The Eye in the Door

ONE

In formal beds beside the Serpentine, early tulips stood in tight-lipped rows. Billy Prior spent several moments setting up an enfilade, then, releasing his companion’s arm, seized an imaginary machine-gun and blasted the heads off the whole bloody lot of them.

Myra stared in amazement. ‘You barmy bugger.’

He shook his head sadly. ‘Five months in a loony bin last year.’

‘Go on.’

She didn’t believe him, of course. Smiling, he came back and offered her his arm. They had been wandering along beside the lake for an hour, but now the afternoon was waning. A coppery light, more like autumn than spring, slanted across the grass, turning the thorned twigs of rose bushes into strips of live electric filament that glowed, reddish, in the dusk.

Prior, always self-conscious, was aware of approving glances following them as they passed. They made a romantic picture, he supposed. The girl, young and pretty, clinging to the arm of a man in uniform, a man, moreover, wearing a greatcoat so grotesquely stained and battered it had obviously seen a good deal of active service. As indeed it had, and was about to see more, if only he could persuade the silly bitch to lie on it.

‘You’re cold,’ he said tenderly, unbuttoning the greatcoat. ‘Put your hand in here. You know, we’d be warmer under the trees. We’d be out of the wind.’

She paused, doubtfully, for by the lake it was still light, whereas the avenue of trees he was pointing to smoked darkness. ‘All right,’ she said at last.

They set off across the grass, their shadows stretching ahead of them, black, attenuated figures that reached the trees and began to climb before they were anywhere near. In the darkness they leant against the trunk of one of the trees and started to kiss. After a while she moaned, and her thighs slackened, and he pressed her back against the fissured bark. His open greatcoat shielded them both. Her hands slid round him, underneath his tunic, and grasped his buttocks, pulling him hard against her. She was tugging at his waistband and buttons and he helped her unfasten them, giving her free play with his cock and balls. His hands were slowly inching up her skirt. Already he’d found the place where the rough stockings gave way to smooth skin. ‘Shall we lie down?’

Her hands came up to form a barrier. ‘What, in this?’

‘You’ll be warm enough.’

‘I bloody won’t. I’m nithered now.’ To emphasize the point she pressed her hands into her armpits and rocked herself.

‘All right,’ he said, his voice hardening. ‘Let’s go back to the flat.’ He’d wanted to avoid doing that, because he knew his landlady would be in, and watching.

She didn’t look at him. ‘No, I think I’d better be getting back.’

‘I’ll take you.’

‘No, I’d rather say goodbye here, if you don’t mind. Me mother-in-law lives five doors down.’

‘You were keen enough the other night.’

Myra smiled placatingly. ‘Look, I had a woman come nosying round. The voluntary police, you know? They can come into your house, or anything, they don’t have to ask. And this one’s a right old cow. I knew her before the war. She was all for women’s rights. I says, “What about my rights? Aren’t I a woman?” But there’s no point arguing with ‘em. They can get your money stopped. And anyway it isn’t right, is it? With Eddie at the Front?’

Prior said in a clipped, authoritative voice, ‘He was at the Front on Friday night.’ He heard the note of self-righteousness, and saw himself, fumbling with the fly buttons of middle-class morality. Good God, no. He’d rather tie a knot in it than have to live with that image. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’ll walk you to the station.’

He strode towards Lancaster Gate, not caring if she followed or not. She came trotting breathlessly along beside him. ‘We can still be friends, can’t we?’

He felt her gaze on his face.

‘Can’t we?’

He stopped and turned to face her. ‘Myra, you’re the sort of girl who ends up in a ditch with her stockings round her neck.’

He walked on more slowly. After a while, her hand came creeping through his arm, and, after a moment’s hesitation, he left it there.

‘Have you got a girl?’ she said.

A brief struggle. ‘Yes.’

She nodded, satisfied. ‘Thought you had. Lying little git, aren’t you? Friday night, you said you hadn’t.’

‘We both said a bellyful on Friday night.’

At the underground station he bought her ticket, and she reached up and kissed his cheek as if nothing had happened. Well, he thought, nothing had happened. On the other side of the barrier she turned, and looked as if she might be regretting the evening they’d planned, but then she gave a little wave, stepped out on to the moving staircase and was carried smoothly away.

Outside the station he hesitated. The rest of the evening stretched in front of him and he didn’t know what to do. He thought about going for a drink, but rejected the idea. If he started drinking as early as this and in this mood, he’d end up drunk, and he couldn’t afford to do that; he had to be clear-headed for the prison tomorrow. He drifted aimlessly along.

It was just beginning to be busy, people hurrying to restaurants and bars, doing their best to forget the shortages, the skimped clothes, the grey bread. All winter, it seemed to Prior, an increasingly frenetic quality had been creeping into London life. Easily justified, of course. Soldiers home on leave had to be given a good time; they mustn’t be allowed to remember what they were going back to, and this gave everybody else a magnificent excuse for never thinking about it at all.

Though this week it had been difficult to avoid thinking. Haig’s April 13th Order of the Day had appeared in full in every newspaper. He knew it off by heart. Everybody did.

There is no other course open to us but to fight it out. Every position must be held to the last man: there must be no retirement. With our backs to the wall, and believing in the justice of our cause, each one of us must fight on to the end.

Whatever effect the Order had on the morale of the army, it had produced panic among civilians. Some women, apparently, were planning in all seriousness how they should kill themselves and their children when the Germans arrived. Those atrocity stories from the first months of the war had done the trick. Rather too well. Nuns with their breasts cut off. Priests hung upside-down and used as clappers to ring their own bells. Not that there hadn’t been atrocities, but prisoners of war were always the main victims, and the guilt was more evenly distributed than the press liked to think.

There were times — and tonight was one of them — when Prior was made physically sick by the sight and sound and smell of civilians. He remembered the stench that comes off a battalion of men marching back from the line, the thick yellow stench, and he thought how preferable it was to this. He knew he had to get off the streets, away from the chattering crowds and the whiffs of perfume that assaulted his nostrils whenever a woman walked past.

Back in the park, under the trees, he began to relax. Perhaps it was his own need that coloured his perceptions, but it seemed to him that the park on this spring evening was alive with desire. Silhouetted against the sunset, a soldier and his girl meandered along, leaning against each other so heavily that if either had withdrawn the other would have fallen. It made him think of himself and Sarah on the beach in Scotland, and he turned away sharply. No point thinking about that. It would be six weeks at least before he could hope to see her again. Further along towards Marble Arch the figures were solitary. Army boots tramped and slurred along the paths or, in the deepest shadow, jetted sparks.

He sat on a bench and lit a cigarette, still trying to decide what to do with the stump of his evening. He needed sex, and he needed it badly. Tossing off was no use, because… because it was no use. Prostitutes were out because he didn’t pay. He remembered telling Rivers, who’d been his doctor at Craiglockhart War Hospital, the ‘loony bin’ where he’d spent five months of the previous year, about a brothel in Amiens, how the men, the private soldiers, queued out on to the pavement and were allowed two minutes each. ‘How long do officers get?’ Rivers had asked. ‘I don’t know,’ Prior had said. ‘Longer than that.’ And then, spitting the words, ‘I don’t pay.’ No doubt Rivers had thought it rather silly, a young man’s ridiculous pride in his sexual prowess, his ability to ‘get it’ free. But it was nothing to do with that. Prior didn’t pay because once, some years ago, he had been paid, and he knew exactly how the payer looks to the one he’s paying.

‘Got a light?’

Automatically, Prior began tapping his pockets. At first he hardly registered the existence of the speaker, except as an unwelcome interruption to his thoughts, but then, as he produced the matches, some unconsciously registered nervousness in the other man’s voice made him look up. He had been going to offer the box, but now he changed his mind, took out a match and struck it himself. The rasp and flare sounded very loud. He cupped his hands to shield the flame, and held it out as the other bent towards it. An officer’s peaked cap, dark eyes, a thin moustache defining a full mouth, the face rounded, though not fat. Prior was sure he knew him, though he couldn’t remember where he’d seen him before. When the cigarette was lit, he didn’t immediately move off, but sat further along the bench, looking vaguely around him, the rather prominent Adam’s apple jerking in his throat. His left leg was stretched out awkwardly in front of him, presumably the explanation of the wound stripe on his sleeve.

Prior could see the problem. This wasn’t exactly the right area, though it bordered upon it, and his own behaviour, though interesting, had not been definitely inviting. He was tempted to tease. Instead he moved closer and said, ‘Have you anywhere to go?’

‘Yes.’ The man looked up. ‘It’s not far.’

The square contained tall, narrow, dark houses, ranged round a fenced-off lawn with spindly trees. The lawn and the surrounding flowerbeds were rank with weeds. Further along, on the right, a bomb had knocked out three houses and partially demolished a fourth, leaving a huge gap. They walked along, not talking much. As they approached the gap, the pavement became gritty beneath their feet, pallid with the white dust that flowed so copiously from stricken houses and never seemed to clear, no matter how carefully the ruin was fenced off. Prior was aware of a distinct sideways pull towards the breach. He’d felt this before, walking past other bombed sites. He had no idea whether this sideways tug was felt by everybody, or whether it was peculiar to him, some affinity with places where the established order has been violently assailed.

They stopped in front of No. 27. The windows were shuttered. A cat, hunched and defensive, crouched on the basement steps, growling over something it had found.

Prior’s companion was having trouble with the lock. ‘Part of the damage,’ he said over his shoulder, pulling a face. He jabbed the door with his shoulder, then seized the knob and pulled it towards him. ‘It works if you pull, I keep forgetting that.’

‘Not too often, I hope,’ said Prior.

His companion turned and smiled, and for a moment there was a renewed pull of sexual tension between them. He took off his cap and greatcoat, and held out his hand for Prior’s. ‘The family’s in the country. I’m staying at my club.’ He hesitated. ‘I suppose I’d better introduce myself. Charles Manning.’

‘Billy Prior.’

Covertly, they examined each other. Manning had a very round head, emphasized by thick, sleek dark hair which he wore brushed back with no parting. His eyes were alert. He resembled some kind of animal, Prior thought, an otter perhaps. Manning saw a thin, fair-haired man, twenty-three or four, with a blunt-nosed, high-cheekboned face and a general air of picking his way delicately through life. Manning pushed open a door on the left, and a breath of dead air came into the hall. ‘Why don’t you go in? I won’t be a minute.’

Prior entered. Tall windows shuttered, furniture shrouded in white sheets. A heavy smell of soot from the empty grate. Everything was under dust-sheets except the tall mirror that reflected, through the open door, the mirror in the hall. Prior found himself staring down a long corridor of Priors, some with their backs to him, none more obviously real than the rest. He moved away.

‘Would you like a drink?’ Manning asked from the door.

‘Yes, please.’

‘Whisky all right?’

‘Fine.’

Alone, Prior walked across to the grand piano, lifted the edge of the dust-sheet and found himself looking at a photograph of a woman with two small boys, one of them clutching a sailing boat to his chest.

When Manning came back, carrying a whisky bottle, a jug and two glasses, Prior was staring at a crack above the door. ‘That looks a bit ominous,’ he said.

‘Yes, doesn’t it? I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about it, really. One can’t get workmen, so I just come in and look at it now and then.’ He held up the jug. ‘Water?’

‘Just a dash.’

They moved across to the fireside chairs. Manning pulled off the sheets, and Prior settled back against the stiff brocade. It didn’t give at all, but held him tensely upright. They started making the sort of conversation they might have made if they’d been introduced in the mess. Prior watched Manning carefully; noting the MC ribbon, the wound stripe, the twitches, the signs of tension, the occasional stammer. He was in a state, though it was difficult to tell how much of his nervousness was due to the situation. Which was dragging on a bit. If this went on they’d demolish the whole bloody bottle and still be swopping regimental chit-chat at midnight. All very nice, Prior thought, but not what I came for. He noticed that Manning’s eyes, though they roamed all over the place, always returned to the stars on Prior’s sleeve. Well, you knew I was an officer, he said silently. He was beginning to suspect Manning might be one of those who cannot — simply cannot — let go sexually with a social equal. Prior sighed, and stood up. ‘Do you mind if I take this off?’ he said. ‘I’m quite warm.’

He wasn’t warm. In fact, to coin a phrase, he was bloody nithered. However. He took off his tie, tunic and shirt, and threw them over the back of a chair. Manning said nothing, simply watched. Prior ran his fingers through his cropped hair till it stood up in spikes, lit a cigarette, rolled it in a particular way along his bottom lip, and smiled. He’d transformed himself into the sort of working-class boy Manning would think it was all right to fuck. A sort of seminal spittoon. And it worked. Manning’s eyes grew dark as his pupils flared. Bending over him, Prior put his hand between his legs, thinking he’d probably never felt a spurt of purer class antagonism than he felt at that moment. He roughened his accent. ‘A’ right?’

‘Yes. Let’s go upstairs.’

Prior followed him. On the first floor a door stood open, leading into a large bedroom with a double bed. Manning pulled the door shut. Prior smiled faintly. ’E would not take Oi into the bed where ’e ’ad deflowered ‘is broide. Instead ‘e went up and up and bloody up. To what were obviously the servants’ quarters. Manning pushed open a door at the end of the corridor, handed Prior the lamp and said, ‘I won’t be a minute.’

Prior went in. A double bed with a brass bedstead almost filled the tiny room. He sat on the edge and bounced up and down. It was quite possibly the noisiest bed he’d ever encountered. Thank God the house was empty. Apart from the bed there was a washstand with a jug and bowl, a table with a looking-glass, and a small closet curtained off. He got up and pulled the curtain back. Two housemaids’ uniforms hung there, looking almost like the maids themselves, the sleeves and caps had been so neatly arranged. A smell came from the closet: lavender and sweat, a sad smell. Prior’s mother had started her life in service in just such a house as this. He looked round the room, the freezing little box of a room, with its view of roofs, and, on a sudden impulse, got one of the uniforms out and buried his face in the armpit, inhaling the smell of sweat. This impulse had nothing to do with sex, though it came from a layer of personality every bit as deep. Manning came back into the room just as Prior raised his head. Seeing Prior with the uniform held against him, Manning looked, it had to be said, daunted. Prior smiled, and put the uniform back on the peg.

Manning set a small jar down on the table by the bed. The click of glass on wood brought them into a closer, tenser relationship than anything they’d so far managed to achieve. Prior finished undressing and lay down on the bed. Manning’s leg was bad. Very bad. Prior leant forward to examine the knee, and for a moment they might have been boys in the playground again, examining each other’s scabs.

‘It looks as if you’re out of it.’

‘Probably. The tendons’ve shortened, you see. They think I’ve got about as much movement as I’m going to get. But then who knows? The way things are going, is anybody out of it?’

Prior straightened up, and, since he was in the neighbourhood, began to rub his face across the hair in Manning’s groin. Manning’s cock stirred and rose and Prior took it into his mouth, but even then, for a long time, he simply played, flicking his tongue round and round the glistening dome. Manning’s thighs tautened. After a while his hand came up and caressed Prior’s cropped hair, his thumb massaging the nape of his neck. Prior raised his head and saw that Manning looked nervous, rightly, since in this situation it was a gesture of tenderness that would precipitate violence, if anything did. And Manning was in no state to cope with that. He went back to his sucking, clasping Manning’s buttocks in his two hands and moving his mouth rapidly up and down the shaft. Manning pushed him gently away and got into bed. They lay stretched out for a moment side by side. Prior rolled on to his elbow and started to stroke Manning’s chest, belly and thighs. He was thinking how impossible it is to sum up sex in terms of who stuffs what into where. This movement of his hand had in it lust; resentment, of Manning’s use of the room among other things; sympathy, for the wound; envy, because Manning was honourably out of it… And a growing awareness that while he had been looking at Manning, Manning had also been looking at him. Prior’s expression hardened. He thought, Well, at least I don’t twitch as much as you do. The stroking hand stopped at Manning’s waist, and he tried to turn him over, but Manning resisted. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Like this.’

Athletic sod. Prior unscrewed the jar, greased his cock with a mixture of vaseline and spit, and wiped the residue on Manning’s arse. He guided Manning’s legs up his chest, being exceedingly careful not to jerk the knee. He was too eager, and the position was hopeless for control, he was fighting himself before he’d got an inch in, and then Manning yelped and tried to pull away. Prior started to withdraw, then suddenly realized that Manning needed to be hurt. ‘Keep still,’ he said, and went on fucking. It was a dangerous game. Prior was capable of real sadism, and knew it, and the knee was only a inch or so away from his hand. He came quickly, with deep shuddering groans, a feeling of being pulled out of himself that started in his throat. Carefully, he lowered Manning’s legs and sucked him off. He was so primed he was clutching Prior’s head and gasping almost before he’d started. ‘I needed that,’ he said, when it was over. ‘I needed a good fucking.’

You all do, Prior thought. Manning went to the bathroom. Prior reached out and turned the looking-glass towards him. Into this glass they had looked, half past five every morning, winter and summer, yawning, bleary-eyed, checking to see their caps were on straight and their hair tucked away. He remembered his mother telling him that, in the house where she’d worked, if a maid met a member of the family in the corridor she had to stand with her face turned to the wall.

Manning came back carrying the whisky bottle and glasses. He was limping badly. Despite Prior’s efforts the position couldn’t have done the knee any good.

‘Where d’you get it?’ Prior asked, nodding at the wound.

‘Passchendaele.’

‘Oh, yes. Your lot were in the assault on the ridge?’

‘That’s right.’ Manning poured the whisky and sat at the end of the bed, propping himself up against the bedstead, and stretching his left leg out in front of him. ‘Great fun.’

Prior said, ‘I’ve just had a Board.’ He didn’t want to talk about his condition, but he was incapable of leaving the subject alone. Manning’s silence on the subject, when a question would have been so much more natural, had begun to irritate him.

‘What did they say?’ Manning asked.

‘They haven’t said anything yet. I’m supposed to be Permanent Home Service, but with things the way they are…’

Manning hesitated, then asked, ‘It is neurasthenia, isn’t it?’

No, Prior wanted to say, it’s raging homicidal mania, with a particular predilection for dismembering toffee-nosed gits with wonky knees. ‘No, it’s asthma,’ he said. ‘I was neurasthenic, but then I had two asthmatic attacks in the hospital, so that confused things a bit.’

‘Which hospital were you in?’

‘Craiglockhart. It’s up in —’

‘Ah, then you know Rivers.’

Prior stared. ‘He was my doctor. Still is. He’s… he’s in London now.’

‘Yes, I know.’

It was Prior’s turn not to ask the obvious question.

‘Are you still on sick leave?’ Manning asked, after a pause.

‘No, I’m at the Ministry of Munitions. In the…’ He looked at Manning. ‘And that’s where I’ve seen you. I knew I had.’

Manning smiled, but he was very obviously not pleased. ‘Just as well I didn’t call myself “Smith”. I thought about it.’

‘If you’re going to do that I’d remove the letters from the hall table first. They aren’t addressed to “Smith”.’ Prior looked down into his glass, and gave up the struggle. ‘How do you know Rivers?’

Manning smiled. ‘He’s my doctor, too.’

‘Shell-shock?’

‘No. Not exactly. I… er… I was picked up by the police. About two months ago. Not quite caught in the act, but… The young man disappeared as soon as we got to the police station. Anyway.’

‘What happened?’

‘Oh, we all sat around. Nobody did anything unpleasant. I sent for my solicitor, and eventually he arrived, and they let me go. Wound helped. Medal helped.’ He looked directly at Prior. ‘Connections helped. You mustn’t despise me too easily, you know. I’m not a fool. And then I went home and waited. My solicitor seemed to think if it went to court I’d get two years, but they probably wouldn’t give me hard labour because of the leg.’

‘That’s big of them.’

‘Yes. Isn’t it? Then somebody said the thing to do was to go to a psychologist and get treatment and and… and that would help. So I went to Dr Head, who has quite a reputation in this field — I was actually told in so many words “Henry Head can cure sodomites” — and he said he couldn’t do me, he was snowed under, and he recommended Rivers. So I went to him, and he said he’d take me on.’

‘Do you want to be cured?’

‘No.’

‘What does he do?’

