Tomorrow's ghost

* * *

'He couldn't have done it. Not possibly.'

Fact. He couldn't dispute fact.

'What?'

'He was in Blackburn at 10.30 that day - maybe earlier. Like he said in his report.'

'What?'

'I have a cast-iron witness. He remembers the time exactly.'

No answer. She would throw him a bone to gnaw at, then - out of sheer cruelty.

'He had a motive. But he'd never have done it then - or got anyone else to do it. Not on November 11th.'

That had been sheer bravado, to go with the cruelty. She didn't even know how she would record that subjective evidence of character and temperament and upbringing and history, which was much stronger in the end - at least for her - even than Rifleman Sands' resolute evidence.

She only knew that she could hardly write: Of all the dates in the year, if he was going to murder his wife, or even wish her dead - which, being Colonel Butler, he would never do anyway, or even wish - that would be the very last, most impossible day. Because that was the day -

It was the day that had thrown her, even when her instinct had told her it was important. Nowadays, when it didn't matter, when it was just a pious formality except for the old generation who knew which day was really which. Remembrance Day was always on a Sunday: that was the day they marched to the Cenotaph and to the thousands of war memorials up and down the country and planted their wreaths and poppies without really remembering anything at all, because they had nothing to remember, because yesterday's ghosts weren't worth mourning in a nasty, rough world.

They would have mostly forgotten, as she had, that the Sunday was always only the closest day to that old real eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of that original year - it was almost an accident that she recalled her father telling her (he who knew everything) that in the old days everything in Britain had stopped for two minutes to remember something which had happened at 11 o'clock on November llth in 1918.

But Colonel Butler had always remembered. What exactly he remembered - he hadn't been alive when Rifleman Sands had first walked up Revidge for the big fireworks display, which had reminded him of the trenches, with the candles in jam jars at his front gate - what he remembered, she could only guess at: maybe his father, against whom he'd revolted, or his father's friends; or his own friends and comrades from Normandy and Germany; or his own men from those other trenches of Korea, Nannie's husband among them; or even the men he himself had killed so efficiently in his time. Or even the old General himself, who'd had a hand in it all from the beginning, father and son beginning.

That was something she intended to find out eventually - his girls could find it out for her simply by asking: they were probably the only human beings who could ask the question with a chance of receiving an answer; no one else (not even a second Mrs Butler) had the right to expect an answer - which she already knew in her heart, but which she would never write down, for it must always be his secret act of remembrance: Because that is the day when he keeps faith with his dead, the day of love and honour and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice, and he would never add a private ghost of his own to that list, on that day, not ever, not this man, not ever -

* * *

A private ghost.

Yesterday's ghost - Frances could feel her heart thump - she had laid yesterday's ghost at the terrible cost of raising a new one for tomorrow - had she?

They were getting very close now. Through the rain-streaked side window she had been catching glimpses of the swollen Thor Brook between the fringe of trees which separated the road from the stream for the last half-mile before they met at the bridge of Thornervaulx.

The bridge was a colour-transparency in childhood's memory - high and hump-backed and narrow as the ordeal bridge of Al-Sirat between earth and heaven over hell -

A new ghost was waiting for her on the other side: there was still so much she didn't know, so much that was still guesswork, about that November llth as well as this November llth, but the new ghost was already an instinctive, stomach-churning certainty.

* * *

The enemy had revived the old Butler scandal into suspicion by dropping the right word into the right ear at the right moment - the classic disinformation stratagem.

And they had calculated its strength not only from the lying truth it contained, but also because all those who feared and disliked and mistrusted David Audley would work hard to make it true, blocking his advancement by blocking Butler's promotion -

playing the enemy's game for reasons which probably ranged from pure selfishness and hatred and fear and prejudice to mistaken patriotism.

And also because, all the while, Sir Frederick himself had let them go ahead for his own reason, hoping that Audley would be forced in the end to take power simply for the sake of friendship and survival -

Was that how it had been?

If it was -

She caught a flash of grey through the trees, against the browns and yellows and greens of late autumn, rain- misted: ruined walls and pinnacles across the stream on the other side of the valley. If it was, then she had made a ruin of it.

And if it was, then Colonel Butler might now die in that ruin, and maybe in those ruins: there must always have been a contingency plan for a last resort, and this was the ideal place for it, where it might just pass scrutiny as a