Rough Cider

ELEVEN

Torrential rain on the canopy roof of an MG convertible is a sure conversation-stopper. It pelted down after lunch, all the way out to Christian Gifford. In these conditions I didn’t do badly to find the village without a false turn, but I then had a problem locating the lane to the farm. I’d expected to use the schoolhouse or Miss Mum-ford’s store to get my bearings. Both had gone. A row of new houses in that clinically smooth, beige-colored material that masquerades as Bath stone now dominated the center of the village. At the end of the row was a shop called Quick-serve with a stack of wire baskets outside.

The pub across the street, the Jolly Gardener, was apparently unchanged, though as a nine-year-old in 1943, I hadn’t taken much note of it. All I could recall was that Barbara’s friend Sally Sh?smith had been the publican’s daughter. I stopped the car and went over to get some directions. The name on the lintel was no longer Sh?smith.

The barmaid, familiar only in the sense that she called me darling, obligingly came to the door with me and pointed the way. I didn’t inquire whether the Lockwoods still owned the farm. I wasn’t pressing for a reunion.

Even when we started up the lane, it was different. Where I seemed to remember the apple orchard were three large greenhouses. A gleaming silo soared above the hedgerow ahead. No trees at all.

I slowed the car and swiveled my head.

“Sure it’s the right place?” asked Alice.

“Far from sure,” I admitted as I swung the car onto a mud track pitted with tractor ruts, “only I don’t see anywhere else.”

Well, it wasn’t exactly Brideshead Revisited, but I did get a prickling sensation at the back of my neck as a cluster of stone buildings swam into focus through the wet windscreen. Smaller than the picture I’d held in my mind yet more solid: the stark, gray-tiled farmhouse with the ancient cider house close by; the tin-roofed cowshed extending past the end of the vegetable garden; the open structure that housed the farm vehicles; the main barn opposite the house; and, standing alone, the smaller barn of sinister memory.

“We’ve found it?” asked Alice in a stage whisper.

I murmured something affirmative and steered the car across the cobbled yard and parked beside a tractor.

Alice flexed and clenched her hands. “I feel kind of nervous.”

“Changed your mind?”

“Are you kidding?” She opened the car door and stepped out.

No one came out to ask who we were. We stood in the center of the yard with the rain lashing our faces. I waved my stick towards the honey-colored building adjacent to the farmhouse. “The cider house. Want to go in?”

“Sure.”

I should have had the sense to realize that Gifford Farm ceased producing cider in 1945. In the local pubs jokers with a macabre turn of humor probably still talked about the days when you could get a drink with a good head.

The cider-making equipment had gone. The building had become a store for animal feed, and the acrid smell stopped us in our tracks. We stood in the open doorway.

“This used to be the meeting place,” I informed Alice, nostalgic as if I’d worked there all my life. “On a day like this we’d all be in here, complaining about the weather. Sunday morning, it was like a pub, with neighbors calling in for a pint.”

“My daddy was in here sometimes?” asked Alice.

“He parked the jeep right here, where we’re standing.”

She bit her lip and turned away. “Would you show me the barn where it happened.”

I pointed to the small, gray building set back from the rest. “Sure you can face it?”

“Try me.”

She took my free hand to trace a course between the puddles. She needed some creature comfort, and so did I.

Out in the yard, the rain obliterated the farm smells, so when I pushed open the barn door, the sweet pungence of hay was overpoweringly evocative. The place was still used for its original purpose, and the familiar dryness penetrated my throat and nostrils.

Holding my emotions in check, I told Alice, “It’s just as I remember it. The smell. The way the bales are stored. Everything.”

“It’s darker than I expected.”

“We’ll soon take care of that.” I let go of her hand and took out my Ronson.

“Be careful.”

“There.” I held the flame high, showing her the loft floor.

A rustle startled her and she grabbed my arm. “Mouse, I expect.” I felt a surge of bravado. “Want to go up? There’s a ladder.”

She hesitated. “Would you go first?”

“Of course.”

I was glad I’d come. Here I was, inside the place I’d so often returned to in my nightmares. I propped my stick against a bale, pocketed the lighter, groped for the ladder, and hauled myself up. Hard work, but I wanted keenly to prove something to myself, and, I suppose, to Alice.

