Tomorrow's ghost (34 page)

Shapiro looked at Frances.

‘Am I right. Princess?’ asked Paul.

Shapiro continued to look at Frances.

‘Princess?’

Frances looked at Shapiro. ‘When does David get back?’

‘Not until midday tomorrow. He’s got a meeting he can’t break—Washington time,’ said Shapiro.

Washington time. Not enough time.

‘I’ll give you whatever help you need,’ said Shapiro.

Everyone was so helpful. There was altruism everywhere.

‘I’m going to Blackburn,’ said Frances for the second time. But now she knew why she was going there.

FOR THE SECOND TIME
in one morning Miss Marilyn Francis was in Thistlethwaite Avenue, at the entrance of the driveway to St. Luke’s Home for Elderly Gentlefolk. But this time she was going inside.

Frances looked at her watch. It was 11.25, which ought to be just about right for visiting.

She turned to the woman beside her. ‘If you could wait here, Mrs Bates—just down the road, perhaps.’

‘Yes, luv.’ Mrs Bates gave her a motherly smile. Mrs Bates was a motherly person, almost grandmotherly. ‘Shall I have Brian bring your own car up, from behind the hotel?’

Mrs Bates was also a well-organised and well-organising person, who thought of everything, as befitted an Israeli intelligence cell commander.

Frances sorted Brian from Evan Owen and Mr Harcourt, who were taking it in turns to keep Colonel Butler in sight. Brian was the plump-faced young man on the motor-cycle, the junior partner in the team. Evan Owen drove the van, and Mr Harcourt was the commercial traveller in the nondescript Cortina.

She also wondered, for the umpteenth time, how Paul Mitchell had made out with Nannie on her return from night duty. The girls, mercifully, had accepted the unscheduled dawn departure of the potential Second Mrs Butler after she had reassured them that Paul was only a colleague, and that he would never be anything more than a colleague, and that he was too young for her anyway, and that she would be coming back to see them at the earliest opportunity; which reassurances—three truths and one lie (she would never come back to Brookside House, that was a near-certainty)—had been the least she could do for Paul, whom they would otherwise have either murdered or seduced during the night as an obstacle to their plans. But Nannie was a different problem—she would give Paul a hard time, supposing his charm didn’t work; and she would also report on him to Colonel Butler at the earliest opportunity, after which the cat would very likely be out of the bag. But by then, very likely, it wouldn’t matter much, he could think what he liked, it would be all over; and, anyway, it was all over for Paul, that part of it—Nannie’s part—and by now he would be two hours up the motorway to Yorkshire.

(The same motorway that Colonel Butler had once travelled at another November dawn, nine years ago.)

She felt strangely fatalistic about it all. ‘Thank you, Mrs Bates.’ As she stepped out of the car she saw Mrs Bates reach under the dashboard for the microphone which linked her to Brian and Evan Owen and Mr Harcourt in his Cortina.

*   *   *

A cobweb of rain brushed her face, fine as gossamer but nonetheless quickly soaking.

This was real northern rain—not so much rain as total wetness. When she had left Brookside House it had been raining—raining obviously, with real raindrops spattering on her. But somewhere along the drive northwards it had stopped raining and had become simply wet, the very air so saturated with moisture that a fish could have breathed it.

She put up Mrs Bates’ big black umbrella, but the dampness ignored it. By the time she reached the porch she could feel it running down her face, spoiling Marilyn’s make-up. If someone didn’t come quickly to answer the bell Marilyn’s blonde frizz, which had jumped so surprisingly from under the wig, would be reduced to unsightly rats’-tails.

The door opened.

‘
‘
Northern Daily Post
-
Gazette,
”
said Frances quickly, hunching herself up against a trickle of rain which had infiltrated the top of her plastic mac. ‘I phoned up about an hour ago. To see Mr Sands, please.’

‘Mr Sands?’ A blast of warm air reached Frances’s face.

Rifleman Sands,
please,
begged Frances silently.

‘Oh, yes—the young lady from the newspaper?’ The green-uniformed nurse was as crisp and fresh as a young lettuce leaf. But she looked at Frances—at Marilyn—doubtfully for a moment, as though she had expected a better class of young lady, not something off the cheapest counter at the supermarket.

