Life Class

by Pat Barker

  Meanwhile … Sighing, he turned over again, and finally just as the threadbare light of dawn made itself felt through a crack in the door, he fell into a deep sleep.

  Nineteen

  Next morning, when Paul opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was Lewis sitting on the end of his bed, fully dressed, smoking a cigarette. Several butts lay scattered on the floor, suggesting he might have been awake some time.

  ‘What time do we have to be over there?’

  Paul looked at his watch. ‘Forty minutes.’

  Lewis seemed almost feverish, tensed up to face the day. No sign of the enthusiasm of the previous night. It made Paul feel nervous and irritable to look at him. Reaching for his clothes, he started to get dressed. Lewis got up and paced up and down, though there was hardly enough room for it: three paces either way and you had to turn.

  ‘You could do that outside.’

  Lewis stopped, but his tension was visible in every muscle. He was straining to start work.

  ‘Breakfast?’ Paul said.

  ‘I can’t eat.’

  ‘All right. Watch me.’

  Outside it was still dark, the furthest sheds just beginning to show through the thinning grey. Far away, a train whistled. As they set off, Paul felt Lewis veering in the direction of the Salle d’Attente; his feet seemed to head in that direction even as he tried to keep pace with Paul. He kept stumbling. Under the weeds the ground was full of holes.

  Paul touched his arm. ‘You’ll feel better for a coffee.’

  The dining room was another hut. The food came in huge vats from somewhere off site and was almost inedible, but the coffee, made on site, was good and Paul drank three huge cups of it before forcing himself to eat. Lewis pushed his croissants to one side, but drank the coffee, cupping his hands round the mug. In the strengthening daylight he looked odder: frizzy hair; eyes, that clear pale Viking blue that make their owners look capable of anything; skin so freckled it was almost a deformity. You thought of leopards, snakes, toads. Lewis put down his cup. Mouth as always slightly open, he was staring at Paul, a question on his face. Paul looked quickly down and away.

  Burton came over and introduced himself. In the chill morning air, his nose was pinched, his eyes red-rimmed with tiredness. Lewis looked up at him, eager to be impressed. Burton welcomed him ‘on board’, recommended several good restaurants, and then, exactly as Paul had done the previous night, told him where he could get a hot bath and a shave. We’re a disappointment to him, Paul thought, watching Lewis’s politely smiling face, with our talk of percentages and our concern for our own comfort. He’s looking for somebody to hero-worship, and we’re not it. But then he wondered what gave him the confidence, the arrogance, to think he could understand Lewis on the basis of such a slight acquaintance. He might be tougher than he appeared on the surface. He’d better be.

  Burton, who’d been the last to arrive, was the first to leave, and his departure signalled a general move across to the sheds. As they walked over the open space, Paul took Lewis to one side and pointed to the road that led away from the station.

  ‘There, you see?’ A convoy of motor ambulances was churning up the hill. ‘That’s the first of them.’

  Paul stared at the road, trying to see it through Lewis’s eyes. Motor lorries, horse-drawn wagons coming back from delivering the rations, a column of men marching. All along the horizon, guns rumbled and flickered. Occasionally a flare went up, illuminating a bank of black cloud.

  ‘Can you get up there?’ Lewis asked.

  ‘Not easily. I suppose an ambulance driver might give you a lift.’

  ‘I’d like to go.’

  ‘Drive an ambulance and you will. Meanwhile …’ He put his hand on Lewis’s shoulder. ‘There’s work to be done.’

  An hour later the black clouds are overhead. The wind rocks and shakes the roof; rain pelts down, sending waves of turbulence around the room. Outside, ambulances roar, cough, hiccup, splutter, stop, unload the wounded and drive off again, churning the mud in the turning circle to thick brownish-black cream. By mid-afternoon every available space in the hut’s been filled. Paul, Lewis and three other orderlies move up and down the rows of stretchers, cutting men out of their uniforms, washing them, ignoring their pleas for water if they’re going to the operating theatres, letting them have it if they’re slight wounds who can wait, or beyond hope. The most severely wounded moan on the edge of consciousness or lie in ominous silence. Continually, throughout the day, the procession of wounded comes. Each time the leading stretcher-bearer holds the door open, a current of cold air rushes in, damp and brackish-smelling, as if even the outside world’s underground. And the gust of wind flutters the papers in Sister Byrd’s hand and lifts the edges of the blankets.

