‘How acute your social perceptions are, Robert. No, I shouldn’t think he’d been on a horse in his life before he joined the army. Poetry, mainly.’
‘Oh, he writes, does he?’
‘No need to say it like that. He’s quite good. Matter of fact, I’ve got one here.’ He tapped his breast pocket. ‘I’ll show you after lunch.’
‘He struck me as being a bit shaky.’
‘Did he? I don’t think he is.’
‘I’m just telling you how he struck me.’
‘He can’t be all that shaky. They’re throwing him out at the end of the month. He was probably just overawed at meeting another Published Poet.’
A slight pause.
‘Aren’t you due to be boarded soon?’
‘The end of the month.’
‘Have you decided what you’re going to do?’
‘I’ve told Rivers I’ll go back, provided the War Office gives me a written guarantee that I’ll be sent back to France.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought you were in much of a position to bargain.’
‘Rivers seems to think he can wangle it. He didn’t say “wangle” of course.’
‘So it’s all over? Thank God.’
‘I’ve told him I won’t withdraw anything. And I’ve told him it’s got to be France. I’m not going to let them put me behind a desk filling in forms for the rest of the war.’
‘Yes, I think that’s right.’
‘Trouble is I don’t trust them. Even Rivers. I mean, on the one hand he says there’s nothing wrong with me and they’ll pass me for general service overseas — there’s nothing else they can do — and then in the next breath he tells me I’ve got a very powerful “anti-war complex”. I don’t even know what it means.’
‘I’ll tell you what it means. It means you’re obsessed. Do you know, you never talk about the future any more? Yes, I know what you’re going to say. How can you? Sass, we sat on a hill in France and we talked about the future. We made plans. The night before the Somme, we made plans. You couldn’t do that now. A few shells, a few corpses, and you’ve lost heart.’
‘How many corpses?’
‘The point is…’
‘The point is 102,000 last month alone. You’re right, I am obsessed. I never forget it for a second, and neither should you. Robert, if you had any real courage you wouldn’t acquiesce the way you do.’
Graves flushed with anger. ‘I’m sorry you think that. I should hate to think I’m a coward. I believe in keeping my word. You agreed to serve, Siegfried. Nobody’s asking you to change your opinions, or even to keep quiet about them, but you agreed to serve, and if you want the respect of the kind of people you’re trying to influence — the Bobbies and the Tommies — you’ve got to be seen to keep your word. They won’t understand if you turn round in the middle of the war and say “I’m sorry, I’ve changed my mind.” To them, that’s just bad form. They’ll say you’re not behaving like a gentleman — and that’s the worst thing they can say about anybody.’
‘Look, Robert, the people who’re keeping this war going don’t give a damn about the “Bobbies” and the “Tommies”. And they don’t let “gentlemanly behaviour” stand in the way either when it comes to feathering their own nests.’ He made a gesture of despair. ‘And as for “bad form” and “gentlemanly behaviour” — that’s just suicidal stupidity.’
Over coffee, the conversation changed tack.
‘There’s something I didn’t tell you in June,’ Graves said.
‘Do you remember Peter?’
‘I never met him.’
‘No, but you remember him? You remember about him? Well, he was arrested. Soliciting outside the local barracks. Actually not very far away from the school.’
‘Oh, Robert, I’m sorry. Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘How could I? You were in no state to think about anybody else.’
‘This was in July, was it?’
‘Same post I got your Declaration in.’ Graves smiled. ‘It was quite a morning.’
‘Yes, I can imagine.’
Graves hesitated. ‘It’s only fair to tell you that… since that happened my affections have been running in more normal channels. I’ve been writing to a girl called Nancy Nicholson. I really think you’ll like her. She’s great fun. The… the only reason I’m telling you this is… I’d hate you to have any misconceptions. About me. I’d hate you to think I was homosexual even in thought. Even if it went no further.’
It was difficult to know what to say. ‘I’m very pleased for you, Robert. About Miss Nicholson, I mean.’
‘Good, that’s all right, then.’
‘What happened to Peter?’
‘You’re not going to believe this. They’re sending him to Rivers.’
This was a bigger, and nastier, shock than Sassoon knew how to account for. ‘Why?’
‘What do you mean, “Why?”? To be cured, of course.’
Sassoon smiled faintly. ‘Yes. Of course.’
The munitions factory at night looked like hell, Sarah thought, as she toiled down the muddy lane towards it, and saw the red smouldering fires reflected from a bank of low cloud, like an artificial sunset. At the gate she fell in with the other girls all walking in the same direction, all subdued, with that clogged, dull look of people who’d just switched to night shift and hadn’t yet managed to adjust.
In the cloakroom, donning ankle-length green overalls, pulling on caps, dragging at a final cigarette, were thirty or forty women. Smells of sweat, lily-of-the-valley, setting lotion. After a while conversations sprang up, the women appeared more normal, even jolly for a time, until the supervisor appeared in the doorway, jabbing her finger at the clock.
‘Your mam get off all right, then?’ Lizzie asked, as they were walking down the stairs to the basement workroom.
‘Got the seven o’clock. She’ll be back by midnight, so it’s not so bad.’
‘How did it go?’
Sarah pulled a face. ‘All right. You know, I swore I wasn’t gunna tell her about Billy, but she winkled it all out of me.’
‘Well, she is your mam. She’s bound to be worried.’
‘Hm. All I could get out of her was: “What does he see in you?” ’S a nice thing to say to your daughter, isn’t it? I says, “A breath of fresh air.” As far as I can make out they’re all disappearing up their own arseholes up there.’
‘Long as it’s only their own,’ Lizzie said.
‘They’re not all like that,’ Sarah said.
‘Biggest part are,’ said Madge. ‘Place I used to work before the war, the son were like that. Oh, and when they found out you should’ve heard Missus. She stomped and she shrieked. Chandelier were going like that, I thought bugger were coming down. But you know he had no sisters, so he never met lasses that way. Goes to school, no lasses. Goes to university — no lasses. Time he finally claps eyes on me, it’s too late, isn’t it? It’s gelled. And even the ones that aren’t like that, they take one look at the Missus and bugger off round the Club.’ Madge strutted along the basement corridor with a finger held be low her nose, saying in a strangled, public school accent, ‘“I shall be dining at the Club tonight, m’dear. Don’t bother to wait up.’ Then he staggers in at two o’clock and flops out on bed in dressing room. Beats me how they breed.’
Raucous laughter from the other women as they spilled into the work room and sat down at the benches. The supervisor, a round-faced, bespectacled, crop-haired lady in a severely tailored suit, bore down upon them. ‘Do you girls ever intend to start work?’