Rough Cider

EIGHTEEN

The trio was playing a number from Call Me Madam as I entered the Pump Room. Appropriate, I thought: The carpeted area under the chandelier where teas were being served was entirely populated by sixtyish women in hats. A scattering of men, mostly blood-pressure cases in tweed suits, had taken up positions in armchairs by the windows, perusing copies of the morning papers clipped to wooden rods.

Ever since Beau Nash, the Pump Room formalities have been strictly observed. You waited for the lady with the pendant-pearl earrings to escort you to a Chippendale chair and hand you a menu. My request to be seated as far away from the music as possible was frigidly received, and when I said I wouldn’t be ordering until my guest arrived, I was curtly informed that it was customary to wait for one’s friends in the anteroom. I smiled and said yes, but I’d made other arrangements.

Two fifty-five by the grandfather clock. I was tense. The truth about Barbara might be hard to take. “We had no secrets from each other,” Sally had told me on Sunday, and I was prepared to believe her. Back in those wartime days I’d watched her a number of times in earnest girl talk with Barbara, heads close, voices pitched low, eyes watchful for anyone who might overhear,

I would ask Sally straight out whether Barbara and Duke had been lovers. Never mind that Harry had said “No chance” and practically throttled me for suggesting it. I wanted more convincing. I wouldn’t believe I was mistaken until I heard it from Sally.

Then the other question had to be put, courtesy of Alice and her theory. Sally might think it was in bad taste, but I would ask it because only she could tell me the answer. How had Barbara really felt about Cliff Morton? Everyone else had marked him down as a feckless, obnoxious character, and I was still at a loss to imagine her secretly preferring him to Duke.

Until I’d had it confirmed by Sally, I wasn’t willing to believe that what I’d witnessed as a child in the hayloft was an act of love.

I’d spent a troubled night thinking over what Simon Ott had said about defense mechanisms. Without result. If only we could analyze the most highly charged moments of our childhood in a dispassionate way, psychiatrists wouldn’t make such a good living. We hold rigidly to the impressions our minds retain, sometimes in the face of evidence to the contrary. I’d never seriously questioned what I believed I saw in 1943. It had become a fact, locked in and not to be disturbed. I was still reluctant to give it an airing.

I didn’t want to be told that I’d harbored a lie for over twenty years.

Well, if Sally confirmed that Barbara and Morton had been lovers, she had some explaining to do. Why hadn’t she spoken up when the trial was held? True, she hadn’t been called as a witness, but presumably she’d made statements to the police. Had she lied to them, or hadn’t they asked her about Barbara’s love life?

It crossed my mind that Sally’s alcoholism could be due to a guilty conscience. It’s hard to live with the knowledge that you might have saved an innocent man from the gallows.

Christ, I was getting morbid. Where was Sally?

Five minutes after three. I looked out towards the paved area of the Abbey churchyard. She was not in sight.

By 3:25, the place had filled up and I’d heard the trio’s repertoire twice. The head waitress came over to ask how long I expected to occupy the table without ordering. I told her in a bored voice to bring a pot of tea for two and some cakes.

At 3:50, a queue had formed just inside the door. I watched an exchange between the head waitress and the girl who’d brought my order. The bill was brought to my table without my asking for it. I topped up my teacup, waited for another rendering of Call Me Madam, settled my bill, and joined the newspaper readers by the window.

I decided to give her until 4:10, even though I didn’t expect to see her now. Too late, I reflected that I should have agreed to meet at the Francis for that lunchtime drink. Then she’d at least have had an incentive.

So I left the Pump Room, collected my car, and drove up to the Royal Crescent where I saw for myself why Sally had failed to keep the appointment.

Her house was gutted.

A fire engine and a police car were drawn up on the cobbles opposite. A few people were standing around outside but there was no activity. It had all happened earlier in the afternoon. The stonework above the first-floor windows was charred to the level of the balustrade. Every pane was smashed, each frame burned out. The debris lay in a pool of black water in the basement. The lower walls and parts of the adjoining frontage were saturated to a deep mustard color.

I came to a screeching stop beside the fire engine, explained to the men in the cab that I was a friend of the people who lived there, and asked when the fire had happened.

“We took the call at 2:13,” one told me.

“Was anyone …?”

“One woman taken to the Royal United. Unconscious. Pretty bad, Am afraid.”

“Where is it?”

He told me, and I raced the MG through the afternoon traffic at actionable speed.

I parked in the doctor’s bay. Casualty Reception sent me upstairs. The first person I saw was Harry.

He was slumped on a steel-and-canvas chair outside the Intensive Care Unit, pressing his knuckles against his teeth. He looked up at me and said in a hollow voice. “What the heck?”

“I went to the house and they told me. What’s happening?”

“She’s unconscious. Asphyxia. Third-degree burns. I don’t want to see her like that.”

“Do they hold out any hope?”

“No one’s saying. I haven’t been here long. Out all day. Got back around four and saw what happened. God!”

“Any idea of the cause?”

Harry turned to look at me. “You trying to be funny, mister? She’s a dipso. She smokes. Okay?”

“Have they said she was drinking?”

“They said nothing.”

Out of consideration I did the same. I disliked the man, but this wasn’t the time to question his logic. I sat opposite him and tried to catch up with my thoughts. I know there are all kinds of theories about coincidences, but it was incredible to me that this should happen on the afternoon Sally had promised to meet me. I wanted to know the cause of that fire.

We waited some twenty minutes before a doctor came out. He’d slipped his face mask down. Harry had his head bowed, so the doctor caught my eye and said in a voice too stiltedly considerate to be bringing good news, “Mr. Ashenfelter?”

I inclined my head towards Harry.