The House At Sea’s End

CHAPTER 32

Kate must be getting heavier, thinks Ruth. It’s been quite a strain to hold her throughout the short service and now, at the end, people seem to want to take endless photographs. Her arms ache as she hoists her daughter higher in her arms.

‘Hold her up, Ruth. That’s it. Just a bit more. Smile, Kate!’

Ruth’s face aches too, as she tries to maintain a sunny, maternal expression. She still doesn’t know why she let Nelson talk her into this. Ever since Craig’s arrest and his own near-drowning, Nelson has been obsessed with the idea that Kate should be christened in a Catholic church.

‘But, Nelson,’ Ruth had protested, ‘I don’t believe in any of that stuff. The body and blood, the saints, life after death.’

‘You didn’t believe in Cathbad’s rubbish either but you still went ahead with the naming day. What’s the difference?’

Ruth can think of several differences (she couldn’t be accused of holding the naming day ceremony just to get Kate into a pagan primary school, for example) but, in the end, she gave in. Nelson has been uncharacteristically depressed after the events at Broughton Sea’s End. Maybe it was the fact that he hadn’t been able to save Ruth or maybe it is just the realisation that he owes his life to Clough, but Nelson has been anxious and ill-at-ease. He rings Ruth several times a day to check on Kate and nags her continually about the baby’s welfare.

‘I’m doing this on my own, Nelson. We agreed. Remember?’

But, in the end, the deciding factor for Ruth was that, if she made Nelson and Michelle godparents, they could have a formal role in Kate’s life. When it comes down to it, she is slightly scared of doing the whole thing on her own. Those terrible moments in the water when she saw not her own life, but Kate’s, unfold in front of her, made her realise that it was dangerous for Kate’s welfare to depend so entirely on one person. She is not particularly scared of dying but she is terrified of leaving Kate on her own. So she agreed to have Kate baptised into the Catholic Church, only making the stipulation that Father Hennessey should come from Sussex to perform the service. She has also made a will, naming Nelson and Michelle as Kate’s guardians in the event of her death. She doesn’t feel any qualms about leaving Kate in Michelle’s care. She’s a good mother and, this way, Kate will be able to be brought up with her half-sisters. Far better than a sterile existence with Ruth’s parents in South London.

Nelson explained to Michelle that Ruth had been brought up a Catholic and had decided on the christening ‘just to be on the safe side, belt and braces job’. Michelle had accepted this without question. She is spectacularly uninterested in religion and has never questioned Nelson’s decision to have their children baptised as Catholics. If you have to be something, why not Catholic? That’s her view. At least you can dress girls beautifully for their First Holy Communion.

Michelle herself is dressed beautifully today. She is wearing a pink flowered dress and beaded cardigan. Ruth, in dark trousers and a white shirt, feels distinctly outclassed. At least Cathbad, complete with cloak, evens things up a bit. Ruth decided that it would just be too weird to have only Nelson and Michelle as godparents, so she has asked Cathbad and Shona as well. The more the merrier. And, as Father Hennessey pointed out, three of the four are actually baptised Catholics.

‘I’m not exactly a practising Catholic,’ said Cathbad, with modest understatement.

‘Oh you can never get away from the Catholic church,’ smiled Father Hennessey. ‘You be a devil worshipper if you like, you’ll still be a lapsed Catholic to us.’

Tatjana had called Cathbad a devil worshipper, Ruth remembers. She never worked out whether this was a joke or not. She does know, though, that Tatjana has moved a long way from the Catholicism of her childhood. The night after Tatjana came to Ruth’s rescue on the beach, appearing on the sea wall like one of the Norse water spirits so beloved of Erik, they had sat up late into the night, talking. Tatjana told Ruth that, in her quest to come to terms with Jacob’s death, she had run the gamut of spirituality.

‘I’ve tried them all – past life regression, séances, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, I even belonged to some made-up church called The Fellowship of The Fisherman. Rick was very good about it. He wanted us to have our own kids but I couldn’t bear to. I didn’t want a child. I wanted Jacob. If anything happened to Kate, having another child wouldn’t make you forget her, would it?’

‘No,’ said Ruth, touching wood surreptitiously.

‘I wanted to get in touch with my little boy again but, of course, it was impossible. Oh, I had all those so-called mediums saying, “I’ve got a little boy here asking for his mummy.” Complete frauds, the lot of them. Not that I wasn’t taken in for a while, but Rick helped me to see what charlatans they were. They pick up on your grief and they feed off it, like vampires. No, the only thing that helped was finally finding his grave. Erik was right about that, you know. We need to see the burial place. It’s a fundamental human requirement.’

‘So you did find it.’

‘Yes. I met this wonderful woman, Eva Klonowski, who runs the International Commission on Missing Persons. She’s a forensic archaeologist and she’s been in Bosnia since the Nineties. She helped me. They’re using all sorts of new technologies there, you know – satellite imagery and spectral analysis – and they’re still finding bones all the time. We found a grave that looked like it might be in the right place and from the right time. The bodies had been moved several times but Eva helped me get DNA testing done. They don’t fund it, you see, except in special circumstances. The tests proved that it was Jacob and my parents. I buried my parents there, on the hillside, but I had Jacob’s bones cremated and I brought them home with me. Do you think that’s weird?’

