In zodiac light, p.6
In Zodiac Light, page 6
7
I read Gurney’s poetry that same evening. Severn and Somme and War’s Embers. I was surprised by what I found in the two slender volumes. Uncertain what to expect, I had imagined something more formally structured; barrack-room ballads, perhaps, as much song or limerick as poetry. But instead I found a variety of verse considerably more than competent in its structures and rhythms and in its range.
Of the two volumes, I preferred the first. Not because the second was any less accomplished – in fact the war poetry it contained seemed to me to be considerably more potent than the earlier work – but because the first contained Gurney’s poems of the Gloucestershire countryside, of the Severn Valley and the Forest of Dean. I was familiar with the places and the landscapes he wrote about from my own boyhood holidays. My mother’s family came mostly from Tewkesbury, and her sisters had lived at Ross-on-Wye, immediately north of the Forest of Dean. Charles and I were taken there for an annual holiday until a few years before the outbreak of the war, when my uncle died.
I recognized most of the places Gurney wrote about, and was struck by the depth of his own affection for them. I looked forward even more to meeting him, and to being able to discuss with him this common history and geography.
As children, my mother had often read poetry to us. Charles had been less enthusiastic than myself, but for her sake he had sat and listened to her recitals – often the day’s final ritual as we both prepared for bed – and later, he and I read the same poems back to her. After that, as we became more proficient in our readings, and when I, at least, gained some pleasure from the exercise, we were brought out to recite at family gatherings. My father compiled several volumes of poetry and prose, all connected to bees and bee-keeping, and nothing gave him greater pleasure than hearing the two of us recite his favourites. Our own pleasure in these performances was greatly enhanced by – and solely dependent on in Charles’s case – the money my father secretly paid us after each recital. Occasionally, one of us would read the poem or short passage and the other would make a background noise of bees, a rising and falling buzzing or droning in keeping with the drama of the words.
My mother and various of his apiarist friends tried to persuade him to find a publisher for these anthologies, but he invariably rejected the idea, insisting that he gained more from the poems and the readings because of the private pleasure they afforded him. When he died, my mother found poems that he had written himself. She copied several of these out for me – the ones containing both the bees and his own sons – and gave them to me on the eve of my departure overseas.
Her own favourites were those poets she herself had read and declaimed as a girl – Tennyson and Browning chiefly – but she also had what my father referred to as ‘a fine ear’ for more contemporary work – Hardy, Masefield, Bridges, de la Mare – and she read these to us, too. The bamboo-and-lacquer bookcase in her dressing-room attested to this lifelong interest.
I felt certain she would have enjoyed and appreciated Gurney’s work, and I regretted that the two sets of poems collected in his first volume – his poems of the Severn and those of the Somme – had not been published as separate collections. And realizing this, it struck me as both a perverse and a brave thing for him to have done, especially before the war’s end, to have combined the two sources of his inspiration in the same book.
Having read the work, I slid the poems into Gurney’s file and laid this on the table beside my bed, hoping for a more successful visit the following day.
8
The next morning, as I was washing, there was a knock at my door and Osborne appeared. He considered me for a moment without speaking. He was agitated and out of breath. He came into my room and sat down.
‘Barstow,’ he said.
Barstow was another of my patients, and I waited for him to explain, wiping the last of the shaving cream from my unshaved neck.
‘He’s attacked one of the orderlies.’
Barstow was sixty-seven years old and had lived in one institution or other for the past fifty years.
‘He wants to see you. He’s insisting on you going to him.’ He crossed the room and sat beside my cold fire, all urgency suddenly gone.
‘Do you know why?’ I asked him, buttoning my shirt.
‘You told him his mother was coming to visit him today. Apparently, he woke up this morning, realized you’d lied to him, and now this.’ He picked up an old newspaper, scanned its front page and dropped it.
‘Barstow killed his mother fifty years ago,’ I said.
‘You know that and I know that.’ He smiled.
‘I told him his sister was coming. His sister. According to his file, she comes every three months. She lives in Northampton. She comes every three months, sits with him in almost complete silence for two hours, complains about the length, complexity and discomfort of her journey, and then leaves. Usually after putting in a new application to have him transferred to the asylum in Northampton to make her own life easier.’
‘He was sent here from there,’ Osborne said.
‘She thinks that because he’s growing old and infirm – because they both are – he ought to go back to her.’
‘It’s not very likely,’ he said. ‘The Boards here and there have washed their hands of him. He’s here for the duration.’
I knew all this.
‘Is there no possibility that he might be sent somewhere close, closer to her? On compassionate grounds?’
He laughed at the phrase. ‘Why? Because it would be the humane thing to do?’ He laughed again. ‘From what I hear of Barstow, he spends days on end sitting motionless and in complete silence. He’s a complainer, like his sister. She’s older than he is. Besides, it’s an hour, less, on the train. Some charitable foundation or other will be helping her with her fares. She could cut her visits to one a year and I doubt he’d notice.’
I put on my white coat and went to the door. ‘Shall we go to him?’ I said.