  Lewis follows Paul round, watching and copying everything he does. Once his shadow falls across Paul’s hands at a crucial moment and Paul swears at him and sees him flinch. He learns quickly though, his hands are strong and deft, he doesn’t tire, or anyway shows no sign of it, though he must be suffering from backache now, as they all are, bending and lifting the stretchers hour after hour. No, Lewis’s problems are all in his head. Some of the things Sister Byrd says – ‘Take that stomach in next, and then the head’ – visibly shock him. ‘Look,’ Paul imagines saying to him, ‘Leave your fucking compassion at the door, it’s no use to anybody here.’

  He’s roused from his trance by a commotion at the door. Another stretcher’s just been brought in. Hearing raised voices, Sister Byrd goes to investigate. The man on the stretcher waits till she’s leaning over him and spits a gob of blood into her face.

  Paul’s on his way over, before she calls for him. Lewis, as always, follows. Paul turns to tell him to go on washing the patient he’s just left, but Sister Byrd says, ‘No, it’ll take two.’ The man’s bucking and rearing against the straps that bind him. ‘You’ve got a right one there,’ the front bearer says, jovial now he’s succeeded in dumping the problem on to somebody else. Wiping the blood from her face, Sister Byrd turns to the driver, who, unusually, has come in with the bearers. ‘He tried to jump out of the back of the ambulance,’ the driver says. ‘We had to tie him down.’

  Blood wells from the man’s mouth, great thick black gobbets of blood. As he turns his head in the direction of their voices, his left eyeball swings against his cheek.

  ‘Will he live?’ Paul asks.

  She shrugs. They carry him through into theatre, Sister Byrd hurrying ahead to warn the surgical team. Paul takes the front of the stretcher, Lewis the rear, though they have to keep stopping, because the man kicks and struggles so much he’s in danger of tipping himself on to the floor. His eyeball swings with every jolt.

  The hot air of the operating theatre hits them, a solid wall Paul has to push against. There are three tables in operation. Burton, Mercer and Browne, wearing red gowns, or so it seems, are chatting to their teams and flirting with the younger nurses, unconscious of the stench of blood. The door into the sterilizing room swings open belching steamy air as a nurse carries a tray of instruments into the room.

  ‘Oh, my God, what’s this?’ Mercer says, looking down.

  ‘Shot himself,’ Sister Cope says.

  Mercer purses his lips, ‘Why for God’s sake? A million Germans getting paid good money to do the job and he has to go and shoot himself. Oh, well. Get him on.’

  Easier said than done. He spits, curses, struggles, finally lands a kick on Sister Cope’s breast that makes her go white. It takes six of them in the end to bind him to the table and two to force the mask down over his face. Even as the ether takes effect, he’s still straining against the straps, a torrent of mangled words spewing from his mouth.

  All right,’ Mercer says. ‘I think we can start now.’

  He’s standing well back, pulling irritably at the ties on his gown. He keeps glancing at the clock and pulling his mask down to wipe away the moustache of sweat that constantly forms on his upper lip. Paul doesn’t like Mercer, not that li
king or disliking matter much here. He doesn’t like the pale, large, doughy face or the way his features, individually rather small and delicate, cluster together in the centre as if for safety. Mercer notices an amputated leg that hasn’t been cleared away fast enough and, in a sudden burst of fury, kicks it across the floor.

  ‘I need this place kept clear!’ he shouts.

  Sister Cope, still white from the kick, scurries across and removes the offending limb.

  Paul and Lewis watch from the back, ready to step in should the man come out of the anaesthetic fighting, as patients often do. Between other people’s shoulders, they catch glimpses of the operation. Mercer locates the bullet, extracts it, drops it, with a small, disgusted clink, into a kidney bowl and then manoeuvres the eyeball back into its socket.

