Tomorrow's ghost

'I've never been back. No point.... It's not pretty, like the Ribble Valley. Over the top, across the golf course over to Mellor - all that's open country... I mean over the top - not like we used to say 'over the top', that was different, that was... But over the top from the golf course, and you drop down to the Ribble - as youngsters we used to go that way, and wade the Ribble, and on to Ribchester. You don't want to go to Bapaume if you can do that, an' nobody shoot at you. Waste of time - waste of money! It used to cost Thruppence to get into Alexandra Meadows for the cricket - and you could see it for nothing from the Conservatory in the Park, 'the Scotsman's Pavilion' was our name for it. And when there wasn't any cricket - there was no telly then, but there was fifteen cinemas in the town, and a music hall ... and the repertory - the Denville Repertory, I used to watch that. The beer was better too, not so gassy - Dutton's and Thwaites' - the next biggest brewing town to Burton we were, because of the good spring water, see.

And of an evening we'd take a tram to Billinge End ... eight-wheelers, they were. Four at the front and four at the back - Blackburn trams and Blackpool trams are best in country.'

The past was getting mixed up with the present, but it would be a mistake to stop him too abruptly, decided Frances. She'd just have to judge her moment.

' - and then walk up Revidge for a bit of capertulling with the girls.'

The present was also beginning to slip above her knee, and it would be a mistake to stop that too: he seemed to have judged his moment as right now, for a final bit of capertulling.

' - and back through the Park, past the lake ...' He looked at her, and she wasn't sure whether he was checking that she was still listening or to see if she intended to scream like the Mayor's daughter. 'That lake's an old quarry, you know. That's why there's no boating on it, or skating in winter, it's that deep they don't rightly know how deep it is.

And there's a stream runs down, right under the War Memorial - underground - and goes through the town, under a street that used to be called Snigg Brook - 'snigg' being an eel - but the silly buggers have re-named it 'Denville Street', would you believe it! I suppose it was because the people from the Denville Rep. used to lodge thereabouts, and it didn't sound posh enough. They did the same with Sour Milk Hall Lane and Banana Street, silly buggers. It's not the same - ' He stopped abruptly, pulling back his hand as though he'd been stung.

Frances couldn't bring herself to ask him what the matter was. He certainly hadn't encountered any resistance, quite the opposite. Could that be what had frightened him?

Or was it her lack of encouragement? But that had never discouraged previous hands.

'Tights,' said Rifleman Sands with disappointed scorn. 'Tights.'

Tights were death on capertulling, of course. It was just Rifleman Sands' bad luck that she was Frances below the waist, not Marilyn.

'But you're a good lass, all the same,' Rifleman Sands patted her Jaeger-skirted thigh forgivingly, as though to reassure her that she wasn't a failure. 'Not a catawauller, like some I could mention.'

She smiled at him, and he smiled back. Nurse Lettuce Leaf was quite right: he was a lovely old man as well as a randy old devil.

And he was ready now.

'So Colonel Butler came to see you today, then, Mr Sands?'

'Aye, the Colonel.' He nodded happily. 'A good lad too, he is, young Jack. Happen you'd make a good pair, him and you.'

'Does he come to see you often?'

'Oh, aye.'

'This time of year?'

'One of the best,' he nodded again. 'The General - he'd be right proud of him.... Of course, he was proud of him already. When he won his medal, fighting those Chinamen, he was pleased as though it was his own boy - him that was killed by the Paythens. 'The M.C., Sands,' he says to me. 'That's a fighting man's medal, that is.' And-he should know, seeing how he'd won it too - that was at Loos, up under Fosse Number Eight, where he was wounded the first time. And that was a terrible bad place. Fosse Number Eight, believe you me, lass. I was up there with the Rifles later on - a terrible bad place, that was.'

He was rambling hopelessly now. Damn tights, thought Frances. He'd have been sharp enough with a suspender to twang.

'At this time of year?' she tried again.

He looked out of the window, up towards the high green ridge where he had once walked, on which he would never walk again.

'It's raining,' he said. 'It's not the same rain as it used to be, though.'

Now he was into nostalgia, thought Frances despairingly.

'It used to be right dirty rain - mucky rain,' said Rifleman Sands unnostalgically.

'Woman couldn't put her whites out - couldn't put anything out - when it was raining.

Bloody mill chimneys'd cover everything with bloody soot. It's a sight better now, thank God!'

Frances looked at her watch. She was losing him, and she was also running out of time. It had all been a dream, anyway - a four-out-of-ten guess which was going to end up in the losing six.

'Got to go, then?' He looked at her wistfully, memories of capertulling before the invention of tights in his eyes. 'He had to go, of course. The Colonel.'

He looked out of the window again.

'I remember in the old days, though... There'll be nobody out there now, not today.

But in the old days there'd be the Regiment, with the red poppies in their caps. And the Territorials. And the nurses, and the Boy Scouts and the Girl Guides - and us, of course.

The Old Contemptibles. And the Blackburn Prize Band.... We'd form up in the centre of town, and we'd march