‘Talks. Or rather, I talk. He listens.’

‘About sex?’

‘No, not very often. The war, mainly. You see that’s where the confusion comes in because he took one look at me and decided I was neurasthenic. I mean, I can see his point. I was in quite a state when I came out of hospital. A lot worse than I realized at the time. One night at dinner I just picked up a vase and smashed it against the wall. It was quite a large party, about twelve people, and there was this awful… silence. And I couldn’t explain why I’d done it. Except the vase was hideous. But then my wife said, “So is your Aunt Dorothea. Where is that sort of thinking going to lead?”’ He smiled. ‘I can’t talk to anybody else, so I talk to him.’

Prior put his hand on Manning’s arm. ‘Are you going to be all right? I mean, are they going to leave you alone?’

‘I don’t know. I think if they were going to bring charges they’d’ve brought them by now.’ His voice deepened. ‘“At that moment there was a knock on the door…”’

Prior was thinking. ‘All the same, it’s rather convenient, isn’t it? That you’re neurasthenic?’

‘Not particularly.’

‘I meant for Rivers. He doesn’t have to talk abou —’

‘I don’t know what Rivers thinks. Anyway, it’s the war I need to talk about. And even with him, you know, there are some things I couldn’t—’

‘You will.’

They lay and looked at each other. Manning said, ‘You were going to say which part of the ministry—’

‘Yes, so I was. Intelligence.’

‘With Major Lode?’

‘Yes. With Major Lode. And you?’

‘I’m on the fifth floor.’

Evidently the location was the answer. Manning turned and threw his arm across Prior’s chest. ‘Do you fancy a bit of turn and turn about? Or don’t you do that?’

Prior smiled. ‘I do anything.’

TWO

Charles Manning left the Ministry of Munitions two hours earlier than usual and went to his house, where he’d arranged to meet a builder who’d promised to repair the bomb damage. It was mid-afternoon. A surprisingly sticky day for spring, warm and damp. When the sun shone, as it did fitfully, emerging from banks of black cloud, the young leaves on the trees glowed a vivid, almost virulent green.

He was walking abstractedly past the bombed site, when the crunch of grit and the smell of charred brick made him pause, and peer through a gap in the fence. The demolished houses had left an outline of themselves on either side of the gap, like after-images on the retina. He saw the looped and trellised bedroom wallpaper that once only the family and its servants would have seen, exposed now to wind and rain and the gaze of casual passers-by. Nothing moved in that wilderness, but, somewhere out of sight, dust leaked steadily from the unstaunchable wound.

Suddenly a cat appeared, a skinny cat, one of the abandoned pets that hung around the square. It began picking its way among the rubble, sharply black and sleek, a silhouette at once angular and sinuous. It stopped, and Manning was aware of baleful yellow eyes turned in his direction, of a cleft pink nose raised to sift the air. Then it continued on its way, the soft pads of its feet finding spaces between shards of glittering glass. Manning watched till it was out of sight. Then, thinking he must get a move on, he swung his stiff leg up the steps to his house and inserted his key in the lock, remembering, with a faint smile, that he must pull and not push.

There was an envelope in the post-box. He took it out and carried it through into the drawing-room, his eyes gradually becoming accustomed to the darkness. A heavy smell of soot. There must have been another fall: chimney-sweeping was another job one couldn’t get done. He looked down at the envelope. Typewritten. Tradesman, probably. His family and friends all knew he was staying at his club. He put the letter down on the dust-sheet that covered the sofa and walked to the other end of the room, where he opened the shutters, letting in a flood of sickly yellow light.

He went to look at the crack above the door. Is it a load-bearing wall? the builder had asked. Manning thumped with his clenched fist. It didn’t sound hollow or feel flimsy, but then these houses were very solidly built. He crossed to the front wall, banged again and thought perhaps he could detect a difference. Not much in it, though. He went back to the crack and noticed that the whole surround of the door had been loosened. In fact the more closely one examined it the worse it appeared. That looks ominous, Prior had said, smiling slightly. Odd lad. Even as he felt himself begin to stir at the recollection of the evening, Manning’s mind was at work, categorizing. At first, noting Prior’s flattened vowels, he’d thought, oh yes. Temporary gentleman. A nasty, snobbish little phrase, but everybody used it, though obviously one tried not to use it in connection with people one liked. But the amazing thing was how persistent one’s awareness of class distinction was. The mind seemed capable of making these minute social assessments in almost any circumstances. He remembered the Somme, how the Northumberlands and Durhams had lain, where the machine-guns had caught them, in neat swathes, like harvested wheat. Later that night, crashing along a trench in pitch-blackness, trying desperately to work out where the frontage he was responsible for ended, he’d stumbled into a Northumberlands’ officer, very obviously shaken by the carnage inflicted on his battalion. And who could blame him? God knows how many they’d lost. Manning, sympathizing, steadying, well aware that his own nerves had not yet been tested, had none the less found time to notice that the Northumberlands’ officer dropped his aitches. He’d been jarred by it. Horrified by the reaction, but jarred nevertheless. And the odd thing was he knew if the man had been a private, he would not have been jarred, he would have handled the situation much better.

As the evening with Prior had gone on, the description ‘temporary gentleman’ had come to seem less and less appropriate. It suggested one of those dreadful people — well, they were dreadful — who aped their betters, anxious to get everything ‘right’, and became, in the process, pallid, morally etiolated and thoroughly nauseating. Prior was saved from that not because he didn’t imitate — he did — but because he wasn’t anxious. Once or twice one might almost have thought one detected a glint of amusement. A hint of parody, even. All the same, the basic truth was the man was neither fish nor fowl nor good red herring. Socially. Sexually too, of course, though this was a less comfortable reflection. He had a girl in the north, he said, but then they all said that. Manning had suggested they should meet again, and Prior had agreed, but politely, without much enthusiasm. Probably he wouldn’t come, and probably it would be just as well. His working at the Ministry brought the whole thing rather too close to… well. Too close.

Manning looked at his watch. Ten minutes before the builder was due. He walked across to the piano, lifted the dust-sheet and brought out the photograph of Jane and the boys. Taken last summer. What a little podge Robert had been. Still was. He’d always be a round-cheeked, nondescript sort of child. He was clutching the boat as if he suspected somebody was planning to take it away from him. No doubt James had been. He’s like me, Manning thought, looking at Robert. He felt an almost painful love for his elder son, and sometimes he heard himself speaking too sharply to the boy, but it was only because he could see so much of himself. He knew the areas of vulnerability, and that made him afraid, because in the end one cannot protect one’s children. Everybody — Robert too, probably, that was the sad thing — assumed James was his favourite. It wasn’t true. His love for James was an altogether sunnier, less complicated emotion. He had more fun with James, because he could see James was resilient. He had his mother’s dark, clearly defined brows, her cheekbones, her jaw, the same amused, direct look. The photograph didn’t do her justice; somehow the sunlight had bleached the strength out of her face. Probably she looked prettier because of it, but she also looked a good deal less like Jane. ‘It was hideous.’ The vase he’d thrown at the wall. ‘So is your Aunt Dorothea. Where is that sort of thinking going to lead?’ Typical Jane. It sounded unsympathetic, but it wasn’t. Not really. She was a woman who could have faced any amount of physical danger without flinching, but the shadows in the mind terrified her.

Manning moved across to the fireplace. On the way he noticed the letter and picked it up again, wondering once more who would have written to this address. There were no outstanding bills. Everybody knew he was at the club. He began to open it, thinking he should probably ask the builder to do something about the dent in the wall where the vase had struck. Inside the envelope, instead of the expected sheet of paper, was a newspaper cutting. He turned it the right way up and read:

THE CULT OF THE CLITORIS

To be a member of Maud Allen’s private performance in Oscar Wilde’s Salome one has to apply to a Miss Valetta, of 9 Duke Street, Adelphi, WC. If Scotland Yard were to seize the list of these members I have no doubt they would secure the names of several thousand of the first 47,000.

He’d seen the paragraph before. It had been reproduced — usually without the heading — in several respectable newspapers, though it had originated in the Vigilante, Pemberton Billing’s dreadful rag. Maud Allan — they hadn’t even spelt her name right — was sueing Pemberton Billing for libel. A grave mistake, in Manning’s view, because once in the witness-box Pemberton Billing could accuse anybody with complete impunity. He would be immune from prosecution. The people he named would not. Of course you could see it from Maud Allan’s point of view. She would be ruined if she didn’t sue. She was probably ruined anyway.

The question was, why had it been sent to him, and by whom? The postmark told him nothing useful. There was no covering letter. Manning dropped the cutting on the sofa, then picked it up again, holding the flimsy yellowing page between his thumb and forefinger. He wiped his upper lip on the back of his hand. Then he turned to the mirror as if to consult himself and, because he’d left the drawing-room door open, found himself looking into a labyrinth of repeated figures. His name was on that list. He was going to Salome, and not simply as an ordinary member of the public, but in the company of Robert Ross who, as Oscar Wilde’s literary executor, had authorized the performance.

Immediately he began to ask himself whether there was an honourable way out, but then he thought, no, that’s no use. To back out now would simply reveal the extent of his fear to to to… to whoever was watching. For obviously somebody was. Somebody had known to send the cutting here.

Prior worked in the Intelligence Unit with Major Lode. Perhaps that had something to do with it? He didn’t know. He didn’t know anything, that was the devil of it.

The bell rang. Still holding the page, Manning went to the door. A thin, spry, greying man, with rheumy blue eyes and ‘a top o’ the morning to you, sorr’ expression, stood on the step.

‘Captain Manning?’ He took off his cap. ‘O’Brien, sir. I’ve come about the repairs.’

Manning became aware that he was gaping. He swallowed, pushed the cutting into his tunic pocket, and said, ‘Yes, of course. Come in.’

He showed O’Brien the crack in the wall, feeling almost too dazed to follow what he was saying. He made himself concentrate. It was a load-bearing wall.

‘How long do you think it’ll take?’

O’Brien pursed his lips. ‘Three days. Normally. Trouble is, you see, sir, you can’t get the lads. Williams now.’ O’Brien shook his head sadly. ‘Good worker in his day. The nipper. Willing lad. Not forward for his age. Samuels.’ O’Brien tapped his chest. ‘Dust gets on his lungs.’

‘How long?’

‘Fortnight? Three weeks?’

‘When can you start?’

‘Any time, sir. Would Monday suit you?’

It had to be said O’Brien was a man who inspired instant mistrust. I hope I’m doing the right thing, Manning thought, showing him to the door. He went back to look at the crack again. In the course of exploring its load-bearing properties O’Brien had dislodged a great quantity of plaster. Manning looked down at the grey dust. He was beginning to suspect O’Brien’s real talent might be for demolition. Oh, what does it matter, he thought. His fingers closed round the cutting and he brought it out again. He’d remembered that, a couple of months ago, when the article about the Black Book and the 47,000 had first appeared, Robert Ross had been sent a copy. Just like this. Anonymously. No covering letter. He walked to the window and looked into the garden. There was a curious tension about this yellow light, as if there might be thunder in the offing. And the bushes — all overgrown, there’d been no proper pruning done for years — were motionless, except for the very tips of their branches that twitched ominously, like cats’ tails. A few drops of rain began to fall, splashing on to the dusty terrace. A memory struggled to surface. Of sitting somewhere in the dust and rain beginning to fall. Drops had splashed on to his face and hands and he’d started to cry, but tentatively, not sure if this was the right response. And then a nursery maid came running and swept him up.

He’d ask Ross tonight whether he’d received a cutting, or knew of anybody else who had. Not that it would be reassuring. Ross was a dangerous person to know, and would become more dangerous as the hysteria over the Pemberton Billing case mounted. The prudent thing would be to drop him altogether. Somehow, articulating this clearly for the first time helped enormously. Of course he wasn’t going to drop Ross. Of course he was going to Salome. It was a question of courage in the end.

Why to the house? Anybody who knew him well enough to know his name would be on the list of subscribers must also know he was staying at his club. But then perhaps they also knew he visited the house regularly, to check that everything was all right, and… other things.

He mustn’t fall into the trap of overestimating what they knew. At the moment he was doing their job for them.

Opening the letter like this in his own home was in some ways a worse experience than opening it at the club would have been. His damaged house leaked memories of Jane and the children, and of himself too, as he had been before the war, memories so vivid in comparison with his present depleted self that he found himself moving between pieces of shrouded furniture like his own ghost.

There was nothing to be gained by brooding like this. He made sure the fallen plaster was caught on the dust-sheet and had not seeped underneath to be trodden into the carpet, shuttered the windows, replaced the photograph beneath the dust-sheet, and let himself out.

Rain was falling. As he left the square and started to walk briskly down the Bayswater Road, reflections of buildings and shadows of people shone fuzzily in the pavements, as if another city lay trapped beneath the patina of water and grease. He kept his head down, thinking he would go to see Ross tonight, and remembering too that he was due to see Rivers next week. He passed the Lancaster Gate underground with its breath of warm air, and walked on.

In Oxford Street a horse had fallen between the shafts of a van and was struggling feebly to get to its feet. The usual knot of bystanders had gathered. He was going to be all right. He was…

Suddenly, the full force of the intrusion into his home struck at him, and he was cowering on the pavement of Oxford Street as if a seventy-hour bombardment were going on. He pretended to look in a shop window, but he didn’t see anything. The sensation was extraordinary, one of the worst attacks he’d ever had. Like being naked, high up on a ledge, somewhere, in full light, with beneath him only jeering voices and millions of eyes.

THREE

Prior sat in the visitors’ waiting-room at Aylesbury Prison, right foot resting on his left knee, hands clasping his ankle, and stared around him. The shabbiness of this room was in marked contrast to the brutal but impressive blood-and-bandages facade of the prison, though the shabbiness too was designed to intimidate. Everything — the chipped green paint, the scuffed no-colour floor, the nailed-down chairs — implied that those who visited criminals were probably criminals themselves. A notice on the wall informed them of the conditions under which they might be searched.

Prior looked down at his greatcoat and flicked away an imaginary speck of dust. This was not the battered and stained garment that Myra had so foolishly refused to lie on, but an altogether superior version which had cost two months’ salary. In these circumstances, it was worth every penny.

The door opened and the wardress came in. With very slightly exaggerated courtesy, Prior rose to his feet. Sad but true, that nothing puts a woman in her place more effectively than a chivalrous gesture performed in a certain manner.

‘Yes, well, it does seem to be in order,’ she said.

He nodded. ‘Good.’

‘If you’d like to come this way.’

He reached the door first and held it open. He wasn’t inclined to waste sympathy on her, this middle-aged, doughy-skinned woman. She had her own power, after all, more absolute than any he possessed. If she were humiliated now, no doubt some clapped-out old whore would be made to pay.

He followed her down the corridor and out into the yard.

‘That’s the women’s block,’ she said, pointing.

A gloomy, massive building. Six rows of windows, small and close together, like little piggy eyes. Prior looked at the yard. ‘But surely the men can see the women when they exercise?’

‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘They can’t see out of the windows. They’re too high up for that.’

He asked her one or two questions about the way the prison was run, how the shift system worked, whether transport to the prison was provided. It had occurred to him that it might not be some anonymous whore who paid for his victory, but the woman he had come to see, and he was anxious to avoid that. ‘Shift working must be quite difficult,’ he said. ‘Particularly for women.’

They stood in the cold yard while he got the story of her ailing mother. Then he held the door of the women’s block open for her, and this time she blushed instead of bridling, since the gesture was being offered in a different spirit. Or she thought it was.

Another corridor. ‘I know this is terribly irregular,’ he said. ‘A man seeing a female prisoner alone. But you do understand, don’t you? It is a matter of security…’

‘Oh, yes, yes. The only reason I questioned it was her being confined to the cell. We know all about security. We’ve had a leader of the Irish rebellion in here.’ An internal struggle, then she burst out, ‘She was a countess.’

Her face lit up with all the awe and deference of which the English working class is capable. Oh dear oh dear.

‘Roper’s a different kettle of fish,’ she went on. ‘Common as muck.’

They went through another set of doors and into a large hall. Prior would have liked some warning of this. He’d expected another corridor, another room. Instead he found himself standing at the bottom of what felt like a pit. The high walls were ringed with three tiers of iron landings, studded by iron doors, linked by iron staircases. In the centre of the pit sat a wardress who, simply by looking up, could observe every door. Prior’s escort went across and spoke to her colleague.

Prior looked around him, wondering what sort of women needed to be kept in a place like this. Prostitutes, thieves, girls who ‘overlaid’ their babies, abortionists who stuck their knitting needles into something vital — did they really need to be here? A bell rang. Behind him the doors opened and a dozen or so women trudged into the room, diverging into two lines as they reached the stairs to the first landing. They wore identical grey smocks that covered them from neck to ankle and blended with the iron grey of the landings, so that the women looked like columns of moving metal. Evidently they were not allowed to speak, and for a while there was no sound except for the clatter of their boots on the stairs, and a chorus of coughs.

Then a youngish woman turned her head and noticed him. Instantly, a stir of excitement ran along the lines, like the rise of hair along a dog’s spine. They broke ranks and came crowding to the railings, shouting down comments on what they could see, and speculations on the size of what they couldn’t. Somebody suggested he might like to settle the matter by getting it out. Then a short square-headed woman jostled her way to the front and lifted her smock to her shoulders, high enough for it to become apparent that His Majesty’s bounty did not extend to the provision of knickers. She jabbed her finger repeatedly towards the mound of thinning hair. Then a whistle blew, wardresses came running, and the women were hustled back into line. The tramp of feet started again, and soon the landings were empty and silent, except for the banging of doors and the rattle of keys in locks. The entire incident had taken less than three minutes.

Prior’s wardress came back. ‘That’s a relief,’ he said. ‘I was beginning to feel like a pork chop in a famine.’

This did not go down well. ‘Roper’s on the top landing,’ she said.

Their boots clanged on the stairs. Looking down now at the empty landings, Prior was puzzled by a sense of familiarity that he couldn’t place. Then he remembered. It was like the trenches. No Man’s Land seen through a periscope, an apparently empty landscape which in fact held thousands of men. That misleading emptiness had always struck him as uncanny. Even now, as he tramped along the third landing, he felt the prickle of hair in the nape of his neck.

The wardress-stopped outside No. 39. She bent and peered through the peephole before unlocking the door. ‘Here you are,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to lock you in. When you’re finished just bang on the door. I’ll be along at the end. Good loud bang, mind.’ She hesitated. ‘She’s been on hunger strike. You’ll find her quite weak.’

He followed the wardress into the room. It seemed very dark, though a small, high, barred window set into the far wall let in a shaft of light. The reflection of the bars was black on the floor, then suddenly faded, as a wisp of cloud drifted across the sun. As his eyes became accustomed to the dark, he saw a grey figure huddled on the plank bed, one skinny arm thrown across its face. Apart from the bed, the only other furnishing was a bucket, smelling powerfully of urine and faeces.

‘Roper?’

The figure on the bed neither moved nor spoke.

‘This is Lieutenant Prior. He’s come to talk to you.’

Still no response. For a moment he thought she was dead, and he’d arrived too late. He said, ‘I’m from the Ministry of Munitions.’

Her face remained hidden. ‘Then you’d better bugger off back there, then, hadn’t you?’

The wardress clicked her tongue. ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ she said. She glanced round the bare cell. ‘Do you want a chair?’

‘No, I can manage.’

‘He’ll not be stopping long enough to need a chair.’

The door banged shut. He listened for the sound of retreating footsteps. He walked closer to the bed. ‘You know, if you co-operate, there could be a chance of remission.’

Silence.

‘That’s if you give us the information we need.’

Her eyes stayed shut. ‘I’ve told you once already. Bugger off back to London you greasy, arse-licking little sod.’

At last he heard the clump of boots on the landing. ‘Prison hasn’t done much for your language has it, Beattie?’

Her eyes opened. He moved so that the light from the window fell directly on to his face.

‘Billy?’

He went closer. She looked him up and down, even touched his sleeve, while a whole army of conflicting emotions fought for possession of her face. She settled for the simplest. Hatred of the uniform. ‘Your dad must be turning in his grave.’

