by Ellis Peters
The younger nurse was giggling. Even Kitty must be smiling at him under cover of the gleaming curtain of her hair. Not unkindly, he had sense enough to know that, but that didn’t make the gall of his humiliation any less bitter. And he really had thought the minimum age was sixteen. He could have sworn it was.
“Are you sure? It used to be sixteen, didn’t it?”
She shook her head, smiling broadly. “I’m sorry, love! Always eighteen since I’ve been in the service. Never mind, being too young is something time will cure, you know.”
There was absolutely nothing he could do about it, except go. Kitty craned round the nurse’s shoulder from her campbed and saw him turn towards the door, crushed and silent. The old fool needn’t have bellowed at him like that. The poor kid was so mortified he wasn’t even going to say good-bye.
“Hey, don’t go!” said Kitty plaintively after his departing back. “Wait for me, and I’ll give you a lift.” She made it as near a child’s wail for company as she decently could, to restore him to a good conceit of himself, and threw in the bribe to take his mind off his injuries, and the sudden reviving gleam in his eyes as he looked round was full repayment. She put it down to the car, which was intelligent of her though inaccurate. “You could at least come and talk to me,” she said. “I was counting on you to take my mind off this beastly bottle.”
Nobody believed in her need to be amused and distracted, but girls like Kitty are allowed to pretend to as many whims as they please.
“Well, if you really want me to, , , ” he said, recovering a little of his confidence.
“That’s all right,” said the matron, beaming benevolently, “by all means wait, my dear, nobody wants to drive a willing lad away.” He gave her a look she was too complacent to understand; she couldn’t even pat a child on the head, he reflected bitterly, without breaking its neck, the kind of touch she had. But she was no longer so important, now Kitty had called him back.
“Here you are,” said the young nurse, planking a chair down beside Kitty’s campbed. “You sit down and talk to your friend, and I’ll bring you both a nice cup of tea afterwards.”
Dominic sat down. Kitty was looking at him, and studiously avoiding looking at the bottle that was gradually filling up with her blood; but not, he observed, because she felt any real repugnance for it. She was shaking with giggles, and when his slender bulk was interposed between her and the official eyes she said in a rapid, conspiratorial whisper: “These people kill me!”
That made everything wonderful by standing everything on its head. He made a fool of himself and she didn’t seem to notice; they behaved according to their kind, only slightly caricaturing themselves, and they killed her.
“I really did think it was all right at sixteen,” he said, still fretting at the sore place, though he couldn’t help grinning back at her.
“Sure,” said Kitty, “I know you did. I never thought about there being a limit at all, but it’s only sense. Am I done yet? You look, I don’t like to.”
He didn’t like to, either; the thought of her blood draining slowly out of the rounded golden arm gave him an almost physical experience of pain. “Nearly,” he said, and averted his eyes. “Look out, here comes our nice cup of tea.”
It wasn’t a nice cup of tea, of course, when it came; it was very strong and very sweet, and of that curious reddish-brown colour which indicates the presence of tinned milk. When they were left to themselves again to drink it Kitty sat up, flexing her newly-bandaged arm, took an experimental sip, and gave the cup a look of incredulous distaste.
“I know,” said Dominic apologetically. “I don’t like it with sugar, either, but you’re supposed to need it after this caper. It puts back the energy you’ve lost, or something.”
“I don’t feel as if I’ve lost any,” admitted Kitty with some surprise, and looked thoughtfully at her bandage. “I’m still not sure what they’ve got in that bottle,” she said darkly. “Wouldn’t you have thought it would be beer?” She caught his lost look, and made haste to explain, even more bafflingly: “Well, after all, that’s what I live on.”
He was staring at her helplessly, more at sea than ever. He hoped he was misunderstanding her, but how could he be sure? He knew nothing about her, except that she was the most charming and disturbing thing that had ever happened to him. And there was her performance that evening at the Boat Club dance.
