The Stars' Tennis Balls

by Stephen Fry

  Dr Mallo and the staff did not leap out from the next doorway. The next doorway led to the room adjacent to the ward where Babe had died and the hospital wing remained as quiet as the tomb it was serving as. Ned put his hand to the doorknob and turned the handle. If he had made a mistake with the alarm-box he would discover it now. He pushed the door open. No bells jangled, no sirens wailed. All was silent. He closed the door behind him and felt for a light-switch.

  He had found himself in a store room whose walls were lined with shelves filled with rows of medical supplies. In the centre of the room was a trestle-table on which stood a packing case about seven feet long and three feet wide with thick rope handles attached to the end sides. Ned approached the table and laid his hands on the lid of the packing case.

  ‘Hello, Babe,’ he whispered. ‘So far so good.’

  He laid down the carrier bag and looked about him. The teaspoon was still gripped in his left hand but he had hoped he might find something stronger. He searched the shelves and saw nothing that would help him. He had almost given up when he glimpsed the end side of a metallic blue toolbox under the table itself.

  Helping himself to a heavy-handled chisel, Ned set to work on prising the lid free, being careful not to bend any of the nails. It took close to fifteen minutes and Ned was sweating profusely by the time he lifted the lid clear and laid it on the floor.

  Inside the crate Babe’s body was covered in a white sheet. Ned swallowed, gripped the fabric and plucked it away. He almost screamed in shock.

  Babe was smiling. It was the smile that Ned had come to love over the last ten years. It was the wicked grin of complicity, excitement and pleasure that always preceded a new lesson in a new field.

  Wait till you meet Joyce, old lad!

  And next week, Faraday and magnets – prepare to be astounded!

  The Battle of Lepanto tomorrow, Ned my boy!

  Wagner. Richard Wagner! Once in your system, never out.

  The Marshall attack. Not an opening for the faint hearted.

  Let’s say Heil to Herr Schopenhauer, shall we?

  Russian verbs of motion, Ned. They’ll drive you mad.

  Ned leaned down and stroked Babe’s beard.

  ‘Here we go,’ he said.

  Ned was prepared to find the body heavy and had planned in his mind all evening how he would set about lifting Babe out of the crate. In his mind he had imagined that he would put a hand under each of his arms, summon up all his strength and heave until Babe’s body was draped face down over Ned’s back in a kind of fireman’s lift. What Ned had not foreseen was the enormous strain this would throw on his weak shoulders. As he strained at Babe’s dead weight he could feel the socket of the left shoulder grinding in the old familiar way. He had not put one of them out for at least seven or eight years and while he knew perfectly well how to snap the socket back, tonight he could not allow anything to disable him. He decided to try letting his right shoulder take the weight instead. He drew in nine or ten sharp lungfuls of breath and pulled.

  Staggering from the table with Babe over his shoulder, Ned sank down to the floor, sweat pouring from him and his right shoulder on fire with pain. Babe’s head banged against the floor and his body tumbled to the ground with a crack of bone as the neck snapped like a dry twig.

  Ned rose unsteadily to his feet and gently stretched out his arms. The right shoulder gave a small click but held in its socket. Inhaling and exhaling deeply, Ned forced his breathing to slow to a calmer rhythm and waited for the trembling in his arms and legs to stop. Stretching and inhaling deeply once more he switched off the lights, opened the door and listened. Satisfied that no sound other than the thumping of his heart pierced the deep black silence of the night, he bent down and hooked a hand under each of Babe’s arms.

  He pulled the body slowly along the corridor of the hospital wing and reached the alarm-box. The radio around the corner was playing music. Ned recognised it to be Grieg’s Death of Åse and instinctively looked down at Babe, as if to share the joke.

  He dragged the body around the corner and laid it down face up. Crouching at Babe’s feet, he pushed him forward along the ground and past the door to the staff room. If Paul came out for another pee, he could not help but trip over the corpse and all would be lost. Bent as low as possible without losing his purchase on the soles of Babe’s feet, Ned pushed again. He was now directly below the window and he pushed faster and faster, wishing that the radio had programmed something louder and more percussive. If it was to be funereal, why not Siegfried’s Death, Verdi’s Dies Ire or the March to the Scaffold? The muted strings of Grieg whined on as Ned cleared the window, stood up and resumed the more comfortable grip under Babe’s arms that allowed him to drag the body backwards over the linoleum that led to his own wing.