‘That’s right,’ said Frances desperately. Marilyn would just have to do, now. But the theory that as Colonel Butler and the North had never seen Marilyn, so that she might purchase a minute or two more of anonymity if the worst came to the worst … that theory of Paul’s didn’t seem so clever now.

She shivered uncontrollably, and the Florence Nightingale training of the lettuce leaf came to her rescue.

‘Ee—but you’re wet, dear—come inside!’ The lettuce leaf opened the door wider. Tut your umbrella down there—in the stand—so it won’t drip on the floor.’

Frances collapsed the umbrella gratefully. The door closed at her back and the warmth swirled around her.

‘And get your raincoat off—let me help you—there now—that’s better! Oh … isn’t it a right miserable day—that’s better!’

That was better. And without the raincoat Marilyn was better too: she was only Marilyn from the neck up. From the neck down she was still Frances, in Mrs Fitzgibbon’s best Jaeger suit.

‘Thank you, nurse.’ Marilyn-Frances took in her surroundings. Everything that wasn’t a cool, freshly-laundered, green-uniformed lettuce leaf was painted and polished in St. Luke’s Home for Elderly Gentlefolk. And on the landing window-sill halfway up the staircase was a great spray of out-of-season flowers, too: one thing St. Luke’s Home didn’t need was a grant from the Ryle Foundation, it was doing very nicely thank-you on the fees from the Elderly Gentlefolk. Colonel Butler was certainly doing right by General Chesney’s ex-gardener, ex-batman, in return for the old man’s 50 per cent share in pulling the General off the barbed wire at wherever-it-was in France sixty years before.

‘And you’ve got an appointment with Mr Sands.’ The lettuce leaf smiled at her this time, it was the influence of the Jaeger suit, no doubt. ‘He is having an exciting time!’

‘Yes?’

‘Oh yes—this way, if you please—‘ The lettuce leaf pointed up the stairs ‘—the Colonel this morning … with a big box of chocolates for us, and flowers for Matron … and the young man yesterday—‘ she glanced over her shoulder at Frances ‘—and he was from your paper too, wasn’t he? What has Mr Sands been up to?’

She was moving at nurses’ quick-step. ‘We’re planning a series on veterans of the First World War,’ said Frances breathlessly.

‘That’s right,’ agreed the lettuce leaf. ‘The young man told me. There aren’t many of them left, I suppose—didn’t he get everything, the young man? Old Mr Sands talked to him for ages.’

‘I’m the woman’s angle,’ said Frances.

‘Ah … of course.’ Nod. ‘Well, when you do a series on the Second World War, you come to me—I wasn’t born then, but my mum remembers it all. Dad was at El Alamein, and had his toe shot off in Italy, in a monastery there—would you believe it? Here we are.’

She knocked at a gleaming door. ‘Mr Sands? Another visitor for you! You’re really in luck today…’ She filled the door for a moment. ‘All right, then? You don’t want the bottle, or anything like that? You’re ready to see your visitor?’

There came a sound from beyond her, a sort of croak.

God! Don’t let him be senile, prayed Frances: he wasn’t yesterday for Paul. Don’t let him be below par for me. I have the right question for him, Paul didn’t.

‘That’s good,’ said the lettuce leaf briskly. But she caught Frances’s arm then. ‘Now, dear. ..’ she murmured into Frances’s ear confidentially ‘… he’s a lovely old man, really—not like most of our old gentlemen, not exactly—but a dear old chap, all the same.’

Most of their old gentlemen would be rich old gentlemen in their own right, that must be the difference.

‘But you’ve got to watch him like a hawk. He pretends he can’t see you properly—and it’s him who’s got eyes like a hawk. And he pretends he can’t hear either, and he hears perfectly well when he wants to. He tells you he can’t hear just to lure you close to him, that’s all—he did it with the Mayor’s daughter, I think it was, when they came to the Home last year, the old devil!’

‘Did what?’ whispered Frances.

‘He put his
hand
up her
skirt,
dear—
right up\
’
hissed the lettuce leaf urgently. ‘You should have heard her scream! I was down the passage—it frightened me out of my wits…. We’re used to it, of course. But you—‘ she glanced quickly at Marilyn’s hair ‘—you better just watch him, that’s all.’ She straightened up abruptly, and poked her head round the door again. ‘Here you are, Mr Sands: it’s the young lady from the newspaper.

And you behave yourself, or I won’t let you watch
The Sweeney
—
I’ll take your set away, and that’s a promise!’

