Rough Cider

THREE

You know the impression Alice Ashenfelter made on me, so I’m not going to explain why I didn’t meet her at the pub in Reading on Saturday morning. It must have got through to you by now that I’m not your obliging English gentleman. I just eat like a gentleman. I drove into Pangbourne and did my Saturday shopping at the grocer’s (we still had one), half a cooked gammon, some duck pate, a dozen new-laid eggs, and a fresh melon. Mindful of Saturday night, I picked up a bottle of champagne from the off-license and waited at the garage while my flat tire was inspected. As I had anticipated, they didn’t find a puncture. They suggested that there might be a fault in the valve, and I undertook to check the pressure in a day or two. I forgot all about it after that.

The rugby international on the BBC’s Grandstand occupied me agreeably for most of the afternoon. That evening I took my current girlfriend, Val Paxton, a staff nurse at Reading General, to the Odeon to see A Hard Day’s Night. Neither of us enjoyed it much. The best I can say is that the facile story line was made bearable by some memorable songs and witty dialogue. Val, who wasn’t crazy about the Beatles, would have opted for Losey’s King and Country at the ABC movie theater, but I didn’t want to spend my evening at a court-martial. If you think that’s a deplorable attitude for a history lecturer to take to one of the most powerful dramas ever made of the first world war, you’re dead right, chum. You’re right and I’m honest, okay?

Afterwards, over a drink, Val told me she’d been thinking about our relationship, and we didn’t have much going outside the bedroom. Plain speaking: that’s what you get from a nurse. She said her time off-duty was too precious to fritter on things she didn’t enjoy. She’d been thinking all through the film that something was badly wrong if we both sat there bored for a couple of hours. I asked her what she’d rather have been doing and she said dancing. A great suggestion to make to a guy with a stick.

After that I passed a few comments on the nursing profession and their priorities, and we were soon trading insults. It got worse. This wasn’t one of those evenings when a stand-up row ends in a passionate reconciliation. It ended with a curt good night at the gate of the nurses’ residence.

It was some time after eleven-thirty when I put the car away and came around the front of the house. When I mentioned earlier that I live by the river at Pangbourne, you probably made the reasonable assumption that I meant the Thames. Anyone hearing of the River Pang would probably place it in China or Burma, but believe me, it has its source in the Wessex Downs and takes a gentle U-shaped course through rural Berkshire for twelve miles or so before joining the Thames from the south at Pangbourne. The Pang is the river that runs past the end of my garden. “River” is perhaps an exaggeration; in reality it’s more of an ancient trout stream. The point of telling you this is that my location is more remote than you might have imagined. I’m not isolated, mind-there are three houses within shouting distance-but we don’t see many strangers. Which is why I was surprised when my stick touched an obstruction on the garden path that turned out to be a rucksack.

I might easily have fallen over the thing. She’d left it against the mud scraper that I keep by my front door. You’ll have gathered that I was not in much doubt about the ownership. Even by moonlight I could see a handkerchief-size Stars and Stripes stitched to the flap. Yet Alice Ashenfelter wasn’t in sight.

With my Saturday night already in ruins, I wasn’t feeling well disposed towards the fair sex. I took a long breath, found my key, and let myself in without bothering to check whether she was somewhere in the garden. Didn’t look round or call out. Closed the door behind me, went into the kitchen, and put on the kettle for my coffee.

I didn’t expect her to go away. If for some reason she hadn’t seen me come in, she’d certainly notice the lights go on. She’d knock at the door any second, and I’d have to be mentally tough to ignore her. The trouble was that I’m easy prey to her sort of tactics. I knew that if I didn’t respond, I’d spend the rest of the night wondering how she’d cope in the open on a Saturday night in my remote corner of Berkshire.

My imagination turned morbid. I pictured myself in the Coroner’s Court at Reading trying to explain why I’d callously closed my door on a young visitor to England who was known to me, had helped me change a wheel only the evening before, and had asked nothing more from me than a civil conversation; who, in consequence of my inhospitality, had taken to the road, hitched a lift with a vanload of drunken pop musicians, been sexually abused, and then thrown from the moving vehicle, fatally fracturing her skull. I could even see her parents, over from Waterbury, Connecticut, for the funeral, red-eyed with grief, staring at me across the grave, unable to understand how any fellow human could be so stony-hearted.

To break this unproductive chain of thought, I switched on the television and got a bishop giving the epilogue. It was so timely that I laughed out loud. For God’s sake (as the bishop had just remarked), just when I’d been given the elbow by one girl, another was at my door. What was I bellyaching about?

