The House At Sea’s End

CHAPTER 22

The projector is in Hastings’ study, a book-lined room with cracked leather sofas and two large dog beds. There is a fire and it is altogether cosier than the glacial drawing room. Ruth stands by the fireplace trying to warm her hands. The smell of dog and wood-smoke fills the air. Hastings draws the red velvet curtains and starts to fiddle with the projector, the sort seen in old films, two wheels with tape running between them. A huge screen is pulled down in front of the books and Stella Hastings comes in with tea and biscuits.

‘Did you ever see such weather for April?’ she says.

‘Do you think it will get worse?’ asks Ruth anxiously. The room is too warm and womb-like. She can see herself settling down on one on the sofas and never getting up again. She must get home to Kate.

‘No, it won’t last,’ says Stella soothingly.

Stella backs out. The projector starts to whirr, circles with numbers inside appear on the screen. 8,7,6,5,4,3,2. Then, with what feels like shocking suddenness, a face appears. A dark-haired young man with little round glasses.

‘What I am about to say,’ he intones, ‘is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.’

The man is dressed in uniform. Ruth isn’t good at uniforms but she thinks that she sees wings above his pocket. RAF? The man sits close to the camera and looks nervous. Occasionally he glances anxiously at the operator, who is unseen. At one point the camera pans slowly round the room, showing a blacked-out window, a notice board, a furled Union Jack.

‘Do you recognise the room?’ Nelson asks Hastings.

‘I’m not sure. It could be the old scout hut. The Home Guard used to meet there.’

‘My name is Hugh P. Anselm,’ the man is saying, pushing his glasses closer to his eyes. ‘I’m a pilot officer in the RAF. Until recently, I was a member of the Home Guard at Broughton Sea’s End.’ He licks his lips and looks at the camera operator. ‘What I am about to tell you occurred in the early hours of September the eighth, 1940. My colleagues and I took a blood oath never to divulge the events of that night. Accordingly, this message is only to be made public after my death and the death of my comrade Archibald Whitcliffe.’

‘Archibald!’ says an amused off-screen voice. Archie Whitcliffe is clearly the man behind the camera. Hugh Anselm ignores the interruption. He is speaking more fluently now, leaning in urgently.

‘We will hide this message where it will not be found. When the time comes we will leave coded instructions as to its whereabouts. The story I have to tell is an unedifying one. Perhaps it will seem incomprehensible to the generations that come after us. I can only ask that you remember three things: it was war, we were scared and we were led by a very singular man.’

Ruth glances at Jack Hastings who is sitting behind the projector. He is leaning forward, his hand covering his mouth.

‘On September the seventh, 1940,’ says Hugh Anselm, glancing down briefly at his notes, ‘the GHQ Home Forces received the codeword “Cromwell”. This meant that an invasion was probable within the next twelve hours. Captain Hastings put our platoon on full alert. We had already placed the defences along the coastal strip; we had a fire ship moored off the beach, ready to ignite. At eleven p.m. three of us, under the command of Sergeant Austin, went out in the patrol boat. At midnight, we returned. At two a.m., just as we were preparing for another recce, our lookout in the tower signalled “enemy approaching”, three long flashes of the torch, two short. Captain Hastings and Sergeant Austin went down to the beach.

‘The rest of the platoon waited at the top of the cliff path. We saw a boat approaching, a small craft with an outboard motor, though that was silent. It was being rowed. We saw at once that it was moving slowly, only one man was rowing. The boat made its landing. Its occupants got out and we saw that two of the men were carrying a body. There were six men in total. Captain Hastings went down to the water’s edge, raised his gun and ordered them to stop in the name of the King. They obeyed at once, putting up their hands. The leader spoke, in accented English. He gave his name as Karl von Kronig, a captain in the German army. He and his men were commandos on a reconnaissance mission. They had been hit by coastal artillery. One of his men was seriously injured. Captain Hastings signalled to us to put the men under arrest. We had been issued with ropes though we had hardly thought that they would submit so easily. We tied the men’s hands and led them up the ramp and into the summer house, at the very end of the garden at Sea’s End House. Donald had the key. Private Whitcliffe and I carried the injured man. He was groaning and we saw that he had been shot.

