They wore them on their heads, Rivers remembered. It had been a feature of the island in that first autumn of the war, naked young men wearing long johns elaborately folded on their heads. They looked beautiful. Meanwhile, in England, other young men had been rushing to don a less flattering garb.
Drifting between sleep and waking, Rivers remembered the smells of oil and copra, the cacophony of snores and whistles from the sleepers crammed into the small cabin on deck, the vibration of the engine that seemed to get into one’s teeth, the strange, brilliant, ferocious southern stars. He couldn’t for the life of him think what was producing this flood of nostalgia. Perhaps it was his own experience of duality that formed the link, for certainly in the years before the war he had experienced a splitting of personality as profound as any suffered by Siegfried. It had been not merely a matter of living two different lives, divided between the dons of Cambridge and the missionaries and headhunters of Melanesia, but of being a different person in the two places. It was his Melanesian self he preferred, but his attempts to integrate that self into his way of life in England had produced nothing but frustration and misery. Perhaps, contrary to what was usually supposed, duality was the stable state; the attempt at integration, dangerous. Certainly Siegfried had found it so.
He raised himself on his elbow and looked at Siegfried, who was sleeping with his face turned to the window. Perhaps the burst of nostalgia was caused by nothing more mysterious than this: the attempt to sleep in a room where another person’s breathing was audible. Sleeping in the same room as another person belonged with his Melanesian self. In England it simply didn’t happen. But it was restful, the rise and fall of breath, like the wash of waves round the prow of the boat, and gradually, as the light thinned, he drifted off to sleep.
He woke to find Siegfried kneeling by his bed. The window was open, the curtains lifting in the breeze. A trickle of bird-song came into the room.
In a half-embarrassed way, Siegfried said, ‘I seem to have talked an awful lot of rubbish last night.’ He looked cold and exhausted, but calm. ‘I suppose I had a fever?’
Rivers didn’t reply.
‘Anyway, I’m all right now.’ Diffidently, he touched Rivers’s sleeve. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you.’
NINETEEN
A week later Rivers was sitting in his armchair in front of the fire, feeling physically tired in an almost sensuous way. This was a rare feeling with him, since most days produced a grating emotional exhaustion which was certainly not conducive to sleep. But he had been flying, which always tired him out physically, and he’d seen Siegfried a lot calmer and happier than he had recently been, though still very far from well.
Prior was the mystery. Prior had missed an appointment, something he’d never done before, and Rivers wasn’t sure what he should do about it. There was little he could do except drop Prior a line expressing his continued willingness to help, but there had been some suggestion that Prior worried about the degree of his dependence. If he had decided to break off the association there was nothing Rivers could — or should — do about it. He wouldn’t come now. He was over two hours late.
Rivers was just thinking he really must make the effort to do something when there was a tap on the door, and the maid came in. ‘There’s a Mr Prior to see you,’ she said, sounding doubtful, for it was very late. ‘Shall I tell him—’
‘No, no. Ask him to come up.’
He felt very unfit to cope with this, whatever it was, but he buttoned his tunic and looked vaguely around for his boots. Prior seemed to be climbing the stairs very quickly, an easy, light tread quite unlike his usual step. His asthma had been very bad on his last visit. He had paused several times on the final flight of stairs and even then had entered the room almost too breathless to speak. The maid must have misheard the name, that or –
Prior came into the room, pausing just inside the door to look round.
‘Are you all right?’ Rivers asked.
‘Yes. Fine.’ He looked at the clock and seemed to become aware that the lateness of the hour required some explanation. ‘I had to see you.’
Rivers waved him to a chair and went to close the door.
‘Well,’ he said, when Prior was settled. ‘Your chest’s a lot better.’
Prior breathed in. Testing. He looked hard at Rivers, and nodded.
‘You were going to go to the prison last time we spoke,’ Rivers said. ‘To see Mrs Roper. Did you go?’
Prior was shaking his head, though not, Rivers thought, in answer to the question. At last he said, in a markedly sibilant voice, ‘I didn’t think you would have pretended.’
‘Pretended what?’ Rivers asked. He waited, then prompted gently, ‘What am I pretending?’
‘That we’ve met before.’
Momentarily, Rivers closed his eyes. When he opened them again Prior was grinning. ‘I thought of saying, “Dr Rivers, I presume?”’
‘If we haven’t met before, how did you know me?’
‘I sit in.’ Prior spread his hands. ‘I sit in. Well, let’s face it, there’s not a lot of choice, is there? I don’t know how you put up with him. I couldn’t. Are you sure it’s a good idea to let him get away with it?’
‘With what?’
‘With being so cheeky.’
‘The sick have a certain licence,’ Rivers said dryly.
‘Oh, and he is sick, isn’t he?’ Prior said earnestly, leaning forward. ‘Do you know, I honestly believe he’s getting worse?
A long silence. Rivers clasped his hands under his chin. ‘Do you think you could manage to say “I”?’
‘’Fraid not. No.’
The antagonism was unmistakable. Rivers was aware of having seen Prior in this mood before, in the early weeks at Craiglockhart. Exactly this. The same incongruous mixture of effeminacy and menace.
‘You know, it’s really quite simple,’ Prior went on. ‘Either we can sit here and have a totally barren argument about which pronouns we’re going to use, or we can talk. I think it’s more important to talk.’
‘I agree.’
‘Good. Do you mind if I smoke?’
‘I never do mind, do I?’
Prior was patting his tunic pockets. ‘I’ll kill him,’ he said smiling. ‘Ah, no, it’s all right.’ He held up a packet of cigars. ‘I’ve got him trained. He used to throw them away.’
‘What would you like to talk about?’
A broad smile. ‘I thought you might have some ideas.’
‘You say you “sit in”. Does that mean you know everything he knows?’
‘Yes. But he doesn’t know anything I know. Only it’s… it’s not quite as neat as that. Sometimes I see things he can’t see, even when he’s there.’
‘Things he doesn’t notice?’
‘Doesn’t want to notice. Like for example he hates Spragge. I mean, he has perfectly good reasons for disliking him, but what he feels goes a long way beyond that. And he knows that, and he doesn’t know why, even though it’s staring him in the face. Literally. Spragge’s like his father.’