‘We? I’m merely the messenger. These things happen all the time. I’m sure you’re more than capable of dealing with this yourself. Cox and one or two others are already with him.’ He looked around my room as he spoke. I had no authority to ask him to leave, and he showed little inclination to do so just because I was going.
‘What about the man he attacked?’ I said.
He shrugged. ‘They know the score. A couple of cuts and bruises perhaps.’
‘Cuts?’
‘Bruises, then. He’s sixty-seven, for God’s sake, heavily medicated, hardly a muscle in his body. You’ve seen him.’ He slapped his palm on the arm of his chair, as though about to push himself up from it.
I picked up my briefcase and slid several files and loose sheets into it.
Osborne finally rose, considered himself in the mirror for a moment and then came to stand beside me at the door. I was still uncertain why he’d come to see me himself instead of sending someone else to fetch me.
As I locked my door, he said, ‘I take it you’ve seen Gurney.’ He waited for my answer.
‘Not yet. But I’ve read his work.’
‘His work?’
‘His poetry.’
‘Oh. That’s “work”, is it? And?’
I told him what I thought, and everything I said either annoyed or disappointed him.
‘You’re probably giving him more credit than he warrants,’ he said. ‘Probably because of everything that’s happened to him since, him being here.’
‘Perhaps,’ I said, knowing that to contradict him then, not yet having spoken to Gurney, would have served no purpose other than to disappoint him further. And to have argued on Gurney’s behalf would certainly have done neither of us – Gurney or myself – any favours.
‘Give you the poems himself, did he?’ he asked me.
‘Lyle had copies. Like I said—’
‘Lyle?’
‘He was there when I went to see Gurney.’
‘And what do you make of him?’
‘I only spoke to him for a few minutes.’ I was reluctant to reveal anything else to him until I’d spoken further with Lyle, and perhaps until I’d seen the two of them – Lyle and Gurney – together.
‘Did he tell you he volunteered to come with Gurney from Gloucester?’
He hadn’t.
‘Thought not. Apparently, him and the genius Ivor have become close friends.’ He invested the two words with a cold emphasis, and though I understood what he was suggesting to me, I didn’t share his own uncertain belief.
‘Lyle was due to sit his Board in a month’s time. I spoke to Townsend up at Barnwood House. Model patient, by all accounts. The Board would have ticked every line on the sheet.’
‘Meaning he would have been released?’
‘Sent somewhere else prior to that, most likely. Kept there for two or three months longer just to make sure, and then sent home to get on with things. He’s still practically a boy.’
‘And has he jeopardized any of that by coming here with Gurney?’
He shrugged. ‘Perhaps, perhaps not. His application for his Board has followed him here. He can sit it just as easily here as there, and to the same end.’
Both of us knew that this was not true. The doctors, visitors and independent assessors in Gloucester would already know Lyle and the progress he had made since being released from prison. They might send on their recommendations to the panel assessing him here, but it would still not be the same thing. I tried hard to think of a single patient who had been recommended for release after his first Dartford Board.
‘So he was taking quite a risk,’ I said. ‘In coming here with Gurney.’
‘Oh? Perhaps he thought that volunteering to come with his friend would do him more good than harm. Especially if Gurney is what they say he is. Besides, now that you’re his doctor here, you’ll no doubt get to have your say when the time comes.’ He walked ahead of me along the corridor and down the stairs, our footsteps echoing on the metal staircase and off the tiled walls.
I followed him to where Barstow had been secured.
Approaching the doorway, I saw Cox and several others standing there, including Lewis.
Cox saw Osborne and came to him. ‘You took your time,’ he said, surprising me with the insubordinate and aggressive remark.
‘Doctor Irvine wasn’t quite ready,’ Osborne said. I’d expected him to reprimand Cox, especially in front of these watching others, but he seemed unwilling to do this. ‘Where’s Barstow?’
‘Where you left him. In there. Sitting in a corner and crying like a baby.’ He beckoned one of the orderlies to him.
The man came.
‘Show the doctors your bruises,’ Cox told him.
The man turned his face from side to side. He had a slight bruise on his cheek and another on his forehead. They were not the marks of a serious assault and needed no treatment.
‘There’s more,’ Cox said, and he grabbed the orderly’s arm and pushed up his sleeve. A third bruise, equally minor and barely coloured, showed on the man’s wrist. Prompted by Osborne, I examined this, prodding it, and then the one on the man’s cheek to judge any pain he still felt. I told him that all he needed was to keep them exposed to the air, that they would have faded to nothing in a few days.
Cox turned to me with a look of exaggerated disbelief on his face. ‘And that’s it, is it? He practically gets strangled by that old bastard and all you tell him is to go away and forget about it?’
‘That wasn’t what he said,’ Osborne said.
The orderly, I saw, still held by Cox, would have been happy to have done as I’d suggested.
Cox ignored the remark. ‘And now you’ll go in to Barstow and spend an hour with him trying to convince him that everything’s all right, that he’s not to blame for any of this.’
‘Of course I’ll go in to him,’ I said, glancing at Osborne in the hope of some support. Turning back to the bruised man, I said, ‘If you are feeling any other pain from the assault’ – the word seemed too much and I’d used it deliberately – ‘then go to the dispensary and tell them what’s happened.’