‘In the summer house, there was a difference of opinion. Sergeant Austin, who had recently lost his son, wanted to shoot all six men. He had an old service revolver and I remember him brandishing it as he spoke. I spoke up, although as a private I hardly had the right. I said the men were prisoners of war and that it was our duty to take them into custody and find help for the injured man. I’m sure I spoke pompously and Captain Hastings was angry. He told me to hold my tongue. He pointed his gun at Von Kronig and asked if there were any other Germans in the vicinity. No, said Von Kronig, who was tall and blond with an air of command. They were simply a reconnaissance party. Captain Hastings told the man that Germany would never win the war. Von Kronig smiled and said that he thought they had won it already. Then Sergeant Austin shot him.

‘He died immediately. Sergeant Austin was a crack shot. The other Germans shouted out but Captain Hastings pointed his gun at them and told them to be quiet. Captain Hastings gave his gun to Corporal Hoffman and told him to cover the men and let us know what they were saying (Corporal Hoffman was born in Germany). He led the rest of us outside and told us that we would have to kill the rest of the men. They would tell the authorities about the killing of their captain and we had to protect Sergeant Austin. Besides, we were at war and they were the enemy. We had to shoot them and bury their bodies. I protested but Captain Hastings told me to be quiet. Danny tried to back me up but Donald said they were only filthy Jerries and would do the same to us. Eventually, to my everlasting shame, I acquiesced.

‘We led out the four men who could stand. Four of us held them, their hands still tied behind their backs. They did not know what was happening, mercifully for them. Then Captain Hastings went behind them and shot each one in the back of the neck and went inside to shoot the sick man. None of us spoke. The wind was high and I don’t believe that anyone heard the shots. Sea’s End House is very isolated. One of the men called on God before he died. I remembered that and, afterwards, I put my rosary into his hands.

‘Captain Hastings told us to take the men down to the beach and bury them. There is a cleft in the cliffs, inaccessible except at low tide. Archie, Danny and I each carried one of the bodies. The others were dragged on a length of canvas, we’d used it earlier to make gun cotton. We burnt the boat on the shore. By now it was dawn and I will never forget seeing the sun rise on that morning and realising that I was a murderer. Archie and I had the job of filling in the grave and that is when I put my rosary into the German soldier’s hands. God forgive me, I have not said the rosary since.

‘At about six a.m. we went back to the summer house. Captain Hastings took out his knife and made a cut on each of our hands. One by one, we pressed our hands together so that the blood mingled and we swore never to divulge what had happened to a living soul. Then we went back to the house and Mrs Hastings made us breakfast.’

Hugh Anselm takes a deep breath and pushes at his glasses again. He looks so young, thinks Ruth. Eighteen? Nineteen?

‘Private Whitcliffe and I will honour the oath we made,’ he says, ‘but we both feel that, one day, the truth should be known. We have only told one other person that this film exists. The last of the three of us left alive will leave instructions as to where to find this evidence. That is all I have to say. God have mercy on us all.’

The film stops abruptly.

Jack Hastings is the first to speak. ‘My brother, Tony, heard the shots,’ he says. ‘He told me about it. He says he heard shooting and saw black shapes in the garden. People carrying bodies. I didn’t believe him. He can only have been about three at the time.’

Ruth imagines the little boy at the nursery window, the figures moving in the dark, the sound of heavy boots on the path, the muffled oaths, the flames from the burning boat.

‘We always thought that the summer house was haunted,’ Hastings continues. ‘Mother wouldn’t let us go in there because it was so near to the cliff edge.’

‘Are you going to tell your mother about this?’ asks Nelson, jerking his head towards the blank screen.

Hastings looks troubled. ‘I don’t know. She has a right to know, I suppose, but my mother worshipped my father. This could kill her. She has no idea about any of this.’

Ruth thinks of Hugh Anselm saying ‘Mrs Hastings made us breakfast’. Did Irene Hastings really not know that she was feeding men who had just committed murder? Did her husband never tell her what happened that night?

‘I never imagined…’ Jack Hastings looks genuinely shocked, his hands shaking as he turns off the projector. ‘I never imagined anything like this. I knew there was something. My dad sometimes talked about the Home Guard and it was never cosy stuff, never anything like the TV programme. He always said that they were ready for an invasion, that they would have fought to the death. But I never thought…’

‘Did you ever suspect that this evidence existed?’

