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PART VIII:
Endgame

47

LUNCH HAD BEEN BAD ENOUGH, BECAUSE EVERYONE HAD WANTED TO talk about the war news—rumors were floating around Greyfriars that Passchendaele had fallen—but whenever anyone had mentioned it, someone else had changed the subject. Mustn't upset our hero in case he starts weeping!

That had been bad enough, but after Alice and Exeter departed on the bikes, Smedley found himself alone with Ginger Jones and Mrs. Bodgley, the three of them fighting their way through conversational swamps—nothing safe to take a stand on, nothing safe to talk about.

He went outside to try gardening, not that he could do much good. Black Dog really hounded him then. His hand hurt. His leg throbbed. He thought of challenging Ginger to a game of one-handed croquet, and that brought on visions of one-handed golf, one-handed grouse shooting, one-handed cricket, and one-handed loving . . . as if he would ever find a gal interested in a cripple. One-handed car driving?

He went for a walk, but it did no good.

He came back to the Dower House, flopped down on one of the garden benches, and wondered why he had ever been crazy enough to let himself become involved in Exeter's affairs and how he was going to extricate himself. There was no decent alternative in sight, either, just the family mausoleum in Chichester. The last meeting with the guv'nor had ended in both of them yelling and Julian sobbing at the same time. Thousands of aunts. Sunday was his birthday . . . .

"Cut it out!" said a voice.

He whipped his head around and saw that Ginger Jones was sitting in a deck chair under a tree. He had a newspaper spread over his chest, as if he had been napping under it and just pulled it down.

"Beg pardon?"

The old man's glasses flashed in the sun. "You were never a moper, Julian Smedley. Don't be one now!"

"I'm not moping." Smedley turned away.

"It's just another stage," Ginger said. "I've seen dozens like you these last couple of years." There was a rustle of paper and a grunt as he heaved himself out of the deck chair. "At first you're so relieved to be out of it that you don't care what it cost." His voice came closer. "Then you begin to realize that you have the rest of your life to live and you are not as other men. You think it isn't fair. Of course it isn't fair." He was right behind Smedley now.

"I'll try to do better next term, sir."

He might as well have saved his breath.

"I've seen dozens, I say! Lots of them would be delighted to give you a hand in exchange for what they've lost. Lungs, eyes, both legs . . . There's one chap who was a fairly close chum of yours—I won't tell you his name—and he looks absolutely splendid. It's just that he isn't a real man anymore, at least not as he sees it. Care to swop with him?"

"Why don't you go and help Mrs. Bodgley knit some warm woolly undies for Our Brave Fighting Men?"

"Because I'd rather stay here and carp at you. I'm telling you that you were never a whiner and you won't be in future. It's just a stage. It will pass. Soon the real Julian Smedley will surface again."

"I really can't tell you how much I look forward to that."

"And then you will start to do what we all have to do, which is play the cards we are dealt. I should have had Exeter give you this lecture. He's better at it than I am. He says he will get you to Nextdoor if you want to go."

"What!?"

Ginger shuffled to the other bench and sat down, moving as if his back hurt. "I asked him before lunch. He'll do anything for you, Captain, because of what you did at Staffles. If Nextdoor's what you want, he says, then he'll help. He thinks you would do well there. The Service will take you at his word, he thinks. But is that really what you want?"

Smedley was, for a moment, speechless. Then, "Do you believe him?"

"Yes, I do. Don't you?"

"I don't know. It all fits . . . but it's fantasy, Ginger! Ravings! Opium dreams."

"I believe him."

"You're not just saying that to cheer me up?"

Jones shook his head. "You knew him when he was a caterpillar. You were chrysalises together and now you're both butterflies. You know him as well as anyone will ever know him. You shared adolescence. You will never know any man better than you know him. Is there anyone, anyone at all, whose word you would take over the word of Edward Exeter?"

Smedley considered the question seriously. He had to. After a while he said, "Probably not."

"Me too. Now come indoors with me, because I want to take a look at that leg of yours. Have you changed the bandages today?"

 

The gashes were swollen and inflamed. Ginger wanted to phone for a doctor and only agreed not to when Smedley promised to do so the next day if things got any worse.

Then they went downstairs for tea.

 

It was cooler in the sitting room than in the garden, Mrs. Bodgley said, because it faced east. Smedley thought it gloomy, unlived-in, lonesome. The crumpets were from Thorndyke's, Mrs. Bodgley said, and Wilfred was an even better baker than his grandfather had been, although of course nobody would ever tell the old man so. The jam, Mrs. Bodgley said, had come from the county craft fair and she thought it must be Mrs. Haddock's recipe. The gentlemen agreed it was excellent jam.

