by Pat Barker
‘I must say I’ll be glad to be out of London,’ Siegfried went on. ‘Have you heard any more about this convalescent home?’
‘Oh, yes. They can take you.’
‘It’s… I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten where you said it was.’
‘Coldstream. Near Berwick-on-Tweed.’
‘Is that anywhere near Scarborough? It’s just Owen’s stationed in Scarborough.’
‘Well, it’s not near, but you could probably get there and back in a day.’ Rivers hesitated. ‘There is one thing I think you… might not like. There has to be a Medical Board first.’
‘Yes.’
Siegfried sounded puzzled. This wasn’t the first time he’d been in hospital: riding accident during training, trench fever, wounded, ‘shell-shocked’ at Craiglockhart, wounded again. He knew the routine backwards.
‘At Craiglockhart,’ Rivers said.
A stunned silence. ‘No. Why Craiglockhart?’
‘Because you’re my patient. Because I want to be on the Board.’
Siegfried couldn’t take it in. ‘I can’t go back there.’
‘I’m afraid you’ve got to. It’s only for a few days, Siegfried.’
Siegfried shook his head. ‘I can’t. You don’t know what you’re asking.’
There was an empty bench a few yards further on. Rivers sat down and indicated that Siegfried should join him. ‘Tell me, then.’
A silence during which Sassoon struggled visibly with himself.
‘Why can’t you?’ Rivers prompted gently.
‘Because it would mean admitting I’m one of them.’
Rivers felt a flare of anger, but brought it quickly under control. ‘One of whom?’
Siegfried was silent. At last he said, ‘You know what I mean.’
‘Yes, I’m afraid I do. One of the degenerates, the loonies, the lead-swingers, the cowards.’ He waited for a response, but Siegfried had turned his head away. ‘You know, Siegfried, sometimes I… reproach myself with having exercised too great an influence on you. At a time when you were vulnerable and… perhaps needed to be left alone to come to your own decision in your way.’ Rivers shook his head. ‘Well, I shan’t be doing that again. If you still think like that I haven’t influenced you at all. I haven’t managed to convey a single bloody thing. Not a bloody thing.’ He looked out over the lake. The wind blew a dark ripple across the surface like goose pimples spreading across skin. ‘Perhaps we’d better be getting back.’
‘Not yet.’
‘You have to go back to Craiglockhart. I’m sorry, I’ll make it as short as I can, but you have to go.’
Siegfried nodded. He was sitting with his big hands clasped between his knees. ‘All right. But you do see what I’m trying to say? I know you find it offensive, but… It’s not just admitting I’m one of them now, it’s admitting I always was. Don’t you see?’
‘Yes, and it’s nonsense. One day I’m going to give you a copy of your admission report. “No physical or mental signs of any nervous disorder.” If you’re tormenting yourself with the idea that your protest was some kind of symptom, well, for God’s sake, stop. It wasn’t. It was an entirely valid, sane response to the situation we’re all in.’ He paused. ‘Wrong, of course.’
‘When I was in France I used to think of it as breakdown. It was easier than –’
‘Than remembering what you believed?’
‘Yes.’ Siegfried looked down at his hands. ‘Now I just feel as if a trap’s been sprung.’ A slight laugh. ‘Not by you, I don’t mean by you. But it has, hasn’t it? It’s absolutely full circle. Literally back to the beginning. Only worse, because now I belong there.’
‘Three days. I promise.’
Siegfried got up. ‘All right.’
Rivers remained seated for a moment. He wanted to say, if there is a trap, I’m in it too, but he couldn’t. ‘Come on,’ he said, standing up. ‘Let’s go back.’
The bomb site had been tidied up, Prior saw. Rubble cleared away, the pavements swept clean of white dust, the houses on either side of the gap shored up. A cold wind whistled through the gap, disturbing the trees, whipping up litter into whirlpools that ran along the gutters. The sun blazed in the windows of the houses opposite the gap, turning the far side of the square into a wall of fire.
