Peter Lovesey: Rough Cider

Before she’d finished, I knew I had to offer her a lift at the least. I was prepared to bet she’d let the tire down in the first place, but after her Good Samaritan act, I couldn’t drive off and leave her standing in the rain in the deserted car park.

I offered to take her to a pub where she could wash her hands. She got in and we drove to one on the London Road where I was pretty sure we wouldn’t meet anyone from the university. When she came out of the ladies’, I bought her a lager and lime.

“Now, would you like to tell me what that was about?” I asked.

“Couldn’t we just pass a little time getting to know each other?”

“Is that important?”

She stared at me earnestly through her gold frames. “It’s normal, isn’t it?”

“All right. Tell me what you’re doing in England.”

“Vacationing.”

“In October?”

“A late vacation.”

“Catching up on the history or just the history lecturers?”

She reddened and looked into her drink. “That isn’t fair and I resent it.”

“You mean, there’s something special about me?”

She didn’t answer. She was fingering the end of her plait like a small, sulky girl. Her hair was parted in a perfectly straight line down the center of her bowed head. She was a true blonde.

“Maybe I imagined that you were pursuing me,” I suggested. “Is it the onset of paranoia, do you think?”

She answered in a low voice, “I think you’re making this hellishly difficult for me.”

“If I knew what it was, I might be able to help. If you’re in some kind of trouble, I can probably put you in touch with people who will help you.”

She looked away and said petulantly, “Give me a break, will you?”

So we lapsed into silence for an interval.

Finally I made signs of moving and said, “Where are you staying? Can I give you a lift?”

She shook her head. “There’s no need. I know where I am now. It’s no distance from here.”

“I’ll be away, then. Thanks for your work on the tire.”

She moved her hand a short way across the table, as if to detain me, then thought better of it and curled it around her glass. “I’ll come here at lunchtime tomorrow. Could we try again?”

I stared at her, mystified. “Why? What’s the point? What are we supposed to try for?”

She bit her lip and said, “You scare me.”

I didn’t know what response to give. Clearly it wasn’t meant as a joke. I shook my head to show that I was at a loss and got up.

“Lunchtime tomorrow,” she repeated. “Please, Theo.”

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?