Present Tense [Round Two of The Great Game]

by Dave Duncan

  Smedley pulled a face. “Wish you'd tell the guv'nor that."

  "It's the truth,” Jones said softly. “Much worse. And I will tell your father if you want me to."

  "Hell, no! Let him brood about his yellow-livered, sniveling son. It was damned white of you to come, Ginger. Do you spend all your weekends trailing around England, combing the wreckage like this?"

  "Paying my respects. And, no, not every weekend."

  "Lots, I'll bet.” Smedley blew out a long cloud of smoke, then dabbed at his cheeks with his empty sleeve. He seemed to be talked out on the war, which was a good sign.

  "Ginger...?"

  "Mm?"

  "Er, nothing."

  It wasn't nothing. They'd had that same futile exchange several times in the last two hours. Smedley had something to say, some subject he couldn't broach.

  Jones glanced at his watch. He must not miss his bus. He was running out of things to talk about. One topic he had learned never to mention was patriotism. Another was Field-Marshal Sir Douglas Haig.

  "Apart from school, how are things?” Smedley muttered.

  "Not so bad. Price of food's frightful. Can't find a workman or a servant anywhere."

  "What about the air raids?"

  "People grumble, but they'll pull through."

  Smedley eyed the older man with the ferocity of a hawk. “How do you think the war's going?"

  "Hard to say. The papers are censored, of course. They tell us that Jerry's done for. Morale's all gone."

  "Balls."

  "Oh. Well, we don't hear rumors at Fallow. The Americans are in, thank God."

  "They're in America!” Smedley snapped. “How long until they can build an army and move it to France—if the U-boats don't sink it on the way? And the Russians are out! Good as. Did you know that?"

  Jones made noncommittal noises. If the Hun could finish the Russians before the Yanks arrived, then the war was lost. Everyone knew it. No one said it.

  "Do you recall a boy called Stringer? Before my time."

  The schoolmaster chuckled. “Long Stringer or Short Stringer?"

  "Don't know. A doctor."

  "That's Short Stringer. His brother's a brigadier or something."

  "He drops in here once in a while. I recognized the school tie."

  "A surgeon, actually. Yes, I know him. He's on the board of governors. Comes to Speech Days."

  Smedley nodded, staring out over the lengthening shadows in the garden. He sucked hard on his cigarette. Jones wondered if the unspeakable, whatever it was, was about to be spoken at last. It came in a rush.

  "Tell me something, Ginger. When war broke out I was in Paris, remember? Edward Exeter and I were on our way to Crete. Came home from Paris just before the dam broke."

  "I remember,” Jones said, suddenly wary. “Dr. Gibbs and the others never made it back, if that's what you're wondering. Never did hear what happened to them."

  "Interned?"

  "Hope so, but there's never been word."

  Smedley dismissed the topic with a quick shake of his head, still staring straight ahead. “Tough egg! No, I was wondering about Exeter. We parted at Victoria. I was heading home to Chichester. He was going on to Greyfriars, to stay with the Bodgleys, but he wanted to send a telegram or something. I had to run for my train. Next thing I knew, there was a copper at the house asking questions."

  He turned to look at Jones with the same owlish stare he had had as a boy. He'd always been a shy, quiet one, Smedley, not the sort you'd have ever expected to be a hero and sport those ribbons. But the war had turned thousands of them into heroes. Millions of them.

  "Young Bodgley was murdered,” Jones said.

  "I know. And they seemed to think Exeter had done it."

  "I didn't believe that then and I don't now!"

  "What innocents we were ... fresh out of school, thinking we were debonair young men of the world...” The voice wavered, then recovered. “Wasn't old Bagpipe stabbed in the back?"

  Jones nodded.

  Smedley actually smiled, for the second time that afternoon. “Well, then! That answers the question, doesn't it? Whatever Exeter may have done, he would never stab anyone in the back. He couldn't stab anyone in the back! Not capable of it.” He lit a new cigarette from the previous butt.

  "I agree,” Jones said. “He wasn't capable of any of it—a stabbing or killing a friend or any of that. A quick uppercut to the jaw, yes. Sudden insanity even. Can happen to ... But I agree that the back part is conclusive proof of his innocence."