Prior was early for his appointment and dawdled along, noticing what on his previous visit, walking with Charles Manning through the spring dark, he had not noticed: that many of the elegant houses had dingy basements, like white teeth yellow round the gums.
He pressed the bell of Manning’s house and turned slightly away, expecting to have to wait, but the door was opened almost immediately and by Manning himself, so quickly indeed that he must have been hovering in the hall. He might have appeared anxious, but his smile, his whole bearing, gave the impression of impulsive informality.
‘It’s all right, I’ve got it,’ he said to somebody over his shoulder, and stood aside to let Prior in. ‘I’m glad you could come. I thought of waiting till we were both back at work, but –’
‘I’m not going back,’ Prior said quickly.
‘Ah.’
The living-room door stood open. No dust-sheets now.
‘Oh, yes, come and see,’ Manning said, noticing the direction of his glance.
They went in. A smell of furniture polish and roses.
‘You found a builder, then,’ Prior said, looking up at the door.
‘Yes. I must say he didn’t inspire a lot of confidence, but he seems to have done all right. As far as one can tell.’ Manning patted the wall. ‘I’ve got a sneaking suspicion the wallpaper might be holding the plaster up.’
They found themselves staring rather too long at the place where the crack had been, and glanced at each other, momentarily at a loss. ‘Come and sit down,’ Manning said.
A bowl of red and yellow roses stood in the fireplace where before there had been scrumpled newspaper dusted with soot. No mirror either – that had been moved. The whole room had been redecorated. So much was changed that the unyielding brocade of the sofa came as a shock. Prior flexed his shoulders, remembering. It was almost as if the body had an alternative store of memory in the nerve endings, for the sensation of being held stiffly erect induced a state of sensual awareness. He looked at Manning, and knew that he too was remembering.
‘Would you like a drink?’
Manning went across to the sideboard. Prior, noticing a book lying face down on the floor near an armchair, reached across and picked it up. Rex v. Pemberton Billing. It was a complete transcript of the trial. What an extraordinary thing for Manning to be reading. Manning came back with the drinks. ‘Is it good?’ Prior asked, holding up the book.
‘Fascinating,’ Manning said. ‘I realized while I was reading it wh-wh-what’s actually h-happening. It’s just that people are saturated with tragedy, they simply can’t respond any more. So they’ve decided to play the rest of the war as farce.’
‘I can’t say I’d be prepared to fork out good money for this.’
‘I didn’t,’ Manning said, sitting down. ‘It was sent to me. By “a well-wisher”.’
Prior raised his eyebrows. ‘Really?’
‘Oh, yes. I’ve had several little… communications.’
‘Captain Spencer came to see us, you know.’
‘“Us”?’
‘The Intelligence Unit. I think somebody must have told him the first question he’d be asked in court was whether he’d informed the appropriate authorities when he discovered the Great Conspiracy. So he was scurrying round London informing them.’ Prior laughed.
‘Did he mention any names?’
‘Good Lord, yes.’ Prior looked up and caught a fleeting expression of anxiety. ‘Not you.’
‘No, I didn’t think that, I’m not important enough. Robert Ross?’
‘Well, yes.’
Manning nodded. ‘You say you’re not going back?’
‘There’s nothing to go back to. I went in to check m
y pigeonhole and… it was like the Marie Celeste. Files gone. Lode gone.’
‘He’s…’
‘Teaching cadets. In Wales. No doubt that pleases him.’
‘Why, is he Welsh?’
‘I was being sarcastic. I shouldn’t think it pleases him in the least. Spragge. I don’t know whether you –’
‘The informer?’
‘That’s right. He’s gone – or going, I’m not sure which – to South Africa. All expenses paid.’
Manning hesitated. ‘I… don’t think you should feel nothing useful came out of that. I showed Eddie Marsh your report and… he was rather impressed actually. As I was. He thought it was… very cogently argued. Very effective.’
‘It may have been cogently argued. It certainly wasn’t effective. She’s still in prison.’