Mrs. Bodgley then narrated several tales of events that had happened when she was in India. The viceroy's court in New Delhi, some jolly times up in the hills in Simla. Something about her visit to Borneo . . . the Raffles Hotel in Singapore . . .

The Empire on which the sun never sets.

Smedley laughed at the jokes, taking his cue from Ginger.

But his mind was on Nextdoor, a whole new world. Civilizing the natives, a worthy cause. His missing hand wouldn't matter there, because he would be Tyika Smedley and have house servants. The war would never be mentioned. He would dress for dinner and the entyikank would wear long gowns. He would do good for the people. He would live forever. He would gain mana and get his hand back.

Dream.

Gravel scrunched.

A car?

Mrs. Bodgley frowned. "That sounds like a car."

Inexplicably, the muscles in Smedley's abdomen all tightened up like wire cables. He remembered the bombardment at Verdun.

The doorbell jangled.

Mrs. Bodgley rose. "I am not expecting visitors. Do you wish me to introduce you by an assumed name, Captain Smedley?"

"No," he said. "If that is necessary, then it will do no good."

Which made no sense, but his hostess nodded her chins and sailed from the room. He glanced at Ginger, who was scratching his beard, light reflecting inscrutably on his pince-nez. Neither of them spoke.

Voices in the hall . . .

" . . . the year Gilbert was elected chairman," Mrs. Bodgley was booming. "I was probably more nervous than you were!"

They both rose to their feet as she cruised in again, followed by a man. A man with fishy, protuberant eyes—eyes with a jubilant gleam in them.

"Of course the captain and I have met." He extended his left hand. "And Mr. Jones! Or may I call you Ginger now, as we always did before, behind your back?"

"If I may call you Short Stringer, as we always did behind your back. Oh, blast!" Ginger's pince-nez fell to the floor.

Stringer reached it before he did, wiped it on his sleeve, and returned it. "Yes, thank you, tea would be wonderful. Driving is dusty work."

Smedley felt ill.

Ginger had lost the ruddy glow that the sunny afternoon had given him. He pawed at his beard.

Mrs. Bodgley seemed quite unconcerned, happy to welcome an old acquaintance, one of her uncountable honorary godchildren. Perhaps she really was unconcerned—had anyone ever given her the Staffles part of the story? Did she realize how impossible this situation was, how deadly? She went to the china cabinet with a hesitant glance at the open door. "Do be seated, please, all of you. Your friend . . . ?"

"I'm sure she will find us," Stringer said blandly, selecting a chair. The gleam was back in his eyes again. His flannels and blazer were immaculate, but he seemed weary—as he should if he had driven across the width of England.

"Just freshening up," Mrs. Bodgley murmured quietly. "One lump or two, Mr. Stringer? Or would you rather I also called you Short?"

"Not unless you wish to be challenged to pistols at dawn. My friends all call me Nat. Only a few old Fallovians call me Shorty. Captain Smedley, I fancy, calls me an impossible coincidence."

"I might call you other things were Mrs. Bodgley not present," Smedley said, crossing his legs. His fist was clenched. Both fists were clenched. He consciously relaxed the visible one. The other he could do nothing about.

A teacup rattled on its saucer. He had shocked Mrs. Bodgley. Alerted to the conflict, she glanced from face to face in bewilderment.

"Nothing to what we were calling you two nights ago," Stringer said with asperity. "That was hardly pukka, what you did, Captain Smedley."

"You were long past due for a fire drill. Your presence here demonstrates that my suspicions were well-founded." Julian toyed with the idea of blacking one of those piscine eyes, and it tasted good. He was shaking, but that was only anger and all right.

"Well-founded but misdirected. Ah!"

A woman marched into the room and stopped, raking it with a glower like a burst of fire from a Hun machine-gun nest. She was tall, angular, unattractive. She wore a cheap-looking brown dress and carried a cumbersome handbag. Her hair was bound high in a bun. Smedley had last seen her behind a desk outside Stringer's office at Staffles.

The men started to rise again. Mrs. Bodgley said, "Ah, there you are. May I intro—"

"Where is she?" Miss Pimm demanded harshly. "Where is Alice Prescott? Is she with him?" She glared at Smedley.

He had nodded before he realized.

"Who?" Ginger said loudly.

She did not look at him, as if his effort to deceive was beneath contempt. "The Opposition has a mark on Alice Prescott, has had for the last three years. She went to Harrow Hill with him?"

