‘I thought all the dashing around was to keep your mind off it?’
‘No, that’s part of the treatment. Ergotherapy.’
‘Well, it’s an interesting idea. Though I don’t know that being stuck in a dugout ever made me feel I was losing contact with the earth.’
Owen smiled. ‘No, nor me. It does work, though.’
Sassoon picked up the next sheet. Craning his neck, Owen could just see the title of the poem. ‘That’s in your style,’ he said.
‘Yes. I… er… noticed.’
‘No good?’
‘Starts and ends well. What happened in the middle?’
‘That’s quite old, that bit. I wrote that two years ago.’
‘They do say if you leave something in a drawer long enough it’ll either rot or ripen.’
‘The bit at the end… About “dirt”. Those are the actual words.’
‘Yes, and they could do with changing. I’ve just cut: “You sod” out of a poem. Those were my actual words.’
‘So it’s no good?’
Sassoon hesitated. ‘It’s not much good at the moment. I suppose the thing is, are you interested enough to go on?’
‘Ye-es. I have to start somewhere. And I think you’re right. It’s mad not to write about the war when it’s —’
‘Such an experience.’
They looked at each other and burst out laughing.
‘My only doubt is… The the fact that you admire somebody very much doesn’t automatically mean they’re a good model. I mean, I admire Wilde, but if I started trying to be witty and elegant and incisive, I’d probably fall flat on my face.’
‘Yes, I see that. Well not that. I mean I see the point. But I do think I can take something from you.’
‘Fair enough.’ Sassoon went back to his reading. ‘I think you’re probably right,’ he said, after a while. ‘If I do nothing else, I might help you get rid of some of this mush.’
‘Some of the sonnets are quite early.’
‘Puberty?’ A long pause. Early sonnets fell like snow. ‘Oh, now this is good. “Song of Songs.”’
‘That’s last week.’
‘Is it? Now you see what I mean about me not being necessarily the right model? I couldn’t do this. And yet of it’s kind it’s absolutely perfect.’
Owen sat down. He looked as if his knees had buckled.
‘I think that should go in the Hydra.’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘a. It’s not good enough. b. Editors shouldn’t publish their own work.’
‘a. I’m a better judge of that than you are. At the moment. b. Rubbish. And c.’ Sassoon leant across and snatched his own poem back. ‘If you don’t publish that, you can’t have this.’
Owen seemed to be contemplating a counter-attack.
‘d. I’m bigger than you are.’
‘All right, I’ll print it.’ He took Sassoon’s poem back. ‘Anonymously.’
‘Cheat.’ Sassoon was shuffling Owen’s papers together. ‘Look, why don’t you have a go at…’ He peered at the title. ‘“The Dead-Beat”? Work at it till you think you’ve made some progress, then bring it back and we’ll have a go at it together. It’s not too traumatic, is it? That memory.’
‘Good heavens, no.’
‘How long do you spend on it? Not that one, I mean generally?’
‘Fifteen minutes.’ He saw Sassoon’s expression change. ‘That’s every day.’
‘Good God, man, that’s no use. You’ve got to sweat your guts out. Look, it’s like drill. You don’t wait till you feel like doing it.’
‘Well, it’s certainly a new approach to the Muse. “Number from the left! Form fours! Right turn!”’
‘It works. I’ll see you — shall we say Thursday? After dinner.’ He opened the door and stood aside to let Owen past. ‘And I shall expect to find both poems in the Hydra.’
12
After Prior had been waiting for perhaps five minutes, the lodging house door opened and Sarah stood there. ‘You’ve got a nerve,’ she said, beginning to close the door.
Prior put a finger in the crack. ‘I’m here now.’
‘Which is more than you were last week. Go on, shift.’
‘I couldn’t come last week. I was so late back they kept me in.’
‘Bit strict, aren’t they? Your parents.’
Too late, he remembered the lies he’d told. He pointed to the blue badge on his tunic. ‘Not parents. The CO.’
The door stopped shutting.
‘I know it sounds stupid, but it is the truth.’
‘Oh, all right, I believe you.’ Her eyes fell on the badge. ‘And if you’re getting yourself upset about that, don’t bother. I knew anyway.’
‘How did you know?’ What had he been doing? Drooling?
‘You don’t think you’re the only one takes it off, do you? They all do. Betty says she had a young man once, she never saw him wearing it. Mind you, knowing Betty, I shouldn’t think she saw him wearing much at all.’
By day, the yellowness of her skin astonished him. It said a lot for her that she was still attractive, that she managed to wear it like a rather dashing accessory.
‘There is just one thing,’ she said, coming out into the porch. ‘If I do go out with you, I want one thing clear at the start. I think you must’ve got a very wrong impression of me the other night. Knocking all that port back.’ She raised her eyes to his face. ‘I don’t usually drink much at all.’
‘I know that. You were gone too quick for somebody that was used to it.’
‘Right, then. Long as you know. I’ll get me jacket.’
He waited, looking up and down the hot street. A trickle of sweat had started in his armpits. From deep inside the house came a woman’s voice raised in anger.
‘Me landlady,’ Sarah said, coming back. ‘Belgian, married a Scot, the poor sod. I don’t think he knew what he was getting. Still, she only charges a shilling for the laundry, and when you think the sheets come off the bed bright yellow you can’t complain about that.’
He felt at home with her, with this precise delineation of the cost of everything, which was not materialistic or grasping, but simply a recognition of the boundaries and limitations of life. ‘I thought we’d get out of Edinburgh,’ he said. ‘It’s too hot.’
Most of Edinburgh was using this last weekend in August to escape the city, not deterred by a sallow tinge to the sky that suggested the hot, sticky weather might break into thunder before the day was out. The train was packed, but he managed to get her a seat, and stood near by. She smiled up at him, but in this rackety, sweating box it was impossible to talk. He looked at the other passengers. A trio of girls out on a spree, a young mother with a struggling toddler tugging at her blouse, a middle-aged couple whose bodies sagged together. Something about that stale intimacy sharpened his sense of the strangeness, the separateness of Sarah’s body. He was so physically aware of her that when the knee of his breeches brushed against her skirt he felt as if the contact had been skin on skin.
A ganglion of rails, the train juddering over points, and then they were slowing, and people were beginning to stir and clutch bags, and jam the aisles. ‘Let’s wait,’ he said.