‘Perhaps it would have been wiser not to tell him?’
Silence.
‘After all, you must’ve had some idea of the kind of response you were likely to get?’
‘I can’t keep it in all the time.’
‘Look, he’s due to be boarded soon. Surely you can put up with the inconvenience for another… what, ten days?’
‘We had a row this morning. I pointed out the casualties for September were 102,000 — official figures. He said, “Yes, Sassoon, the Celestial Surgeon is at work upon humanity.”’
Rivers sighed. He was thinking that Sassoon’s insistence of hammering home the bitter reality was probably not doing Fothersgill much good either. ‘What does he think about you? Do you know?’
‘I have a disturbed aura. Apparently.’
‘Really?’
‘Indigo. I’m glad somebody finds it amusing.’
‘I was just thinking how useful it would be. Instant diagnosis.’
‘I’ve woken him up once or twice.’
‘Nightmares?’
‘Not exactly.’
Sassoon was avoiding his eye, but then he often did at the beginning of interviews. ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’
‘Oh, it was nothing. I just… saw something I couldn’t possibly have seen.’
He thinks I’ll despise him for being irrational, Rivers thought. ‘I did once see… well, not see… hear something I couldn’t explain. It was on one of the Solomon Islands. On this particular island, the people believe the souls of the dead go to a bay at the other side — the spirits come up to the house in canoes and carry the dead person’s soul away. So you have a kind of wake, and on this particular night we were all crowded together, gathered round the corpse, waiting for the sound of paddles. The whole village was there, all these dark brown intently listening faces. And we listened too and asked questions in whispers. The atmosphere was unbelievable. And then a moment came when they heard the paddles. You saw this expression of mingled joy and grief spread over all their faces, and of course we heard nothing. Until the moment when the spirits were actually in the room, taking the soul away, and then the whole house was suddenly filled with whistling sounds. I could see all the faces. Nobody was making those sounds, and yet we all heard them. You see, the rational explanation for that is that we’d allowed ourselves to be dragged into an experience of mass hypnosis, and I don’t for a moment deny that that’s possible. But what we’d been told to expect was the swish of paddles. Nobody’d said anything about whistling. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a rational explanation. Only I don’t think that particular rational explanation fits all the facts.’
After Rivers had finished there was a pause. Then Sassoon said, with great difficulty, ‘What happened to me started with a noise.’
‘What sort of noise?’
‘Tapping. It started in Owen’s room and then when I went back to my own room it started again. Owen didn’t hear it. It didn’t bother me particularly, I just went off to sleep and… when I woke up, somebody was standing just inside the door. I knew who it was. I couldn’t see the face, but I recognized his coat.’ He paused. ‘Orme. Nice lad. Died six months ago.’
‘You said “once or twice”. The same man?’
‘No. Various people.’ A long silence. ‘I know this must sound like the the kind of thing I was seeing in London, but it isn’t. It’s… nothing like that. In London they were clutching holes in their heads and waving their stumps around. These are… very quiet. Very restrained.’ He smiled. ‘Obviously you get a better class of hallucination round here.’
‘What do you feel when you see them?’
Sassoon shrugged. ‘I don’t feel anything. At the time.’
‘You’re not frightened?’
‘No. That’s why I said they weren’t nightmares.’
‘Afterwards?’
‘Guilt.’
‘Do they look reproachful?’
Sassoon thought about it. ‘No. They just look puzzled. They can’t understand why I’m here.’
A long silence. After a while, Sassoon roused himself. ‘I wrote about it. I’m sorry, I know you hate this.’
Rivers took the sheet of paper: ‘I don’t hate it. I just feel inadequate.’
When I’m asleep, dreaming and drowsed and warm,
They come, the homeless ones, the noiseless dead.
While the dim charging breakers of the storm
Rumble and drone and bellow overhead,
Out of the gloom they gather about my bed.
They whisper to my heart; their thoughts are mine.
‘Why are you here with all your watches ended?
‘From Ypres to Frise we sought you in the line.’
In bitter safety I awake, unfriended;
And while the dawn begins with slashing rain
I think of the Battalion in the mud.
‘When are you going back to them again?
‘Are they not still your brothers through our blood?’
Sassoon, who’d got up and walked across to the window, turned round when a movement from Rivers seemed to indicate he’d finished. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘Don’t feel you have to say something.’
But Rivers was not capable of saying anything. He’d taken off his glasses and was dabbing the skin round his eyes. Sassoon didn’t know what to do. He pretended to look out of the window again. At last Rivers put his glasses on again and said, ‘Does the question have an answer?’
‘Oh, yes. I’m going back.’
A long indrawn breath. ‘Have you told anybody else yet?’
‘No, I wanted you to be the first.’
‘Your pacifist friends won’t be pleased.’
‘No, I know. I’m not looking forward to that.’ He was looking at Rivers with an extraordinary mixture of love and hostility. ‘You are, though, aren’t you? You’re pleased.’
‘Oh, yes. I’m pleased.’
Part 4
17
Ada Lumb arrived on the nine o’clock train. Sarah met her at the station, and they spent the morning looking round the shops. Or rather Sarah looked round the shops, while her mother, by a mixture of bullying, wheedling, cajoling, questions, speculations, wild surmises and sudden, bitter silences, extracted the whole story of Sarah’s relationship with Billy Prior. By twelve, Sarah was glad to rest her feet, if not her ears, in a café, where they sat at a table for two by the window and ordered ham and chips. The alternative was steak and kidney pie, but Ada was having none of that. ‘You can’t trust anything with pastry wrapped round it,’ she said. ‘What they find to put in it, God knows. You’ve only got to look in the butchers to see there is nowt.’
Sarah was not deceived. She knew once the waitress was out of earshot she was in for a dollop of advice on rather more serious matters. She wiped a hole in the condensation on the window. Outside the people were moving shadows, the pavements of Princes Street jumped and streamed with rain. ‘Just in time,’ she said.
‘I suppose you let him in?’
‘What?’
‘You don’t say “what”, Sarah. You say “pardon”.’
‘What?’
‘I said, I suppose you let him in?’
‘Isn’t that my business, Mam?’
‘Would be if you were gunna cope with the consequences.’