The Stars’ Tennis Balls

… thoroughly thought through…

Oh goodness, the beauty of it! I never noticed how language looked on the page before. To foreign eyes that phrase must reek of English. I have spent huge epochs of time rolling words around in my tongue and throat for the pleasure of their sounds, but never, never before has it occurred to me that words might, even in my dreadful handwriting, look so beautiful and so eternally fine.

‘Thoroughly thought through’ sounds beautiful too, by the way. At least, said out loud in a lonely room it does.

I think what it means is beautiful as well, to one in my condition.

Well, I am looking at the paper I have covered and putting off the moment of writing coherently and consequently about myself and my situation for fear that I will do it too quickly and that the day might come when I find that my writing has caught up with my present and that I will have nothing more to report.

Consequently? Is that what I mean? I mean ‘in historical sequence’, but surely ‘consequently’ isn’t the word.

Chronologically is what I mean. They do come back to me when I relax.

Writing it all down chronologically will make me confront everything in a very different way I think. In my head and my mind, alone in this room, my life has become nothing more than a peculiar sort of game. Like any game it can be amusing and it can be deeply upsetting. On paper I suspect that it will take on the quality of a report. It will all become true and I cannot be certain what it will do to me when I know that it is all true. Perhaps it will send me truly mad, perhaps it will set me free. It is worth taking the risk to find out.

I will begin with time. I have taken, I think, five hours to write this much. I base all my calculations on shadows and food and counting. I have assumed that breakfast comes at eight o’clock. It doesn’t really matter if it is eight o’clock or seven or nine, all that matters is the passing of the hours, not what they are named. When I was in the school choir for a short time before my voice broke, we were taught to read music by interval. It didn’t matter whether the first note you sang was called a C or an F, it was all about the jump between the first and the next one, the interval. That’s what Julie Andrews taught the children, the … I’m not going to get cross if I can’t remember their names … the girls and boys she taught to sing ‘Doh Re Mi’ to. It is more or less the same with me and time. There’s a word for it. Tonic something…

So, let us say that breakfast is eight. If that is true then lunch is half past twelve. I know this, for I have counted the whole stretch of time between breakfast and lunch many times. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi and so on. That was a very dark period: over the course of many many days and weeks I would lose count somewhere and the failure would set me weeping for the rest of the day. I began to believe that I was losing count deliberately because I did not want to be a master of time again. The day did come, however, when I had perfected the art of counting without dropping a stitch, as I called it, and I could be sure that four and a half hours passed between breakfast and lunch. I discovered that the count (when I was sure of it) was always between sixteen thousand and sixteen thousand five hundred Mississippis. Sixteen thousand two hundred seconds is four and a half hours, though you would be ashamed of me if you knew how long it took me to be absolutely certain of that simple calculation. Dividing by sixty and then by sixty again ought to be easy, but my brain found it hard to contain all the numbers at once.

16,200. It doesn’t really seem like that much when I write it down. Sixteen thousand two hundred. Does it seem more written in words or figures? Believe me, when you count them out, one by one, it seems to take hours. Well, it does take hours of course. Four and a half of them.

There is a single high window in this room and on the other side of it (I have jumped up when trampolining on the bed) there is a tree which I call my larch. I never really knew a larch from an oak at any time, but I think larches are tall and my tree is tall, so therefore it may as well be a larch. On winter days when the sun is low I can see its shadow move across the ceiling. I ought to be able to calculate a great deal from this, but I don’t know enough about the sun and the earth. I do know that when I start to see the shadows summer is over and the long winter is about to begin and that when the shadows fade away it is spring and the endless summer is close at hand.

I have attempted, as you might imagine, to count the days and weeks, but something is stopping me. I tried once to mark them off against the wall, using my fingernails but the act of it soon filed them down and I wasn’t able to continue. They always take back the plastic cutlery and I am sure that if I were to mark the walls with my felt-tipped pens they would be permanently confiscated. I could start now on the paper, with the prisoner’s traditional rows of soldiers and a line through them to mark the week, but the truth is, I don’t want to know how much time has passed. I cannot tell you how many winters and summers there have been. Sometimes I think it is three, sometimes as many as five.

There was a time when I thought I could detect when it was Sunday. There would be a brightness outside and an atmosphere inside that made me sure of it. The echo of footsteps seemed to ring differently in the corridors, which I suppose sounds mad. I would say to whoever brought in the food, usually Rolf or Martin, ‘Happy Sunday!’ but there was never any response. Once Martin, who for a short time I had decided was nicer than Rolf, said, ‘It is Wednesday today,’ and that upset me greatly for some reason.

I was moved into this room when my shoulders had mended. I have almost forgotten the first room, which might be a kind of mercy. I had been strapped to the bed there and was at almost my lowest point. Rolf would not speak to me. Dr Mallo would not come. My memories tormented me more than the pain. I still believed that it was all soon to end, you see. I thought that the father of my dreams would come and set me free, that the terrible misunderstanding was shortly to come to an end. I know better now. Dr Mallo has explained that this is my home and that I have no other. I have been ill. My mind has been full of false memories which only time can dispel. If I am slow with myself and patient I will be able to see things more clearly.