Which was
The Sweeney?
Marilyn had kept up with all the popular TV programmes, from
Coronation Str
eet
upwards—My God!
The Sweeney
was the violent one, where the cops and robbers were always putting in the boot.

She entered the room cautiously.

It was a beautiful room, high and peach-and-white, with bright-flowered curtains framing a window which gave a view of trees on a far hillside.

And a big colour TV set for
The Sweeney.
And a little old man sitting up in bed, against a mound of pillows—
Like a little old wizened monkey,
Paul had said.
Sans teeth, almost sans eyes, but not sans
memory.

Paul wasn’t quite so clever though, again: more like a little bird of prey, with bright eyes fastening on her. (Or perhaps that wasn’t quite fair to Paul, and she was being wise after the nurse’s warning of his predatory habits once the prey was within reach.) He didn’t say anything, he just looked at her. There was a copy of the
Sun
under his hand, opened to page three’s bare breasts. As she looked back at him he closed the page.

Well, she hadn’t been so clever either. There was obviously nothing wrong with his eyes or his memory, but she’d forgotten to ask what was wrong with his legs… Though perhaps she should be grateful for their weakness, so it seemed. ‘Mr Sands?’

‘Yes?’ He sank back into the pillows. ‘I’m from the
Post
-
Gazette,
Mr Sands. A colleague of mine came to see you yesterday… About you war experiences.’

‘What?’ He cupped his hand to his ear. ‘About-your-war-experiences, Mr Sands.’

‘Speak up. Missy. I can’t hear you.’ Frances advanced towards the bed. ‘My colleague came to see you yesterday to ask you about your war experiences. When you were in the trenches with General Chesney.’

‘I still can’t hear you. You’ll have to speak up.’

‘You can hear me perfectly well,’ said Frances clearly.

‘Don’t shout. There’s no call to shout,’ said Rifleman Sands. ‘I’m not deaf.’

‘I want to talk to you about
after
the war,’ said Frances.

‘Ar? Well, you’ll have to come closer,’ said Rifleman Sands, laying down the price by patting the bed. ‘You can come and sit on the edge here. Then I can hear you.’

Then you can do more than hear me, thought Frances.

She looked down at the hand which had patted the bed, and which now lay resting itself on the coverlet. It was a working hand, one size bigger than the rest of Rifleman Sands, what she could see of him—a hand expanded by work, old and knotted now, the veins standing up from the parchment-thin skin, but very clean and manicured—a St.

Luke’s hand now. When she thought about it dispassionately, it didn’t disgust her at all.

It had been up a good many skirts in its time, that hand, without doubt. Now it was about to go up hers, but it wouldn’t be the first—or the worst—to make that short journey. It had been cleaned by the earth of the old General’s flowerbeds a thousand times over, and by that other earth of France and Flanders too, and it couldn’t possibly do her any harm now. If her skirt was the last skirt, that was just the final bit of the unpaid debt.

The bed was high off the floor, her skirt rode up quite naturally as she hitched herself aboard it.

Rifleman Sands smiled at her happily, and she found herself smiling back at him in perfect accord, perfect innocence.

‘Now, Missy. After the war? There was a big fireworks display on the top of Corporation Park, along Revidge … where there’s now tennis courts—there was a bit of spare land there—where we used to go capertulling of a Sunday night—‘

‘Capertulling?’

The hand patted the coverlet. ‘A big fireworks display. We used to walk up Revidge—about this time of year, too—and on our front gate we used to have an arch of laurels, with candles in jam jars … My elder brother used to say he was watching these people coming back, stopping to light their cigarettes on the candles in the jam jars. I didn’t go, of course.’

‘Why not?’

‘Fireworks reminded me of the trenches.’ He spoke as though it was a silly questions, to which she ought to know the answer without asking. ‘We had enough fireworks…

Though later on I did go up. You forget, see—in the end you forget.’

It was after the
first
war, he was talking about—sixty years ago, nearly! She was going to have to watch her time-scale, thought Frances. He was dredging back into his memory, already prepared by Paul’s questions of the day before, telling her what he thought she wanted to know.

‘Top of the Corporation Park, luv—you know it. Where the tennis courts are now.’

The hand fastened on her ankle, which dangled just over the edge of the bed beside him.

‘Top of the Corporation Park.’