  Back in his room, it took another shoulder-wrenching effort to heave Babe onto the bed. He did so without first pulling back the blankets and had to rock the body backwards and forwards on its side before he could loosen the bedsheets and cover Babe up, cursing himself for his stupidity. He imagined Babe too tutting at such a lack of foresight and common sense.

  ‘Sorry,’ he whispered. ‘Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.’

  Ned arranged the head on the pillow, pulled up the blankets and bent down to lay a final kiss on Babe’s head. ‘Goodbye my best and dearest friend. Whatever happens, you have saved my life.’

  On his way back to the store room Ned returned to Mallo’s office and replaced the alarm-key, parking the residue of his gum under the doctor’s grand leather chair. One day Dr Mallo would find it and wonder how it got there.

  Ducking under the staff-room window, from which Rossini’s overture to the Barber of Seville now blasted triumphantly, Ned passed by the alarm-box and made his way back to the store room, closing the door behind him and switching on the light.

  He could not afford now to make the slightest mistake and he prepared everything he needed with meticulous care. He dropped the carrier bag into the crate and looked around the room. An idea had come to him as he had been dragging Babe’s body along the corridors and he searched the shelves now until he came upon a box marked ‘Diacetylmorphine EP’. He ripped it open and emptied its contents, dozens and dozens of polythene bags, into the crate, throwing in for good measure a polythene bag filled with syringes. He looked down and saw that there was room for another boxful too. And another. After a moment’s thought he added a waste disposal sack, large enough to contain all the polythene bags and the carrier bag he had taken from Mallo’s office too.

  His initial plan had been to cannibalise screws from the hinge of the door and work them into the inside of the lid using the teaspoon as a screwdriver, but he discovered that the blue toolbox contained a small jar of wood-screws and even a brace and selection of drill bits. One thing he could not find however was rope, so he tore strips from the sheet that had covered Babe’s body and plaited them tightly together. He held this home-made rope against the inside of the top of the crate and drilled with the brace, being careful not to break through to the other side of the lid. He screwed the plaited cloth tightly into the wood, with just enough give to offer a firm hand hold, which he tested by tugging on it with all his strength until he could be sure that the cloth would not rip and that the screws would hold fast.

  Ned now laid the lid on top of the crate, lining up the nails with their original holes. He pushed down and saw that three of the nails, instead of finding their holes, jumped up proud. He readjusted each one and tried again. When he was reasonably sure that each nail would find home he pulled off the lid once more and laid it upside down crossways over the crate.

  He gave a final look around the room, kicking the toolbox under the table into its original position. He glanced about the shelves and down at the floor. With the exception of the lid lying across the crate, everything was as it had been when he had first walked in.

  Drawing in a deep breath, Ned switched off the light and moved slowly forward in the pitch darknes
s until he felt his leg bump against the table. He climbed onto it and stood slowly up, his head nearly brushing the ceiling. He picked up the lid and felt at it until his fingers closed on the loop of cloth. He lifted the lid by this handle and, holding it in front of him like a Norman shield, he stepped into the crate and lay back on his bed of polythene. Manoeuvring the lid into position and satisfying himself that, so long as he pulled down on his plaited handle, all was well, Ned concentrated so hard on staying awake that he fell asleep almost instantly.

  The bang of the store-room door opening awoke Ned with a jolt. Tiny slivers of light pierced the darkness of the packing-crate and at first he was convinced that too much time had passed. Perhaps they had decided to keep the body longer and send it on an evening boat. Babe would already have been discovered in Ned’s room and the hunt would be up. He cursed himself for sleeping. If he had stayed awake he might have realised that too much time had passed and managed to escape another way. Babe had assured him that the island was at least thirty miles from land, but attempting to swim for freedom would have been better than ignominious discovery here.