I am a very sick young man. I am a fantasist who has chosen to invent a history for himself which does not belong to him. A feeling of personal inadequacy has led me to believe that I once possessed a life of ease and affection and respect. I imagined that I was a happy, adjusted and popular boy with a famous and important father and a contented existence at a well-known public school. This is, apparently, very common. Many unfortunate children choose to inhabit a world like this rather than confront the reality of their lives. It is difficult for me because the fantasy was so real that I have burned out of my memory the real life into which I was actually born. I just cannot recapture or imagine it, no matter how hard I try. My assumed identity is so strong a part of me that even now, knowing the truth, I cannot fully let go of it. Dr Mallo tells me that mine is almost the strongest and most intractable case he has dealt with in all his professional life and this helps. It is hard not to feel a little proud.

The more able I am to accept the truth the easier my life here becomes. The paper and felt-tipped pens are a result of a ‘breakthrough’ that occurred some time ago. I see Dr Mallo every now and then. Perhaps these sessions are regular, once a fortnight, or once every ten days, it is hard to tell. Eight or nine visits ago I broke down and admitted to him that I knew I was not called Ned and that everything I thought had been my memory was indeed false, as he had been telling me for so long. Perhaps he thought I was saying this to please him, for at first nothing changed. In fact he was quite severe with me, accusing me of pretending to agree with him just to make life easier for myself. After a few visits however, he told me that I had made a genuine breakthrough and that this meant I could be trusted with a few privileges. I asked if that meant I might be allowed to read some books. Books will come later, he told me, for they can be dangerous to those with a frail grip on reality. Firstly, it would be a good idea for me to have some paper and pens and to write down everything I felt. If Dr Mallo trusted that I was really coming to grips with my situation, I might then start to visit the library.

What about other patients? Would it be possible for me to join in with them? I had noted evening and afternoon periods marked by an electric bell and always connected with the distant sounds of doors opening and closing, feet shuffling and sometimes a little laughter.

Dr Mallo congratulated me on my observation and held out the hope that one day I would be balanced and strong enough to associate with others without danger to myself. In the meantime, it was important for me to grow healthier in my mind. He is pleased that I have the self-respect that keeps me physically fit and hopes I will be able to set myself mental exercises that are the equivalent of the bench-presses and sit-ups with which I test my physical self.

So now I shall take everything very slowly and not allow myself to become too excited. I must not exaggerate any apparent improvement, for if I am honest, I have to confess that in my sleeping moments, and even sometimes when I am awake, the echoes of the old false memories still fill my mind like seductive ghosts. It will be of no use to me at all if I am over-optimistic about my condition. There is still a very long way to go.

I hear the squeak of the trolley outside. It will soon be time for my medication and supper. I must set down my pens, square the paper neatly on the table and sit up straight. I would not want Dr Mallo to hear that I have been overheated or undisciplined.

Von Trapp! Those were the children in The Sound of Music. You see! Things really do come back when you relax. The Von Trapp Family Singers…

This has been a wonderful and encouraging day.

‘So now, Ned my friend, how are you today?’

‘I’m very well, Dr Mallo, but I wonder if I can ask you something?’

‘Of course. You know that you can ask me anything you please.’

‘I think it’s wrong that you still call me Ned.’

‘We have talked of this before. I am very happy to call you what pleases you. Have you perhaps another name for me? A remembered name?’

Ned wrinkled his brow at this. ‘Well, sometimes I think I might be Ashley.’

‘You would like me to call you Ashley?’

‘I don’t think so. It isn’t quite right. I’m sure that I do remember an Ashley and that I think of him with someone like me. I associate the name Ashley with pretending to be something you aren’t, but it’s all a little confused. I don’t think Ashley is me. I was hoping you might think up a name. My real name may come back to me soon, but in the meantime, anything you give me is better than Ned. The name Ned is beginning to annoy me.

‘Very well. I shall call you…’ Dr Mallo looked around the room as if expecting to light upon an object that would offer a connection to a suitable name. ‘I shall call you Thomas,’ he said, after gazing for a while at a picture on the wall behind Ned. ‘How is Thomas? An English name I think, for you are an English young man. This we know.’

‘Thomas …' Ned repeated the name with pleasure. ‘Thomas…’ he said again, with the delight of a child unwrapping a present. ‘Thomas is very good, doctor. Thank you. I like that very much.’

‘So we shall call you Thomas,’ said Dr Mallo, ‘but I need to believe that you understand the name. It is an escape from Ned, a symbol, we shall say, of a new beginning. It is important you are realistic with this name and do not imagine that Thomas has a past into which you may retreat. It is a name we have conjured up together here for convenience and to mark your progress. Nothing more.

‘Absolutely!’

‘So now, Thomas my young friend. How have you been?’

‘I think I’ve been well,’ said Ned. ‘I’ve been very happy lately.’

The sound of the new name in his ears was wonderful, it released a feeling to be hoarded and treasured in his room later. ‘Hello there, Thomas.’ ‘Thomas, good to see you. ‘Oh look, there’s Thomas!’ ‘Good old Thomas…

‘And at last,’ said Dr Mallo, looking at a tall sheaf of paper in front of him, the trace of a smile on his lips. ‘I am beginning to be able to read your writing without great effort.’

‘It is better, isn’t it?’ Ned agreed enthusiastically. ‘I find I can shape the letters so much more easily now.

‘And more slowly I hope? With less excitement?’

‘Completely.’

