Peter Lovesey - Rough Cider

When I was nine; I fell in love with a girl of twenty named Barbara, who killed herself. True.

It’s an extraordinary story. I’ve been telling myself for years that I must put it in writing. I can’t expect the memories to stay vivid forever. I’m past fifty now.

I have any number of excuses for delaying so long. Where should I start, for instance? Not in 1943, for sure.

To tell it right, I must take you into a self-service restaurant in Reading in 1964, where you meet me at the self-assured age of twenty-nine, eating sausages and chips and rashly trying to read Machiavelli’s The Prince at the same time. A Friday lunch. I know it was Friday because at the end of the week I was in the habit of escaping from the university for a quiet couple of hours on my own. My luckless duty as the most underemployed member of staff in the history department was to offer a course on Europe in the twentieth century to all-comers in the first year. Like many other fiascos, my course was the brainchild of a committee, this one dedicated to promoting a concept known as supportive studies. It was optional and would not be examined. The “all-comers” consisted of a phalanx of political agitators who filled the two front rows, plus sundry casual callers who came in to sleep because all seats were taken in the library. After it I was in no mood for luncheon and pretentious conversation in the senior refectory.

“Excuse me, is this place taken?”

I raised my eyes from the book and stared. It’s a long cultural leap from Machiavelli to a girl with pouting lips like Bardot’s, blond hair, and gold-rimmed glasses.

She was carrying a full tray.

I took a glance around me. There was no reason for her to have come to my table. The restaurant was three-quarters empty. There were two unoccupied tables to my right.

I’d better explain that I’m obliged to use a stick to get about. My right leg is practically useless. At thirteen I became a victim of polio. Ninety-nine people in a hundred who contract the virus display only minor and temporary symptoms. I was the hundredth. Compared with others I’ve met, mine is a small disability. I try not to let it limit my possibilities. I refuse to wear a leg-iron, so I keep myself vertical with a stick, an ostentatious ebony cane with an inlaid silver band and a leather handle. The reason I mention this is that from time to time I’m bothered by well-meaning people who impose themselves on me to attest their concern for the disabled. My first thought when I saw the girl with the tray was that she was one of these. I didn’t want to be patronized, even by a stunningly good-looking girl.

I guessed from her age (she was not more than twenty) and the glasses that she was a student, but her clothes were definitely more town than gown; red chiffon scarf, black blouse, and peacock-blue corduroy skirt with dark stockings and black, sling-back shoes. Something was wrong, though. Even to my inexpert eye the skirt was inches too long for Britain in 1964. Her accent was unfamiliar, also, which may have explained why she didn’t understand the form in a British self-service restaurant.

I gave her the benefit of the doubt and cleared my newspaper from the place opposite.

She sat down, reaching behind her neck to pull a thick, blond plait over her right shoulder.

“Thank you. I’m really obliged to you.”

So she was American.

The balance shifted back in favor of the university: very likely she was one of the new intakes who wasn’t yet into more casual clothes. She even might have been so raw as to have sat through the lecture I had just delivered.

“Hope you don’t object to the smell of curry,” the girl said with a nervous laugh as she lifted the metal cover off her plate. “If there’s anything hot and spicy on the menu, I’m enslaved. Mexican food is my number-one favorite, but you can’t get it here. Have you eaten Mexican? You should. You really should.”

So she wanted conversation, as well as a place at my table. I was sure I recognized the zealous tone of the do-gooder. I pretended to discover an interest in a wrestling-bill on the wall beside me. A barrell-shaped brute called Angel Harper was scheduled to grapple in the Town Hall with Shaggy Sterne, who was the hairiest human I’d ever seen.

“You’re from the university, am I right?” she said, as if an interest in professional wrestling were positive proof. Then, not waiting for an answer, “Would you care for some water? I swear I shall die if I don’t have water with this.”

She sprang up like a fireman and went to look for water.

I shifted my eyes to her retreating figure. The white ribbon at the top of the blond plait danced to the swing of her hips. Let’s admit it-deep down I was flattered that she’d chosen to join me.

She came back with two glasses of water and placed them on the table. She had pale, slender hands and clear varnish on her nails. “I wasn’t sure if you said you wanted any, but if you don’t, I guess there’s a fair chance I shall be able to use a second glass.”

I moved my lips in a token response and looked down at my book.

A few seconds passed before she took a sip of water and started again. “Forgive me if I’m wrong, but aren’t you Theo Sinclair?”

I shut the book and frowned. She’d used my name. My first name. This was 1964, remember, when we addressed undergraduates, even freshers straight from school, as Mr. or Miss, unless we were playing rugby with them or recruiting for the Communist Party. We gave respect and expected it in return.

As before, when she’d asked a direct question, she was too nervous or too loquacious to let it stand. “I’m Alice Ashenfelter from Waterbury, Connecticut. Do you know the States? Waterbury is a couple hours’ bus ride from New York City. You don’t mind if we talk? I heard so much about English people being reserved and everything, but I found it isn’t true at all when you get over the first bit.. Aren’t you going to ask me how I got to know your name?”

I answered, “As it happens, no.” As I mentioned, I’m not proud of the way I reacted. I’ve tried since to analyze my coolness towards her. I suppose in a perverse way I resented the fact that an extremely attractive young woman felt safe enough with me to make the sort of approach she had.

I’d got through my main course. Generally I finished with a coffee, but I decided to miss it. I looked at my watch, wiped my mouth, said in a measured voice, “Time I was moving on,” gathered my book and newspaper, reached for my stick, got up, and moved away.

Foolishly, I thought I wouldn’t be bothered again by Alice Ashenfelter.

At two, when I returned to my office in the Faculty of Arts building, she was waiting in there, standing in front of the Paul Klee print beside the filing cabinet.

“Hi.”

I turned right about and went to see Carol Dangerfield, the department secretary. Cool Carol of the beehive hairstyle, the only member of the admin staff who always survived enrollment week without a migraine or a bust-up with the prof. She kept us sane.

“That girl in my office-the American-did you tell her to wait in there?”

“Why, yes. Dr. Sinclair. Did I do wrong?”

“What did she say she wanted?”

“I don’t know that she mentioned anything. She simply asked to see you. I thought she must be one of your tutor group, so I sent her in to wait.”

“Her name is Ashenfelter. Is she one of ours?”

Carol Dangerfield frowned. “Unless she’s a fresher…” She opened the card index on her desk. “Apparently not. Perhaps she’s one of Professor Byron’s intakes. I could check with his secretary.”