Rough Cider Read Free Page A

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