The Fog of War

Chapter 3

Chapter 3One hot June day she met Annie Beelock in the lane as she was on her rounds in the village.

“He’s getting worse,” Annie said glumly. He won’t let me into the sitting room to clean unless he’s there. And he’s doing a lot of muttering to himself.” She shot Sylvia a worried look. “I’m starting to think he’s not safe to be alone up there at night when I go home,” she said.

“No word on Matthew coming home yet?” Sylvia asked.

Annie shook her head. “No. I wish they’d hurry up and finish discharging.”

Sylvia pulled a face back at her. “Wishing won’t make them quicker. I’ll call in, shall I? I’m nearly done down here.”

“If you would. At least he talks to you. All he says to me is to not disturb his books.”

Sylvia hadn’t spoken to anyone about his delusions. It seemed too private, as well as being a breach of confidentiality. She let the unspoken enquiry slide by her.

“I’ll be up in an hour or so. Are you on your way out?”

“Yes, down to market.”

It was a Saturday.

“I’ll let you know if there’s anything I’m worried about.”

Annie nodded. “Thank you, Sylvia. It’s a lot to take on without a professional opinion.”

* * * *

She saw her last patient in the village and went back to Courtfield for the car. The farm was a couple of miles out of the village, and she didn’t want to walk.

She followed the rough lane up to the house and pulled up outside the fenced-in garden, hopping out and slamming the door behind her.

As she opened the garden gate, she glanced up at the house. Through the sitting room window, she could see the silhouette of a man…Webber, she assumed…He was marching around, waving his arms.

There was a cloud of light following him around the room.

It took her completely aback. She watched, slack jawed.

He threw himself about, flinging his arms wide and pointing and spinning round. She couldn’t hear anything, but when he turned a certain way into the light, she could see his mouth moving. So, he was speaking, too. She poised herself to run in and stop him if it looked like he was going to hurt himself. But he didn’t. He finished what he was doing, took his glasses off, polished them, and put them back on like a perfectly normal person and sat down in his chair, vanishing below her line of sight.

She shoved her heart out of her mouth back down into its proper place in her chest and marched up and knocked on the door.

“What are you doing to yourself, Arthur Webber?” she demanded, as he opened it. It took him ages to get there, slow, shuffling steps coming down the hall. “What was that I just saw through the window?”

He looked at her with his head on one side, yellowing, unhealthy skin sunk over the bones of his skull with no padding underneath at all to provide shape. His eyes were bright, despite that.

“What did you see?” he asked her. “What did you see, Dr Marks?”

“The light,” she said. “I saw the light. It was you, you made it.”

“Come in.” He shuffled off down the passage, leaving her to shut the door behind her. “Come in and sit down.”

She sat in her habitual chair in the sitting room and watched him pace around. He was obviously sick and exhausted, but something was driving him.

“I’ve been telling you. You’ve not heard me though, have you?” he said to her. “You’ve sat there listening to me each time you’ve come to visit, listening, and thinking I’m mad and wondering whether you should sign the papers to have me put away. But you can see now…now you’ve seen it yourself!” He paused. “I should have shown you right from the start and then you’d have believed me. I’ve found a way to make a weapon to end the war! To end the war and bring the boys home!”

“The war is already ended,” she said, gently. “It ended months ago. I know Matty’s not home yet, but they’re coming. They’re bringing them all home.”

“A weapon like this will mean that no-one ever goes to war again,” he said. “It’ll be so terrible…so fearsome…that no-one will dare. And I’ll be in charge of it, so it can’t be used wrongly! I’ll be able to stop it all from happening again.”

He was clearly completely potty, whatever she’d seen.

She shut her eyes briefly and when she opened them, she said, “So what was the light I saw?”

That she had seen it, she was certain.

He looked at her smugly. “Power, my dear. That was power. I pull it up and I use it to do whatever I want.”

He stopped pacing and stepped closer to her; she leaned back in her chair, refusing to let him see he was intimidating her. She was fairly sure she could fight him off if it came to it…he was a husk of the man he’d been, all skin and bone…but really, she preferred not to have to wrestle her patients to the ground if she could possibly avoid it.

Instead of leaping on her foaming at the mouth, which, ugh, she had half been expecting, he extended a hand, palm up.

“Watch,” he said.

She watched.

There was a flickering a couple of inches above his palm, like a match being struck. It steadily grew into a ball of light about three inches across, hovering over his palm.

She looked at it and then up at him. He was watching her, waiting for her reaction.

