And why am I bothering to recall such an incident in so much detail, Prior asked himself. Because every memory of friendship I come up with is a shield against Hettie’s spit in my face, a way of saying of course I couldn’t have done it. What surprised him now was how innocent he’d felt when Beattie first mentioned Hettie’s belief that he’d betrayed Mac. ‘I didn’t do it,’ he’d said automatically, with total assurance, for all the world as if he could answer for every minute of his waking life. Only on the train coming back to London had he forced himself to accept that it was possible he’d betrayed Mac. Or at any rate that it was impossible for him to deny it.
Since then he’d gained one fact from Rivers that filled him with fear. He now knew that in the fugue state he’d denied that his father was his father. If he was prepared to deny that — a simple biological fact after all — what chance did pre-war friendships have? Rivers had hesitated visibly when telling him what his other state had said, and yet Prior’s reaction to it had been more complicated than simple rejection or denial. To say that one had been born in a shell-hole is to say something absurdly self-dramatizing. Even by my standards, Prior thought wryly. Yet if you asked anybody who’d fought in France whether he thought he was the same person he’d been before the war, the person his family still remembered, the overwhelming majority — no, not even that, all of them, all of them would say no. It was merely a matter of degree. And one did feel at times very powerfully that the only loyalties that actually mattered were loyalties forged there. Picard clay was a powerful glue. Might it not, applied to pre-war friendships with conscientious objectors, be an equally powerful solvent?
Not in this state, he reminded himself. In this state he’d risked court martial for Beattie’s sake, copying out documents that incriminated Spragge. But then Beattie was a woman, and couldn’t fight. His other self might be less tolerant of healthy strapping young men spending the war years trying to disrupt the supply of ammunition on which other lives depended.
But Mac, he thought. Mac.
He did eventually drift off to sleep, and woke three hours later, to find the room full of sunshine. He peered sleepily at his watch, then reached for his dressing-gown. Rivers, already shaved and fully dressed, was sitting over the remains of breakfast. ‘It seemed better to let you sleep,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid the coffee’s cold.’
‘Did you get back to sleep?’
‘Yes.’
Lying hound, thought Prior. He drank the cold coffee as he shaved and dressed. Rivers was waiting by the desk. For a moment Prior felt rebellious, but then he looked at Rivers and saw how tired he was and thought, my God, if he can manage, it, I can. He sat down, and the familiar position, the light falling on to Rivers’s face, made him aware that he’d taken a decision. ‘I’m going to see Mac,’ he said.
Silence. ‘I think the reason I’m not making any progress is that… there’s a there’s th-there’s oh, for Christ’s sake.’ He threw back his head. ‘There’s a barrier, and I think it’s something to do with him.’
‘Finding out one fact about your behaviour over the past few weeks isn’t going to change anything.’
‘I think it might.’
Another long silence. Rivers shifted his position, ‘Yes, I do see that.’
‘And although I see the point, I mean, I see how important it is to get to the root of it, I do need to be functioning now. Somehow going over what happened with my parents just makes me feel like a sort of lifelong hopeless neurotic. It makes me feel I’ll never be able to do anything.’
‘Oh, I shouldn’t worry about that,’ Rivers said. ‘Half the world’s work’s done by hopeless neurotics.’
This was accompanied by an involuntary glance at his desk. Prior laughed aloud. ‘Would you like me to help you with any of it?’
Rivers smiled. ‘I was thinking of Darwin.’
‘Like hell. Why don’t you let me do that?’ Prior asked, pointing to a stack of papers on the desk. ‘You’re just typing it out, aren’t you? You’re not altering it.’
‘It’s very kind of you, but you couldn’t read the writing. That’s why I have to type it. My secretary can’t read it either.’
‘Let’s have a look. Do you mind?’ Prior picked up a sheet of paper. ‘Rivers, do you realize this is the graphic equivalent of a stammer? I mean, whatever it is you couldn’t say, you certainly didn’t intend to write it.’
Rivers pointed his index finger. ‘You’re getting better.’
Prior smiled. Without apparent effort, he read a sentence aloud: Thus, a frequent factor in the production of war neurosis is the necessity of restraint of the expression of dislike or disrespect for those of superior rank. ‘There’s no hope for me, then, is there? I wonder why you bother.’ He pushed Rivers gently off the chair. ‘Go on, you get on with something else.’
Rivers shook his head. ‘Do you know, nobody’s ever done that before.’
‘I’m good at breaking codes.’
‘Is that a boast?’
‘No. Pure terror.’
As Rivers turned the corner, he saw a man leaving Sassoon’s room. They met face to face in the narrow corridor, and stopped.
‘Dr Rivers?’
‘Yes.’
‘Robert Ross.’
They shook hands. After a few pleasantries about the weather, Ross said, ‘I don’t know whether Siegfried’s talked about the future at all?’
‘I believe he has various plans. Obviously he’s in no state to do anything very much at the moment.’
‘Gosse has some idea he could be useful in war propaganda, you know. Apparently Siegfried told him his only qualification for the job was that he’d been wounded in the head.’
They laughed, united by their shared affection for Siegfried, then said goodbye. Rivers was left with the impression that Ross had wanted to tell him something, but had thought better of it.
Siegfried was sitting up in bed, a notepad on his knees. ‘Was that you talking to Ross?’
‘Yes.’
‘He looks ill, doesn’t he?’
He looked worse than ‘ill’. He looked as if he were dying. ‘It’s difficult to tell when you don’t know the person.’
‘I shan’t be seeing him next week. He’s off to the country.’
Rivers sat down by the bed.
‘I’ve been trying to write to Owen,’ Sassoon said. ‘You remember Owen? Little chap. Used to be in the breakfast-room selling the Hydra.’
‘Yes, I remember. Brock’s patient.’
‘Well, he sent me a poem and I praised it to to the skies and now it’s been passed round…’ Siegfried pulled a face. ‘Nobody else likes it. And now I look at it again I’m not sure either. The fact is…’ he said, putting the pad on his bedside table, ‘my judgement’s gone. And not just for Owen’s work. I thought I’d done one or two good things, but when I look at them again they’re rubbish. In fact, I don’t think I’ve done anything good since I left Craiglockhart.’
Rivers said carefully, ‘You think that at the moment because you’re depressed. Give yourself a rest.’
‘Am I depressed?’
‘You know you are.’
‘I don’t know what point there is in it anyway. What’s an anti-war poet except a poet who’s dependent on war? I thought a lot of things were simple, Rivers, and…’ A pause. ‘Eddie Marsh came to see me. He thinks he can find me a job at the Ministry of Munitions.’