Tomorrow's ghost

by Anthony Price

  Not true. Or, not the whole truth, anyway. She had been very pleased with herself, very full of the pride before which every fall had to go, very pleased with her own cleverness, with her own unerring instinct.

  She hadn’t known how the instinct had come to her, but she’d been consciously saving that up for consideration at leisure, like a favourite sweet to be smuggled up to bed, past the tooth-cleaning ritual, to be sucked secretly and selfishly in the darkness after lights-out. Four out of ten had become ten out of ten.

  And she had wanted the smug sod at the end of the telephone. Extension 223, to squirm—she had wanted to hear him squirm as she gave him the answer he hadn’t expected.

  * * *

  ‘He couldn’t have done it. Not possibly.’

  Fact. He couldn’t dispute fact.

  ‘What?’

  ‘He was in Blackburn at 10.30 that day—maybe earlier. Like he said in his report.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I have a cast-iron witness. He remembers the time exactly.’

  No answer. She would throw him a bone to gnaw at, then—out of sheer cruelty.

  ‘He had a motive. But he’d never have done it then—or got anyone else to do it. Not on November 11th.’

  That had been sheer bravado, to go with the cruelty. She didn’t even know how she would record that subjective evidence of character and temperament and upbringing and history, which was much stronger in the end—at least for her—even than Rifleman Sands’ resolute evidence.

  She only knew that she could hardly write: Of all the dates in the year, if he was going to murder his wife, or even wish her dead—which, being Colonel Butler, he would never do anyway, or even wish—that would be the very last, most impossible day. Because that was the day –

  It was the day that had thrown her, even when her instinct had told her it was important. Nowadays, when it didn’t matter, when it was just a pious formality except for the old generation who knew which day was really which. Remembrance Day was always on a Sunday: that was the day they marched to the Cenotaph and to the thousands of war memorials up and down the country and planted their wreaths and poppies without really remembering anything at all, because they had nothing to remember, because yesterday’s ghosts weren’t worth mourning in a nasty, rough world.

  They would have mostly forgotten, as she had, that the Sunday was always only the closest day to that old real eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of that original year—it was almost an accident that she recalled her father telling her (he who knew everything) that in the old days everything in Britain had stopped for two minutes to remember something which had happened at 11 o’clock on November llth in 1918.

  But Colonel Butler had always remembered. What exactly he remembered—he hadn’t been alive when Rifleman Sands had first walked up Revidge for the big fireworks display, which had reminded him of the trenches, with the candles in jam jars at his front gate—what he remembered, she could only guess at: maybe his father, against whom he’d revolted, or his father’s friends; or his own friends and comrades from Normandy and Germany; or his own men from those other trenches of Korea, Nannie’s husband among them; or even the men he himself had killed so efficiently in his time. Or even the old General himself, who’d had a hand in it all from the beginning, father and son beginning.

  That was something she intended to find out eventually—his girls could find it out for her simply by asking: they were probably the only human beings who could ask the question with a chance of receiving an answer; no one else (not even a second Mrs Butler) had the right to expect an answer—which she already knew in her heart, but which she would never write down, for it must always be his secret act of remembrance: Because that is the day when he keeps faith with his dead, the day of love and honour and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice, and he would never add a private ghost of his own to that list, on that day, not ever, not this man, not ever—

  * * *

  A private ghost.

  Yesterday’s ghost—Frances could feel her heart thump—she had laid yesterday’s ghost at the terrible cost of raising a new one for tomorrow—had she?

  They were getting very close now. Through the rain-streaked side window she had been catching glimpses of the swollen Thor Brook between the fringe of trees which separated the road from the stream for the last half-mile before they met at the bridge of Thornervaulx.

  The bridge was a colour-transparency in childhood’s memory—high and hump-backed and narrow as the ordeal bridge of Al-Sirat between earth and heaven over hell—

  A new ghost was waiting for her on the other side: there was still so much she didn’t know, so much that was still guesswork, about that November llth as well as this November llth, but the new ghost was already an instinctive, stomach-churning certainty.

  * * *

  The enemy had revived the old Butler scandal into suspicion by dropping the right word into the right ear at the right moment—the classic disinformation stratagem.

  And they had calculated its strength not only from the lying truth it contained, but also because all those who feared and disliked and mistrusted David Audley would work hard to make it true, blocking his advancement by blocking Butler’s promotion—playing the enemy’s game for reasons which probably ranged from pure selfishness and hatred and fear and prejudice to mistaken patriotism.

