Beneath Gray Skies Read online

  “That’s for me to know and you to find out, lad.” And not another word would Brian say on the subject.

  “He’s one of them queers,” Tom said. “He’s a Limey, they’re all like that. Watch your ass, Davy-boy.” But Tom was wrong about that, David reckoned. He didn’t know a lot about that sort of thing, but he’d already seen something in his short period of service, and he’d fought off a couple of half-serious attempts by an older soldier. Either Tom was wrong about Brian, or Brian was a lot more subtle in his approach than his previous would-be seducer.

  “Play chess?” asked Brian one evening.

  “Saw some fellows playing it once. How does it work?” asked David.

  Brian produced a chess board from his knapsack and set out the pieces. “Now, the object of the game is to checkmate the other bloke’s king.”

  “What’s ‘checkmate’, then?”

  “It means that you get the other bloke’s king in a position where you could take him, and he can’t wriggle out. It’s a sort of war-game between two armies.”

  David sat up a little straighter.

  “Now this here’s a rook, or a castle. See how it looks like a castle tower?”

  David, who’d never seen a castle, or even a picture of one, nodded. “What’s the horses?”

  “Those are knights. But first look at how the castles move, straight up and down like this, or straight across like this.”

  The lesson proceeded. “Ready for your first game?” asked Brian after about thirty minutes of explanation. Ten minutes later it was over. “I don’t know how you did that, David, I really don’t.”

  “I really won? You weren’t trying!” accused David.

  “On the contrary, dear boy, I was trying. Not very hard, maybe, but I was trying. Do you want to play again?”

  This time, it took nearly twenty minutes. “I don’t believe it,” said Brian, holding out his hand across the board. Feeling rather foolish, David shook it. “I was the bally chess champion at Harrow in my last year. I used to reckon I was pretty good and all that. Just shows how wrong a chap can be about himself.”

  “Another game?” asked David.

  “Ah, you’ve got your bloodlust up. Just give my ego a few minutes to revive itself and I’ll be ready. You wouldn’t happen to have any of that bloody awful whiskey on you, would you?” David passed the bottle over. “Ah, you’re a gentleman, David, even if you aren’t an officer yet,” said Brian, shuddering as the moonshine went down, and passing the bottle back to David.

  David won that game too.

  -o-

  The next week, the Captain sent for David.

  “Sir,” said David, saluting as he entered the office, and stood at attention.

  “Had that Limey in to see me about a half an hour back after prayers. Tells me you whupped him at chess once, and you keep on doing it. Don’t play the game myself, but they say it shows you got some kind of brains. You got brains, kid? Can you read?”

  “Of course, sir,” replied David indignantly.

  “Keep calm, kid. Lotta kids we get in here, can’t hardly read nor write, and can’t figger past two. Here, read this to me,” and passed a book over to David.

  David read fluently and without hesitation: “We propose to consider first the single elements of our subject, then each branch or part, and, last of all, the whole, in all its relations—therefore to advance from the simple to the complex. But it is necessary for us to commence with a glance at the nature of the whole, because it is particularly necessary that in the consideration of any of the parts their relation to the whole should be kept constantly in view.”

  “Know what that means?”

  “Not rightly, sir. But I think he means that soldiers have to look at the big things and the little things all together.”

  “Not bad. Now copy that sentence for me onto this piece of paper.” David had been taught his letters by a strict teacher, and his handwriting was the product of a more leisurely elegant age. The Captain whistled as he looked at it. “Private Slater, this is better than the Colonel’s own writing. You can figger as well as you can read and write?”

  “Not as well, sir, but I can manage.”

  “Well, Private Slater, I’m going to get you promoted to Corporal and you’ll become the assistant company orderly. You’re too smart to be out on the fence all day. You’ll be inside, out of the hot sun, checking papers from HQ and letting me know what’s going on, and sending my answers back to HQ. Fellow we have now gets sick mighty often, and the paperwork piles up while he’s puking up his guts. Reckon you can handle all that?”

  “Yes sir. Thank you, sir.”

  “Thank your Limey friend. Congratulations, Corporal Slater. Report to my office at 8 o’clock tomorrow morning. Dismissed.” And with a snappy salute, Acting-Corporal David Slater almost bounced down the steps to the parade ground.

  -o-

  Thanks, Brian,” he said that evening.

  “Eh? For what, old man?”

  “You’re talking to Corporal Slater now, Private. Assistant company orderly.” David was almost glowing with pride as he grinned at Brian.

  Big smiles and a hand to shake. “Well done, old boy. I’m awfully glad my few words were useful. But when I saw how bally good at chess you turned out to be, I thought to myself, that lad’s got hidden talents. He’s wasted where he is. And so I had a word with the Left-tenant” (Brian always pronounced it that way for some reason) “and he listened to me, I’m pleased to say, and passed my words of wisdom up to the Captain. My dear good man, this calls for a celebration. No, no,” as David reached for his bottle. “The pleasure’s all mine, as the bishop said to the actress. Oh, never mind,” in answer to David’s puzzled look. He pulled out a bottle of whiskey. “Now this will warm the cockles of your heart. Real whisky from a Scottish island. After you.” He extended the bottle. David sipped—it was as different from his usual moonshine as Brian was from Tom. He drank again.

