The Players And The Game Read Online Free Page A

sexual implication. In what she thought of as his actor’s voice he said, ‘No trouble. I swear it.’
     
    Brian Hartford lay on the floor, looked through his gun sight and fired four shots. Each pellet struck a foot soldier. He completed the move by wheeling his infantry so that they encircled Blaney’s depleted right flank. ‘Got you,’ he said in the eager biting tone that made his words often sound like a command or an insult. He was a small sandy man with greenish eyes and almost invisible eyebrows.
    Blaney considered the situation. Soldiers, red and blue, horse and foot, covered the plastic-tiled floor. There was a village street with a church in it, a wood made from plastic trees, a blue plastic river with a bridge which Blaney’s retreating troops had failed to reach in time to blow it up. He nodded. ‘Trouble is, your gunners have got twenty-twenty vision.’ Blaney wore thick pebbled glasses.
    The remark had a flavour of frivolity which Hartford disliked. It implied that good sight was more important than good generalship. ‘Not at all. You should have drawn back your left sooner to cover the bridge. You simply didn’t realise its importance.’ He relented and offered whisky. After all, he had won. They went into the living-room. Hartford talked exclusively about the game they had just finished, and what set-up they should try next week. Blaney tried to show enthusiasm. He had begun to play the War Game because it sounded like fun, but continued only because he was the marketing manager of Timbals, and Hartford was deputy managing director. He hoped for some profit from the association, but so far its possible nature was not apparent.
    When Blaney had gone Hartford went back into the big room and put the soldiers, guns and landscape away carefully in boxes. He lived alone on the top floor of a large Victorian house in Maida Vale which had been turned into service apartments. He looked out for a few moments into the quiet street, and then went to bed. His bedroom was composed of rectangles that confronted each other angularly, the bed, the Danish cupboard and dressing-table, a high-backed chair. He carefully hung up jacket and trousers, put shirt and briefs into a laundry bin and shoes on trees, looked with pleasure at the Mondrian lithographs on the walls, and got into bed.

Chapter Five
Extracts from a Journal
     
Early May
    Saw Eyes Without a Face, Les Yeux Sans Visage is the proper French title. All about a doctor who takes skin grafts off people to put on to his daughter’s disfigured face. Didn’t like it, not interesting. Bonnie didn’t come, quite right too. These new films are not like the old ones. Though I liked Psycho, that was good. The shower cabinet, the blood running away. And there is one called Peeping Tom, which sounds as if it should be good.
     
    There is something that doesn’t satisfy me about the Game. What do I mean? I’ll try to explain. Take this notebook, who am I writing it for? Myself I suppose, perhaps for Bonnie too, though I’m not especially anxious that she should read it. Perhaps I’ll let her one day. Nobody else. In a way that’s right, I don’t want them to, because this is my secret. But in another way I want everybody to know about Behaviour as Games, I want them to understand there are no limits to fantasy fun. I want to know the kind of fantasy fun they’re having too.
    Explained all this to Bonnie, that the two of us were very lucky to be able to tell our fantasies. Not sure she understood, in some ways she’s stupid. I believe she thought I was asking her to have sex. Rubbish. I’ve said it before, but now I shall write it out in capitals. DRACULA DOES NOT WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH BONNIE. She wouldn’t like it if he did. But anyway, she doesn’t attract him.
    Seriously, seriously Bonnie, that would spoil the whole Game. What Dracula does want is this, to let somebody else into the Game. Talked to Bonnie about this, and she was doubtful. I believe when