I turned off the bishop, took a sip of coffee, and considered the options. Already it was midnight. If Alice Ashenfelter had come on a visit, she was planning to stay the night. You’ve heard of the swinging sixties, but, believe me, for Reading in 1964, she was far ahead of her time.

Was it my manly charm that had brought her here? I was once told that some women are powerfully attracted to cripples-and who was I to object? — only I’d yet to have it confirmed. I’d always assumed it was dreamed up by some guy with a game leg.

The hell with my suspicions. If you’re male and alone on a Saturday night and a nineteen-year-old blonde arrives on your doorstep at midnight, you don’t ask questions, you reach for the champagne. The Perrier Jouet was ready in the fridge.

I took a flashlight off the shelf and was on my way through the passage to the front door when I heard the creak of a board upstairs.

My bedroom. The nerve of the girl.

She’d broken in.

I was incensed. I’m sure it was a primitive response to my territory being invaded. If I’d had two good legs, I’d have been up those stairs and she’d have been out on her you-know-what before I’d drawn another breath. Instead, while I limped to the kitchen, my brain ran the gamut from outrage to arousal.

On reflection, I decided, I wouldn’t throw her out. I wouldn’t even register a protest.

She’d staked her colors to the mast.

I could be positive too. I took out the champagne and two glasses and put them on a tray. I’m fairly adept at balancing a tray on one arm, even when it comes to mounting the stairs.

I didn’t put on the light. I know my way around my own bedroom in the dark. I leaned against the chest of drawers to the left of the door and passed my hand across the surface, prior to resting the tray there. Good thing I did, because my fingers came into contact with a pair of glasses.

Don’t rush it, I told myself.

A trace of musk reached my nostrils and made me take a longer, stimulating breath.

I unfastened my belt and stripped. I approached the bed. As my hand touched the pillow, I felt her loosened hair lying across it. She’d unfastened the plait. I got in beside her. She was wrapped in my dressing gown for warmth. Our lips touched, and she guided my hand onto soft, yielding skin.

Coming up the stairs, I’d been thinking of the dustup if I’d brought Val home, as I’d planned. Now I stopped thinking about Val. Except that she was outclassed.

When I eventually got out of bed to uncork the champagne, Alice Ashenfelter spoke. Instead of telling me that the earth had moved, she said. “The catch on your toilet window is loose.”

“So you climbed in.”

She bit her lip. “Are you mad at me?”

“Do I look mad?”

“I can’t see without my glasses.”

I handed them to her.

She looped them over her ears and said. “A little distrait but not mad.”

The cork shot across the room, and 1 filled the glasses.

My turn to look at her. The light over the bed put strong shadows under her breasts, parting the strands of her incredibly long, fine hair. I liked the hair loose. For a girl of, say, nineteen, the plait was a curiously juvenile affectation. Plenty of the female students I taught grew their hair long, generally wearing it loose or as a ponytail or, in a few cases, some form of bun. Plaits were definitely out. Possibly it was an American style that hadn’t yet made the crossing, but I had the impression that it was special to Alice Ashenfelter. Her wide-eyed directness of approach went with it.

What I hadn’t worked out was whether the schoolgirlish behavior was just an act or ingrained in her personality. A case of arrested development. But not, I thought appreciatively, in all respects.

As if she’d read my thoughts, she lowered herself in the bed and pulled up the sheet to cover her breasts. Modesty seemed to be reasserting itself, so I picked the dressing gown off the floor and put it on.

Now, I thought, for the price tag.

I sat in the armchair facing the bed and said, “There’s something else you want to say?”

She raised her head and went through the motion of swallowing without having taken a sip. Then she said, with the reluctance sounding in her voice, “It’s going to be difficult for me. You’ve got to make allowances.”

I said, “The champagne is good for that.”

“Okay, only please be patient. This means more to me than I can put into words. If I tell you why I came to England and went to all this trouble to find you, maybe you’ll understand some of the dumb things I did, like letting the air out of, your tire.”

We seemed to be getting somewhere. I gave a judicious nod.

She pitched her voice lower and fingered her hair. “I want you to tell me about my daddy.”

“What?”

“My daddy.”

My skin prickled. What else could I believe but that I’d just made love to an insane woman? I tried to stay impassive, but alarm bells were jangling in my head.

“I never really knew him,” she went on in the same intense tone, “but you did.”

“Yes?” I said vacantly, then, collecting myself, “I think you might be mistaken.”

“No. You knew him, all right. He was hanged for murder back in 1945.”