The Ghost Road (4 page)

'No?'

Rivers was thinking deeply. 'What do you think I can
do to help?'

'Nothing.
With respect.'

'Oh, damn that.'

Wansbeck smiled.
'As you say.'
He held his handkerchief to his mouth as another fit of coughing seized him.
'I'll try not to give you this at least.'

Wansbeck was a man of exceptionally good physique,
tall, broad-shouldered deep-chested. Rivers, estimating height, weight,
muscular tone, noting the tremor of the huge hands, a slight twitch of the left
eyelid, was aware, at a different level, of the pathos of a strong body broken—though
he didn't know why the word 'broken' should occur to him, since, objectively
speaking, Wansbeck's physical suffering amounted to nothing more than a bad
cold. He'd made a good recovery from his wound.

'When did you first notice the smell?'

'In the hospital.
Look, everybody goes on about the smell. I
know
there isn't one.'
A faint smile.
'It's just I can
still smell it.'

'When was the first time?'

'I was in a side ward.
Three beds.
One man quite bad, he'd got a piece of shrapnel stuck in his back. He was
called Jessop, not that it matters. The other was a slight arm wound, and he
was obviously getting better and I realized there was a chance I'd be left
alone with Jessop.
The one who couldn't move.
And I started
to worry about it, because he was helpless and I knew if I wanted to kill him I
could.'

'Did you dislike him at all?
Jessop.'

'Not in the least. No.'

'So it was just the fact that he was helpless?'

Wansbeck thought a moment.

'Were
you left alone with him?'

'Yes.'

'What happened?'

A sound midway between a snort and a laugh.
'It was a long night.'

'Did you want to kill him?'

'Yes—'

'No,
think.
Did you
want
to kill him or were you
afraid
of wanting to kill him?'

Silence.
'I don't know. What difference does it make?'

'Enormous.'

'Afraid. I
think.
After that I asked
if I could go on to the main ward. And to answer your question, the first time
I noticed the smell was the following morning.' A long silence, during which he
started to speak several times before eventually saying, 'You know when I told
the doctor about not wanting to be left alone with Jessop, he said, "How
long have you suffered from homosexual impulses?'" A quick, casual glance,
but Wansbeck couldn't disguise his anger. 'I didn't want to to to
fuck
him, I wanted to
kill
him.'

'Does it still bother you to be alone with people?'

Wansbeck glanced round the room. 'I avoid it when I
can.'

They exchanged smiles. Wansbeck put his hand up and
stroked his neck.

'Is your throat bothering you?'

'Bit sore.'

Rivers went round the desk and felt his glands.
Wansbeck stared past him with a strained look. Evidently the smell was
particularly bad. 'Yes, they are a bit swollen.' He touched Wansbeck's
forehead, then checked his pulse. 'I think you'd be better off in bed.'

Wansbeck nodded. 'You know, I can tell the smell isn't
real, because I can still smell it. I'm too bunged up to smell anything else.'

Rivers smiled. He was starting to like Wansbeck. Tell
Sister Roberts I've told you to go to bed, and would she take your temperature,
please. I'll be up to see you later.'

At the door Wansbeck turned. 'Thank you for what you
didn't
say.'

'And what's that?'

'"It was only a boche—if it was up to me I'd give
you a medal. Nobody's going to
hang
you for it."'

'You mean other people
have
said that?'

'Oh, yes. It never seems to occur to them that
punishment might be a relief.'

Rivers looked hard at him.
'Self-administered?'

'No.'

A fractional hesitation?

'Go to bed,' Rivers said. 'I'll be up in a minute.'

* * *

After Wansbeck had gone, Rivers went to close the
window, and stood for a moment watching boys playing in the square.
High sharp cries, like seagulls.

'Are w-we
a
m-m-m-m-mistake?
W-why are w-we?'

'Of course you're not a mistake,' his mother had said,
smoothing the hair back from his forehead.
'So
w-why d-d-does h-
he
s-say w-w-w-w-we are?'

'I expect he just likes girls more than boys.'

'B-b-b-b-but w-w-why d-d-does he?'

Rivers smiled. I know, he thought, I know.
Questions, questions.

'Boys are rough and noisy. And they fight'

'B-b-but you h-h-have to to to f-f-f-ight,
s-s-sometimes.'

Yes.

CHAPTER
THREE

Prior dawdled along, scuffing the sleeve of his tunic
along the sea-wall, looking out over the pale, level, filthy sands to where the
waves turned. Silence was a relief after the jabber of tongues in the mess: who
was going out with the next draft,
who
was up for
promotion, who had been recommended for an MC.
The eyes that
slid to your chest and then to your left sleeve.
The cards, the gossip,
the triviality, the muckraking, the rubbish—he'd be glad to be shot of it all.

He was going back to France. He'd spent the evening
writing to people: Sarah, his mother, Charles Manning, Rivers. And the last
letter had reminded him of Craiglockhart, so that now he drifted along,
remembering the light flashing on Rivers's glasses, and the everlasting
pok-pok
from the tennis courts that somehow wove itself into the pattern of their
speech and silence, as Rivers extracted his memories of France from him, one by
one, like a dentist pulling teeth.

He wondered what Rivers would think of his going back.
Not much.

