THE HOUSE AT SEA’S END (15 page)

‘What is the baby’s full name?’ he asks in his Druid voice, echoey and impressive.

‘Kate,’ says Ruth. ‘Kate Scarlet.’

She looks at Nelson and finds, to her horror, that she can’t look away. Only the two of them know the significance of the name though, to judge by Judy’s sudden start, some of the others might guess. Scarlet Henderson, the little girl involved in the abduction case that first drew Ruth and Nelson together.

For a full minute, Ruth and Nelson stare at each other across the flames. Then, to Ruth’s relief, Cathbad starts speaking again.

‘May the gods keep this child pure and perfect, and let anything that is negative stay far beyond her world.’

He puts his finger in the olive oil and gently touches Kate’s forehead. Ruth watches him closely to check that he doesn’t trace any sinister symbol on her, but no, it’s just a touch. Then, he puts his finger in the wine and places a drop on Kate’s lips. She smiles. Her mother’s daughter.

‘May you always have good fortune,’ intones Cathbad, ‘may you always have good health, may you always be joyful, and may you always have love in your heart.’

Once again, Ruth looks at Nelson. He is staring into the fire.

‘You are known to the gods and to us as Kate Scarlet. This is your name, and it is powerful. Bear your name with honour, and may the gods bless you on this and every day.’ He passes the wine to Ruth. ‘Drink and pass on.’

He then addresses the wider circle. ‘As you drink, say aloud: “I honour you, Kate Scarlet.”‘

Ruth takes a sip. The wine rushes to her head like whisky. ‘I honour you, Kate Scarlet,’ she croaks. She passes the cup to Shona who takes an enthusiastic gulp. ‘I honour you, Kate Scarlet,’ she says, her voice loud and clear. She passes the cup on to Dieter.

‘I honour you, Kate Scarlet,’ he bows slightly.

‘I honour you, Kate Scarlet,’ echoes Clara.

‘I honour you, Kate Scarlet.’ Clough sounds as if he is laughing.

‘I honour you, Kate Scarlet.’ Trace is expressionless.

‘I honour you, Kate Scarlet.’ Tatjana, putting the stress on the ‘you’.

‘I honour you, Kate Scarlet,’ Ted booms as loudly as Cathbad himself.

‘I honour you, Kate Scarlet.’ Judy’s voice is soft.

‘I honour you, Kate Scarlet.’ Phil’s self-conscious mumble.

‘I honour you, Kate Scarlet.’ Freya’s fervent whisper.

Michelle takes the cup with complete self-possession. ‘I honour you, Kate Scarlet.’ Nelson takes the wine. His lips move but no-one hears any words. The flames have risen so that Ruth cannot see his face.

Cathbad replaces the cup on the table. ‘Can I have her?’ he asks Ruth. Rather reluctantly Ruth hands over the bundle in the blue snow suit. Cathbad holds the baby up to the night sky. ‘Welcome, Kate Scarlet. We ask the gods to watch over you and over your father and mother.’ He turns to Ruth, smiling. ‘That’s it.’

Numbly, Ruth follows Cathbad back into the house. Why did he say that about father and mother? Does he suspect something or did he just download the whole thing from paganceremonies.co.uk? That’s the trouble with Cathbad, you never know how much is airy-fairy spiritual stuff and how much is good old-fashioned stirring. Did the other guests suspect anything? She doesn’t think any of them were listening very hard – they all had the slightly glazed expression of people in church. Nelson will have noticed though, she’s sure of that.

Kate has fallen asleep and Ruth is glad to escape upstairs and put her to bed. She takes off Kate’s snow suit and puts her, still dressed in her babygro, into her cot, under the blanket knitted by Ruth’s mother. What would Ruth’s parents make of the ceremony around the fire? In all probability,
they’d be searching for their bell, book and candle at the first sight of the fire or the oil or the cup of wine.

But when Ruth goes downstairs and starts talking to Judy over the remains of the punch, Judy says, ‘It reminded me of the Catholic mass. You know, sharing the wine and all that.’

Ruth wonders if the analogy also occurred to Nelson who, like Judy, was brought up a Catholic.

‘Are you getting married in a Catholic church?’ she asks.

Judy grimaces. ‘Yes. The full nuptial mass. Darren’s a Catholic too. We met at school.’

‘It must be nice,’ says Ruth, ‘knowing someone that well.’