  The sound of weary morning voices yawning and moaning reassured him. Working his hand into the cloth loop, Ned pulled down on the lid as hard as he could and waited, hardly daring to breathe.

  Two male voices spoke in Danish.

  ‘We’ll take it on our shoulders.’

  ‘What’s the rope on the ends for?’

  ‘Yah, but it will bite into our hands. Believe me, I’ve done this before. On our shoulders. You first, one, two . . . three.’

  ‘I thought it was going to be an old man. Christ, he’s heavy.’

  ‘It’ll be the wood mostly. Come on.’

  ‘Ow!’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘You were supposed to hammer the nails in. I just cut my finger!’

  Ned lost all sense of direction as his body bumped back and forth inside the crate. He was dropped onto the floor twice when doors had to be unlocked and opened and each time Ned was fearful that the lid would bounce up and he would be discovered. He prepared in his mind the possibility of having to fight for it and run.

  Finally, cold morning air seeped through the sides of the box and he heard the cry of gulls followed by the groaning creak of a sliding van door. The crate was pushed with bone-jarring carelessness onto a metal floor, the door slammed shut and an engine started.

  Ned recalled the infernal torture of his last journey in a van. He saw again the two dead eyes of the men who had kicked him to unconsciousness and heard the rhythmical flipping of tyres over a ribbed causeway. He remembered Mr Gaine and he remembered every detail of those two brutal men. He could not, however, reassemble in his mind the identity of the Ned who had undergone those infernal torments of soul and body. That Ned had been as innocent, terrified and blinded by the world and its cruelty as a newborn puppy. He had been a particle, without will, direction or purpose. That Ned had been dead for almost twenty years: all the life had been snuffed out of him the day Rolf had dislocated his left shoulder and murdered his last remaining shreds of hope and faith. The Ned who travelled now was an entirely different being, a man of iron will, an avenging angel – an instrument of God.

  Ned stood up on the rocks and turned to look at the ferry half a mile out to sea. When she put in, the crew would carry the wooden box, now weighed down with sea-chain and iron tackle, to the dock where, after a time, it would be opened and the deception discovered. Perhaps the island had already sent a message to shore and Ned was already a wanted man.

  He shivered and unwound from his aching shoulders a large yellow oilskin bag that he had stolen from the captain’s locker on board the ferry. In the locker he had also found clothing and a wallet containing two and a half thousand Danish kroner. He had no idea whether it was a fortune or barely enough for a small breakfast.

  Half an hour later he walked into a crowded café on the Århus road. He had not been surprised to discover that he was in Denmark. Babe had told him that the hospital island lay in the Kattegat, somewhere between the Swedish coast and northern Jutland. Ned marched straight to the counter and ordered a cup of coffee and a plate of eggs and bacon. He took a seat and looked around him. He had seen five large lorries parked outside and decided that his best course was boldness and speed.

  ‘Hey!’ he called out above the noise of the juke box. Everyone in the café looked up and stared at him. ‘Anybody here going south? I need to be in Germany by tonight. I’ll go halves on the fuel.’

  Most of the men in Ned’s eyeline shrugged and looked back down at their plates. One or two shook their heads regretfully, but no one responded. Damn, thought Ned, what do I do now?

  A voice behind him spoke up in broken Danish. ‘I have to be in Hamburg tonight. You are welcome to ride with me.’

  ‘Fantastic!’ cried Ned, in German. ‘You’ve saved my life!’

  ‘Oh, you’re German,’ said the other. ‘Thank Christ for that. Danish is a nightmare.’

  ‘I know,’ said Ned with a sympathetic smile. ‘Trying to speak it gives you a nosebleed. Let me buy you a cup of coffee, you don’t mind waiting while I dive into a quick breakfast do you?’

  ‘No problem,’ said the other, coming round to join Ned at his table and extending his hand. ‘Dieter, by the way.’

  ‘Karl,’ said Ned. ‘Pleased to know you. Ah, prachtvoll!’ He smiled up at the waitress as a plate was put in front of him. ‘And a cup of coffee for my friend here,’ he added in Danish.

