by J. Thorn
That was the day that the deaths started to happen.
From that day onwards, Elsmoor was the same, always quiet and withdrawn, like someone had just switched off a light somewhere and not bothered to turn it back on again. He spent most of his free time, which was very little in that place, sitting in his personal tent, behind his surgery, quiet as could be. Whenever I saw him sitting in his tent, he was still reading that same letter, over and over again, must have been a hundred times.
At first it wasn’t really noticeable, but I did overhear a couple of the staff talking that evening, as I sat on the bank near the river eating my supper. One of the nurses, a woman called Sue, was speaking in hushed tones to a supply driver who was due to leave in the morning. I didn’t hear the start of the conversation, but when I heard his name mentioned, my ears perked up like a rabbit hiding in a field. I must have been ten feet away, so I wouldn’t have been the only one to overhear it.
"I think Doctor Elsmoor is not well," she whispered. "He just didn’t seem himself today."
"What do you mean?" asked the driver. I think he was from the same part of the country as old Looky, except his accent wasn’t as deep.
"Well he just seemed quiet today," she said, "and I don’t think he is paying attention as he normally would. He administered a restful peace to two gentlemen today, and I’m not sure they were lost causes."
"Are you serious?" The driver’s voice was strained. "That’s wrong isn’t it?"
"Well I don’t know, you know how short of supplies we are here."
"Yes, I deliver them, but putting down a man who could be saved."
"Oh, I don’t know, they were both in pretty bad shape, and he said we needed to preserve what supplies we had for those who were coming in that could more easily be saved. I didn’t question him at the time, but I feel terrible about it now."
"You should tell someone." The driver’s voice was grave.
"I can’t do that," came the exasperated reply. "He’s the best doctor in the field, I’m wrong to question his practice in the first place."
"If he is a danger to folks..."
"No, it’s not like that, he’s just distracted at the moment, I’m sure he’ll be fine."
"Well I hope you know what you’re doing Sue, I wouldn’t want you to get in any trouble just to defend the doctor."
I think Sue must have regretted bringing the subject up, because she backed off and changed the subject as fast as an alley-cat smelling a dog.
My thoughts drifted away from their conversation after a while, before I eventually turned in to sleep. It had been a long day, with a new batch of the injured arriving at dawn that morning, mostly diseases. It was amazing how we seemed to get more diseased soldiers than injured ones. But then I remember that field below the hill, filled with the dying after our assault, and the moans of pain that slowly stopped as each one of them passed into his fate. If you were shot out here that was you pretty much finished.
I woke up a little late the next morning, and was lucky that Elsmoor had gone about his rounds early, otherwise I might have had myself a little telling-off for tardiness.
The first I heard of it was as I arrived at the foremost tent in the south of the camp, not far from my little nook at the back of the barracks tent, and the first port of call for me most days.
As I was about to enter the tent, three soldiers with military police helmets rushed past me, heading north and away from the river, up towards the surgery tents, where all the most urgent cases were kept, including the new arrivals. It was unusual to see them off in such a hurry, strange even to see them in the camp in the first place. They were usually posted out over the bridge, at the gate. But this morning they hurried off up the hill and disappeared into the warren of tents and out of sight.
The ruckus started when I came back out of the tent with my first list of required supplies. I could hear shouts echoing down into the valley, and then chaos broke out. First there was a lot of shouting, which rose into a crescendo, until the final ear-wrenching gunshots resounded. I nearly dropped my notepad in my hurry to run up the hill.
I wasn’t the only one making an urgent line for the arrivals marquee, where all the noise was coming from. Nurses, doctors, and a few soldiers rushed out of tents from all directions and scurried up the hill.
When I got there I couldn’t get into the marquee for so many people rushing around and shouting at each other, though I did catch a glimpse from the edge of the entrance.
The nurses and doctors seemed to be rushing to revive a number of soldiers lying in the bunks of the tent. They were minor injury cases, as far as I knew, but they didn’t seem very minor now. Most of them lay there cold as dead, which it turned out most of them were.
In the middle of the room at least two doctors and a couple of nurses struggled with what I thought was a patient, but as I watched, I saw that pair of brown ankle-length boots that he always wore, sticking out from underneath one of the doctors who was trying to bring Major Elsmoor back to life. It was hopeless though. A gunshot wound to the chest and another to the head was quite the guarantee that Elsmoor was never going to breathe again.
I didn’t find out much more about the incident until Joe recounted everything he had witnessed, while we sat in the back of the truck, heading away from the camp. Everyone had been closed-lipped afterwards, and the standing officer who took over the camp the same day, a tall, skinny man by the name of Renwood, who I think was another major like Elsmoor, gave the order out that the incident was not to be discussed by anyone until after an investigation had been made.
Joe had a little extra to tell me…
"I was lying on my bunk reading that newspaper you got for me the day before. I had just got past the news and into the sports section, which I always looked forward to, when Elsmoor came into the tent.
