Forever the Colours (9 page)

Tommy stood stunned for a moment, leaning against the desk. His thoughts were a jumble of shock, incredulity, panic and hilarity, thoughts so fantastic, he wanted to laugh and scream at the same time. If his eyes hadn't deceived him, or maybe it was the opiates, he was in fact in a hospital tent, in lust with a long haired man, and, according to the diary's date, it was 1880. The world spun for a second and Tommy landed on his arse with a thud.

‘Ere, you right, boy?' came a voice from one of the other beds.

Tommy looked at the occupant. He found a balding man with a large nose and an awful skin condition. He smiled. ‘No, I'm not OK, mate.'

He started to giggle, then laugh, loudly, at the insane position he found himself in.

Well,
I
suppose
it's
better
than
being
dead
, he thought,
or
maybe
I
am
dead
and
this
is
my
afterlife
after
all
.

‘Hang on a minute,' he said.

‘Hang on to what, boy?'

‘Well, it can't be death, can it? I mean, I'm still breathing and all that, and I feel pain and all.'

‘Have ye lost yer mind, then?'

‘Pardon?'

‘Is thee mad?' the voice said. ‘God's marcy, ye bin booming since ye waayked.'

Tommy laughed again. ‘I have no idea what you're talking about, mate, but it sounds great.'

‘Take no mind to him,' said a voice from the other bed. ‘Miserable bugger, he is.'

Tommy looked to the occupant of the other bed and saw a young man, maybe in his twenties and extremely pale looking.

Tommy grabbed hold of the edge of the desk and pulled himself up; he stood for a moment, not quite knowing what to do.

‘Are you all right, old boy? You look rather pale, don't you know.'

Tommy laughed at that. ‘You wanna have a look in a mirror, me old mate. You look like Casper.'

The young pale man smiled, but looked confused as well. ‘Well, I am sure that Mister Casper is devilishly handsome as well.'

They both laughed at this remark.

‘I honestly don't know what to do,' said Tommy. ‘I think maybe I'm going mad. I shouldn't be here. I mean, I was somewhere else, and now I'm here, dead or in the past or maybe just stoned…I dunno!'

‘Well it certainly appears you had a little bump on the head all right, but a word of advice, my friend: I wouldn't go spouting off too much about being dead or in the past or whatever stoned means. I dare say you will be carted off back to jolly old England and deposited in the nearest asylum.'

Tommy stared at Mr Pale for a few moments, and then said, ‘What if this is just a dream? What if I've been injured and I'm in a coma or something? And this is all just a very weird dream.'

‘Well I must say, if this is a dream, I feel terribly real, and since I feel terribly real, I will introduce myself. Lieutenant Maurice Rayner, at your service, Adjutant with the 66th Berkshire Regiment. Oh, and I do a spot of interpreting as well, just in case you want to ask the lovely nurse out for dinner, what.'

Tommy had to smile at this. As he walked over to the Lieutenant, he held out his hand and said, ‘Thomas Evans, Private, the Queen's Own Fusiliers, nutcase!'

Rayner shook it. ‘Well, Private Evans, I don't recall the fusiliers being part of our little party, so unless you are quite mad, or have gotten lost out here in this bloody furnace, I suggest you become a private in the Berkshires, because if the skilled Surgeon Major comes to the conclusion that you are, in fact, insane, then its cheerio to dear old Private Evans, hello asylum!'

Tommy thought about this for a while whilst listening to the hustle and bustle outside the tent.
What
the
hell
, he thought.
If
I'm
dead
then
none
of
this
will
matter,
and
if
I'm
in
a
coma,
well,
there's
no
point
fighting
it,
just
go
where
it
takes
me.
As
for
going
back
in
time,
well,
that's
just
silly.

‘All right, sir,' said Tommy in a smart voice. ‘Private Evans of the 66th reporting for duty. Must beg your pardon, sir, as I seem to have mislaid my memory, and this Private begs your indulgence.'

Chapter 5

Friend

T
here
is a distinct smell to a hospital, a clinical smell, a smell of TCP, disinfectant, Savlon, chemical smells in general. The strange smell here, though, Tommy couldn't place. He had never liked the smell of hospitals; it meant sickness and death. It also meant watching your loved ones take their last breath, like Granddad Stan, curled up on a bed fighting for every breath; six stone soaking wet and looking a hundred-and-fifty-years-old. He didn't always look like that though; no, once he was a big man. A big strong man and a soldier, it's true. Tommy had seen all the old photographs from the war when he was a child. All those black and white prints of young Stan and his mates, standing alongside burnt out German tanks, artillery pieces and even brothels (though he wasn't supposed to see those photos, and Gran went mad when Tommy asked who the black girl was sitting on his lap, drinking out of a champagne bottle).

‘Ah, well now,' Stan had said, ‘that was a poor Nubian
that I rescued from the Nazis, boy. Poor girl was so happy when we took that French town, she gave us all a drink and a kiss, as thanks, you know.' And with that he had quickly buried the photo at the bottom of the shoe box where they were kept.

