The Wood Beyond

‘Rosie saw the secretaire in the hall and she asked me if you’d brought it for her to keep her things in and I said you may very well have.’

After a recent and ideologically very dubious spat between Ellie and her daughter about the state of her room, Pascoe had asserted his paterfamilial authority with the promise of a large gin and tonic for his wife and a large storage chest for his Rosie. He had in mind something in puce plastic, but the little girl’s refined taste could sometimes be as surprising as her occasionally fluorescent language.

‘You like it, do you?’ said Pascoe.

‘Oh yes. I think it’s bloody marvellous,’ she answered very seriously.

He caught Ellie’s eye again and she gave him an I-don’t-know-where-she-gets-it-from look. Since going to school Rosie had moved up a linguistic gear and like Caliban, her profit on it was she now knew how to curse. The problem was to stop her from cursing without letting her know that she had been.

Pascoe said, ‘It belonged to Granny Pascoe and she wanted you to have it.’

‘Granny who’s dead?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Is she a ghost?’ asked Rosie uneasily.

‘You know there’s no such thing as ghosts, so she can’t be, can she?’ said Ellie briskly.

‘No,’ said Rosie without conviction.

Pascoe put his mouth to her ear and said, ‘And if she is, she’ll be a ghost down in Warwickshire, because everyone knows ghosts have got to do their haunting round the place where they died.’

The little girl looked greatly relieved though he saw Ellie grimace at this betrayal of rational principles. But she was as pleased as he was at this solution to the problem of Ada’s writing desk.

‘Told you it would find its place,’ she gasped as they collapsed on Rosie’s bed after lugging the secretaire upstairs.

‘Clever old you,’ he said, grinning, and the truce might have been sealed with more than a loving kiss if Rosie hadn’t demanded their help in tidying away all her dolls, toys and other impedimenta into her new store cupboard.

At seven o’clock with Rosie safely stowed in bed and Ellie making ready for her party, Pascoe was in the kitchen pouring himself a lager when the doorbell rang. He heard Ellie’s footsteps on the stairs and her voice calling, ‘I’ll get it.’

Wendy Walker again? he wondered. No. She’d just said she wanted a lift back. Or this time, perhaps it was the Fat Man, come to see for himself that he’d got safely home. Bastard!

But when Ellie came into the kitchen she wasn’t wearing her Apocalypse Now face, though she was wearing a silk dress which struck him as being a touch showy for such a proletarian celebration.

‘Chap called Hilary Studholme to see you,’ she said.

‘Eye patch, one arm, and a limp?’ he asked.

‘Or grey hair, his own teeth and a nice smile,’ said Ellie. ‘Could it be the same guy?’

‘Not in court, it couldn’t,’ said Pascoe. ‘Let’s see.’

The major was standing by the fireplace looking rather ill at ease.

‘Nice to see you again,’ said Pascoe remembering to offer his left hand. ‘Do sit down. I was just pouring myself a drink. Can I get you anything?’

‘Orange juice, anything non-alc. There are those of your colleagues who feel I shouldn’t have a licence. Mustn’t always help the police, must we?’

He smiled his nice smile. From the doorway Ellie said, ‘I’ll get the drinks.’

Seating himself opposite his visitor, Pascoe said, ‘So what brings you into my neck of the woods, major?’

‘Dining out this way with friends. Was going to ring you in the morning, but thought face to face better. Especially as I wanted to show you something.’

He picked up a large envelope which he had set down on a coffee table, flicked the flap open with his thumb and shook some photographs out.

They were all of soldiers in Great War uniform. Two were formal groups, the other was informal, showing four men resting against a gun limber. Their clothes were mud-stained and their efforts to look cheerful sat on their fatigued faces like prostitutes’ smiles.

‘Anyone you recognize?’ said Studholme.

‘Good lord,’ said Ellie who’d returned with the drinks which she was setting down on the table. ‘There you are again, Peter.’

This time, even Pascoe couldn’t deny the resemblance between himself and one of the exhausted soldiers. It was less clear in the group pictures, but Ellie went with unerring accuracy to a face which had Studholme nodding his agreement.

‘So what’s your point?’ said Pascoe. ‘You think this is my great-grandfather, is that it?’

It didn’t seem to him a particularly exciting discovery, certainly not one to bring Studholme even a short distance out of his way.

The major said, ‘You mentioned a photograph you had?’

With the perfect timing she had inherited from her mother, Rosie pushed open the door and came in, barefooted and nightgowned, carrying the photograph from Ada’s secretaire.

‘Look what I found, Daddy,’ she said.

‘Good God,’ said Pascoe, taking the photo. ‘I was twice your age before I learned how to open that drawer.’

‘Girls mature quicker,’ observed Ellie. ‘But that doesn’t mean they don’t need their sleep. Come on. Back to bed with you, Lady Macbeth.’

‘But why is Daddy wearing those funny clothes?’ asked Rosie who had learned early on that the way to delay her mother from any undesirable course of action was to ask as many questions as possible.

‘It’s not me, darling,’ interposed Pascoe. ‘It’s your great-great-granddad, and he just happened to look a tiny little bit like me.’

‘He looks the spitting image of you,’ said Ellie. ‘Doesn’t he, dear?’

‘Fucking right he does,’ agreed Rosie.

Pascoe winced and glanced an apology at the major whose one visible eyebrow arched quizzically. Ellie caught the girl up in her arms and said, ‘Off we go. Say good-night.’

There was a moment’s pause which had Pascoe wondering if his daughter was rifling her word-horde for one of the less conventional valedictory forms such as, ‘Don’t let the bastards grind you down’ or ‘Up yours, arsehole’, but she contented herself with a long-suffering ‘Goodnight then’ over her mother’s shoulder.

‘She is making surprising progress at school,’ said Pascoe when the door had closed.

‘Indeed,’ said Studholme dryly.

He took the photograph from Pascoe’s hand and studied it, then set it alongside the ones he’d brought.

‘Might be doubles,’ he said. ‘Such things happen. Anything can. But chances are they’re the same. Wouldn’t you agree?’