Judy fishes a slice of orange out of the punch and eats it meditatively. ‘It is nice. I mean, we’ve got the same memories, the same friends. Our families all know each other.’ She laughs. ‘I can’t help wondering what it would be like to go to bed with someone you hardly know. God, I must be drunk.’

Ruth thinks of a dark night, a terrible discovery, an unknown body moving against hers.

‘It may be exciting,’ she says, ‘but I think the best thing must be to go to bed with someone who knows every inch of your body.’

‘Sounds fun.’

Ruth whirls round to find Nelson standing behind her. She knows she is blushing like a bonfire.

‘This is women’s talk,’ says Judy.

‘So I gathered. We’re off, Ruth. Thanks for a … well, thanks.’

‘Have you spoken to Dieter? About the bodies?’

‘We had a quick chat. He seems a bit preoccupied now.’

Ruth glances over to the sofa where Dieter and Clara are still nose to nose, his hand brushing the back of her neck.

‘Is that Jack Hastings’ daughter?’ asks Nelson.

Ruth nods.

‘Wonder what he’ll think about her snogging a German?’

‘Don’t mention the war,’ warns Ruth.

‘Right. Well, goodbye.’ He leans towards her as if he is about to kiss her cheek but, at the last minute, veers away again. Michelle swoops over and enfolds Ruth in a scented embrace.

‘We must meet up very soon,’ she says.

‘What on earth does she see in him?’ says Judy, as the door closes behind the Nelsons.

‘His sparkling personality?’

‘Hardly.’

Now Tatjana is ladling away at the punch.

‘That man, Nelson,’ she says, ‘he is very attractive.’

Judy snorts and turns away to talk to Cathbad.

‘Do you think so?’ says Ruth.

‘Yes,’ says Tatjana dreamily. ‘He is very powerful, very dark. I think he has a secret.’

Ruth looks at her sharply but Tatjana is staring into the punchbowl. In the kitchen Ted and Clough have started singing. ‘I wanna be near you. You’re the one, the one for me.’

Tatjana shoots a sidelong glance at Ruth. ‘I think I felt a spark though.’

‘What?’

‘I think he was attracted to me,’ says Tatjana. ‘I felt it.’

Ruth says nothing. She doesn’t quite know what to make of the new, sexually confident Tatjana. She prefers the quiet girl sitting in the pine forest, drinking wine in defiance of the wolves.

‘He’s married,’ she says at last.

‘And his wife is very beautiful,’ says Tatjana, ‘but not clever enough for him, I think.’

‘I wanna be near you,’ bellow Ted and Clough from the kitchen. ‘You’re the one for me.’

Ruth suddenly feels very tired. She wants to lie down and sleep for a week. Would it be very rude to go to bed and ask the last one out to turn off the lights?

Judy appears at her shoulder. ‘Bye, Ruth. Thanks for a lovely evening.’

‘You’re not driving are you?’ Ruth doesn’t know what was in the punch but she’s betting it was ninety per cent proof.

‘No, Trace is giving me a lift. As soon as she can stop Cloughie singing, that is.’

In the other room, the concert ends abruptly. Not for the first time, Ruth envies Trace’s natural authority.

‘You must come on my hen night,’ says Judy. ‘It’s a week on Saturday. I’m dreading it.’

‘Why do you want me to come then?’ laughs Ruth. ‘So I can dread it too?’

‘I need someone on my side.’ Judy turns politely to Tatjana who is still standing by the punch. ‘You must come too. A fine English tradition for you.’

‘I’d love to,’ says Tatjana, much to Ruth’s surprise.

Ted also cadges a lift with Trace, leaving Cathbad, Ruth, Freya and Tatjana to start to clear away plates and eat the
last of the crisps. Phil and Shona left shortly after the ceremony and Dieter and Clara seem to have disappeared.

‘That was an interesting experience,’ Tatjana is saying to Cathbad.

‘It’s important,’ says Cathbad, ‘to introduce the baby to the household guardians.’

Tatjana stacks glasses neatly in the sink.

‘So, Cathbad,’ she says, ‘how long have you been a devil worshipper?’