He was quiet as anything, and I said good morning to him, but he didn’t pay me any attention. Just went about his business. I was a little put out by that, but he had been acting a bit strange lately anyway, so I just kept my mouth shut, and left him alone to do his work.
I thought it was strange that he was there so early that morning, and that he was the one giving out the injections, instead of the nurse. He just went along the line, stuck each and every man in the row with his damn needle, moving through each of them with an almost clinical precision and speed.
Then he got to me, and you know he looked at me for a moment before I realised what he was doing, I don’t know how I did - it must have been that cold look on his face. He held the needle up for a second, watched me, and then said, "You don’t want to go, do you?’
He was looking down at my leg and then back up, staring me straight in the eyes. There was something vacant about that look.
I was numb, shocked. I almost didn’t open my mouth, though when he frowned at me, I eventually did.
‘No thank you doc. I’m fine here.’
Stupid I know, but what else could I say? He nodded and then left, skulking out the door with his head low, the needle in his pocket, and his bag, that brown, cracked leather one he always carries with him, tucked under his arm. Of course I gave him about a half a minute to get out, before I started bellowing at the top of my voice, just so he didn’t come walking back in and stick me one to keep me quiet.
Then the rest you already know about. It’s a shame they had to do him in the end, but apparently when the MP’s went in and told him to move away, to stop, he ignored them, and was just about to stick yet another soldier, one who just had a broken leg, and was lying there asleep."
After he finished, Joe sat there in silence for a while. We both did. It’s so hard to imagine how a previously sane man could just go off the boat like that.
Major Elsmoor died from massive blood loss and brain damage about five minutes after he was shot. With him, he took a hundred and thirty-seven men - nearly a quarter of all the patients in the field hospital. I wish I knew what possessed him to do that. What was in that lette
r that started him off on that road?
Maybe it was just best left alone.
I met Marie again in a hospital north of London.
She was cleaning the floors of the ward where I took Joe. I wasn’t meant to be there of course. My ticket home, and my time in the military ended the moment I stepped out onto the docks, but I had grown fond of Joe Dean, and I kept a promise I made to him, to travel with him until he was settled into the place. Being an American in England at that time was certainly nothing unusual, they were all over the place, but he didn’t know anybody, and really, when I think about it, I didn’t want to lose touch with him. I didn’t have any friends myself either.
I stayed in the village just down the road from the hospital, and a strike of fortune gave me a job in a workhouse and a bed in the local hostelry at the same time. So I settled there for a while, spending my days working, and my evenings either sitting playing cards with Joe, or drinking in the pub down the road. I didn’t earn that much money, but it was the first time in my life that I was paid to do anything. It was enough to get by on.
One evening I was playing cards with Joe when she just came round the corner. We stared at each other for what seemed ages before she finally spoke.
"Reggie?"
"Marie?"
I can't even start to explain how happy I was to see her again. It had been a long time, but it was just like I had said goodbye to her on that street yesterday. She told me all about how she had gone back to her parents and started school again, and how she had volunteered to work in the hospital. We spent hours and hours recounting the years that had passed. I told her nearly everything, just missing out the parts about walking dead men and rampaging, mad doctors.
She was even prettier than I remembered.
A month or so later Joe was ready to leave the hospital, so I packed up and headed back into London with him. He was why I was in the village in the first place, and it was good to see him on his feet at last.
Marie and I promised to keep in touch, and we did. I would travel to the hospital to see her every couple of weeks, and we would sit and talk after she finished work. I even went to visit her at home with her folks in Gravesend. This time I wasn't wearing rags.
From the accounts of the staff at the hospital, Joe was lucky to still have some use of his leg. The infection had been so bad that they nearly decided to cut it off to stop it spreading, but about a week after being in the hospital his health had turned around, the medicine they had been giving him started to work, and then it was almost like it had never been there. He was soon up and started walking, regaining strength in his withered legs. He built himself up faster than I would have believed, and I wasn’t at all surprised when he said he was going to discharge himself and head into the city. He had plans, did Joe. Plans to open up his own coffeehouse, a Caff he called it.
"Just like they are at home, except this one will be in London," he would say. "It’ll make me rich, boy. You’ll see," he chirped, nodding to himself, "coffee and cakes in the front of the shop, whiskey and cigars out in the back."
I believed him. He had a way of instilling you with a sense of confidence, both in him and in yourself.
At first I wasn’t sure where he was going to get the money from, but somehow he managed it.
"There’s a few people owe me some," he said as we stood outside an empty building on Casey Street. It wasn’t a big place, and the area wasn’t the nicest in the city, but it was going cheap, and Gallowshill wasn’t a slum back then - at least not for a few years.