‘You are growing quite a beard now. Does it bother you?’

‘Well,’ Ned’s hand went to his face. ‘It has taken some getting used to. It itches and it must look very odd, I suppose.

‘No, no. Why should it look odd? A beard is a most natural thing.’

‘Well …

‘You would like to see yourself in your beard?’

‘May I? May I really?’ Ned’s legs started to jog up and down on the balls of his feet.

‘I do not see why not.’

Dr Mallo opened a drawer in his desk and brought out a small hand-mirror which he passed across to Ned, who took it and held it on his jiggling knees, face turned away.

‘You are afraid to look?’

‘I’m – I’m not sure.

‘Set your heels to the floor and take some deep breaths. One-two-three, one-two-three.’

Ned’s knees stopped their jogging and he moved his head. He lifted the mirror from his lap, swallowed twice and slowly opened his eyes.

‘What do you think?’

Ned was looking at a face that he did not know. The face stared back at him in equal surprise and horror. It was a gaunt face, a face of hard cheekbones and deep-set eyes. The straw-coloured hair on its head was long, hanging lankly over the ears, the beard hair seemed coarser and tinged with a suggestion of red. Ned put a hand to his own face, and saw a bony hand rubbing the beard line of the face in the mirror and pulling at its moustache.

‘You like this face?’

Ned tried to avoid meeting the eyes in the mirror. They were resentful and coldly blue. They seemed to dislike him.

‘Who is he?’ Ned cried. ‘Who is this man? I don’t know him!’

The face in the mirror had tears streaking its beard. It licked its cracked lips. Its mouth pursed in disgust at the face of Thomas looking in.

‘That is enough. Give me the mirror now.

‘Who is he? He hates me! Who is he? Who is he? That isn’t me! Is it Thomas? It isn’t Ned. Who is it?’

Dr Mallo pressed a buzzer on the underside of his desk and sighed. Foolish of him to have tried such an experiment. A distasteful display, yet fascinating also. Such pitiable distress, such complete dislocation of subject. Mallo’s student dissertation on the work of Piaget came back to him. If he were still a man of academic energy there could be a paper in this. But Mallo’s days of professional ambition were behind him. He watched Rolf come into the room, wrestle the mirror away and snap bracelets on the boy’s wrists with the methodical efficiency that never deserted him.

‘Calm yourself, Thomas. You see now I hope that there is still a long way for you to go. We will allow you a period of calm for a while. No more writing for the time being, just peaceful reflection. Chlorpromazine,’ he added to Rolf, ‘75 milligrams, I think.’

Ned’s eyes were fixed on the hand-mirror which lay face down on the desk. He was not aware of Rolf pulling up his sleeve. His mind was filled only with a desire to see that haggard face once more and to tear its malevolent eyes from their sockets.

There were special days that came very rarely, days when the food was piled high on Ned’s tray and flower vases and bowls filled with fresh fruit were placed on his table. In the mornings Martin and Rolf would lead him out of the room and stand him under a shower at the end of the corridor. They would hold him there and sponge him clean. Then, still under the shower-head, but with the flow of water turned off, they would cut his hair and shave his beard. His room too, when he returned to it, would have been scrubbed clean and washed. The chamber pot would have gone and the sweet scent of pine room-freshener would hang in the air.

In the afternoons of these extraordinary days Dr Mallo would visit him, together with two others, a man and a woman who did not wear white coats and who brought the atmosphere of the outside world into the room with them. The woman’s handbag and the man’s briefcase fascinated Ned. They bore flavours and smells that were intriguing, enchanting and frightening too.

They all spoke to each other in a language that Ned could not understand, the same language that Rolf and Martin spoke and that he had decided long ago was Scandinavian. He heard his name mentioned in those conversations, always as Thomas now, they never used the name Ned any more.

The woman liked to talk to him sometimes.

‘Do you remember me?’ she would ask, in thickly accented English.

‘Yes, how are you?’ Ned would reply.

‘But how are you?’

‘Oh, I am much better thank you. Much better.’

‘Are you happy here?’

‘Very happy thank you. Yes. Very happy indeed.’

One day in summer they came again, but this time there were three of them. The same couple as before but with another woman, younger than the other, and a great deal more inquisitive. Ned picked up Dr Mallo’s tension at her questions and did his best to say what he thought the doctor expected and wanted of him.

‘How long have you been here, Thomas?’ This new woman’s English was better even than Dr Mallo’s and she spoke to Ned very directly. The others used to ask him questions politely, but never with the impression that they were especially interested in his answers. This woman seemed very curious about Ned and paid great attention to the way he replied.

‘How long?’ Ned looked towards Dr Mallo. ‘I’m not sure how long…’

‘Don’t look at the doctor,’ said the woman, ‘I want to know how long you think you’ve been here.’

‘It’s a little hard to tell. Perhaps three or four years. Maybe a bit longer?’

The woman nodded. ‘I see. And your name is Thomas, I believe?’

Ned nodded enthusiastically. ‘Absolutely.’

‘But when you first came here, your name was Ned.’

Ned found that he did not like to hear that name. ‘I was in a bit of a state then,’ he said. ‘I needed to clear up a lot of the ideas in my head. I had been imagining all kinds of things.’

‘Have you made friends with the other patients?’