‘No.’

‘I’m glad, because those ashes are my greatest comfort. I keep them in a casket on my bedside table at home and I’ve even got some in here.’ She touched the gold locket around her neck. ‘You understand, don’t you?’

Yes, Ruth did understand. She now has an insight into the ferocious world of motherhood. She thought that this was the first time she had spoken to Tatjana, really spoken to her, since the day in the pine forest. She was glad to have her friend back, to have salvaged something from the wreckage of Bosnia. But the next day Tatjana had left to go back to America and Ruth does not know if she will ever see her again.

So, Tatjana is not among the small group gathered in the characterless modern church of St Peter and St Paul. Judy isn’t there either; she is on her honeymoon. A week ago, Ruth attended her wedding, an elaborate affair in a far grander church. Judy had looked beautiful, her round-faced prettiness transformed into something quite spectacular. Her colleagues had formed a guard of honour outside the church and there had been the obligatory jokes about stop-and-search, truncheons and handcuffs.

Ruth didn’t have much chance to talk to Judy. The reception, in a four-star hotel, was packed and she was stuck with Judy’s colleagues from the station. Nelson was there, with Michelle, but he was on a more important table. He looked fed up, fiddling with his tie and glowering at the jokes about the police force. Michelle, of course, looked gorgeous in exactly the right kind of hat.

After the meal there was a disco. Ruth dutifully danced with the policewomen, who had commandeered the dance floor. She even managed an embarrassed shuffle with Clough (Trace having refused to dance). But as ‘YMCA’ segued into Kylie, she escaped, looking for some air and a chance to take off her shoes. After trying several doors, all of which seemed to open onto conference rooms, she eventually found French windows leading to a terrace. She had sunk down with relief onto a stone seat but, to her surprise, she wasn’t alone. Judy was there, looking out over the landscaped grounds, mysterious in the moonlight.

‘Congratulations,’ Ruth had said. She felt slightly awkward. What do you say to the bride, after all? And it felt wrong to see her there, by herself, in her big white dress. A bride is meant to be in company, isn’t that why she has attendants, to ensure that she is never on her own? ‘It’s a lovely wedding. I’m sure you and Darren will be very happy together.’

Judy had laughed, rather oddly. Her eyes were glittering and her headdress was askew. ‘Are you? I’m not.’ And she had gathered up her skirts and gone back to join the conga.

What had Judy meant? Ruth doesn’t like to guess. She has had enough uncertainty to last her a lifetime. If Judy, marrying her childhood sweetheart, isn’t happy, what hope is there for the rest of them?

Certainly Clara isn’t happy. Ruth catches a glimpse of her at the back of the church, pale and pretty in a grey shift dress. Ruth invited Clara to the christening because she seems genuinely fond of Kate. Also, Ruth feels rather bad about having suspected her, even briefly, of the murders. She now sees that Clara is just a rather directionless young woman, a child almost, still mourning her first real love. But she has, at least, been on a few archaeological digs and is, apparently, considering going back to university to study forensic archaeology. Ruth hopes that Clara’s subsequent career will be less eventful than her own.

Irene Hastings is dead. She died just as Craig attempted another murder to protect the family name and Nelson fought for his life in the water. Nelson still feels slightly uneasy about the expression that he saw on Stella Hastings’ face that afternoon. She had known that her mother-in-law was not going to survive. Had she hastened her death? How much did Irene really know about the murders? She had visited Archie Whitcliffe and Hugh Anselm. She had been close to all the members of the Home Guard, including Craig’s grandfather who, apparently, was ‘devoted’ to her. She had known enough, certainly, to plant hardy annuals in a German officer’s helmet. Could Irene have colluded with Craig? Who did the gardening scissors really belong to? And who had warned Craig that Hugh Anselm’s troublesome conscience was stirring once more?

But Nelson keeps these doubts to himself. The case is closed and Whitcliffe is satisfied. Craig will be charged with the murders of Archibald Whitcliffe, Hugh Patrick Anselm and Dieter Eckhart. He has made a full confession.

Archie was given a proper military funeral, conducted by Father Tom, and is buried in the graveyard at Broughton. There may still be an enquiry into the deaths of the six German soldiers. Hugh’s film, so carefully preserved all those years, has been sent to the CPS but there is a feeling that, as all the people concerned are now dead, there is little point in pursuing the case. The German families seem remarkably lacking in desire for vengeance; all they want are their loved ones’ bodies back. As Erik knew, there is a powerful comfort in having a grave to visit. Ruth sent the rosary to the family of Manfred Hahn, in whose hand it had been found. Manfred was, presumably, the man who had cried out to God before he was shot, a prayer heard by the young Hugh Anselm. Manfred Hahn’s granddaughter sent Ruth a nice letter saying that they would treasure the rosary forever. Ruth hopes that Hugh would approve of this entente cordiale.

