Free Regeneration by Pat Barker Page A

even bother showing him the Declaration. I knew he wouldn’t go along with it.’
    ‘Why wouldn’t he? Out of concern for you?’
    ‘Ye-es. Yes, that certainly, but… Ross was a close friend of Wilde’s. I suppose he’s learnt to keep his head below the parapet.’
    ‘And you haven’t.’
    ‘I don’t like holes in the ground.’
    Rivers began polishing his glasses on his handkerchief. ‘You know, I realize Ross’s caution probably seems excessive. To you. But I hope you won’t be in too much of a hurry to dismiss it. There’s nothing more despicable than using a man’s private life to discredit his views. But it’s very frequently done, even by people in my profession. People you might think wouldn’t resort to such tactics. I wouldn’t like to see it happen to you.’
    ‘I thought discrediting my views was what you were about?’
    Rivers smiled wryly. ‘Let’s just say I’m fussy about the methods.’
    Rivers had kept two hours free of appointments in the late afternoon in order to get on with the backlog of reports. He’d been working for half an hour when Miss Crowe tapped on the door. ‘Mr Prior says could he have a word?’
    Rivers pulled a face. ‘I’ve seen him once today. Does he say what’s wrong?’
    ‘No, this is the father.’
    ‘I didn’t even know he was coming.’
    She started to close the door. ‘I’ll tell him you’re busy, shall I?’
    ‘No, no, I’ll see him.’
    Mr Prior came in. He was a big, thick-set man with a ruddy complexion, dark hair sleeked back, and a luxuriant, drooping, reddish-brown moustache. ‘I’m sorry to drop on you like this,’ he said. ‘I thought our Billy had told you we were coming.’
    ‘I think he probably mentioned it. If he did, I’m afraid it slipped my mind.’
    Mr Prior looked him shrewdly up and down. ‘ Nab. Wasn’t your mind it slipped.’
    ‘Well, sit down. How did you find him?’
    ‘Difficult to tell when they won’t talk, isn’t it?’
    ‘Isn’t he talking? He was this morning.’
    ‘Well, he’s not now.’
    ‘It does come and go.’
    ‘Oh, I’m sure. Comes when it’s convenient and goes when it isn’t. What’s supposed to be the matter?’
    ‘Physically, nothing.’ Two l’s, Rivers thought. ‘I thinkperhaps there’s something he’s afraid to talk about, so he solves the problem by making it impossible for himself to speak. This is… beneath the surface. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.’
    ‘If he doesn’t, it’ll be the first time.’
    Rivers tried a different tack. ‘I believe he volunteered, didn’t he? The first week of the war.’
    ‘He did. Against my advice, not that that’s ever counted for much.’
    ‘You didn’t want him to go?’
    ‘No I did not. I told him, time enough to do summat for the Empire when the Empire’s done summat for you.’
    ‘It is natural for the young to be idealistic.’
    ‘Ideals had nowt to do with it. He was desperate to get out of his job.’
    ‘I think I remember him saying he didn’t like it. He was a clerk in a shipping office.’
    ‘That’s right, and getting nowhere. Twenty years wearing the arse of your breeches out and then, if you’re a good boy and lick all the right places, you get to be supervisor and then you sit on a bigger stool and watch other people wear their breeches out. Didn’t suit our Billy. He’s ambitious, you know, you mightn’t think it to look at him, but he is. His mam drilled that into him. Schooled him in it. She was determined he was going to get on.’
    Rather unexpectedly, Rivers found himself wanting to leap to Billy Prior’s defence. ‘She seems to have succeeded.’
    Mr Prior snorted. ‘She’s made a stool-arsed jack on him, if that’s what you mean.’
    ‘You make it sound as if you had no say.’
    ‘I didn’t. All the years that lad was growing up there was only one time I put my oar in, and that was when there was this lad at school picking on him. He was forever coming in crying. And one day I