In A Dry Season

TEN

Christmas 1943. It was a gloomy, chill and moonless night when the 448th held their first dance at Rowan Woods. Gloria, Cynthia, Alice and I walked there together along the narrow lane through the woods, our breaths misting in the air. We wore court shoes and carried our dance shoes because they were far too precious and flimsy to walk in. Luckily, the ground wasn’t too muddy, because none of us would have been caught dead wearing wellies to a dance, even if we had to walk through Rowan Woods in a storm.

“How many of them do you think there are?” Cynthia asked.

“I don’t know,” said Gloria. “It’s a big aerodrome, though. Probably hundreds. Thousands, even.”

Alice did a little dance. “Ooh, just think of it, all those Yanks with money to throw away. They get paid much more than our boys, you know. Ellen Bairstow told me. She went out with a GI when she was working at that factory near Liverpool, and she’d never seen so much money.”

“Don’t you try to tell yourself they won’t want something in return, Alice Poole,” said Gloria. “And don’t you forget your poor Eric away fighting for his country.”

We were all a bit quiet after that. I don’t know about the others, but I couldn’t help thinking of Matthew. A fox or a badger suddenly flashed across the path and scared us, but the adrenaline at least broke the silence. We were still excited, and we giggled like silly schoolgirls the rest of the way.

Most villagers had already seen the newcomers around, and I had even served some of them in the shop, where they had looked puzzled at our meager offerings and confused by the unfamiliar brand names. Some people disapproved of their arrival – especially Betty Goodall – thinking it would lower moral standards, but most of us quickly accepted them as part of the general scenery. I even helped the local WVS set up a Welcome Club for them in Harkside. Thus far, in my limited experience, Americans had always been friendly and polite, though I can’t say I really warmed to the way they called me “ma’am.” It made me feel so old.

They were certainly far more casual and confident in their manner than our lads, and they had much smarter uniforms. They even wore shoes rather than the great clodhopping boots the Ministry saw fit to issue to our poor armed forces. Of course, our view of Americans was still almost entirely formed by the glamour of Hollywood films, magazines and popular songs. To some, they were all cowboys and gangsters; to others, the men were handsome heroes and the women beautiful and rather vulgar molls.

That evening as we trudged through the forest, we had little real idea of what to expect. We had all fussed about what to wear for days, and we had taken special care with our appearance – even me, who was generally not overly concerned about such superficial matters. Under the overcoats we wore to keep out the chill, we all had on our best dresses. Gloria, of course, looked gorgeous in her black velvet V-neck dress with the puff sleeves and wide, padded shoulders. She had added a red felt rose at the neckline on the left side. I was a little more serviceable in the Utility dress I had bought in London.

One big problem was that we had all run out of fashion stockings and either we didn’t have enough coupons to get new ones or we couldn’t find any in the shops. When Gloria dropped by to meet me after I closed up shop, the first thing she told me to do was stand on a chair.

“Why?” I asked.

“Go on. You’ll see.”

I could have said no, but I was curious, so I stood. The next thing I knew, Gloria was lifting up my skirt and applying some sort of cold greasy stuff to my legs.

I squirmed. “What is that?”

“Shut up and keep still. It’s Miner’s Liquid Make-Up Foundation. Cost me two and sevenpence halfpenny, it did.”

I kept still. When the stuff she had slathered on my legs finally dried, Gloria had me stand on the chair again and she carefully drew a seam all the way down the backs of my legs with a special sort of pencil. It tickled and again she had to tell me to keep still.

“There.” She bit down on the corner of her lip and stepped back to admire her handiwork. I stood on the stool feeling like an idiot, holding my skirt up around my thighs. “That’ll do,” she pronounced at last. “Me next.”

As I “did” her, rubbing the foundation on her soft, pale skin, she started to laugh. “Marvelous stuff, this,” she said. “I was at my wit’s end the summer before last, before Matthew… well, anyway, I was so desperate I tried a mixture of gravy powder and water.”

“What happened?”

“Bloody flies! Chased me all the way from here to Harkside, and the damn things even buzzed around my legs inside the hall. I felt like a piece of meat in a butcher’s window.” She paused. “Ooh, Gwen, do you remember what that looked like? All those lovely cuts of meat in the butcher’s window?”

“Don’t, I said. “You’ll only make us miserable.”

