‘What do you think about that?’
‘I don’t know.’
Rivers nodded. ‘Well, you’ve got plenty of time.’
‘I don’t even know whether I’m going back to France. Am I?’
‘I shall do everything I can to prevent it. I don’t think anybody expects you to go back this time.’
‘I never regretted going back, you know. Not once.’ He sat up suddenly, clasping his arms round his knees. ‘You know what I’d really like to do? Go to Sheffield and work in a factory.’
‘In a factory?’
‘Yes, why not? I don’t want to spend the rest of my life wrapped up in the sort of cocoon I was in before the war. I want to find out about ordinary people. Workers.’
‘Why Sheffield?’
‘Because it’s close to Edward Carpenter.’
Silence.
‘Why not?’ Siegfried demanded. ‘Why not? I did everything anybody wanted me to do. Everything you wanted me to do. I gave in, I went back. Now why can’t I do something that’s right for me?’
‘Because you’re still in the army.’
‘But you say yourself nobody expects —’
‘That’s a very different matter from a General Discharge. I see no grounds for that.’
‘Does it rest with you?’
‘Yes.’ Rivers got up and walked to the window. He had hoped this time to be able to use his skills unambiguously for Siegfried’s benefit. Instead, he was faced with the task of putting obstacles in the way of yet another hare-brained scheme, because this was another protest, smaller, more private, less hopeful, than his public declaration had been, but still a protest.
Behind him Siegfried said, ‘There was a great jamboree in the park yesterday. Bands playing.’
Rivers turned to look at him. ‘Of course, I was forgetting. August 4th.’
‘They were unveiling some sort of shrine to the dead. Or giving thanks for the war, I’m not sure which. There’s a Committee for War Memorials. One of the committees Robbie had to resign from. Can’t have the Glorious Dead commemorated by a sodomite. Even if some of the Glorious Dead were sodomites.’
‘You’re very bitter.’
‘And you’re right, it’s no good. You can ride anger.’ Siegfried raised his hands in a horseman’s gesture, forefingers splayed to take the reins. ‘I don’t know what you do with bitterness. Nothing, probably.’
Rivers caught and held a sigh. ‘There’s something I want to say. In my own defence, I suppose. If at any time you’d said to me, “I am a pacifist. I believe it’s always and in all circumstances wrong to kill”, I… I wouldn’t have agreed with you, I’d’ve made you argue the case every step of the way, but in the end I’d’ve done everything in my power to help you get out of the army.’
‘You don’t need a defence. I told you, I never regretted going back.’
‘But then you have to face the fact that you’re still a soldier.’ Rivers opened his mouth, looked down at Siegfried, and shut it again. ‘You know, you really oughtn’t to be lying in bed on a day like this. Why don’t you get dressed? We could go out.’
Siegfried looked at his tunic, hanging on the back of the door. ‘No, thanks, I’d rather not.’
‘You haven’t been dressed since you arrived.’
‘I can’t be bothered to dazzle the VADs.’
‘Dazzle? Isn’t that a bit conceited?’
‘Fact, Rivers.’ Siegfried smiled. ‘One of life’s minor ironies.’
Rivers walked across the room, took Siegfried’s tunic from the peg and threw it on to the bed. ‘Come on, Siegfried. Put it on. You can’t spend the rest of your life in pyjamas.’
‘I can’t spend the rest of my life in that either.’
‘No, but you have to spend the rest of the war in it.’
For a moment it looked as if Siegfried would refuse. Then, slowly, he pushed back the covers and got out of bed. He looked terrible. White. Twitching. Exhausted.
‘We needn’t go far,’ Rivers said.
Slowly, Sassoon started to put on the uniform.
It was easier for Prior to arrange a visit to Mac than he had expected. He still had Ministry of Munitions headed notepaper, having taken a pile with him when he cleared his desk. But probably even without it, the uniform, the wound stripe, the earnestly expressed wish to save an old friend from the shame of pacifism, would have been enough to get him an interview.
Mac was sitting on his plank bed, his head in his hands.
Prior said, ‘Hello, Mac.’
The hands came down. Mac looked… as people do look who’ve had repeated disagreements with detention camp guards.
‘On your feet,’ the guard said.
‘No,’ Prior said sharply. ‘Leave us.’
The man looked startled, but obeyed. It was a relief when the door clanged shut behind him. Prior had been dreading a situation where Mac refused to salute him, and the guards spent the next half hour bouncing his head off the wall.
‘Well,’ Prior said.
No chair. No glass in the window. A smell of stale urine from the bucket, placed where it could be seen from the door. And behind him… yes, of course. The eye.
‘I didn’t expect to see you,’ Mac said. Neither his voice nor his manner was friendly, but he showed no obvious rancour. Perhaps, like a soldier, he’d become accustomed to the giving and receiving of hard, impersonal knocks. There was no room for emotion in this.
‘At least they’ve given you a blanket.’
Mac was naked underneath the blanket and the cell was cold even in summer.
‘For your visit. It goes when you go.’
Prior sat down at the foot of the plank bed and looked around him.
‘One of the main weapons, that,’ said Mac conversationally. ‘Marching you about the place naked. Especially since they don’t give you any paper to wipe yourself with and the food in here’s enough to give a brass monkey the shits.’ He waited. ‘The arsehole plays a major part in breaking people down, did you know that?’
‘You look as if they’ve worked you over.’
‘Work? Pleasure. One of them…’ Mac raised his forearm. ‘Hang your towel on it.’
‘Is that over now?’
‘The beatings? They’re over when I give in.’
A uniform was lying, neatly folded, on the end of the bed.
‘Can I ask you something, Billy? Do you talk about the war in the trenches? I don’t mean day-to-day stuff, pass the ammunition, all that, I mean, “Why are we fighting?” “What is it all for?”’
‘No. We’re ‘ere because we’re ‘ere.’
‘Same in here.’
Prior looked puzzled. ‘There’s nobody to talk to.’
Mac smiled. ‘Morse code on the pipes. I take it I can rely on you not to tell the CO?’
‘Of course.’
‘“Of course”, Billy?’
‘It wasn’t me.’
Mac smiled and shook his head. ‘Why come here if you’re going to say that? Why come at all? I don’t know. Do you just want to see what you’ve done?’
Prior opened his mouth for a second denial, and closed it again. ‘I’ve got something for you,’ he said, digging into his tunic pocket and bringing out two bars of chocolate. He watched Mac’s pupils flare, then go dead. ‘Yes, I know. It’s contaminated. I’ve touched it.’ He held the chocolate out, using his body to screen Mac from the eye. ‘But you have to survive.’
Mac aligned himself exactly with Prior so that he could take the chocolate without being seen. ‘That’s true.’
‘You’d better eat it. They’ll search you.’
‘They won’t. That would mean doubting your integrity. An officer and a gentleman, no less. All the same I think I will have some.’ He slit the paper with his fingernail, broke off a piece and started to eat. The movements of his mouth and throat were awkward. Hunger had turned eating into an act as private as bishop-bashing. Prior tried to look away, but there was nothing to look at. His eyes could only wander round the cell and return to Mac.