Manning smiled. ‘The point is –’
The french windows were thrown open, and a chubby-cheeked child peered, blinking, into the dark interior. ‘Daddy?’
‘Not now, Robert,’ Manning said, turning round. ‘Ask Elsie.’
Manning’s face softened as he watched the child close the door carefully behind him. His delight in his house and family was so obvious it seemed churlish to wonder if he ever regretted the empty rooms of early spring, the smells of soot and fallen plaster, the footsteps that had followed him upstairs to the maids’ bedroom.
‘The point is that being able to organize an array of complicated facts and present them succinctly is quite a rare ability. And just the sort of thing we’re looking for in my line of work.’
‘Which is…’
‘Health and safety. To cut a long story short, I’m offering you a job.’
‘Ah.’
‘I think you might find it worth while. Since it’s basically protecting the interests of the workers.’
Prior was in no hurry to reply. He had resigned himself, not entirely with reluctance, to going back to Scarborough, to resuming the boring, comfortless life of an army camp in England. At the same time he knew Manning’s offer was one for which a great many men would have given an arm or a leg, and not merely in the meaningless way that expression was normally used. ‘Is Rivers behind this?’
‘No.’
Prior wasn’t sure he believed him. ‘I’m very grateful, Charles – don’t think I don’t appreciate it – but I’m afraid I can’t accept.’
‘Why not?’
‘Sarah – that’s my girlfriend – she’s in the north. I’d be able to see quite a lot of her if I was in Scarborough. And – that’s a big factor. And… I’m not sure how much I want a cushy job.’
Manning hesitated. ‘It does have one very big advantage. It’s most unlikely you’d be sent back to France. Though I suppose that’s not very likely anyway.’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’
‘What rating are you?’
‘A4.’
‘That’s a long way from the top.’
‘With a Board in two weeks’ time.’
‘Rivers wouldn’t let it happen.’
‘Rivers has nothing to do with it. I was given my original rating on the basis of my asthma.’
‘But he’d write to the Board if you asked him.’
‘I know. In fact I think Rivers could be quite eloquent on the subject of my unfitness for France. The point is, he won’t be asked.’
‘How are you really?’
‘A lot better.’
Manning toyed with his glass. ‘What was the trouble exactly?’
Prior smiled, remained silent just long enough for Manning to feel embarrassed by the intrusiveness of the question, then answered it. ‘Memory lapses. Black-outs, I suppose. They do seem to be over.’
‘Do you know what you did during them?’
‘Yes.’ Prior smiled again. ‘Nothing I don’t have a tendency to do.’
Manning became aware that he was looking almost indecently curious, and quickly corrected his expression.
‘How about you?’ Prior said.
‘Mending. It was much harder work than I thought it would be.’
‘Rivers? Oh, yes.’
‘I mean, he’s an absolute slave-driver. And you can’t grumble because you know he’s driving himself even harder.’
A glance of amusement and shared affection. Then Manning said, ‘You sound almost as if you want to go back.’
‘Yes, I suppose I do, in a way. It’s odd, isn’t it? In spite of everything – I mean in spite of Not Believing in the War and Not Having Faith in Our Generals and all that, it still seems the only clean place to be.’
‘Yes. My God, yes.’
They stared at each other, aware of a depth of understanding that the surface facts of their relationship scarcely accounted for.
‘Not an option for me, I’m afraid,’ Manning added, stretching out his leg. ‘But I do know what you mean.’
‘Do you think we’re mad?’
‘Both been in the loony bin.’
‘You’d better not let Rivers hear you calling it that.’
‘I wouldn’t dare. The offer’s open for the next few days, you know,’ Manning said, putting down his glass. ‘I shan’t be seeing Marsh till –’
Prior smiled and shook his head. ‘No. Thank you, but no.’
‘You don’t think you might regret it?’
Prior laughed. ‘Charles, if I get sent back – if, if, if, if – I shall sit in a dug-out and look back to this afternoon, and I shall think, “You bloody fool.”’
‘Well,’ Manning said, standing up. ‘I tried.’
