Regeneration (11 page)

Rivers folded
The Times
and smiled. ‘Really, Siegfried, what did you expect?’

‘I don’t know. Meanwhile…’ Sassoon leant across and pointed to the front page.

Rivers read. ‘“Platts. Killed in action on the 28th April, dearly loved younger son, etc., aged seventeen years and ten months.”’ He looked up and found Sassoon watching him.

‘He wasn’t old enough to
enlist.
And nobody gives a damn.’

‘Of course they do.’

‘Oh, come on, it doesn’t even put them off their sausages! Have you ever sat in a club room and
watched
people read the casualty list?’

‘You could say that about the breakfast room here. Sensitivity t-to what’s going on in France is not best shown by b-bursting
into t-tears over the c-casualty list.’ He saw Sassoon noticing the stammer and made an effort to speak more calmly. ‘The thing for you to do now is face the fact that you’re here, and here for at least another eleven weeks. Have you thought what you’re going to do?’

‘Not really. I’m still out of breath from getting here. Go for walks. Read.’

‘Will you be able to write, do you think?’

‘Oh, yes. I’ll write if I have to sit on the roof to do it.’

‘There’s no prospect of a room of your own.’

‘No, I know that.’

Rivers chose his words carefully. ‘Captain Campbell is an extremely nice man.’

‘Yes, I’ve noticed. What’s more, his battle plans are saner than Haig’s.’

Rivers ignored that. ‘One thing I could do is put you up for my club, the Conservative Club. I don’t know whether you’d like that? It’d give you an alternative base at least.’

‘I would, very much. Thank you.’

‘Though I hope you won’t exclude the possibility of making friends here.’

Sassoon looked down at the backs of his hands. ‘I thought I might send for my golf clubs. There seem to be one or two keen golfers about.’

‘Good idea. I’ll see you three times a week. It’d better be evenings rather than mornings, I think – especially if you’re going to play golf. Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays?’

‘Fine.’ He smiled faintly. ‘I’ve got nothing else on.’

‘Eight thirty, shall we say? Immediately after dinner.’

Sassoon nodded. ‘It’s very kind of you.’

‘Oh, I don’t know about that.’ He closed his appointments book and pulled a sheet of paper towards him. ‘Now I need to ask a few questions about your physical health. Childhood illnesses, that sort of thing.’

‘All right. Why?’

‘For the admission report.’

‘Oh, I see.’

‘I don’t usually include any… intimate details.’

‘Probably just as well. My intimate details disqualify me from military service.’

Rivers looked up and smiled. ‘I know.’

After Sassoon had gone, Rivers got a case sheet from the stack on his side table, paused for a few moments to collect his thoughts, and began to write:

Patient joined ranks of the Sussex Yeomanry on Aug. 3rd, 1914. Three months later he had a bad smash while schooling a horse and was laid up for several months. In May 1915 he received a commission in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. He was in France from Nov. 1915 until Aug. 1916, when he was sent home with trench fever. He had received the Military Cross in June 1916. He was on three months’ sick leave and returned to France in Feb. 1917. On April 16th, 1917, he was wounded in the right shoulder and was in the surgical wards of the 4th London for four weeks and then at Lady Brassey’s Convalescent Home for three weeks. He then understood that he was to be sent to Cambridge to instruct cadets.

From an early stage of his service in France, he had been horrified by the slaughter and had come to doubt whether the continuance of the War was justifiable. When on sick leave in 1916 he was in communication with Bertrand Russell and other pacifists. He had never previously approved of pacifism and does not think he was influenced by this communication. During his second visit to France, his doubts about the justifiability of the War were accentuated; he became perhaps even more doubtful about the way in which the war was being conducted from a military point of view. When he became fit to return to duty, in July of this year, he felt he was unable to do so, and that it was his duty to make some kind of protest. He drew up a statement which he himself regarded as an act of wilful defiance of military authority (see
The Times,
July 31st, 1917). In consequence of this statement he was ordered to attend a Medical Board at Chester about July 16th, but failed to attend. It was arranged that a second Board should be held at Liverpool on July 20th, which he attended, and he was recommended for admission to Craiglockhart War Hospital for special treatment for three months.