Dr Mallo started to speak to the young woman, she listened for a while and spoke back at him rapidly. Ned imagined that he heard some words that were a little like the English words ‘Better’ and ‘Hysteria.

It was strange to see how small Dr Mallo looked, and how afraid he was of this young woman. His head was on one side as he listened to her, and he nodded and smiled, passing his tongue quickly over his lips and making notes on the clipboard he carried with him. It was something more than the woman’s height that made him look so small beside her Ned thought, even though she was nearly a foot taller than him. His whole demeanour reminded Ned of how he tried to look when he was doing his best to please Rolf or even Dr Mallo himself.

The woman turned to Ned. ‘The doctor tells me that you have chosen not to associate with any other patients since you have been here?’

‘I… I don’t think I have been ready.’

The woman raised her eyebrows. ‘Why not?’

Ned knew that he must not look to Dr Mallo for prompting or encouragement. It would please him more if he showed that he could think for himself.

‘I wanted to be more confident in myself, if you see what I mean. I didn’t want to lie to anyone about who I was. Also,’ he added, ‘I only speak English and I’ve not wanted to have the problem of being misunderstood.’ That last idea came to him from nowhere and he hoped that Dr Mallo would be pleased at his inventiveness.

There followed another flurry of conversation in which the other woman and her companion joined. Dr Mallo nodded his head decisively and made some more notes. Ned could see that he was trying hard to appear pleased.

‘I will see you again soon, Thomas,’ said the young woman. ‘I hope that the company of some English speaking people will be helpful for you. Will you promise me to try and talk to other patients? Just one or two to start with. Under supervision in case you become nervous. I think you will enjoy it.’

Ned nodded and did his best to look brave and resolute. ‘Good.’ She looked around the room. ‘You do not have any books here, I see.’

‘I have been writing again,’ said Ned almost defensively. ‘I have written some poems actually.’

‘No doubt you will write better poems if you have the chance to read. Books are always healthy. Goodbye, Thomas. I will see you on my next visit and I expect to see you with books in here. We will talk about what you have read and what friends you have made.’

That evening, when Martin came with his supper and to take away the fruit bowl and the vase of flowers, Ned almost whined at him.

‘That woman said I had to talk to other people. Is it true? I don’t want to. I want to be left on my own. Tell Dr Mallo that I don’t want to meet anyone. Especially not English people.’

‘You do as Doctor tells. If Doctor wants you meet other people, you are meeting other people,’ Martin replied. ‘Not matter if English or not English. Not your choosing. For Doctor to choosing. And here, look.’ Martin dropped an enormous English encyclopaedia onto the floor beside the bed. ‘You will read.’

Ned smiled himself to sleep that night. The lost memory came to him of a kind old man reading the Tales of Uncle Remus. Something about Brer Rabbit, the Tar Baby and the briar patch. He did not quite know why the story was relevant but he knew that it was.

Babe glanced up from the chessboard as Martin led a reluctant patient through the glazed partition and into the sun-room.

Smooth-shaven from yesterday’s official visit, Babe noticed. Another bloody Scandiwegian by the look of the blue eyes and flaxen hair. Frightened eyes they are. Mind you, fake-frightened perhaps. Wary and alert under the guise of compliance and the fog of Thorazine. I know that look well enough. Our man has been here a while and a day, I can see that. Knows how to play it safe. Now why have they kept him from us? What will be his big secret, we wonder? Been keeping himself fit all on his ownsome, that I can see. The full range of physical jerks. And talking of physical jerks, Martin will have tried it on with him, the lardy beast. Not got too far either, by the angry claw of his grip on the boy’s shoulder. Well, well. This is all something new to put the mind to.

Babe dropped his eyes to the chessboard and set up a high-droned mumble over the pieces.

‘Ah, and you’d try a semi-Slav on me, would you, you whore-master dog? I know a few ways to beat that…’ What a master of the slurred babble, you are, Babe, he added to himself.

‘You sit here,’ Martin said to the young man.

Speaks to him in English, by Christ! In God’s own blessed English tongue. Martin’s tortured approximation of it, I allow, but English none the less.

Babe almost gave away his interest by sitting up and looking across in their direction.

Calm down there, the Babe. There’s many a reason for Martin to be speaking in English. The boy may yet be Finn, Flem or Hollander. No certainty that he’s a Brit from Britland. It don’t pay to go leaping to conclusions. The lingua franca of all ritzy international institutions is English. Spoken in every high class bank, brothel and lunatic asylum from here to the Balkans.

The young man had sat down and was now trying to stand.

‘I say sit,’ said Martin, angrily pushing him down. ‘You sit, you stay.’

Why don’t you speak, boy?

Babe’s eyes were flicking from one chess man to another, his fingers pulling at his loose lips. No one would suppose that he knew that any world existed outside the sixty-four squares in front of him, certainly it would be impossible to guess that all his attention was on this awkward new arrival into the world of the sun-room.

Martin moved about, looking at the other patients while his patient fretted on his plastic chair.

‘May I go now please?’ the young man whined at last.

Angels and ministers of Grace defend us! More than a Brit. English! English as a maypole! English as torture! English as hypocrisy, pederasty and the Parliament of Fowles! Five wee words, but I can parse them and strip them of their code as easy as all thank you.

May I go now, please? Privately educated. A good school too, none of your minor drosses. Top drawer top three or I’m a fool, and I have never been that, as God is my whiteness.