‘Well, I expect he would be if he was in it. He isn’t, he’s alive and kicking. My mother, mainly.’ She’d never liked him to talk about his father’s treatment of his mother. Now, with that remark, they were back in Tite Street, in the room behind the shop, beef stew and dumplings simmering on the stove, Hettie peering into the mirror above the mantelpiece, tweaking curls on to her forehead. Before the sense of intimacy could be lost, he went and sat on the end of her bed, and she shifted a little to make room for him. ‘You’ll never guess what I’ve just seen,’ he said in the same gossipy tone, and lifted an imaginary smock above his head.

Her face lit up with amusement. ‘Mad Mary,’ she said. ‘Eeh, dear me, everybody sees that, chaplain, governor. I says, “Put it away, Mary, it’s going bald.” But you can’t reason with her, she’s away to the woods is that one, but you’d be surprised how many are. There’s women in here should never’ve been sent to prison. They need help. Hey, and we’ve had a countess; an Irish rebel, I met her in the yard. She says, “You’re the woman who tried to kill Lloyd George. Let me shake your hand.” I says, “Well, it’s very kind of you, love, but I didn’t.”’

‘Didn’t you?’

‘’Course I bloody didn’t.’ She stared at him. ‘Did I try to kill Lloyd George by sticking a curare-tipped blowdart in his arse? No. I. did. not. Now if you’re asking, “Suppose you had a curare-tipped blowdart and Lloyd George’s arse was just here, would you stick it in?” ‘course I bloody would, because there’ll be no peace while that bugger’s in power.’

Prior shook his head. ‘You can’t fasten it on to one person like that.’

‘Can’t you? I can.’

‘I don’t see how you can derive that from a Marxist analysis.’

‘Bugger Marxist analysis, I hate the sod.’

He waited. ‘Enough to kill him?’

‘Yes, enough to kill him! And I wouldn’t feel guilty about it either. Any more than he feels guilty about the millions and millions of young lives he’s chucked away.’ She fell back, her mouth working. ‘I’m not your milk-and-water, creeping Jesus sort of pacifist.’

‘It might’ve been better if you hadn’t said all that in court.’

‘I told the truth in court. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.’ She laughed. ‘Bloody fatal, that was. Do you know, Billy, I’ve seen the time I could con anybody into anything, when I was a young woman. Now they ask me a simple question and the truth pours out.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s mixing with bloody Quakers, that’s what’s done it. Good Christian company’s been the ruin of me.’

‘So you didn’t plan to kill him?’

‘The poison was for the dogs.’

She hitched herself up the bed and propped her head against the wall. It was possible in this position to see how emaciated she was, how waxy her skin. Her hair, which had been brown the last time he saw her, was now almost entirely white. Thin strands escaped from the bun at the back of her head and straggled about her neck. He started to speak, but she interrupted him. ‘What are you here for, Billy?’

‘To help you.’

She smiled. ‘So what was all that about information?’

‘I had to say that. She was listening.’

‘But you are from the Ministry of Munitions?’

“Course I am. How do you think I got in? Doesn’t mean I’m here for information, does it?’ He leant forward. ‘Think about it, Beattie. What information have you got?’

She bridled. ‘You’d be surprised. People coming in and out.’ Then she pulled a face. ‘Actually, there’s not that many politicals in here. They’re all on about their fannies. You lose patience.’

‘I want you to tell me what happened.’

‘You mean you don’t know?’

‘I haven’t got a transcript of the trial.’

‘Haven’t you? You do surprise me. Why don’t you go and talk to Spragge?’

‘I will. I want your version first, because I haven’t heard your version.’ He waited. ‘Look, Beattie, whatever damage was done was done at the trial. I’m not asking you to name any names that didn’t come out then.’

She brooded for a moment. ‘You know Tommy Blenkinsop’s dead?’

‘Tommy —’

‘The deserter I had stopping with me. Hettie had gone away to live, you know, she was teaching over at Middleton, so I had this spare room, and I said I’d put Tommy up. Eeh, poor little Tommy, eleven kids, and do you know to look at him you wouldn’t’ve thought he had a fuck in him? He says to me, “You know, Beattie, I only joined up for a bit of peace.” Poor lad. Anyway, that night we were sat over the fire, Tommy and me, and there was this knock on the door, and I says to Tommy, “You go on upstairs, love.” I answered it and there was…” She sighed, looking into the distance. ‘Spragge. Rain pouring off him, it was a terrible night. And he said he had a letter from Mac, so of course I asked him to come in. I’ve had time to think since then. It was Mac he was after. He was the big fish, we just got caught in the net. And the letter was genuine enough, he’d took Mac in as well as me, so he must’ve been convincing, mustn’t he? Anyway, he explained he was on his way to Liverpool, and he says, “Can you put me up?” and I says, “Well, no, not really.” And then I thought, we-ell, and I says, “Unless you don’t mind sharing a bed,” and I told him about Tommy. “Is he of the homogenic persuasion?” he says. Well, I just looked at him. I says, “No, I shouldn’t think so, he’s got eleven kids, do you want the bed or not?” So he decided he was stopping and we sat down round the table, and after a while he notices the photograph of our William on the mantelpiece. I don’t know whether he knew about our William, I think he must’ve done, though, because he kept bringing the conversation round, and saying what a fine lad he was and all that. And you know I was worried sick about our William, because I knew what was going on, you see, he’d managed to get a letter smuggled out.’

‘What was going on?’

‘Well. You see, William didn’t get exemption. He… Partly he was unlucky with the Board, but you know they don’t like moral objectors anyway. If you’re religious — doesn’t matter how batty it is — you can say you’ve got the Holy Spirit in a jamjar on the mantelpiece — that’s all right, that’s fine. If you say, “I think it’s morally wrong for young men to be sent out to slaughter each other,” God help you. The Chairman of the Board actually said to our William, “You can’t be a conscientious objector because you don’t believe in God, and people who don’t believe in God don’t have consciences.” That was the level of it. Anyway, if you’re refused exemption you get handed over to the army. The military police show up and take you off to the barracks and you get given your first order, generally, “Get stripped off and put the uniform on.” And of course the lads refuse, and then it’s the detention centre. Our William was sent to Wandsworth, and it was really tough. He was stripped and put in a cell with a stone floor and no glass in the window — this is January, mind — and then, he says, they just put a uniform beside you and they wait to see how long it’ll take you to give in. Of course I was worried sick, I thought he was going to get pneumonia, but actually he said in his letter it wasn’t the cold that bothered him, it was being watched all the time. The eye in the door.’ She laughed. ‘I didn’t know what he meant.’

She looked past Prior’s shoulder, and he turned to follow her gaze. He found himself looking at an elaborately painted eye. The peephole formed the pupil, but around this someone had taken the time and trouble to paint a veined iris, an eyewhite, eyelashes and a lid. This eye, where no eye should have been, was deeply disturbing to Prior. For a moment he was back in France, looking at Towers’s eyeball in the palm of his hand. He blinked the image away. ‘That’s horrible,’ he said, turning back to Beattie.

‘’S not so bad long as it stays in the door.’ She tapped the side of her head. ‘You start worrying when it gets in here.’

‘Anyway, go on. He was talking about William.’

‘Yes, he kept bringing the conversation round, and of course I was worried, and out it all came. It wasn’t just our William that was bothering me, it was all of them.’

‘All the conchies?’

‘You know I don’t mean that.’

No, he thought. She was one of those who felt every death. She’d never learnt to read the casualty lists over breakfast and then go off and have a perfectly pleasant day, as the vast majority of civilians did. If she had learnt to do that, she mightn’t have been here. ‘Go on,’ he said.

‘He could see I was getting upset and he says, “Why don’t we have a drink?” Well, money was a bit tight, you know, with feeding Tommy as well, but he says, “Don’t you worry, love, this one’s on me.” And he went into the scullery and came back with two bloody great big jugs, and off he went. Eeh, special brew. Well, you know me, Billy, two glasses of that, he was me long-lost brother, and I did, I talked, I played me mouth. I cussed Lloyd George, I cussed the King, I don’t know what bugger I didn’t cuss, but I was lonely, Billy. I’d had nobody to talk to except Tommy for months, and he was no company, poor little bugger, his nerves were gone. And of course at the trial it all got twisted. He said I kept dropping hints Lloyd George was going to die. I can remember exactly what I said. I says, “That bloody, buggering bastard Lloyd George, he’s got a head on him like a forty-shilling pisspot, but you mark my words he’ll come to rue.” There. That was it. That was the death threat.’ She shook her head. ‘It was nowt of the sort. Anyway we were half way down the second jug — or I was — and he says, “Can I trust you?” I says, “Well, you’re in a pretty pickle if you can’t.” And then he starts telling me about this detention centre where the regime was very bad. Worse than Wandsworth. And you know all the stuff he was telling me was stuff I’d told him, about being naked in the cells and all that, but I was too daft to see it. And then he says, him and some of his mates had found a way to get the lads out. They had a contact inside the centre, one of the guards it was supposed to be. But, he says, the problem was the dogs. They had these dogs patrolling the perimeter fence. I says, “Well, poison.” He says, well, yes, but there was a problem about that. It had to look like an outside job because of the guard. You see, they didn’t want the detention centre to twig about him. So I says, “Curare.”’

‘Fired through the fence in a blowdart?’

‘Yes.’

‘Fired at the dogs?’

‘Yes.’

‘Of course,’ Prior said, ‘you do realize, don’t you, a lot of people wouldn’t know about curare?’

For the first time she looked uneasy. ‘Yes, well, I read about it in a book on South America, and then I happened to mention it to Alf — our Winnie’s husband — and he says, “Oh, yes, we’ve got some of that in the lab.” That’s the only way I knew about it.’

‘No previous thoughts of killing Lloyd George? They said at the trial you’d plotted to kill him before, when you were in the suffragettes.’

‘The suffragettes never threatened human life. That was a point of honour: property, not life. It just shows Spragge’s ignorance, does that. Couldn’t even think up a convincing lie.’

‘He seems to have convinced the jury.’

‘You know what was going on there as well as I do. You put a pacifist — any pacifist — in the dock — could be Jesus Christ — and the biggest rogue unhung in the witness-box, and who do you think they’re gunna believe?’

‘What did he say when you mentioned curare?’

‘He says, yes, but how on earth was he going to get his hands on that? I says I knew where to get it, but it was too risky. And then he says if I helped him, he’d help me. He’d get little Tommy across to Ireland, and that clinched it for me, because you know Tommy was getting really weird. I mean, to be honest, I thought if I didn’t get him out I was gunna have a loony on me hands, like Lily Braithwaite’s husband. You know what a state he was in when he come back.’

‘So you agreed to get the curare?’

‘Yes, he give me an address and told me to write to him when I got it. I wrote to our Winnie’s Alf, and he mentioned dogs in his letter back to me, but that letter was never produced, I think it slipped down a crack in the pavement. And Alf said, yes, he’d get it. He works in a big medical laboratory, and he had to sign for the poison. But he wasn’t worried, see, because the dogs’d be dying at the other end of the country and nobody would make the connection. But can you imagine him signing his name like that if he’d thought it was for Lloyd George?’

‘Then what?’

‘I waited. The post seemed to take such a long time, but of course unbeknownst to us all the letters were being opened. The parcel was opened. And then when it was finally delivered the police were on the doorstep in a matter of minutes. And I was charged with conspiracy to murder Lloyd George, and others. That’s the other thing they dropped. It wasn’t just Lloyd George they were on about. To begin with it was hundreds of people I was supposed to be plotting to kill. And, of course, all I could say was; “The poison was for the dogs,” but I couldn’t prove it, it was Spragge’s word against mine, and he was working for the bloody Ministry of Munitions. Oh, and the trial. You know he read all the letters out in court?’

‘Smith did?’

‘Yeh, Smith. The Attorney-General. Oh, I was honoured, they wheeled out all the big guns. And he read me letters out in court, about Winnie’s period being late and all that. And you know he read the words the way I’d wrote them. Just to get a laugh out of me, because I can’t spell, I never have been able to. But I wonder how good his spelling’d be, if he’d left school when he was eight?’

‘He shouldn’t’ve done that.’

‘I was fair game. Language too. He couldn’t get over the language, this dreadful, coarse, lewd, vulgar, low woman who kept using all these words his dear little wifie didn’t even know. I’ll bet.’

Prior sat back against the wall. He was finding the eye in the door difficult to cope with. Facing it was intolerable, because you could never be sure if there were a human eye at the centre of the painted eye. Sitting with his back to it was worse, since there’s nothing more alarming than being watched from behind. And when he sat sideways, he had the irritating impression of somebody perpetually trying to attract his attention. It tired him, and if it tired him after less than an hour, what must it have done to Beattie, who’d had to endure it for over a year? He noticed that the latrine bucket had been placed where it could be seen from the door. ‘Why’s the bucket there?’ he asked.

‘Because some poor bloody cow drowned herself in her own piss.’

‘My God.’ He stared at her. ‘You’re not as bad as that, are you?’

‘No, I keep going. Trouble is, you’re punished if you go on hunger strike, so I can’t have any visitors. I haven’t seen our Hettie for… oh, I don’t know, it must be two months.’

‘I’ll see what I can do.’

‘That’s what Spragge said. When I told him about not being able to get Tommy across to Ireland, he says, “I’ll see what I can do.”’

‘The difference is I’m not asking for anything back.’

She touched his sleeve. ‘We were close once, Billy. You were like a son to me.’ She waited. ‘I’m not going to ask whose side you’re on because you mightn’t tell me the truth, and if you did, I wouldn’t believe you. But just tell me this. Do you know whose side you’re on?’

He looked at her and smiled, but didn’t reply.

FOUR

The Ministry of Munitions was housed in the Hotel Metropole. The reception desk, now guarded by armed police, had once been manned by smooth-faced young men, trained not to look surprised when the sixth couple in succession turned out to be called Smith, or when prosperous-looking gentlemen, entertaining their curiously unprosperous-looking nephews, requested a double room. No such innocent frolics now, Prior thought, crossing the foyer. Goodness how the moral tone had declined.

On the third floor he tapped on Major Lode’s door. Lode looked up from the file he was reading, dabbing, as he always did when confronted by a new situation, at the outer corners of his large, silky, red-gold moustache. In defiance of biology, Prior saw this moustache as a feminine adornment: perhaps because it seemed to require so much protection from the outside world.

‘How did it go?’ Lode asked.

‘Quite well, I think. She was… fairly hostile to begin with, but I think towards the end she was starting to open up.’

‘Did you mention MacDowell?’

‘Only in passing. I thought it better not to… focus on him.’

‘Hmm, yes, quite right. So what’s the next step?’

‘I’d like to see Hettie Roper. The younger daughter. You remember she was walking out with MacDowell?’

Lode smiled. ‘Walking out? Yes. I was just thinking, what a quaint expression. But I thought that was over? That’s what she told the police.’

‘I don’t believe it. They were too close.’

‘Yes, well, do what you need to do. Good.’

And now, Prior thought, closing the door quietly behind him, you can fumigate your fucking office. ‘What a quaint expression.’ I could buy and sell you, he told the closed door. Lode had no idea. He’d spent his entire adult life — boyhood too, for that matter — in uniformed, disciplined, hierarchical institutions, and he simply couldn’t conceive of the possibility that other people might function differently. It was all a great big chessboard to him. This rag-bag collection of Quakers, socialists, anarchists, suffragettes, syndicalists, Seventh Day Adventists and God knows who else was merely an elaborate disguise, behind which lurked the real anti-war movement, a secret, disciplined, highly efficient organization dedicated to the overthrow of the state as surely and simply as Lode was dedicated to its preservation. And on the other side of the board, at the head of the opposing army, elusive, tenacious, dangerous: the Black King himself, Patrick MacDowell. It wasn’t complete nonsense, of course. Mac was certainly a more effective opponent of the war than most, if only because he was not in love with suffering. Poor Mac, he’d had enough of that by the time he was ten.

Prior walked down the corridor to his own room, tiny in comparison with Lode’s, hardly more than a cupboard. Evidently, in pre-war days this room had been reserved for those obliged to sin on a budget. He felt dirty, physically dirty, after the long train journey, and when he looked into the small glass above the washbasin he saw that his face was covered in smuts. He washed as much of himself as he could reach without undressing, and then began searching through the filing cabinet. He’d made a list of a number of files that contained reports from Lionel Spragge, and it took him only a few moments to gather them together and dump them on his desk. He had an hour to read through them before Spragge arrived. Spragge had been reluctant to come to the Ministry at all, suggesting they should meet outside, at some pub or other, but Prior had wanted this first meeting to be on his own ground.

He’d read the reports several times already, so it was merely a matter of refreshing his memory. When he came to Beattie’s file, to Spragge’s reports on the Roper affair and then to his deposition, he read more slowly. After a while he looked up, puzzled by the sense of something unfamiliar in the room. He stared round him, but could see nothing different, and then he realized that the change was in himself. He had not been angry until now.

LIONEL ARTHUR MORTIMER SPRAGGE

on his oath saith as follows:

2 February 1917. I am employed at the Ministry of Munitions. I entered the employ of the Ministry on 1 July 1916. I have been engaged making certain inquiries concerning various organizations amongst others the Independent Labour Party and the No Conscription fellowship. I reported to Major Lode. He was the officer from whom I chiefly got my directions.

Between October and December 1916 I was sent to Liverpool to make inquiries concerning one Patrick MacDowell. He had been the leading organizer of the Sheffield strike in the Munitions factories. I told MacDowell I wanted to go to the Manchester area. MacDowell gave me a letter to give to Mrs Beatrice Roper. On the night of I think the 23 rd December I went to Mrs Roper’s shop, at 11 Tite Street, Salford, and gave her the letter. After reading the letter Mrs Roper agreed that I could stay with her and we shook hands very heartily indeed. She sat at one end of the table, and I sat next to her. There was another man staying in the house at the time who was introduced to me as Tommy Blenkinsop, a deserter. He did not come downstairs until later. Mrs Roper asked me about myself. I told her I had been refused exemption and that I had been on the run since September as a moral objector. I told her about being locked up in a detention centre and I think I told her something of the treatment I had received there. At that she said, ‘That is just like my William,’ and she got up and fetched a photograph from the dresser. It was a small photograph of her son, William Roper. As she was showing me the photograph she told me that before the war she had been active in the suffragettes and that she had burnt down a church. I think her exact words were, ‘You know about St Michael’s? We were nearly copped, but we bloody well did it.’ She laughed and said, ‘You should have seen the flames go up.’ She then said, ‘And that was not all we did.’ She told me she had been party to a plan to kill Mr Lloyd George, by inserting a curare-tipped nail through the sole of his boot in such a way that it would pierce the skin when he put his weight on the foot, causing instant lassitude followed by seizures. They had been planning to do this on the Isle of Wight where Mr Lloyd George was staying at that time. There was a waiter in his hotel sympathetic to the suffragette cause. I do not recollect the name of the hotel, or of the waiter. I asked her why the attempt had not succeeded. She replied, ‘The bloody, shitting, buggering old sod pissed off to France, didn’t he?’ Mrs Roper’s language was fairly good most of the time but when she spoke of Mr Lloyd George she used bad language. I then made diligent inquiries as to the nature of Mrs Roper’s attitude to Mr Lloyd George. She several times expressed the opinion that he ought to be killed. I then asked her whether there was anybody else who ought to be killed and she replied, ‘Yes, the other George, that poncing old git in the Palace, he’d not be missed.’

I then asked her whether this was all talk or whether some plan was afoot. She replied, ‘Can I trust you?’ I think I said something to the effect that she was in a pretty pickle if she could not. She then said that she knew where to get curare and that Walton Heath Golf-course would be a good place to get Mr Lloyd George with an air-gun. She said she knew three good lads in London who would do the job. She then asked me if I wanted to be in on it and I considered it my duty to reply in the affirmative in order to procure further information. 1 passed that night at Mrs Roper’s house, and the following morning I reported back to Major Lode’s department in code.