So the reputation of Buster Hastings, the ‘old devil’ who ‘fought the good fight’, may well survive. But the grandchildren of the men in the Home Guard – Clara, Craig and Whitcliffe – they will remember.

Whitcliffe is buying Maria a flat.

‘He says it’s what his grandfather would have wanted,’ Nelson told Ruth.

‘Well, he’s probably right. He can’t be such a bad bloke after all.’

Nelson has his own suspicions. Could Superintendent Whitcliffe be the father of Maria’s little boy? Could this be why Archie left the code in her hands, knowing that it would find its way to the police force and, maybe, unite George’s parents in the process? Is this the meaning of the cryptic note in Archie’s will? Gerald, I’m so proud of you and I know you’ll do the right thing. Nelson doesn’t know and Whitcliffe isn’t telling. But, one way or another, he can’t quite summon up his old hatred and contempt for his boss. It’s a shame really. He misses it.

Sea’s End House is being knocked down. The council has declared it unsafe, and though Jack Hastings is threatening to take the matter to the European Court of Human Rights he actually seems resigned to losing his family home. His mother’s death hit him hard and, on the few occasions that Ruth has seen him since, he seemed subdued, shrunken even, a small man once more. He no longer talks about an Englishman’s home being his castle and has even mentioned the idea of retiring to Spain. Ruth herself feels a pang for the sinister grey house high on the cliff. She can’t forget the night she spent there – the snow falling on the beach, Nelson’s face in the candlelight, the clock striking midnight. She still has that odd time-slip feeling; the sense that if, during the course of dinner, she had ventured out of the house, she would have seen not the snow-covered cars and the flashing hazard lights on the coast road, but Captain Hastings and his men taking the sloping path to the beach; seen the boat being rowed ashore, heard the shots in the long-vanished summer house, watched as the shallow grave was dug under the cliff. She thinks too of Tony, Jack’s elder brother, the child who watched from the turret window. Tony, dead of cancer in his thirties. Was it this death which haunted Irene Hastings or the deaths of the six men, killed on her husband’s orders?

Cathbad wants a picture of himself holding Kate. Ruth hands her over thankfully. Her arms have gone numb. Cathbad holds Kate face outwards, like a football trophy. Ruth has noticed that a lot of men do this. Shona takes his photograph, then has one of herself with Cathbad and the baby. They look like a proper nuclear family, if you ignore Cathbad’s cloak. Ruth notices Phil looking distinctly put out. Shona, Ruth knows, would love to have a baby but Phil feels that his years of fatherhood are behind him. She wonders if Shona will be able to persuade him. Certainly Phil is still besotted with her, following her round like a puppy, carrying her hot-pink pashmina like a badge of office.

Cathbad hands Kate back to Ruth. ‘What about a picture of you with all the godparents?’ he says. ‘I’ll get Harry and Michelle.’

‘It’s okay, thanks,’ says Ruth. All these photographs are too much for her, though Kate seems to be enjoying them no end. Ruth had wanted a quiet service, no pomp and ceremony, just a few friends and a drink afterwards. But Nelson has arranged for them all to have lunch at The Phoenix. And, though Father Hennessey has obviously tried to keep things low-key – he isn’t wearing robes, for example – there is something somehow grandiose about the ceremony itself, even when pared to the bone.

‘Do you reject Satan… and all his works… and all his empty promises?’

Ruth noticed that Cathbad kept rather quiet when this question was addressed to the godparents. Nelson, though, answered in ringing tones. ‘I do.’ Just like a wedding.

‘Do you believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth? Do you believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was born of the Virgin Mary, was crucified, died and was buried, rose from the dead, and is now seated at the right hand of the Father?’

Tricky one, Ruth thought. But Nelson answered up again. ‘I do.’ Beside him, Michelle and Shona murmured supportively and Cathbad looked enigmatic.

Father Hennessey lit a candle – shades of Cathbad’s sacred fire – and gave it to Nelson to hold. Then he had taken the holy water and fairly doused Kate’s head in it. Ruth had been amazed; she had been expecting a few polite drops. Kate had been too shocked even to cry. Ruth thought of her parents, who believe in Full Immersion for Adults. They are not here today, for them this ceremony would be no better than the pagan naming day. Worse probably. Pagans can be laughed off as harmless eccentrics. The Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins – that’s serious stuff.

‘Kate Scarlet. I baptise you in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.’

Ruth just hopes that all the spirits are satisfied.

Outside the sunshine is warm on their faces and the trees are full of blossom. Summer is almost here. Kate’s first summer. Nelson goes off to organise the cars and Ruth finds herself next to Michelle.

‘She was so good,’ says Michelle. ‘She didn’t even cry.’

‘She likes all the attention.’

‘My two were just the same.’

Michelle stretches out a casual finger and strokes Kate’s hair, the little whorl that always goes in the same way, stubbornly against the tide.

‘Funny,’ says Michelle. ‘Harry’s got a bit of hair that grows just the same way.’

And, all afternoon, through the lunch and the speeches and the general outpouring of goodwill, Ruth sees Michelle’s face and its slowly dawning suspicion.