  Someone had left a newspaper on the table and Ned searched it for a currency table. With relief, he worked out that he was carrying over two hundred pounds. Unless inflation had gone entirely insane over the last twenty years, he reckoned it should be enough to get him where he wanted to go.

  Ned rode up front with Dieter, who told him that he had picked up a consignment of paper pulp in Skagen fifty miles north of the roadside café they were leaving, which was just outside the port of Ålborg. Ned calculated that they still had a drive of a hundred and fifty miles south to the German border. The ferry would be putting in at the harbour in Ålborg now. It was all a question of whether or not Dr Mallo had decided to alert the police. He would have discovered that there were papers missing from his filing-cabinet and Ned was confident that this would prevent him from contacting anyone in authority. Perhaps Mallo would call Oliver Delft, probably he would not dare. In Mallo’s position, Ned would fabricate a death certificate and try and forget that the troublesome Englishman had ever existed.

  Dieter was not a demanding conversationalist. His world appeared to revolve around his wife Trude and their children, of whom there were photographs displayed all around the cabin, and football of which Ned knew little. What he did know was confined to what he had learned of the Scandinavian leagues from Paul. The doings of Trondheim held no interest for Dieter whatsoever.

  ‘Not much traffic,’ Ned remarked at one point.

  ‘April sixteenth,’ said Dieter. ‘It’s a public holiday here. The queen’s birthday, so they tell me.’

  ‘Ah, of course.’

  They stopped for lunch outside Århus and here Ned made his first mistake. They were sitting at a table and Ned picked up a small object that Dieter had brought with him into the café.

  ‘What on earth is this?’ he had asked, holding it in his hand and staring at it in bewilderment.

  ‘You’re joking!’ Dieter smiled broadly. His eyes narrowed when he saw that Ned was completely serious. ‘Are you telling me that you don’t know what this is?’

  Ned realised that he had blundered and tried to laugh it off. ‘What I mean to say is,’ he said, ‘I’ve not seen one like this before . . .’

  ‘Not seen one like this? Look around you, man!’

  Ned glanced at the other tables and saw at least six almost identical objects.

  ‘Well, it’s the colour really . . .’ he said, with an attempt at heartiness. ‘Yours is red, the others are mostly black and grey.’


  ‘Where have you been the last ten years?’ Dieter asked. ‘Where on God’s earth is there a place without mobile phones?’

  Phones! Mobile phones. Ned cursed himself for not working it out for himself. Now that he looked he could see two people speaking into them. ‘I’ve . . . I’ve not been well,’ he said. ‘I’ve been in a hospital.’

  ‘A prison more like.’

  ‘No, no, a hospital. You must believe me, Dieter. I’m fine now. Totally well, but I have . . . you know, missed out on some things.’

  Dieter let Ned back into the lorry, but he was more silent as they continued the journey south towards Åbenrå and the German border. Ned sat beside him, thinking furiously. He came to the conclusion that his best recourse was a kind of limited honesty. The last thing he wanted was for Dieter to flag down a police car. It would be hard to explain the quantity of drugs packed into his oilskin bag.

  ‘I’ll be straight with you, Dieter,’ he said at last. ‘I’ve escaped from a Danish hospital. My family put me there because of a drug problem, but I’m fine now. Really. Absolutely fine. I’m heading for Hanover to be with my girlfriend. I’ve messed up my life, but I’m better now. I just need help to get home.’

  ‘How long were you there?’ asked Dieter, his eyes firmly on the road.

  ‘Nearly a year.’

  ‘Nearly a year and you don’t know what a mobile phone is?’

  ‘They gave me electric shock therapy. I forget things sometimes. What can I say? I’m not a bad man, Dieter, I promise you that.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Dieter and he fell quiet again.

  After an agonising silence which Ned did not dare break with pleadings or further justification, Dieter spoke again, shyly and with some embarrassment. ‘Me, I had a drug problem too some years back. I am a trained engineer, you know? I had a very good job, lots of money. I got a little too fond of the heroin and I lost my job. With thanks to my marvellous wife Trude and the mercy and love of my saviour Jesus Christ I am now a clean and healthy person. I shall take you to Hamburg and introduce you to my church. A church is better than any hospital. Only the Lord can help people like us.’