by Pat Barker
Prior arrived exactly on time, and was about to ring the bell when he saw Rivers walking rapidly up the hill.
‘Have you rung?’ Rivers asked, getting out his key.
‘No, I saw you coming.’
Rivers opened the door and stood aside to let Prior in. Mrs Irving, Rivers’s landlady, was hovering in the hall, wanting to complain about the Belgian refugees on the second floor whose failure to understand the extent of the food shortages was making her life a misery. When that subject was exhausted, there were the raids to be discussed. Wasn’t it scandalous they’d been kept awake all night and not a word about it in The Times? Then there was her daughter, who’d been summoned back from France, ostensibly because her mother was ill, in fact because she was incapable of sorting out her servant problems. Girls kept leaving her employ on the flimsy excuse that they could earn five times as much in the munition factories. There was no accounting for modern girls, she said. And Frances was so moody.
At last Mrs Irving was called away, by Frances presumably, at any rate by a young woman with braided hair who gave Rivers a cool, amused, sympathetic smile before she closed the door of the drawing-room.
‘I hope she’s letting you live rent free,’ Prior said.
They walked up the stairs together. Rivers paused on the second floor to look down into the garden. The laburnum, he said, was particularly fine. Prior didn’t believe in this sudden interest in horticulture. The pause was to give him time to get his breath back. His chest was tighter than it had been on his last visit, and Rivers would have noticed that. Damn Rivers, he thought, knowing the response was utterly unfair. Whenever he needed Rivers he became angry with him, often to the point where he couldn’t talk about what was worrying him. He mustn’t let that happen tonight.
Normally Prior took a long time to get started, but this evening he was no sooner settled in his chair than he launched into an account of his visit to Mrs Roper. What emerged most vividly was the eye in the door. He reverted to this again and again, how elaborately painted it had been, even to the veins in the iris, how the latrine bucket had been placed within sight of it, how it was never possible to tell whether a human eye was looking through the painted one or not. It was clear from Prior’s expression, from his whole demeanour, that he was seeing the eye as he spoke. Rivers was always sensitive to the signs of intense visualization in other people, since this was a capacity in which he himself was markedly deficient, a state of affairs which had once seemed simple and now seemed very complicated indeed. He switched his attention firmly back to Prior, asked a few questions about his previous relationship with Mrs Roper, then listened intently to his account of the nightmare. ‘Whose eye was it?’ he asked, when Prior had finished.
Prior shrugged. ‘I don’t know. How should I know?’
‘It’s your dream.’
Prior drew a deep breath, reluctant to delve into a memory that could still make his stomach heave. ‘I suppose Towers is the obvious connection.’
‘Had you been thinking about that?’
‘I remembered it when I was in the cell with Beattie. I… I actually saw it for a moment. Then later I remembered I used to go and buy gob-stoppers from Beattie’s shop.’ He paused. ‘I don’t know whether you remember, but when I picked up Towers’s eye, I said, “What shall I do with this gob-stopper?”’
‘I remember.’
A long silence.
Rivers said slowly, ‘When one eye reminded you of the other, was that just the obvious connection? I mean, because they were both eyes?’
Prior produced one of his elaborate shrugs. ‘I suppose so.’
Silence.
‘I don’t know. It was in the prison, but later… I don’t know. I knew I was going to have a bad night. You you you just get to know the the feeling. I felt sorry for Beattie. And then I started thinking about William — that’s the son — and… you know, naked in his cell, stone floor, snow outside…’ He shook his head. ‘It was… quite powerful, and I… I think I resented that. I resented having my sympathies manipulated. Because it’s nothing, is it?’ A burst of anger. ‘I lost three men with frost-bite. And so I started thinking about that, about those men and… It was a way of saying, “All right, William, your bum’s numb. Tough luck.” Though that’s irrelevant, of course.’ He smiled wryly. ‘It isn’t a suffering competition.’
‘And then you thought about Towers?’
‘Yes. But not in the same way as… as as the other men, I mean, I wasn’t focusing on the horror of it. It was… I don’t know.’ He held out his hand to Rivers, palm upwards. ‘A sort of talisman. Do you know what I mean? If that happens to you…’ The outstretched hand started to shake. ‘There’s no possible room for doubt where your loyalties are.’
