Rough Cider (16 page)

But we’re dealing with Alice. I wasn’t blind to her motives. Any female who could slip so rapidly out of a little-girl-lost role and into bed wasn’t dewy-eyed. She’d used me, manipulated me, played on my reactions. As it happened, I didn’t particularly mind, because through the bewildering shifts of character I’d perceived a personality I liked. She was intelligent, resilient, sometimes wrong-headed, but brave, unusually brave. Different.

I’ve told you about the moment when I was toweling Alice’s hair in front of the fire in the pub and I knew that I wanted her. To be brutally honest—and haven’t I kept faith with you up to now?—the wanting was all on my side. I’d picked up no signals from Alice.

Well, almost none. If there had been a moment of mutual closeness, it was earlier. Smile if you wish, but I don’t mean when we were in bed together. That was an experience, a turn-on, as exciting as anything my body had been privileged to share in but exclusively sensual.

I’m talking about another moment. Remember when we stepped over the puddles at Gifford Farm and she took my hand? And slipped her arm about my waist in the hayloft? Then, I believe, other possibilities beckoned us, like understanding, respect, and maybe even affection.

Yet what happened on the drive to Bath when I tried to kiss her? What brought on the frost?

I traced it back to our conversation in the hayloft. I’d balked at some of the intimate questions she’d fired at me concerning Cliff Morton’s attack on Barbara. I mean, I didn’t duck out. I’d simply felt uncomfortable and shown it. I’d appeared evasive.

So if I wanted Alice, there were bridges to be mended. I needed to be constructive about what we’d seen and heard.

For a start, our trip to Gifford Farm. Bernard couldn’t have made it more plain that he was troubled to find us at the farm.
What’s past is over
was his attitude, and I had some sympathy for it. I’d felt the same until Alice had forced my hand. But I hadn’t seen her off with a shotgun.

I could understand Bernard and his parents wanting to forget. They’d been through hell since Barbara’s rape and suicide. The inquest. The discovery of the skull in the cask and the ruin of their cider business. The police swarming over their farm digging for human remains. The suspicions that George Lockwood had shot Morton. Nor had it ended with Duke’s arrest. They’d all been called to testify at the trial.

A niggling thought intruded here. In their understandable wish to get a positive verdict, and the whole thing forgotten as soon as possible, might the Lockwoods have overstated the evidence against Duke? The prosecution had been mounted largely on forensic testimony, backed by circumstantial evidence from the Lockwoods and myself. We, between us, had provided the picture of Duke as the vengeful lover. I’m not saying that the Lockwoods were guilty of perjury, and I certainly didn’t go along with everything Harry had told us, but could they have misinterpreted some of Barbara’s actions?

Which brought me to Harry.

His version of events was sensational. Maybe
fantastic
is a better word. By his account Duke had no regard for Barbara whatsoever. He’d had to be persuaded, if not press-ganged, into partnering her. According to Harry, those romantic evening walks in the Somerset lanes simply hadn’t included Duke. On the afternoon of the rape and murder, Duke had appeared disenchanted, but hardly like a man who had just blown out another’s brains.

Why, I wondered, had Harry suggested such things if they weren’t true?

There was a clue. It was his revelation that he and Duke had been boyhood friends, rivals for Alice’s mother, Elly. Harry had treated it lightly. Easy now to dismiss it as casual dates with ice-cream sodas. How had he felt at the time, when Duke had cut him out and married Elly? No bitterness? No festering resentment?

If there was none, and it was nothing to him, why had he married Elly himself when the opportunity came?

Suppose Harry, Duke’s so-called buddy, cynically and deliberately took advantage of their time away from home to promote and encourage an affair between Duke and the first available girl. Suppose it was always Harry’s plan to disclose to Elly that her young husband was unfaithful. Simple, really, to work on a man’s loneliness: “Just make up a foursome, Duke, so I can get some time with Sally.” And to Sally: “You know, my buddy is incredibly shy, but he really fancies your friend Barbara.” A few encouraging signals from Barbara and the fuse was lit.