F3, bishop-g2, castle short…

Winchester, Eton or Harrow?

Advance the c pawn, sacrifice him later for space on the queen’s side …

Not Winchester, I believe. Too polite.

Exchange the bish for his knight and the black squares are mine…

Eton? I think not. Doesn’t quite have the carriage. That would never quit an Etonian, not even here. That leaves us Harrow. Semper floreat herga.

‘Babe, I’ve got someone for you to meet.’ Martin stood over the board and spoke in Swedish. ‘Don’t want to meet anyone,’ Babe muttered in the same language, clumsily enacting an exchange over the board and letting the pieces topple over. ‘Leave me alone.’

‘Never mind what you want, old man. His name is Thomas. You can teach him to play chess.’

Ned bent down and picked up a black bishop from the floor. Babe snatched it back and banged it on the board without looking at him.

‘Sit down and play at chess,’ Martin ordered Ned. ‘This is Babe. He is our oldest guest. Here before Dr Mallo even, is that right, Babe?’

‘Here before you were a watery drop of seed down your sinful father’s leg, you miserable perverted gobshite cunt,’ murmured Babe resetting the white queen with great care.

‘What’s that? What he saying?’

‘He says that he has indeed been here a long time,’ said Ned. ‘Look, Martin, do I have to talk to him? Can’t I please go back to my room? Or be on my own at least?’

‘You talk,’ said Martin. ‘I come back lunchtime. Sit down. You talk. You play chess. Be nice on each other.’

There was silence at the table for almost a minute as Babe set up the pieces and Ned sat down and concentrated on looking miserable.

Over Babe’s shoulder he could see a lawn that sloped down from the sun-room. At the bottom was a line of trees, whose thickness suggested the possibility of a river. There were other patients outside, sitting on benches and walking. That all this was possible amazed him.

The brightness of the room and the smell of other people mingled with the sour odour of sunlight on vinyl were intoxicating to Ned. He could feel Martin’s distrustful eyes upon him somewhere so he did not allow himself to appear eager for conversation, instead he slouched sulkily and glared down at the chessmen as if they were enemies.

What the old man, Babe, if Ned had heard right, had said right under Martin’s nose had thrilled him beyond imagining. He had called him a miserable perverted gobshite cunt and trusted to the slur in his voice and speed in his delivery to obscure the meaning. He might be a mad and ugly old man, but he was certain to be more entertaining than a lonely room.

‘That’s the ticket, old son,’ said the old man suddenly. His eyes were down on the table and he spoke in a mumble, but the words came clear to Ned’s ears. ‘You ye worked Martin out. The more browned off you look, the better he likes it. Don’t talk back to me right off, rest a hand on your chin to hide your lips and keep that spoilt, petulant look going. You do it to a turn.’

Ned’s heart began to beat more quickly. He put his elbow on the table and pushed his mouth into the upturned cup of his palm.

‘Are you English?’

‘Devil a bit I am.

‘Is Martin looking?’

‘Standing there with a cup of coffee in his hand gazing at the back of your head with a frown on him like an angry turd-wasp. Turned down his bedroom advances, did you, lad? No, no. There’s no call to go pink. He tries it on with all the new patients. Are you going to make a move? You’re not going to tell me they didn’t teach you chess at Harrow?’

Ned gasped and could not stop himself from looking up.

Babe was plucking his lips and staring down at the chessboard as if nothing had been said. He mumbled through his dribble in a sing-song. ‘It was wrong of me to spring it onto you like that. I’m a devil of a show-off and you’ll have to forgive me. But if Professor Higgins can do it, why not the Babe? Eyes down and make a move, you pampered Asiatic jade.’

Ned pushed forward a pawn and resumed his previous position, hand concealing mouth. ‘How could you possibly know? I mean… not that I am, not that I did go there. Have you been looking at Dr Mallo’s records? You’ve overheard me speaking to him?’

‘Calm yourself right down, young Thomas. Let’s not be rushing like a bull at the gate of a china shop. Or any kind of bull at all, whether at a gate, in a shop, or rising from the sea to rapine and lust. You’ll get used to my mad ways with metaphor and allusion in time. Just remember this, if we manage ourselves aright here today and for the next few days as well, then Martin there will leave us be and happy enough in himself to do so. He knows me for a mad old, strange old, harmless old, comic old, disgusting old man, but you he does not trust or like. He and Rolfie, they see it as their job to protect this institution from the foolish liberal credulity of the good Dr Mallo. If you have been allowed out to socialise, it’s because of the new girl who came visiting yesterday, or am I wrong?’

‘No, that’s right!’ Ned breathed.

‘Well now – dear God, you’ve a lot to learn about chess, young monkey. Have you never heard of a fork? – well now, I thought that must be so. She had reformer and new broom stitched into her milken breasts. Mallo and the staff will be madder than the maddest amongst us to have her interfere. If you’ve not been out to talk to us yet, there’ll be a reason and they won’t like being overruled by a liberal doxy with modern doctrines about her. Who put you away in this place?’

Ned was silent.

‘You not want to talk about it? I’ll never force you, boy.’

‘No, it’s not that. It’s just that I don’t know.’

‘Well, how long have you been here?’

‘I…’ Ned did not know what to say.

‘Easy to lose time. Do you have an inkling of the date it was when you were last a free man?’

