Haunted by Alma Alexander Page A

country for as long as that case you’re holding has been here.
And that is about forty years. Yon good gentleman has exaggerated a
bit about its age – it’s not, strictly speaking, pre-war, since it
was brand new when my father gave it to me in 1940…”
    “Now wait a minute!” I said, startled into
loudness. “You can’t possibly mean - ”
    “But I assure you, Miss, it’s perfectly
true,” the stall-holder said earnestly. He had disposed of the
other customer and was taking my remark, quite understandably, to
be a response to his own earlier words.
    “I’m sorry, I was talking to this young
gentleman here.”
    “Who?” asked the stall-keeper blankly.
    The fair young man beside me gave half salute
which the stall-keeper ignored entirely.
    “The young…” I began, and my voice died
agonisingly as the fair boy carried on smiling and the stall-keeper
looked at me as if I’d taken leave of my senses.
    Gradually, the horrible truth dawned.
    “Would you like to take the case, Miss?” said
the stall-keeper carefully.
    “Oh, do get it,” the boy said at the same
instant. “You’ll be doing me a great favor.”
    I opened my mouth to say no, but what came
out, despite my best efforts, was, “Yes, I’ll take it.”
    Bemused, I scrabbled in the jumbled contents
of my bag for my purse, which, as usual, had migrated to the
bottom. As I did so, a square of white cardboard floated down to
cobbles, coming to rest with the writing uppermost. My invitation
to the local RAF society’s annual Battle of Britain Ball.
    “You dropped something, Miss,” the
stall-keeper observed, relinquishing the cigarette case.
    “Battle of Britain Ball, what?” the fair
youth said. “Nice to know someone still cares. Are you going?”
    I refused to answer. Not in front of the
stall-keeper. I picked up the card with great dignity, restored it
to my bag, in the company of my newly-acquired cigarette case, and
strolled slowly away from the market-place and into the quiet
streets beyond.
    The fair youth, hands in pockets, kept
pace.
    “Look, who are you anyway?” I said
crossly.
    “Oh, I am sorry, didn’t I introduce myself?”
He sounded contrite. “Walter Charles Hawke at your service. But you
can call me Wally. All my friends do.”
    “I’m not your friend,” I informed him.
“Besides…”
    “Oh, I know we’ve only just met, but I can
assure you that I think of you as a friend already,” Wally said
with the same endearing smile that had captured my attention
earlier. “After all, you do hold my immortal soul in the bag, so to
speak.”
    “I – what?”
    “The cigarette case,” Wally supplied
helpfully. And then, when I gazed at him with blank
incomprehension, he sighed. “I can see I’m going to have to explain
from the beginning.”
    “I would be much obliged,” I said
sarcastically. “But I absolutely refuse to walk around town talking
to a piece of thin air. Enough people already think I’m crazy – I
don’t need to add to the number.”
    “Oh,” Wally said, in all seriousness. “I can
probably solve that. Give me a moment.”
    If I’d had any doubts, they vanished now.
Before my eyes he sort of flickered, disappeared, then formed
again, causing one startled passer-by to turn and gape after us,
probably doubting his eyesight. After all, he had just seen a man
materialize out of nothing. And a man, as well, who was dressed in…
I gave a squeal of indignation.
    “Are you really going to walk around Cape
Town wearing what I presume is a World War Two uniform?”
    Wally looked down, as if this was the first
time he’d noticed that he was wearing anything at all.
    “You’ve got a point,” he conceded. “Give me
another moment.” He faded again.
    Scarlet with embarrassment – another man had
stopped to goggle – I turned and studied a nearby shop window. In
its reflection, I saw a shape form in the hitherto empty space
beside me, and Wally popped into existence wearing jeans and a red
T-shirt