We cleared the place out, and spent days hauling junk down the road to the scrap yard in Choke alley, just off Casey Street. I worked in his Caff for a while, just as he wanted, serving whiskey and all manner of strange imported teas out in the back room of the shop. Most times that room would be filled with a thick fog of cigar smoke, both day and night, and that dry, sweet smell of malt whiskey. I got to know most of the locals. Tad Bennet, the local cobbler, and ‘Benny’ to most of his friends, Ryan Cole, another American soldier who had set himself up just across the street with a small grocery shop.
The Caff was the place to go in the evening, for locals and for visitors, Joe was making a fortune out of the place, but I think somewhere along the way he got greedy, started doing deals out in the back yard, all manner of deals. He converted the small outhouse into a card den, and he had folks in there playing for money, and exchanging money for other things. This, of course, led to the trouble that eventually found its way into the place one night in mid-March, the night that Ryan Cole died, and the night that the leather bag turned up on the doorstep.
I was serving out the back, and it was about nine in the evening when Ryan brought the bag in. It was raining outside and it must have been sat on the doorstep for quite a while, because the leather was drenched through. He dumped it on the counter, and I was about to ask him to take it off when he spoke.
"Is this Joe’s bag Reggie? I found it on the step just out there."
He nodded his head towards the back door.
I looked down at it, dripping dirty rainwater all over my clean bar, and shook my head.
"No, I don’t think so, he’s just out the back, I’ll ask."
Joe was taking a smoke in the back yard, leaning up against the wall of the card den. He didn’t like to smoke in the back room. He said there were already enough people smoking in there, and he didn’t have anybody in the den at the time.
"Joe? Ryan’s found this bag outside on the street, thinks it might be yours."
As I poured Ryan his whiskey, Joe stubbed out his smoke, walked into the bar, and just stood there next to me, staring at it. His face went from a ruddy brown to pale as snow. I’d not seen Joe look that shook up before.
"Where the hell did that come from?" he asked, throwing Ryan an accusing glance. "This some kind of joke?"
Ryan looked offended, "No, I found it outside there and thought it might be yours. I can take it away if you want. I’m sure Tad will pay a good price for it, looks in good condition."
"The hell you will," said Joe, and snatching up the bag, he walked into the office room that was just behind the bar, and put the bag square on the table with a thud.
Ryan looked at me, puzzled, and shrugged, handed me some coins for the whiskey and went to sit down in the corner of the room. He usually perched at the bar, but after the way Joe reacted he seemed a little put out.
I went into the office.
"You all right?"
"No, well, sure, yeah, look at this Reg," he said, opening the top of the bag.
The whole bag was stuffed full of money - coins of all kinds, old, darkened and worn, like it had all been sat in someone’s coat pocket for a decade, in the back of a wardrobe. But it would have had to have been one hell of a pocket.
"My god, there must be thousands in there," I said, "I’ve never seen so much money before,"
"I have," said Joe. "Just once."
I frowned at him, waiting for him to explain.
"This is exactly the same bag my money arrived in when I collected what people owed me, to buy this place, though I also borrowed a little at the same time."
"You borrowed money? How much?"
"Not too much, well, quite a bit, but nothing too worrying, and I never asked for any more."
"So what’s this for?"
"I don’t know."
Later that evening, as more folks turned up for their late night drinks, someone new stepped into the Caff. He was a short stubby man, wide of girth and round in the face, with a beard that seemed to go on for ever. He didn’t look very old, but his beard was far too long for a young man.
For a man of such cumbersome build he moved with a careful grace that seemed unnatural, almost gliding across the floor of the back room and up to the bar, hardly losing his stride. I had a tumbler in my hand and a vodka bottle in the other.
He squared up to me, his face expressionless.
"Joseph Dean."
That was it, no
please, no thank you, no explanation as to why he wanted to speak to Joe, just his name. I immediately didn’t like him.
"No sir, I’m not Joseph Dean," I said. He irritated me in a way I couldn’t place.
He sighed, squinting at me, probably just as annoyed by my answer as I was by his arrogance.
"I am aware that you are not Joseph Dean, Mr. Weldon. Now, please make him aware that I am waiting for him."
How he knew my name, I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t like that at all. But he seemed utterly humourless, so I decided that maybe I shouldn’t agitate him. I put the bottle and tumbler down and headed out into the back room, where I thought Joe would probably be sitting in his chair, smoking.
He was standing over by the open window, looking out into the alleyway, smoking his pipe with his other hand firmly on the top of the leather bag when I walked in.
"Joe, there’s this strange guy here to see you. I don’t like the look of him, but he knows your whole name, and he looks pretty serious."
Joe turned to me and nodded. He paused for a moment, looking down at the floor, his hand still on the bag.
"Tell him I’ll be out in a moment."
I did that, and the gentleman waited silently at the bar, refusing to take a drink or even sit down. He just stood there, looking around the room.
Ryan stood up and went to join Tad over at the corner table, throwing me a curious glance as he did so. I frowned back, and shook my head at him. I didn’t know what this guy wanted, but I was sure it wasn’t good, and I had a suspicion it was something to do with that leather bag that Joe was holding on to so tightly.