  "Bloody nonsense,” the young man muttered.

  "Even Mrs. Bodgley refused to believe he killed her son."

  The owlish stare hardened into a threatening frown. “Then what? He escaped?"

  "He totally vanished. Hasn't been seen since."

  "Go on, man!” Suddenly the pitiful neurotic invalid was a young officer blazing with authority.

  Jones flinched like some lowly recruit, even while feeling a surge of joy at the transformation. “It's a total mystery. He just disappeared. There was a warrant issued, but no one ever heard from him again. Of course things were in a pretty mess, with war breaking out and all that."

  Apparently none of this was news to Smedley. He scowled with impatience, as if the recruit were being more than usually stupid. “The copper told us he had a broken leg."

  "His right leg was smashed."

  "So someone helped him? Must have."

  Jones shrugged. “An archangel from the sound of it. Or the Invisible Man. The full story never came out."

  "And you genuinely believe it was a put-up job? Still? You still think that, Ginger?"

  Jones nodded, wondering what lay behind the sudden vehemence. After being through what this boy had been through, why should he brood over the guilt or innocence of a schoolboy chum? After seeing so much death, why become so agitated over one long-ago death? It had been three years. It had happened in another world, a world that was gone forever, butchered in the mud of Flanders.

  The mood passed like a lightning flash. Smedley slumped loosely. He leaned his arms on his knees and reached for his cigarette with the wrong arm. He cursed under his breath.

  Jones waited, but he would have to run for the bus soon or he would not see his bed tonight. Nor any bed, if he got trapped in the city. Not the way London was these days.

  "Why?"

  "I don't know,” Smedley muttered. He seemed to be counting the litter of butts around his feet.

  Nonsense! The man needed to get something off his chest. Well, that was why Jones had come. He crossed his legs and leaned back to wait. He'd slept on station waiting room benches before now. He could again.

  "Shell shock, they call it,” his companion told the dishes on the table—slowly, as if dragging the words out of himself. “Battle fatigue. Tricks of the mind. Weeping, you know? Facial tics, you know? Imagining things?"

  "Maybe. Maybe not. Man has to trust something."

  "There's lots here worse off than me, you know?” Smedley jerked his thumb over his left shoulder. “They call it the morgue. West wing. Don't know who they are, some of them. Or think they're the bleeding Duke of Wellington. All lead-swingers and scrimshankers, I expect."

  "I doubt that very much."

  Smedley looked up with a tortured, frightened grimace.

  Jones's heart began to thunder like all the guns on the Western Front. “So?"

  "There's one they call John Three. They have a John Two, and there was a John One once, I expect. No name or rank. Doesn't speak. Can't or won't say who he is or what unit he was in."

  Jones sucked in a long breath of the chilling air.

  "I'd forgotten how blue his eyes are,” Smedley whispered.

  "Oh, my God!"

  "Bluest eyes I ever did see."

  "Is he ... Is he injured? Physically, I mean?"

  "Nothing major. Touch of gas burn or something.” Smedley shook his head. With another of his abrupt mood changes he sat up and laughed. “I expect I
was imagining it."

  "Let's just pretend you weren't, shall we? Did you speak to him?"

  "No. He was with his keeper. Being exercised. Walked around the lawn like a dog. I wandered over. He looked right through me. I asked his keeper for a light. Said thanks. Trotted off."

  Of course Exeter would have enlisted as soon as his leg had mended. It was impossible to imagine him not doing so. False name ... Tricky, not impossible...

  "One thing you should know,” Smedley said shrilly. “He doesn't look a day older than he did in Victoria Station, three years ago. So a chap really has to assume that he's just a little bit more shell-shocked than he hoped he was, wouldn't you say? Imagining things like that?"

  "You're all right, man!” Jones said sharply. “But Exeter? Amnesia? He's lost his memory?"

  Smedley's eye had begun to twitch again. He threw down his cigarette and stamped on it. “Oh, no! No, no, old man, that's not the problem at all. He knew me right away. Turned white as a sheet, then just stared at the horizon. That's why I didn't speak to him. Chatted up the keeper to keep him busy till Exeter got his color back, then left without a glance at him."