Mrs. Bodgley made a choking noise and sank back in her chair.

"Where?" Ginger said.

"Oh, don't be childish!" Miss Pimm snapped. "I can tell that Exeter is a few miles southwest of us. We have a mark on him! I assume he went to Harrow Hill to consult the presence again. If his cousin is with him, then he is in deadly danger."

"How do we know," Smedley's voice said from where he was sitting, "that you are not the Opposition?"

"You don't. But it makes no difference. You will cooperate anyway."

"Mana!" Ginger said, and sat down hurriedly. "You have this mana he talks about!"

She looked at him seriously for the first time. She was the only one standing; the others sat and stared like children in a classroom.

"Yes, I am with Head Office, although you will have to take my word for that."

"I don't think I understand," Mrs. Bodgley muttered faintly. Had her self-possession ever failed her before? "Will you sit down and have a cup of tea, Miss Pimm?"

"No. There is no time. Mr. Stringer, we must hurry."

The famous surgeon sighed and drained his cup. He muttered, "You're sacked!" half under his breath.

Smedley and Ginger exchanged glances of panic.

"Perhaps you could explain?" Mrs. Bodgley said with an effort.

Miss Pimm slung the strap of her bag over her shoulder. "I repeat, there is no time. Nine years ago, I promised Cameron Exeter that I would guard his son. I almost failed. The boy is back again, and I still have some residual obligations to fulfil. I don't believe the rest of you are in any danger now. I shall intercept Exeter before he returns here. Even if the agent the Opposition has sent is a vindictive type, he will have no reason to vent his spite on you. Come, Stringer!"

"Wait!" Smedley barked. "What exactly are you planning to do?"

She stopped in the doorway and turned as if to give battle. "I am going to do what I was planning to do at Staffles before you stuck your oar in and disrupted everything, Captain Smedley. It was your blundering intervention that alerted the Opposition."

"The Blighters, you mean?"

"We sometimes call them that. Stringer?"

"Exeter says he will never go back!" Smedley shouted.

"I fail to see that it is any business of yours."

"I do. I want to go."

He had said it. He was shocked to hear it.

But he had said it, so he must mean it.

With the reluctance of a frozen pond melting, the formidable Miss Pimm's pale lips thinned into a faint hint of a smile. "After all the trouble you have caused me, you demand favors? Talk about brass! I know you are a man of initiative and fast decisions, Captain Smedley, but do you know what is involved? Do you understand that it means considerable danger and to all intents and purposes is irrevocable? It means loss of family and home and friends. It is a leap beyond the bounds of imagination."

He nodded. His heart was beating a mad tattoo. Damn Chichester and the old man! Damn the aunts! Sunday was his birthday—twenty-one, key of the door. He smiled, to see if he still could. "Just show me."

"You are ready to come now? Immediately?"

"Yes."

"Then you impress. Very well. Come along and we'll see if it is possible. I make no promises." Miss Pimm summoned Stringer with a flick of her head and stalked from the room.

Everyone stood up again.

"La Belle Dame Sans Merci!" the surgeon growled, following her. "Thanks awfully for the tea, dear lady. I have so much enjoyed our long chat this afternoon. Don't bother to see us out. We really must do this more often. Get the lead out, Captain! She won't wait for you." He disappeared into the hallway.

Smedley was shivering like a dog in the starting gate. He looked to the others. "Anyone else feeling suicidal this afternoon?"

Neither had any close family. They were both aging. Ginger at least believed the tales of Elfenland—Smedley wasn't sure if Mrs. Bodgley did. Get away from the war! Live forever! Be restored to youth and health! How could anyone refuse the chance, no matter how long the odds?

Ginger removed his pince-nez and rubbed it vigorously on his sleeve. Then he replaced it and sighed. "No. I think not. Not me."

Outside, the car engine rumbled into life.

"Mrs. Bodgley?"

The lady was pale. She bit her lip. Her hesitation was longer, but then she shook her head. "No. At my age . . . no. My memories are here."

"Then I must run. Thank you, Mrs. B. Thank you both for . . . everything." Oh, God! His eyes were flooding. He grabbed her and kissed her cheek. He clutched Ginger's outstretched hand awkwardly and pumped it, thumping the man's shoulder with his stump.

"Bye!" he shouted, and ran out of the room. He blundered into the umbrella stand, ricocheted off it, raced along the hall and out the front door. The great silver Rolls was just starting to move along the driveway. He sprinted after it, and a door swung open for him.

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