The patient is a healthy looking man of good physique. There are no physical signs of any disorder of the Nervous System. He discusses his recent actions and their motives in a perfectly intelligent and rational way, and there is no evidence of any excitement or depression. He recognizes that his view of warfare is tinged by his feelings about the death of friends and of the men who were under his command in France. At the present time he lays special stress on the hopelessness of any decision in the War as it is now being conducted, but he left out any reference to this aspect of his opinions in the statement which he sent to his Commanding Officer and which was read in the House of Commons. His view differs from that of the ordinary pacifist in that he would no longer object to the continuance of the War if he saw any reasonable prospect of a rapid decision.

He had an attack of double pneumonia when 11 years old, and again at 14. He was at Marlborough College, where he strained his heart at football. He was for four terms at Clare College, Cambridge, where he read first Law and then History, but did not care for either subject. He left Cambridge and spent the following years living in the country, devoting his time chiefly to hunting and cricket. He took no interest in Politics. From boyhood he has written verses at different times, and during his convalescence from his riding accident in 1914 he wrote a poem called ‘The Old Huntsman’, which has recently been published with other poen under that title.

‘I gave Broadbent leave,’ Bryce said. ‘With some trepidation.’

‘Yes, he told me he was going to ask you.’

‘You know what he’s done? Gone off with his room-mate’s new breeches. Marsden’s furious.’

Ruggles said, ‘You mean this guy’s running round the hospital bare-assed frightening the VADs?’

‘No, he’s wearing his other breeches. And your idea of what might frighten a VAD is –’

‘Chivalrous,’ said Ruggles.

‘Naive,’ said Bryce. ‘In the extreme.’

‘Why is it always your patients, Rivers?’ asked Brock.

The MOs were sitting round a table in Bryce’s room over coffee, as they did twice a week after dinner. These gatherings were kept deliberately informal, but they served some of the same purposes as a case conference. Since everybody had now
read
The Times
report, Bryce had asked Rivers to say a few words about Sassoon.

Rivers kept it as brief and uncontroversial as possible. While he was speaking, he noticed that Brock was balancing a pencil between the tips of his extremely long bluish fingers. Never a good sign. Rivers liked Brock, but they didn’t invariably see eye to eye.

A moment’s silence, after Rivers had finished speaking. Then Ruggles asked Bryce if the press had shown any interest. While Bryce was summarizing a conversation he’d had with the
Daily Mail,
Rivers watched Brock, who sat, arms folded across his chest, looking down his long pinched nose at the table. Brock always looked frozen. Even his voice, high, thin and reedy, seemed to echo across arctic wastes. When Bryce had finished, Brock turned to Rivers and said, ‘What are you thinking of doing with him?’

‘Well, I have been seeing him every day. I’m going to drop that now to three times a week.’

‘Isn’t that rather a lot? For someone who – according to you – has nothing wrong with him?’

‘I shan’t be able to persuade him to go back in less than that.’

‘Isn’t there a case for leaving him alone?’

‘No.’

‘I mean, simply by
being
here he’s discredited. Discredited, disgraced,
apparently
lied to by his best friend? I’d’ve thought there was a case for letting him be.’

‘No, there’s no case,’ Rivers said. ‘He’s a mentally and physically healthy man. It’s
his
duty to go back, and it’s
my
duty to see he does.’

‘And you’ve no doubts about that at all?’

‘I don’t see the problem. I’m not going to give him electric shocks, or or subcutaneous injections of ether. I’m simply asking him to defend his position. Which he admits was reached largely on emotional grounds.’

‘Grief
at the death of his friends.
Horror
at the slaughter of everybody else’s friends. It isn’t clear to me why such emotions have to be ignored.’

‘I’m not saying they should be ignored. Only that they mustn’t be allowed to dominate.’

‘The protopathic must know its place?’

Rivers looked taken aback. ‘I wouldn’t’ve put it quite like that.’

‘Why not? It’s your word. And Sassoon does seem to be a remarkably protopathic young man. Doesn’t he? I mean from what you say, it’s “all or nothing” all the time. Happy warrior one minute. Bitter pacifist the next.’