  "He's faking it?"

  "No question. Unless I imagined it."

  "You didn't imagine this!"

  "Oh, I wouldn't say that!"

  "Don't be a fool, man!” Jones snapped. “Have you had other delusions? Seen any other ghosts?"

  "No."

  "Then you didn't this time. He can't reveal his name without going on trial for a murder he didn't commit!"

  The eye twitched faster. “He'd better find himself a name pretty soon, Mr. Jones! Very soon! I've been asking a few discreet questions.” The twitch had spread to his cheek. “He turned up at the front line under very mysterious circumstances. No uniform, no papers, nothing. They think he's a German sp-p-py!"

  "What!"

  "That's one th-th-theory.” Smedley was having trouble controlling his mouth now. “So he's got the choice of being hanged or sh-sh-shot, do you see?"

  "My god!"

  "What'n hell're we going to do, Ginger? How can we help him?” Smedley buried his face in one hand and a sleeve. He began to weep again.

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  II

  White Knight

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  3

  AS SOON AS THE NURSE TURNED HER BACK, SMEDLEY SPAT OUT THE sleeping pill. When the light was turned off, he placed it carefully under his pillow. He would need it later. He rolled onto his back and prepared to wait.

  His right hand throbbed. The fingers were tightly clenched, the nails digging into his palm. They were all somewhere back in Belgium, but he could feel exactly what they were doing ... hurt like hell sometimes. Just part of the trouble of going bonkers.

  Staffles had not been designed as a hospital. He shared a room with two other men, and there was barely room to walk between the beds. Rattray tossed and scuffled on the right; Wilkinson wheezed and bubbled on the left, his lungs ruined by gas. Very shortly both men were snoring—those pills packed a punch like twelve-inch howitzers.

  Light filtered in from the corridor. The sounds of the hospital dwindled into silence. Once in a while it trembled as a train clattered by, London to Dover or Dover to London ... no question which was the better way to be heading these days. The guns were still throbbing.

  He needed a fag, but the nurses gathered up every cigarette in the building at lights-out. Staffles was one giant firetrap.

  He lay and brooded, trying to fit what he had learned about the anonymous John Three in the west wing to the Exeter story he had heard from Jones—how that man had aged! An impossible disappearance and an impossible reappearance? Somehow that was appropriate. At least it made sense to a loony with a bad case of shell shock who couldn't sit still for ten minutes without having an attack of the willies.

  I would kill for a cigarette.

  He should have done something about Exeter days ago, but he hadn't really been able to believe himself. It had taken Ginger's reassurance to convince him of his own story, to persuade him he wasn't that far gone in the head. Not quite. Close, but not on target.

  Exeter had vanished from Albert Memorial Hospital in Greyfriars. Somehow he had passed by the nurses on duty and the doorman, all of whom had sworn he had not. The night nurse had discovered his room wrecked, blood on the floor, and yet no one had heard a thing. Impossible, but Ginger believed, although he admitted it was hearsay. Hearsay from Mrs. Bodgley was good as Holy Writ.

  John Three had been brought in from the battlefield with no uniform on. With nothing on, so the rumors said—shows how far gone the poor sod must be. No sane skulker would go so far as to strip to the buff in that rain-swept, bullet-swept, shell-swept hell. Mad as a March hare.

  There were only two ways into no-man's-land. Either he had come from the British lines or the German lines. Or perhaps he'd cracked up an aeroplane. But why bare arsed? The mud had been known to suck off a man's boots and trousers but not his tunic. Shell blast could collapse his lungs or his brain and kill him without leaving a visible mark on him, but stripping him naked without otherwise harming him seemed rather too freakish even for shell blast.

  I would give my right arm for a fag. It's no damn use anyway.

  Why John Three? Could he speak at all? Why not invent a name?

  Name, rank, and serial number.

  The alternative was a bullet.

  Why had Exeter not been shot out of hand? Why was he not in a provost cell, at least, instead of a low-security mental ward? There were weird rumors. Or at least there were rumors of rumors, tales of people who knew more than they were able to tell but rolled their eyes expressively.