We met the others by the fairy bridge. Cynthia Garmen was going for the Dorothy Lamour look. She had a black pageboy hairdo and wore a lot of makeup. She even had mascara on her eyes, which looked really strange, as women tended not to use a lot of eye makeup back then. It wasn’t good-quality mascara. When she got hot from dancing later in the evening, it started to melt, and she looked as if she had been crying. She said she had bought it on the black market in Leeds, so she could hardly go back and complain.

Alice was in her Marlene Dietrich period: plucked eyebrows penciled in a high arch, wavy blond hair parted in the center, hanging down to her shoulders. She was wearing a Princess-style burgundy dress with long, tight sleeves and buttons all down the front. It came in at the waist to show how thin she was: almost as thin as Marlene Dietrich.

The dance was held in the mess. We could hear the music before we even got there. It was the song I remembered hearing in Piccadilly Circus a few months ago: “Take the ‘A’ Train.” We stood outside the door touching up our hair, checking our appearance one last time in our compact mirrors. Then we took off our coats – not wanting to walk in wearing bulky winter overcoats – stuffed our court shoes in the pockets and put on our dance shoes. Ready at last, we made our grand entrance.

The music didn’t stop, though I swear it faltered for a moment the way records do sometimes when they become warped. It was a sextet, playing on a makeshift stage at the far end from the bar, and they all wore American air force uniforms. I suppose the odds are that when you gather so many disparate people together, you’re bound to end up with enough musicians for a band.

Already the place was crowded with airmen and local girls, mostly from Harkside. The dance floor was busy and a knot of people stood laughing and drinking by the bar. Others sat at the rickety tables smoking and chatting. I had expected the large Nissen hut to be cold, but there was a peculiar-looking squat thing giving out heat in one corner, which I later discovered was called a “potbellied stove” (a very apt description, I thought). Apparently, the air force had brought it all the way from America, having heard English winters were cold and wet, and so were the summers.

They hardly needed it tonight, though, as the press of bodies and the motion of dancing exuded all the heat we needed. The men had already covered the walls with photographs taken from magazines: landscapes of vast, snowcapped mountain ranges; long flat plains and prairie wheatfields; deserts dotted with huge, twisted cacti; and city streets that looked like scenes from Hollywood films. Little bits of America brought over to make them feel less far away from home. A Christmas tree stood in one corner, covered with tinsel and fairy lights, and paper trimmings hung around the ceiling.

“Take your coats, ladies?”

“Why, thank you,” said Gloria.

It was Gloria who had turned the heads, of course. Even with Dorothy Lamour and Marlene Dietrich for competition, she still stood way ahead of the field.

We handed our coats to the young airman, who was tall, slim and dark in complexion. He spoke with a lazy drawl and moved with agile, unhurried grace. He had brown eyes, short black hair and the whitest teeth I had even seen.

“Over here.” He led us to the far wall, beside the bar, where everyone’s coats hung. “They’ll be safe here, now don’t you ladies worry.” When he turned his back, Gloria looked at me and raised an eyebrow in approval.

We followed him and held on to our handbags. It was always awkward not knowing what to do with your handbag when you danced. Usually, you left it under the table, but Cynthia once had hers stolen at a dance in Harkside.

“And now, ma’am,” he said, turning straightaway to Gloria, “if I may have the pleasure of the first dance?”

Gloria inclined her head slightly, passed her handbag to me, took his hand and went off. It didn’t take long before someone snapped up Cynthia, too, and I was holding three handbags. But, if I say so myself, a rather handsome young navigator from Hackensack, New Jersey, called Bernard – which he pronounced with the emphasis on the second syllable – asked me to dance even before his friend asked Alice. I passed the three handbags to her and left her standing there gawping in a way that Marlene Dietrich never gawped.

“First, you have to answer a question for me,” I said, before I let him lead, just to show I could be quite brave when I wanted to, though I was secretly scared to death of all these brash and handsome young men all around me.

Bernard scratched his head. “What’s that, ma’am?”

“What’s an ‘A’ train?”

“Huh?”

“The music that was playing when we came in. ‘Take the “A” Train.’ What’s an ‘A’ train? I’ve always wondered. Is it better than a ‘B’ train, for example?”

He grinned. “Well, no, ma’am. I mean, it’s just a subway train.”

“Subway? You mean the underground?”

“Yes, ma’am. In New York City. The ‘A’ train’s the subway that’s the fastest way to Harlem.”

“Ah,” I said, the light finally dawning. “Well, I never. Okay, then, let’s dance.”

