TWO MEN SAT IN A GARDEN AND TALKED ABOUT HELL. ONE OF THEM had been there.
The time was a Saturday afternoon in early September 1917. The site was a sunny corner in the grounds of Staffles, which had been an English country house since the seventeenth century and was now a hospital for wounded returning from the Great War.
The two sat side by side at the top of a short flight of steps leading up to a set of glass doors. Inside those doors, a row of beds prevented anyone from coming out or going in, so the speakers would not be disturbed. It was a sheltered spot. The younger man had found it, and it was probably the best place in the entire hospital for a private chat. He had always had a knack for coming out on top like that. He was not greedy or selfish, yet even as a child he had always been the one to land the best bed in the dorm. Draw a name from a hat, and it would almost always be his.
The steps led down to crazy paving and a lichen-stained stone balustrade. Beyond that, a park sloped to a copse of beeches. The grass badly needed cutting, the rosebushes were straggly, and the flower beds nurtured more weeds than blossoms. Hills in the distance were upholstered with hop fields, their regular texture like the weave of a giant green carpet. Autumn lurked in the air, although the leaves had not yet begun to turn.
Once in a while a train would rush along behind the wood, puffing trails of smoke. When it had gone, the silence that returned was marred by a persistent faint rumbling, the sound of the guns across the Channel. There was another big push on in Flanders. Every man in Staffles knew it. Everyone in southern England knew it.
Men in hospital blues crowded the grounds, sitting on benches or strolling aimlessly. Some were in wheelchairs, some on crutches. Many had weekend visitors to entertain them. Somewhere someone was playing croquet.
In front of the two men stood a small mahogany parlor table, bearing a tea tray. One plate still bore a few crumbs of the scones which had come with the tea. The sparrows hopping hopefully on the flagstones were well aware of those crumbs.
The younger man was doing most of the talking. He spoke of mud and cold, of shrapnel and gas attacks, of days without rest or relief from terror, of weeks in the same clothing, of lice and rheumatism, of trench foot and gas gangrene. He told of young subalterns like himself marching at the head of their men across the wastes of no-man's-land until they reached Fritz's barbed wire and machine guns scythed them down in their ranks. He told of mutilation and death in numbers never imagined possible in the golden days before the war.
Several times during the tea drinking and scone eating, he had reached out absentmindedly with his right sleeve, which was pinned shut just where his wrist should have been. He had muttered curses and tucked that arm out of sight again. He chain-smoked, frequently reaching to his mouth with his empty cuff. At times he would try to stop talking, but his left eye would immediately start to twitch. When that happened, the spasms would quickly spread to involve his entire face, until it grimaced and writhed as if it had taken on an idiot life of its own. And then he would weep.
At such times the older man would tactfully pretend to be engrossed in watching other men in the distance or studying the swallows gathering on the telephone wires. He would speak of the old days—of the cricket and rugby, and of boys his companion had known who were now men. He did not mention the awful shadow that lay on them as they waited for the call that would take them away and run them through the mincer as it ran their older brethren. A war that had seemed glorious in 1914 was a monster now. He did not mention the ever-growing list of the dead.
He was middle-aged, approaching elderly. His portly frame and full beard gave him a marked resemblance to the late King Edward VII, but he wore a pair of pince-nez. His beard was heavily streaked with gray, and his hat concealed a spreading baldness. His name was David Jones and he was a schoolmaster. For more than thirty years he had been known behind his back as Ginger, not for his temperament or his coloring, but because in his youth Ginger had gone with Jones as Dusty went with Miller.
The gasping, breathless sobs beside him had quietened again.
"The swallows will be heading south soon now," he remarked.
"Lucky buggers!" said the young man. His name was Julian Smedley. He was a captain in the Royal Artillery. He was twenty years old. After a moment he added, "You know that was my first thought? There was no pain at all. I looked down and saw nothing where my hand should be and that was my first thought: Thank God! I am going Home!"
"And you're not going back!"
"No. Even better." There was another gasp. "Oh, God! I wish I could stop piping my eye like this." He fumbled awkwardly for a cigarette.
The older man turned his head. "You're not the worst, you know. Not by a long shot. I've seen many much worse."
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.