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?’
‘No, I shouldn’t think so. Four doctors, thirty nurses. I think we might manage.’
‘Only I don’t want to be moved.’
Rivers helped him to pull up the sheets. ‘I thought you didn’t like it here?’
‘Yes, well, you can get used to anything, can’t you? Do you think I could have a towel tied to the bed?’
‘Yes, of course. Anything you want.’
‘Only it helps, you see. Having something to pull on.’
‘What was it like in France? The asthma.’
‘Better than at home.’
A shout of laughter from below. Charlie Chaplin in full swing. Rivers, following Prior’s gaze, saw the single lamp and the deep shadows, and sensed, with a premonitory tightening of his diaphragm, the breath-by-breath agony of the coming night. ‘I’ll see about the towel,’ he said.
He saw Prior settled down for the night. ‘I’ll be along in the morning,’ he said. Then he went to Sister’s room next door and left orders he was to be woken at once if Prior got worse.
7
Sassoon woke to the sound of screams and running footsteps. The screams stopped and then a moment or two later started again. He peered at his watch and made out that it was ten past four.
Because of the rubber underlay, a pool of sweat had gathered in the small of his back. The rubbery smell lingered on his skin, a clinical smell that made his body unfamiliar to him. In the next bed Campbell snored, a cacophony of grunts, snorts and whistles. No screams ever woke him. On the other hand he himself never screamed, and Sassoon had been at Craiglockhart long enough now to realize how valuable a room-mate that made him.
Fully awake now, he dragged himself to the bottom of the bed, lifted the thin curtain and peered out of the window. Wester Hill, blunt-nosed and brooding, loomed out of the mist. And yesterday, he thought, shivering a little, his statement had been read in the House of Commons. He wondered what would happen next. Whether anything would happen. In any event there was a kind of consolation in knowing it was out of his hands.
He knew he was shivering more with fear than cold, though it was difficult to name the fear. The place, perhaps. The haunted faces, the stammers, the stumbling walks, that indefinable look of being ‘mental’. Craiglockhart frightened him more than the front had ever done.
Upstairs whoever-it-was screamed again. He heard women’s voices and then, a few minutes afterwards, a man’s voice. Rivers, he thought, but he couldn’t be sure. Quaking and comfortless, he propped himself up against the iron bedhead and waited for the dawn.
∗
Prior hauled himself further up the bed as Rivers came in. He closed the book he’d been reading and put it down on his bedside table. ‘I thought it was you,’ he said. ‘I can tell your footsteps.’
Rivers got a chair and sat down by the bed. ‘Did you manage to get back to sleep?’
‘Yes. Did you?’
Silence.
‘I wasn’t being awkward,’ Prior said. ‘That was concern.’