After “Kalamazoo,” “Stardust” and “April in Paris,” we gathered at the bar and the tall airman who had taken our coats bought us all bourbon, which we took to the table. His name was Billy Joe Farrell. He hailed from Tennessee and worked on the ground crew. He introduced us to his friend, Edgar Konig, whom everyone called PX because on American bases PX meant the quartermaster’s stores, which was exactly what he ran.

PX was a gangly young Iowan with a baby face and his fair hair shaved almost to his skull. He was tall, with Nordic cheekbones, pouting lips and the longest eyelashes over his cornflower-blue eyes. He was also very shy, far too shy to dance with any of us. He never quite made full eye contact with anyone. He was the sort of person who is always around but never really gets noticed, and I think the reason he was so generous to us all was simply that it made him feel needed.

When I look back on that evening now, over twenty-five years ago, especially considering all that has happened since, it seemed to go around in a whirl of dancing and talking and drinking, and it finished before it really began. I still remember the strange accents and the unfamiliar place names and phrases we heard; the young faces; the surprisingly soft feel of a uniform under my palm; the biting, yet sweet, taste of bourbon; the kisses; whispered plans to meet again.

As the four of us walked tipsily back through the woods, arms linked with our gallant escorts, little did we know how, before long, we’d be using words like “lousy,” “bum” and “creep” in our daily conversation, not to mention chewing gum and smoking Luckies. As we walked we sang “Shenandoah” and after good-night kisses agreed to meet them again in Harkside the following week.

It was the first time Banks had been to the Queen’s Arms for lunch in some months. He had been trying to avoid boozing too much during the day, partly because it was sometimes hard to stop, and partly because it seemed too much a part of his old life.

It wasn’t so much that he used to go there with Sandra frequently – though they often dropped in for a quick jar if they’d been in town together to see a film or a play – just that the Queen’s Arms brought back memories of the days when his life and work were in harmony: the days before Jimmy Riddle; the days when he had enjoyed long brain-storming sessions with Gristhorpe, Hatchley, Phil Richmond and Susan Gay over a steak-and-kidney pud and a pint of Theakston’s bitter; the days when Sandra had been happy with their marriage and with her work at the gallery.

Or so he had believed.

Like many things he had believed, it had all been an illusion, only true because he had been gullible enough to believe in it. In reality, it had all been as flimsy and fleeting as an optical illusion; it depended entirely on your point of view. In calendar time, perhaps, those days weren’t so long ago, but in his memory they sometimes seemed as if they had been dreamed by another person in another century.

Even before he bought the cottage, in those days when he had been out on the booze in Eastvale nearly every night, he had avoided the Queen’s Arms. Instead, he had sought out modern, anonymous pubs tucked away on the estates, places where the regulars enjoyed their quiz trivia nights and their karaoke and paid no attention to the sad figure in the corner who bumped against the table a little harder each time he went for a piss.

He got into a fight only once, with a paunchy loudmouth who thought Banks was eyeballing his girlfriend, a pasty-faced scrubber with bad hair. It didn’t matter that Banks didn’t think she was worth fighting over, her boyfriend was ready to rock and roll. Luckily, Banks was never so pissed that he forgot the rules of barroom brawling: get in first and get in nasty. While the boyfriend was still building up steam verbally, Banks punched him in the stomach and brought up his knee to connect with his nose. Blood, snot and vomit spattered his trousers. Everyone went quiet, and no one tried to stop him leaving.

Banks had always had a violent streak; he knew that even when he used to talk about love and peace with Jem. That was one reason he could never fully give himself to the sixties scene in the first place, only hang around the fringes. The music was fine, the pot was okay, the girls were willing, but the turn-the-other-cheek philosophy sucked.

Today, he felt like indulging himself at the Queen’s Arms. Cyril, the landlord, welcomed him back like a long-lost friend, not remarking on his absence, and Glenys, Cyril’s wife, gave him her usual shy smile. He bought a pint and ordered a Yorkie filled with roast beef and onion gravy. The pub was busy with its usual lunchtime mix of tourists, local office workers and shopkeepers on their lunch breaks, but Banks managed to snag a small copper-topped table in the far corner, between the fireplace and the diamond-shaped amber and green windowpanes.

