∗
Prior took off his clothes, put on the white hospital gown and sat on the bed to await the arrival of the doctor. This was his second visit. The first time he’d seen Eaglesham, the consultant, a big, kindly, grizzled bear of a man who’d said very little but whom he’d trusted at once. He’d raised his eyebrows when Prior blew into the Vitalograph or whatever the machine was called, but he hadn’t said what he thought, and Prior had not wanted to ask. It wasn’t going to be Eaglesham today, though. A much younger man with a sallow skin and slick dark hair was popping in and out of the other cubicles. Prior looked down at his thin white legs. He didn’t see why he had to take all his clothes off. Were they trying to cater for some unforeseen medical emergency in which his lungs had slipped into his pelvis? He didn’t like the way the gown fastened at the back. He didn’t mind displaying his wares, if he liked the other person and the time seemed right, but he did like the illusion at least that the act was voluntary. He could hear the doctor’s voice in the cubicle next door, talking to a man who couldn’t complete a sentence without coughing. At last the curtains were pushed aside and the doctor came in, followed by a nurse, clasping a beige file to her bosom. Prior slipped off the robe and stood up to be examined.
‘Second-Lieutenant Prior.’
‘Mister’ he wanted to say. He said, ‘Yes.’
‘I see there’s some question whether you’re fit to go back. I mean apart from the state of your nerves.’
Prior said nothing at all.
The doctor waited. ‘Well, let’s have a look at you.’
He moved the stethoscope all over Prior’s chest, pressing so hard that at times the stethoscope left overlapping rings on the skin that flushed and faded to white. He thinks I’m shirking, Prior thought, and the idea made him go cold.
‘How are your nerves?’ the doctor said.
‘Better.’
‘Shell explosion, was it?’
‘Not exactly.’
Not one word of what he’d told Rivers would he repeat to this man.
‘Do you think you’re fit?’
‘I’m not a doctor.’
The doctor smiled. Contemptuously, it seemed to Prior. ‘Keen to get back, are we?’
Prior closed his eyes. He had a picture of himself driving his knee into the man’s groin, and the picture was so vivid that for a moment he thought he might have done it, but then he opened his eyes and there was the sallow face, still smiling. He stared at him.
The doctor nodded, almost as if Prior had replied, and then slowly, to avoid any suggestion of backing off, turned and made a brief note on the file. It’s all bluff, Prior thought. It’s what Eaglesham says that matters.
He was in a torment as he got back into his uniform, reckoning his chances, despising himself for reckoning them. He didn’t thank Rivers for any of this. I haven’t lied to any of them, he thought. I haven’t made things out to be worse than they really are. He finished lacing his puttees and stood up. The nurse came back with a card. ‘If you tell them at the appointments desk, three weeks.’
‘Yes, all right. Thank you.’
He took the card, but walking down the long corridor afterwards he was tempted not to make the appointment. In the end he did, then put the card away and strode out into the hospital grounds as fast as he could. He thought he might buy himself something from the barrow at the entrance, fruit or sweets, any little treat that might make him feel better. Less contaminated.
He saw her before she saw him, and called out, ‘Sarah.’ She turned and smiled. He’d thought about her a lot while he’d been in the sick bay, remembering that time on the beach. Illness, once the worst was over, always made him randy. What he’d forgotten, he thought now, looking at the yellow face beneath the aureole of extraordinary hair, was how much he liked her.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, obviously delighted.
‘Having my chest examined.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘Fine — thanks to you. What are you doing here?’
‘I’m with Madge. Her fiancé’s been wounded.’
‘Is he all right?’
‘Yes, I think so.’ Her face darkened. ‘I’ve just seen some that aren’t all right. There’s a sort of conservatory round the back. They’re all sat in there. Where the rest of us don’t have to see them.’
‘Bad?’
She nodded. ‘You know I used to wonder how I’d go on if Johnny came back like that. You always tell yourself it’d make no difference. Easy said, isn’t it?’
He sensed the anger and responded to it immediately. She might not know much about the war, but what she did know she faced honestly. He admired her for that. ‘Look, do you have to wait for Madge?’ he asked. ‘I mean, how long do you think she’ll be?’
‘Ages, I should think. She was virtually in bed with him when I left.’
‘Well, can’t you tell her you’re going? She can walk back by herself all right, can’t she? It’s broad daylight.’
She looked at him consideringly. ‘Yes, all right.’ She started to move away. ‘I won’t be a minute.’
Left alone, Prior bought two bunches of chrysanthemums, bronze and white, from the barrow near the entrance. They weren’t the flowers he would have chosen, but he wanted to give her something. He stood craning his head for the first sight of her. When she arrived, smiling and out of breath, he handed her the flowers, and then, on a sudden impulse, leant across and kissed her. The flowers, crushed between them, released their bitter, autumnal smell.
They were burning leaves on Hampstead Heath where Rivers walked with Ruth Head on the second day of his visit. Acrid smoke drifted across their path and below them London lay in a blue haze. They stopped by one of the ponds, and watched a coot cleave the smooth water. ‘You see over there behind those houses?’ Ruth said. ‘That’s the RFC hospital. And then over there — just in that dip there — that’s the Big Gun.’
‘I’m glad you and Henry don’t take refuge in the kitchen every night. Everybody else seems to.’
‘Can you imagine Henry cowering under the kitchen table?’
They smiled at each other and walked on.
‘Actually the air raids are my guilty secret,’ Ruth said.
‘You mean you’d rather be under the table?’
‘Oh no, quite the opposite. I enjoy them. It’s a terrible thing to say, isn’t it? All that damage. People killed. And yet every time the siren goes, I feel this immense sense of exhilaration. I’d really like to go out and run about in it.’ She laughed, self-deprecatingly. ‘I don’t of course. But I get this feeling that the… the crust of everything is starting to crack. Don’t you feel that?’
‘Yes. I’m just not sure we’re going to like what’s under the crust.’
They started to walk towards Spaniard’s Road. Rivers said, ‘You know last night I got the distinct impression that Henry was plotting something.’