Spragge was a big, fleshy, floridly handsome man, with thick brows and startling blue-green eyes that slanted down at the outer corners. His neck and jowls had thickened, and rose from his broad shoulders in a single column. Hair sprouted from his ears, his nostrils, the cuffs of his shirt. He was as unmistakably and crudely potent as a goat. Beattie would have gone for him, Prior thought, as he stood up to shake hands. He wondered how he knew that, and why he should mind as much as he did.

‘I asked you to come in,’ Prior said, after Spragge had settled into his chair, ‘because we’re thinking of employing you again.’ He watched the flare of hope. Spragge was less well turned out than he appeared to be at first sight. His suit was shiny with wear, his shirt cuffs frayed. ‘You’ll have gathered from the papers there’s a lot of unrest in the munitions industry at the moment. Particularly in the north, where you spent a good deal of time, didn’t you? In’16.’

‘Yes, I —’

‘With MacDowell. Who’d just come out of a detention centre, I believe?’

‘Yes, he’s a deserter. Conchie. You should see the size of him, for God’s sake. Built like a brick shithouse. See some of the scraggy little buggers that get sent to France.’ Spragge was looking distinctly nervous. ‘I don’t think I could approach him again. I mean, he knows me.’

‘He knows you from the Roper case, doesn’t he?’

‘Before that.’

‘You might be able to give advice, though. Obviously we’d need to keep you away from the areas you were working in before.’

Spragge looked relieved.

‘You met MacDowell in the summer of ‘16? In Sheffield?’

‘Yes, I was making inquiries into the shop stewards’ movement.’

Prior made a show of consulting his notes. ‘You stayed with Edward Carpenter?’

‘I did.’ Spragge leant forward, his florid face shining with sweat, and said in a sinister whisper, ‘Carpenter is of the homogenic persuasion.’

‘So I believe.’ That phrase again. It had stuck in Beattie’s memory, and no wonder. It was transparently obvious that Spragge’s natural turn of phrase would have been something like ‘fucking brown ‘atter’. ‘Of the homogenic persuasion’ was Major Lode. Who had once told Prior in, of all places, the Cafe Royal, ‘This country is being brought to its knees. Not by Germany’ — here he’d thumped the table so hard that plates and cutlery had leapt into the air — ‘NOT BY GERMANY, but by an unholy alliance of socialists, sodomites and shop stewards.’ Prior had felt scarcely able to comment, never having been a shop steward. ‘Do you think that’s relevant?’

‘It was relevant to me. There was no lock on the door.’

‘He is eighty, isn’t he?’ said Prior.

Spragge shifted inside his jacket. ‘A vigorous eighty.’

‘You went to a meeting, next day? Addressed by Carpenter.’

‘I went with Carpenter.’

‘And in the course of his speech he quoted a number of… well, what would you call them? Songs? Poems? In praise of homogenic love.’

‘He did. In public.’

‘Well, it was a public meeting, wasn’t it? And then after the meeting you went into a smaller room, and there you were introduced to a number of people, including the author of these songs?’

‘Yes.’

‘Walt Whitman.’

‘Yes.’

‘Walt Whitman is an American poet.’ Prior waited for Spragge’s mouth to open. ‘A dead American poet.’

‘He didn’t look well.’

‘1819 to 1892.’

Spragge jerked his head. ‘Yeh, well, it’s the money, innit?’

‘Is it?’

‘I’ll say it is. Two pound ten a week I was promised. Mind you, he says the information’s got to be good and you’ve got to keep it coming.’ Spragge sat back and snorted. ‘Didn’t matter how good it was, I never had two pound ten in my hand, not regular, just like that. Bonuses, yes. But what use are dribs and drabs like that to me? I’m a family man.’

‘You got bonuses, did you?’

‘Now and then.’

‘That would be if you turned up something special?’

Spragge hesitated. ‘Yes.’

‘How big a bonus did you get for Beattie Roper?’

Spragge hesitated again, then clearly decided he had nothing to lose. ‘Not big enough.’

‘But you got one?’

‘Yes.’

‘All in one go?’

‘Half on arrest, half on conviction.’

‘You got a bonus if she was convicted?’

‘Look, I know what you’re after. You’re saying I lied under oath. Well, I didn’t. Do you think I’m gunna risk — what is it, five years — for a measly fifty quid? ‘Course I’m bloody not. I’d have to be mad, wouldn’t I?’

‘Or in debt.’

Spragge blinked. ‘Just because I lied about Walt Whitman doesn’t mean I was lying all the time. That was the first report I wrote, I was desperate to get enough in.’

‘You never talked about dogs to Mrs Roper?’

Spragge made an impatient gesture. ‘What dogs? There weren’t any fucking dogs. They’re not used in detention centres. You might not know that, but she does. She’s talked to men who’ve been in every detention centre in England. She knows there aren’t any dogs.’ He stared at Prior. ‘Have you been talking to her?’

‘I’ve interviewed her, yes.’

Spragge snorted. ‘Well, all I can say is the old bitch’s got you properly conned.’

‘I haven’t said I believed her.’

‘She was convicted. It doesn’t matter what you believe.’

‘It matters a great deal, from the point of view of your job prospects.’ Prior gave this time to sink in. ‘The letter that came with the poison. From Mrs Roper’s son-in-law.’ He drew the file towards him. ‘“If you get close enough to the poor brutes, I pity them. Dead in twenty seconds’.”

‘All that proves is that the son-in-law thought it was for the dogs. Well, she’d have to tell him something, wouldn’t she?’

‘You still say she plotted to kill Lloyd George?’

‘Yes.’

‘And that the suggestion came from her, and not from you?’

‘Yes. She didn’t need any bloody encouragement!’

‘Even to the details? Even to suggesting Walton Heath Golf-course as a good place to do it?’

‘That’s right.’

‘How would she know that? She’s spent her entire life in the back streets of Salford, how would she know where Lloyd George plays golf?’

Spragge shrugged. ‘Read it in the paper? I don’t suppose it’s a state secret.’ He leant forward. ‘You know, you want to be careful. If you’re saying I acted as an agent provocateur — and that is what you’re saying, isn’t it? — then you’re also saying that Major Lode employed an agent provocateur. Either knowingly, in which case he’s a rogue, or unknowingly, in which case he’s a fool. Either way, it’s not gunna do his career much good, is it? You watch yourself. You might find out it’s your head on the chopping-block.’

Prior spread his hands. ‘Who’s talking about chopping-blocks? I’m interviewing a new agent — new to me. And I’ve made it clear — at least I hope I’ve made it clear — that any little flight of fancy — Walt Whitman rising from the dead — and I’ll be on to it. If there aren’t any flights of fancy, well then… no need to worry.’ With the air of a man getting to the real purpose of the meeting at last, Prior drew another file towards him. ‘Now tell me what you know about MacDowell.’

After he’d finished milking Spragge of information, all of which he knew already, and had sent him home to await the summons, Prior sat motionless for a while, his chin propped on his hands.

‘The poison was for the dogs.’

‘There weren’t any fucking dogs. You might not know that, but she does.’

Was it possible Beattie had tried to reach out from her corner shop in Tite Street and kill the Prime Minister? The Beattie he’d known before the war would not have done that, but then that Beattie had been rooted in a communal life. Oh, she’d been considered odd — any woman in Tite Street who worked for the suffragettes was odd. But she hadn’t been isolated. That came with the war.

Shortly after the outbreak of war, Miss Burton’s little dog had gone missing. Miss Burton was a spinster who haunted the parish church, arranged flowers, sorted jumble, cherished a hopeless love for the vicar — how hopeless probably only Prior knew. He’d been at home at the time, waiting for orders to join his regiment, and he’d helped her search for the dog. They found it tied by a wire to the railway fence, in a buzzing cloud of black flies, disembowelled. It was a dachshund. One of the enemy.

In that climate Beattie had found the courage to be a pacifist. People stopped going to the shop. If it hadn’t been for the allotment, the family would have starved. So many bricks came through the window they gave up having it mended and lived behind boards. Shit — canine and human — regularly plopped through the letter-box on to the carpet. In that isolation, in that semi-darkness, Beattie had sheltered deserters and later, after the passing of the Conscription Act, conscientious objectors who’d been refused exemption. Until one day, carrying a letter from Mac, Spragge had knocked on her door and uncovered a plot to assassinate the Prime Minister. Or so he said.

Could she have plotted to kill Lloyd George? Prior thought he understood how the powerless might begin to fancy themselves omnipotent. The badges of hopeless drudgery, the brush and the cooking-pot, become the flying broomstick and the cauldron, and not only in the minds of the persecutors. At first there would be only wild and flailing words, prophecies that Lloyd George would come to a dreadful end and then, nudged along by Spragge — because whatever Beattie’s part in this, Spragge had not been innocent — the sudden determination to act out the fantasy: to destroy the man she blamed for prolonging the war and causing millions of deaths.

Lode would have had no difficulty in believing Spragge. The poison plot fitted in very neatly with his preconceptions about the anti-war movement. Not much grasp of reality in all this, Prior thought, on either side. He was used to thinking of politics in terms of conflicting interests, but what seemed to have happened here was less a conflict of interests than a disastrous meshing together of fantasies.

He began putting away the files. It was a situation where you had to hang on to the few certainties, and he was certain that Spragge had lied under oath, and since Spragge had been the only witness, this of itself meant the conviction was unsafe.

He locked the filing cabinet and the door of his room, and walked along to the end of the corridor. The lift was stuck on the fifth floor. He decided not to wait and ran downstairs, coming out on to the mezzanine landing where he paused and looked down into the foyer, as he often did, liking to imagine the hotel as it must have been before the war, before this drabness of black and khaki set in.

The shape of a head caught his attention. Charles Manning, waiting for the lift, and with him — good God — Winston Churchill and Edward Marsh. Prior watched. Manning, though obviously junior, seemed perfectly at ease in their company. Certainly he was not merely dancing attendance; there was a good deal of shared laughter, and, as they moved into the lift, Marsh’s hand rested briefly on his shoulder. Well, well, well, Prior thought, continuing on his way downstairs. ‘Connections’ indeed!

Prior lived in a seedy basement flat in Bayswater. He could have afforded better, but he preferred to spend his money on properly tailored uniforms, and these did not come cheap. His bedroom had french windows that opened on to a small high-walled yard, so dark that he had never been tempted to sit out, though his landlady had made an effort. The walls were painted cream to a height of about ten feet, and there were a number of thin, straggly plants dying in a great variety of containers.

The room was small and L-shaped. His bed lay along the upright of the L, facing the window, with a desk and hard chair at the foot. The baseline of the L contained a wardrobe, with an oval mirror set into the door. There was space for nothing else.

The bathroom was next door. He had a tepid bath, and then, wrapped in his dressing-gown, lay on the bed and lit a cigarette. He was too tired to think constructively, and yet his mind whirred on. This was the frame of mind that led to a bad night, and it irritated him, almost to the point of tears, that he could do nothing about it.

He thought of Beattie in her cell. Eighteen months since Lionel Spragge knocked on her door. Eighteen months ago he’d been in France. Eighteen months ago William Roper had been in Wandsworth Detention Centre. An image of William began to form in Prior’s mind, tiny but powerful, like the initial letter of a gospel. William, naked in his cell, watched constantly through the eye in the door, and beside him, on the stone floor, the uniform he’d refused to put on. A small, high, barred window, lit with a bluish glow from the snow outside.

He found himself resenting the power of this image. The claim it made on his sympathy. Deliberately, he entered the cell and then let himself drift out of the window, between the bars, into the falling snow. He was in France now, lying out in the open with his platoon. The trenches had been blown flat, there was no shelter from the icy wind, no hope of getting the wounded back. And no water, because the water in the water-bottles had frozen. Once a hawk flew over, its shadow black against the snow. The only movement, the only life, in a landscape dead as the moon. Hour after hour of silence, and the snow falling. Then, abruptly, Sanderson’s convulsed and screaming face, as they cut the puttees away from his frost-bitten legs.

This was no use. Prior sat up and started reading The Times, but the print blurred and Beattie’s face took its place, the white hair straggling round her neck. He closed his eyes. The bell of the shop in Tite Street rang as he pushed the door open. How old? Four? Five? A smell of cat pee and tarred string from the bundles of firewood in the corner. Beattie’s cat had never been able to resist marking those bundles. Mrs Thorpe plonked their Alfie on the counter while she paid her bill. Alfie swung his short legs in their sturdy boots, puffing away at a fag end, though he was only three. Between drags, he sucked his mother’s breast, puffing and sucking alternately, peering round the white curve at Prior, who was a Big Boy and therefore an object of interest and suspicion. It was late in the afternoon. Mrs Thorpe would be far gone. Jugs of best bitter were her favourite, chased down by sips of something medicinal that she kept in a flask fastened to her thigh with a home-made elastic garter. Whisky for the heart, brandy for the lungs, gin for the bladder. Alfie, guzzling away at his mother’s milk, looked contented, and well he might, since it could hardly have been less than 70 proof.

The past is a palimpsest, Prior thought. Early memories are always obscured by accumulations of later knowledge. He made himself walk to the counter again, this time remembering nothing but the moment, push his sweaty coin across the cool marble, and ask, ‘What can I have for a ha’penny?’

There was a white apron round Beattie’s waist with two pockets, stained black from the coins inside them. These coins smelled very strong when she emptied them on to the table to count them, a dark, dank, heavy smell.

‘What can I have for a ha’penny?’

Beattie’s voice, patient as if she hadn’t said all this a million times before, reeled off the list: aniseed ball, sherbert delight, liquorice stick, a packet of thousand-and-ones, and finally — his favourite because it lasted so long — a gob-stopper.

Towers’s eye lay in the palm of his hand. ‘What am I supposed to do with this gob-stopper?’ Logan’s hand reached out, grasped his shaking wrist, and tipped the eye into the bag.

Don’t think about it, he told himself. It was too late in the day to risk thinking about that.

He had no memory of Beattie’s face. She’d been an object then, a mountain, the side of a house, vast, taken for granted, not a person to whom you could attach adjectives. Though he could attach them readily enough now: lively, opinionated, intelligent, uneducated, foul-mouthed, impulsive, generous, quick-tempered, kind. Prior’s mother, his gentle and, it had to be said, genteel mother, hated Beattie Roper, though, when his mother became ill with suspected tuberculosis, it was to Beattie he’d been sent. That must have been his father’s decision.

For almost a year, when he was five or six years old, he’d lived with Beattie and played with her two daughters, Winnie, who was now in Leeds Prison, and Hettie, who’d been charged with conspiracy to murder, but acquitted. He’d been the baby, when they played houses; the customer, when they played shops; the pupil, when they played schools; the patient, when they played nurses; and all these roles had been extremely boring, except, now and then, the role of patient.

They’d played under the big table in the kitchen, because its green tasselled cloth hanging down all round them made a separate world. Particularly on wash days, when the house was invaded by smells of soda, Dolly Blue and wet wool, and the wind blew grit in from the yard, the table was their refuge. Between the green tassels they looked out at adult boots coming and going, and felt a pleasant sense of power.

Mr Carker’s boots. Mr Carker was secretary of the Independent Labour Party, and sometimes he and Beattie sat together at the table, discussing politics. These discussions had been, in every sense, above Prior’s head, though he remembered one remark of Mr Carker’s to the effect that the suffragettes simply exploited working-class women like Beattie. ‘It’s all very well, talking about sisterhood, but when they go home at night and drop their knickers, it’s somebody else’s job to pick them up.’

Probably it was the reference to dropping knickers that had made that particular remark stick in his mind. Perhaps it excited Mr Carker too, for shortly afterwards his boot crept along the floor and brushed against Beattie’s foot. She moved her foot. The boot followed, accompanied this time by a hand on her knee, a hand that just lifted the green tassels. Prior looked round and saw Hettie’s stricken face. It was a house with no father, and all the children, but particularly Hettie, were passionate in defence of their mother. For the first time in his life, perhaps, Prior was aware of another’s pain. Stealthily, he reached out and tied Mr Carker’s boot laces together, so that when, finally, he got up to go, he tripped and measured his full length on the floor.

The disciplining of children must have been the only subject on which Beattie held no advanced views. She’d hauled him out of his hiding place, tipped him over her knee and tanned his arse; and he’d clenched his teeth, divided between a blaze of joy that he was suffering for Hettie’s sake, and regret that the suffering should not have taken a more dignified form.

Major Lode, interviewing him for his present post, had leant across the table and said, ‘You see, you know these people, don’t you?’

Prior took a last drag of his cigarette, leant over the edge of the bed and stubbed it out in the ashtray. Yes.

He drew the curtains and got inside the sheets. He was afraid to go to sleep, but he had learnt, from long experience, that to keep himself awake at night only to fall asleep shortly before dawn made for the worst nightmares of all. He lay and stared at the ceiling, unblinking, until his eyelids prickled, then rolled over on to his side and brought his knees up to his chin.

He was back in the winter landscape, with a sound like wind blowing, only it was not the wind, but the sound of emptiness. A hawk flew over and he watched its shadow on the snow. They were marching back. His boot went through thin ice into freezing mud. The ice meshed out round his foot, white opaque lines radiating out so that he stood at the centre of a frozen web.

The cold half woke him. He found his leg outside the covers and brought it back inside, but now his whole body was cold. He was lying naked on a stone floor. Because his sleep was light, he knew he was dreaming, and he knew also that he had to wake up before something worse happened. He turned and saw the eye watching him, an eye not painted but very much alive. The white glittered in the moonlight. The same noise of emptiness he’d heard in France had followed him into the cell. He stared at the eye, and then, by a supreme effort of will, forced himself to sit up.

Sweating and clammy, he reached down for his cigarettes, and remembered he’d left them on the desk. He got up and felt his way along, not wanting to switch on the light because the horror of the nightmare was heavy on him, and he was afraid of what the glare might reveal. He was standing by the desk, in the half-darkness, dabbing his hands among his papers, searching for the cigarette packet, when he heard a chuckle and spun round. The eye was watching him from the door. He shrank back against the table, his hands groping behind him for the paper-knife. His fingers closed round the hilt and he sprang at the door, stabbing the eye again and again, his naked body spattered with blood and some thick whitish fluid that did not drip but clung to his belly, and quickly chilled. Then, exhausted, he slipped to the floor and lay there, sobbing, and the sound of his sobbing woke him up.

At first he simply stared at the door. Only when he was sure there was no eye did he start to relax and take in the strangeness of his position. The fingertips of his right hand patted the cold oilcloth, as if by touching it he could make it turn into a mattress and sheets. No, he was out of bed, lying on the floor. Nightmare, he thought, drawing a deep breath. He started to pull himself up, feeling a wetness in his groin, and, as he did so, his splayed fingers touched the knife. So that had been real. With a spasm of revulsion, he struck out at it and sent it skittering across the floor.

FIVE

The aerodrome consisted of two runways and a straggle of low buildings set in one corner of a field.

Rivers and Dundas got out of the car and stood looking at the sky: clear, except for one bank of dark cloud away on the horizon.

‘Good weather for it, anyway,’ Dundas said.

It was possible to tell he was frightened, but only because Rivers had been observing him closely for weeks. Dundas suffered from abnormal reactions in the air. Where healthy pilots experienced no sensation at all, Dundas reported feeling his head squashed into his body, or a loss of movement in his legs. He suffered from nausea. More seriously still, he had more than once experienced the preliminary stages of a faint. After every physiological test possible had proved negative, he had been handed over to Rivers for psychological observation. Unfortunately, Rivers was making no progress. Dundas seemed to be exactly the sort of cheerful, likable, slightly irresponsible young man he’d grown accustomed to dealing with in the Royal Flying Corps. Apart from flying, his main interests were amateur dramatics, music and girls, not necessarily in that order. He appeared, in fact, to be entirely normal. Until he got into an aeroplane. And they were here to do just that.

‘We seem to have arrived a bit early,’ Dundas said. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

The canteen was empty, except for a group of young fliers gathered round a table in the far corner, most of them in their twenties, one ginger-haired lad noticeably younger. Dundas went off to get the tea, and Rivers sat down at a table whose entire surface was covered with interlocking rings of tea stains. The young men were reading newspapers, chatting in a desultory fashion about the events of the day: the massive German advance, Maud Allan’s libel action against Pemberton Billing, the cult of the clitoris. A dark-haired young man held up a photograph of Maud Allan. ‘If she ever fancies anything bigger she’s welcome to knock on my door.’

