Read Online Regeneration by Pat Barker - Free Book Online Page B

you like to tell me something about that early part?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘But you do remember it?’
    ‘Doesn’t mean I want to talk about it.’ He looked round the room. ‘I don’t see why it has to be like this anyway.’
    ‘Like what?’
    ‘All the questions from you , all the answers from me. Why can’t it be both ways?’
    ‘Look, Mr Prior, if you went to the doctor with bronchitis and he spent half the consultation time telling you about his lumbago, you would not be pleased. Would you?’
    ‘No, but if I went to my doctor in despair it might help to know he at least understood the meaning of the word.’
    ‘Are you in despair?’
    Prior sighed, ostentatiously impatient.
    ‘You know, I talk to a lot of people who are in despair or very close to it, and my experience is that they don’t care what the doctor feels. That’s the whole point about despair, isn’t it? That you turn in on yourself.’
    ‘Well, all I can say is I’d rather talk to a real person than a a strip of empathic wallpaper.’
    Rivers smiled. ‘I like that.’
    Prior glared at him.
    ‘If you feel you can’t talk about France, would it help to talk about the nightmares?’
    ‘ No. I don’t think talking helps. It just churns things up and makes them seem more real.’
    ‘But they are real.’
    A short silence. Rivers closed Prior’s file. ‘All right. Good morning.’
    Prior looked at the clock. ‘It’s only twenty past ten.’
    Rivers spread his hands.
    ‘You can’t refuse to talk to me.’
    ‘Prior, there are a hundred and sixty-eight patients in this hospital, all of them wanting to get better, none of them getting the attention he deserves. Good morning.’
    Prior started to get up, then sat down again. ‘You’ve no right to say I don’t want to get better.’
    ‘I didn’t say that.’
    ‘You implied it.’
    ‘All right. Do you want to get better?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘But you’re not prepared to co-operate with the treatment.’
    ‘I don’t agree with the treatment.’
    Deep breath. ‘What methods of treatment do you favour?’
    ‘Dr Sanderson was going to try hypnosis.’
    ‘He doesn’t mention it in his report.’
    ‘He was. He told me.’
    ‘How did you feel about that?’
    ‘I thought it was a good idea. I mean you ’re more or less saying: things are real, you’ve got to face them, but how can I face them when I don’t know what they are?’
    ‘That’s rather an unusual reaction, you know. Generally, when a doctor suggests hypnosis the patient’s quite nervous,because he feels he’ll be… putting himself in somebody else’s power. Actually that’s not quite true, but it does tend to be the fear.’
    ‘If it’s not true, why don’t you use it?’
    ‘I do sometimes. In selected cases. As a last resort. In your case, I’d want to know quite a lot about the part of your war service that you do remember.’
    ‘All right. What do you want to know?’
    Rivers blinked, surprised by the sudden capitulation. ‘Well, anything you want to tell me.’
    Silence.
    ‘Perhaps you could start with the day before you went into the CCS for the first time. Do you remember what you were doing that day?’
    Prior smiled. ‘Standing up to my waist in water in a dugout in the middle of No Man’s Land being bombed to buggery.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Good question. You should pack this in and join the general staff.’
    ‘If there wasn’t a reason, there must at least have been a rationale.’
    ‘There was that, all right.’ Prior adopted a strangled version of the public school accent. ‘The pride of the British Army requires that absolute dominance must be maintained in No Man’s Land at all times.’ He dropped the accent. ‘Which in practice means… Dugout in the middle of No Man’s Land. Right? Every forty-eight hours two platoons crawl out – nighttime, of course – relieve the poor bastards inside, and provide the Germans with another forty-eight hours’ target practice. Why it’s thought