Dialogues of the Dead

“Yes,” he said. If she’d wanted to flick a bit of cold water at him, introducing Dee’s name at this juncture did the trick. “Talking of Dee, you ever hear of a doctor with that name?”

“Not unless you mean the Elizabethan astrologer and necromancer,” she said.

“Yeah, that’ll be the one,” he said. Clever old Pascoe, ho ho ho.

“This the latest theory, the Wordman’s a magician and Dick’s a descendant of the doctor?”

“Well, you’ve got to admit he’s a little bit weird,” he said, adding quickly to dilute his criticism, “Must be the time he spends with Penn. When I went up to the Reference, they were in the office, playing that funny board game. Paronomania.”

He looked at her closely to see if he’d got it right.

Rye laughed and said, “You do listen, then!”

“Depends who’s talking. You said the word actually means an obsessive interest in word games?”

“That’s right. It’s a mix of paronomasia, that’s wordplay or a pun, and mania, with maybe a touch of paranoia thrown in. What are you looking at me like that for?”

“You realize you’ve just repeated more or less what I was saying about the Wordman?” said Hat.

“Oh, come on,” she said with irritation. “What your tame experts said, you mean? Listen, these two have been playing this game ever since I joined the staff. It’s no big secret vice. I asked about it and Dick explained the name, no problem. He even gave me a copy of the rules and so on. I’ve got it somewhere.”

She started looking through a drawer.

“The two boards I’ve seen looked hand-painted, and they were different,” said Hat. “Is it a real game? Or just one they made up?”

“What on earth would the difference be?” she said, smiling at him. “I know it started at school when they were playing Scrabble-”

“At school?” he interrupted. “Dee went to Unthank too?”

“Yes. That a problem?”

“Of course not.” But it might be an answer. “So, Scrabble.”

“That’s right. It seems there was a dispute about some Latin word that one of them used, and it led to them playing a version in which you couldn’t use anything but Latin. Things developed from that, they wanted something more complicated, with a bigger board, more letters, different rules, and the players take turns in choosing the language. …Oh, here it is-no, don’t read it now, you can keep it, time I was clearing out some of this clutter.”

Hat folded the sheets of paper she’d given him and put them in his wallet.

“No wonder I couldn’t understand any of the words I saw,” he said, reluctantly impressed. “How many languages do they speak, for God’s sake?”

“French, German-Penn’s fluent in that, of course-bit of Spanish, Italian, the usual stuff. But it doesn’t matter. They don’t have to know a language to play in it so long as there’s a dictionary in the library. That’s part of the fun, it seems. It’s like poker. One will produce a word which looks like it might be Slovakian, say, then defy the other to challenge him. Is it a bluff or has he swotted up a bit of Slovak the day before, and is now trying to provoke a challenge? Then out comes the dictionary and it’s lose a go and fifty points if it’s a false word, and the same if it’s an unsuccessful challenge.”

“What a pair of sad plonkers,” muttered Hat.

“Why do you say that?” she asked, looking at him curiously. “Two consenting adults, and they play in private, they’re not trying to impress anyone.”

“They seem to have impressed you. Ever try it yourself?”

“Wouldn’t have minded, but I’ve never been asked,” she said. “Story of my life, really. Lots of interesting games going on, but nobody asks me to play.”

Was this a hint? An invitation? Or just a tease?

He drank some coffee to moisten his suddenly dry throat as he tried to work out whether the time was ripe for a move. His body certainly thought it was. He could feel his flesh beginning to overheat.

“You all right, Hat?” said Rye, looking at him with some concern. “You’re looking very flushed.”

“Oh yes, I’m fine,” he said.

But even as he spoke, it occurred to him he was far from fine and that this heat had more to do with debility than desire.

“You don’t look fine, not unless you always start flushing in patches at this time in the evening,” she said. “In fact you look like what I felt like at work yesterday.”

“You mean I’ve caught your lurgy?” said Hat, choking back a cough. “I knew we had a lot in common.”

“Please. I hate a plucky trooper. You feel OK to drive home?”

It occurred to Hat that if he played his cards right, he could claim sanctuary here, then he recalled that Rye herself was only just recovering from the bug. In romantic fiction, the patient often got the nurse on to his bed. On the other hand, he suspected that all a pair of patients would get on was each other’s nerves.

“Yeah, no problem. So what’s the prognosis?”

“Well, you’ll feel a lot worse before you begin to feel better, but the good news is that it may be nasty but it’s short.”

“So I should be OK for the weekend then?”