  And also because, all the while, Sir Frederick himself had let them go ahead for his own reason, hoping that Audley would be forced in the end to take power simply for the sake of friendship and survival—

  Was that how it had been?

  If it was—

  She caught a flash of grey through the trees, against the browns and yellows and greens of late autumn, rain-misted: ruined walls and pinnacles across the stream on the other side of the valley. If it was, then she had made a ruin of it.

  And if it was, then Colonel Butler might now die in that ruin, and maybe in those ruins: there must always have been a contingency plan for a last resort, and this was the ideal place for it, where it might just pass scrutiny as a natural hazard of duty.

  * * *

  Paul.

  Frances clasped the name like a straw. Paul was Colonel Butler’s last chance. Paul was always suspicious, Paul always had his eyes open. Paul, in the unseen presence of O’Leary, would have his hand on that gun of his, of which he was so proud, with which he was so born-to-the-manner good, as he was good at everything. Paul was the best.

  She frowned.

  Paul—?

  * * *

  ‘There’s the bridge,’ said David Audley. There was the bridge. Childhood’s memory had been wrong—No. It wasn’t so high, or so narrow as she had remembered, or as the ordeal bridge of Al-Sirat, between life and death. But as they had come up to it eighteen years ago there had been a big orange coach swinging on to it, and Mother had said ‘Wait, Charles—it’s too narrow—sit down, Frances!’ and they had waited while the coach-driver backed and manoeuvred.

  * * *

  Paul? The youngest and best?

  * * *

  She twisted the wheel just in time, almost too late. Another second’s hesitation would have carried them on up the valley, to somewhere she’d never been. A great splash of rain from the saturated branches of the trees above obscured the windscreen for a moment, then there was a bump as they crossed the bridge and the windscreen wipers swept the water away.

  Hard left and hard right—her father’s hands on the wheel, impossibly remembered, swung them on to the car park which the old Ministry of Public Buildings and Works had carved out of the monastic gardens, the wheels spinning and the gravel spurting.

  Daddy had never driven that fast—Daddy had parked carefully under the trees on the right, between the wall and the ice-cream van from which he had bought her a choc-ice, and himself a choc-ice too—

  But the path to the abbey ruins was at the top, on the left: she had walked across the gravel with him, licking the melting
chocolate off her fingers—and he had been licking the chocolate off his fingers too, and grinning at her, while Mother unloaded the picnic with Uncle John—it was at the top, the path. She swung the wheel the other way, skidding round the vividly-striped police car—the day-glo orange and white flashed in front of her and was gone as though it had never existed.

  ‘Christ!’ said Audley.

  She stood on the brakes, feeling the car slither under her.

  Now she knew: Butler was a dream—the girls’ dream which she had started to dream against all reason and all reality. Butler was already invulnerable—he had always been invulnerable, from the start, the stars in their million courses were running for him, as they had on his battlefields; his bad luck would always come from a different direction, from where it had always come.

  It would be Paul—

  Frances slammed out of the car, leaving the door swinging.

  It would be Paul—

  There was a man ahead of her. Audley shouted something, but the words were lost to her.

  She could run. She had always been able to run. Some women couldn’t run, their hips got in the way, their breasts went every whichway. But Frances Warren never saw anyone’s back in the 100 and 220, no girl could touch her.

  The man was gone, open mouthed. It was not James Cable, she saw only that—it was not James Cable, so James Cable was also up ahead somewhere, with Jack Butler and Trevor Anthony Bond—and with Paul—Make it James Cable, prayed Frances. It won’t be Trevor Anthony Bond, it can’t be Butler—it’ll never be Butler in this age of the world—make it Cable, not Paul !

  There were steps up, between modern stone walls. She knew where she was going, it was past the lay brothers’ dormitory, past the great kitchen and the wide quadrangle of the ruined cloister—

  * * *

  ‘Now sweetie: you’re standing in the middle of the cloister—so you know where the Chapter House and the Parlour are … the Parlour where they were allowed to parlez to each other … and the Warming House where they lifted their cassocks and warmed their—‘

  ‘Charles!’

  * * *

  Not the Chapter House, not the Cloister, not the Parlour—the wall ended with the Galilee Porch.

  There was a reason for Galilee Porch, and he had told her the reason; but she could never remember it then, and she couldn’t think of it now. But that was where the wall ended, that was still the entrance to Thornervaulx Abbey.