Then suppose the whole scheme misfired because of Cliff Morton’s attack on Barbara. Duke killed Morton out of some rash notion of honor, and Barbara committed suicide in shame and despair. Harry was shocked, no doubt. But being an opportunist, he waited for the dust to settle. Then he saw his chance. When the law had taken its course, he went to visit poor, widowed Elly as her caring friend.

As an explanation, it fitted the personalities as well as the known facts. It accounted for Harry’s coolness to Alice and me when we arrived on his doorstep wanting to discuss the murder. His first instinct had been to send us away, his second to deny that there was ever anything serious between Duke and Barbara.

It was thanks to Sally that we’d got inside.

So what about Sally?

If there was any truth in my theory, she must have been involved. Yet she’d come to our aid, invited us in when Harry would have shut the door. Clearly there was tension between Harry and her, most apparent when he’d gone out of the room to collect the drinks and she’d been on the point of telling us something about Duke’s relationship with Barbara. What had Sally said when we talked about the fortune-telling game with the apple, when Barbara cut through the last pip—the “soldier pip”? “She was terribly upset, being pregnant and everything… We had no secrets from each other. They were gong to be married.” And when I’d gently pointed out to Sally that Duke already had a wife and child in America, she’d appeared not to know about it, and said, “You’ve got it all wrong.” Poor Sally, Hadn’t Harry ever told her the truth?

I’d have liked another word with Sally.

I didn’t get any further before Alice reappeared. Rather to my disappointment, she’d refastened her plait. She looked more solemn than ever. And, uniquely in my experience of women, she hadn’t taken the opportunity in the ladies’ to touch up her lipstick. Not much encouragement there. I prepared for the worst, and it wasn’t long in coming.

She studied me for a while, as if she’d made up her mind that something had to be resolved between us, and finally said, “I’m staying here tonight. I’ve booked a single room upstairs.”

I said inanely, “What?”

She waited for it to sink it.

Meanwhile I was eyeing the stack of ketchup bottles on the shelf, each with its red deposit caked around the cap. Anyone who contemplated a night in this place had to be desperate.

“Why, for God’s sake? It’s a hole.”

“I can see that.”

“Is it me? Something I said to upset you?”

“No particular thing.”

“What, then?”

The food arrived, dried-up fish and undercooked chips without vegetables or garnish, slammed in front of us, followed by one of the ketchup bottles.

I said with all the consideration I could muster, “Alice, I’d like to know what this is about.”

She tightened her mouth and said nothing.

I told her, “I’m not going to leave you in a dump like this without a very good explanation.”

She pushed her plate aside. She hadn’t touched the food.

I said across the chasm that had opened between us, “Don’t you think I’m entitled to be told?”

Something disturbingly akin to contempt flickered across her face.

I wasn’t giving up. “This relates to something you asked me earlier, doesn’t it?”

A response at last. She nodded.

I said, “About what happened in the hayloft?”

She mouthed the word
yes.

So we were back to the rape.

She must have seen the muscles tighten along my jawline.

She gave me a warning look, narrowing her eyes.

I said, “Has something prompted this?”

“Sure. What we just heard from Harry.”

“Harry? He was lying through his teeth.”

After an interval to sharpen up the sarcasm she asked, “How did you get to be such an infallible judge of character, Theo? Is it intuition, sixth sense, or just refusing ever to trust a Yank?”

I smiled ironically. “Harry?”

“Not only Harry. My daddy too.”

“I trusted him.”

“Not when he said things you didn’t want to believe.”

“Such as?”

“The way he really felt about Barbara. There was never anything serious between them.”

I frowned. “He said that?”

“In court. On oath.”

“He was confused.”

“Theo, it’s on record. I read it in one of your books. There was nothing serious. He said it.”

I commented offhandedly, “Depends what you mean by serious. I’d say her condition indicated something serious.”

She scraped back her chair and said witheringly, “Is this the garbage you were trying to peddle to Harry? Are you seriously suggesting my daddy got her pregnant?”

She had every right to feel defensive about Duke. I loved him, too, and the truth hurt. “Someone did, Alice. She wasn’t promiscuous.”

“I’m not questioning that. I question the assumption that my daddy was responsible.”

I leaned back in my chair. “Who do you think was the father, then?”

“Cliff Morton. You told me it was him.”

