Tomorrow's ghost dda-9

by Anthony Price

  He looked out of the window again.

  'I remember in the old days, though... There'll be nobody out there now, not today.

  But in the old days there'd be the Regiment, with the red poppies in their caps. And the Territorials. And the nurses, and the Boy Scouts and the Girl Guides - and us, of course.

  The Old Contemptibles. And the Blackburn Prize Band.... We'd form up in the centre of town, and we'd march up Preston New Road - with all our medals - the General, and young Jackie's father just behind him, that was his RSM - cor! you should have seen us then! The whole town was out. Didn't matter if it rained or shined - left, right, left, right -

  swing those arms! And the band playing the old tunes!

  'And young Jack was there too, with the Scouts. And he used to stay behind with his dad afterwards... But now they do a bit of something on a Sunday, not worth going to -

  waste of time. But then it was right on the day - November the eleventh. Two minutes'

  silence at 11 o'clock: the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month - '

  * * *

  Frances had come past him, hiding her face behind the little umbrella heading towards the gates beyond the fountain.

  Colonel Butler was standing in front of the ugly memorial obelisk which was topped by an even uglier representation of Peace - a female Peace presiding in bronze over the countless dead of the two World Wars (no room for the Korean dead, or the bad luck casualties of all the other little wars since, from Malaya to Ulster. No room for Blackburn's Robbie Fitzgibbons).

  She hadn't watched him from the front, that would have been too risky. But from behind, from the cover - no shelter - of the gates she had observed that he was standing easily, his multi-coloured golfing umbrella over his head, as though reading the names.

  And then a clock sounded, away somewhere behind her in the dripping town. As it did so, as though at a time-signal, a sheet of heavier rain - genuine rain - slashed down across the Park, blotting out the further landmarks she had passed a few moments before.

  As the first strokes of the clock rang out, rain-muffled. Colonel Butler collapsed his umbrella and removed his ridiculous hat, and came to attention. Even after the sound of the last stroke had cut off - with the loud spattering of the rain and the noise of the traffic behind her it didn't die away, it ended abruptly - he still stood there, for what seemed like an age, bare-headed in the downpour.

  Then, unhurriedly, for by then he was wet enough not to need to hurry, he replaced his hat and opened the umbrella again, just as Brian came trotting by him.

  * * *

  Not an age, but two minutes exactly, counted off in heartbeats.

  * * *

  That's why he had to go, of course. He keeps the proper day, naturally. Never fails -

  leastways, not when he's in England, and not fighting somewhere. But always comes to see me first, even if only for five minutes - and I've been here ten years now, since me legs went, and he's not missed once.'

  He twisted awkwardly in the bed to feel under his pillows.

  'He has to, see...' He turned back towards her. 'He has to bring me my red poppy.'

  He displayed the evidence triumphantly.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Once upon a time, concluded Frances, there had been a great mansion somewhere hereabouts; one of those huge northern granite palaces built out of coal or cotton, in a rolling parkland, with lodges at the gates - and a duck pond - and a dower house into which the first widow could retreat when her eldest son brought his young bride home from the honeymoon in Piranesi's Italy.

  But now, amid the concrete high-rise towers and temples of North Yorkshire University, the Dower House (which was all that had survived of that splendid Once Upon a Time ... except, of course, the duck pond) ... the Dower House seemed more like a cottage out of the Grimms' fairy tales which had been magicked from its clearing in the forest into the open.

  Not that it frightened her any more, as it might have done before - as the duck pond still did. She was no longer Gretel (was it Gretel?), if she ever had been; and she was no longer Miss Fitzgibbon, the fairy story blue-stocking; and, for all her bedraggled blondeness, she was no longer Marilyn - she no longer needed to be.

  She was Mrs Frances Fitzgibbon returning to Paul Mitchell in triumph and victory.

  Even the day wasn't so grey now, even the rain wasn't so wet. There was more fighting to be done - the Enemy had lost a battle, but not yet the war itself after the Pelennor Fields. But it was not a battle they had expected to lose, and she had won it.