  “Not too much,” warned Brian. “I’ll bet you have to be up early tomorrow for this orderly job, and you’re not going to be at your best with a hangover. Goodnight, Corporal Slater.” He picked up the bottle and walked with it to the other end of the hut.

  -o-

  David soon grew into the job of company orderly. To start with, he wasn’t sure what some of the long words on the orders meant, but he got into the habit of copying the difficult parts and asking Brian to help him with the long words and complicated phrases in the evenings. Sometimes Tom joined them, and he learned to play chess too, but he was no match for either David or Brian. When they played poker together, Tom was the one who usually ended up with more matchsticks than the rest of them, though.

  “You lads don’t make enough in this bloody outfit for me to let you play for money,” said Brian, who seemed to have appointed himself as a kind of honorary uncle to half the soldiers in David’s company, but still managed to find time to play chess with David and chat about his work at least two or three times a week.

  -o-

  One evening, David came to Brian with a question. “Where’s Berlin? There’s nowhere called that round this way, is there?”

  “The only Berlin I can think of is in Germany. That’s the other side of the ocean, a week or so away by ship. Why?”

  “I thought that’s what they were talking about. We’ve gotten us some strange orders. We’re going there. Looks like I’ll be traveling outside the Confederacy for the first time in my life. And you know something else? We’re not going to be in Germany in uniform, neither, if I understand them orders rightly. We’re all of us booked on a ship called the Robert E. Lee, setting off from Savannah in two weeks’ time, which means we have to be packing up the day after tomorrow, I reckon.”

  “Just us? Our company, I mean?”

  “No, looks like the whole of us in the 3rd Alabama, and then the 7th North Texas, and the signals company from the 9th North Carolina. Why in heck would they want to send us over there?”

  -
o-

  That night, David missed seeing Brian creep out of the hut when everyone else was asleep. He didn’t miss him coming back in.

  “Pssst. Brian!”

  “Yes? Go back to sleep.”

  “Where the heck were you?”

  “Gone to look at the stars. Couldn’t sleep at all. Always does me good to go out and look at the stars. Makes me remember my place in the universe, I suppose. Reminds me just how small I am in the great scheme of things.”

  David thought about it a bit, and laughed quietly. “’Night, then, Brian.”

  “Goodnight, old man.”

  It was when David was nearly asleep that he realized that the weather had been overcast all day. It hadn’t looked that evening as though the weather was going to clear up. Surely Brian wouldn’t have gone out to look at the clouds? But why would Brian lie about it? He must have made a mistake, that’s all. But you don’t make a mistake about that sort of thing … David drifted off.

  Chapter 6: Whitehall, London, United Kingdom

  “This is one of the biggest messes that’s ever landed on my desk.”

  “So, the 3rd Alabama, the 7th North Texas and the 9th North Carolina are going over next week?” C, the head of the British Secret Service, asked one of his deputies.

  “It certainly looks that way, sir,” came the reply.

  “Do you think we should pull Finch-Malloy out of there?” C enquired. “He’s done damn’ well, I have to give him that and I’d be happy to let him pull out with full honors if he wants.”

  “Actually, I think he wants to stay on there for a while, sir. He reported that he’s got to like the taste of grits, whatever they may be, and that he’s discovered a chess prodigy he thinks it’s his duty to bring before the world.”

  “Hmph. Not exactly good Service reasons, are they? Can he do anything more while he’s in that army?”

  “Oh yes. He can report on their state of readiness and all that, sir. I’d be inclined to let him stay there with his grits if he wants to stay, sir.”

  “Very well, Parkes. But tell him he can pull out at any time if he wants to. No chance he’s been spotted, is there?”

  “I think he would have let us know by now if he had any problems in that area, sir.”

  “I hope you’re right. Those Confeds can be pretty nasty towards the people they don’t like once their blood’s up. Lynchings and all that. I’m sure our Washington friends are glad they never had to fight them in a war and that they went without a struggle.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, sir. They say that if President Lincoln hadn’t gone down with that fever when he did, he’d have made a stand, and there would have been a war, rather than that half-baked Seward-Chase compromise on Fort Sumter which let them slip away peacefully. Probably several thousand dead. Could have gone on for a year or so.”

  C snorted. “Says who? The Confederacy would have had to surrender in a month or two. No supplies. Look at them now. A load of subsistence-level farmers mainly, led by a hereditary slave-owning dictatorship with a worthless currency, and thinking they’re God’s chosen people.”

  “Bit like the Roundheads in our Civil War, sir?”

  “You could say that in some ways, Parkes. Damn’ good fighters when they have the supplies to do it, though, which is why I’m worried about them going over to Germany. Herr Hitler has some money coming to his National Socialists from a lot of large companies. Enough to get decent Mausers into the hands of those Confeds and God knows what else in the shape of airplanes and so on.”

