Toby's Room (28 page)

Increasingly, he needed a drink to take the edge off his fear. With one part of his mind he could, quite objectively, analyse his condition because he’d seen it so often before, in other men. You began by being appropriately, rationally afraid, the extent of the fear always proportionate to the danger. With luck, and a sound constitution, that stage might last for many months. But the process of erosion is unrelenting. After repeated episodes of overwhelming fear, you start to become punch-drunk. You take stupid risks, and sometimes you get away with it, but not for very long. If you’re lucky you may be wounded, but don’t count on it. If you’re not, the third stage is just round the corner. Fear is omnipresent. Sitting in a café, with a beer in front of you, you’re neither more nor less afraid than you are in the front line. Fear has become a constant companion; you can’t remember what it’s like not to be afraid. He was at that stage now.

And the next? Breakdown: stammering, forgetting how to do even the simplest things, shaking, shitty breeches … Oh, he’d seen it. And he knew it wasn’t far away.

As stretcher-bearers and orderlies they played little direct part in the rehearsals for the coming attack. Brooke held a sick parade at six o’clock every morning, dispensed laxatives, listened to chests,
attended to blistered feet. One man, a tall, yellow-skinned, cadaverous sort of chap, older than the rest, became really quite ill with a septic throat.
How did you get that?
Neville wanted to ask. If he’d thought it was contagious he’d have climbed into bed on top of the chap and gone through the whole
Kiss me, Hardy
routine, though he probably wouldn’t have got it, no matter how hard he tried. Beyond the usual coughs and sniffles, he couldn’t get anything.

Many of the soldiers were young recruits fresh from home. They had no knowledge of the men whose places they were taking in the line, very little idea of what lay ahead, and the others, those who knew, who remembered names and faces, were silent.

When not actually rehearsing for the attack they played a lot of football. Neville’s bulk and laboured breathing kept him off the pitch, though he liked watching. Rain pelted down; the men’s shirts stuck to their backs and their mouths were wet and red in muddy faces. He remembered the same men as they’d been ten days ago: pinched, grey faces, stumbling along, many of them half asleep. They’d been old men, then. And the smell: that evil yellow stench of a battalion coming out of the line. And look at them now. Yes, but in a few days they’d be back in the line, and this time, everybody said, this time they’d really be in the thick of it. Of course rumours were always flying round, but he thought there was some truth in this one. You could tell from the jumping-off points in the rehearsals that they were going to bear the brunt of it.

All this time, whether drunk or sober, Neville was aware of the revolver lying at the bottom of his kitbag. Knowing it was there both disturbed and comforted him. Two days before they were due to start the long march away from safety, he went and sat by himself in the barn where the men slept at night and took it out of its wrapping. Hardly knowing what he was doing, he put the muzzle against the skin of his bare arm, trying to imagine what it would be like to squeeze the trigger: the agony of torn muscles and shattered bone.

An act of cowardice, people said. And he didn’t dare do it. So what did that make him? His fingers as they stroked the cold metal left prints that quickly faded. If only he could get wounded, a slight
wound, nothing too serious, just enough to make sure he got sent home.

An illness would do. Trench fever: that was a good one. Oh, for God’s sake, he didn’t need to get ill, he
was
ill. He’d had rheumatic fever as a child; there’d been a question mark over his heart ever since. He’d been excused rugby for a whole year. And the symptoms he’d been experiencing recently: racing pulse, indigestion – ah yes, but was it indigestion? Skipped beats … His heart skipped so many beats it was a wonder the bugger kept going at all. Even now, this minute, he could feel his heart thudding: skipping beats, every vein in his body pulsing and throbbing, as if he’d suddenly become transparent. Honest to God, if he stripped to the waist now, you’d be able to see it beating. Nobody could say that was normal …

Brooke was the problem. Why couldn’t he stay in the Casualty Clearing Station like every other MO and wait for the wounded to be brought to him? There’d be no disgrace in that, none whatsoever. In fact, it was the way the system was meant to work. But no, Brooke had to be in the front line, or preferably in front of it, crawling around on his belly in the dark. Sometimes, after the wounded and dead had been brought in, he’d go out again, searching for identity discs. Anything, he said, to bring down the terribly long list of ‘Missing, Believed Killed’. How could people grieve, he said, when they didn’t know? And Neville had to go with him; there was no choice. That was the crux of it, really: Brooke had a choice; he didn’t. He was ordered to go, and so he went, crawling about in bright moonlight over what felt like the eyeball of the world, searching through a mess of decomposing body parts to find the little scraps of metal.