“Oh, I don’t mean it’s actually my staple diet,” she said quickly. “I just meant it’s what I live on, it’s what pays the bills, you know. I ought to have told you, I’m Kitty Norris. If that means anything? No good reason why it should,” she hurried on reassuringly. “I’m just Norris’s Beers, that’s all I meant.” She said it in a resigned voice, as though she was explaining away some odd but not tragic native deformity to which she had long become accustomed, but which might disconcert a stranger.
“Oh, yes, of course,” said Dominic, at once relieved and mortified. What must she think of him for almost taking her literally? And he ought to have known. Katherine Norris the beer heiress was in and out of the local news headlines regularly, he must surely have seen her photograph occasionally. It couldn’t have done her justice, though, or he wouldn’t have failed to recognise her. Her name was prominent on about a third of the pub signs in the county, all those, in fact, which weren’t the monopoly of Armiger’s Ales. And hadn’t she been going to marry old Armiger’s son at one time? Dominic groped in his memory, but local society engagements and weddings did not figure among the events he was in the habit of filing, and he couldn’t remember what was supposed to have happened to break off the merger. It was enough to be grateful for the fact, no need to account for it. “I should have realised,” he said. “My name’s Dominic Felse.”
“Cheers, Dominic!” She drank to him in the acrid, sugary tea. “Did you know this used to be a bottle of stout once? I mean they used to give the victims stout to restore them afterwards. Old man Shelley told me so. I’m being done, Dominic, that’s what.”
“Norris’s stout?” asked Dominic, venturing timidly on a joke. It had a generous success; she threw back her head and laughed.
“Too true! I’m being done two ways,” she said indignantly as she swung her feet to the floor and shook down her sleeve over the already slipping bandage.
It was nearly at an end, he thought as he followed her out.
The transport had arrived and was disgorging its load of volunteers on the forecourt; the evening had closed in as it does in late September, with swiftly falling darkness and sudden clear cold. She would get into the Karmann-Ghia and wave her hand at him warmly but thoughtlessly, and drive away, and he would walk alone to the bus stop and go home. And who knew if he would ever see her again?
“Where can I take you?” she said cheerfully, sliding across from the driving-seat to open the other door.
He hesitated for a moment, worrying whether he ought to accept, whether he wasn’t being a nuisance to her, and longing to accept even if he was. “Thanks awfully,” he said with a gulp, “but I’m only going to the bus station, it’s just a step.”
“Straight?” said Kitty, poker-faced. “That where you spend your nights?”
“I mean I’ve only got to catch a bus from there.”
“Come on, get in,” said Kitty, “and tell me where you live, or I shall think you don’t like my car. Ever driven in one of these?”
He was inside, sitting shoulder to shoulder with her, their sleeves brushing; the plastic hide upholstery might have been floating golden clouds under him, clouds of glory. The girl was bliss enough, the car was almost too much for him. Kitty started the engine and began to back towards the shrubberies to turn, for the transport had cramped her style a little. The bushes made a smoky dimness behind her, stirring against the gathering darkness. She switched on her reversing light to make sure how much room she had, and justified all Dominic’s heady pride and delight in her by bringing the car round in one, slithering expertly past the tail of
the transport at an impetuous speed, and shooting the gateway like a racing ace. They passed everything along Howard Road, and slowed at the traffic lights.
“You still haven’t told me where I’m to take you,” said Kitty.
There was nothing left for him to do but capitulate and tell her where he lived, which he did in a daze of delight.
“Comerford, that’s hardly far enough to get going properly. Let’s go the long way round.” She signalled her intention of turning right, and positioned herself beautifully to let the following car pass her on the near side. The driver leaned out and shouted something as he passed, gesticulating towards the rear wheels of the Karmann-Ghia. Dominic, who hadn’t understood, bristled on Kitty’s behalf, but Kitty, who had, swore and grinned and waved a hand in hasty acknowledgment.
“Damn!” she said, switching off her reversing light. “I’m always doing that. Next time I’m going to get a self-cancelling one. Don’t you tell your father on me, will you? I do try to remember. It isn’t even that I’ve got such a bad memory, really, it’s just certain things about a car that trip me up every time. That damned reversing light, and then the petrol. I wouldn’t like to tell you how many times I’ve run out of petrol inside a year.”