‘It was July the thirtieth. But I was ill … I thought all kinds of things. I shouldn’t really be thinking of that time. It holds me back. Dr Mallo told me that I had to forget all those associations, they are delusions

‘Delusions are the one things you may trust in here. July thirtieth, eh? And what year?’

‘Nineteen eighty,’ said Ned, excitement beginning to build in him, ‘and what’s more Thomas isn’t my name. My real name is

‘I don’t want to know. Not just yet. If they’ve changed your name, you don’t want to be heard telling me the old one. Make a move, go on. Make a move now. Try and get that poor bishop out of the shit, if you can.

Ned looked down at the chess pieces swimming beneath him.

‘I can call you Babe?’

‘Certainly you can call me Babe, and what pleasure it will give me to answer to the name spoken in a voice so fine and so true. And the first thing that Babe will do for Thomas, when we have convinced our keepers that it was their idea to force us together, is he will teach him to play a proper game of schach, écheques, shachmatyin, chess, scacchi… call it what you will, for you’ve a dismal idea of it at the moment, you young lummock. Checkmate with knobs on.’

‘I never really knew much more than the rules, I’m afraid.’

‘I shall set the pieces up again, and you will turn away. Droop all languid like a listless lily in Lent. You’re bored with me and you find me osmically offensive, which is to say you think I stink like the stinkiest stinkweed that was. But before you turn away, answer me something.’

‘What?’

‘How long is it that you believe you’ve been here?’

‘Well, I don’t know the year now, but it must be … I don’t know. Three years? Four?’

‘It is ten, Thomas my friend. Ten years next month.’

‘What?’

‘Not so loud! And keep your eyes ever cast downwards. Today is, by the Grace of God, the eighteenth of June in the year nineteen ninety.’

‘But it can’t be anything like … it can’t be that long! That would make me twenty-seven years old. That’s impossible!’

‘I hate to be the one to tell you, Thomas, but you look nearer thirty-seven or forty-seven. There’s grey mixed in your hair by the temples and those eyes of yours do not contain at all the look of youth. Ah now, he’s glaring over at us. Turn and look away.’

Martin came towards Ned, a meanly sarcastic smile on his face. ‘This was quick game. You no good for chess? You letting mad old man beat you?’

Ned shook his head.

‘I don’t like him,’ he said, gesturing towards the mumbling Babe. ‘He smells.’

‘You come and play and talk with Babe every day. Every day one hour longer. Is good for you each.’

‘But…

‘No but. No but. You make complaint and I have you two together all the time. Share room maybe? You like that? You like share your room with smelling old man?’

‘I won’t,’ said Ned, outraged. ‘I won't! You can’t make me!’

Over the next eight weeks Ned went to his room with small scraps of paper hidden about him. On them were written all the chess theory, attacks, defences, gambits, combinations and end game strategies that Babe knew. His course of instruction began with games played by Phillidor and Morphy and masterpieces of the romantic age, games that, like paintings, had titles: titles like The Evergreen, the Two Dukes and the Immortal. Ned was moved from these towards the age of Steinitz and the modern style, then to an understanding of a positional theory called the Hypermodern that made his head ache. Next came an induction into opening play and counter play whose language made Ned laugh. The Caro Kann and the Queen’s Indian, the Sicilian and the French Defences, the Gioco Piano and the Ruy Lopez. The Dragon variation, the Tartakower and the Nimzowitch. The Queen’s Gambit Declined and the Queen’s Gambit Accepted. The Marshall Attack. The Maroczy Bind. The Poisoned Pawn.

‘We shan’t be friends until we can play a game of chess together. You have it in you to play a decent game. Everyone has it in them to play a decent game. It’s nothing but memory and a refusal to think of yourself as a mental rabbit. If a soul can read and write, a soul can play a game of chess.’

There was so much Ned wanted to ask Babe, but any questions were waved aside over the board.

‘Chess lad. Pressing lidless eyes, we will play a game of chess. Your move, and watch your back rank.’

Dr Mallo had paid a visit to the sun-room during Ned’s first week there and ordered Babe away for a turn on the lawn.

‘I want to talk to my friend Thomas. I shall not move the pieces,’ the doctor had assured Babe, who shuffled away mumbling oaths into his beard.

‘So, how are you finding it, Thomas?’

‘It’s a little strange,’ said Ned uncertainly. ‘He’s a very peculiar man and I don’t really understand much he says. He can be very rude, but as long as I don’t talk too much he doesn’t seem to mind me.’

‘Have you talked to any other patients, I wonder?’

‘I try to sometimes,’ said Ned. ‘I don’t know which of them speak English. I upset that man over there yesterday by taking a chair that was next to him and he swore at me in English.’

‘Yes, that is Dr Michaels, a very unhappy man. You will never derive much sense from him I fear. Unstable, but not dangerous. I am pleased, Thomas, that you are able to sit out here. And Babe is not – ' Dr Mallo looked down at the chessboard with what Ned could instinctively tell were uncomprehending eyes, ‘- Babe is not curious about you? He does not load your mind with questions?’

‘He doesn’t ask me anything,’ said Ned in a disappointed voice, ‘except when I’m going to make a move or why I bounce my knees up and down under the table.’