Prior looked down at his shaking hand, and seemed to become aware of it for the first time. He swallowed. ‘Sorry, will you excuse me a moment?’
He crashed out of the room. Doors opened and closed as he tried to locate the bathroom. Rivers got up to help, then heard retching, followed by a gush of water, followed by more retching. Prior wouldn’t want to be seen in that condition. He sat down again.
It was obviously his day to cope with people being sick.
He rested his chin on his clasped hands, and waited. It had taken two months’ hard work at Craiglockhart to get Prior to the point where he remembered picking up Towers’s eye, and even then he’d had to resort to hypnosis, something he always did with great reluctance. Prior had arrived at the hospital mute, rebellious, possibly the least co-operative patient Rivers had ever encountered, and with a very marked tendency to probe. To insist on a two-way relationship. He had accused Rivers of being merely ‘a strip of empathic wallpaper’ and asked him what the hell use he thought that was. Later this had became something of a joke between them, but the probing went on, combined with a sort of jeering flirta-tiousness that had been surprisingly difficult to handle.
Prior’s nightmares had been dreadful. He’d always insisted he couldn’t remember them, though this had been obviously untrue. Eventually, he’d told Rivers in a tone of icy self-disgust that his dreams of mutilation and slaughter were accompanied by seminal emissions.
Prior came back into the room. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said casually, settling back into his chair.
He hadn’t reached the bathroom in time. The front of his tunic was wet where he’d had to sponge it down. He noticed Rivers noticing the stain, and his face tightened. He’s going to make me pay for seeing that, Rivers thought. No point questioning the logic of it. That was Prior. ‘Would you like a break?’ Rivers asked, trying to relieve the tension.
Prior nodded.
‘Let’s go by the fire.’
They left the desk and settled themselves in armchairs. Rivers took off his glasses and swept a hand down across his eyes.
‘Tired?’
‘Slightly. As Mrs Irving was saying, we had our own personal aid-raid last night. I suppose somebody panics and starts firing.’
A pause while they stared into the fire. Prior said, ‘I bumped into a patient of yours the other night. Charles Manning.’
Rivers had started to clean his glasses. ‘I umm –’
‘Can’t talk about another patient. No, of course you can’t. He talked, though. You know, when he mentioned your name I thought “war neurosis” – well, he does tend to twitch a bit, doesn’t he? – but no, apparently not. Met a handsome soldier. Nasty policeman’s hand on shoulder. What do you know, suddenly he requires treatment. What was the… ? Henry Head, that was it. “Henry Head can cure sodomites.” So off he goes to Head, who says, “Sorry, like to help. Snowed under.” With sodomites, presumably. The mind does rather boggle doesn’t it? “Why don’t you try Rivers?”’ Prior waited. When there was no response he went on, ‘Manning was surprisingly open about his little tastes. Cameronians with sweaty feet, apparently. Touching, isn’t it, how some people develop a real devotion to the Highland regiments? I wonder, Rivers…’ Prior was making li
ttle smacking movements with his lips, a don worrying away at some particularly recondite problem. ‘How would you set about “curing” somebody of fancying Cameronians with sweaty feet?’
Rivers said coldly, ‘I should apply carbolic soap to the feet.’
‘Really? A leap ahead of Dr Freud there, I think.’
Rivers leant forward. ‘Stop this. Dr Head is “snowed under” by young men who’ve had large parts of their brains shot away. In a rational society, a man who spent his days like that wouldn’t have to spend his evenings, his own time, remember, with men who could perfectly well be left to get on with their own lives in their own way. The fact that he’s prepared to do it is a tribute to Head.’
‘He’s a friend of yours?’
‘Yes.’
‘I suppose he could refuse to take them?’ Prior said.
‘No, he can’t do that. Two years’ hard labour, remember?’
A short silence. ‘I’m sorry.’
Rivers spread his hands.
But Prior wouldn’t let go. ‘All the same there must be times when one patient actually does need to talk about another. I mean, it must be obvious the conversation about the Cameronians could only have taken place in bed?’