  ‘All right.’ He straightens up, presses one hand hard into the small of his back, leaving a red print on the white cloth. ‘What’s next?’

  He’s marginally better tempered now because he feels he’s done a good job, as no doubt he has. Paul and Lewis come forward, unbuckle the straps and lift the man on to the stretcher.

  ‘Through there,’ Paul says, nodding at the door behind Lewis.

  Lewis backs out into the cold corridor. Immediately, they both begin to shiver. Within a few seconds Lewis is shaking uncontrollably, whether from cold or shock it’s hard to tell. If it’s shock, Paul doesn’t want to know. Keep the patient warm, that’s all that matters. ‘Move,’ he says. Lewis backs away down the corridor.

  They deliver their unconscious burden to the recovery ward, his restored eye gazing sightlessly up at them, and leave him there.

  ‘What’ll happen to him?’

  ‘He’ll be shot.’

  Lewis gapes. ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘’ Course he will, suicide counts as desertion.’

  ‘But that’s mad. Why not just let him die?’

  ‘Pour encourager les autres.’

  They’re standing in the weed-thronged yard, by the pile of railway sleepers.

  Paul looks at Lewis with a mixture of pity and exasperation. ‘I think you’re allowed a cigarette before we go back.’

  Lewis shakes his head, then lights one anyway, remembering, a second later, to offer the packet.

  ‘No, I won’t, thanks.’ Paul waits, watching the dry, fleshy mouth drag on the cigarette. ‘Look, that was a bad business in there. But it’s not typical.’

  ‘What I don’t like is that we’re part of it.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Sending him back to be shot.’

  ‘What’s the alternative? Let him die?’

  ‘It’s what he wants.’

  ‘Well, if you’re going to start letting them do what they want … Most of them want to go home.’

  ‘And I’d let them.’

  ‘Then it’s just as well you’re not in charge.’

  Lewis is already stubbing out his half-smoked cigarette. ‘Come on, we’d better be getting back.’

  He sets off at his loping pace across the waste ground, his boots flashing silver drops of rain. Paul follows at a slower pace. He hasn’t had time to sort out his own reactions. He’s been too busy coping with Lewis. Now he finds it difficult to tell which are Lewis’s feelings and which his own. He feels as if he’s been crowded out of his own mind.

  But then, that’s the question. Should you even pause to consider your own reactions? These men suffer so much more than he does, more than he can imagine. In the face of their suffering, isn’t it self-indulgent to think about his own feelings? He has nobody to talk to about such things and blunders his way through as best he can. If you feel nothing – this is what he comes back to time and time again – you might just as well be a machine, and machines aren’t very good at caring for people. There’s something machinelike about a lot of the professional nurses here. Even Sister Byrd, whom he admires, he looks at her sometimes and sees a robot. Well, lucky for her, perhaps. It’s probably more efficient to be like that. Certainly less painful.

  Throwing his cigarette away, he follows Lewis into the building.

  Twenty

  Elinor to Paul

  You say you don’t want to burden me with the horrors but you mustn’t hold back because of me. I want to know everything and anyway, why should I be sheltered? I feel the same kind of guilt when I tell you about the Slade and painting and parties in Gordon Square. (Where I’ve been invited twice now.) You have so little time and probably by the end of the day so little energy and nobody to talk to about the things that really matter and I have so much of all these things. Are you managing to do any work at all? You know what I mean – your own work? If you’ve got the hut to yourself isn’t it possible to do a bit in the evenings?

  I carry your photograph around with me everywhere. At home – ‘home’ meaning Gower Street – it’s on the bedside table where I can see it when I wake up but here I have to keep it in a drawer in case Mother comes in. She’s always on the lookout for what she calls ‘the One’. She wants me to go to her bandaging class with her this afternoon so I can witness her triumph over Mrs Bradley. Toby has received his commission and been gazetted. I’m not sure I can face it. The thought of Mrs Bradley in her camisole reclining on a chaise longue while the whole twittering first-aid class clusters round and tries to diagnose her! I’ve had enough of Mrs Bradley to last me a lifetime. She’s the one who kept making snide remarks to Mother because Toby hadn’t enlisted yet, really made her life a misery. There was a lovely moment last week when Mother got flustered and attempted to apply a tourniquet to Mrs Bradley’s neck. ‘What a stupid, stupid mistake,’ she kept saying all the way home. ‘I can’t think why I did it. I know perfectly well you don’t apply a tourniquet to a neck wound.’ Mother’s one of life’s innocents, I’m afraid. She doesn’t know ‘mistakes’ sometimes have inverted commas round them.

