OVER THE LENGTH of days, once the light ceased to hurt his eyes, Roche became obsessed with the ceilings above him.
The first had a complex tracery of shadows, the design of which he could never quite unravel as it floated above him; dummy5
then there were dark bars which made him think of prisons, giving him terrible nightmares interspersed with faces, mixed up with a succession of confusing events. But after that there were several happy days, when a ceiling with interesting cracks and stains appeared above him, which he transformed into the islands and continents of a new world to be circumnavigated on voyages of discovery, with the far-off sounds of creaking masts and rigging, and the changes of watch in his ears to mark the passage of time.
Finally they pricked his arm to cancel consciousness, and he awoke to birdsong, and the knowledge of good and evil, and a plain white ceiling without shadow or blemish; and shortly after that he was allowed to look around, and then to sit up and see walls, and tree-tops through the window; and he was back in England again with a nurse to prove it, soft-voiced but business-like, plumping his pillows.
In fact, it was a very nice room, dazzling and well-furnished and airy. What he didn't like about it, which was different from the French rooms, was its absolute silence except for the bird-song, with none of the French bumps and bangs and distant traffic noises which he remembered in retrospect; from all which he deduced that they had him tucked away in one of their secret places; which didn't surprise him, now that he had failed to die on them, but also didn't reassure him.
And, having deduced that, he concluded then that there was dummy5
really no point in asking anything of his nurse, or of the basilisk sister who superintended her; and the doctors themselves were of course even more out of the question, whatever the question was. So he retreated into the wasteland within himself, knowing that he wasn't going anywhere, and that they would come when they were ready, which would be when he was ready, and there wasn't anything he could do about it.
Only it was Audley who came; and, more surprisingly, he came alone, towards the end of an Indian summer's afternoon.
'Are you all right?' Audley mistook his surprise for weakness, by the inflexion he gave to the routine inquiry.
'I'm fine,' said Roche. It occurred to him out of habit that he could spin out the game by pretending not to be fine, but he quickly dismissed the notion as ridiculous. He had nothing with which to play games any more, besides which there were things he wanted to know very badly which Audley of all people might actually tell him.
Or, at least, there was one askable thing, which protruded out of the oily surface of both his daydreams and his nightmares.
'How's Lady Alexandra?'
'Disgustingly healthy.' Audley still smiled that lop-sided dummy5
smile, but there was something different about him nevertheless: part of it was greater self-assurance, in so far as that was possible, yet there was also something hesitant, which was new. But that might be because he wasn't used to sick-rooms; or it might just be in the confused eye of the beholder.
'Really?' He dropped the irrelevant thought to concentrate on the important one. 'Honestly?'
'Really—honestly.' Audley pulled up the chair. 'I told you—
the Perownes are practically indestructible by conventional means—they're all built like Tiger tanks. In fact, she's even making the most out of her scar, Lexy is ... she tells all and sundry that she got it duelling at Heidelberg.
So the letter had to be earned, and the game had to be played even here, after the final whistle.
'Honestly . . . I'm fine.' Roche jibbed at the prospect, but he wanted the letter. 'Sister says . . . 'we' have been very ill, but
'we' are on the mend. It's just that . . . 'we' expected someone . . . different.' Roche opted for the truth, for want of anything better.
Audley regarded him doubtfully. 'Ah . . . well, we have a special dispensation from above—a bit of the old influence-in-high-places, old boy. There will be somebody along to de-brief you formally in due course, naturally. But not yet.'
dummy5
'De-brief me?' Roche wasn't surprised by Audley-with-influence-in-high-places. But he knew that self- confessed traitors weren't de-briefed, they were interrogated.
'Uh-huh.' Audley fielded his doubts confidently. 'Originally they were going to lock you up, and throw away the key. And they're not exactly well-disposed to you even now. . .
naturally. But things have changed.' He made a Caliban-face.
'You'll have to resign your commission—and sign a lots of bits of paper . . . And you'll have to come clean on everything
— eh?'
For five seconds Roche was beyond astonishment, then for a moment he was in nowhere. And after that he recognised the familiar features of the wasteland, which were cratered like any battlefield, and full of slimy things which he'd already imagined.
Audley's face was scrubbed of emotion now. 'You
'To betray everyone, you mean?' Roche could smell himself, washed and re-bandaged that morning, in preparation for this.
The scrubbed face changed to one of unconcealed interest.
'You really did mean it, did you—back in the Tower?
