The Chandelier Ballroom (26 page)

Even when the man lay still he continued to beat at him with the idea that he might spring up again and get the better of him, but there was no movement.

Clambering to his feet at last, exhausted and out of breath, Norman stood swaying over the silent form. From the big room on the other side of the passage wall, sounds of high jinks were still going on. Obviously with all the noise they were making in there, no one had heard the upheaval in the passage the other side of the wall.

In the deep darkness, even though he bent over the form lying amid the kitchen rubbish now strewn around them, it was impossible to identify who the man was. To see better, he fumbled for his lighter, flicking the top up. With his hand trembling, he was forced to strike it several times before he could get a flame. Holding it close to the man’s face, he recoiled with a terrified gasp. The man was Sergeant Nigel Price.

‘Oh dear Jesus!’ The epithet tore itself from him. He was in trouble. Panic filled his whole being, his immediate thought to make off before anyone discovered him. But he couldn’t leave the man here. The strong flame heating up the lighter, the metal was beginning to burn his hand and he let the cap drop, plunging the place again into darkness.

The rancid smell of spilled cooking oil was making him feel sick. His face hurt where he had not quite dodged some of Price’s blows, but he thanked God for the heavy can of cooking oil. But for that he’d have ended up being pummelled into a pulp himself, a smaller man than Price, giving Price the greater advantage. He’d never have stood a chance.

Yet instead of making a run for it, he bent down to take another look at the man, flicking the lighter flame on yet again. Price was spark out, his face bloody. Had that can he’d wielded done all that damage? Wondering, he leaned closer for a better look then recoiled. The man’s eyes were open, just staring up at him from out of what seemed a complete mask of blood.

Cold with sudden horror, his paralysed grip on the cigarette lighter with its still flickering flame, seeming unable to let go, he sank to his knees in a desperate but futile attempt to shake Price back to his senses. It was then he realised that Price wasn’t breathing.

For a moment his own breath seemed to have stopped, stifled by the dismay gripping him at what he’d done. He shook the limp body with all his strength, crying out as his own breath came back to him in a sudden gush, ‘Wake up! Wake up, Price! For God’s sake, wake up!’

He let the lighter fall from his hand. It lay on the floor amid the kitchen waste, the spilled cooking oil, the cloths that had been put out to be taken for laundering, now all soaked in it.

Still gripped by shock, he hadn’t noticed that the top of the lighter was still up, allowing the wick to continue burning, until he became aware that the flame had caught some of the oil-soaked cloths and, to his instant fright, the oil-soaked bottom of one of his trouser legs as well.

Leaping up in alarm, the first thought should have been to drag Price to safety or perhaps try to stamp out the fire, but the only instinctive reaction that came was of self-preservation, to run outside as quickly as possible and douse his own smouldering clothing before it became seriously worse. Forgetting the other man, he fled through the open passage door and once outside began frantically slapping out, not a moment too soon, the small flame that to his horror was starting to spread.

Extinguished in a matter of seconds but it could have been bad. That thought made him turn with some idea of going back to drag Price to safety, but oily black smoke was already pouring from the doorway. To go back now would probably choke him before he got anywhere near Nigel Price.

He had to run for help. But it came to him with renewed shock that Price was beyond help. The memory of those sightless blue eyes staring up at him quivered in his brain like a wavering spectre. He had killed him, not intentionally, but who’d believe him? If he ran off now no one would know he’d been here. But his own bruised face would raise questions of how he’d come by it. And there was Valerie, she’d seen him. Where was she now?

Staring at the smoke, he knew he had to go for help, in panic sprinted towards the front of the house, yelling, ‘Fire!’ at the top of his lungs.

But already men were streaming out through the main door, smoke obviously having begun rolling down the back passage and into the big room used for officers’ recreation. Through the open door he saw others pouring down the wide staircase, smoke already rising up the back stairs from the passage, cutting off any retreat in that direction.

‘It’s round the back!’ he shouted rather unnecessarily at two officers hurrying past him. ‘I saw it start,’ he began, then realised immediately that it was the entirely wrong thing to say as they pulled up sharply while others carried on streaming past.