  “You’d think there’d be enough experienced fighting men in Germany, sir.” It was half a question, and C chose to answer it.

  “Half-starved and shell-shocked, Parkes. You’ve seen our lads back from the trenches. Well, the Germans have it much worse. And the poor bastards are starving to death—the ones that the influenza epidemic left alive. They lost hundreds of thousands, you know, poor devils. They’ve no stomach for any more fighting. Anyway, you know Jerry. Follow an officer anywhere, but Hitler was only a corporal. How much support is he going to get from the officers if he wants to take over the country?”

  “And I suppose that if things go wrong, it wasn’t the Germans who failed and the Nazis can’t be blamed?”

  “You have the makings of a very superior dictator, Parkes,” smiled C. “Don’t let it go to your head. Now I must pop round and see our lords and masters, and make sure this information your man has given us gets to the right ears.”

  -o-

  The Minister was not pleased with the information when C made his way to Whitehall. “Damn it, C, of course I’m happy that we know what’s going on, but couldn’t we have known about this a little earlier?”

  “Apparently the details of this were only decided a few days ago. We’re pretty sure Washington doesn’t know about this yet.”

  “Are you going to tell them?” C stood primly without saying a word. “Don’t look like that at me, C. Dumb insolence, I call it. You know perfectly well that you intelligence chappies trade secrets like schoolboys swapping stamps.”

  “In this case, sir, I would prefer the Cabinet to make the decision regarding Washington’s being informed, rather than my making it. Far be it for me to fall foul of the Monroe Doctrine.”

  The Minister spluttered into his teacup. “You never fail to amaze and entertain me, C. Since when has the Monroe Doctrine ever meant a thing to you secret johnnies? Are you going to tell the Yanks?”

  “I’ve already said, sir. This is a matter for the Cabinet, not for me.”

  “Why so serious with this one, C?”

  “Because, sir, this is one of the biggest messes that’s ever landed on my desk. Quite frankly, I would prefer it if it were someone else’s decision. The implications go a long way outside my office, and reach to the League of Nations in Geneva.”

  “All right, I’ll present it to the PM. What’s your private view on this? Off the record, as the newspaper chaps say?”

  “My view is to keep it quiet, sir. If we let them know we have agents in the Southern army, the Yanks will start looking for our agents in their forces as well. We could disguise the information, of course, and say it came from the French or something …”

  “So for the moment, I’ll suggest we keep it quiet. If any further ingenious ways of distorting the truth occur to your twisted mind, I’ll trouble you to keep them to yourself for now. By the way, have you any idea how several thousand men who speak no German are going to be hidden in Germany until Herr Hitler makes his move?”

  “No, sir. But a few possibilities occur to me. They could be presented as prisoners of war, to be kept apart from the general population.”

  “From a war that ended three years ago? Preposterous!”

  “Not from the Great War, sir, but from one of the Polish border clashes or something like that. Maybe even from Bolshevik Russia.”

  The Minister considered this. “Better than I could come up with, C,” he said at length. “I start to understand how you earn your monstrously high salary. Joking apart, do you want to attend the Cabinet meeting and present these findings? I’m beginning to feel I will need the safety of numbers. The PM has a distinct aversion to rocking boats too hard. I get the feeling he gets seasick far too easily.”

  Chapter 7: Cordele, Georgia, Confederate States of America

  “My guess is that they were looking for any excuse to kill you.”

  The sun was going down as Christopher walked from the drugstore, where he’d just purchased a packet of headache powders, back to Miss Justin’s. As he turned the corner behind the railroad depot, he noticed the Childers girl sitting in the road, crying.

  “Why, Miss Anna-Mary, what’s the matter with you?” he asked.

  “I fell down and hurt my knee, and my doll has hurt her knee, too.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad now. Let’s have a look at your dolly and your knee. Oh yes,” he shook his head sympathetically. “She is in a bad way. And so are you. Let me help you u
p, and I’ll take you home.” He reached down and took her hand, when he was interrupted by a shout from behind him.

  “Hey! Nigra! Take your dirty black hands off her, y’hear?” It was Lamar Fitchman’s raucous voice. Scared, Christopher dropped Anna-Mary’s hand and turned to face Fitchman. With a sinking feeling, he saw that Fitchman was not alone. Three friends were with him. Wild boys from the other side of the tracks, one swinging a corn liquor jug from one hand. As Fitchman made his way, somewhat unsteadily, towards Christopher and Anna-Mary, it was obvious to Christopher that he been drinking heavily.

  “Now, sweetheart,” Fitchman slurred towards the little girl. “You leave this nasty black boogeyman to us, and run along home.” Forgetting both the pain in her knee, and a loaf of corn bread which she’d been carrying in her other hand, she fled, doll firmly clutched to her breast, from this new apparition with hate in his reddened eyes, and a strong smell of stale whiskey on his breath.