“You haven’t got a petrol gauge, have you?” he asked, searching the dashboard for it in vain.
“No, it’s a reserve tank. I thought it would be better, because when you have to switch over you know you’ve got exactly a gallon, and that’s fair warning.”
“And is it better?” asked Dominic curiously.
“Yes and no. It works on long journeys, because then I don’t know how far it will be between filling stations, so I make a point of stopping at the very first one after the switchover, and filling up. But when I’m just driving round town, shopping or something, I kick her over and think, oh, I’ve still got a gallon, I needn’t worry, plenty of time, pumps all round me. And then I clean forget about it, and run dry in the middle of the High Street, or halfway up the lane to the golf links. I never learn,” said Kitty ruefully. “But when I had a petrol gauge on the old car I never remembered to look at it in time, so what’s the use? It’s just me. Dizzy, that’s what.”
“You drive awfully well,” said Dominic, reaching for the nearest handful of comfort he could offer her. That self-derisive note in her voice, at once comic and sad, had already begun to fit itself into a hitherto undiscovered place in his heart like a key into a secret door.
“No, do you mean that? Honestly?”
“Yes, of course. You must know you drive well.”
“Ah!” said Kitty. “I still like to hear it said. Like the car, too?”
It was one subject at least on which he could be eloquent, doubly so because it was Kitty’s car. They talked knowledgeably about sports models all the way to Comerford, and when she pulled up at his own door in the village the return to his ordinary world and the shadow of his familiar routine startled him like a sudden blow. Those few minutes of utter freedom and ease with her were the end of it as well as the beginning. He had to be thankful for a small miracle that wouldn’t drop in his lap a second time. He climbed out slowly, chilled by the fall back into time and place, and stood awkwardly by the door on her side of the car, struggling for something to say that shouldn’t shame him by letting down the whole experience into the trivial and commonplace.
“Thanks awfully for the lift home.”
“Pleasure!” said Kitty, smiling at him. “Thanks for the lift you gave me, too. I can’t think of anyone I’d rather shed my blood with.”
“Are you sure you feel all right?” was all he found to say.
An end of muslin was protruding from Kitty’s sleeve; she pulled it experimentally, and it came away in a twisted string, shedding a scrap of lint on the seat beside her. They both laughed immoderately.
“I feel fine,” said Kitty. “Maybe I had blood pressure before, and now I’m cured.”
An instant’s silence. The soft light from the net-curtained front window lay tenderly on the firm, full curves of her mouth, while her forehead and eyes were in shadow. How soft that mouth was, and yet how decided, with its closely folded lips and deep, resolute corners, how ribald and vulnerable and sad. The core of molten joy in Dominic’s heart burned into exquisite anguish, just watching the slow deepening of her valedictory smile.
“Well, thanks, and good-bye!”
“See you at the next blood-letting,” said Kitty cheerfully, and drove away with a flutter of her fingers to her brow, something between a wave and a salute, leaving him standing gazing after her and holding his breath until the blood pounded thunderously in his ears, and the pain in his middle was as sharp and radical as toothache.
But she saw him again earlier than she had foretold, and in very different circumstances; and the blood in question on that occasion, which was neither his blood nor hers, had already been let in considerable quantities.
CHAPTER II.
THE LATEST OF Alfred Armiger’s long chain of super-pubs, The Jolly Barmaid, opened its doors for business at the end of that September. It stood on a “B” road, half a mile from Comerford and perhaps a mile and a quarter from Comerbourne; not an advantageous position at first sight, but old Armiger knew what he was doing where making money was concerned, and few people seriously doubted that he would make the place pay. Those who knew the beer baron best were already wondering if he had any inside information about the long-discussed by-pass, and whether it wouldn’t, when it eventually materialised, turn out to be unrolling its profitable asphalt just outside the walls of the new hotel. It was seven months now since he’d bought the place and turned loose on it all the resources of his army of builders, designers and decorators, and everyone came along on the night of the gala opening to have a look at the results.