“Magic?” she said, in a tone she rather hoped wasn’t as awed as she felt.

“Not magic, my dear. Power. Just power. Like air or water or electricity. You just have to know how to get it. And once you have it…you can do anything.”

He made a dismissing gesture with his hand and the light snapped out.

“True practitioners don’t call it magic. It implies a sense of superstition, a lack of understanding.” He sniffed and settled into the chair opposite her. “And now I suppose you’ll sign a piece of paper and have me put away somewhere.”

She looked at him steadily. “I don’t think there’s any need, do you? You’re clearly not delusional, that was real. I have the evidence of my own eyes. But Mr Webber. Is this what’s making you unwell? Because Annie Beelock is very worried about you. That’s why I called today. I met her in the lane earlier and she asked if I’d drop in on my way home.”

He pulled a face. “That woman fusses far too much, she always has.”

“She cares about you, that’s all. She’s known you a long time. And I’m sure Matty would be worried if he knew you were so unwell.” She paused. “Do you know when he’s coming home?”

He shook his head. “No. He says he hasn’t heard anything yet. They’re taking their time discharging everyone.”

“It’s a lot of men to bring back,” she said. “Logistics. And paperwork.” She huffed a small laugh. “So much paperwork.”

He looked at her shrewdly, a trace of the old Arthur Webber, the incisive journalist he’d been before he’d come home to the farm. “You were with the Women’s Hospital, weren’t you? In an administrative role?”

She shook her head. “No. Surgical. Shrapnel. Gas-gangrene, mostly.” She rubbed a hand over her face. “Look, Mr Webber. Arthur. Will you let me examine you? Because magic or not, you don’t look well. Please?”

He shook his head and said, formally, “No. There’s no point, Dr Marks. It’s the power that’s draining me. Whatever I do now, I can’t stop it. I’ve just got to make the best of the time I’ve got left. I can pull power to keep me going and I need to finish my work and make sure nothing like this war can ever happen again.” He stared into space. “It’s coming, you know. This war is only just ending, and I know there’s another one coming. With terrible weapons. So terrible. I’ve been told. They showed me.”

“Who showed you?” she asked, gently.

“The people from the future,” he said. “They opened a gate in the border between the worlds and they came through and told me that it was all going to happen again. They were trying to stop it.” He wiped his hands over his face. “So much death, Dr Marks. We can’t allow it.”

“Mr Webber. Arthur. Are you telling me that this magic—” he raised an eyebrow at her, and she corrected herself, “—not magic—this not-magic…can allow people to travel through time?”

She stared at him.

He didn’t meet her gaze. “That’s what they said. They said they could leave from one time and travel to another. I saw them appear. They were here for a little while. They showed me…some things…” His voice wavered on the phrase, awed.

She wondered what they’d shown him.

He continued, “And then they left again. In a cloud of light. A cloud of mist, with sparkling light in it. And these peculiar howling sounds, like wild animals. Creatures that were attracted to the power, they said…” His voice drifted off and then he seemed to pull himself back. “And they said they’d got the wrong time.”

They sat in silence. Sylvia couldn’t comprehend it. It would have been much easier to think he was potty if she hadn’t seen him make the light in his palm.

People from another time? Lights…mist…howling.

She bit her lip. He was mad. He must be.

But…he still didn’t look like a madman. He looked ill, and excited. But perfectly sane. What he was saying made her remember…but she didn’t want to think about that. Not here, anyway.

She pushed the rising memory away.

Her mind was blank. Completely blank. If she wouldn’t let herself think about that, then it refused to process anything.

She blinked, frantically, a sudden upswell of emotion taking her by surprise.

Good grief. She certainly wasn’t going to cry. Not in Arthur Webber’s sitting room, anyway. She bit the inside of her cheek sharply to stop herself.

They sat in silence.

Webber had his eyes shut, head resting on the back of the armchair as if he were asleep. She studied him as she got herself back under control. She could ask him questions. But…she didn’t know if she wanted any more answers. And she didn’t want to disturb him if he was asleep, she told herself, recognising it for the excuse it was, even as she thought it.

Eventually, taking refuge in professionalism, she said quietly, “Well. If you still won’t let me examine you and you think there’s nothing I can do for you, then I need to get back for lunch.”

She rose, shaking out her loose trousers. “But Mr Webber, will you come to me if you need any help?”

He struggled with the effort but rose when she did and looked across at her seriously. “I don’t think there’s any help anyone can give me now, Dr Marks. But yes, I will.”