Tomorrow's ghost

up Preston New Road - with all our medals - the General, and young Jackie's father just behind him, that was his RSM - cor! you should have seen us then! The whole town was out. Didn't matter if it rained or shined - left, right, left, right -

swing those arms! And the band playing the old tunes!

'And young Jack was there too, with the Scouts. And he used to stay behind with his dad afterwards... But now they do a bit of something on a Sunday, not worth going to -

waste of time. But then it was right on the day - November the eleventh. Two minutes'

silence at 11 o'clock: the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month - '

* * *

Frances had come past him, hiding her face behind the little umbrella heading towards the gates beyond the fountain.

Colonel Butler was standing in front of the ugly memorial obelisk which was topped by an even uglier representation of Peace - a female Peace presiding in bronze over the countless dead of the two World Wars (no room for the Korean dead, or the bad luck casualties of all the other little wars since, from Malaya to Ulster. No room for Blackburn's Robbie Fitzgibbons).

She hadn't watched him from the front, that would have been too risky. But from behind, from the cover - no shelter - of the gates she had observed that he was standing easily, his multi-coloured golfing umbrella over his head, as though reading the names.

And then a clock sounded, away somewhere behind her in the dripping town. As it did so, as though at a time- signal, a sheet of heavier rain - genuine rain - slashed down across the Park, blotting out the further landmarks she had passed a few moments before.

As the first strokes of the clock rang out, rain-muffled. Colonel Butler collapsed his umbrella and removed his ridiculous hat, and came to attention. Even after the sound of the last stroke had cut off - with the loud spattering of the rain and the noise of the traffic behind her it didn't die away, it ended abruptly - he still stood there, for what seemed like an age, bare-headed in the downpour.

Then, unhurriedly, for by then he was wet enough not to need to hurry, he replaced his hat and opened the umbrella again, just as Brian came trotting by him.

* * *

Not an age, but two minutes exactly, counted off in heartbeats.

* * *

That's why he had to go, of course. He keeps the proper day, naturally. Never fails -

leastways, not when he's in England, and not fighting somewhere. But always comes to see me first, even if only for five minutes - and I've been here ten years now, since me legs went, and he's not missed once.'

He twisted awkwardly in the bed to feel under his pillows.

'He has to, see...' He turned back towards her. 'He has to bring me my red poppy.'

He displayed the evidence triumphantly.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Once upon a time, concluded Frances, there had been a great mansion somewhere hereabouts; one of those huge northern granite palaces built out of coal or cotton, in a rolling parkland, with lodges at the gates - and a duck pond - and a dower house into which the first widow could retreat when her eldest son brought his young bride home from the honeymoon in Piranesi's Italy.

But now, amid the concrete high-rise towers and temples of North Yorkshire University, the Dower House (which was all that had survived of that splendid Once Upon a Time ... except, of course, the duck pond) ... the Dower House seemed more like a cottage out of the Grimms' fairy tales which had been magicked from its clearing in the forest into the open.

Not that it frightened her any more, as it might have done before - as the duck pond still did. She was no longer Gretel (was it Gretel?), if she ever had been; and she was no longer Miss Fitzgibbon, the fairy story blue-stocking; and, for all her bedraggled blondeness, she was no longer Marilyn - she no longer needed to be.

She was Mrs Frances Fitzgibbon returning to Paul Mitchell in triumph and victory.

Even the day wasn't so grey now, even the rain wasn't so wet. There was more fighting to be done - the Enemy had lost a battle, but not yet the war itself after the Pelennor Fields. But it was not a battle they had expected to lose, and she had won it.

So it was only reasonable to feel drained and a little light-headed.

* * *

It didn't matter, waiting in the rain outside the Dower House, as it had mattered outside St. Luke's Home.

The door opened, and there was dear old Professor Crowe - brave old Colonel Crowe. It didn't even matter that he was looking at her with stranger's eyes, unrecognising her.

'Professor Crowe - you remember me?'

'Miss Fitzgibbon - I beg your pardon - Mrs Fitzgibbon! Well met, my dear, very well met!' He beamed at her more warmingly than the St. Luke's central heating. 'But you're soaking - quite soaking - come in, my dear, come in! Come in, come in, come in!'

He bustled around her, half wizard, half Hobbit, all elderly bachelor. He fetched a towel. He thought about giving her coffee, but it was too late; he thought about making tea, but it was too early. He didn't mind that she