Flat to the floor, I leaned over and provided light again. She mounted the ladder fast and held on to my arm after I helped her. She was trembling.

Without my stick I had to put a hand on her shoulder to get upright. She automatically curved her arm around my waist. Disability can bring compensations.

I told her, “If you wonder how I got up here as a boy, I had two good legs then. The polio struck later.”

There were fewer bales than formerly, and they were differently stacked, but I parked myself on one and tried to visualize the scene that November afternoon in 1943. I moved the lighter towards the angle of the roof where I’d found the gap to see through, and then over the area where Barbara and Cliff Morton had been lying.

Alice questioned me closely-in fact, it seemed to me, with excessive, if not prurient, interest-in the details of the rape, the precise position of the two of them, and their state of undress. She wanted to know if Morton was wearing trousers (he wasn’t; the memory of his hairy thighs and jerking buttocks still nauseated me) and if Barbara’s breasts were visible (her blouse and bra were forced up to her shoulders), if she was wearing scent (I didn’t notice), and if her knickers were made of cotton or something finer (I ask you!). I answered everything as candidly as I was able, even down to the way Barbara had cried out and hammered the floor with her legs and arms as she tried hopelessly to twist from under him. I don’t mind telling you that some of the things I had to say stuck in my throat, but Alice waited impassively until I found my voice and then coolly asked me supplementary questions. She wasn’t held back by inhibitions.

We looked for the bullet hole and found a place at about hip height where a whole section of wood had been sawn out of a beam by the forensic expert, Dr. Atcliffe. Without seeing the angle of the bullet, we couldn’t estimate the line of fire.

“Enough?”

Alice nodded.

Descending a ladder with my handicap is harder than climbing it. I was breathing heavily when I joined her. She suggested we sit down a moment on a bale.

“Was it worth the trouble?” I asked.

“It’s not an experience you can evaluate,” she said sharply, then, sensing that she ought to soften the remark, “But I’m grateful.”

“What’s next?”

“The Lockwoods.”

“They must have left the farm by now.”

“I’ll find them.”

I noted the change of pronoun. Up to now she’d been only too pleased to have me at her side. Was this an assertion of independence? Was my usefulness played out? Oddly, considering my earlier reluctance, I felt a stab of rejection. If Alice was going on with her absurd quest, I was beginning to want to be part of it.

I reached for my stick. “Let’s try the farmhouse.”

The wind whipped up the rain as we crossed the yard. I thought a curtain twitched at one of the windows, but it may have been a gust getting through the casements. There was no response to our knocking.

I repeated, “It must have changed hands by now, anyway.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” called Alice, already moving around the side of the house. “Look what I found-if the memory isn’t too painful.”

I followed her. She was by the back door, and she had her hand on the rusty mangle Mrs. Lockwood had bent me over when she slippered me.

I gave a mock groan. We needed some light relief.

“Any new people would have gotten rid of this piece of junk,” said Alice. “Can you see inside the kitchen? Does it look the same?”

I got up close to check.

There was an instantaneous gunshot.

“Christ!” I said.

Chips of stone had been dislodged from somewhere above us and peppered the cobbles.

I asked Alice, “Are you all right?”

She was brushing moss off her sleeve. “I think so.”

“Bloody lunatic!” I could see him across the yard holding the gun, a figure in a black oilskin and boots, standing beside the tractor, grinning inanely. I shouted, “What the hell was that for?”

I limped towards him, so angry that I gave no thought to the gun. “Did you hear me?” I yelled.

By way of reply, he spat copiously on the bonnet of my car.

“Peasant!” I said.

Alice had caught up with me. “Theo, be careful,”

“Leave this to me.”

I was close enough to recognize him. The face had thickened, and the black hair was flecked with gray. There were a couple of gaps in the grin, but it was still a strong, good-looking face that wouldn’t look out of place on a Fair Isle pattern.

Bernard Lockwood.

I said, “You could have killed us.”

“Rats.”

I glared at him. There was no glimmer of recognition on his part.

He leered at Alice and said slowly, “I were firing at rats.”

I felt like throwing a punch at him. I’m not incapable of using my fists. Without taking my eyes off him I said, “Alice, I think you’d better get in the car.”

Bernard said, “Don’t ‘ee understand English? I were aiming at two old rats by the guttering there. Vermin.” He made a creeping motion with his fingers. “Them as has four legs and tails.”