He had brought with him the folder DS Hatchley had just dropped on his desk: information gleaned from the central registry of births, marriages and deaths. With any luck, it would answer a number of his questions. Already that morning, he had phoned army records and asked about Matthew Shackleton’s service history. They said they would verify his identity and call him back. He knew from experience that the military didn’t like people snooping into their affairs, even the police, but he didn’t expect much trouble with this one; after all, Matthew Shackleton was long dead.

Hatchley’s notes confirmed that Gloria was born on September 17, 1921, as she had correctly noted on the St. Bartholomew’s register. Instead of simply giving “London” as her place of birth, the official record listed London Hospital, Mile End. Christ, Banks thought, that was in the thick of the East End, all right, and a real villain’s thoroughfare these days. It would certainly have made her a Cockney, an accent she had worked hard to lose, if Elizabeth Goodall was to be believed.

Her father was Jack Stringer, whose illegible signature appeared in the “Signature, Residence and Description of Informant” column along with the Mile End address. Her mother’s name was Patricia McPhee. The father’s rank or profession was listed as “dock worker.” There was no column on the form to record the mother’s.

Next, Hatchley had checked to see if Gloria’s parents had, indeed, been killed in the Blitz, and had pulled death certificates for the two of them, dated September 15, 1940, listing the same Mile End address and “injuries sustained during bombing” as the cause of death.

A series of black-and-white images passed through Banks’s mind: vast stretches of rubble and craters; acrid smoke drifting through the night air; children’s screams, flames licking soot-blackened walls, the screeching of the bombs before the shattering explosions; houses only half-destroyed, so you could see inside the rooms – the pathetic sticks of furniture, framed photographs askew on the walls, peeling wallpaper; families huddled together under blankets in underground stations, a few valued possessions with them.

The images came mostly from films and documentaries he had seen on the Blitz. His parents had actually lived through it, moving to Peterborough from Hammersmith only after the war. They never spoke about it much, as most people who had been through it didn’t, but his mother had told him a comical story or two about the war days.

Some of the images of the war’s devastation came from Banks’s own experience, when he was a child, even that long after the war. As he had told Annie, wastelands of rubble and half-destroyed buildings remained in some areas for years. He remembered visiting London as a child and being surprised when his father told him that the acres of flattened streets in the East End were there because of the war.

Hatchley had been unable to find a death certificate for Gloria Kathleen Shackleton, but he did find one for Matthew, and the information on it caused Banks almost to choke on his beer.

According to the death certificate, Matthew Shackleton died at Leeds General Infirmary on March 15, 1950, by his own hand. Cause of death was given as a “self-inflicted gunshot wound.” At the time, he was thirty-one years of age, of no occupation, living at an address in Bramley, Leeds. The informant of his death was listed as Gwynneth Vivian Shackleton, of the same address. Banks checked again, but Hatchley had made no mistake.

He lit a cigarette and thought for a moment. Matthew Shackleton was supposed to have died in Burma, but obviously he hadn’t. Of the three survivors of the old Hobb’s End days that Banks and Annie had talked to over the past few days, one had left the village in 1940, before Gloria’s arrival there, the second had gone in May 1944, and the third at Christmas 1944. Neither Elizabeth Goodall nor Alice Poole had mentioned Matthew Shackleton’s returning, so he must have come back after they had left.

Which made him a definite suspect in his wife’s murder. Again.

What had he come home to?

And why had he killed himself five years later?

Banks flipped the sheet and carried on reading. A marriage certificate existed for Gwynneth Vivian Shackleton and Ronald Maurice Bingham. They were married at Christ Church, Hampstead, on August 21, 1954. The groom’s profession was listed as “Civil Servant.” Ronald died of liver cancer at home on July 18, 1967.

There was no death certificate for Gwynneth.

Hatchley had dug even deeper, and he had also discovered that there was a record of a child being born to Gloria Kathleen Stringer at her parents’ home address in Mile End, London, on November 5, 1937, shortly after her sixteenth birthday.

November 5. Guy Fawkes Night.

Banks imagined Gloria struggling to give birth as Catherine-wheels spun and jumping crackers and bangers exploded outside in the street, as Volcanoes erupted dark red fire, changing to green, then white, and rockets burst into showers of bright colors in the darkness beyond the bedroom windows. Did she look out on the scene from her pain? Did the noise and colors take her mind off what she was going through?

The boy was christened Francis Paul Henderson, taking his father’s surname. George Henderson, like Jack Shackleton, was listed as “dock worker.”

There was no trace of a wedding certificate.