  So it was only reasonable to feel drained and a little light-headed.

  * * *

  It didn't matter, waiting in the rain outside the Dower House, as it had mattered outside St. Luke's Home.

  The door opened, and there was dear old Professor Crowe - brave old Colonel Crowe. It didn't even matter that he was looking at her with stranger's eyes, unrecognising her.

  'Professor Crowe - you remember me?'

  'Miss Fitzgibbon - I beg your pardon - Mrs Fitzgibbon! Well met, my dear, very well met!' He beamed at her more warmingly than the St. Luke's central heating. 'But you're soaking - quite soaking - come in, my dear, come in! Come in, come in, come in!'

  He bustled around her, half wizard, half Hobbit, all elderly bachelor. He fetched a towel. He thought about giving her coffee, but it was too late; he thought about making tea, but it was too early. He didn't mind that she covered his snowy towel with lipstick and mascara - 'It'll look wicked, dear - it'll make my students think, and anything which makes them think cannot be bad.' And finally he presented her with a whisky even more outrageous than that which Isobel had given her once upon another time, which she wanted even less and needed not at all, a true Robbie-measure.

  'Now - move up close to the fire - ' It was a fire like Isobel's too, generous with well-selected pieces of coal ' - take off that wet jacket, I'll put it in the airing cupboard - on a hanger, don't worry, so it won't lose its shape - it doesn't matter you've only a slip underneath: you won't lose your shape - hah! - and I'm practically old enough to be your grandfather, so if the incipient scandal doesn't worry you it won't worry me - there now, that's better! Drink your whisky, child ... there's plenty more where that came from -

  see!'

  Frances saw: it was a big new bottle of Glenfiddich from a tall cylindrical case, 86 per cent U.S. proof, out of the nearest duty-free air terminal or American base. It burned her throat as she sipped it.

  At last he sank down into the chair opposite her, breathless from his exertions. So far as she could remember, she hadn't yet said a single coherent thing to him, least of all to ask where Paul Mitchell was - why the Dower House was Paul's new headquarters.

  'Relief, my dear! The blessed relief of seeing you... And I know all about you now, too. All about you!'

  That was a conversation stopper. Frances burned her throat again, speechless.

  'I've been so worried about you. I haven't been so worried since the weather report they gave us before D-Day - "Shall we go or shall we stay?" I never admired Ike more than then, that was'his moment. We'd discussed it, of course - every probability, every possibility. The state of the beaches, and so on. But I was to be one of his men on the spot, so I had to put my money where my mouth was, it was no problem for me - if I was wrong I wouldn't be there afterwards to worry about it. But he had to make the decision, and then sit around and wait to see how it turned out - I felt for him. But I really thought I'd guessed what that was like, but do you know I hadn't at all, not at all!

  Not until I started to worry about you, young lady.'

  In spite of the fire outside her and the malt inside her, Frances felt a chill shiver her.

  'I'm sorry - ' she croaked, the chill and the Glenfiddich interacting.

  'And so you should be. You told the Death Story!'

  'The Death Story?'

  'Yes. And then you didn't die. Such effrontery! When we strolled over to the pond -
/>   and you were as cool and calm and collected as though you were about to feed those beastly birds with bread - -I was much more frightened than on Sword beach. I thought you were going to take me with you - absolutely petrified I was, I can tell you!'

  'I'm - I'm sorry, Professor. You've quite lost me now,' said Frances.

  'I suppose I should still be worried, for it's still on the end of your finger - ' He stopped suddenly. 'Unless you've killed somebody already, of course. Have you killed anyone during the last twenty-four hours, by any chance? You don't look as if you have, but one can never tell these days...'

  'Killed anyone?' The chill was an ice-block now.

  'Or presided over a death, perhaps?' Crowe looked at her hopefully. 'Or even seen a death? An accident would do, so long as you were nearby. Have you pointed at anyone?

  Or touched anyone deliberately?'

  Frances thought of Rifleman Sands. He was old enough, and frail enough. But he had done all the touching. And she very carefully hadn't pointed at the young man in the petrol station - Paul's inexplicable advice had been loud in her brain then.