‘She’d not notice the difference,’ somebody said.

A good-natured scuffle. Then a new voice: ‘Did you hear the one about Lord Albemarle? Went into the Turf, and said…” A desiccated, aristocratic bleat. ‘“Keep reading in the papers about this Greek chap, Clitoris. Anybody know who he is?”’ They all laughed, the younger lad with braying anguish; it was immediately clear his confusion at least equalled Lord Albemarle’s.

Dundas came back with the tea and two very greasy doughnuts.

‘Not for me, thank you,’ Rivers said, patting his stomach. ‘I have to be careful.’

Dundas nodded uncomprehendingly. Obviously duodenal ulcers and having to be careful were a million miles away from his experience. He ate both doughnuts with every sign of relish. Rivers sipped his tea and tried not to think that if Dundas’s medical records were anything to go by (my God, they’d better be!) he could expect to see the doughnuts again before long.

They didn’t talk much. Dundas was too tense, and Rivers respected his need for silence. When they’d finished, they walked across to the hangars together. Dundas disappeared inside the first hangar for a moment and came back carrying flying helmets, jackets and gauntlets. Rivers put a jacket on and followed Dundas across to the aeroplane.

‘Here she is,’ Dundas said, patting the fuselage. ‘Terrible old bucket. Can’t think why they’ve given us this one.’

Because it’s the one they can best afford to lose, Rivers thought. He’d intended this reflection as a small private joke, but instead it brought him face to face with his own fear.

‘Right,’ Dundas said. ‘If you’d like to hop in.’

Rivers climbed into the observer’s seat and fastened the harness. Dundas bent over him to check the buckles. A faint smile acknowledged the reversal of the usual caring role. ‘All right?’ he said.

‘Fine.’

‘You’ve done a lot of flying, haven’t you?’

‘I don’t know about a lot. Some.’

‘But you’ve done spins and loops and things?’

‘Yes.’

Dundas smiled. ‘That’s all right, then.’

Something about Dundas’s smile held Rivers’s attention. Suddenly, he felt certain Dundas was withholding something, even perhaps concealing it. Not malingering. In fact, rather the reverse. He thought Dundas might be minimizing his symptoms. It wasn’t a good moment for that particular perception to strike.

Dundas pulled his helmet on, climbed in, exchanged a whole series of shouts and waves with the mechanics. The engine stuttered, began to roar, and then they were taxiing away from the hangar.

Rivers looked round him, at hedgerows thick with blossom, a sky tumultuous with rising larks; then he snapped his goggles into place, and the splendour contracted to a muddy pond.

He was now definitely afraid. The situation might almost be regarded as a small experiment, with himself as the subject. The healthy reaction to fear in a normal human being is the undertaking of some manipulative activity designed to avoid or neutralize the danger. Provided such activity is available, the individual ought to be unaware of feeling fear. But no such activity was available. Like every other man who sits in the observer’s seat, he was entirely dependent on his pilot. And what a pilot. He had long believed that the essential factor in the production of war neurosis among the two most vulnerable groups, observers and trench soldiers, was the peculiarly passive, dependent and immobile nature of their experience. It isn’t often that a hypothesis conceived in the scientist’s cortex is confirmed by his gut, but his gut certainly seemed to be doing its best to prove this one. He bit his lips to control the pain and concentrated hard on the back of Dundas’s head, at the wisps of reddish-gold hair escaping from beneath the helmet, the pink neck, the edge of white scarf, the brown leather of his flying jacket, scuffed and scarred with wear.

‘ALL RIGHT?’ Dundas yelled.

They had reached their take-off position. The engine raced. Rivers felt himself pushed hard back against the vibrating seat. The plane lifted, bumped, lifted again, and then climbed steeply away from the huddle of buildings.

He looked over the side, shielding his mouth from the wind. The countryside stretched below them, grey striations of lanes and roads, the glitter of a pond, great golden swathes of laburnum, a line of hedgerow white with blossom, blue smoke from a bonfire drifting across a field of green wheat.

A movement from Dundas brought him back to the task in hand. Dundas was making a spinning movement with his hand. The comforting roar of the engine faltered, then became an infuriated mosquito whine as the plane started to spin. Dundas’s eyes were fixed on his instruments. Rivers watched the sun revolve in a great spiral round the falling plane. Abruptly, the sun vanished, and the green fields rushed up to meet them. Dundas pulled on the stick, but something was wrong. The horizon was tilted. Rivers leant forward and tilted his hand to the left. Slowly the horizon straightened.

Dundas had lost his sense of the horizontal. Already.

‘HOW WAS IT?’ Rivers yelled.

Dundas waved his hand in an incomprehensible gesture, then put one hand on top of his head and pressed repeatedly, indicating he’d felt his head being squashed into his body. He made the spinning movement again. Rivers shook his head and made a looping movement. After a moment’s hesitation, Dundas’s thumb went up.

The plane banked steeply as Dundas turned and made for the city. He was not meant to do this, and Rivers guessed he was trying to make the flight last as long as possible. In a short time he saw beneath him the sulphurous haze of London. This was the view seen by the German pilots as they came in on moonlit bombing raids, following the silver thread of the Thames, counting bridges, watching for the bulge of the Isle of Dogs.

Rivers tapped Dundas on the shoulder. Dundas turned round and nodded. So much of his face was hidden by the goggles it was impossible to read his expression. Rivers sat back and again concentrated on his own sensations. After the fifth loop he began to feel he was loose in his seat, a reaction he remembered from other flights and knew to be a frequent, though not universal, reaction of healthy fliers. They again came out with one wing down. Dundas leant over the side and retched, but didn’t vomit. Rivers jerked his thumb at the ground, but Dundas ignored him.

With no idea at all now which manoeuvre to expect, Rivers sat back and tried to relax as the plane climbed. The vast blue haze of London fell away beneath the left wing-tip. Higher and colder. Wisps of cloud hid the sun; columns of shadows flitted rapidly across the city. Rivers felt calm, suddenly. There were worse ways to die, and he’d seen most of them.

Again the engine faltered, giving way to the mosquito whine as the plane began to fall. Dundas came out of the spin, white, giddy, confused and clearly finding it difficult to focus on his instruments. Rivers could see him peering at them. He yelled, ‘DOWN!’ and jerked his finger at the ground. Dundas leant out of the plane and was sick.

They had a bumpy landing, though not worse than many others Rivers had experienced. After the plane had taxied to a halt, Dundas stayed in his seat for a few moments before jumping down. He staggered slightly and held on to the wing. Rivers climbed down and immediately went up to him.

‘I’m all right,’ Dundas said, letting go of the wing.

Two mechanics were walking towards the plane. Dundas turned to them and made some comment on the flight. The three went into a huddle, and Rivers walked to one side. Dundas was smiling and talking cheerfully, but then Dundas was a very good actor.

When he came across to join Rivers, he said, ‘Sorry about that.’

‘Shall we go and sit down?’

Dundas looked towards the canteen, but shook his head. ‘I think I’d just as soon get back, if you don’t mind.’

Rivers’s legs were trembling as they walked back to the car. He was angry with himself for getting into such a state — angry, ashamed and inclined to pretend he’d been less frightened than he knew he had been. He observed this reaction, thinking he was in the state of fatigue and illness that favours the development of an anxiety neurosis, and behaving in the way most likely to bring it about. He was doing exactly what he told his patients not to do: repressing the awareness of fear.

In the car going back to the hospital, Dundas examined his reactions minutely. During the first spin, in addition to the squashed head feeling, he’d felt sick. ‘Not so much sick. More a sort of bulge in my throat. And then during the loop I felt really sick. And faint. The sky went dark.’

‘And in the last spin?’

‘That was terrible. I felt really confused.’

After leaving Dundas in the hospital entrance hall, Rivers went into his room and threw his cap and cane on to the chair. Henry Head came in a moment later. ‘How was he?’

‘Bad.’

‘Sick?’

‘And faint.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘No, I seem to be suffering from terminal stiff upper lip. You know the way I go on about not repressing fear? What did I do?’ He spread his hands.

‘It’s the Public School Factor, Will. We’re all too well trained.’

‘It’s the Silly Old Fool Factor. Too many young men around.’

Head smiled. ‘No, well, I know what you mean. One doesn’t want to seem totally decrepit.’

‘I had this sudden sense that Dundas was hiding something. And that didn’t —’

‘He is.’

Rivers looked surprised.

‘He’s got a bottle of Bumstead’s Gleet Cure in his locker.’

‘Has he?’

‘Sister Mitchell noticed it. Syphilis wouldn’t make him go faint, mind.’

‘Lying awake worrying about it might.’ Rivers sat in silence for a moment. ‘Well. Redirects the investigation a bit, doesn’t it?’

‘Makes it a helluva lot simpler.’ Head dropped into a sergeant-major’s baritone. ‘“Show us yer knob, lad.” Are you coming to dinner?’

‘Yes, and then I must dash. I’m supposed to be seeing somebody at eight.’

Rivers had the top floor of a large house near Hampstead Heath. The house was within a hundred yards of the great gun, and there were times when its proximity showed in every line of his face.

Prior arrived exactly on time, and was about to ring the bell when he saw Rivers walking rapidly up the hill.

‘Have you rung?’ Rivers asked, getting out his key.

‘No, I saw you coming.’

Rivers opened the door and stood aside to let Prior in. Mrs Irving, Rivers’s landlady, was hovering in the hall, wanting to complain about the Belgian refugees on the second floor whose failure to understand the extent of the food shortages was making her life a misery. When that subject was exhausted, there were the raids to be discussed. Wasn’t it scandalous they’d been kept awake all night and not a word about it in The Times? Then there was her daughter, who’d been summoned back from France, ostensibly because her mother was ill, in fact because she was incapable of sorting out her servant problems. Girls kept leaving her employ on the flimsy excuse that they could earn five times as much in the munition factories. There was no accounting for modern girls, she said. And Frances was so moody.

At last Mrs Irving was called away, by Frances presumably, at any rate by a young woman with braided hair who gave Rivers a cool, amused, sympathetic smile before she closed the door of the drawing-room.

‘I hope she’s letting you live rent free,’ Prior said.

They walked up the stairs together. Rivers paused on the second floor to look down into the garden. The laburnum, he said, was particularly fine. Prior didn’t believe in this sudden interest in horticulture. The pause was to give him time to get his breath back. His chest was tighter than it had been on his last visit, and Rivers would have noticed that. Damn Rivers, he thought, knowing the response was utterly unfair. Whenever he needed Rivers he became angry with him, often to the point where he couldn’t talk about what was worrying him. He mustn’t let that happen tonight.

Normally Prior took a long time to get started, but this evening he was no sooner settled in his chair than he launched into an account of his visit to Mrs Roper. What emerged most vividly was the eye in the door. He reverted to this again and again, how elaborately painted it had been, even to the veins in the iris, how the latrine bucket had been placed within sight of it, how it was never possible to tell whether a human eye was looking through the painted one or not. It was clear from Prior’s expression, from his whole demeanour, that he was seeing the eye as he spoke. Rivers was always sensitive to the signs of intense visualization in other people, since this was a capacity in which he himself was markedly deficient, a state of affairs which had once seemed simple and now seemed very complicated indeed. He switched his attention firmly back to Prior, asked a few questions about his previous relationship with Mrs Roper, then listened intently to his account of the nightmare. ‘Whose eye was it?’ he asked, when Prior had finished.

Prior shrugged. ‘I don’t know. How should I know?’

‘It’s your dream.’

Prior drew a deep breath, reluctant to delve into a memory that could still make his stomach heave. ‘I suppose Towers is the obvious connection.’

‘Had you been thinking about that?’

‘I remembered it when I was in the cell with Beattie. I… I actually saw it for a moment. Then later I remembered I used to go and buy gob-stoppers from Beattie’s shop.’ He paused. ‘I don’t know whether you remember, but when I picked up Towers’s eye, I said, “What shall I do with this gob-stopper?”’

‘I remember.’

A long silence.

Rivers said slowly, ‘When one eye reminded you of the other, was that just the obvious connection? I mean, because they were both eyes?’

Prior produced one of his elaborate shrugs. ‘I suppose so.’

Silence.

‘I don’t know. It was in the prison, but later… I don’t know. I knew I was going to have a bad night. You you you just get to know the the feeling. I felt sorry for Beattie. And then I started thinking about William — that’s the son — and… you know, naked in his cell, stone floor, snow outside…’ He shook his head. ‘It was… quite powerful, and I… I think I resented that. I resented having my sympathies manipulated. Because it’s nothing, is it?’ A burst of anger. ‘I lost three men with frost-bite. And so I started thinking about that, about those men and… It was a way of saying, “All right, William, your bum’s numb. Tough luck.” Though that’s irrelevant, of course.’ He smiled wryly. ‘It isn’t a suffering competition.’

‘And then you thought about Towers?’

‘Yes. But not in the same way as… as as the other men, I mean, I wasn’t focusing on the horror of it. It was… I don’t know.’ He held out his hand to Rivers, palm upwards. ‘A sort of talisman. Do you know what I mean? If that happens to you…’ The outstretched hand started to shake. ‘There’s no possible room for doubt where your loyalties are.’

Prior looked down at his shaking hand, and seemed to become aware of it for the first time. He swallowed. ‘Sorry, will you excuse me a moment?’

He crashed out of the room. Doors opened and closed as he tried to locate the bathroom. Rivers got up to help, then heard retching, followed by a gush of water, followed by more retching. Prior wouldn’t want to be seen in that condition. He sat down again.

It was obviously his day to cope with people being sick.

He rested his chin on his clasped hands, and waited. It had taken two months’ hard work at Craiglockhart to get Prior to the point where he remembered picking up Towers’s eye, and even then he’d had to resort to hypnosis, something he always did with great reluctance. Prior had arrived at the hospital mute, rebellious, possibly the least co-operative patient Rivers had ever encountered, and with a very marked tendency to probe. To insist on a two-way relationship. He had accused Rivers of being merely ‘a strip of empathic wallpaper’ and asked him what the hell use he thought that was. Later this had became something of a joke between them, but the probing went on, combined with a sort of jeering flirta-tiousness that had been surprisingly difficult to handle.

Prior’s nightmares had been dreadful. He’d always insisted he couldn’t remember them, though this had been obviously untrue. Eventually, he’d told Rivers in a tone of icy self-disgust that his dreams of mutilation and slaughter were accompanied by seminal emissions.

Prior came back into the room. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said casually, settling back into his chair.

He hadn’t reached the bathroom in time. The front of his tunic was wet where he’d had to sponge it down. He noticed Rivers noticing the stain, and his face tightened. He’s going to make me pay for seeing that, Rivers thought. No point questioning the logic of it. That was Prior. ‘Would you like a break?’ Rivers asked, trying to relieve the tension.

Prior nodded.

‘Let’s go by the fire.’

They left the desk and settled themselves in armchairs. Rivers took off his glasses and swept a hand down across his eyes.

‘Tired?’

‘Slightly. As Mrs Irving was saying, we had our own personal aid-raid last night. I suppose somebody panics and starts firing.’

A pause while they stared into the fire. Prior said, ‘I bumped into a patient of yours the other night. Charles Manning.’

Rivers had started to clean his glasses. ‘I umm —’

‘Can’t talk about another patient. No, of course you can’t. He talked, though. You know, when he mentioned your name I thought “war neurosis” — well, he does tend to twitch a bit, doesn’t he? — but no, apparently not. Met a handsome soldier. Nasty policeman’s hand on shoulder. What do you know, suddenly he requires treatment. What was the…? Henry Head, that was it. “Henry Head can cure sodomites.” So off he goes to Head, who says, “Sorry, like to help. Snowed under.” With sodomites, presumably. The mind does rather boggle doesn’t it? “Why don’t you try Rivers?”’ Prior waited. When there was no response he went on, ‘Manning was surprisingly open about his little tastes. Cameronians with sweaty feet, apparently. Touching, isn’t it, how some people develop a real devotion to the Highland regiments? I wonder, Rivers…’ Prior was making little smacking movements with his lips, a don worrying away at some particularly recondite problem. ‘How would you set about “curing” somebody of fancying Cameronians with sweaty feet?’

Rivers said coldly, ‘I should apply carbolic soap to the feet.’

‘Really? A leap ahead of Dr Freud there, I think.’

Rivers leant forward. ‘Stop this. Dr Head is “snowed under” by young men who’ve had large parts of their brains shot away. In a rational society, a man who spent his days like that wouldn’t have to spend his evenings, his own time, remember, with men who could perfectly well be left to get on with their own lives in their own way. The fact that he’s prepared to do it is a tribute to Head.’

‘He’s a friend of yours?’

‘Yes.’

‘I suppose he could refuse to take them?’ Prior said.

‘No, he can’t do that. Two years’ hard labour, remember?’

A short silence. ‘I’m sorry.’

Rivers spread his hands.

But Prior wouldn’t let go. ‘All the same there must be times when one patient actually does need to talk about another. I mean, it must be obvious the conversation about the Cameronians could only have taken place in bed?’

‘The thought had occurred.’

‘Well, suppose I need to talk about it? Suppose I’m racked with guilt?’

‘Are you?’

‘The point is —’ Abruptly, Prior gave up. ‘No. I don’t seem to feel sexual guilt, you know. At all, really. About anything.’

Not true, Rivers thought. Prior had felt enormous guilt about the nocturnal emissions that accompanied his nightmares. Guilt about an involuntary action.

‘I used to,’ Prior said.

‘When was that?’

‘When I was twelve. Where we lived there was a young man who used to be wheeled around on a trolley. I don’t know what was wrong with him, tuberculosis of the spine, something like that, something terrible. And the trolley creaked, so you could always hear it coming. And he was pointed out to us as an illustration of what happened if you indulged in self-abuse.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Scoutmaster. Mr Hailes. He actually said what came out was spinal fluid. And of course you’ve only got a limited supply of that, and mine was going down pretty fast. I used to lie awake and try not to do it, and I’d get more and more frightened. Unfortunately, there was only one thing that took my mind off the fear. So I did it again. And all the time this creaking trolley was getting nearer and nearer. And we’d been told the first signs of collapse were pallor and shadows under the eyes. And I used to get out of bed in the morning and look in the mirror, and what do you know? Pallor. Shadows under the eyes.’ He laughed. ‘It’s funny now, but at one time I actually thought about suicide.’

‘What got you out of it?’

Prior smiled. ‘Not what. Who. Paddy MacDowell.’

‘The man who organized the Sheffield strike?’

The smile broadened. ‘Yes, at a later stage. He was otherwise engaged at the time. “Bashing his bishop.” That’s what we used to call it. Mac’s bishop got bashed oftener than anybody else’s. He used to more or less pull it out and do it in public — and he was taller and stronger than any of us. So that planted the first seed of doubt. And then Hailes said the way to purity was to keep a glass of cold water by your bed, and then when temptation struck, you could plunge “the Inflamed Organ” — he always called it that — into the water. Well, I relayed this to Mac. Mac was common, he didn’t go to Scouts — and he said, “But if it’s stiff how do you get it into the glass without spilling the water?” And I suddenly had this picture of poor bloody Hailes standing there with his limp “organ” in a glass of water and I just knew he was talking rubbish. Poor little sod, he must’ve forgotten what an erection looked like. Anyway, after that I gave up on guilt. I think I got through a lifetime’s supply in six months.’

‘Was it a close friendship? With MacDowell?’

‘You mean, did we —’

‘No. I—’

‘Yes, it was close. We were that age, I suppose.’

Prior was looking much more relaxed. ‘Do you want to go on?’ Rivers asked.

A slight hesitation. ‘No, but I think I’d better.’ For a while he didn’t speak, then, measuring the words with movements of his steepled fingertips, he said, ‘Dreams are attempts to resolve conflict. Right? Well, I can’t see any conflict in this one.’

‘You stabbed somebody in the eye.’

‘Rivers. It was a door.’

‘The eye was alive.’

‘Yes.’

‘So why do you say there was no conflict?’

