Regeneration (9 page)

‘I thought discrediting my views was what you were about?’

Rivers smiled wryly. ‘Let’s just say I’m fussy about the methods.’

Rivers had kept two hours free of appointments in the late afternoon in order to get on with the backlog of reports. He’d been working for half an hour when Miss Crowe tapped on the door. ‘Mr Prior says could he have a word?’

Rivers pulled a face. ‘I’ve seen him once today. Does he say what’s wrong?’

‘No, this is the father.’

‘I didn’t even know he was coming.’

She started to close the door. ‘I’ll tell him you’re busy, shall I?’

‘No, no, I’ll see him.’

Mr Prior came in. He was a big, thick-set man with a ruddy complexion, dark hair sleeked back, and a luxuriant, drooping, reddish-brown moustache. ‘I’m sorry to drop on you like this,’ he said. ‘I thought our Billy had told you we were coming.’

‘I think he probably mentioned it. If he did, I’m afraid it slipped my mind.’

Mr Prior looked him shrewdly up and down. ‘
Nab.
Wasn’t your mind it slipped.’

‘Well, sit down. How did you find him?’

‘Difficult to tell when they won’t talk, isn’t it?’

‘Isn’t he talking? He was this morning.’

‘Well, he’s not now.’

‘It does come and go.’

‘Oh, I’m sure. Comes when it’s convenient and goes when it isn’t. What’s supposed to be the matter?’

‘Physically, nothing.’ Two l’s, Rivers thought. ‘I think
perhaps there’s something he’s afraid to talk about, so he solves the problem by making it impossible for himself to speak. This is… beneath the surface. He doesn’t
know
what he’s doing.’

‘If he doesn’t, it’ll be the first time.’

Rivers tried a different tack. ‘I believe he volunteered, didn’t he? The first week of the war.’

‘He did. Against my advice, not that
that’s
ever counted for much.’

‘You didn’t want him to go?’

‘No I did not. I told him, time enough to do summat for the Empire when the Empire’s done summat for you.’

‘It is natural for the young to be idealistic.’

‘Ideals had nowt to do with it. He was desperate to get out of his job.’

‘I think I remember him saying he didn’t like it. He was a clerk in a shipping office.’

‘That’s right, and getting nowhere. Twenty years wearing the arse of your breeches out and then, if you’re a good boy and lick all the right places, you get to be supervisor and then you sit on a bigger stool and watch other people wear their breeches out. Didn’t suit our Billy. He’s ambitious, you know, you mightn’t think it to look at him, but he is. His mam drilled that into him. Schooled him in it. She was
determined
he was going to get on.’

Rather unexpectedly, Rivers found himself wanting to leap to Billy Prior’s defence. ‘She seems to have succeeded.’

Mr Prior snorted. ‘She’s made a stool-arsed jack on him, if that’s what you mean.’

‘You make it sound as if you had no say.’

‘I didn’t. All the years that lad was growing up there was only one time I put my oar in, and that was when there was this lad at school picking on him. He was forever coming in crying. And one day I thought, well, I’ve had enough of this. So the next time he come in blubbing I give him a backhander and shoved him out the door. There he was, all tears and snot, yelling his bloody head off. He says, he’s waiting for us, our Dad. I says, go on, then. You’ve got to toughen ’em up, you know, in our neighbourhood. If you lie down there’s plenty to walk over you.’

‘What happened?’

‘Got the shit beat out of him.
And
the next day.
And
the next.
But
– and this is our Billy – when he did finally take a tumble to himself and hit the little sod he didn’t just hit him, he half bloody murdered him. I had his father coming round, and all sorts. Not but what
be
got short shrift.’

He seemed to have no feeling for his son at all, except contempt. ‘You must be proud of his being an officer?’

‘Must I?
I
’m not proud. He should’ve stuck with his own. Except he can’t, can he? That’s what she’s done to him. He’s neither fish nor fowl, and she’s too bloody daft to see it. But I tell you one person who
does
see it.’ He pointed to the ceiling. ‘Oh it’s all very lovey-dovey on the surface but underneath he doesn’t thank her for it.’ He stood up. ‘Anyway I’d best be getting back. His nibs’ll have a fit, when he knows I’ve seen you. Wheezing badly, isn’t he?’ He caught Rivers’s expression. ‘Oh, I see, he wasn’t wheezing either? Not what you could call a successful visit.’