‘The thought had occurred.’
‘Well, suppose I need to talk about it? Suppose I’m racked with guilt?’
‘Are you?’
‘The point is –’ Abruptly, Prior gave up. ‘No. I don’t seem to feel sexual guilt, you know. At all, really. About anything.’
Not true, Rivers thought. Prior had felt enormous guilt about the nocturnal emissions that accompanied his nightmares. Guilt about an involuntary action.
‘I used to,’ Prior said.
‘When was that?’
‘When I was twelve. Where we lived there was a young man who used to be wheeled around on a trolley. I don’t know what was wrong with him, tuberculosis of the spine, something like that, something terrible. And the trolley creaked, so you could always hear it coming. And he was pointed out to us as an illustration of what happened if you indulged in self-abuse.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘Scoutmaster. Mr Hailes. He actually said what came out was spinal fluid. And of course you’ve only got a limited supply of that, and mine was going down pretty fast. I used to lie awake and try not to do it, and I’d get more and more frightened. Unfortunately, there was only one thing that took my mind off the fear. So I did it again. And all the time this creaking trolley was getting nearer and nearer. And we’d been told the first signs of collapse were pallor and shadows under the eyes. And I used to get out of bed in the morning and look in the mirror, and what do you know? Pallor. Shadows under the eyes.’ He laughed. ‘It’s funny now, but at one time I actually thought about suicide.’
‘What got you out of it?’
Prior smiled. ‘Not what. Who. Paddy MacDowell.’
‘The man who organized the Sheffield strike?’
The smile broadened. ‘Yes, at a later stage. He was otherwise engaged at the time. “Bashing his bishop.” That’s what we used to call it. Mac’s bishop got bashed oftener than anybody else’s. He used to more or less pull it out and do it in public – and he was taller and stronger than any of us. So that planted the first seed of doubt. And then Hailes said the way to purity was to keep a glass of cold water by your bed, and then when temptation struck, you could plunge “the Inflamed Organ” – he always called it that – into the water. Well, I relayed this to Mac. Mac was common, he didn’t go to Scouts – and he said, “But if it’s stiff how do you get it into the glass without spilling the water?” And I suddenly had this picture of poor bloody Hailes standing there with his limp “organ” in a glass of water and I just knew he was talking rubbish. Poor little sod, he must’ve forgotten what an erection looked like. Anyway, after that I gave up on guilt. I think I got through a lifetime’s supply in six months.’
‘Was it a close friendship? With MacDowell?’
‘You mean, did we –’
‘No. I—’
‘Yes, it was close. We were that age, I suppose.’
Prior was looking much more relaxed. ‘Do you want to go on?’ Rivers asked.
A slight hesitation. ‘No, but I think I’d better.’ For a while he didn’t speak, then, measuring the words with movements of his steepled fingertips, he said, ‘Dreams are attempts to resolve conflict. Right? Well, I can’t see any conflict in this one.’
‘You stabbed somebody in the eye.’
‘Rivers. It was a door.’
‘The eye was alive.’
‘Yes.’
‘So why do you say there was no conflict?’
‘Because I was so identified with William or Beattie or… I don’t know. William, probably, because I was naked. And I was attacking what seemed to me the most awful feature of their situation, which is the eye. The constant surveillance. So I don’t see that there’s any conflict. I mean it might be very inconvenient in real life but in the dream there was no doubt whose side I was on. Theirs.’
Rivers waited. When it was clear Prior could offer nothing more he said, ‘You say the worst feature of their situation is the eye?’
‘Yes.’
‘The constantly being spied on?’
‘Yes.’
Rivers asked gently, ‘In that meeting with Mrs Roper, who was the spy?’
‘I –’ Prior’s mouth twisted. ‘I was.’
Another pause. Rivers prompted. ‘So?’
‘So,’ Prior said in a disgusted singsong, jabbing with his index finger, ‘“eye” was stabbing myself in the “I”. And God knows one wouldn’t want a reputation for puns like that!’
A pause. Rivers asked, ‘What do you think about that? Does it seem…’
‘It’s possible, I suppose. I hate what I do. And I suppose I probably felt I was in a false position. Well, obviously I did, I’d have to be mad not to.’