‘Because I was so identified with William or Beattie or… I don’t know. William, probably, because I was naked. And I was attacking what seemed to me the most awful feature of their situation, which is the eye. The constant surveillance. So I don’t see that there’s any conflict. I mean it might be very inconvenient in real life but in the dream there was no doubt whose side I was on. Theirs.’

Rivers waited. When it was clear Prior could offer nothing more he said, ‘You say the worst feature of their situation is the eye?’

‘Yes.’

‘The constantly being spied on?’

‘Yes.’

Rivers asked gently, ‘In that meeting with Mrs Roper, who was the spy?’

‘I —’ Prior’s mouth twisted. ‘I was.’

Another pause. Rivers prompted. ‘So?’

‘So,’ Prior said in a disgusted singsong, jabbing with his index finger, ‘“eye” was stabbing myself in the “I”. And God knows one wouldn’t want a reputation for puns like that!’

A pause. Rivers asked, ‘What do you think about that? Does it seem…’

‘It’s possible, I suppose. I hate what I do. And I suppose I probably felt I was in a false position. Well, obviously I did, I’d have to be mad not to.’

‘I want you to do something for me,’ Rivers said. ‘I want you to write down any dreams you have that are as… as bad as this one. Just record them. Don’t try to interpret. And send them to me. I’ll be seeing you again on—’

‘No, I’m sorry, I can’t. It’ll have to be the following week. If that’s all right? I’m going to see Hettie Roper.’

‘Back to Salford? Where will you be staying?’

‘At home.’ He pulled a face. ‘Yes, I know. How can I stay anywhere else?’

Rivers nodded. He was remembering a visit of Prior’s parents to Craiglockhart. In one afternoon they’d undone every slight sign of progress and precipitated an asthmatic attack. ‘Does your father know what you’re doing? I mean, does he know what the job involves?’

‘My God, I hope not.’ Prior shifted restlessly. ‘This is a dirty little war, Rivers. I can honestly say I’d rather be in France.’

‘Yes. I’m sure you would.’

Prior gave him a sharp look. ‘You’re worried, aren’t you? Why? Because I’m going home?’

‘No, not particularly.’

‘Oh, I see. Yes. It was a suicide dream.’ His expression changed. ‘You needn’t worry. If anybody comes a cropper over this one, it will not be me.’

He looked quite different, suddenly: keen, alert, cold, observant, detached, manipulative, ruthless. Rivers realized he was seeing, probably for the first time, Prior’s public face. At Craiglockhart he’d been aggressive and manipulative, but always from a position of comparative helplessness. At times he’d reminded Rivers of a toddler clinging to his father’s sleeve in order to be able to deliver a harder kick on his shins. Now, briefly, he glimpsed the Prior other people saw: the Lodes, the Ropers, the Spragges, and it came as a shock. Prior was formidable.

SIX

Against a yellow backcloth a woman draped in brilliant green veils writhed and twisted. She looked like an exotic lizard or a poisonous snake. That, apparently, had been Wilde’s intention. Robert Ross had been telling them about it before the performance, recalling a day in Paris, Wilde darting across the boulevards to look in shop windows, asking, ‘What about that?’ or ‘Or perhaps she should be naked except for the jewels?’ Yellow and green was his colour scheme, though Wilde could not have foreseen what, for Charles Manning, was its most disturbing feature: that the yellow was the exact shade of munition girls’ skins. Others wouldn’t notice that, of course. It only struck him because one of his duties at the Ministry was to serve as the military member on a committee set up to inspect the health and safety standards of munitions factories. One saw row after row of such girls, yellow-skinned, strands of ginger hair escaping from under their green caps, faces half hidden by respirators.

Ross had been quite interesting on Wilde’s plans for Salome, rather more interesting than the performance so far. The most startling piece of information was that Wilde himself had once played Salome, which did rather boggle the imagination, since in photographs he looked far from sylph-like, even by the normal standards of prosperous middle-aged men. Manning directed his attention back to the stage. Since he’d made the effort to attend — and it had been an effort, he was feeling very far from well — he ought at least to give the play a chance, particularly since it had obviously meant a great deal to Wilde. Iokanaan’s head had been brought in on a charger and Salome was kneeling, hands outstretched towards it. Manning felt an unexpected spasm of revulsion, not because the head was horrifying, but because it wasn’t. Another thing Wilde couldn’t have foreseen: people in the audience for whom severed heads were not necessarily made of papier mâché.

Salome began to fondle the head. ‘Ah! thou wouldst not suffer me to kiss thy mouth, Iokanaan. Well! I will kiss it now. I will bite it with my teeth as one bites a ripe fruit. Yes, I will kiss thy mouth, Iokanaan. I said it: did I not say it? I said it. Ah! I will kiss it now.’

Manning was bored. If he were honest all this meant nothing to him. He could see what Wilde was doing. He was attempting to convey the sense of a great passion constricted, poisoned, denied legitimate outlets, but none the less forced to the surface, expressed as destruction and cruelty because it could not be expressed as love. It was not that he thought the theme trivial or unworthy or out of date — certainly not that — but the language was impossible for him. France had made it impossible.

He’d only to think for a second of the stinking yellow mud of the salient, that porridge in which the lumps were human bodies, or parts of them, for an impassable barrier to come between his mind and these words.

A line of men in gas masks clumps along the duckboards. Ahead of the marching column what looks like a lump of mud sticks to the edge of the track. Closer, it turns out to be a hand. Clumping feet. His own breathing harsh inside the respirator, and then wriggling worm-like across the mud, a voice, sly, insinuating, confidential: ‘Where’s Scudder? Where’s Scudder? Where’s—’

On stage another question was being asked: ‘But wherefore dost thou not look at me, Iokanaan? Thine eyes that were so terrible, so full of rage and scorn, are shut now. Wherefore are they shut?’

He’s dead, for Christ’s sake, Manning thought. His knee had gone into spasm, and he was in acute pain. He glanced sideways at Ross, whose gaze was fixed on the stage, registering every nuance of the performance. He looked ill. Even in this golden reflected light, he looked ill. Oh, God, Manning thought, I wish this was over.

At last Herod cried, Kill that woman! and the soldiers rushed towards Salome, daughter of Herodias, and crushed her beneath their shields.

A moment’s silence, then the applause burst out and Maud Allan, impersonal beneath the heavy make-up, was curtsying, blowing kisses, smiling, the severed head dangling from one small white hand.

Ross was surrounded as soon as the lights went up. Manning pushed through and shook hands with him, added his murmur to the general buzz of congratulation, then pointed to his knee, and to the back of the auditorium. Ross nodded. ‘But you will come backstage?’

Pushing against the crowd to get to the top exit, Manning realized how painful his leg was. He opened the door marked — FIRE EXIT and went through. A stone corridor, dimly lit, stretched ahead of him, with none of the gilt and plush of the rest of the theatre. The men’s lavatory was at the end of the corridor, down a short flight of stairs. He peed, and then lingered over the business of washing his hands, wanting to postpone the moment when he would have to go backstage and swap the usual chit-chat. He would much rather have gone home. He was sleeping in his own house again, making the need to keep an eye on the builders his excuse, though he was glad of the chance to get away from the club. That silly incident, the newspaper clipping sent to his house, had disturbed him, simply because it could have been sent by anybody. He no longer felt he could trust people, members of his club, people he worked with. Even tonight his unwillingness to attend had not been primarily from fear of being seen with Ross — though that was a factor — so much as from simple reluctance to mix. Perhaps he was becoming too much of a recluse. Rivers certainly seemed to think he was.

He looked into the mirror. The overhead light cast deep shadows across his face.

Clumping feet. His own breathing harsh inside the respirator, and then wriggling worm-like across the mud, a voice, sly, insinuating, confidential:

‘What did you think of it?’

A man had come out of one of the cubicles and was staring at him in the mirror. His sudden silent appearance startled Manning. ‘Not for me, I’m afraid,’ Manning said, starting to dry his hands. ‘What did you think?’

The man, who had not moved, said abruptly, ‘I thought it was the mutterings of a child with a grotesquely enlarged and diseased clitoris.’

‘Did you? I just thought it had dated rather badly.’

‘No,’ the man said, as if his opinion were the only one that could carry weight. ‘It isn’t dated. In fact, in terms of what they’re trying to do, it’s an extremely clever choice.’

Manning looked into the mirror, determined not to be thrown by this ludicrous and yet curiously menacing figure. ‘You think enlarged clitorises are a modern problem, do you?’

‘All the discontents of modern women can be cured by clitoridectomy.’

‘It’s a bit more complicated than that, surely.’

It was as if he hadn’t spoken. The man came closer until his face was beside Manning’s in the glass. ‘There are women in this city whose clitorises are so grotesquely enlarged, so horribly inflamed, they can be satisfied ONLY BY BULL ELEPHANTS.’

Silence. Manning couldn’t think of anything to say.

‘Didn’t I see you in the box with Robert Ross?’

Manning turned to face him. Looking him straight in the eye and loading every word with significance, he said, ‘I am from the Ministry of Munitions.’ He touched the side of his nose, raised a cautionary finger and departed.

Walking along the corridor, he was surprised to find himself trembling. The man was a complete lunatic. One didn’t have to be Rivers to diagnose that, and yet he had been, in a rather horrible way, impressive.

In the crush of Maud Allan’s dressing-room, he accepted a glass of wine and edged his way towards Ross. ‘I’ve just met the most extraordinary man in the downstairs lavatory.’

‘Hmm.’

‘No, not “hmm.” Mad. He went on and on about diseased clitorises.’

‘It’ll be Captain Spencer. Grein said he’d seen him.’

‘Who is he?’ Manning asked.

‘The source of all the trouble, my dear. He’s the man who saw the Black Book. Who knows the names.’

‘But he’s mad.’

‘That won’t stop them believing him. The fact is…’ Ross looked around cautiously. ‘She shouldn’t have sued. I know I’m the last person to say that, but —’

‘What else could she have done?’

Ross shook his head. ‘Once they’re in court they can name anybody.’

‘Are they leaving you alone?’

‘No. I have a police officer more or less permanently stationed in the drawing-room. I’d offer the poor man a bed if I didn’t think it would be misinterpreted.’

When they left, twenty minutes later, Manning noticed Captain Spencer standing under a street lamp on the other side of the road, watching. Manning reached out to touch Ross’s sleeve, then thought better of it, and let his hand drop.

SEVEN

On the train to Manchester, Prior read the Roper correspondence.

Dear Winnie,

Don’t worry about me pet I am orlrite Hettie come home for Xmas and we had a good time even little Tommy purked up a bit and you no what he’s like you notice this new year there wasnt the same nonsense talked as there was last I think last year knocked the stuffing out of a lot of people except that bloody buggering Welsh windbag he dont change his tune much the poor lads

Hettie made me go to the sales with her cos she new I wanted a blowse there was a nice black one no trimings but Hettie says aw Mam your making yourself an old woman anyway you no Hettie I come away with a navy blue with a little yellow rose on it I think it looks orlrite cant take it back if it dont with it being in the sale we bumped into Mrs Warner you no her from the suffragettes and of corse she asked after you but she was only standoffish you could see her wanting to get away she says she thort to much was made of Xmas and turcy was a very dry meat I says well Ive never tasted it so I wouldnt no You no what Ronnie Carker used to say dont you theyre only mecking use of you, Beattie when they go home at night they dont even have to pick their nickers up mind you if Ronnie was there they wouldnt need to take them of either

As regards your late visitor you want to remember youve had a lot of worry with Alfs Mam being bad and then thier Ivy being so funny but whatever you do dont let it go past the fortnite YOU COME HOME otherwise youll end up with some bloody mucky cow with a neck you can plant taties in women like that do no end of damidge Ive seen bits of young lasses dragging themselves round years after

Did Alf get the letter I sent it on thursday but the post is very slow isnt it I spose its the backlog from Xmas if he did get it ask him to send me the stuff as soon as poss if he didn’t tell him not to worry Ill rite again I want it for a man who stopped here just before Xmas he needs it to do somethink a bit risky but only for him he doesnt no anythink about you and Alf so theres no danger of you getting dragged in Anyway wil close now hoping this finds you as it leaves me

Buckets of love

Mam

Dear Mam,

School again, dunno who’s more fed up, me or the kids. The hall roof sprang a leak during the holidays. No hope of getting it mended, of course, and it was blowing a gale today. Absolutely streaming down the panes and no lights on and Weddell rabbiting on about the Empire and how we must all tighten our belts and brace ourselves, though you don’t see him bracing himself much, and he couldn’t tighten his belt not with that belly on him. I just kept praying one of the drops from the ceiling was going to land on his bald pate, but no luck. And all the kids coughing like mad. One starts off and then they all start. So we got ‘Our glorious Empire…’ cough cough. ‘We must fight to the last man.’ cough cough ‘Our valiant lads…’ cough cough. Oh, and he’s worked out how many old boys are in the trenches. Quite a lot, which surprised me, I’d’ve thought they all had rickets. There’s rickets in my class. You know that very domed forehead they get? Once you know to look out for that you realize how much of it there is. And then we have to listen to all this puke about what we’re fighting for. Still, it’s better than it was before Christmas. I really did think I was going to throw up then. Peace on earth to men of goodwill, and how we were all showing goodwill by blowing up the Jerries and saving gallant little Belgium. I tried to tell Standard Six what gallant little Belgium got up to in the Congo, but he soon put a stop to that. I told him I was only doing it to compare a bad colonial regime with the splendid record of our glorious Empire, but I don’t think he believed me. He doesn’t trust me further than he could throw me and that wouldn’t be far. He’s put me on teaching the little ones this term and I don’t think that’s a coincidence either.

8’s been in touch. You know I’ve been worried sick about him ever since he got nabbed, but he says it’s not too bad. One of the lads had a beard and they shaved him with a cut-throat razor. He ended up pretty cut about, but it’s surprising what they can find to laugh at. He says he hasn’t seen our William but of course he wouldn’t with him being in solitary. It might be the last we hear, though, Mam, because he says the guard who smuggles the letters out is being moved.

One thing I have found out — from 10, you won’t know him — is the state of things in Etaples. That’s the big camp where they all get sent to train and he says he’s never seen anything like it. He says they treat the conscripts like shit. Men tied to posts for the least little thing with their arms above their heads. Doesn’t sound much, does it, but he says it’s agony. He says as sure as anything there’s going to be a blow up there. I hope so, I do hope so. A few officers shot by their own men, that’s all it’ll take, just the one little spark, and it’ll spread like wildfire. I know it will.

Haven’t heard anything from Mac. I try to keep busy, I’m running round like scalded cat half the time because I daren’t let myself think. The little ones are nice, though. Nobody’s got to them yet. I thought of a new nursery rhyme the other day.

Georgie Georgie, pudding and pie

Perhaps the girls’ll make him cry

Let’s keep our ringers crossed, eh?

You want to stock up on food, Mam. I know it’s difficult when you’ve got Tommy to feed, but if you get the chance put a few tins by. If it ever comes to coupons, conchies’ families’ll be at the back of the queue, if they get any at all.

Don’t worry about me, I’m all right. You think about yourself for a change,

Lots of love,

Hettie

P.S. If that bloody Mac doesn’t write soon I’ll bash his bloody head in.

Dear Ma,

Find the stuff you asked for enclosed. Tell your friend to follow the directions exactly. You will think me a softie I expect but I feel sorry for the dogs. If you get close enough to the poor brutes, I pity them. Dead in twenty seconds. Anyway, good luck. Reckon we’ll have peace by next Christmas? Here’s hoping,

Alf

P.S. Winnie says to say she came all right.

My darling Hettie,

You’ll be wondering why you haven’t heard sooner. Well, there’s been all hell let loose. Do you remember that lad with the hump on his back? Would insist on going in front of the tribunal instead of getting out of it on health grounds, which he certainly would have done. I’ve been trying to get him a passage to Ireland and eventually succeeded, but he was picked up just as he was getting on to the boat. The hump gave him away. We’d tried everything to hide it. Charlie suggested putting a dress on him and trying to make him look like a pregnant woman walking backwards, but I don’t know how you do that. Anyway, he’s back in Wandsworth, where they’re doing their best to flatten it for him no doubt. But it’s a nuisance because it means we have to lie low and that means everybody else has had their trips to the Emerald Isle postponed. It clogs the entire system up, and I lose patience, I’m afraid. I know individuals matter, but getting six or seven men across to Ireland isn’t going to stop the war. There’s only one way do that, and we both know what it is.

I’m staying with Charlie Greaves’s mother, DON’T WRITE. I know you know the address, but the trouble is you’re not the only one who knows it. All incoming post is opened. I don’t want you in this any deeper than you are already. And I’m not treating you like ‘the little woman’. There’s got to be people they don’t know about, otherwise there’s no safe houses, and no network to pass people on. Speaking of which, I sent a lad to your Mam just before Christmas. Did you happen to bump into him? I wondered afterwards if I’d done the right thing. Not that I’ve any doubts about him, he’s a good lad, keen as mustard, but he does get carried away. I don’t suppose it matters, but if you write to your Mam you might mention it, though I suppose he’ll have moved on by now. How is she, by the way? I wish we could get Tommy out of there. He’s not doing her any good at all.

I’m writing this in bed, which is a big brass one, masses of room, and bouncy. It’s tippling down outside and the wind’s blowing, and I’d give anything to have you in here with me. Soon.

All my love,

Mac

It seemed strange to Prior to be reading his friends’ private letters, though these had all — with the exception of Alf’s letter and its inconvenient mention of dogs — been read aloud at the Old Bailey. Even Hettie’s little nursery rhyme had boomed around No. 1 Court, as the Attorney-General argued it implied her involvement in the conspiracy. No, there was no privacy left in these letters; he was not violating anything that mattered. And yet, as the train thundered into a tunnel and the carriage filled with the acrid smell of smoke, Prior turned to face his doubled reflection in the window and thought he didn’t like himself very much. It was the last letter he minded: the gentleness of Mac’s love for Hettie exposed, first in open court and now again to him.

They’d found that letter in the pocket of Hettie’s skirt when they went to the school to arrest her.

EIGHT

Harry Prior was getting ready to go out. A clean shirt had been put to air on the clothes-horse in front of the fire, darkening and chilling the room. Billy Prior and his mother sat at the table, she with her apron on, he in shirt and braces, unable either to continue their interrupted conversation or to talk to Harry. He bent over the sink, lathering his face, blathering and spluttering, sticking his index fingers into his ears and waggling them. Then, after rinsing the soap off, he placed one forefinger over each nostril in turn and slung great gobs of green snot into the sink.

Prior, his elbow touching his mother’s side, felt her quiver fastidiously. He laced his fingers round the hot cup of tea and raised it to his lips, dipping his short nose delicately as he drank. How many times as a child had he watched this tense, unnecessary scene, sharing his mother’s disgust as he would have shared her fear of lightning. Now, as a man, in this over-familiar room — the tiles worn down by his footsteps, the table polished by his elbows — he thought he could see the conflict more even-handedly than he had seen it then. It takes a great deal of aggression to quiver fastidiously for twenty-eight years.

He thought, now, he could recognize his mother’s contribution to the shared tragedy. He saw how the wincing sensitivity of her response was actually feeding this brutal performance. He recalled her gentle, genteel, whining, reproachful voice going on and on, long after his father’s stumbling footsteps had jerked him into wakefulness; how he had sat on the stairs and strained to hear, until his muscles ached with the tension, waiting for her to say the one thing he would not be able to bear. And then the scuffle of running steps, a stifled cry, and he would be half way downstairs, listening to see if it was just a single slap, the back of his father’s hand sending his mother staggering against the wall, or whether it was one of the bad times. She never had the sense to shut up.

But then, he thought, his face shielded by the rim of his cup, one might equally say she had never been coward enough to refrain from speaking her mind for fear of the consequences. It would be very easy, under the pretext of ‘even-handedness’, to slip too far the other way and blame the violence in the home not on his brutality, but on her failure to manage it.