‘Precisely. He’s completely inconsistent. And that’s all the more reason to get him to
argue
the position –’

‘Epicritically.’

‘Rationally.’

Brock raised his hands and sat back in his chair. ‘I hope you don’t mind my playing devil’s advocate?’

‘Good heavens, no. The whole point of these meetings is to protect the patient.’

Brock smiled, one of his rare, thin, unexpectedly charming smiles. ‘Is that what I was doing? I thought I was protecting you.’

Part 2

__________________

8

__________

Prior had lost weight during his time in sick bay. Watching the light fall on to his face, Rivers noticed how sharp the cheekbones had become.

‘Do you mind if I smoke?’

‘No, go ahead.’ Rivers pushed an ashtray across the desk.

The match flared behind Prior’s cupped hands. ‘First for three weeks,’ he said. ‘God, I feel dizzy.’

Rivers tried not to say, but said, ‘It’s not really a good idea with asthma, you know.’

‘You think it might shorten my life? Do you know how long the average officer lasts in France?’

‘Yes. Three months. You’re not in France.’

Prior dragged on the cigarette and, momentarily, closed his eyes. He looked a bit like the boys you saw on street corners in the East End. That same air of knowing the price of everything. Rivers drew the file towards him. ‘We left you in billets at Beauvois.’

‘Yes. We were there, oh, I think about four days and then we were rushed back into the line. We attacked the morning of the night we moved up.’

‘Date?’

‘April the 23rd.’

Rivers looked up. It was unusual for Prior to be so accurate.

‘St George’s Day. The CO toasted him in the mess. I remember because it was so bloody stupid.’

‘You were in the casualty clearing station on the…’ He glanced at the file. ‘29th. So that leaves us with six days unaccounted for.’

‘Yes, and I’m afraid I can’t help you with any of them.’

‘Do you remember the attack?’

‘Yes. It was exactly like any other attack.’

Rivers waited. Prior looked so hostile that at first Rivers
thought he would refuse to go on, but then he raised the cigarette to his lips, and said,
‘All right.
Your watch is brought back by a runner, having been synchronized at headquarters.’ A long pause. ‘You wait, you try to calm down anybody who’s obviously shitting himself or on the verge of throwing up. You hope you won’t do either of those things yourself. Then you start the count down: ten, nine, eight… so on. You blow the whistle. You climb the ladder. Then you double through a gap in the wire, lie flat, wait for everybody else to get out – those that are left, there’s already quite a heavy toll – and then you stand up. And you start walking.
Not
at the double. Normal walking speed.’ Prior started to smile. ‘In a straight line. Across open country. In broad daylight. Towards a line of machineguns.’ He shook his head. ‘Oh, and of course you’re being shelled all the way.’

‘What did you
feel?’

Prior tapped the ash off his cigarette. ‘You always want to know what I
felt.’

‘Well, yes. You’re describing this attack as if it were a – a slightly ridiculous event in –’

‘Not “slightly”. Slightly, I did not say.’

‘All right, an
extremely
ridiculous event – in somebody else’s life.’

‘Perhaps that’s how it felt.’

‘Was it?’ He gave Prior time to answer. ‘I think you’re capable of a great deal of detachment, but you’d have to be
inhuman
to be as detached as that.’

‘All right. It felt…’ Prior started to smile again.
‘Sexy.’

Rivers raised a hand to his mouth.

‘You see?’ Prior said, pointing to the hand. ‘You ask me how it felt and when I tell you, you don’t believe me.’

Rivers lowered his hand. ‘I haven’t said I don’t believe you. I was waiting for you to go on.’

‘You know those men who lurk around in bushes waiting to jump out on unsuspecting ladies and –
er-um
– display their equipment? It felt a bit like that. A bit like I
imagine
that feels. I wouldn’t like you to think I had any personal experience.’

‘And was that your only feeling?’

‘Apart from terror, yes.’ He looked amused. ‘Shall we get back to “inhuman detachment”?’

‘If you like.’

Prior laughed. ‘I think it suits us
both
better, don’t you?’