The women had returned at the sound of their raised voices. Robert glimpsed his mother standing at the door, her face a mask of horror.
His father put a hand on his arm. ‘Robbie,’ he said softly.
Robert looked down at his father’s friend. ‘Well, I’m sure it’s easy enough to be a patriot when you’ve nothing at all to lose,’ he said. ‘And certainly when the war effort appears to be supporting your business so satisfactorily.’ Basil Cumberland’s face fell, like a wax candle collapsing. There was a horrified silence, and no one moved. Then Robert caught sight of his father, staring at the floor, wearing on his face an expression of disappointment mixed with confusion that he’d never seen before. He took a deep breath, swallowed. ‘I apologise,’ he said. ‘That was uncalled for. But everything else I stand by. I’m sorry, Mother. Good night.’
He strode upstairs to the bed he’d lain in since he was a boy, feeling like an imposter in his own life, a monster impersonating a civilised person. The dark seemed to lie slumped on top of him, heavy and suffocating. There was a hard, condensed ball of anger inside him.
After a while he threw off the bedclothes and crept out of the house, across the fields and beyond, into the forest where he’d played as a boy. He walked and walked until eventually the ball of anger had loosened a little, then sat down against a tree. He ought to have gone to Canada when he’d had the chance. He’d have had a home and bed of his own by now, maybe even a wife to share it with, and the war would have been a distant thing.
He thought bleakly of his only real experience with a woman – drunk, up against a wall. She’d been the eager friend of a lady friend that a former classmate had brought along to the pub one evening. Or so he’d thought – later he’d discovered that his friend had paid for both women. He felt shamed by the experience and had vowed never again to have sex with a woman he was not in love with.
But that was before the war, when women still existed in his sphere – when falling in love was something one still expected to do one day. Was that it, now? Was that to be his only experience of physical intimacy? And what of one day fathering a child? It all seemed as intangible as a fairy tale now. Where had doing the right thing got him? Lining the pockets of men like Basil Cumberland, that was where. Risking his life day after day in France while the Basil Cumberlands of the world smoked their cigars, counted their money and copulated with their silly, pampered wives whenever the mood took them. Becoming a stranger to everything and everyone he had ever known – most of all himself.
What woman would want to know him now, in any case? He felt he barely counted as human any more. He looked up at the firmament. It seemed dark and strange without all the lights and noises of war, and the ground oddly dead and still. Then, on an impulse, he took off all his clothes and dived into the river.
The cold water was a shock, but at the same time felt like a sort of absolution, cleansing him both inside and out. The trouble was that he would always do the right thing; it was in his nature. But this was the foreign country now. France was where he belonged. At the front. His men needed him. He’d always thought that his art was the deepest thing in him, but now he knew better. He belonged to the war. It was his master, and he its servant.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘Who can give me some examples of unhealthy ways of dealing with stress?’
The woman in the middle of the therapy room waited. Her name badge read Dawn Davies, Psychotherapist. ‘Anyone?’ Her eyes were quick and business-like. ‘All right then, how about alcohol, drugs, self-harm? All ways of blocking out difficult feelings. We all experience stress. It’s part of being human. But we need to find healthy ways of dealing with it. Let’s think about what some of those ways might be. Who’s going to start?’
Louisa sat on a sofa by the window, hugging her knees to her chest. Slumped next to her was a man with matted black hair and rotten teeth and arms marked with numerous scars. His name, she’d learned, was Samir. He smelled appalling. His eyes were open, but he lay unmoving, staring vacantly ahead. Eight other patients sat in a vague circle.
It had been a week since she’d been admitted. She was doing her best to stay calm and persuade herself everything would soon be resolved. But in the dead of night she lay awake, listening to Marisa ranting hoarsely in her sleep and wondering whether she’d ever see the outside world again. How was it that people she didn’t even know wielded such power over her? And how was it possible that an abominable, dehumanising place like this could exist in the twenty-first century? From down the corridor she could hear people shouting and swearing, banging on doors. Sometimes someone would try the door handle. She got up several times a night to check that it was locked. She felt as if fear had scooped out all her insides and poured itself into the ringing, hollow space. As first light filtered in, her darkest thoughts would begin to unravel, and she would surrender to an exhausted sleep. Then at seven she would be shaken roughly awake by someone yelling: ‘Come on! Come on! We haven’t got all day!’
‘Kerry, do you have anything you’d like to share?’ asked Ms Davies. ‘A time when you’ve felt particularly vulnerable?’
‘Not really,’ said Kerry, shifting in her chair.
‘But group therapy only works if we all contribute,’ said the therapist with a little sigh. ‘This is how we validate our experiences. Sharing what we’ve gone through encourages us to feel less isolated and to recover.’
‘Yeah.’ Kerry frowned and cleared her throat. ‘Yeah, I get that. But my head’s a bit fuzzy. Sorry, but I don’t feel very lucid.’
‘All right.’ The psychotherapist turned to someone else. Kerry glanced at Louisa, rolled her eyes and grinned. Louisa, unable to help herself, smiled into her knees, hoping Ms Davies wouldn’t notice.
From what Louisa had been able to gather, Dawn Davies was fighting a losing battle. Most people seemed to see therapy as a chore – something that had to be done in order to get a tick in the right box on the release form, rather than an opportunity for real recovery. Assuming they even wanted to be released, which was far from a given. The few who regularly spoke up just repeated over and over their personal stories of neglected childhoods and suicide attempts, seeming keen to stew in their own misery.
It was pointless. How could any of them help pull each other to safety when they were all drowning in the same sea? Louisa felt that even though she hadn’t come in depressed, hearing all the stories of misery and madness – just being in this appalling, soulless place – would eventually make her that way. Focused, individual therapy, like she’d had when she was younger, would probably have been helpful, but they didn’t offer that here, of course – it would be much too expensive. But whatever she thought, she knew she must show a positive attitude.
‘I’d like to share,’ said Gary, a short, pale man with no discernible neck whose eyes were always hidden behind a pair of smeared glasses held together with sticky tape. His forearms were crisscrossed with scars and his voice was hoarse from damage to his voice box, done, he’d told her proudly, when he’d attempted to hang himself. Louisa felt a swell of anguish. Gary shared his issues at every session, and they were always the same.