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Rivers. It’s a gift.’
    ‘I think if I’d made any association at all with the snake – and after all what possible relevance can my associations have? – it was probably with the one that’s crawling up your lapel.’
    Anderson looked down at the caduceus badge of the RAMC which he wore on his tunic, and then across at the same badge on Rivers’s tunic.
    ‘What the er snake might suggest is that medicine is an issue between yourself and your father-in-law?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Not at all?’
    ‘No.’
    Another long silence. Anderson said, ‘It depends what you mean by an issue.’
    ‘A subject on which there is habitual disagreement.’
    ‘No. Naturally my time in France has left me with a certain level of distaste for the practice of medicine, but that’ll go in time. There’s no issue. I have a wife and child to support.’
    ‘You’re how old?’
    ‘Thirty-six.’
    ‘And your little boy?’
    Anderson’s expression softened. ‘Five.’
    ‘School fees coming up?’
    ‘Yes. I’ll be all right once I’ve had a rest. Basically, I’m paying for last summer. Do you know, at one point we averaged ten amputations a day? Every time I was due for leave it was cancelled.’ He looked straight at Rivers. ‘There’s no doubt what the problem is. Tiredness.’
    ‘I still find the vomiting puzzling. Especially since you say you feel no more than a mild disinclination for medicine.’
    ‘I didn’t say mild, I said temporary.’
    ‘Ah. What in particular do you find difficult?’
    ‘I don’t know that there is anything particular.’
    A long silence.
    Anderson said, ‘I’m going to start timing these silences, Rivers.’
    ‘It’s already been done. Some of the younger ones had a sweepstake on it. I’m not supposed to know.’
    ‘Blood.’
    ‘And you attribute this to the ten amputations a day?’
    ‘No, I was all right then. The… er… problem started later. I wasn’t at Étaples when it happened, I’d been moved forward – the 13th CCS. They brought in this lad. He was a Frenchman, he’d escaped from the German lines. Covered in mud. There wasn’t an inch of skin showing anywhere. And you know it’s not like ordinary mud, it’s five, six inches thick. Bleeding. Frantic with pain. No English.’ A pause. ‘I missed it. I treated the minor wounds and missed the major one.’ He gave a short, hissing laugh. ‘Not that the minor ones were all that minor. He started to haemorrhage, and… there was nothing I could do. I just stood there and watched him bleed to death.’ His face twisted. ‘It pumped out of him.’
    It was a while before either of them stirred. Then Anderson said, ‘If you’re wondering why that one, I don’t know. I’ve seen many worse deaths.’
    ‘Have you told your family?’
    ‘No. They know I don’t like the idea of going back to medicine, but they don’t know why.’
    ‘Have you talked to your wife?’
    ‘Now and then. You have to think about the practicalities, Rivers. I’ve devoted all my adult life to medicine. I’ve no private income to tide me over. And I do have a wife and a child.’
    ‘Public health might be a possibility.’
    ‘It doesn’t have much… dash about it, does it?’
    ‘Is that a consideration?’
    Anderson hesitated. ‘Not with me.’
    ‘Well, we can talk about the practicalities later. You still haven’t told me when you said enough.’
    Anderson smiled. ‘You make it sound like a decision. I don’t know that lying on the floor in a pool of piss counts as a decision.’ He paused. ‘The following morning. On the ward. I remember them all looking down at me. Awkward situation, really. What do you do when the doctor breaks down?’
    At intervals, as Rivers was doing his rounds as orderly officer for the day, he thought about this dream. It was disturbing in many ways. At first he’d been inclined to see the post-mortem apron as expressing no more than a lack of faith in him, or, more accurately, in his methods, since obviously