‘I’m sure it’s done him a lot of good. We often find they don’t settle till they’ve seen their families.’

Mr Prior nodded, accepting the reassurance without believing it. ‘Any idea how long he’ll be here?’

‘Twelve weeks. Initially.’

‘Hm. He’d get a damn sight more sympathy from me if he had a bullet up his arse. Anyway…’ He held out his hand. ‘It’s been nice meeting you. I don’t know when we’ll be up again.’

Rivers had completed two reports when Miss Crowe put her head round the door again. ‘
Mrs
Prior.’

They exchanged glances. Rivers threw down his pen, and said, ‘Show her in.’

Mrs Prior was a small upright woman, neatly dressed in a dark suit and mauve blouse. ‘I won’t stay long,’ she said, sitting nervously on the edge of the chair. She was playing with her wedding ring, pulling and pushing it over the swollen knuckle. ‘I’d like to apologize for my husband. I thought he was just stepping outside for a smoke, otherwise I’d’ve stopped him.’

A carefully genteel voice. Fading prettiness. Billy Prior had got his build and features from her rather than the father. ‘No, I was pleased to see him. How did you find Billy?’

‘Wheezing. I’ve not seen his chest as tight as that since he was a child.’

‘I didn’t even know he was asthmatic.’

‘No, well, it doesn’t bother him much. Usually. As a child it was terrible. I used to have to boil kettles in his room. You know, for the steam?’

‘You must be very proud of him.’

Her face softened. ‘I am. Because
I
know how hard it’s been. I can truthfully say he never sat an exam without he was bad with his asthma.’

‘Did he like the shipping office?’

Her mouth shaped itself to say ‘yes’, then, ‘No. It was the same docks as his father and I think that was the mistake. You know, his father was earning more as a ganger than Billy was as a clerk, and I think myself there was a little bit of… You see the trouble with my husband, the block had to chip. Do you know what I mean? He’s never been able to accept that Billy was different. And I think there might have been a little bit of jealousy as well, because he has, he’s had a hard life. I don’t deny that. A lot harder than it need have been, because
his
mother sent him to work when he was
ten.
And no need for it either, she had two sons working, but there it is. What can you say? He worships her’ She was silent for a moment, brooding. ‘You know sometimes I think the less you do for them, the better you’re thought of.’

‘Would you say Billy and his father were close?’

‘
No!
And yet, you see, the funny thing is our Billy’s…’ She sought for a way of erasing the tell-tale ‘our’ from the sentence and, not finding one, gave a little deprecatory laugh. ‘All for “the common people”, as he calls them. I said, “You mean your father?”’ She laughed again. ‘Oh, no, he didn’t mean his father. I said, “But you know nothing about the common people. You’ve had nothing to do with them.” Do you know what he turned round and said? “Whose fault is that?”

Miss Crowe tapped on the door. ‘Your husband says he’s going now, Mrs Prior.’

‘Yes, well, I’ll have to go. You’ll take care of him, won’t you?’

She was close to tears. Rivers said, ‘We’ll do our best.’

‘I’d be grateful if you wouldn’t mention I’ve been to see you. He’s upset enough about his father.’

After she’d gone, Rivers turned to Miss Crowe. ‘That was amazing. Do you know, I think they’d have said
anything
?’

‘You get married couples like that, sir. One sympathetic word and you’re there till midnight. Captain Broadbent’s waiting to see you.’

Rivers looked at the pile of papers on his desk and sighed. ‘All right, show him in.’ The frustration boiled over. ‘And do
please try
not to call him “captain”. He’s no more a captain than I am.’

‘You
are
a captain, Captain Rivers.’

Miss Crowe paused at the door to savour the small moment of triumph. Rivers smiled and said, ‘All right. But at least try not to
address
him as “captain”. It really doesn’t help him to have his fantasies confirmed.’

‘I’ll do my best, sir. Though as long as he’s allowed to walk round the hospital with three stars on his sleeve, I don’t see that my remembering to call him “mister” is going to make a great deal of difference.’ She smiled sweetly and withdrew. A moment later she reappeared. ‘
Mister
Broadbent, sir.’

‘Come in, Mr Broadbent. Sit down.’

It wasn’t just the stars. There was also the little matter of the medals, including the Serbian equivalent of the VC awarded to a foreigner for the first and only time in its long and glorious history. And then there were the honorary degrees, though at least he hadn’t yet taken to wearing those on his tunic. However, he was doing very good work with the hospital chamber orchestra. ‘Well, Broadbent, what can I do for you?’