‘What do you mean, you saw it start?’ demanded one.

‘Just that …’ He broke off, cursing himself silently, while one of them said, ‘Come with us,’ he finding himself being conducted along by them. It was then he saw Valerie standing a few yards off. For a second he stared in disbelief as they made to pass her. Then a raging fury caught hold of him.

‘You bitch!’ he screamed. ‘What’ve you done?’

The officers paused at his shout. ‘Who’re you yelling at, Corporal?’ one asked sharply.

‘It’s her!’ he yelled, pointing towards her. ‘It’s her fault!’

The man’s eyes followed the pointing finger. ‘What are you talking about, man? There’s no one there.’ Looking back at him he noticed for the first time the pummelled state of Norman’s face. ‘What happened to your face? Have you been fighting?’

Frantically, Norman pulled away from him. ‘She made me do it. She made me hit him. It was her!’ Even as he looked at her he now realised it wasn’t Valerie but the woman he’d seen before, smiling at him, taunting him.

‘Who the devil are you?’ he screamed. ‘What d’you want with me?’

He tried to make for her but the officer’s grip on his arm tightened, drawing him back forcefully while men streamed past them to where choking black smoke continued to billow through the open rear door.

‘What’s the matter with you, man? Who’re you talking to? There’s no one there.’ He looked accusingly at him. ‘Have you been drinking, soldier?’

Trying to pull away, Norman looked back but the woman had disappeared. She seemed to have totally vanished.

‘Where’s she gone?’ he yelled at the second lieutenant, who still had him by the arm. ‘She was there just a moment ago.’

The man gave a mocking chuckle then grew serious. ‘Enough of this, Corporal, there never was anyone there. I reckon you’ve had a skinful.’

The lieutenant with him wasn’t quite as amused. ‘More than a skinful,’ he growled. ‘Your name and number, Corporal?’

Confused, Norman didn’t reply, tightening his lips.

‘I asked you what is your name and number?’ demanded the man, while the second lieutenant’s grin faded.

‘Corporal, answer your officer!’

‘I don’t know who she is …’ Norman began, but the shouting and urgent activity from the direction of the fire was diverting the lieutenant’s attention.

‘We should see what’s going on,’ he said urgently. ‘They may need some help.’

But his companion’s face tightened. ‘Do you think we should leave him, sir? It looks as if he’s been in a fight and probably drunk, and the way he’s acting he could have had something to do with that fire.’

‘Maybe,’ agreed the other as the din of the fire alarm reached them. ‘Right, bring him along.’

With an officer on either side holding him firmly as they made towards the commotion of fire crew and helpers, Norman began yelling at them to listen to him.

‘She was there, I tell you! She was there!’ He began to gabble in a torrent of only half intelligible words. ‘It was a woman. She keeps appearing to me, telling me my fiancée is having it off with someone else. Then she disappears again. I don’t know who she is, what she wants, but she’s haunting me! It’s not Valerie. I don’t know who she is.’

‘That’s enough!’ came the order. ‘Be silent!’

He hardly heard them, raging desperately on. ‘I’m telling you, she was there! Let me go! I have to speak to Valerie, say sorry to her for not trusting her. She’s down with the ’flu. She was telling the truth, I know it now. I’ve got to see her and—’

‘Shut up, will you!’ The command was sharp and agitated as they turned the corner of the building to see smoke still billowing from the rear doorway, small orange tongues of flames now flickering within the rolling, black pall.

The sight took away all thought of Valerie, the mysterious woman, the failure of those who held him to believe him. He thought of Price – should have tried to get him out, but what if the blow from that metal can had already killed him?

The thought overwhelmed him while all around the commotion of those trying to douse the fire filled his ears. From the NAAFI canteen men were flooding out to see the fire, to offer help if needed. Helpless, he let his body sag between the two officers holding him, hearing himself saying over and over as if someone else was speaking for him, ‘I didn’t mean to kill him. She made me.’

