. The darkness seemed to be full of tossing heads, stamping hooves, neighs, snorts, whinnies, here and there a glint of silver as a rolling eye caught the light. He was transfixed by the horses: huge heads, weaving bodies, smells of shit and straw. In the interval between one blast of wind and the next he thought he heard voices. Following the sound, he walked along between the rows of boxes to the last one on the left.

A tangle of limbs and laboured breathing. His first thought was that a horse had fallen and was threshing about in the straw. For several long seconds, his brain went on telling his eyes that they were looking at a sick horse, but then he began to see faces in the gloom. A boy’s face first, dazed and panting, and behind him Brooke’s face, his mouth stretched wide in a silent scream.

Neville didn’t know how long he stood there, before Brooke opened his eyes and saw him. They stared at each other. And then, suddenly, Neville was free to move. He backed away, half walking, half running between the lines of panicking horses, pushed the door open and almost fell into the yard. He stood with his back to the wall, blankly watching raindrops plop into puddles, unable to think. He couldn’t go back to the ward, not yet. Instead, he took shelter in the adjoining barn where he lit a cigarette and stood, breathing deeply, while his brain struggled to make sense of what he’d seen.

The fool. The utter bloody fool. He couldn’t believe the stupidity. In those first few seconds, his thoughts were all of concern for Brooke, who was risking everything, and for what? From his vantage point inside the barn door he saw Brooke come out of the stables and run across the yard. Neville threw his half-smoked cigarette away, watching the bright descending arc before it sizzled to a quick death in the mud. Then, slowly, he followed Brooke into the main building.