  * * *

  The great quire of the abbey stretched ahead of her—quire and retroquire, monks’ quire and presbytery, which had once been the glory and the wonder of the Thor Brook valley, and far beyond—and the High Altar, once gilded and jewelled, under which the miraculous bones of St. Biddulph had lain, which no virgin could look upon with safety, because they guaranteed pregnancy even to the most barren—

  * * *

  ‘Where, Daddy?’ Virgin Frances had looked for the high altar.

  * * *

  Where, Daddy? thought Frances again, desperately.

  But there was only the long sweep of broken pillars, like jagged teeth, rising higher and higher out of the smooth turf, each with its swirl of dead leaves around it, until the towering walls of the roofless transepts reared up, and the perfect open circle of the rose window framing grey sky where once the Virgin and Child had been enthroned in glory—

  Where?

  * * *

  Frances ran down into the wide empty quire of the lay brothers, between the dark woods of the hillside, almost leafless, on her left, and the labyrinth of abbey ruins on her right.

  The emptiness mocked her and terrified her. Paul—the rain ran down her face—Paul!

  As though called by that soundless cry Paul Mitchell emerged from behind one of the slender columns of the opening into the south transept, beside the high altar’s site.

  Another movement caught her eye, away beyond the pillars in the labyrinth.

  Colonel Butler walked out on to the green square of the cloister quadrangle, unmistakeable under his golfing umbrella. Now they were both in the open: she could see them both. And now he, whom she had summoned, only had to make his choice—that was the story’s ending.

  * * *

  She saw him rise out of the ruin of summer’s growth on the hillside under the eaves of the trees, ten yards from her, his rifle lifting for the heart shot. He hadn’t seen her, she was half-masked by a broken pillar. The choice was still hers: she could shout Paul—there!

  But that would be too late for Colonel Butler. Or she could shout Down, Colonel Butler! And that would be just one second too late for Paul—

  * * *

  The choices were gone in the same instant of their imagining, as the rifle rose.

  There had never been any choices, only the true ending.

  * * *

  Frances stepped into the open.

  ‘O’Leary—‘ she pointed at him ‘—you’re dead!’

  * * *

  That would give Paul and Butler the time they both—

  CHAPTER 16

  WHERE SHE LAY close to the stump of the third pillar in the ruined quire, it was quiet now.

  For a moment it had been noisy—she had not truly heard the noises, but she was aware that there had been noises—but now there was only the steady swish of an infinite number of raindrops on stone and grass and leaves around her, where she lay.

  Then she was aware that she had heard the noises at the exact moment when she had been punched such a terrible blow on the chest, so that the grey sky and the greyer stonework and the green grass had cartwheeled—no one had ever punched her so hard, it had quite knocked the breath out of her.

  So now her eyes were full of tears, blurring green and grey into indistinguishable shapes of colour; but that was only natural, that she should cry after being hit so hard, to make her so breathless.

  * * *

  Daddy—I hurt—Daddy—

  * * *

  It wasn’t tears, it was the rain on her face. But she couldn’t close her eyes against the rain—

  * * *

  ‘Frances!’

  * * *

  That was the name she had wanted to remember. That was the name in her handbag—but there were other names in her handbag, and they wouldn’t know which name was her name –

  Where was her handbag? Without her handbag she had no name at all: they wouldn’t know who she was.

  * * *

  ‘Mitchell. Are you all right?’

  A different voice, far away but well-remembered.

  ‘Yes.’

  The first voice, much closer but far above her.

  ‘Over here. Colonel—Oh God! Frances!’

  * * *

  She had made a fascinating discovery: they were quite right when they said you never hear the one that hits you.

  But they were also quite wrong, because she had heard it long before, and everything she had done had been only to make sure she was in the right place at the right time to meet it.

  She wanted desperately to tell them that, but she couldn’t, and that made her angry: it seemed to her that she had failed in everything she had set out to do in her life—

  * * *

  ‘Frances—Frances—‘

  The colours swirled and swam. She floated into them.

  ‘Let her be, lad. Let her be.’

  * * *

  ‘Frances!’

  * * *

  She no longer recognised the names, or the faraway voices. And yet the sound of them took away her anger and her despair at her failure.

  Perhaps not everything, perhaps not everything—

  And that was enough for the Act of Contrition, which must be the last feeling of all—

  * * *

  No, not the last.

  The last feeling, as the greens and greys darkened, was the gentle kiss of the rain—of the Prince—on her lips.

  The End