‘Yes.’
Siegfried sounded puzzled. This wasn’t the first time he’d been in hospitaclass="underline" riding accident during training, trench fever, wounded, ‘shell-shocked’ at Craiglockhart, wounded again. He knew the routine backwards.
‘At Craiglockhart,’ Rivers said.
A stunned silence. ‘No. Why Craiglockhart?’
‘Because you’re my patient. Because I want to be on the Board.’
Siegfried couldn’t take it in. ‘I can’t go back there.’
‘I’m afraid you’ve got to. It’s only for a few days, Siegfried.’
Siegfried shook his head. ‘I can’t. You don’t know what you’re asking.’
There was an empty bench a few yards further on. Rivers sat down and indicated that Siegfried should join him. ‘Tell me, then.’
A silence during which Sassoon struggled visibly with himself.
‘Why can’t you?’ Rivers prompted gently.
‘Because it would mean admitting I’m one of them.’
Rivers felt a flare of anger, but brought it quickly under control. ‘One of whom?’
Siegfried was silent. At last he said, ‘You know what I mean.’
‘Yes, I’m afraid I do. One of the degenerates, the loonies, the lead-swingers, the cowards.’ He waited for a response, but Siegfried had turned his head away. ‘You know, Siegfried, sometimes I… reproach myself with having exercised too great an influence on you. At a time when you were vulnerable and… perhaps needed to be left alone to come to your own decision in your way.’ Rivers shook his head. ‘Well, I shan’t be doing that again. If you still think like that I haven’t influenced you at all. I haven’t managed to convey a single bloody thing. Not a bloody thing.’ He looked out over the lake. The wind blew a dark ripple across the surface like goose pimples spreading across skin. ‘Perhaps we’d better be getting back.’
‘Not yet.’
‘You have to go back to Craiglockhart. I’m sorry, I’ll make it as short as I can, but you have to go.’
Siegfried nodded. He was sitting with his big hands clasped between his knees. ‘All right. But you do see what I’m trying to say? I know you find it offensive, but… It’s not just admitting I’m one of them now, it’s admitting I always was. Don’t you see?’
‘Yes, and it’s nonsense. One day I’m going to give you a copy of your admission report. “No physical or mental signs of any nervous disorder.” If you’re tormenting yourself with the idea that your protest was some kind of symptom, well, for God’s sake, stop. It wasn’t. It was an entirely valid, sane response to the situation we’re all in.’ He paused. ‘Wrong, of course.’
‘When I was in France I used to think of it as breakdown. It was easier than —’
‘Than remembering what you believed?’
‘Yes.’ Siegfried looked down at his hands. ‘Now I just feel as if a trap’s been sprung.’ A slight laugh. ‘Not by you, I don’t mean by you. But it has, hasn’t it? It’s absolutely full circle. Literally back to the beginning. Only worse, because now I belong there.’
‘Three days. I promise.’
Siegfried got up. ‘All right.’
Rivers remained seated for a moment. He wanted to say, if there is a trap, I’m in it too, but he couldn’t. ‘Come on,’ he said, standing up. ‘Let’s go back.’
The bomb site had been tidied up, Prior saw. Rubble cleared away, the pavements swept clean of white dust, the houses on either side of the gap shored up. A cold wind whistled through the gap, disturbing the trees, whipping up litter into whirlpools that ran along the gutters. The sun blazed in the windows of the houses opposite the gap, turning the far side of the square into a wall of fire.
Prior was early for his appointment and dawdled along, noticing what on his previous visit, walking with Charles Manning through the spring dark, he had not noticed: that many of the elegant houses had dingy basements, like white teeth yellow round the gums.
He pressed the bell of Manning’s house and turned slightly away, expecting to have to wait, but the door was opened almost immediately and by Manning himself, so quickly indeed that he must have been hovering in the hall. He might have appeared anxious, but his smile, his whole bearing, gave the impression of impulsive informality.
‘It’s all right, I’ve got it,’ he said to somebody over his shoulder, and stood aside to let Prior in. ‘I’m glad you could come. I thought of waiting till we were both back at work, but —’
‘I’m not going back,’ Prior said quickly.
‘Ah.’
The living-room door stood open. No dust-sheets now.
‘Oh, yes, come and see,’ Manning said, noticing the direction of his glance.
They went in. A smell of furniture polish and roses.
‘You found a builder, then,’ Prior said, looking up at the door.
‘Yes. I must say he didn’t inspire a lot of confidence, but he seems to have done all right. As far as one can tell.’ Manning patted the wall. ‘I’ve got a sneaking suspicion the wallpaper might be holding the plaster up.’
They found themselves staring rather too long at the place where the crack had been, and glanced at each other, momentarily at a loss. ‘Come and sit down,’ Manning said.
A bowl of red and yellow roses stood in the fireplace where before there had been scrumpled newspaper dusted with soot. No mirror either — that had been moved. The whole room had been redecorated. So much was changed that the unyielding brocade of the sofa came as a shock. Prior flexed his shoulders, remembering. It was almost as if the body had an alternative store of memory in the nerve endings, for the sensation of being held stiffly erect induced a state of sensual awareness. He looked at Manning, and knew that he too was remembering.
‘Would you like a drink?’
Manning went across to the sideboard. Prior, noticing a book lying face down on the floor near an armchair, reached across and picked it up. Rex v. Pemberton Billing. It was a complete transcript of the trial. What an extraordinary thing for Manning to be reading. Manning came back with the drinks. ‘Is it good?’ Prior asked, holding up the book.
‘Fascinating,’ Manning said. ‘I realized while I was reading it wh-wh-what’s actually h-happening. It’s just that people are saturated with tragedy, they simply can’t respond any more. So they’ve decided to play the rest of the war as farce.’
‘I can’t say I’d be prepared to fork out good money for this.’
‘I didn’t,’ Manning said, sitting down. ‘It was sent to me. By “a well-wisher”.’
Prior raised his eyebrows. ‘Really?’
‘Oh, yes. I’ve had several little… communications.’
‘Captain Spencer came to see us, you know.’
‘“Us”?’
‘The Intelligence Unit. I think somebody must have told him the first question he’d be asked in court was whether he’d informed the appropriate authorities when he discovered the Great Conspiracy. So he was scurrying round London informing them.’ Prior laughed.
‘Did he mention any names?’
‘Good Lord, yes.’ Prior looked up and caught a fleeting expression of anxiety. ‘Not you.’
‘No, I didn’t think that, I’m not important enough. Robert Ross?’
‘Well, yes.’
Manning nodded. ‘You say you’re not going back?’
‘There’s nothing to go back to. I went in to check my pigeonhole and… it was like the Marie Celeste. Files gone. Lode gone.’
‘He’s…’
‘Teaching cadets. In Wales. No doubt that pleases him.’