‘And then what?’ Cox said. ‘They dab some iodine on it and tell him to stop complaining?’
‘In all likelihood, yes,’ I said, unwilling to endure his provocations any longer.
‘Perhaps we might all just return to our duties,’ Osborne said.
Cox turned his back on us and mimicked the words.
And again, Osborne let the remark pass without comment or reprimand. ‘I’ll see you later, Cox,’ was all he said, and he turned and walked away from us.
‘You can count on that,’ Cox called after him, just as Osborne turned a corner. It was unlikely that he would not have heard the remark.
I considered asking Cox why he’d addressed Osborne like that, but knew that this would only prolong his tirade, and that it would add to the pleasure he took in this, especially in front of all these subordinates.
Instead, I told the bruised man to come and see me the following day if any of his bruises had failed to fade. ‘Either that, or go back to Cox and tell him. I’m sure he has your welfare at heart.’ My meaning was clear to the man and he smiled at the words.
Seeing this, Cox finally released his grip on the man and told him to get back to his work.
The man saluted him, said ‘Yes, Sir,’ and then walked away from us.
Cox waited where he stood for a moment, watching me closely, and then he too left us.
I asked for the door to be unlocked and went into the wing in which Barstow had lived for the past eight years.
I found him in his room, alone, sitting on his bed, crying, his hands held palm-upwards on his knees.
I went over to him and he looked up at me. At first he appeared not to recognize me – prior to the previous day, I’d seen him only once or twice during the past month – and so I told him again who I was.
‘I did a terrible thing,’ he said.
‘I know. But no one was harmed, or only slightly.’
‘I mean my mother,’ he said. ‘That’s why I got so upset, see? I got set to dreaming about her last night. Had it in my head’ – he struck his forehead with the knuckles of both hands – ‘that she was coming to see me today. Had it in my head that it was her – my mother – and not that miserable old bag of a sister coming here to sit in her funeral clothes and talk all about how hard everything is for her.’
‘I told you she was coming, yesterday,’ I said.
‘Did you?’
‘Perhaps you misheard me?’
‘I doubt it. Would me not hearing you right bring my mother back to me after all these years? She’d be’ – he made a quick calculation – ‘nigh on ninety by now. People like us don’t make old bones.’ He looked up again. ‘I hit that bastard, didn’t I? He had it coming. He pushes us about like we were cattle. I should know. That’s what I was, see – a farm hand.’
I let him talk, and he went on for a further twenty minutes, re-telling me the story of his life, his work, his brothers and sisters, the woman who might have been about to become his wife, the children he might have had, the profession he might have followed when he finally stopped working on the land. A perfectly remembered and rehearsed story. Right up to the night he killed his own mother. After which, the abyss opened up and everything fell into its unfathomable darkness.
After twenty minutes, he fell silent, the story over.
‘What now?’ he said after a minute.
‘I don’t know,’ I told him. ‘It’s probably up to you.’
‘She lost her husband of forty-five years last Christmas,’ he said. ‘My miserable old bag of a sister. He visited me once, with her, soon after they were wed. I was still in Northampton, then. I told him that him and me would soon be swapping places, that living with her would soon drive him mad. He laughed about it at the time. She never did, mind, but he found it funny enough. At the time. And that was the last I ever saw of him. No kids. Three born, not one living past six months.’
I put a hand on his shoulder.
‘If you were strong enough to attack a man forty years younger than yourself, then I might need to reassess your medication,’ I said. I was only half joking.
He raised his arms, bent them at the elbow and flexed his non-existent muscles. ‘I still got it, boy,’ he said. ‘Comes from all that hard work I did. Farm hand, I was.’
And before he could begin to tell me the same story all over again, I rose and told him I had to leave.
He came to the door and held out his hand to me. ‘It was good of you to take the trouble to come,’ he said. ‘Never get a proper doctor anywhere near the farm.’
‘Any time,’ I told him, as though the choice existed for either of us.
9
‘I owe you an apology.’
The voice caught me unawares. I was sitting on the terrace with my eyes closed, feigning sleep, listening to the men around me.
I opened my eyes.
Alison West sat beside me.
‘Oh?’
‘My wound. Showing it off to you like that. It was insensitive.’
‘Is that what you were doing – showing off?’
‘I said showing it off.’ She shook her head, exasperated. ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Don’t make it into a joke.’
At the time, it had felt closer to an intimacy, a genuine revelation.
I pulled my shirt out of my waistband a few inches and showed her the waxy mark across my stomach.
‘And round here’ – I patted my side – ‘I’ve got a constellation of small white stars, twenty-seven to be precise, pinpricks. Sometimes they look like a hand, and sometimes – and not entirely inappropriately – they look like a gun, a pistol.’
Beside her stood a large wheeled wicker trunk on which the word ‘Laundry’ was stencilled in white.
‘I see they’re still finding work for you commensurate with your skills, talents and abilities,’ I said.
‘“Commensurate”. That’s a big word. First I push this all the way to the laundry, and once there, I hang around for an hour until someone gives me another one to push all the way back again to the linen store. The sick and the maimed and the mere lookers-on part at my approach and then close back around me when I’ve gone.’