As a child, Prior remembered beating his clenched fist against the palm of the other hand, over and over again, saying, with every smack of flesh on flesh, PIG PIG PIG PIG. Obviously, his present attempt to understand his parents’ marriage was more mature, more adult, more perceptive, more sensitive, more insightful, more almost anything you cared to mention, than PIG PIG PIG PIG, but it didn’t content him, because it was also a lie: a way of claiming to be ‘above the battle’. And he was not above it: he was its product. He and she — elemental forces, almost devoid of personal characteristics — clawed each other in every cell of his body, and would do so until he died. ‘They fight and fight and never rest on the Marches of my breast,’ he thought, and I’m fucking fed up with it.

His father had got his jacket and cap on now, and stood ready to go out, looking at them with a hard, dry, stretched-elastic smile, the two of them together, as they had always been, waiting for him to go. ‘I’ll see you, then,’ he said.

There was no question, as in the majority of households there would have been, of father and son going for a drink together.

‘When will you be back?’ his mother asked, as she had always done.

‘Elevenish. Don’t wait up.’

She always waited up. Oh, she would have said there was the fire to damp down, tomorrow’s bait to be got ready, the table to be laid, the kettle to be filled, but all these tasks could have been done earlier. Prior, once more lowering his eyes to the cup, tried not to ask himself how many violent scenes might have been avoided if his mother had simply taken his father at his word and gone to bed. Hundreds? Or none? The man who spoke so softly and considerately now might well have dragged her out of bed to wait on him, when he staggered in from the pub with ten or eleven pints on board.

Leave it, he told himself. Leave it.

After his father had gone, Prior and his mother went on sitting at the table while they finished drinking their tea. She never mentioned France or Craiglockhart. She seemed to want to ignore everything that had happened to him since he left home. This was both an irritation and a relief. He asked after boys he’d known at school. This one was dead, that one wounded, Eddie Wilson had deserted. He remembered Eddie, didn’t he? There were deserters in the paper every week, she said. The policeman who found Eddie Wilson hiding in his mother’s coal-hole had been awarded a prize of five shillings.

‘There was a letter in the paper the other week,’ she said. ‘From Father Mackenzie. You remember him, don’t you?’

She found last week’s paper and handed it to him. He read the letter, first silently and then aloud, in a wickedly accurate imitation of Father Mackenzie’s liturgical flutings. ‘“There may be some among you, who, by reason of your wilful and culpable neglect of the Laws of Physical development, are not fit to serve your country, but —” Oh, for Christ’s sake!’ He thew the paper down. ‘Some among them carry their wilful and culpable neglect to the point of getting rickets. If he’s physically well developed it’s because his mother could afford to shove good food in his gob four times a day.’ And goodness wasn’t he well developed, Prior thought, remembering Father Mackenzie in his socks.

‘He just thinks a lot of people are shirking, Billy. You’ve got to admit he’s got a point.’

‘Do you know the height requirement for the Bantam regiments? Five feet. And do you know how many men from round here fail that?’

‘Billy, sometimes you sound exactly like your father.’

He picked up the paper and pretended to read.

‘There’s a lot of talk about a strike at the munition works. Your father’s all for it. Well, he would be, wouldn’t he?’

‘What’s it about?’

‘I don’t know.’ She groped for an unfamiliar word. ‘Dilution?’

‘Sounds right.’

‘Well, you can imagine your dad. “Bits of lasses earning more than I do.” “You mark my words,” he says, “after the war they’ll bring in unskilled labour. The missus’ll be going to work, and the man’ll be sat at home minding the bairn. It’s the end of craftsmanship. This war’s the Trojan horse, only they’re all too so-and-soing daft to see it.”’

Typical, Prior thought. However determined his father might be to raise the status of the working class as a whole, he was still more determined to maintain distinctions within it.

‘Oh, and he doesn’t like false teeth. That’s another thing,’ his mother went on. ‘Mrs Thorpe’s got them, you know. “Mutton dressed up as lamb,” he says. The way he goes on about her teeth you’d think she’d bit him. And then there’s Mrs Riley’s dustbin. Lobster tins, would you believe. “They were glad of a bit of bread and scrape before the war.”’

‘He’s got a funny idea of socialism.’

She shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t know. Things like women’s rights, he was never in favour of that.’

‘No.’

‘I remember him going on at Beattie Roper about that.’

A pause. ‘I went to see Beattie.’

She looked stunned. ‘In prison?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ve no call to go getting yourself mixed up in that.’

Faced with this sudden blaze of anger, he said, ‘I have to. It’s my job.’

‘Oh.’ She nodded, only half believing him.

‘How’s Hettie?’

His mother froze. ‘I wouldn’t know. I never see her.’

There had been a time, when he was seventeen, when he and Hettie Roper had been ‘walking out’, and, for once, the ‘quaint expression’ had been painfully accurate. ‘Walking’ was exactly what they did. And talking too, of course: passionate, heated talk, about socialism and women’s rights, spiritualism, Edward Carpenter’s ideas on male comradeship, whether there could be such a thing as free love. He remembered one day on the beach at Formby, sitting in the dunes as the sky darkened, and the sun hung low over the sea. All day he had been wanting to touch her, and had not dared do it. The sun lingered, tense and swollen, then spilled itself on to the water. ‘Come on,’ he said, picking up his jacket. ‘We’d better be getting back.’

That night, as on so many other nights, his mother had been waiting up for him. A book was open on her knee, but she hadn’t bothered to light the gas. And then the questions started. He realized then that she hated Hettie Roper. He didn’t know why.

‘Does she still run the shop?’ he asked.

‘No point. Nobody’d buy anything off her if she did.’

‘Does she work?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘So how does she live?’

A shrug. ‘She’s still got the allotment.’

‘I thought I’d pop round and see her.’

Silence.

Reminding himself he was no longer seventeen, Prior stood up and put his cup on the draining-board. ‘I won’t be long.’

Before the war, women used to sit on their steps in the warm evenings until after dark, postponing the moment when the raging bedbug must be faced, and taking pleasure in the only social contact they could enjoy without fear of condemnation. A woman seen chatting to her neighbours during the day quickly felt the weight of public disapproval. ‘Eeh, look at that Mrs Thorpe. Eleven kids. You’d think she could find herself summat to do, wouldn’t you?’ Now, looking up and down the street, Prior saw deserted doorsteps. Women were out and about, but walking purposefully, as if they had somewhere to go.

He supposed it was Mrs Thorpe’s name that came particularly to mind because she’d been one of the worst offenders, with her lard-white breasts the size of footballs, and Georgie or Alfie or Bobby worrying away at them, breaking off now and then for a drag on a tab end. Or perhaps, subconsciously, he’d already identified her, for there she was, coming towards him, divested of the clogs and shawl he’d always seen her in and wearing not merely a coat and hat but flesh-coloured stockings and shoes. It was scarcely possible the attractive woman with her should be Mrs Riley, but he didn’t know who else it could be.

They greeted him with cries of delight, hugging, kissing, standing back, flashing their incredible smiles. There was a saying round here: for every child born a tooth lost, and certainly, before the war, Mrs Thorpe and Mrs Riley had advertised their fecundity every time they opened their mouths. Now, in place of gaps and blackened stumps was this even, flashing whiteness. ‘What white teeth you have, Grandma,’ he said.

‘All the better to eat you with,’ said Mrs Riley. ‘And who are you calling Grandma?’

Mrs Thorpe asked, ‘How long have you got, love?’ And then, before he had time to answer, ‘Eeh, aren’t we awful, always asking that?’

‘Two days.’

‘Well, make the most of it. Don’t do anything we wouldn’t do, mind.’

He smiled. ‘How much scope does that give me?’

‘Fair bit, these days,’ said Mrs Riley.

He remembered, suddenly, that he’d sucked the breasts of both these women. His mother had been very ill for two months after his birth, and he’d been fed on tins of condensed milk from the corner shop, the same milk adults used in their tea. Babies in these streets were regularly fed on it. Babies fed on it regularly died. Then Mrs Thorpe and Mrs Riley had appeared, at that time, he supposed, lively young girls each with her own first baby at her breast. They had taken it in turns to feed him and, in so doing, had probably saved his life. He had known this a long time, but somehow, when Mrs Thorpe and Mrs Riley had been shapeless bundles in shawls, it had not registered. Now, though not easily discomforted, he felt himself start to blush.

‘Look at that,’ said Mrs Riley. ‘He’s courting, I can always tell.’

‘Are you courting?’ Mrs Thorpe asked.

‘Yes. Her name’s Sarah. Sarah Lumb.’

‘Good strong name that,’ said Mrs Riley.

‘She’s a good strong lass.’

‘Mebbe has need to be,’ said Mrs Riley, looking him up and down, speculatively. ‘Do y’ fancy a drink?’

‘No, I’d like to, but I’ve got to see somebody.’

‘Well, if you change your mind we’ll be in the Rose and Crown.’

And off they went, cackling delightedly, two married women going out for a drink together. Unheard of. And in his father’s pub too. No wonder the old bugger thought Armageddon had arrived.

Prior walked on, noticing everywhere the signs of a new prosperity. Meat might be scarce, bread might be grey, but the area was booming for all that. Part of him was pleased, delighted even. ‘Bits of lasses earning more than I do’? Good. Lobster tins in Mrs Riley’s dustbin? Good. He would have given anything to have been simply, unequivocally, unambiguously pleased. But he passed too many houses with black-edged cards in the window, and to every name on the cards he could put a face. It seemed to him the streets were full of ghosts, grey, famished, unappeasable ghosts, jostling on the pavements, waiting outside homes that had prospered in their absence. He imagined a fire blazing up, a window shaking its frame, a door gliding open, and then somebody saying, ‘Wind’s getting up. Do you feel the draught?’ and shutting the door fast.

The glow he’d felt in talking to Mrs Thorpe and Mrs Riley faded. He slipped down the back alley between Marsh Street and Gladstone Terrace, making for Tite Street and Beattie Roper’s shop, a journey he must have taken thousands of times as a child, a boy, a young man, but now he moved silently across the cobbles, feeling almost invisible. He was no more part of the life around him than one of those returning ghosts.

He came out at the top of Hope Street and started to walk down it. Hope Street ran parallel with the canal and was known, predictably, as No-Hope Street, because of the alacrity with which its inhabitants transferred themselves from one to the other. At least before the war they did. Suicides were rare now. The war had cheered everybody up.

Half way down, on the corner of Hope Street and Tite Street, was Beattie’s shop, its windows boarded up. He knocked loudly on the door.

‘You’ll not get an answer there, love,’ a woman said, passing by. He waited until she’d turned the corner, then knelt and peered through the letter-box. The counters were cleared, the floor swept clean. He called, ‘Hettie. It’s me, Billy.’ The door into the living-room stood open. He felt her listening. ‘Hettie, it’s me.’

She came at last, kneeling on her side of the door to check he was alone. There was a great rattling of bolts and chains, and she stood there, a thin, dark, intense woman, older than he remembered. No longer pretty.

‘Billy.’

‘I’ve been to see your mother.’

‘Yes. She wrote.’

A long hesitation, which told him immediately what he wanted to know. He took off his cap and stepped forward. Almost simultaneously, she stood aside and said, ‘Come in.’

The living-room was empty. Both doors, one to the scullery, the other to the stairs, were closed. He looked round the room, taking his time. A fire blazed in the grate. The kettle stood on the hob beside it. The table, with its green cloth, still took up most of the space, six empty chairs ranged neatly round it. Hettie followed his gaze, and he could see how changes she’d become accustomed to — the empty chairs — became strange again, and unbearable as she saw them through his eyes. ‘Oh, Billy,’ she said, and then she was in his arms and crying.

He cuddled her, lifting her off her feet, rocking her from side to side. Only when the sobs subsided did he loosen his grip, and let her slide to the ground. Her spread fingers encountered belt, buckles, buttons, tabs, stars: the whole hated paraphernalia. He said quickly, ‘I see you’ve still got Tibbs.’

A fat tabby cat lay coiled on the rug, the pale underside of his chin exposed. Ghost smells of cat pee and creosote drifted in from the shop.

‘Yes,’ she said, laughing and sniffing. ‘Pees on everything now.’

Her laughter acknowledged the fund of shared memories. Thank God, Prior thought, pulling out a chair and sitting down.

She fetched the tea-pot and started making tea. ‘How’s me mam? She says she’s all right.’

‘Thin. But she’s eating. She’s come off the strike.’

‘Hmm. How long for? I tell her she shouldn’t do it, but she says, “How else can I convince them?”’

‘Have you been to see her?’

‘I’m going next week. I gather we’ve got you to thank for that?’

‘I put in a word.’

She poured the tea. ‘How come you’re in a position to put in a word?’

‘Got a job in the Ministry, that’s all. They’re not sending me back ‘cause of the asthma.’

‘But what do you do?’

He laughed. ‘Exactly what I did before the war. Push pieces of paper across a desk. But I managed to get me hands on your mam’s file — via a young lady in the filing department — and then I thought I’d go and see her.’

‘And you just bluffed your way in?’

‘Well, not exactly, I had Ministry of Munitions headed notepaper. That gets you anywhere.’

‘Huh! I wish we had some.’

She believed him. Just as once her mother had believed Spragge. She was sitting at the head of the table, in her mother’s chair, no doubt because that made her mother’s absence seem less glaring, and he was sitting, almost certainly, where Spragge had sat. He looked across to the dresser, and there sure enough was the photograph of William.

Hettie saw him looking at it, and reached behind her. ‘I don’t think you’ve seen this one, have you?’ she said, and handed it across.

William was leaning against a stone wall, his arms loosely folded, and he was smiling, though the smile had become strained as the photographer fiddled with his camera. He was wearing bicycle clips. A pencilled date on the back said ‘May 1913’. Prior thought he knew the place, they’d gone there together, the three of them. Behind the wall, not visible in the photograph, a steep bank shelved away, covered with brambles and bracken, full of rabbits whose shiny round droppings lay everywhere.

‘Why does it look so long ago?’ he said, holding the photograph out in front of him. Without conscious duplicity (though not without awareness), he was groping for the tone of their pre-war friendship.

She laughed, a harsh yelp that didn’t sound like Hettie.

‘No, but it does, doesn’t it?’ he persisted. ‘I mean, it looks longer than it is. You know, I was thinking about that on the way over. About…’ He took a deep breath. ‘You know if you were writing about something like… oh, I don’t know, enclosures, or the coming of the railways, you wouldn’t have people standing round saying…’ He put a theatrical hand to his brow. ‘“Oh, dear me, we are living through a period of terribly rapid social change, aren’t we?” Because nobody’d believe people would be so… aware. But here we are, living through just such a period, and everybody’s bloody well aware of it. I’ve heard nothing else since I came home. Not the words, of course, but the awareness. And I just wondered whether there aren’t periods when people do become aware of what’s happening, and they look back on their previous unconscious selves and it seems like decades ago. Another life.’

‘Yes, I think you’re right.’ She thought for a moment. ‘I went to London a couple of months ago, to see one of the few suffragette friends who still wants to know me. And we were sitting in her house, and there was a raid, and we actually heard shrapnel falling on the trees, and do you know it sounded exactly like rain. And she was … full of herself. Short hair, breeches, driving an ambulance, all things she’d never’ve been allowed to do in a million years. And suddenly she grabbed hold of me and she said, “Hettie, for women, this is the first day in the history of the world.”’

‘And the last for a lot of men.’

Her face darkened. ‘Don’t beat me over the head with that, Billy. I’m the pacifist, remember.’

‘At least you’ve got the vote.’

‘No, I haven’t. I’m not thirty. Mam hasn’t, she’s in prison. Winnie hasn’t, same reason. William hasn’t, he’s had his vote taken away ‘cause he’s a conchie. So as far as votes go this family’s one down on before the war.’

‘Where is William?’ Prior said, looking at the photograph again.

‘Dartmoor. He took the Home Office scheme. He’s doing “useful work unconnected with the war”.’ She snorted. ‘Breaking stones.’

‘I’m surprised he took it.’

‘You wouldn’t be if you saw him. He’s that thin, you wouldn’t know him.’

‘I had Mike Riordan in my platoon. You remember Mike? I didn’t know him either. Only in his case it was the face that was missing.’

‘It isn’t a competition, Billy.’

‘No. You’re right.’

She touched his sleeve. ‘I wish we were on the same side.’

‘Well, as far as your mam’s concerned we are. You surely don’t think I’m on Spragge’s side?’

Her expression changed. ‘Oh, that man. Do you know, I met him once, just for a couple minutes, and I knew there was something wrong with him.’

‘You didn’t know about the poison?’

‘No, she kept all that from me. I wish she hadn’t, I’d’ve told her she was daft to trust him. And that smirking bastard at the Old Bailey. It was awful, Billy. You’re stood in that dock and you feel guilty, even though you know you haven’t done it. For months afterwards I felt people could look straight through me.’ She stopped. ‘Here, drink your tea. It’ll get cold.’

‘How are you managing?’

‘I survive. Your dad brings me a bit of meat now and then. Don’t look so surprised, Billy.’ A pause. ‘I tell you who’s been good. Mrs Riley. Every time she bakes she brings something round. You know mebbe just half a dozen rock buns, but every bit helps. I’ve nothing to thank the others for, except a few bricks through the window. What gets me you know is the way they used to cut me mam dead in the street, they’d just look through her. But let them be in trouble, or their daughters be in trouble, and there they were, banging on the back door. I says, “You’re a fool, Mam. Why should you risk prison for them?” But it was, “Oh, well, she had to have instruments last time,” or “Poor bairn, she’s only seventeen.” And she’d do it for them. And it all came out at the trial. You know, killing a baby when its mother’s two months gone, that’s a terrible crime. But wait twenty years and blow the same kid’s head off, that’s all right.’

Prior winced, thinking how strange it was that such words should come so easily from her mouth, that she should have so little conception of what memories they conjured up for him.

‘What about Mac? Do you ever see him?’

Her face became guarded. ‘No.’

‘Never?’

‘You know bloody well, Billy, he wouldn’t dare come here.’

Prior sat back in his chair. ‘I know he couldn’t stay away.’ He waited. ‘I thought I heard somebody just now.’

Her eyes went to the scullery door.

‘Walking up and down.’

‘It’s a restless house. You’ve got to remember me mam held seances here. In this room.’

‘You don’t believe in that.’

‘I know me mam wasn’t a fraud. Something happened. Whether it was just the force of people’s need or not, I don’t know, but there used to be nights when this table was shaking. It changes a place. I sit here on me own some nights and I hear footsteps going round and round the table.’

He had a dreadfully clear perception of what her life must be like, alone in this house, with the empty chairs and the boarded-up windows. It didn’t surprise him that she heard footsteps going round the table.

‘Talking of Mac,’ he said, and felt her stiffen. ‘I thought I’d go round and see his mam. I don’t suppose he still sees her, does he?’

‘That’s a good idea, Billy. I’d willingly go, but I doubt if she’d thank me for it. In fact, I doubt if she’d invite me in.’

‘No, she’s a great patriot, Lizzie.’ He was smiling to himself. ‘You know the last time I was home I bumped into her. Well.’ He laughed. ‘Fell over her. You know the alley behind the Rose and Crown? “Just resting,” she says. I got her on her feet and she took one look at the uniform and she says, “Thank God for an honest man.” And out it all came. Apparently on the day war broke out she did seven men for free because they’d just come back from the recruiting office. They said. “And do you know,” she says. “Five of them were still walking round in civvies a year after.” She says she had a go at Wally Smith about it. And he says, “Well they wouldn’t let me in because of me teeth.” And Lizzie says, “What the fuck do they want you to do? Bite the buggers?” ‘

Hettie was looking very uncomfortable. Since she was far from prudish he could only suppose the story of Lizzie and her August 4th burst of generosity was likely to be painful to the person on the other side of the scullery door. He thought of saying, ‘Oh, come on, Mac, stop arsing about,’ but he didn’t dare risk it. Better make his plea first, then leave them alone to talk about it.

‘I’d like to see Mac, Hettie.’

‘So would I,’ she flashed. ‘Fat chance.’

‘No, I mean I really do need to see him. If I’m going to do anything for your mam, I’ve got to talk to him first. He —’

‘He didn’t know anything about it.’

‘No, but he knew Spragge. Spragge was with him the night before he came here. He gave Spragge the address.’

