Life Class by Pat Barker

Author:Pat Barker [Barker, Pat]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780141906416
Google: Y4QO9YqfNFcC
Amazon: 0307387801
Publisher: Anchor
Published: 2008-08-06T23:00:00+00:00

Part Two

Seventeen

Everything stinks: creosote, bleach, disinfectant, soil, blood, gangrene.

The military authorities say uniforms must be preserved at all costs, but that means manhandling patients who are in agony. Cut them off, says Sister Byrd, and she’s the voice of authority here, in the Salle d’Attente, not some gold-braid-encrusted crustacean miles away from blood and pain, so cut they do, snip, snip, snip, snip, as close to the skin as they dare.

On either side of Paul as he cuts are two long rows of feet: yellow, strong, calloused, scarred where blisters have formed and burst repeatedly. Since August they’ve done a lot of marching, these feet, and all their marching has brought them to this one place.

Sister Byrd’s tough, tougher even than she looks. Auburn hair tarnished with silver; fine, pale skin mottled red on the cheeks; harebell-blue eyes – she must have been pretty once – but now she’s barrel-shaped and dour, and amazingly good at her job.

Every few minutes the door’s pushed open and the stretcher-bearers shuffle in with their load, standing like carthorses between the shafts, waiting to be told where to set it down. They’re there now, waiting. Sister Byrd pulls the blanket over the face of a man who’s just died and his yellow ankles seem to get longer. Strong calves appear, fuzzed with black hairs, the muscles prominent from all the marching he’s done in the last few weeks. She bows her head, but only for a second. All right,’ she says, in French. ‘You can put him here.’

In bad weather, as now, the rain pelts down on the corrugated-iron roof with the rattle of machine-gun fire. At the moment it’s a real downpour. Waking from their half-sleep, the bundles in the blankets began to stir and cry out in fear. One of the head wounds throws off his blanket, clambers to his feet and, naked, runs between the rows of beds. Two of the orderlies give chase and eventually grab hold of him, one by each arm, and hold him like that, his arms outstretched, a blood-soaked bandage slipping down across one eye. They soothe him, stroke his arms, tell him there’s nothing to be frightened of, it’s the rain, only the rain, no guns here, and perhaps he believes them, but more probably he doesn’t understand a word, only the tone of voice and the touch. But he lets himself be led along, the strength that terror gave him ebbing with every step, until, by the time they reach his bed, he’s walking with the slow, shuffling steps of a very old man.

At last Sister Byrd signals that it’s Paul’s turn for a break. They drink their cocoa in the sterilizing room, all of them, dressers, orderlies, nurses, surgeons, surrounded by hissing and bursts of steam. The cocoa’s hot. It delineates his gullet as it goes down. Only his hands around the mug and the hot fluid in his mouth and stomach are real. The light over the dressing table blurs; he makes an effort to straighten up and focus on his surroundings.

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