Tomorrow's ghost

can identify with beautiful princesses held captive by jealous step-mothers because that makes them unavailable to a male lover, which is their father. All of which is not something I like to go into, because it mixes up quite normal enjoyment of good stories with the most terrible pubertal situations. One ends up with Walt Disney's Snow White as a really frightful story of sexual jealousy ... and, frankly my dear, I won't have that. Academics must be careful when they find they're playing with fire.'

He gazed for a moment into the heart of the fire, and then came back to her. 'But your story is different - with a different root. But it also seems to ... play with fire, as it were.'

'I don't see how.' Frances took a firm grip on her imagination. Robbie's death was an accident. Accidents happened all the time. That was the beginning and the end of it. 'It's just a fairy story. With a happy ending, too - a eucatastrophic ending. Professor.'

'Hah!' For a moment he twinkled at her for being an attentive student, then he was serious again. 'Your story is. My story isn't.'

'Then tell me your story. I'm not superstitious.'

'Bravely said! And the ritual challenge, too: where did you pick it up?'

Frances sighed. 'As usual. Professor, I don't know what you're talking about.'

'I don't think you have to know. You are your

Grandmother's grand-daughter, I suspect!'

'You're doing it again.'

'So I am! Forgive me.... Very well. But first I will demolish your story, my dear.

Forget about the three princes. There is only one - the third, of course. The other two are medieval accretions. Or, more accurately, bowdlerisations of a sort.'

'A dirty fairy story?'

He ignored her irreverence. 'One prince, then. He comes upon a hideous old woman, but because he's blind that doesn't matter to him. He makes her young again by kissing her; she was a beautiful young thing all the time, just bewitched. And they lived happily ever after. Presumably he was bewitched too, and the moment he gives the kiss he receives his sight in exchange?'

'That wasn't in my story.'

'Good. Forget the bewitching too, anyway. But then what do we have.'

'No story.'

'We have a hideous old woman - a real woman. Once she was young and beautiful, like you. Now she is old, and nothing works properly any more - Candide's 'old woman' to the life: 'My eyes were not always sore and bloodshot, my nose did not always touch my chin.... My breast was once as white as a lily, and as firmly and elegantly moulded as the Venus de Medici's.'' He shook his head sadly. 'It happens to all of us, except those- the gods love, who die young, before they know the humiliation of missing a train because they are afraid to run that last fifty yards, as I am now.' He smiled at her. 'And I swear I clipped two seconds off the 220 record on Sword Beach that morning, running in boots on sand, armed cap a pied - I wasn't sure that the gods didn't love me, I suppose!'

It was Rifleman Sands all over again, thought Frances. It was one weakness that women didn't have, because they'd always missed battle and sudden death - this remembering with advantage their deeds of daring.

Crowe held up his finger. 'Can she be delivered from all this? Of course she can! One kiss - and no more ugliness, no more aches and pains. No more remembrance of all that's been lost, and all that might have been but never was. One kiss - and either nothing, or youth and beauty again for ever and ever. Happy ever after!'

He nodded. 'It's pre-Christian, of course. Or pre-medieval Christian - they were the ones who made the Prince himself ugly and frightening, before them he was a god, and a beautiful and merciful god in his own right. And a god who rewarded you if you played the game properly.' Crowe pointed at the Glenfiddich bottle, and then at Frances herself. 'Valhalla is good whisky and pretty women. No one who offers that can be ugly

- it's against reason!'

He stared at her, for all the world as though imprinting her specification on his memory, with the Glenfiddich, for future reference.

'The trick, my dear, is to call the Prince up when you want him. If I'm right ... your Grandmother - she knew it. Pass the story on, and die - that's the Neapolitan version of it. When you're tired of fighting, tell the story - and summon the Prince of Death!'

He frowned suddenly. 'But the trick has a catch to it: once you've told the story you have to pay the score. Because if you don't, then someone else will have to. It's as though you've summoned him - it's actually called 'The Summoning Story' in one version - and he's not going to go away empty-handed. The Neapolitans say that the Grandmother has a choice - she can point at someone who is dear to her. Or she can let him choose at random, in which case he'll choose someone dear to her, so it amounts to the same thing.

He likes the youngest and best, for choice.'

It was totally insane. It was an old man's macabre game, nothing more than that. He had read his own book on superstition too often.

'Fortunately - very fortunately - you are not a grandmother yet, so it may not work for you like that. And also Colonel Butler may be able to provide you with a substitute, it now seems likely.'

'What?'

'Haven't you been brought up to date?' He smote his forehead. 'No - of course! You haven't seen your young man yet - the dashing Mitchell. But David Audley will be able to put you in the picture.'

'David's here - now?' Frances sat up.

'Very much so. Though ... I gather ... unofficially.' Crowe glanced at the clock on the mantlepiece above his fire. 'He should be back here - I thought he was you, at the door.

Except he doesn't knock, he always barges straight in. He hasn't changed one bit over the years.... Anyway, he went off to find young Mitchell, I think, to ascertain from him the whereabouts of his friend Colonel Butler.'