  'No.'

  'Well, we'll have to leave it to Jack Butler. Perhaps that'll qualify.' He blinked at her uneasily.

  The Death Story.

  'I - am sorry. Professor. But just what is the Death Story?'

  'My dear...' She watched the scholar take over from the old man with his memories of Sword Beach and Eisenhower '... your so-called fairy story - the ugly princess and the blind prince - have you no idea what you really did?'

  She knew exactly what she had done: she had told a fairy story - Granny's creepy fairy story - to take the heat off herself in the Common Room of the new English Faculty Library. And although there had been a bomb just under her feet, no one had died after that -

  Horrors, though: she had also told it to Robbie that last time, to get him searching for its origin among his books - to get his mind off going to bed with her.

  Successfully, too.

  And then Robbie had stepped off the pavement, and tripped over his big feet, three days later as the armoured pig was passing.

  Was that success, too?

  It wasn't possible. It was pure fancy - as accidental and coincidental as Sir Frederick's wild idea that she had some special wild skill in picking right answers. It was no more than some aberrant mathematical figuring by men who ought to know better.

  All the same. 'The Death Story?'

  Crowe nodded. 'Yes ... I've been checking up on it, as a matter of fact. A lot of fairy stories can be explained in terms of very simple psychology. For example, little girls like fairy stories because of their oedipal problems - they can identify with beautiful princesses held captive by jealous step-mothers because that makes them unavailable to a male lover, which is their father. All of which is not something I like to go into, because it mixes up quite normal enjoyment of good stories with the most terrible pubertal situations. One ends up with Walt Disney's Snow White as a really frightful story of sexual jealousy ... and, frankly my dear, I won't have that. Academics must be careful when they find they're playing with fire.'

  He gazed for a moment into the heart of the fire, and then came back to her. 'But your story is different - with a different root. But it also seems to ... play with fire, as it were.'

  'I don't see how.' Frances took a firm grip on her imagination. Robbie's death was an accident. Accidents happened all the time. That was the beginning and the end of it. 'It's just a fairy story. With a happy ending, too - a eucatastrophic ending. Professor.'

  'Hah!' For a moment he twinkled at her for being an attentive student, then he was serious again. 'Your story is. My story isn't.'

  'Then tell me your story. I'm not superstitious.'

  'Bravely said! And the ritual challenge, too: where did you pick it up?'

  Frances sighed. 'As usual. Professor, I don't know what you're talking about.'

  'I don't think you have to know. You are your

  Grandmother's grand-daughter, I suspect!'

  'You're doing it again.'

  'So I am! Forgive me.... Very well. But first I will demolish your story, my dear.

  Forget about the three princes. There is only one - the third, of course. The other two are medieval accretions. Or, more accurately, bowdlerisations of a sort.'

  'A dirty fairy story?'

  He ignored her irreverence. 'One prince, then. He comes upon a hideous old woman, but because he's blind that doesn't matter to him. He makes her young again by kissing her; she was a beautiful young thing all the time, just bewitched. And they lived happily ever after. Presumably he was bewitched too, and the moment he gives the kiss he receives his sight in exchange?'

  'That wasn't in my story.'

  'Good. Forget the bewitching too, anyway. But then what do we have.'

  'No story.'

  'We have a hideous old woman - a real woman. Once she was young and beautiful, like you. Now she is old, and nothing works properly any more - Candide's "old woman" to the life: "My eyes were not always sore and bloodshot, my nose did not always touch my chin.... My breast was once as white as a lily, and as firmly and elegantly moulded as the Venus de Medici's.'" He shook his head sadly. 'It happens to all of us, except those- the gods love, who die young, before they know the humiliation of missing a train because they are afraid to run that last fifty yards, as I am now.' He smiled at her. 'And I swear I clipped two seconds off the 220 record on Sword Beach that morning, running in boots on sand, armed cap a pied - I wasn't sure that the gods didn't love me, I suppose!'