So Gloria had given birth over three years before she turned up in Hobb’s End. What had become of the child and its father? Had she turned over the boy’s care completely to George Henderson? It looked that way. She had certainly indicated to none of her new friends that she had a son. Was George Henderson the man with the boy who had turned up at Bridge Cottage during the war? The one Gloria had argued with?

Glenys brought over Banks’s Yorkie. He tucked into the huge stuffed Yorkshire pudding and washed each mouthful down with a sip of Theakston’s.

According to Hatchley’s final search, George Henderson had died of a heart attack just five months ago. There was no death or marriage certificate for his son Francis. That made three of them unaccounted for by death certificates. Gloria, in all likelihood, had been buried under the outbuilding, but that still left Gwynneth Shackleton and Francis Henderson. Why hadn’t they come forward? One possibility was that they might both be dead, though Gwynneth would be in her early seventies and Francis only pushing sixty, hardly old in this day and age. Another possibility was that neither of them knew what was going on, which was too much of a coincidence for Banks to swallow. There again, maybe they had something to hide. But what?

Francis wouldn’t be able to tell Banks much. Everything that happened in Hobb’s End happened before he turned eight, so he was hardly a suspect in the murder of Gloria Shackleton. He would have been about sixteen when the village was flooded to make Thornfield Reservoir, and Banks doubted that the event would have meant anything to him.

Nonetheless, it would be interesting to know what had become of him. If nothing else, Francis Henderson’s DNA could help determine beyond a shadow of a doubt whether the skeleton really was Gloria Shackleton’s.

There was another issue, too: Someone had to lay Gloria’s body to rest, bury her properly, in a churchyard, this time. Two people who had been intimately involved with her were possibly still alive: her sister-in-law, Gwynneth Bingham, and her son, Francis Henderson. They should be the ones to do it, to bury their dead.

Banks sighed, put the files back in his briefcase and walked through the crowds across Market Street. He found a message waiting at the front desk from army personnel, informing him that Matthew Shackleton had been listed as “Missing presumed dead” in 1943, and that was all they had on him. Curioser and curioser. Back in his office, Banks picked up the phone and called Detective Inspector Ken Blackstone at Millgarth Station, in Leeds.

“Alan,” said Blackstone. “Long time no see.”

There was a coolness and distance in his voice. They hadn’t been in touch often over the past year or so, and Banks realized he had probably alienated Ken along with just about everyone else who had tried to be his friend during the dark days. Ken had left a number of messages on his answering machine suggesting they get together and talk, but Banks had responded to none of them. He didn’t feel like explaining how he just hadn’t been able to handle people offering help and encouragement, feeling sorry for him, how he was managing to feel quite sorry enough for himself, thank you very much, and how he had preferred to seek anonymity among the crowds instead. “You know how it is,” he said.

“Sure. So what can I do for you? Don’t tell me this is just a social call.”

“Not exactly.”

“I thought not.” There was a slight pause, then Blackstone’s tone softened a little. “Any new developments between you and Sandra?”

“Nothing. Except I’ve heard she’s seeing someone.”

“I’m sorry, Alan.”

“These things happen.”

“Tell me about it. I’ve been there.”

“Then you should understand.”

“I do. Want to get rat-arsed and talk about it sometime?”

Banks laughed. “It’ll be a pleasure.”

“Good. So, what can I do for you?”

“Well, if this little idea works out, we might have that piss-up quicker than you think. I’m looking for the details of a suicide. Leeds. Bramley. Gunshot wound. Name’s Matthew Shackleton. Died the fifteenth of March, 1950. The local cop shop should have some sort of record, especially as there was a firearm involved.”

“Is there an explanation in here somewhere?”

“Long story, Ken. By the way, have you ever heard anything on the grapevine about a DS called Cabbot? Annie Cabbot?”

“Can’t say as I have. But then I’ve not exactly been around the grapevine much for the past while. Why do you want to know? All right, I know, don’t bother, another long story, right? Look, about this suicide. It could take a while.”

“You mean you’re talking minutes instead of seconds?”

Blackstone laughed. “Hours instead of minutes, more like. I’ll get DC Collins to make some phone calls – if I can drag him away from his paper. I’ll call you back later.”

Banks heard a grunt and the rustle of a newspaper in the background. “Thanks, Ken,” he said. “Appreciate it.”

“You’d better. You owe me a curry.”

“You’re on.”

“And, Alan…?”

“Yes.”