‘Ha! I ask, you understand, because it is so important that you are not encouraged into more fantasy concerning yourself. If anyone were to ask who you were and what is the nature of your illness …

‘I don’t know what I would say, Doctor. I would tell them that my name is Thomas and that I am getting better. I prefer not to talk about myself.’

‘Quite so. He plays a good game of chess, Babe?’

Ned shrugged.

‘I think not, you have a checkmate in four moves if you look closely,’ said Dr Mallo rising and taking his leave with a brisk and satisfied nod of his head.

‘Mate in four moves, my arse and the arse of every man here!’ Babe had hissed under his breath when Ned reported the conversation to him. ‘The bullshit of the man, the fraud and fakery of him. If you don’t move up your h pawn you’ll be the one to be mated and in one move, never mind four.’

‘When can we talk of anything except chess, Babe?’

‘When you have beaten me.

‘But that’s never!’

‘Don’t you believe it. I’ve written out the Nimzo-Indian for you today. You’ll love it.’

As the weeks passed, Ned found himself becoming more and more obsessed by their games. He fell asleep each night with the diagonal tensions and energetic force-fields exerted by each piece pressing against his mind. Chess and the power of each man on the board dominated his inner life. He began to replay positions easily in his head, without having to picture the whole board. His questions, now solely confined to chess, began to please Babe.

‘Ah now. You’re confusing strategy with tactics there. That’s a thing that reminds me of my old lessons in military training. The strategy, you see, is the battle plan, the Big Idea. We will win the battle by taking that hill. There’s your strategy, to take the hill. How do we take the hill? Ah now, there’s your tactics. We might soften her up with artillery and follow through with an assault by armoured troops. We might bombard her from the air. Perhaps we will pretend to deploy around another target altogether and fool the enemy into thinking that we don’t care a damn about the hill. By night we send in our special forces, knives in their teeth and boot-black on their faces, to take our hill by stealth. There’s any amount of tactics and all at the service of the one strategic idea. You follow me?’

It was only later that Ned, all absorbed in the detail of chess, turned his mind to the remark ‘my old lessons in military training’. A man of Babe’s age had probably fought in the war. The Second World War. When Ned had first asked him if he was English, Babe had replied ‘Devil a bit I am,’ which Ned took to mean an emphatic negative. Babe’s voice however, in accent and delivery, was very English indeed, a rich fruity and deliciously old-fashioned sounding English that reminded Ned of old wireless broadcasts. The way he spoke, though, his choice of words and the strange spin he put on familiar phrases, that was somehow not very English at all. It had a stage Irish, or Hollywood pirate quality to it. One day he would discover more about him.

Meanwhile, two months into his training, Ned had an exciting week ahead of him. He had, for the first time, drawn a game. Babe had been the one to extend his hand across the board to make the offer which Ned, in his excitement and with the scent of victory in his nostrils, had turned down. Babe then forced an exchange of queens and rooks and the game petered out into the draw which it was always destined to be. But Ned had been playing black and to draw as black was always a positive result. The game of chess is so delicately balanced, Babe had explained, that the advantage of the first move is enough, in tournament play, to ensure that the majority of victories go to the player with the white pieces. Ned knew that this result with black was therefore a turning point.

The following day, Babe playing black had won easily and Ned, furious with himself, made assiduous plans that night to do something magnificent the next day.

He fell asleep with an idea in his mined that he should try the Winawer variation of the French Defence, which some instinct told him Babe did not enjoy playing. He awoke with a fully formed sense of how to win implanted in his mind. The plan involved not only the absolute chess of the game but psychology too and when Rolf, whose duty day it was, led him out to the sun-porch, he was already looking grouchy and underslept.

‘I shouldn’t have lost like that yesterday,’ he said, without offering any of his usual polite greetings. ‘You trapped me. It was pathetic.’

‘Dear me,’ said Babe straightening the white pieces in front of him. ‘Did we get out of bed the wrong side this morning?’

‘Let’s just play,’ said Ned moodily, inwardly praying that Babe’s king pawn would advance but staring instead at the c-pawn, as if hoping for an English opening or deferred Queen’s Indian.

With a shrug, Babe played e-4 and Ned instantly replied by pushing his own king’s pawn forward to meet it. Babe moved his knight out to f-3 and Ned moved a hand to his queen’s knight, as if resigned to an Italian or Spanish game. Then he dropped the hand back with a resentful tut and started to think. He took five minutes over his second move, the dull, seemingly ultra-defensive and amateurish d-6 that marks the French Defence. Babe continued to rattle out his pieces in the standard way and Ned haltingly replied. His heart beat faster and faster as each move repeated the pattern that he had planned the night before, developing into the very line of the Winawer that he had prepared. A moment came when Babe had to play with extreme accuracy to avoid a trap that Ned knew would cost him the loss of an active pawn. Babe stopped himself from playing the quick and obvious move and Ned, his head down, could sense in his field of peripheral vision, that Babe’s head had turned up to look at him. Ned did not shift, but continued to frown over the board, not revealing anything when Babe, avoiding the mistake, played the only correct move possible. Ned had not banked everything on a cheap tactical trap as he might have done two weeks earlier. In fact, he would have been disappointed if Babe had fallen for it. He knew that his position was good, and that was all that counted.

