Regeneration by Pat Barker Read Free Book Online

upset. Probably just as well, because they came back terrified. It was a Jewish funeral, you see, and they couldn’t understand what was going on. My elder brother said it was two old men in funny hats walking up and down saying jabber-jabber-jabber.’
    ‘You must’ve felt you’d lost him twice.’
    ‘Yes. We did lose him twice.’
    Rivers gazed out of the window. ‘What difference would it have made, do you think, if your father had lived?’
    A long silence. ‘Better education.’
    ‘But you went to Marlborough?’
    ‘Yes, but I was years behind everybody else. Mother had this theory we were delicate and our brains shouldn’t be taxed. I don’t think I ever really caught up. I left Cambridge without taking my degree.’
    ‘And then?’
    Sassoon shook his head. ‘Nothing much. Hunting, cricket. Writing poems. Not very good poems.’
    ‘Didn’t you find it all… rather unsatisfying?’
    ‘Yes, but I couldn’t seem to see a way out. It was like being three different people, and they all wanted to go different ways.’ A slight smile. ‘The result was I went nowhere.’
    Rivers waited.
    ‘I mean, there was the riding, hunting, cricketing me, and then there was the… the other side… that was interested in poetry and music, and things like that. And I didn’t seem able to…’ He laced his fingers. ‘Knot them together.’
    ‘And the third?’
    ‘I’m sorry?’
    ‘You said three.’
    ‘Did I? I meant two.’
    Ah. ‘And then the war. You joined up on the first day?’
    ‘Yes, in the ranks. I couldn’t wait to get in.’
    ‘Your superior officers wrote glowing reports for the Board. Did you know that?’
    A flush of pleasure. ‘I think the army’s probably the only place I’ve ever really belonged.’
    ‘And you’ve cut yourself off from it.’
    ‘Yes, because –’
    ‘I’m not interested in the reasons at the moment. I’m more interested in the result. The effect on you.’
    ‘Isolation, I suppose. I can’t talk to anybody.’
    ‘You talk to me. Or at least, I think you do.’
    ‘You don’t say stupid things.’
    Rivers turned his head away. ‘I’m pleased about that.’
    ‘Go on, laugh. I don’t mind.’
    ‘You’d been offered a job in Cambridge, hadn’t you? Teaching cadets.’
    Sassoon frowned. ‘Yes.’
    ‘But you didn’t take it?’
    ‘No. It was either prison or France.’ He laughed. ‘I didn’t foresee this.’
    Rivers watched him staring round the room. ‘You can’t bear to be safe, can you?’ He waited for a reply. ‘Well, you’ve got twelve weeks of it. At least. If you go on refusing to serve, you’ll be safe for the rest of the war.’
    Two red spots appeared on Sassoon’s cheekbones. ‘Not my choice.’
    ‘I didn’t say it was.’ Rivers paused. ‘You know you reacted then as if I were attacking you, and yet all I did was to point out the facts. ’ He leant forward. ‘If you maintain your protest, you can expect to spend the remainder of the war in a state of Complete. Personal. Safety.’
    Sassoon shifted in his seat. ‘I’m not responsible for other people’s decisions.’
    ‘You don’t think you might find being safe while other people die rather difficult?’
    A flash of anger. ‘Nobody else in this stinking country seems to find it difficult. I expect I’ll just learn to live with it. Like everybody else.’
    ∗
    Bums stood at the window of his room. Rain had blurred the landscape, dissolving sky and hills together in a wash of grey. He loathed wet weather because then everybody stayed indoors, sitting, around the patients’ common room, talking, in strained or facetious tones, about the war the war the war.
    A sharper gust of wind blew rain against the glass. Somehow or other he was going to have to get out. It wasn’t forbidden, it was even encouraged, though he himself didn’t go out much. He got his coat and went downstairs. On the corridor he met one of the nurses from his ward, who looked surprised to see him wearing his