Six: that was the score from their last excursion into hell. Ah, yes, Brooke said, but that was six families rescued from the pain of not knowing. You couldn’t fault him: not on that, not on anything. Only, if he went on like this, he was going to get them all killed. For one brief moment, Neville let himself imagine the unthinkable, pointing the revolver away from himself. Levelling it. Then, quickly, he pushed it back inside the sock and returned it to his bag.

Next evening, after a particularly bad day, Neville decided he couldn’t put off talking to Brooke any longer. He went round to the farmhouse where the first-aid post was currently located, but found it empty except for Evans and Wilkie, who were rolling bandages and grumbling over a smoky fire.

‘Where’s Doc?’ he asked.

‘Where do you think?’

He set off to the stables. As soon as he opened the door he heard Brooke’s voice and followed it, between lines of tossing heads and manes, to a box at the far end where he found Brooke kneeling down, peering at a horse’s hoof that one of the stable lads was holding between his knees.

‘Can’t see anything,’ he said, straightening up, ‘but she’s definitely limping on that side.’

He jumped as Neville came up behind him. So perhaps even Brooke’s nerves weren’t perfect? ‘Do you think I could have a word, sir, if you’re not too busy?’

‘Yes, of course, I’m nearly finished here.’

Neville went back to the farmhouse, sat on his bunk and waited. He was trying to work himself up into a state of desperation, but couldn’t manage even that. After a while Brooke came in, wiping his hands on his breeches.

‘Did you have a good ride?’

‘Huh, not really, she went lame on the way back. I think I might have to rest her a day or two.’ He looked more closely at Neville. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘I’d like you to have a look at my chest.’

‘Why, what’s wrong?’

‘Dunno, really. My heartbeat’s irregular, feels as if I’m choking, sometimes I can’t breathe …’

‘All right, get your tunic off.’ Brooke’s tone was cold. He went to the table, poured water into a bowl, soaped his hands and dried them on a towel, managing, somehow, to imbue each of these simple actions with deep scepticism. ‘Let’s have a look at you, then.’
The stethoscope moved across the pallid flesh. ‘Breathe. And again. Again. Deep breaths …’

When, finally, he took the stethoscope away he remained unnervingly silent.

‘The thing is I had rheumatic fever when I was a child, I couldn’t play games for a year, and then when I went to enlist I was told my heart wasn’t up to it, and –’

‘Who told you?’

‘Bryson. He’s a good man. Harley Street.’

‘So it wasn’t the army that rejected you?’

‘No, Bryson told me not to bother trying to enlist.’

‘I see.’

‘I did volunteer for the Belgian Red Cross instead.’

‘Well, I can’t find anything wrong with you. You do have a few skipped beats but they’re quite common – doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with your heart. You tend to get them with worry, tension, tiredness … Too much coffee. Too much alcohol. All of which is true of you.’

You cold-blooded little prick. He wasn’t going to plead – he’d see Brooke in hell first – but then something went wrong, something slipped, and he heard himself pleading anyway. That awful whining, so familiar from sick parades, now coming out of his own mouth; the humiliation.

‘I just can’t take it any more. You can call me a coward if you like, I don’t bloody well care. I’ve reached the end of the road. I cannot go on.’

‘You can’t say that. It ends when it ends.’ He went to the door, obviously wanting the conversation to be over, but then turned back. ‘What do you want me to do? Send you back to base with a heart problem that doesn’t exist? I can’t do that.’

‘You won’t.’

‘There’s no quick exit. And please don’t do anything stupid …’

‘Like crawling round No Man’s Land rescuing dead bodies? God forbid.’

‘We’re all frightened, every single one of us. It’s what you do with it that counts.’

‘And what do you do? Drink too much? Slope off to a brothel when you think nobody’s looking?’

‘I ride. Horses.’

‘’Course you do.’

Suddenly losing patience, Brooke seized Neville’s tunic from the back of the chair and threw it at him.