Hastings shakes his head. ‘No, never.’ He sits down, looking as if he’ll never move again.

‘I’ve got to go,’ says Ruth. The ugly Thirties clock on the mantelpiece says six o’clock.

Through the stained glass in the front door, Ruth sees a strange blueish light. When she opens the door, she realises what it is. The world has changed. The long drive is covered with a heavy layer of snow, the trees are white with it, and Ruth’s car is barely visible. The surface is virgin and unspoiled, until one of Hastings’ dogs breaks free and starts running round in mad circles, barking hysterically.

‘Jesus,’ says Nelson. ‘That’s come down fast.’

‘Oh my God.’ Ruth feels sick. ‘How am I going to get home?’

‘We’ll go in my car,’ says Nelson. ‘It’s bigger and heavier. And it’s got a wider wheelbase.’

Words like ‘wider wheelbase’ mean nothing to Ruth, but she takes in the fact that Nelson is offering to drive her home. Back to Kate. With only the briefest of farewells to Jack Hastings, they run across the white lawn to Nelson’s Mercedes. The snow seeps into Ruth’s trainers and, within seconds, she is freezing. Nelson sweeps the snow off the windscreen and gets in to start the engine. Thank God for German cars. Maybe the ill-fated captain was right and they did win the war.

Ruth leans forward in her seat, willing the car to negotiate the snowy drive. The wheels spin and Nelson swears but they move forward slowly, the soft snow hissing under the wheels.

‘Should have chains on really,’ says Nelson. ‘But at least it’s not icy yet.’

When they reach the road Ruth starts to breathe more easily, but as they near the main road they see that something is wrong. There are flashing lights, a man in a reflective jacket barring the way.

‘Police,’ says Nelson. He gets out of the car. After a brief discussion in which Ruth can see the reflective jacket shrugging obsequiously, Nelson comes back to the window.

‘Road’s blocked,’ he says. ‘Lorry’s jack-knifed.’

‘Oh no.’ Ruth is rigid with horror. ‘What shall we do?’

‘There’s no route cross-country,’ he says. ‘We’ll have to go back to Sea’s End House.’

‘What about Kate?’ Ruth’s voice wobbles.

‘She’ll be fine, love. Clara’s with her. And I’ll get you home if I can. I’ll phone for reinforcements. Get a chopper if necessary. Okay?’

‘Okay.’ Ruth manages a watery smile.

Jack and Stella are all concern. They usher Ruth into the kitchen while Nelson makes his phone calls. Irene, of course, makes them tea with bone china cups and saucers. At Stella’s suggestion, Ruth rings Clara. The girl’s cheerful voice is a distinct comfort.

‘What a pain. That road is a nightmare. But don’t worry, Ruth. I can kip down on your sofa. I’ve made up Kate’s milk and she looks a bit sleepy.’

‘Is Tatjana back yet?’

‘No. But it’s pretty wild outside, maybe she’s stuck in town.’

‘Maybe. I’ll get home as soon as I can.’

‘Okay. But don’t worry. Really.’

Ruth clicks off the phone feeling better but still hyper-ventilating slightly. It’s as if there’s still an umbilical cord attaching her to Kate. She can go away from her baby for short stretches of time, but after a few hours she starts to panic. It’s bad enough at the end of a working day, racing through the King’s Lynn streets, desperate to press her face against Kate’s and inhale her lovely baby smell. But now, stuck miles away from her, Ruth feels as if she will snap clean in two, so strong is the invisible pull of her daughter.

Nelson returns. ‘Snow’s started again. We can’t get the chopper out in conditions like this.’ Ruth thought he’d been joking about the helicopter. ‘We’ll have to sit it out for a bit, love.’

Love. It’s the second time he’s called her that.

‘You must be our guests,’ says Stella Hastings. ‘We’ll have a nice supper and I’ll make up the spare room for you, Inspector. Ruth, you won’t mind having Clara’s room?’

‘No,’ says Ruth. ‘But the snow might stop soon.’

Hastings comes back into the room with snow on his peaked cap. ‘Not much chance of that, I’m afraid. It’s pretty heavy now. I walked up to the coast road and the lorry’s stuck fast. I knew something like this would happen one day. I’ve warned the council time and time again.’

