Rough Cider

TWELVE

A lice sighed and said, “I just don’t understand.” She said it again, twice, before we reached the end of the lane.

I pulled off the road outside the Jolly Gardener, switched off, and turned to look at her. Until that moment I hadn’t appreciated what a soaking we’d both taken. Her hair was so saturated that you’d never have known she was normally a blonde.

She blinked. The drops of moisture on her cheeks might have rolled off her head, but I wasn’t certain. The edges of her eyes and mouth were creased with worry. She tried to form a word and didn’t succeed. She was obviously deeply troubled.

I wasn’t a picture of serenity myself. Yd never met a woman who triggered such conflicting responses in me.

I took her hand. She was cold, as much from shock, I decided, as exposure. I told her with gentle authority, “There’s a log fire in the pub. I’m taking you in there to dry out.”

It was near closing time and the barmaid was clearing the empties, but she seemed genuinely pleased to see us. I don’t think she was run off her feet. The clientele consisted of two motionless old men perched on stools at opposite ends of the bar. Without consulting Alice I ordered two double brandies and carried them to the fireplace. The barmaid-did I mention that she was a pretty, dark-haired woman in her thirties? — followed me over, fussed sympathetically about our sodden clothes, and set to work with the poker to coax more activity from the fire. She wanted to know if we’d found the farm and I thanked her. If she was expecting some gossip about the Lockwoods, she was disappointed. Instead I asked if we could borrow a towel for Alice’s hair.

There’s a lot to be said for real flames and the smell of charred wood. It was a wide, stone-built fireplace with an iron pot-crane, a pair of dusty bellows, and a paved hearth. We flopped gratefully into a well-scuffed leather settee already occupied by two black-and-white cats. Alice removed her glasses, uncoiled her plait, and leaned forward, letting the damp hair get the benefit of the heat.

The barmaid returned and handed the towel to me with a wink and a firm instruction not to handle the young lady too roughly. It would have been churlish after that to pass the towel to Alice, so without discussing it I applied myself to die task and gradually restored some of the softness to her hair.

Presently she took out a comb and worked silently on the job of easing out the tangles. I sat back, sipping the brandy, and spoke the words of reason I’d been rehearsing as I used the towel. “Don’t you think you’re getting sidetracked? Does it really matter a tinker’s cuss about Harry? He’s unimportant.”

She stopped the combing and lowered her eyelids in a way that made me wish I’d phrased it more sensitively. I was treating her like one of my second-year students who’d messed up an essay on the feudal system. Without her glasses and with her hair unfastened like this-you’re right, girls, I’m a dyed-in-the-wool chauvinist-she was an extremely appealing woman.

I made another stab. “Alice, I can see you’re going to suffer until you make sense of what we’ve heard. I’m not pressing, but if it would help to talk it over…”

She lifted her face and said, “Please, Theo.”

You can put it down to the firelight, or the brandy, or the clear blue trust in her eyes, but if there was a moment in our association when it promised to become a relationship, this, for me, was it. I wanted her.

There was a short hiatus before I marshaled my thoughts sufficiently to say, “All right. Let’s compare notes on Harry the GI and your stepfather. See if we’re talking about the same guy. Harry must have been slightly older than Duke, say about twenty-five in 1943. He’d put in a few more years of service and made a sergeant’s rank, then lost his stripes over some disciplinary thing.”

“The age is spot on,” Alice confirmed. “Henry was twenty-nine when he married Mom.”

“Short-say five-five-thickset with sandy-colored, crinkly hair?”

“Mm.” She frowned, concentrating hard. “Stubby, nicotine-stained fingers with small, pinched-in nails that looked ingrowing?”

“Snap.” I’d watched Harry use those repulsive little hands to pick leaves and pieces of twig from Sally’s hair. “Do we need to go on?”

Alice shook her head. “I don’t need any more convincing. I can see how it happened. Harry is my daddy’s buddy. When he gets back to the States after the war, he calls on Mom to pay his respects, offer her some words of comfort. She’s feeling really low, a widow at twenty-two with a baby to bring up. She can’t even say her man died with honor. She can’t meet with other war widows, and she doesn’t qualify for a pension. Is it any wonder she grabbed the chance of marrying Harry?”

“Is it any wonder that it didn’t work out?”

She stared fixedly into the flames. “I don’t care if he was my daddy’s buddy. He was a schmuck.”

After an interval I said, “When did Harry abandon her?”

“I was eight years old. 1952.”

“I think you told me he came to England and married a second time.”

She swung around to face me with wide, astonished eyes.

“He must have come over here to look for Sally, his wartime romance. Theo, is that what happened, do you think?”

“Let’s find out if we can.” I turned and looked towards the bar. One of the old men had gone.

“Last orders, my love?” called the barmaid.

Neither of us had finished the brandy. “No, thanks, but you may be able to help us. Some people called Shoesmith had this pub in the war.”

The barmaid nodded. “Right up to the fifties, I believe. What year was the Coronation?”

“Did you know them?”

“Everyone knew the Shoesmiths. They were a village family. Been here for generations.”

“Gone now?”

She crossed herself and said, “Gathered, my love. The parents, I mean. Sally the daughter is still going, after a fashion.”

“What does that mean?”

The barmaid looked away. “Gossip, my love, just gossip. She got married and lives in Bath.”

“So we heard. To an American.”

She was obviously glad to move on to someone else. “A real live wire, he is. And saucy with it. Comes in here regular and takes all sorts of liberties. Wandering hands, you know? He’s in the antique business and does very nicely out of it, thank you, a white Mercedes and a house in the Royal Crescent, so he can afford to buy me a martini when I take offense, which I do, naturally.”

I smiled back. “Any idea which year he married Sally?”

“The same year the family gave up the pub. That was a summer for parties. We had the Coronation and the wedding reception and the farewell do.”

“1953,” the old man unexpectedly contributed.

I looked at Alice.

She’d replaced her glasses. She studied me through them as if making up her mind. “Theo?”

“Yes?”

“I don’t believe I can face Harry alone.”

“Do you need to?”

A sigh. “It’s essential. He must know all the answers.”

“You want me to take you to Bath?”

On the way out I thanked the barmaid and bought her a martini. The old man perked up and said his was a pint of Usher’s, probably the easiest he’d earned since Coronation year.