The beach was dark below him. They were all gone, the
munitions workers and their girls, the war profiteers with stubby fingers
turning the pages of
John
Bull
German boats came in close sometimes. 'Not close enough,'
Owen had said, as they'd waited for the draft list to go up on the wall. And
he'd laughed, with that slightly alarmed look he sometimes had.

A friendly, lolling, dog-on-its-back sort of sea.
You could swim in that and not feel cold. He started to
wander along with no idea of where his feet were taking him or why. After a few
minutes he rounded the headland and looked along the half-circle of South Bay
at the opposite cliffs, surmounted by their white Georgian terraces. Some of
his brother officers were up there now, living it up at the most expensive of
the town's oyster bars. He'd been there himself two nights ago, but tonight he
didn't fancy it.

Closer at hand were souvenir shops, coconut-shies,
swing-boats, funny hats, the crack of rifle fire, screams of terror from the
haunted house where cardboard skeletons leapt out of the cupboards with green
electric light bulbs flashing in the sockets of their skulls.
If they'd seen...
Oh, leave it, leave it.

Behind him, along the road that led to the barracks,
were prim boarding-houses with thick lace curtains that screened out the
vulgarity of day-trippers. You couldn't go for a walk anywhere in Scarborough
without seeing the English class system laid out before you in all its full,
intricate horror.

He heard a gasp of pain beside him, and a hand
clutched his sleeve.
A red-haired woman, flashily dressed and
alone.
'Sorry, love, it's these shoes.' She smiled brightly at him. 'I
keep going over on the heel.'

She rested her arms beside his on the railings, her
right elbow lightly touching his sleeve.

'No, thanks.'

'Why, you been offered summat?'

She muttered on. It had come to summat if a decent
woman couldn't have a rest without
being...
pestered.
And who did he think he was anyway? Couple of bits of gold braid, they think
their shit smells of violets—

'I don't pay.'

A whoop of laughter.
'Well, you're certainly not getting it free.'

He smiled, allowing a note of pathos to creep into his
voice. I'm going back to France next week.'

'Aw, piss off.'

For a moment he hoped she might take her own advice,
but she didn't. They stood side by side, almost touching, but he was miles
away, remembering Lizzie MacDowell and the first day of the war. 'Long Liz'
they called her, for, among the girls who worked Commercial Road, most of them
reared in the workhouse, Lizzie's height—a full five feet no less— made her a
giant. She was his best friend's mother, a fact not at the forefront of his
mind when he met her in a back alley on his way home from the pub and told her
he'd enlisted.

—Good lad!
she'd
said.

Lizzie was a great enthusiast for the Empire. And
somehow or other he'd gone home with her, stumbling up the passage and into the
back bedroom, until finally, in a film of cooling sweat, they'd lain together
on the sagging bed, while the bedbugs feasted and a smell of urine rose from
the chamberpot underneath. She'd told him about her regulars. One man came
every month, turned a chair upside-down and shoved each one of the four legs in
turn up his arse. Didn't want her to do anything, she said. Just watch.

— Well, you know what a worry-guts I am. I keep
thinking what'll I do if he gets stuck?

—Saw the bloody leg off

—Do you mind, that's the only decent chair I've got.

'What's so funny?'

'Just thinking about an old friend.'

Money had not changed hands on that occasion. He'd
been Lizzie's patriotic gesture: one of seven.

Poor Lizzie, she'd been very disillusioned when five
of the seven turned out not to have enlisted at all

'Do you fancy a bit of company, then?'

He looked at her. 'You don't give up, do you?' And
then suddenly the shrieks, the rattle of rifle fire, pub doors belching smells
of warm beer were intolerable.
Anything not to have to go on
being the oil bead on this filthy water.
'All right.'

She was telling the truth about her shoes. If she
hadn't clung to his arm she'd have fallen over more than once as they climbed
the steep steps to the quieter streets behind the foreshore.

'What do they call you?' she asked, breathing port
into his face.

'Billy.
You?'

'Elinor.'

I'll bet, he thought. 'D' y' get "Nellie"?'

'Sometimes, ' she said, her voice pinched with
dignity. 'It's just round the corner here.' Perhaps she sensed he was having
second thoughts for her arm tightened.
"S not far.'

They went up a flight of steps to the door. As she
fumbled with the key he looked round, and almost stumbled over a cluster of
unwashed milk bottles, furred green.

'Mind
,' she said. 'You'll have everybody out.'

The hall dark, smelling of drains and mice.
A face—no more than a slit of sallow skin and one
eye—peered through a crack in the door on his left.

'You'll have to be quiet,' Nellie whispered, and then,
catching sight of the face just as the door closed, yelled, 'There's some right
nosy bastards round here.'

They walked up the stairs, arms round each other's
waists, shoulders and hips bumping in the narrow space, catching the breath of
each other's laughter, until her tipsiness communicated itself to him and all
doubt and reluctance dissolved away.

She unlocked the door. A naked overhead bulb revealed
a tousled bed, a chair piled high with camisoles and stays, a wash-stand
and—surprisingly businesslike, this—a clean towel and a bar of yellow soap.

'You won't mind having a little wash.'

He didn't
mind.
He was buggered if
he'd rely on it, though.

'Do you know,' she said, unbuttoning her blouse, 'I
had one poor lad the other week washed his
hands?'