  Paul to Elinor

  You should never be afraid of telling me about your work – or the parties. The thought that there are some people out there still painting and drawing, still thinking art matters more than anything else, is one of the few things that keeps me going. That and remembering the Slade. I close my eyes sometimes and see you and Catherine walking around the quad, Catherine with her arm around your waist. How I used to envy her. And I hear Tonks shouting: ‘I suppose you think you can draw?’ That’s not so good! How is Tonks? And yes, I do manage to do a bit of drawing when I’m off duty. Or rather, I did.

  The trouble is, I’ve acquired a room mate. Hut mate, I suppose I should say. He’s perfectly pleasant, young, enthusiastic, full of admirable qualities – and he’s driving me mad. Partly it’s that I don’t take kindly to sharing a bedroom with anybody – only child, didn’t go to boarding school, etc. I find the sound of somebody else’s breathing intensely irritating. It stops me sleeping. Oh, and everything’s new to him. Every impression of the hospital, the wounds, the gangrene, the amputated limbs stacked up outside – so of course I start seeing it all again through his eyes, whereas most of the time I go around in a kind of dream state. Like being inside a rubber glove that covers all of you, not just your hands.

  I’ve been made more or less responsible for him, I think. And I can’t complain because when I look back now I can see how kind people were to me when I first arrived, how patiently they answered idiotic questions and redid jobs I was supposed to have done.

  But. But I can’t draw with him in the room. He looks over my shoulder all the time – pretends not to, but he does. And I can’t lie on my bed, in the evening after we’ve all come back from the café, and say goodnight to your photograph. Can’t talk to it either. All such indulgences are at an end.

  What all this has done is to bring forward a little plan I was hatching anyway, which is to hire a room in town. All the tourist trade’s gone. The brass hats are accommodated in hotels or in posh houses overlooking the main square, but in the back streets there are plenty of rooms that used to be let out to summer visitors going very cheap ind
eed. I think I could get somewhere for about five shillings a week in English money, so that’s my new project. It’s what keeps me going.

  I liked your story of your mother and Mrs Bradley and the tourniquet.

  Have to go now. I’m writing this early in the morning with Lewis snoring in the next bed – actually he doesn’t snore, he whistles – and he’s showing signs of stirring. It’s time for breakfast anyway. I’m hungry!

  Elinor to Paul

  Things aren’t good at home. Toby’s gone off to officer training, Mother’s taken to her bed and everybody – by which I mean Father and Rachel and even Toby – thinks I should throw everything up and go home to look after her. I’m the one who isn’t doing anything important, you see. Rachel’s pregnant, Toby’s in the army, Dad’s got his work. All I’ve got is painting, which doesn’t matter and specifically doesn’t matter now. You’d be amazed how many supposedly intelligent people think of art as some frivolrous (sorry, can’t spell it!) distraction from things that really matter. By which of course they mean the war the war the war. Since I’m not involved in any way with that, why can’t I go home and look after Mother?

  How’s Tonks? Thinner, gloomier, snappier – at the same time rather splendid, I think. You’d never get that art-doesn’t-matter nonsense out of him. As for the rest, well, the Slade’s almost deserted. Difficult not to speak in a whisper sometimes, you get such a strong sense of people who should be here and aren’t. The men’s life class limps on, but I don’t see how it can keep going much longer. Even the women are beginning to drop away. Ruthie’s nursing – she volunteered the same day as her three brothers enlisted – Marjorie’s talking about leaving, Catherine’s gone. Her father’s been interned, but at least it’s in London and not on the Isle of Man, where a lot of them are sent.