It was enough for those holding him – an open confession amid the chaos. Taken to the guardhouse, hardly comprehending what was happening to him, everything became a nightmare of confusion. Hour upon hour of unbroken interrogation by military police, hearing himself trying to explain the mysterious woman who had goaded him into doing what he had done, hardly aware that by his statement he was sealing his own fate, later seen as either a pack of lies or the ramblings of a man out of his wits.

The sight of his own face bruised and swollen, evidence enough of an obvious fight, was pounced on, he accused also of setting fire to the place in an effort to conceal the evidence. Worn down, hardly aware of what he was saying, he tried to explain the cause of the fight, having to defend himself from the heavier man, all the time turning to the mysterious woman, managing only to incriminate himself even more as his interrogators began to see him as out of his mind.

Even trying to explain how the blaze itself had occurred, the cooking oil catching fire as he used his lighter to see if Price was okay, then accidentally dropping it among the oil-soaked rubbish.

‘And how did that rubbish come to be soaked in cooking oil?’

No longer sure of what he was saying, his garbled story that one of the large cans containing used cooking oil must have spilled was instantly taken as pathetic prevarication.

Asked why the man’s skull had been fractured by what appeared to have been some heavy object, in his agitated state he broke down, admitting that the can had been the only thing he could find to defend himself with against the bigger man who’d had him pinned down and had been punching him repeatedly in the face.

Asked how he could hit someone with something so heavy while being pinned down, before he could give a reply, they switched tactics.

‘Did you start the fight intentionally?’

The sudden question took him by surprise. He blurted, ‘No, I just saw him with the woman and I thought it was my Valerie!’

This brought a smirk of disbelief to his inquisitors’ lips. ‘There was bad blood between you and him, wasn’t there?’

‘Not from my side.’

‘You were being badgered quite a bit, quite unfairly you said.’ He couldn’t remember telling them that, but maybe he had. ‘Why would anyone in that situation not look for revenge the moment an opportunity arose?’

The question was unfair. His heart beating with huge heavy thumps made him feel sick. To the evidence being deliberately stacked against him as he saw it, all he could say was, ‘I wasn’t looking for revenge.’

‘But you started the fight.’

Confused, tired beyond endurance, almost ready to give in, let them have their way, he could only deny any idea of seeking revenge; rather that when he thought he had found Price with a girl who at the time looked to him to be exactly like his own fiancée, Valerie Prentice, he had lost his temper, so probably he must have started it. ‘But I realised later it wasn’t her. It wasn’t Valerie. It was this other woman.’

‘What other woman?’

‘The one who kept turning up, smiling at me, taunting me. I’d seen her before, always there, taunting me. Like a sort of apparition, she’d appear then vanish again, you have to believe me!’

They didn’t. His tale so garbled that even to him it sounded as though he’d totally lost his mind. The bemused look on his interrogators’ faces said it all. He needed for them to see that he had been in his right mind, that the woman he saw had to be real, though even he was no longer sure.

‘Do any of you believe in ghosts?’ he challenged out of the blue. He saw their grins change to scowls.

‘Don’t start being funny!’ one of them growled, taking delight in thrusting his large face into Norman’s. ‘I hope you do realise the seriousness of what you’re being accused of?’

He did, but had the girl with Sergeant Price been Valerie or not? He was no longer sure. The girl he’d seen previously hadn’t been Valerie. But had it been Valerie or this other one who’d run off when he’d caught her with Price? Exhausted while his interrogators remained fresh and eager for answers, he was no longer sure of anything that had happened.

Finally transported to Colchester to await a court martial, he was accused of having attacked and killed a senior NCO. Examination of the body proved beyond doubt that Sergeant Price had died from blows to the face and head with some heavy object, the fracture to the skull not the fire being the cause of death. Corporal Norman Bowers, having murdered his sergeant, whether insane at the time or not, was sentenced to hang.

Enquiries had proved his Valerie to have indeed been confined to bed that night with ’flu, although that only made his insistence that she had been there sound all the more rambling.

Knowing how confused she must be feeling by all she’d learned, her pain and confusion all his fault, he wept in mortification, giving himself up to his fate, hardly caring any more, wanting only to hold her close and tell her how much he loved her, a wish denied to him.