After an hour of fraught and completely silent play, Babe found himself a pawn down and having to marshal unconnected pieces to avoid all manner of tactical horrors. When a position is won, dozens of attacking combinations, traps and spellbinding sacrifices present themselves to the player on the winning side. Ned was busy considering a spectacular sacrifice of his queen that he believed would force a checkmate in five or six moves, when Babe knocked over his king and gave a rich, low chuckle.

‘Outplayed from pillar to post, you devious son of a mountain whore.’

‘You resign?’

‘Of course I resign, you dastardly bog and vice versa. My position is so full of holes it’s a wonder the board doesn’t fall to the floor. You planned this, didn’t you, boy? From the first petulant pout of the lip to the last maddening stutter. Oh, you’re wicked. Wicked as whisky.'

Ned looked up anxiously. ‘But the chess, it wasn’t all tricks and psychology was it? I mean, the pure chess was good too.'

‘Lad, there is no such thing as pure chess. There’s good chess and there’s bad. Good chess takes in the breath of your opponent and the dip of his head as much as depth of his mind and the placing of his knights. Good chess cares about the way you move a piece just as much as the square you move it to. Did you know you played a Smyslov Screw just now? You did, you know. A real life Smyslov Screw.’

‘A what?’

‘Vasilly Smyslov, world champion from the Soviet Union. I saw him play, as it happens. A master of the endgame and as wily a fox as you’d care to be matched against. He had a way of setting a piece when he made a move and screwing it into the square, pressing down on it and slowly twisting it as though to fix it there for ever. Put the fear of God into his opponents, that simple little trick. You did the same just now when you moved your rook to the seventh. But more than that, you understand the greatest chess secret of all. The best move you can ever play in chess is not the best move. No, the best move you can ever play is the move your opponent least wants you to play. And that you did time after time. You knew that I hate the turgid tactical hell of the French, didn’t you? I never told you, but you sensed it. Oh my God boy, I could hug you I’m so proud.’

Ned saw that tears were falling down Babe’s face.

‘It’s all thanks to you,’ he said.

‘Fuff to that! What is it, nine … no, eight and a half weeks since you first pushed a pawn in my direction. Look at you, look at what you can do with those sixteen pieces of cheap wood. Did you ever know your mind could think so deep and play so mean? Did you? Did you? Tell the Babe you’ve amazed yourself!’

‘Babe, I’ve amazed myself,’ said Ned. ‘I don’t know how I did it. I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it. It’s you. You did it for me.

‘I did nothing. Nothing at all, but let you understand the power of your own mind. There isn’t a player in the world who could call you a patzer or a rabbit now. The great ones will beat you, for sure, but you’ll never disgrace yourself over a checkerboard, not if you live as long as me. This calls for a marvellous toast to be drunk.’

Ned laughed. ‘I’ll whistle for Rolf, shall I?’

‘You think I’m joking. Reach into your mind and draw out your favourite drink. What is it? Are you a whisky man like myself, or does your Harrovian favour the great deep wines of Bordeaux? Is it maybe the gossiping fizz of champagnes fit only for tarts and scoundrels that pleases you? Myself, I’m hankering for the salt oil of a Bunnahabhain, that mysterious Other of the Islay malts. I’ve its queer squat bottle in my hand now and I’m snagging my nails on the lead about its bung… hey now! What have I said to upset you?’

Tears were dropping from Ned’s chin onto the chessboard.

‘It’s nothing, nothing…, only you see I’ve never really had a chance to drink anything. My favourite drink is … used to be… just a glass of cold milk.’

A memory of Oliver Delft opening the refrigerator door crashed into Ned’s mind and he gave a gulping sob.

‘Tss!’ Babe hushed him urgently. ‘Don’t let your distress be seen. I’m sorry Thomas, truly sorry. I had no idea in the world. My stupid tongue, it fancies itself to have a pleasing way with it. The women used to think me a seducer with words and sometimes I play up to the memory of that. It’s my one last vanity in this place of wined minds and in my vulgar haste I took you to a place you have forgotten to visit. But never mind that now. The day will come when you’ll be pleased to go back there.'

‘No!’ said Ned forcefully. ‘I mustn’t. I absolutely mustn’t. There are things in my past that I still don’t understand properly and Dr Mallo says…’

‘Dr Mallo says! Take comfort in knowing that this is a man who is capable of saying, “It’s checkmate in four unless I’m much mistaken.” Dr Mallo, he don’t know shit from sugar and you can’t pretend it isn’t so. He has a soul of pus and the mind of a rotted turd. He is a failure and not a word he says can come near to you.

‘He’s a failure? Then what does that make us?’ choked Ned. 'Whaton earth does that make us?’

‘Well that’s something we must decide for ourselves, Thomas. Now, Rolf is walking by, heave a giant sneeze into your handkerchief as if you’d caught a mote of dust in the sunlight.’

The last words that Ned said to Babe that afternoon were, ‘Will you teach me, Babe? Teach me everything you know. Just as you did with chess. Teach me all the science and poetry and philosophy you can. Teach me history and geography. Teach me music and art and mathematics. Will you? You know so much and I know so little. I was supposed to have gone to Oxford, but…’

‘Well, you were saved that at least,’ Babe had replied, ‘so there’s hope yet. Yes, I’ll teach you, Thomas. We shall tread the wide path of philosophy as we trod the narrow path of chess and who knows what we shall discover about ourselves as we go along the way?’