I said, “God-awful shot if you were.”

Alice hadn’t moved.

Bernard folded the gun under his arm. “What you be doing here?”

“Visiting”

“Trespassing, more like.”

I said, “It’s bloody pouring and I haven’t the time or the inclination to discuss it with you. We’re going.”

“No, Theo,” butted in Alice. “Please.”

“Save your breath,” I told her. “The man’s a thug.” Perhaps I should have said moron. He seemed impervious to insults.

Alice told Bernard civilly, “Maybe you could help us. We want to get in touch with the Lockwood family.”

Let’s give him credit for some artifice. He didn’t admit to his identity immediately, though it may have been due to sheer obtuseness. “Lockwood? What’s your business with they?”

I said to Alice, “You see? We’ll get nowhere.” I really hoped we could beat a retreat without introductions, but she was digging in.

She explained to him, “They were the people who owned this place in World War Two, right? Are you the present owner by any chance?”

“Could be,” conceded Bernard.

I’d had enough. I switched to the attack. “Come off it. You’re Bernard Lockwood. Where are your parents, in the house?”

His hand tightened around the butt of the shotgun.

Alice turned to me in amazement. “This is Bernard?” She said it the American way, stressing the second syllable.

I was watching Bernard’s spare hand. He’d taken two orange-colored cartridges from his pocket. I didn’t have long to get my message across. I took a steadying breath and told him, “I was the boy evacuated here. The young lady is a friend. I promised to show her the place and, if possible, look up your parents.”

Before Bernard could respond, Alice rashly chimed in, “My name is Alice Ashenfelter and my daddy was the man convicted of the murder here.”

I could have belted her.

Muscles were bunching on Bernard’s jawline. He frowned, grappling with what he had heard, trying to make the connection. His brown eyes darted between me and Alice. Finally, he abandoned the attempt and said through his teeth, “What’s past is over. You’d best get on your way.”

Curiously the words didn’t carry the force represented by the gun. I risked an appeal to his better nature. “Come on, man. We’ve driven out specially from Reading. Your parents were good to me in the war. The least I can do is present my compliments.”

“I’ll pass ‘em on for ‘ee.”

“Are they inside?”

I’d pushed too far. He snapped the cartridges into the gun, locked it in the firing position, and leveled it at my chest.

“Get in the car and go.”

Keeping my eyes on him, I said to Alice, “It’s hopeless.”

She evidently disagreed. “Mr. Lockwood, we came here in good faith-”

“Good faith be buggered!” Bernard cut in savagely.

“Bloody liars, the pair of you.”

Alice protested in a high, accusing note. “That’s unfair. I’ve gone out of my way to be honest with you·”

Bernard sneered. “Honest? And you tell me you’re the killer’s daughter? And your name is Ashenfelter? You’re no more Ashenfelter than I am, young lady. Name of the killer was Donovan.”

I started to say, “That’s easy to explain-” but Bernard talked over me.

“Ashenfelter was his friend, the littl’un. The other GI. What did he call himself? Harry.”

Alice gave a gasp and grabbed my arm. “That can’t be true. Theo, it can’t be true!” She’d gone deathly white.

Myriad possibilities raged in my brain. For Alice’s sake I said, “Sheer coincidence. Don’t let it get to you.”

She blurted out a rush of words: “Duke Donovan was my real daddy. Henry Ashenfelter was the man my mother married in 1947, when I was a kid. I was given his name. If he was Duke’s friend Harry, I figure he came back from the war and married my mom.”

Bernard looked unimpressed. “Good try, miss. Not good enough. Ashenfelter married Sally Shoesmith.”

I said, “Barbara’s friend?”

“You’d remember if you were here. They were courting like cats in heat.”

“And they actually married?”

“Live in Bath like a lord and lady, don’t they? Publican’s daughter, that’s all she were, and now you need a bloody visiting card to speak to her.” He grinned slyly. “Not that you’d get much sense out of her, from what I’ve heard.”

“Is something the matter with Sally, then?”

He spat again, aiming it at my shoes. “Clear off. Bloody liars.”

Alice said in a choking voice, “Theo, let’s go.”

I took a step backwards, nodding to Bernard.

He lowered the gun.

We drove away without another word.