Rivers stopped by the bed. ‘Have you heard of screens?’ he asked.
Martin looked up. ‘Wantage said he was going to get them.’
Wantage was lounging in the doorway of the staff-room, smoking a cigarette, clearly in no hurry to rescue a conchie orderly from an impossible position. His eyes widened. ‘I was just —’
‘I know exactly what you’re doing. Screens round that bed. Now. And get in there and help.’ He called over his shoulder as he walked off. ‘And put that cigarette out.’
Rivers was still shaking with anger when he got back to his desk. He made himself concentrate on the uncompleted sentence.
… if imagination is active and powerful, it is probably far better to allow it to play around the trials and dangers of warfare than to carry out a prolonged system of repression by which morbid energy may be stored so as to form a kind of dump ready to explode on the occurrence of some mental shock or bodily illness.
Exploding ammunition dumps had become a cliche, he supposed. Still, Bolden did a very good imitation of one. He wasn’t doing too badly himself.
A tap on the door. ‘No,’ Rivers said. ‘Whatever it is, no.’
Miss Rogers smiled. ‘There was a telephone call, while you were up on the ward. About a Captain Sassoon.’
Rivers was on his feet. ‘What about him?’
‘He’s in the American Red Cross Hospital at Lancaster Gate with a head wound, they said. Would you go and see him?’
‘How bad is it?’
‘I don’t know. They didn’t say.’
In the taxi going to Lancaster Gate, Rivers’s own words ran round and round in his head. If imagination is active and powerful, it is probably far better to allow it to play around… He looked out of the window, shaking his head as if to clear it. It wasn’t even as if the advice were appropriate. He didn’t need imagination, for Christ’s sake. He was a neurologist. He knew exactly what shrapnel and bullets do to the brain.
The ward was a large room with ornate plasterwork, and tall windows opening on a view of Hyde Park. Two of the beds were empty. The others contained lightly wounded men, all looking reasonably cheerful. On a table in the centre of the ward a gramophone was playing a popular love song. You made me love you.
A nurse came bustling up to him. ‘Who were you —’
‘Captain Sassoon.’
‘He’s been moved to a single room. Didn’t they tell you? Another two floors, I’m afraid, but I don’t think he’s allowed…” Her eye fell on his RAMC badges. ‘Are you Dr Rivers?’
‘Yes.’
‘I think Dr Saunders is expecting you.’
Dr Saunders was waiting outside the door of his room, a small man with pouched cheeks, receding ginger hair and blue eyes ten years younger than the rest of his face. ‘They sent you to the main ward,’ he said, shaking hands.
Rivers followed him into the room. ‘How bad is he?’
‘The wound — not bad at all. In fact, I can show you.’ He took an X-ray from a file on his desk and held it to the light. Sassoon’s skull stared out at them. ‘You see?’ Saunders pointed to the intact bone. ‘The bullet went right across there.’ He indicated the place on his own head. ‘What he’s got is a rather neat parting in the scalp.’
Rivers breathed out. ‘Lucky man,’ he said, as lightly as he could.
‘I don’t think he thinks so.’
They sat at opposite sides of the desk. ‘I got a rather garbled message, I’m afraid,’ Rivers said. ‘I wasn’t clear whether you’d asked me to see him or — ‘
‘It was me. I saw your name on the file and I thought since you’d dealt with him before you might not mind seeing him again.’ Saunders hesitated. ‘I gather he was quite an unusual patient.’
Rivers looked down at his own signature at the end of the Craiglockhart report. ‘He’d protested against the war. It was…’ He took a deep breath. ‘Convenient to say he’d broken down.’
‘Convenient for whom?’
‘The War Office. His friends. Ultimately for Sassoon.’
‘And you persuaded him to go back?’
‘He decided to go back. What’s wrong?’
‘He’s… He was all right when he arrived. Seemed to be. Then he had about eight visitors all at his bed at the one time. The hospital rules say two. But the nurse on duty was very young and apparently she felt she couldn’t ask them to leave. She won’t make that mistake again. Anyway, by the time they finally did leave he was in a terrible state. Very upset. And then he had a bad night — everybody had a bad night — and we decided to try a single room and no visitors.’
‘Is he depressed?’
‘No. Rather the reverse. Excitable. Can’t stop talking. And now he’s got nobody to talk to.’
Rivers smiled. ‘Perhaps I’d better go along and provide an audience.’
Deep-carpeted corridors, gilt-framed pictures on the wall. He followed Saunders, remembering the corridors of Craiglockhart. Dark, draughty, smelling of cigarettes. But this was oppressive too, in its airless, cushioned luxury. He looked out of a window into a deep dark well between two buildings. A pigeon stood on a window-sill, one cracked pink foot curled round the edge of the abyss.
Saunders said, ‘He seems to have a good patch in the afternoon. He might be asleep.’ He opened the door softly and they went in.
Sassoon was asleep, his face pale and drawn beneath the cap of bandages. ‘Shall I —’ Saunders whispered, pointing to Sassoon.
‘No, leave him. I’ll wait.’
‘I’ll leave you to it, then,’ Saunders said, and withdrew.
Rivers sat down by the bed. There was another bed in the room, but it was not made up. Flowers, fruit, chocolate, books were piled up on the bedside table. He did not intend to wake Siegfried, but gradually some recollection of whispered voices began to disturb the shuttered face. Siegfried moistened his lips and a second later opened his eyes. He focused them on Rivers, and for a moment there was joy, followed immediately by fear. He stretched out his hand and touched Rivers’s sleeve. He’s making sure I’m real, Rivers thought. A rather revealing gesture.
The hand slid down and touched the back of his hand. Siegfried swallowed, and started to sit up. ‘I’m glad to see you,’ he said, offering his hand. ‘I thought for a mo —’ He checked himself. ‘They won’t let you stay,’ he said, smiling apologetically. ‘I’m not allowed to see anybody.’
‘No, it’s all right. They know I’m here.’
‘I suppose it’s because you’re a doctor,’ Siegfried said, settling back. ‘They wouldn’t let Lady Ottoline in, I heard Mrs Fisher talking to her in the corridor.’
His manner was different, Rivers thought. Talkative, restless, rapid speech, and he was looking directly at Rivers, something he almost never did, particularly at the beginning of a meeting. But he seemed perfectly rational, and the changes were within normal bounds. ‘Why won’t they let you see anybody?’
‘It’s because of Sunday, everybody came, Robert Ross, Meicklejon, Sitwell, oh God, Eddie Marsh, and they were all talking about the book and I got excited and —’ He raised his hands to his forehead. ‘FIZZLE. POP. I had a bad night, kept everybody awake, and they put me in here.’
‘How was last night?’
Siegfried pulled a face. ‘Bad. I keep thinking how big it is, the war, and how impossible it is to write about, and how useless it is to get angry, that’s such a trivial reaction, it doesn’t, it just doesn’t do any sort of justice to the to the to the tragedy, you know you spend your entire life out there obsessed with this tiny little sector of the Front, I mean thirty yards of sandbags, that’s the war, you’ve no conception of anything else, and now I think I can see all of it, vast armies, flares going up, millions of people, millions, millions.’