‘I want you to do something for me,’ Rivers said. ‘I want you to write down any dreams you have that are as… as bad as this one. Just record them. Don’t try to interpret. And send them to me. I’ll be seeing you again on—’
‘No, I’m sorry, I can’t. It’ll have to be the following week. If that’s all right? I’m going to see Hettie Roper.’
‘Back to Salford? Where will you be staying?’
‘At home.’ He pulled a face. ‘Yes, I know. How can I stay anywhere else?’
Rivers nodded. He was remembering a visit of Prior’s parents to Craiglockhart. In one afternoon they’d undone every slight sign of progress and precipitated an asthmatic attack. ‘Does your father know what you’re doing? I mean, does he know what the job involves?’
‘My God, I hope not.’ Prior shifted restlessly. ‘This is a dirty little war, Rivers. I can honestly say I’d rather be in France.’
‘Yes. I’m sure you would.’
Prior gave him a sharp look. ‘You’re worried, aren’t you? Why? Because I’m going home?’
‘No, not particularly.’
‘Oh, I see. Yes. It was a suicide dream.’ His expression changed. ‘You needn’t worry. If anybody comes a cropper over this one, it will not be me.’
He looked quite different, suddenly: keen, alert, cold, observant, detached, manipulative, ruthless. Rivers realized he was seeing, probably for the first time, Prior’s public face. At Craiglockhart he’d been aggressive and manipulative, but always from a position of comparative helplessness. At times he’d reminded Rivers of a toddler clinging to his father’s sleeve in order to be able to deliver a harder kick on his shins. Now, briefly, he glimpsed the Prior other people saw: the Lodes, the Ropers, the Spragges, and it came as a shock. Prior was formidable.
SIX
Against a yellow backcloth a woman draped in brilliant green veils writhed and twisted. She looked like an exotic lizard or a poisonous snake. That, apparently, had been Wilde’s intention. Robert Ross had been telling them about it before the performance, recalling a day in Par
is, Wilde darting across the boulevards to look in shop windows, asking, ‘What about that?’ or ‘Or perhaps she should be naked except for the jewels?’ Yellow and green was his colour scheme, though Wilde could not have foreseen what, for Charles Manning, was its most disturbing feature: that the yellow was the exact shade of munition girls’ skins. Others wouldn’t notice that, of course. It only struck him because one of his duties at the Ministry was to serve as the military member on a committee set up to inspect the health and safety standards of munitions factories. One saw row after row of such girls, yellow-skinned, strands of ginger hair escaping from under their green caps, faces half hidden by respirators.
Ross had been quite interesting on Wilde’s plans for Salome, rather more interesting than the performance so far. The most startling piece of information was that Wilde himself had once played Salome, which did rather boggle the imagination, since in photographs he looked far from sylph-like, even by the normal standards of prosperous middle-aged men. Manning directed his attention back to the stage. Since he’d made the effort to attend – and it had been an effort, he was feeling very far from well – he ought at least to give the play a chance, particularly since it had obviously meant a great deal to Wilde. Iokanaan’s head had been brought in on a charger and Salome was kneeling, hands outstretched towards it. Manning felt an unexpected spasm of revulsion, not because the head was horrifying, but because it wasn’t. Another thing Wilde couldn’t have foreseen: people in the audience for whom severed heads were not necessarily made of papier mâché.
Salome began to fondle the head. ‘Ah! thou wouldst not suffer me to kiss thy mouth, Iokanaan. Well! I will kiss it now. I will bite it with my teeth as one bites a ripe fruit. Yes, I will kiss thy mouth, Iokanaan. I said it: did I not say it? I said it. Ah! I will kiss it now.’
Manning was bored. If he were honest all this meant nothing to him. He could see what Wilde was doing. He was attempting to convey the sense of a great passion constricted, poisoned, denied legitimate outlets, but none the less forced to the surface, expressed as destruction and cruelty because it could not be expressed as love. It was not that he thought the theme trivial or unworthy or out of date – certainly not that – but the language was impossible for him. France had made it impossible.