He was at Dunkirk as well. Three days, he was on that beach. He only ever spoke about that when he'd had a drink, and even then not much; it was the only time during the war when he had been truly frightened. There was one occasion, though, when he'd gotten quite drunk, and it was then that Stan told Tommy a secret.

It was the third day on the beach at dusk and he had just waded back after the Destroyer
he had tried to board had taken a direct hit from a Stuka
dive bomber. When he got back to the hole he had dug in a sand dune, he found another soldier hiding in it. He had gotten into an argument with the man, who had point blanked refused to move, with Stan arguing that he had dug that hole with his own two hands. Just then, as a fight was about to ensue, a German ME 109 fighter came screaming down the beach heading straight for them. As the other soldier's attention was taken up with the fighter, Stan thumped him in the stomach and dragged him out of the hole and dived in. In between sobs, he said, ‘I watched that poor boy disintegrate right in front of me, lad. He was gazing right at me and then he was gone. Why, why did I do it? There was room for the two of us.' Tommy left his Granddad crying, alone in his potting shed, and it was never mentioned again.

‘What is it?' Tommy asked, as Arun passed him a wooden bowl with what looked like vomit in it.

‘It is food, Private Sahib.'

‘Yes, I can see that it might be food, but what sort of food?'

‘Err, it is being wholesome food, Private Sahib,' and with that Arun walked back out of the tent.

Tommy sighed heavily and sniffed the contents of the bowl.
Well
, he thought
,
it
smells
like
soup
or
stew
or
something
like
that,
anyway.
How
is
it
that,
if
this
is
the
afterlife,
I'm
not
eating
huge
hunks
of
pork
and
beef,
and
bowls
filled
with
all
different
kinds
of
fruit,
and
drinking
wine,
and
getting
a
bed
bath
from
a
group
of
virgins?
He sighed again and, picking up the wooden spoon, placed a small amount of it in his mouth. With a mighty effort, he started to chew.

It
might
be
a
potato
stew
, he thought after a moment.
And
maybe
some
meat
as
well.
He stopped chewing, and swallowed quickly.
Meat!
he thought again.
What
kind
of
meat?
He inspected the bowl, stirring the contents up and checking the bit of gristle he had managed to find.
Beef
, he thought,
that's
got
to
be
beef,
probably
the
testicles
or
some
other
offal
. But he was hungry, very hungry, he realised. In fact, he couldn't remember the last time he had eaten; he thought it might have been a packet of crisps on the morning of the patrol.
Morning!
What
time
is
it
now?
What
day
is
it
now?
Do
they
have
days
here?
Tommy thought.
Am
I
going
mad
or
something?

‘Sod it,' he said, and threw the rest of the stuff down his throat.

‘My, who's a hungry boy, then?' came a voice from the tent flap. ‘Don't forget to stop at your fingers, what.'

Tommy looked up and saw Lieutenant Rayner standing by the tent entrance. He smiled and licked the spoon. ‘Not too bad actually when you don't think about what's in it.'

‘Food of the gods, I'm sure.' The Lieutenant limped over to his bed and climbed onto it. With an exaggerated sigh, he collapsed back onto the roughly stuffed pillow. ‘That, my fine fellow,' he said ‘was an awful lot of work just to have a shit.' He rolled onto his side and faced Tommy. ‘Feel any better, Mr Dead and Gone to Hell?'

Tommy placed the bowl on the little stool next to his bed, swung round and sat on the edge. ‘You can take the piss all you want, Maurice, but I know what my eyes are telling me, and they're telling me that, unless I'm dead, I'm asleep and dreaming. If I'm not dreaming, then I'm as mad as a box of frogs, and if I'm not mad, then I've gone back in time, for what reason I couldn't tell ya. Personally, my money's on the dreaming.'

‘Well, I don't care for any of those scenarios.' Maurice leaned up on his elbow, ‘Because, Thomas, if you are dead, then I'm a ghost, if you are dreaming, then I don't exist, if you are insane, then I am just a figment of your overactive imagination and if you have indeed gone back in time, as you say, then I have already lived this life and I am, well, already dead!' He smiled at Tommy. ‘Saying that, though, at least I get to live again. Even in your mind will do.'

Tommy sat thinking for a moment.
What
if
Maurice
is
right?
As insane as it sounded to Tommy, what if he had gone back in time? He looked over at Maurice, then looked around the tent, and thought,
How
could
this
be
a
dream?
It's
so
real!
He had never had a dream like it; in fact, he couldn't recall ever having a dream and realising it was a dream at the same time.
Can
you
even
do
that?

‘Why the bloody hell would I have gone back in time? What possible reason would there be for that to happen? No, no, I'm obviously dreaming or something, because, you know what, I can feel pain. How can you feel pain when you're dead? Eh? Tell me that, then, Maurice.'

‘You can feel pain, old bean, because you are indeed alive! As we sit here debating on the why's and wherefores of heaven and hell, your heart is pumping blood to that close approximation you call a brain. You are also, I might add, breathing. You have just eaten some of that slop, for goodness sake. And believe me, if you weren't real, I would be the first to tell you.' With that, he leaned down from the bed, picked up a wooden bowl and threw it at Tommy, catching him in the leg.