It’s a strange, surreal evening. Despite further assurances from Clara (Kate is sleeping, she’s fine, they’re both fine), Ruth still feels tense and twitchy. She also can’t forget the events of the day – the boat trip, the discovery of the buried box and, finally, the film itself. All through dinner – polished dining table, flickering candles, acres of silver and china – she keeps seeing Hugh Anselm’s face, hearing his voice, the voice of a precocious teenager. The story I have to tell is an unedifying one… there was a difference of opinion… to my everlasting shame, I acquiesced. But his story was not a teenager’s story. This was a man who had to face a terrible choice and bear an intolerable burden of guilt – all before he was twenty. What had the rest of Hugh Anselm’s life been like, she wonders? Why did he decide, in the end, to break the oath? Why had he written to Dieter Eckhart? Dieter, who is now dead.

Yet Jack Hastings, who has just heard that his father murdered five men in cold blood, seems unaffected. Earlier, in the study, he had looked a broken man. Now he is every inch the genial host, pouring wine, telling amusing anecdotes about his family. His mother, Irene, smiles vaguely in the shadows. What does she know? What does she suspect?

Yet despite all these cross-currents of emotion, there is something almost magical about the evening. The formal dining room, the candlelight, the knowledge that outside it is still snowing, all conspire to make the little group around the table seem somehow removed from the rest of the world. It’s as if, thinks Ruth, they have travelled in time. When they finally get up from the table and open the doors to the white expanse outside, will it be 2009 or 1940? Or will it be 1840, with carriage wheels whirling through the snow? Will the warning light shine in the tower, three short flashes, two long? Will Buster Hastings be walking down the cliff path towards the sea, gun in hand?

And, if she’s honest, she likes the fact that she is there with Nelson. The configuration around the table, Jack and Stella, Ruth and Nelson, makes it almost seem as if they are a couple. She has never been out to dinner with Nelson and it is unlikely that she ever will again. So she enjoys looking at him across the table, she likes the fact that she and Nelson have some shared history to relate (they tell the story of the Iron Age body on the Saltmarsh, the discovery that first drew them together), she relishes the moment when, after repairing to the drawing room, they sit together on the sofa drinking brandy.

Irene has gone to bed. ‘She sleeps downstairs; it’s easier for her these days.’ Stella, after checking on her mother-in-law, comes into the room with coffee in little gold cups, chocolates, coloured sugar.

‘Blimey,’ says Ruth, who has had rather a lot to drink, ‘do you eat like this every night?’

She sees Nelson smiling into his brandy.

‘We try to eat in the dining room at least once a week,’ says Hastings. ‘It’s a shame to let standards drop entirely.’

‘But most of the time we huddle round the kitchen table,’ says Stella. ‘Jack reads the paper and I listen to the radio. That’s why it’s nice to have guests.’

‘Do you entertain a lot?’ asks Nelson. He says ‘entertain’ like it’s a foreign word.

‘Not really.’ There’s a twinkle in Stella’s eye as she passes round the cups. ‘Jack’s fallen out with most of the neighbours, you see.’

‘Really, Stella! That’s not true.’

‘I can’t stand most of my neighbours,’ says Nelson. ‘But the wife still insists on asking them round.’

It’s the first time he has mentioned Michelle. At least he didn’t say her name, thinks Ruth.

‘You should be master in your own home, my dear fellow,’ says Hastings.

‘That’s easier said than done,’ says Nelson. ‘I’m outnumbered. I’ve got two daughters, you see.’ He looks at Ruth and away again. ‘They gang up on me.’

‘Clara could always twist Jack round her little finger,’ says Stella. ‘You’ve got all this to come, Ruth.’

Ruth smiles stiffly.

‘I don’t mind being outnumbered,’ says Nelson. ‘I haven’t been first in the bathroom for over fifteen years. It’s hard, though, when they grow up.’

Stella nods, her blue eyes warm. ‘You’re so right, Harry. I remember when Alastair left home I was bereft. I kept wandering into his room and crying. It was the same with Giles and Clara. That’s why I’m glad that Clara’s come back to us for a bit.’

‘She’ll soon be off again,’ says Hastings. ‘She’s thinking seriously about the TEFL course.’