“I know some of what you’ve been going through, but don’t be a stranger.”

“I know, I know. I told you; you’re on. Curry and piss-up and talk about girls. Just like a couple of teenagers. Soon as you get the info.”

Blackstone chuckled. “Okay. Talk to you later.”

Billy Joe and Gloria soon became a couple. Billy Joe was seen going alone to Bridge Cottage, and that got the village tongues wagging. Especially when PX was seen coming and going there the next day. He, too, seemed to have taken a shy sort of shine to Gloria, happy to be her slave and get for her whatever her heart desired. I suggested Gloria tell them to use the back door, where they couldn’t be seen from High Street, but she just laughed and shrugged it off.

There was no real mystery to the visits. Gloria told me she wanted sex and she had chosen Billy Joe to supply it. She said he was good at it. I still didn’t understand what it was all about. When I asked her if I had to be in love before I let men take liberties with me, she lapsed into one of her mysterious silences, then said, “There’s love, Gwen, and then there’s sex. They don’t have to be the same. Especially not these days. Not while there’s a war on. Just try not to get them mixed up.” Then she smiled. “But it’s always nice to be a little bit in love.” After this, I was more confused than ever, but I let the subject drop.

Gloria also needed her Luckies, nylons, lipstick, rouge and scented soap. She drank too much, so she needed a source for whiskey, too, and she also took to chewing gum, which she insisted on chewing in church, just to annoy Betty Goodall. And PX, of course, would get her all these things at the flutter of an eyelash. Whether she ever granted him any favors in exchange, I can’t say for certain, but I doubt it. Whatever she was, Gloria was never a whore, and I couldn’t imagine PX actually being with a woman in that way. He looked even younger and seemed even shyer and more awkward than me. There was some health reason that prevented him from serving in a more active branch of the forces – after all, he looked young and strong enough for combat – but he never told anyone exactly what it was.

PX did little favors for us all – for me, Cynthia, Alice, even Mother – especially when it came to nylons and makeup. One thing I soon started to wonder about was why the American forces, undoubtedly male as they were for the most part, had storage rooms full of women’s underwear and cosmetics. It was either intended to endear them to the local women, or they had certain private proclivities that they managed to hide from the rest of the world.

Anyway, lucky for us, PX seemed willing and able to get hold of just about anything we needed. If we bemoaned the lack of decent meat, for example, he would mysteriously produce bacon, and on occasion, even a piece of beef. Once he even, miracle of miracles, came up with some oranges! I hadn’t seen an orange in years.

I don’t think his empire was limited to the contents of the Rowan Woods PX, either. Sometimes, when he got a weekend pass, he would disappear for the entire time. He never said where he went or why, but I suspected he had a few dealings with the Leeds black market. I think I rather liked him, even though he seemed so young, and I might have gone out with him if he had asked me. But he never did, and I was too shy to ask him. We were only together in a group. Besides, I know he preferred Gloria.

Billy Joe had other uses, too. He was essentially an airplane mechanic, but he could also fix anything on wheels. That came in useful when our little Morris van gave up the ghost. Billy Joe came down in the evening, with PX and a couple of others tagging along, fixed it in a jiffy, then the whole gang of us picked up Gloria and went to the Shoulder of Mutton for a drink. A curious incident occurred that night that colored my view of Billy Joe for some time to come.

They were the only Americans in the pub and we were the only women. In addition to getting us plenty of suspicious and disapproving glances, even from people I had known for years and served in the shop, this also drew a few loud and pointed comments. Most of the men there were either too old to go to war or were excused because of health reasons. Some were in reserved occupations.

“Just think about it, Bert,” said one local as we bought our first drinks. “Our lads are over there fighting the Nazis, and them damn Yanks are over here sniffing around our women like tomcats in heat.”

We ignored them, took a table in a quiet corner and kept to ourselves.

The next time we were ready for drinks, Billy Joe went to the bar. He was drinking pints of watery beer, and I had told him to hold on to his glass because there was a shortage. A lot of locals took their own, and some even used jam jars, but if you got one early in the evening you had to hold on to it for the night. As he was on his way back, one of the local strapping farm lads who hadn’t been called up – something to do with an allergy to tinned food, I think – called out after him:

“Hey, Yank. Tha’s ta’en me glass.”

Billy Joe tried to ignore him, but the man, Seth his name was, had drunk enough to make him feel brave. He lumbered over from the bar and stood right behind Billy Joe, back at the table. The place went quiet.