‘Time to get back to work, I’m afraid. It’s your night duty or had you forgotten?’ He turned on his heel and was about to leave when he said, ‘Oh, and keep an eye on Kent, will you? Wake me up if he gets any worse.’

Slowly, Neville put on his tunic and buttoned it up, before walking along the corridor to the large parlour that served as a temporary hospital.

Hen Man looked up from his crossword.

‘You all right?’

‘Fine. More to the point, how’s he?’ He nodded towards Kent, who was propped up in bed on four pillows with his head drooping to one side. He was one of the older men and had been in the sick bay with chest infections several times before this latest crisis. ‘No better?’

Hen Man pulled a face. ‘Bit worse if anything.’ He folded the newspaper and stood up. ‘Well, I
hope
you have a quiet night. But if you don’t, don’t wake me.’

Night duty. On the ward, Neville’s wide awake, the morphine beginning to wear off just as the other patients are settling down to sleep. Peering along the row of beds, he sees the night nurse sitting at her table. She’s got her head propped up on her hands and seems to be nodding off. He tries to turn on to his side, and realizes he can’t move. Of course, his hands are tied to the bed, to prevent him touching the tube that’s stuck in the middle of his face. Boss-eyed, he squints down at it, but it’s only a blurred shape on the periphery of his vision. He closes his eyes because that’s the only way he can
ignore what’s been done to him. Instantly, the morphine he thought was gone reaches out clammy hands and tries to smother him.

Somewhere quite close there’s a sound of tortured breathing. Where’s the bloody nurse? Why doesn’t she do something? The man’s obviously suffering. Lazy cow. He opens his mouth to shout ‘Nurse? Nurse?’ but other words come out.

‘Calm down. Now I want you to sit forward, that’s right, put your arms forward as well, like this, look, now breathe, that’s right, and again. Deep as you can, and now I want you to hold the next breath and cough. Can you do that for me?’

A stream of green phlegm, enough to fill the small bowl he was holding.

Kent fell back against the pillows, a yellow doll with cavernous pits above his collarbone.

‘It ought to feel a bit easier now. Try to sleep …’

Kent’s eyes flickering upwards so that for a few seconds there was only white.
Bloody hell
, Neville thought.
I’ve got to get Brooke
.

When he was sure Kent was settled, or as settled as he could be, he set off down the corridor, dogged by his own pale shadow in the lamplight. Boiler muttered a protest as he felt the light on his face. Quickly, Neville passed through into the room he and Brooke shared. Brooke’s bunk was empty: must’ve gone for a pee or something. Couldn’t be anywhere else at this time, it was two o’clock in the morning. Neville waited, but he was aware, all the time, of Kent alone in the sickroom, of the urgent need to get back to him, and so when, after a few minutes, Brooke still hadn’t appeared, he set off in search of him.

The lantern, held high above his head, showed slanting lines of rain disappearing into thick mud. Sploshing and slithering, he crossed the yard to the stables. Brooke was worried about his lame horse, that’s where he’d be. Amazing how horses need rest, and men don’t. The door was open. Inside, the noise was deafening; the wind hurled rain on to a corrugated-iron roof. No wonder the horses were restless. The darkness seemed to be full of tossing heads, stamping hooves, neighs, snorts, whinnies, here and there a
glint of silver as a rolling eye caught the light. He was transfixed by the horses: huge heads, weaving bodies, smells of shit and straw. In the interval between one blast of wind and the next he thought he heard voices. Following the sound, he walked along between the rows of boxes to the last one on the left.

A tangle of limbs and laboured breathing. His first thought was that a horse had fallen and was threshing about in the straw. For several long seconds, his brain went on telling his eyes that they were looking at a sick horse, but then he began to see faces in the gloom. A boy’s face first, dazed and panting, and behind him Brooke’s face, his mouth stretched wide in a silent scream.

Neville didn’t know how long he stood there, before Brooke opened his eyes and saw him. They stared at each other. And then, suddenly, Neville was free to move. He backed away, half walking, half running between the lines of panicking horses, pushed the door open and almost fell into the yard. He stood with his back to the wall, blankly watching raindrops plop into puddles, unable to think. He couldn’t go back to the ward, not yet. Instead, he took shelter in the adjoining barn where he lit a cigarette and stood, breathing deeply, while his brain struggled to make sense of what he’d seen.