‘Do you think he doesn’t know that? Spragge took in an awful lot of people, Billy. He had letters’

‘I know. I’m not… I’m not blaming Mac. I just want to talk to him. He might remember something that would help. You see, if we could prove Spragge acted as an agent provocateur with somebody else — or even tried to — that would help to discredit his evidence in your mam’s case.’

She glanced at the scullery door. ‘I know somebody who bumps into Mac now and then. I’ll see if I can get a message through.’

‘That’s all I ask.’ He stood up. ‘And now I’d better be off.’

She didn’t try to detain him. At the door he paused and said loudly, ‘I thought I’d go for a walk by the cattle pens. I thought I’d go there now.’

She looked up at him. ‘Goodnight, Billy.’

NINE

It was not quite dusk when Prior reached the cattle pens, empty at this time of the week and therefore unguarded. Mac, if he came at all, would wait till dark, so there was time to kill. He lit a cigarette and strolled up and down, remembering the taste of his first cigarette — given to him by Mac — and the valiant efforts he’d made not to be sick.

He stood for a while, his hands gripping the cold metal of one of the pens. He was recalling a time when he’d been ill — one of the many — and he’d gone out and wandered the streets, not well enough yet to go back to school but bored with being in the house. It had been a hot day, and he was muffled up, a prickly scarf round his neck, a poultice bound to his chest. The heat beat up into his face from the pavements as he dragged himself along, stick-thin, white, bed-bound legs moving in front of him, the smell of Wintergreen rising into his nostrils. The name made him think of pine trees, snow-covered hills and the way the sheets felt when you thrust your hot legs into a cool part, away from the sticky damp.

He heard their hoofs before he saw them and, like everybody else, stopped to watch as the main street filled with cattle being driven to the slaughterhouse. A smell of hot shit. Dust rising all round, getting into his lungs, making him cough and bring up sticky green phlegm. He backed away from the noise and commotion, ran up a back alley between the high dark walls, then realized that, as in a nightmare, a cow was following him, with slithering feet and staring eyes, and men chasing after her. More men came running from the other end of the alley. They cornered her, closing in from both sides, and the terrified animal slipped in her own green shit and fell, and they threw heavy black nets around her and dragged her back to the herd, while all along the alley housewives whose clean washing had been swept aside erupted from their backyards, shouting and waving their arms.

At the moment the nets landed Prior had looked across the heaving backs and seen a boy, about his own age, standing pressed back against the wall, his white, still face half hidden by a mass of cottery black hair. Mac.

The sight of the cow in the net stayed with him. Many a night he dreamt about her and woke to lie staring into the swirling darkness. Sometimes when he woke it was already light, and then, afraid to go back to sleep, he would creep downstairs, open the door quietly and slip out into the empty, dawn-smelling streets. The only other person about at that hour was the knocker-up, an old woman with bent back and wisps of white hair escaping from a black woollen shawl, who went from house to house, tapping on the upper windows with her long pole, waiting for the drowsy or bad-tempered answer, and moving on. Drifting along behind her, he’d found his way to the cattle pens, and to the deepest friendship of his childhood.

He left the pens now and walked into the high shed, which was as vast as a cathedral, and echoing. He walked up and down, dwarfed by the height, imagining the place as it used to be and presumably still was, if you came at the right time of week. He remembered the rattle of rain on the corrugated iron roof, imagined it pouring down as it had on the night he first stayed here with Mac. He looked round, and the empty stalls filled with terrified cattle, huge shadows of tossing horns leapt across the ceiling as the guards moved up and down with lanterns, checking that the overcrowded animals were not suffocating to death. If they suffocated before they could be slaughtered, their meat was unfit for human consumption, though it found its way on to the market as ‘braxy’, in shops patronized only by the very poor. There was no profit to be had from braxy, so if an animal was distressed and appeared to be near death the guards would rouse the slaughterman to come and dispatch it. These guards were supposed to be on duty all night, but since they’d been away for long stretches on the drovers’ road they naturally wanted to sleep with their wives or girlfriends, and that was where Mac came in. The job was subcontracted to him at a penny a night, and he was good at it. He could calm a cow, even a cow who’d already scented blood, to the point where she would yield milk into a lemonade bottle. Prior could almost see him now, wedged into a wall of sweating flesh, slithering on the green shit that always had about it the smell of terror, coaxing, whispering, stroking, burrowing his head into the cow’s side, and then coming back in triumph with the warm milk. They’d swigged it from the bottle, sitting side by side on the bales of straw that stood in one corner of the shed, and then, slowly and luxuriously, like businessmen savouring particularly fine cigars, they smoked the tab ends Mac had picked up from the streets.

Prior wandered across to the bales of straw and sat down, his cigarette a small planet shining in the darkness, for the night was closing in fast. He could just see the nail in the wall which had always been their target in peeing competitions, and from the nail he moved in imagination to the school playground. He had a lot of playground memories of Mac, and classroom memories too, though few of these were happy. Mac was dirty and his hair was lousy. He wore men’s shoes, and a jacket whose sleeves came to the tips of his fingers, and he was always being beaten. As children do, Prior supposed, he’d started by assuming that Mac was beaten more often than anybody else because he was naughtier than anybody else. He was inclined to believe now that the only valuable part of his education at that abysmal school had been learning that this was not true. Lizzie’s profession was well known. On the one occasion she’d come to school, her speech had been slurred and she’d raised her voice in the corridor; they’d all watched her through the classroom windows, every varied pitch of her indignation expressed in the jiggling of the feather on her hat. No doubt she’d come down to protest because they’d beaten Mac too hard. If so, the visit did no good: he was beaten again as soon as she left. Prior remembered those beatings. He remembered the painful pressure of emotions he’d felt: fear, pity, anger, excitement, pleasure. He wondered now whether the pleasure could possibly have been as sexual as he remembered it. Probably not.

After one such occasion Prior had sat with his back to the railings that divided the boys’ playground from the girls’, munching a sandwich and watching Mac. Mac was running up and down the playground with Joe Smailes on his back, staggering beneath the weight, his grubby hands with their scabbed knuckles clasping Joe Smailes’s podgy pink thighs. Mac was a bread horse: he gave other boys rides on his back in exchange for the crust from their bread or the core of their apple. Lizzie had not been poor, as the neighbourhood understood poverty, but she was too disorganized by drink to provide regular meals. What disturbed Prior this time, what ensured that his eyes never left Mac’s face as he staggered up and down, was the knowledge that he’d deserved a beating every bit as much as Mac, but because he was clean, tidy, well turned out, likely to win a scholarship and bring desperately needed credit to the school, he’d been spared. He bit into his second sandwich, thought, munched, choked. Suddenly he ran across the playground, thrust what was left of the sandwich into Mac’s hands, burst into tears, and ran away.

Who needed Marx when they had Tite Street Board School, Prior thought, stubbing out his cigarette carefully between strips of golden straw. Still absorbed in memories of the past, he got to his feet and started to walk up and down. The moon had risen; its light was bright enough to cast his shadow across the floor. His-first awareness of Mac was of a shadow growing beside his own, then the touch of a hand on his shoulder, and a light amused voice asking, ‘Am I to understand you’ve been up my mother?’

Prior turned. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘All that stuff about “Thank God for an honest man”, I don’t know what else it could mean.’

‘Now would I do that?’

‘I don’t know. Before the war you’d’ve fucked a cow in a field if you could’ve found one to stand still for you.’

And the bull. ‘Mac, I swear —’

‘Aw, forget it. If I was sensitive about that I’d’ve croaked years ago.’ Mac was smiling. This was almost, but not quite, a joke.

Prior said, ‘Shall we sit down?’

They sat on bales of straw a few feet apart, united and divided by the rush of memory. They could see clearly enough, by moonlight and the intermittent glow of cigarettes, to be able to judge each other’s expression.

‘It was you in the kitchen, then,’ Prior said. ‘I thought it was.’

‘Why, who’d you think it might be?’

Prior hesitated. ‘I was afraid it might be some poor frightened little sod of a deserter, I was afraid he’d —’

‘What would you have done?’

‘Turned him in.’

Mac looked at him curiously. ‘Even though he’s “a poor frightened little sod”?’

‘Yes. What about the poor frightened little sods who don’t desert?’

‘Well, at least we know where we stand.’

‘I don’t want to start by telling you a pack of lies.’

Mac laughed. ‘You told Hettie a few. That girl in the filing department, the one who got you the files, my God, Billy, you must be ringing her bell.’

‘Say it, Mac.’

‘All right, I’ll say it. It strikes me you’d be a bloody good recruit, for them. You with your commission and your posh accent, and your…’ With a kind of mock delicacy, Mac touched his own chest. ‘Low friends. Officers’ mess one night, back streets of Salford the next. Equally at home or…’ He smiled, relishing the intimacy of his capacity to wound. ‘Equally not at home, in both.’

‘Whereas you of course are firmly embedded in the bosom of a loving proletariat? Well, let me tell you, Mac, the part of the proletariat I’ve been fighting with — the vast majority — they’d string you up from the nearest fucking lamp-post and not think twice about it. And as for your striking munition workers…’ Prior swept the shed with a burst of machine-gun fire.

There was a moment’s shocked silence, as if the childish gesture had indeed produced carnage.

‘And don’t think they wouldn’t do it, they would. I know them.’

Mac said, ‘I’m surprised you feel quite so much pleasure at the idea of the workers shooting each other.’

‘No pleasure, Mac. Just facing reality.’ Prior produced a flask from his tunic pocket and handed it over. ‘Here, wash it down.’

Mac unscrewed the cap, drank, blinked as his eyes watered, then passed the flask back, its neck unwiped. After a moment’s hesitation Prior drank, thinking, as he did so, that the sacramental gesture was hollow. Milk in unwiped lemonade bottles was a lifetime away.

‘You still haven’t explained,’ Mac said.

‘About the files? I work in the Intelligence Unit.’

Mac made a slight, involuntary movement.

‘They’d’ve been here by now.’

Mac smiled. ‘Must be quite nice, really. A foot on each side of the fence. Long as you don’t mind what it’s doing to your balls.’

‘They’re all right, Mac. Worry about your own.’

‘Oh, I see. I wondered when that was coming. Men fight, is that it?’

‘No. I can see it takes courage to be a pacifist. At least, I suppose it does. You see, my trouble is I don’t know what courage means. The only time I’ve ever done anything even slightly brave, I couldn’t remember a bloody thing about it. Bit like those men who bash the wife’s head in with a poker. “Everything went black, m’lud.”’

Mac nodded. ‘Well, since you’re being honest, I think a load of fucking rubbish’s talked about how much courage it takes to be a pacifist. When I was deported from the Clyde, they came for me in the middle of the night. One minute I was dreaming about a blonde with lovely big tits and the next minute I was looking up at six policemen with lovely big truncheons. Anyway, they got me off to the station and they started pushing me around, one to the other, you know, flat-of-the-hand stuff, and they were all grinning, sort of nervous grins, and I knew what was coming, I knew they were working themselves up. It’s surprising how much working up the average man needs before he’ll do anything really violent. Well, you’d know all about that.’

‘Yes,’ Prior said expressionlessly.

‘I was shitting meself. And then I thought, well. They’re not going to blind you. They’re not going to shove dirty great pieces of hot metal in your spine, they’re not going to blow the top of your head off, they’re not going to amputate your arms and legs without an anaesthetic, so what the fuck are you worried about? If you were in France you’d be facing all that. And of course there’s always the unanswered question. Could you face it? Could you pass the test? But where I think we differ, Billy, is that you think that’s a Very Important Question, and I think it’s fucking trivial.’

Prior glanced sideways at him. ‘No, you don’t.’

‘All right, I don’t.’

‘You could always say you’re showing moral courage.’

‘No such thing. It’s a bit like medieval trial-by-combat, you know. In the end moral and political truths have to be proved on the body, because this mass of nerve and muscle and blood is what we are.’

‘That’s a very dangerous idea. It comes quite close to saying that the willingness to suffer proves the rightness of the belief. But it doesn’t. The most it can ever prove is the believer’s sincerity. And not always that. Some people just like suffering.’

Mac was looking round the shed. He said, ‘I don’t think I do,’ but he seemed to have tired of the argument, or perhaps the whisky had begun to soften his mood. ‘I often think about those days.’

Prior waited. ‘You can trust me, you know.’

‘I trusted Spragge.’

‘You didn’t have pissing competitions with Spragge.’

‘Oh, that’s it, is it? Piss brothers?’

Prior laughed. ‘Something like that.’

A long silence. ‘What do you want?’

‘I want you to tell me about Spragge.’

Mac gave a choking laugh. ‘He’s your fucking employee.’

‘Not any more. The trial blew his cover.’

‘Good.’

‘He was with you, wasn’t he, the night before?’

‘I sent him there.’

Mac must find that almost intolerable, Prior thought. His debt to the Ropers was total. Without Beattie, he’d’ve been a scabby, lousy, neglected kid, barely able to read and write, fit only for the drovers’ road and the slaughterhouse. Beattie had taken him in. By the age of thirteen he’d been living more with her than with his own mother. As soon as the older boys in the street gang stopped speculating about sex and started climbing Lizzie’s stairs in search of more concrete information, Mac had found his own home unbearable. He’d disappeared altogether for a time, going up the drovers’ road one summer, returning, older, harder, the first traces of cynicism and deadness round his mouth and eyes. Then Beattie took charge. ‘What the hell’s the matter with you?’ she asked. ‘You can read, can’t you? Just ‘cos the teachers think you’re stupid, doesn’t mean you are. Some of them aren’t too bright. Here, read this. No, go on, read it. I want to know what you think.’

‘He was after you, wasn’t he?’ Prior asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Do you think she meant to kill Lloyd George?’

‘Nah. You know Beattie. She finds a spider in the sink, she gets a bit of newspaper and puts it in the yard.’

‘Hmm. I just wonder what she’d do if she found Lloyd George in the sink.’

‘Run the fucking taps.’

They looked at each other and burst out laughing.

‘Look, if there was anything, the idea came from Spragge. And I think helping people escape from a detention centre sounds about right. And Spragge had tried it on before.’

‘Who with?’

‘Charlie Greaves, Joe Haswell. He offered them explosives to blow up a munitions factory. Said he knew where he could get some. Well, for God’s sake. They’re not exactly lying around, are they? As soon as they said no, he started backing off. Pretended he hadn’t meant it.’

‘And you still sent him to Beattie?’

‘This is hindsight, man. It sticks in my mind now because of what happened. At the time I just thought, oh God, another mad bugger.’

‘Could you get them to write it down? With dates, if possible.’

‘I don’t even know where they are.’

‘It’s for Beattie, Mac.’

Mac let out a sharp breath. ‘What do you want it for?’

‘To discredit Spragge, of course.’

‘They won’t reopen the case.’

‘Not publicly. But they might let her out. Quietly. She’s going to die in there, Mac. She won’t last anywhere near ten years.’

A dragging silence.

‘I’m not asking them to incriminate themselves. All they have to do is say “He offered us explosives and we refused.”’

‘And you think they’re going to be believed?’

‘I think there’s a better chance than you might think. There’s a lot of questions being asked about the way spies are used in munition factories. Some of them are better at starting strikes than you are, Mac.’

‘All right.’ Mac stood up. ‘It’ll take a few weeks.’

‘As long as that?’

‘I’ve told you. I don’t know where they are.’

‘Where can I contact you?’

Mac laughed. ‘You fucking can’t. Here, give me your address.’

Prior took the notepad and pencil, and scribbled. ‘All right?’

‘Don’t write to Hettie. The post’s opened. And one more thing.’ Mac came very close, resting his hands heavily on Prior’s shoulders. ‘If this is a trap, Billy, you’re dead. I’m not a fucking Quaker, remember.’

For a moment the pressure on his shoulders increased, then Mac turned and strode away.

Prior decided to take the short-cut home across the brick fields. This patch of waste land always reminded him of France. Sump holes reflected a dull gleam at the sky, tall grasses bent to the wind, pieces of scrap metal rusted, rubbish stank, a rusting iron bedstead upreared itself, a jagged black shape that, outlined against the horizon, would have served as a landmark on patrol.

One of the ways in which he felt different from his brother officers, one of the many, was that their England was a pastoral place: fields, streams, wooded valleys, medieval churches surrounded by ancient elms. They couldn’t grasp that for him, and for the vast majority of the men, the Front, with its mechanization, its reduction of the individual to a cog in a machine, its blasted landscape, was not a contrast with the life they’d known at home, in Birmingham or Manchester or Glasgow or the Welsh pit villages, but a nightmarish culmination. ‘Equally not at home in either,’ Mac had said. He was right.

Prior lingered a while, listening to the night noises, remembering the evenings in his childhood when he’d sat on the stairs, unable to sleep, until his father had come in and gone to bed, and he knew his mother was safe. Engines rumbled, coughed, whistled, hissed. Trucks shunted along, bumpers clanged together. A few streets away a drunk started singing: ‘There’s an old mill by the stream, Nelly Dean.’

He ought to be getting back. He’d already been away much longer than he’d meant. He began walking rapidly across the brick fields. One moment he was striding confidently along and the next he was falling, sliding rather, down a steep slope into pitch-black. He lay on his back at the muddy bottom of the hole and saw the tall weeds wave against the sky. He wasn’t hurt, but the breath had been knocked out of him. Gradually, his heart stopped thumping. The stars looked brighter down here, just as they did in a trench. He reached out for something to hold on to, and his groping fingers encountered a sort of ledge. He patted along it and then froze. It was a firestep. It couldn’t be, but it was. Disorientated and afraid, he felt further and encountered a hole, and then another beside it, and another: funk holes, scooped out of the clay. He was in a trench. Even as his mind staggered, he was groping for an explanation. Boys played here. Street gangs. They must have been digging for months to get as deep as this. But then probably the trench was years old, as old as the real trenches, perhaps. He clambered out, over what he suspected was No Man’s Land, and there, sure enough, were the enemy lines.

Smiling to himself, unwilling to admit how deeply the bizarre incident had shocked him, he walked on, more cautiously now, and reached the railings at the far side. He was trembling. He had to hold on to the railings to steady himself.

The shock made him rebellious. He decided he wouldn’t go straight home after all. Witnessing these nasty little rows between his parents did them no good, and him a great deal of harm. The time had come to call a halt. He would go to the pub. Which pub? His way home took him past the Rose and Crown, whose brass door flashed to and fro, letting out great belches of warm beery air. He would go there. He would do what other men do who come home on leave. Get drunk and forget.

He was greeted by a fug of human warmth, so hot he felt the skin on his nose tingle as the pores opened. He stood looking round at the flushed and noisy faces, and in the far corner spotted Mrs Thorpe and Mrs Riley with a great gaggle of other women. He decided he ought to stand them a drink. After all, they’d stood him many a drink in their day. A cry of recognition greeted him as he approached, and the whole boozy crowd of them opened up and took him in.

Two hours later Harry Prior was stumbling home, gazing in bleary appreciation at the full moon, riding high and magnificent in the clear sky. He paused on the bridge that spanned the canal to take a quick leak and admire the view. The moon was reflected in the water. He looked down at it, as a jet of hot piss hit the wall and trickled satisfyingly between the cobbles, and wondered why it should be bobbling up and down. He checked to see the real moon was behaving itself, then peered more closely at its reflection.

It wasn’t the bloody moon at all, it was an arse. My God, the lad was going at it. Harry had half a mind to cheer him on, but then he thought, no, better not. A person might very easily be mistaken for a peeping Tom. He leant further over, pressing himself against the rough granite, wishing he could see more. All he could see of the woman was knees. Who the bloody hell wants to watch a male arse bobbing up and down? Bloody golf-balls. Still, it didn’t half give you ideas. Bugger all doing at home, knees glued together. He rubbed himself against the wall for comfort, then wandered disconsolately on.

‘There’s somebody on the bridge.’

Prior turned, but he couldn’t see anything. He listened to the fading footsteps. ‘They’re going.’

She’d gone tense and braced herself against him. He’d have to start from the beginning. He kissed her mouth, her nose, her hair, and then, lowering his head in pure delight, feeling every taboo in the whole fucking country crash round his ears, he sucked Mrs Riley’s breasts.