“I said that’s my glass tha’s got tha beer in, Yank.”

Billy Joe put the tray down on the table, glanced at the pint glass and shrugged. “Same one I’ve had all evening, sir,” he said in that lazy Southern drawl.

“‘Same one I’ve had all evening, sir,’” Seth tried to mock him, but it didn’t come out right. “Well it’s mine, sithee.”

Billy Joe picked up his glass of beer, turned to face Seth slowly and shook his head. “I don’t think so, sir.”

Seth thrust his chin forward. “Well, I bloody do. Gimme it back.”

“You sure, sir?”

“Aye, Yank.”

Billy Joe nodded in that slow way of his, then he poured the beer all over Seth’s feet and held out the glass to him. “You can take the glass,” he said. “But the beer was mine. I paid for it. And, by the way, sir, ah am not a Yankee.”

Even Seth’s friends had started to laugh by now. It was that sort of fulcrum moment, when so much hangs in the balance, just the lightest touch the wrong way sends it all tumbling down. I could feel my heart beating hard and fast.

Seth made the wrong move. He stepped back and raised his fist. But he was slow. Billy Joe might have had that exaggerated sort of lazy grace, but his speed amazed me. Before anyone knew what had happened, there was the sound of breaking glass and Seth was on his knees, screaming, hands over his face, blood gushing out between his fingers.

“Ah am not a Yankee, sir,” Billy Joe repeated, then turned his back and sat down. The mood had soured, nobody wanted anything more to drink, and we all left shortly afterward.

Vivian Elmsley got up at about one o’clock, turned on the bedside light and took a sleeping pill. She didn’t like them, didn’t like the way they made her feel woolly-minded the next morning, but this was getting ridiculous. They said old people didn’t need as much sleep, but lying tossing and turning all night imagining someone scratching at the window or tapping at the door was exhausting. It was probably the wind, she told herself as she turned off the light and settled back on the pillows.

But there was no wind.

Slowly, the chemical Morpheus insinuated its way into her system. She felt sluggish, her blood heavy as lead, pushing her down into the mattress. Soon she hovered on the threshold between sleep and waking, where thoughts take on the aspect of dreams, and an image you conjure up consciously is suddenly snatched away for unconscious improvisations, like variations on a musical theme.

At first, she pictured Gloria’s tilted head as she had appeared on the TV screen, the detail from Stanhope’s painting, looking like a cartoon-Gloria.

Then the cartoon-Gloria started talking about a night in Rio de Janeiro when Vivian had had too much to drink and – the only time – succumbed to sexual advances at a cocktail party in a big hotel, remembered a whispered room number, waited until Ronald was fast asleep and slipped out into the corridor.

The cartoon-Gloria’s monologue was cut with images of the night, which flicked past jerkily like the series of cards in an old “What the Butler Saw” machine.

Vivian had always wondered what it would be like. They only did it once. Her lover was a gentle and sensitive woman from the French Embassy, conscious it was Vivian’s first time, but ultimately frustrated at her lack of ability to respond. It wasn’t for want of trying, Vivian thought. She couldn’t lose herself in sex with a man, so she had hoped she could abandon herself to the caresses of another woman, enjoy the bliss that writers wrote about and people risked everything for.

But she couldn’t. It wouldn’t happen.

Finally, she put on her robe and hurried out, humiliated, back to her own room. Ronald was still snoring away. She lay on her own bed and stared at the dark ceiling, tears welling in her eyes, a dull ache in her loins.

As the cartoon-Gloria retold the story of Vivian’s failed attempt at sex and infidelity, it was as if the TV camera started to move away from her, and the rest of Gloria came into view, showing more of her figure, and before long Vivian realized that Gloria wasn’t wearing a red dress; she was covered in blood which oozed from cuts deep into the gristle of her flesh.

Yet she was still talking.

Talking about something that happened years after her death.

Vivian tried to stop it but she felt as if she were being held down by the weight of her own blood, an anchor hooked deep into the darkness and the horror. Too heavy.

She struggled to wake, and as she did, the telephone rang. Her bonds were suddenly cut, and she shot up, gasping for air as if she had been drowning.

Without thinking, she picked up the receiver. A lifeline.

After a short pause, the monotone voice whispered, “Gwen. Gwen Shackleton.”

“Go away,” she mumbled, her tongue thick and furred.

The voice laughed. “Soon, Gwen,” the man said. “Soon.”