Tomorrow's ghost

'Would you like something to drink, Mrs Fisher?' Hedges gestured to the chair on the other side of the fire. 'I'm sorry - I'm forgetting my manners.' She needed a drink. 'A whisky - would that be possible?'

Why had she said that?-'Any particular brand?' He smiled at her. 'They have some very fine malt here.'

Frances sat down, and without waiting for an answer he swung round to the empty bar counter behind him. 'Isobel! One large Glenlivet, if you please!'

He turned back to her. 'Nine years ago...'

Malt whisky. Nine years ago she had never even heard of malt whisky, thought Frances. Nine years ago she had never tasted whisky in her life, in her nineteen sheltered years. And now she didn't know (except that it was a cold day, and she was colder still) why she had asked for whisky - or why he had offered, of all whiskies, the one she knew how to drink, from the years between.

He nodded at her, a nod for each year. 'A year or two back - maybe not ... Or not so well. But now ... yes, I can remember it.'

Was that how it was? thought Frances bleakly. In the end, was it the ones that got away that came back to mind, yesterday's ghosts?

'I'm glad to hear it,' she lied. Or, at least for the time being, didn't lie. 'This one bugged you, did it?'

'Bugged?' He winced slightly at the slang. 'No - ' He cut off as Frances stared past him, and then turned towards the bar. 'Ah ... thank you, Isobel.' It was the publican's lady - and she was looking at Frances with considerable surprise. 'Thank you, Isobel,'

repeated Hedges. Isobel looked from Frances to the tumbler in her hand, and Frances understood the raised eyebrows.

It was not a ladylike measure.

'Would you like some water, madam?'

As Frances estimated the tumbler's contents - more like three fingers' generous measure than two - memory twisted inside her. Robbie had taught her to drink malt, but she had also learnt bitterly what his own measures signified: one for pleasure and relaxation over his books and his music, two for sleep and forgetfulness, and three to nerve him again to fumbling passion with his unresponsive partner. And for all the good it did him, he might have doubled the dose.

'No, thank you.' She smiled mechanically. Perhaps he'd have done better to have doubled hers, three had only tightened every nerve in her to do what he had wanted, but hadn't helped her to deceive him in the doing; and that had been a disaster out of which not even Marshal Foch could have attacked his way.

Isobel gave her one last, very old-fashioned, glance, and ducked back into the depths of the pub;

Hedges swept the glass off the bar and presented it to her.

'Thank you, Mr Hedges.'

She sipped the fiery stuff, and thought as she did so how very strange it was that the spirit itself - this ardent spirit which had always failed to arouse any ardour in her - the thing itself hadn't instantly reminded her of Robbie, but only the quantity of it which had been poured into the tumbler, a purely visual memory. But then ever since Marilyn had been terminated - or perhaps it was ever since the bomb, as though its concussion had shaken loose some defensive shield in her head - her memory had been playing tricks on her, reminding her of what she didn't want, and didn't need, to remember.

Hedges was staring at her, and with a start she realised that she had been staring at him across the rim of the tumbler, and not seeing him at all.

'Do you want to know about her ... or him, Mrs Fisher?' Being looked through seemed to have disconcerted him slightly, the tone of his voice told her. 'The wife or the Major?'

The Major.

The nine years fell away from Frances at last. Nine years ago (she had been a student nine years ago, and a spinster, and a virgin, and the secretary of the University Labour Club, and an admirer of Anthony Wedgwood Benn; and now she was none of those things and nine years might have been nine million) ... and nine years ago Colonel Butler had been a major, and before that a captain, and before that a lieutenant, and before that an officer-cadet, and before that a corporal, and before that a private, and before that a schoolboy, and before that a child and a baby and a glint in his father's eye in a backstreet house on the wrong side of the tracks (Paul had been right there - right as usual); but for her he would always have been Colonel Butler if it hadn't been for ex-Detective Chief Inspector William Ewart Hedges (who, nine years ago had been Detective Inspector Hedges), who had suddenly put Major Butler in another perspective of time, his own perspective - with Butler pickled forever in the aspic of a police report as Major - but one which opened all the other perspectives to her ... even the perspective of the future, in which (although rank didn't really matter in the department, and she didn't even understand what her own grade of assistant-principal meant) - in which they would surely promote him to Brigadier if ... if she, Mrs Fisher, Mrs Fitzgibbon and Miss (nine years ago) Frances Warren, the student-spinster-virgin-admirer, gave him a clean bill of health, pronouncing him fit to wear one of Sir Frederick's Rings of Power for better and not for worse, whatever that might mean.

The Major -

Even the deferential way he had pronounced the rank told her something: Et tu, William Ewart Hedges, and she must make an allowance for that.

But there was no more time to think of that now. There would be time for that later.

At least it had all flashed through her mind quickly: after he had said The wife or the Major? he had reached for his pint of mild, hitherto untouched, and now he was just setting it back on the table, two inches down from the brim.

The wife or the Major?

Major and Mrs Butler.

Major John (but always Jack) Butler, MC (General list).

Mrs Madeleine Francoise de Latour d'Auray Butler, nee Boucard.

Lord! thought Frances, still staring at Hedges but thinking a carbon copy of the