In the hall a maid came forward carrying Prior’s cap and cane. Prior glanced at her: she was sallow-skinned, middle aged, about as old as his mother, he supposed. He stared at her uniform, remembering how he’d pressed his face into the armpits, smelling the careworn, sad smell. Manning was saying something, but he didn’t hear what it was. He turned to him and said, ‘Now I come to think of it, Spencer did mention other names.’
Manning said smoothly, ‘Thank you, Alice. I’ll see Mr Prior out.’
‘Winston Churchill and Edward Marsh.’
Manning gave an astonished yelp. ‘Churchill?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then he is mad.’
‘Yes, that’s what I thought.’ Prior walked to the door, then stopped. ‘He said Churchill and Marsh spent an entire afternoon beating each other’s buttocks with a plaited birch.’
‘Yes.’
‘What do you mean “yes”?’
‘Churchill was Home Secretary at the time.’
‘Oh, well, that explains everything.’
‘It was a new kind of birch.’ Manning looked impatient. ‘I don’t know the details, there’d been some sort of controversy about it. I think people were saying it was cruel. So naturally they –’
‘Tried it out on each other.’
‘Yes.’ Manning’s expression hardened. ‘They were doing their duty.’
‘What conclusion did they reach?’
‘I think they both thought they’d had worse beatings at school.’
Prior nodded, glanced round to make sure they were unobserved, then took hold of Manning’s pudgy cheeks and chucked them. ‘There’ll always be an England,’ he told him and ran, laughing, down the steps.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The reader may find it useful to have a brief outline of the historical events that occurred in 1917-1918 on which this novel is based.
Beattie Roper’s story is loosely based on the ‘poison plot’ of 1917. Alice Wheeldon, a second-hand clothes dealer living in the back streets of Derby, was accused and convicted of having conspired to murder Lloyd George, Arthur Henderson and other persons by poisoning. The poison, in the case of Lloyd George, was to be administered by a curare-tipped blowdart. The trial depositions are in the Public Record Office, Chancery Lane, and provide a fascinating insight into the lives of absolutist pacifists on the run, and the Ministry of Munitions agents who spied on them. Mrs Wheeldon was convicted on the unsupported evid
ence of such informers and sentenced to ten years’ hard labour, despite her insistence that the poison she had procured was intended for the guard dogs at a detention centre. After the war she was released, but, weakened by prison diet, hard labour and repeated hunger strikes, died in 1919.
Friends of Alice Wheeldon by Sheila Rowbotham (Pluto Press, 1986) contains a useful essay: ‘Rebel Networks in the First World War’.
In January 1918 the Imperialist (later the Vigilante), a newspaper owned and edited by the MP Noel Pemberton Billing, carried an article entitled ‘The First 47,000’. It purported to be written by Pemberton Billing himself, but in fact the author was a Captain Harold Spencer, who claimed that he had been a British Intelligence agent at the time when he saw and read the Black Book in the cabinet noir of ‘a certain German Prince’.
In April this article was followed by a short paragraph entitled ‘The Cult of the Clitoris’, again purporting to be written by Pemberton Billing, and again written by Harold Spencer. This suggested that the list of subscribers to a private performance of Oscar Wilde’s Salome might contain many names of the 47,000. Maud Allan, who was to dance the part of Salome, sued Pemberton Billing for libel, since the paragraph clearly implied she was a lesbian.
The trial was presided over by Lord Justice Darling. Pemberton Billing defended himself. Having been identified early in the proceedings as one of the 47,000, Darling lost control of the court.
The star defence witness was Harold Spencer. In addition to giving free rein to his obsession with women who had hypertrophied and diseased clitorises and therefore could be satisfied only by bull elephants, Spencer alleged that many members of the Asquith War Cabinet had been in the pay of the Germans, that Maud Allan was Asquith’s wife’s lover and a German agent, that many high-ranking officers in the British army were Germans, and that persons who had the courage and patriotism to point these facts out were marooned on desert islands where they had to subsist on iron rations from submarines.