“I told you what the gossip was in 1943.” I leaned forward. “She was two months’ pregnant when she died at the end of November. She’d been going out with Duke since September.”

Alice clicked her tongue and looked away, as if it were futile listening to me.

I took a mouthful of the pale chips and chewed them, letting her brood on what I’d said. After an interval I said, “I expect you’re thinking of the incident in the apple orchard, when Morton was given his marching orders. You think he may have made her pregnant then? It’s true that she was pretty upset and so were the Lockwoods. She had love bites on her neck and shoulders. But as for full sex, no, that doesn’t fit the facts. They would have treated it more seriously. Everyone would have. I had the impression there was some grappling in the long grass, a few snatched kisses, not much more.”

“With Barbara’s consent?”

I felt my blood run cold. “Of course not.”

Alice’s eyebrows jutted above the level of her glasses. “Why not?”

She was either incredibly wide of the mark or trying to goad me. Deciding to treat it lightly, I gave a laugh that was exhaled more than voiced. “She despised the man. He had a bad reputation. No regular work. He dodged the call-up. The entire family despised him.”

“They employed him to pick apples.”

“Force of circumstance. Men were in short supply.”

She felt for her plait and traced one of the strands with her fingertip.

I said, “You won’t make me believe that Barbara allowed Cliff Morton to… to…”

“You can’t even bring yourself to mention it, can you?” said Alice in a voice that mingled pity and contempt. “Theo, you idiolized that girl. She was sweet to you, and you turned her into a saint. I don’t blame you. I had crushes on people myself when I was a kid. Only you’re not a nine-year-old boy anymore. For God’s sake let’s talk about this in an adult fashion, because I think you’re way off-beam over Barbara. I think she loved Cliff Morton.”

“Impossible.”

“Will you let me finish? Let’s start with some facts of life. Simple mathematics. Barbara was found to be two months’ pregnant at the time of her death, right? When precisely did she kill herself?”

“On the Sunday. November thirtieth.”

“So she conceived in late September or very early the following month.”

“Presumably.”

“And it was late September when my daddy first came to the farm.”

“True.” At least there were some facts we could agree on. I took a fish bone from my mouth and parked it at the edge of my plate. I had a glimmer of where this was leading but only a glimmer. A man isn’t so habituated to counting weeks and months.

She added, “If I got it right from you, they didn’t spend any time together until the Columbus Day concert.”

She’d fanned the glimmer into a spark.

“Columbus Day is October twelfth. These days we observe it on the second Monday in the month, but in the war it was always the same.” She watched me without emotion as she repeated, “October twelfth, Theo.”

I stared at her blankly. Why hadn’t I worked it out for myself? I took a deep breath and admitted with as much dignity as I could salvage, “Duke couldn’t have been the father of her child.”

“Thank you.” She looked over her glasses. “But somebody must have been.”

I said with loathing, “That bastard Morton. He
did
rape her in the apple orchard.”

Pointedly, she commented, “You told me just now it doesn’t fit the facts.”

“It has to,” I blustered. “I was mistaken.”

“No,” said Alice. “You were right. You’re not going to like this, Theo, but Barbara and Cliff were sweethearts.” She put up a restraining hand. “Before you hit the roof, will you answer me this? When was the first time you noticed Cliff?”

“That morning in the orchard, I suppose.”

“Would you try to recall it precisely, please?”

I gave a sharp sigh of impatience. The way she was addressing me was strikingly reminiscent of the cross-examination she’d made of Harry Ashenfelter. Well, if she wanted me on the witness stand, she’d find that I had a poor regard for her latest theory. I reminded her coolly, “I think I told you this before. It was during the break when Mrs. Lock-wood brought out the tea. Quite a few of the people there were strangers to me, but I noticed Morton because he collected a mug of tea for Barbara and sat beside her. It proves nothing.”

“You were just a little put out because it cut across your plans as a matchmaker. That’s why you noticed him, isn’t that so?”

I wasn’t letting that pass unchallenged. “A matchmaker, no. I never actively promoted the friendship between Duke and Barbara.”

She rephrased it. “They were both special people in your eyes, and you hoped they would link up.”