Detective-Sergeant George Felse of the County C.I.D. wandered in off-duty out of pure curiosity. He had often admired the decrepit stone-mullioned house and regretted its steady mouldering into a picturesque and uneconomic slum. Two old ladies had been living in it then, and like so many ancient sisters they had died within days of each other, leaving the place unoccupied for almost a year before their distant heir decided to sell and cut his losses. There was nothing else to be done with a place of such a size and in such a state; the only question had been whether he would ever find a buyer. But he had; he’d found Alfred Armiger, the smartest man on a bargain in three or four counties.
It still made no sense to George, even when he pushed open the new and resplendent Tudor door and walked into a hall all elaborate panelling and black oak beams, carved settles and copper-coloured glass witchballs. He estimated that ten thousand at least must have been sunk in the restoration, and he couldn’t see how Armiger was ever going to get it back, short of shifting the place bodily on to the main road, which was liable to tax even his formidable powers. Even if he could continue to fill it as he’d apparently filled it tonight, which was very doubtful, it would still cost him more to run, with the staff he’d need here, than he’d make out of it.
It was certainly lively enough tonight. In the crowded public bar on the left, lantern-lit and period down to the fire-dogs in the hearth, George recognised most of the Bohemian population of Comerbourne, more especially the young ones. Ragged beards and mohair sweaters gave the place the texture of goats and something of their pungent smell. In the two small lounge-bars on the right the eighteenth century had been allowed a toe-hold, and there were some nice brocade chairs and some comfortable couches, and a fair number of the more sober county posteriors were occupying them. The dining-room seemed to be doing a considerable trade, too, to judge by the numbers of white-coated waiters who were running backwards and forwards for drinks to the saloon bar. Most of them seemed to be strangers to the district, probably newly recruited for this house. He saw only one whom he knew, old Bennie from the White Horse in Comerbourne, no doubt transplanted here for his local knowledge. It would pay to have someone about the place who knew all the ce
lebrities, and all the nuisances, too.
They were a mixed bag in the saloon bar, neither big shots nor Bohemians. The big room had been virtually rebuilt, and Tudorised with a monstrously heavy hand. The ceiling beams were too low and too obtrusive, and hung with far too motley an array of polished copper, much of it shamelessly new. Armiger always knew exactly what he wanted, and if he couldn’t get it in period he’d have it manufactured specially, even if it involved some surprising anachronisms. But at least the customers were genuine enough here, farmers, tradesmen, travellers, local cottagers and workmen, and scattered among them the occasional county elder who still preferred this kind of company.
George inched his way patiently to the bar and ordered a pint of mild, and a blonde with a topknot like the Prince of Wales’s feathers and long pink finger-nails set the pot in front of him and informed him with a condescending smile that tonight everything was on the house, with Mr. Armiger’s compliments. Hence the crowd, he thought, though the evening was yet youngish, and no doubt hundreds more would get wind of the party before closing-time. When drinks were free George stopped at one, indeed if he’d known he would probably have deferred satisfying his curiosity until another night, but he was here now. And the spectacle was undoubtedly interesting. More than half the members of the Borough Council were somewhere in the house, and a good sprinkling of the more widely scattered County Council, too. Armiger crooked his finger and people came running, but how many of them out of any love for him? You wouldn’t need the fingers of both hands to count ‘em, thought George, one would be enough.
He was carrying his pint pot to the most retired corner he could see when a heavy hand thumped him on the shoulder and a voice resonant and confident as brass, but tuned as truly as brass, too, bellowed in his ear: “Well, well, my boy, is this an honour or a warning?”
Speak of the devil, and his bat-wings rustle behind you.
“Don’t worry,” said George, turning to grin over his shoulder at the man who had bought him the beer. “I’m off duty. Thirst brought me in on you. Thanks for this, I wasn’t expecting it. Cheers!”