  He might not have been faking when he was brought in. Men picked up in battlefields were usually in bloody rotten shape. The journey back on a stretcher would be enough of an ordeal to drive a chap bonkers all by itself. So perhaps Exeter had genuinely been unable to talk when he was brought in, although Smedley himself had walked on his own feet into the casualty clearing station and tried to shake hands with—never mind.

  Exeter had been putting up a stall on Wednesday. He had known Smedley. And if there was one thing Smedley had learned to recognize in Belgium, it was terror.

  Exeter hadn't even given him a don't-give-me-away look. It had been an attempt at an I-don't-know-you look. That rankled a little, but if he couldn't trust an old pal not to give him away, then he was in something very deep and ever so smelly.

  How long could he swing it? The medicals weren't dumb; they knew a skulker when they saw one. They'd use all kinds of tricks—sneak up behind him and bark orders, ask unexpected questions, leave newspapers lying around....

  Thinking about that, Smedley began to sweat. How long could a man go without speaking? It would be like solitary, but solitary in the middle of a crowd. Voluntary Coventry? Never speaking, never admitting that you could understand? Hour after hour. Day after day. It would crack a man. If Exeter wasn't already off his rocker, the strain of pretending to be would make it so. Playing crazy, he'd go crazy!

  Smedley realized with a shock that he hadn't been weeping or even twitching. Just lying there, thinking and wishing for a Player's. The Exeter puzzle had given his mind something to chew on.

  He had a strange jumpy feeling, not altogether unpleasant. He wasn't going to be in any personal danger. Hell, he could paint his face green or dance hornpipes on the piano and no one would do anything more than sigh and write a note on his file.

  The danger would be to Exeter. If Smedley got caught showing interest in the mystery man, then someone might put two and two together. If anyone ever made the Fallow connection, then the jig would be up. Which might be why Exeter was keeping his mouth shut instead of spinning a yarn. An Englishman's voice would place him within a county. Or his school. Put Professor Higgins on the case and he'd say, “Fallow!” in two shakes.

  Smedley awoke with a blast of terror, sweating torrents and choking back a screa
m. He had been asleep! Without a pill! Jolly good! First time since ... since never mind. Snores to the right of him, snores to the left of him, volleyed and thundered. So he hadn't actually shrieked aloud. He had slept! Perhaps he was getting a little better, just a little? Please, Lord?

  He tried to see his watch and couldn't. Still, it felt like time to go. He swallowed the ashtray taste in his mouth and eased back the blankets.

  Dressing one-handed was bad enough in daylight. From now on he'd have his suits made with flies that buttoned on the left. He had thought to pull his shoes off without untying them, but getting them on again was harder. Neckties were an invention of the devil.... Hairbrush...

  One wan bulb lit the corridor, invoking vast shadows. He set off on tiptoe, thinking of the poor sods in the trenches in Belgium, going over the top. At least in the artillery he'd never had to do that. Primary target: the linen closet down the hall. Pray it wasn't locked.

  It was. Hellfire!

  In two weeks he had snooped everywhere in Staffles—upstairs, downstairs, in any chamber he was allowed into—hoping he was doing it from boredom and because it was better than sitting still, frightened he was doing it because his loose brains were looking for bogeys.

  Secondary target: one of the doctors’ rooms.

  He found a doctors’ cubbyhole that was not locked, that did have a white coat hanging behind the door. Some kind saint had even left a stethoscope in the pocket. Now that was really shockingly careless! Take that man's name, Sergeant.

  His fingers were shaking so much he could barely fasten the buttons. Nelly! He hung the stethoscope around his neck like a gas mask. He tucked a pencil behind his ear and his stump in his pocket and a clipboard under his arm. Then he stiffened his upper lip and marched off boldly in the direction of the west wing.

  The house was dim and silent. It stank of disinfectant and the eternal stench of stale cigarette smoke.

  A real doctor was the worst danger, and there would be one on duty somewhere. A nurse might be overawed by the stethoscope. Guards...

  One guard, reading a newspaper.