‘You must be proud of her,’ says Ruth. She thinks it’s about time she said something.

‘Oh we are,’ says Stella. ‘She hasn’t had it easy. School was difficult. I was so pleased that she made it to university and got a good degree. I just hope that this latest thing…’ Her voice trails off. The logs hiss in the fire. In the hall, a clock strikes.

‘Midnight,’ says Nelson. ‘I must be for my bed.’

‘Me too,’ says Ruth and blushes. Nelson grins at her.

‘Don’t mind us, ha ha,’ Jack Hastings is quick to enlarge on the joke.

‘Really, Jack,’ says Stella mildly. ‘I’ll show you to your room, Ruth. It’s in the tower. Yours is the one above, Harry. It’s got its own bathroom so you can make up for all those years of missing out.’

Clara’s room is comfortable and untidy. Because it’s in the tower it has curved walls and nothing quite fits. The bed juts out into the middle of the room, cupboards and bookcases stand awkwardly against the rounded walls. It was obviously once Clara’s childhood bedroom – there is a rocking horse grinning in the corner and a pile of teddy bears on the widow seat. Equally obviously, it has been recently decorated, with blameless sprigged wallpaper and curtains held back with little bows. Ruth goes to the window and looks out. Far below is the sea. It looks wrong to see snow on the beach, like a negative, the black waves breaking on the white shore. Far off, she can see a flashing light. It’s probably on the coast road but it makes her think of the lighthouse and the days when its beam would have shone out, warning sailors off the jagged rocks. At the foot of the tower there is a narrow line of snow before the land drops away. The garden and the summer house have disappeared forever. Ruth thinks of the night when the Germans landed, the shots in the dark, the little boy watching from the window. Perhaps this same window? She shivers.

She washes in the bathroom, a thin slice taken out of the room. Stella has lent her a nightdress but it’s floor-length and frilly and she doesn’t want to wear it. (‘Why?’ she asks herself sternly. ‘Who will see it?’) Instead, she keeps on her T-shirt and knickers. She is appalled to find herself stealing some of Clara’s perfume. She doesn’t know what she is thinking of. She and Nelson said a very brief goodnight in the hall. She won’t see him again until morning. She puts her phone on the bedside table, wishing she could ring home again. But Clara will be asleep. Funny to think of her sleeping in Ruth’s bed and Ruth in hers (though Clara insisted that she would be comfortable on the sofa). When she last spoke to Clara, Tatjana wasn’t home. She has obviously decided to stay the night in Norwich.

Ruth sighs. She feels twitchier than ever, every nerve strung up to snapping point. How is she ever going to get to sleep? She fetches a glass of water from the bathroom. Perhaps she’s just a bit drunk. But slow sipping doesn’t help. She goes to the bookcase. She’ll read until she drops off. Clara is nothing if not eclectic in her tastes: law textbooks, Dickens, Jilly Cooper, Agatha Christie. Ruth thinks of Archie and his crime novels. What made him think of that elaborate code? And why leave it to Maria, whose English, according to Nelson, isn’t that good? Perhaps that was a way to ensure that the film would never be found – a way of honouring his promise to Hugh but protecting the memory of the troop. And who, she wonders suddenly, was the third person who knew the secret? The person Hugh mentioned in the film. Presumably he too is dead by now.

Ruth takes out a copy of Riders; she loves books about horses. But as she does so she dislodges a small, leather-bound book that has been lying on top of Jilly Cooper’s epic. It is a diary.

She knows she shouldn’t open it. She knows that. She has no right to read Clara’s private diary. It would be the worst possible invasion of privacy. She should just put it back on the shelf.

Ruth opens the diary.

I hate his wife, she reads. I want to kill him for deceiving me.

Ruth stops reading. Clutching the book, she goes to the window. The snow has stopped. Sea’s End House lies under a cloak of silence; everything is muffled, enclosed, secret. The roads will be treacherous. Ruth is miles away from home. Clara is looking after her baby. She hears Clara’s voice, on the night of the naming day party. I was expelled from two schools.

Why was she expelled?

She hears Stella. She hasn’t had it easy. School was difficult.

Why was school difficult?

On an impulse, Ruth goes to the bedside table and starts looking through the drawers. In the third drawer, she finds what she is looking for.

A pair of dress-making scissors.