The Ghost Road by Pat Barker Read Free Book Online Page B

who'd applied a
tourniquet to the leg of his favourite hunter. 'Gangrene set in, would you
believe? We had to shoot the poor sod.' Telford looked down at the fluttering
lids. 'And it was only a graze.'
    Moffet flapped like a landed fish, moaned, vomited
yellow bile. Rivers tapped his cheek. 'Have you taken anything?'
    Sister Roberts came creaking to the door with a
wheelchair. Telford looked up at her, horrified, whipped a flannel off the side
of the bath and draped it over Moffet's genitals.
    'For God's sake, man,' Rivers snapped. 'She's a nurse' Though with Telford's history it probably wasn't
Sister Robert's modesty he thought he was protecting. 'If you could get us a
couple of blankets,' he said, twisting in the narrow space.
    Moffet's head lolled to one side as they hauled him
into the chair and wrapped blankets round him, though Rivers was beginning to
suspect he was less drowsy than he seemed.
    'Well,' he said, straightening up. 'I think I can
manage now, Major Telford. Thank you, you've been a great help.'
    'That's all right.' He looked down at Moffet and
sniffed. 'Helps break up the afternoon. Anyway, what's all this Major
nonsense?' he demanded, punching Rivers playfully in the biceps. 'Don't be such
a stuffed shirt, man.'
    And off he went, whistling 'A Bachelor Gay Am I'.
    They wheeled Moffet into a side ward, since nothing is
worse for morale on a 'shell-shock' ward than a suicide attempt. Except a successful suicide of course. He remembered the man
at Craiglockhart who'd succeeded in hanging himself. Quite apart from his own tragedy
he'd undone weeks of careful work on other people.
    The deepest gash required stitching. Rivers set to
work immediately, and was rather surprised to find Moffet stoical. He watched
the needle dip in and out, only licking his lips once towards the end.
    There,' Rivers said. 'All done.'
    Moffet rolled his head restlessly. 'I didn't make a
very good job of it, did I?'
    'Not many people do. The only person I've ever known
to succeed by that method was a surgeon—he virtually severed his left hand.' He
got up and stretched his legs, pressing a hand hard into the small of his back.
'How much whisky did you have?'
    'Half a bottle. Bit more perhaps.'
    No point talking to him, then.
    'Where did you get it?'
    'My mother. Does it matter?'
    'And the razor?'
    Moffet looked puzzled. 'Mine.'
    'All right. You try to get some sleep.'
    'Will you have to tell the police?'
    'No.' Rivers looked down at him. 'You're a soldier.
You're under military discipline.'
    He found Sister Roberts waiting for him. 'I'm afraid
we can't let this go,' he said. 'The lockers are supposed to be searched
regularly.'
    'I'll ask Miss Banbury. She was the last person to do
it.'
    She was also Sister Roberts's bête noire ,
for no better reason than that she was well-meaning, clumsy, enthusiastic,
unqualified and upper class.
    'His mother gave him the whisky.'
    'Can't say I'm surprised. Silly woman.'
    Sister Roberts, as he knew from numerous air-raid
conversations of the previous winter, was the eldest girl in a family of
eleven. She'd clawed her way out of the Gateshead slums and therefore felt
obliged to believe in the corrosive effects on the human psyche of good food,
good housing and good education.
    'Telford was a bit of a revelation, wasn't he?' she
said. 'Surprisingly cool.'
    'Oh, Telford's fine. Until he opened his big mouth
nobody noticed he was mad.' He added, not entirely as an afterthought, 'He
works at the War Office.'
    Outside in the corridor he met Wansbeck, now much
better though surely not well enough to be up and about.
    'How do you feel?' Rivers asked.
    'Bit weak. Throat's still sore, but I'm not coughing
as much.'
    'You'd be better off in bed. Go on, back with you.'
    As the doors banged shut behind Wansbeck, Rivers
became aware of an insistent clicking. Nothing to account for
it. The long corridor stretched ahead, empty, its grey, palely shining
floor faintly marked with the shadows of the window frames.