  It was Rifleman Sands all over again, thought Frances. It was one weakness that women didn't have, because they'd always missed battle and sudden death - this remembering with advantage their deeds of daring.

  Crowe held up his finger. 'Can she be delivered from all this? Of course she can! One kiss - and no more ugliness, no more aches and pains. No more remembrance of all that's been lost, and all that might have been but never was. One kiss - and either nothing, or youth and beauty again for ever and ever. Happy ever after!'

  He nodded. 'It's pre-Christian, of course. Or pre-medieval Christian - they were the ones who made the Prince himself ugly and frightening, before them he was a god, and a beautiful and merciful god in his own right. And a god who rewarded you if you played the game properly.' Crowe pointed at the Glenfiddich bottle, and then at Frances herself. 'Valhalla is good whisky and pretty women. No one who offers that can be ugly

  - it's against reason!'

  He stared at her, for all the world as though imprinting her specification on his memory, with the Glenfiddich, for future reference.

  'The trick, my dear, is to call the Prince up when you want him. If I'm right ... your Grandmother - she knew it. Pass the story on, and die - that's the Neapolitan version of it. When you're tired of fighting, tell the story - and summon the Prince of Death!'

  He frowned suddenly. 'But the trick has a catch to it: once you've told the story you have to pay the score. Because if you don't, then someone else will have to. It's as though you've summoned him - it's actually called "The Summoning Story" in one version - and he's not going to go away empty-handed. The Neapolitans say that the Grandmother has a choice - she can point at someone who is dear to her. Or she can let him choose at random, in which case he'll choose someone dear to her, so it amounts to the same thing.

  He likes the youngest and best, for choice.'

  It was totally insane. It was an old man's macabre game, nothing more than that. He had read his own book on superstition too often.

  'Fortunately - very fortunately - you are not a grandmother yet, so it may not work for you like that. And also Colonel Butler may be able to provide you with a substitute, it now seems likely.'

  'What?'

  'Haven't you been brought up to date?' He smote his forehead. 'No - of course! You haven't seen your young man yet - the dashing Mitchell. But David Audley will be able to put you in the picture.'

  'David's
here - now?' Frances sat up.

  'Very much so. Though ... I gather ... unofficially.' Crowe glanced at the clock on the mantlepiece above his fire. 'He should be back here - I thought he was you, at the door.

  Except he doesn't knock, he always barges straight in. He hasn't changed one bit over the years.... Anyway, he went off to find young Mitchell, I think, to ascertain from him the whereabouts of his friend Colonel Butler.'

  Frances frowned at him. 'What did you mean - "Colonel Butler may have a substitute"?'

  'I think so. He's about to catch that fellow O'Leary - he thinks he's going to catch him alive, but David believes otherwise.' He looked at her, eyes bright with excitement which he probably hadn't felt for years, thought Frances - maybe since he had sprinted across his Normandy beach. Teaching students English literature for half a lifetime would be no substitute for that drug, at a guess.

  'You know a lot that's going on. Professor?' 'That I shouldn't, you mean?' He twinkled again happily. 'Well, you started it, my dear... Or you started it again, I should say. I was half in your line of business after the war, but they were making such a fearful mess of it that I got out of it as soon as I decently could, before I was too old to do anything else. That would be about the time Jones did the same thing - R. V. Jones ...

  though I wasn't in his class, of course.... Helping to win a war is one thing - it's rather stimulating, actually. But losing a peace can be intolerably frustrating.' He regarded her mildly. 'I've kept in touch to some extent, but I'm really no more than an interested spectator.'

  Frances counted up to ten, for the sake of good manners. 'Colonel Butler is going to catch O'Leary?'

  'That is my impression. You seem surprised?' She didn't know how to answer that.

  For some reason she was surprised: the reason lay in the atmosphere of ants' nest disaster she had left behind her here only forty-eight hours earlier. Yet even then.

  Colonel Butler had been in the middle of the nest, but not part of its confusion, she remembered.

  'He is a man with great drive and will-power, your Colonel Butler.' The spectator's detachment