‘I’ve had some bad news, Dr Rivers,’ Broadbent said in his confiding, insinuating way. ‘My mother’s been taken ill.’

Rivers didn’t believe Broadbent’s mother was ill. He didn’t believe Broadbent had a mother. He thought it entirely possible that Broadbent had been hatched. ‘Oh, I
am
sorry.’

‘I was hoping for some leave.’

‘You’ll have to ask the CO about that.’

‘I was hoping you might put a word in for me. You see, I don’t think Major Bryce
likes
me very much.’

People who’d heard of Broadbent’s exploits, but not met
him, were apt to picture a rather florid, swashbuckling, larger-than-life figure. In reality, Broadbent was a limp, etiolated youth, with a pallid complexion and a notably damp handshake, whose constant and bizarre infringements of the hospital rules took up far far too much time. He was quite right in thinking Bryce didn’t like him.

‘It’s not a question of liking or not liking,’ Rivers said. ‘Is your mother very ill?’

‘I’m afraid so, Dr Rivers.’

‘Then I’m sure Major Bryce will be sympathetic. But it
is his
decision. Not mine.’

‘I just thought…’ Suddenly Broadbent’s voice hardened. ‘This is
extremely
bad for my nerves. You know what happens.’

‘I hope it doesn’t happen this time. Because last time, if you remember, you had to be locked up. Why don’t you go to see Major Bryce now?’

‘Yes, all right.’ Broadbent stood up, reluctantly, and spat, ‘
Thank
you, sir.’

At least he didn’t offer to shake hands.

After dinner a Charlie Chaplin film was shown in the cinema on the first floor. The whole of the ground floor was deserted. Rivers, taking his completed reports along to the office to be typed, saw that a lamp had been left burning in the patients’ common room and went in to switch it off.

Prior was sitting beneath the windows at the far end of the room, looking out over the tennis courts, his face and hands bluish in the dim light. Rivers was tempted to withdraw immediately, but then something about the isolation of the small figure under the huge windows made him pause. ‘Don’t you want to see the film?’

‘I couldn’t stand the smoke.’

He was wheezing very badly. Rivers went across to the window and sat beside him. Housemartins were weaving to and fro above the tennis courts, feeding on the myriads of tiny insects that were just visible as a golden haze. He watched them cut, wheel, dive– how skilful they were at avoiding collision –and for a moment, under the spell of the flickering birds, the day’s work and responsibility fell away. But he couldn’t ignore
Prior’s breathing, or the whiteness of the knuckles where his left hand gripped the chair. He turned and looked at him, noting the drawn, anxious face. ‘It’s bad, isn’t it?’

‘Bit tight.’

Prior was bent forward to help the expansion of his lungs. Looking at him now, Rivers could see the straightness of the shoulders, the surprising breadth of chest in a delicately built man. Once you knew it was obvious. But why nothing on the file?

‘I gather you met my father,’ Prior gasped. ‘Quite a character.’

‘He seemed to be a man of strong views.’

Prior’s mouth twisted. ‘He’s a bar-room socialist, if that’s what you mean. Beer and revolution go in,
piss
comes out.’ He attempted a laugh. ‘My mother was quite concerned. “He’ll be down there effing and blinding,” she said. “Showing us all up.”’

‘I liked him.’

‘Oh, yes, he’s very likeable. Outside the house. I’ve seen him use my mother as a football.’ The next breath screeched. ‘When I was too little to do anything about it.’

‘You know, I think I ought to have a look at that chest.’

Prior managed a ghostly imitation of his usual manner. ‘Your room or mine?’

‘The sick bay.’

The walk along the corridor to the lift was painfully slow.

‘I didn’t want you to meet him,’ Prior said, as Rivers pressed the button for the second floor.

‘No, I know you didn’t. I could hardly refuse.’

‘I’m not blaming
you.’

‘Is it a question of blame?’

While the nurses made up the bed, Rivers examined Prior. He’d expected Prior to be impossible, but in the event he became strictly impersonal, gazing over Rivers’s shoulder as the stethoscope moved across his chest. ‘All right, put your jacket on.’ Rivers folded the stethoscope. ‘I’m surprised you got to France at all with that.’

‘They couldn’t afford to be fussy.’ Prior started the long climb into the bed. ‘I won’t be moved to another hospital, will I?’