The next morning Nelson drives to work in a sombre frame of mind. Last night felt like one of those weirdly scientific Japanese tortures designed to discover how much one person could stand in a short space of time. He prides himself on his self control but there are easier things in life than watching your wife hold your illegitimate baby. And what was Cathbad playing at around the fire? Nelson is sure that when he said the words, ‘we ask the gods to watch over you and over your father and mother’, Cathbad looked straight at him. Does Cathbad know that Nelson is Kate’s father? Before she was born Cathbad overheard something which may have given him a clue and Nelson has no doubt at all that he has remembered, word for word. Cathbad is also well in with all the university lot – maybe Ruth has confided in Shona or even that slimy Phil. Christ, probably everyone at UNN knows by now – Nelson’s hands are wet on the steering wheel. If so, it’s only a matter of time before Michelle finds out.

Michelle likes Ruth. She wants to help her. ‘She doesn’t know the first thing about looking after a baby’ she told a
decidedly twitchy Nelson on her return from a visit to Ruth and the new-born Kate. ‘I caught her reading today.’ ‘
Reading?
’ echoed Nelson, rather wildly. ‘Yes, she was feeding Kate and reading some old archaeology book.’ ‘What’s wrong with that?’ Michelle had laughed. ‘When you have a baby you don’t have time for reading. Not if you’re doing it properly.’ Was Ruth doing it properly? She doesn’t quite look comfortable with a baby, the way Michelle does. Ruth still holds Kate slightly warily, as if she might explode, but she seems to do all the right things and, sometimes, she looks at Kate with an expression that makes Nelson’s heart ache. And she talks to the baby all the time, even if she does address the five-month-old like one of her postgraduates. ‘We’re going outside now, Kate. You might find it a bit cold at first but that’s just the contrast with inside …’

No, to Nelson’s anxious eye, Ruth seems to be doing just fine. He’d worried about her going back to work but the childminder seems competent (unknown to Ruth, Nelson has run a third check on Sandra) and he knows that, as he’s hardly in a position to help her openly, Ruth needs the money. He has offered to give her some money every month (he’d tell Michelle it was a retirement scheme or something) but Ruth refused. ‘I want to do this on my own,’ she said. A statement which, though courageous and admirable in many ways, nevertheless fills Nelson with dread.

When it comes down to it, does he have any rights at all where Kate is concerned? None at all, says a lawyer whom he has secretly consulted. ‘If your name isn’t on the birth certificate, you’re no-one.’ Nelson has never seen Kate’s birth certificate but he’s betting it’s ‘father unknown’. Ruth could
do anything – emigrate, join a commune, refuse to send Kate to school – and he couldn’t do a thing about it. Jesus, she’s already had a pagan christening service. His mother would turn in her grave (the shock of Kate’s parentage would have killed her). When Cathbad put the oil on Kate’s forehead Nelson had surprised himself by how strongly he wanted Cathbad, anyone, to trace the sign of the cross there.
I baptise you in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Once a Catholic, as they say. And Kate Scarlet! Why had Ruth done that? Even today, when he thinks of the name Scarlet, he feels as if his heart will break.

By the time he reaches the station he is sunk in gloom and the sight of Whitcliffe waiting for him in his office does nothing to cheer him up. He knows that Whitcliffe won’t have dropped in for a cosy chat about his promotion prospects.

Whitcliffe is holding a piece of paper. When he sees Nelson he strides forward and thrusts the paper into his face.

‘What is the meaning of this?’

Nelson has never known his boss so angry. Normally Whitcliffe keeps his distance and speaks in a light monotone. Now he is eyeball to eyeball with Nelson, his face red, his voice, in which the Norfolk accent has suddenly come to the fore, choked with fury. In an odd way, for the first time, Nelson almost likes the man. But he knows he must be careful, very careful.

‘What do you mean, sir?’ He throws in the ‘sir’ to appease Whitcliffe.

‘Mean? I mean this!’ Whitcliffe waves the paper again. Nelson backs away slightly.

‘What is it?’ Though he knows very well.

‘How dare you … how
dare
you ask for an autopsy on my grandfather.’

‘I had good reasons, sir,’ says Nelson stolidly.

They glare at each other. Whitcliffe is still breathing heavily but his colour has faded and, when he speaks, his voice is almost back to RP.

‘Perhaps you’d be good enough to share your
reasoning
with me.’

‘Why don’t we sit down?’ Nelson attempts a soothing tone and feels as if he has scored a point, especially when Whitcliffe takes the subordinate’s chair and allows him to take his place behind his own desk. But, as soon as they are seated, Whitcliffe returns to the attack.

‘How dared you do this, Harry. Behind my back.’

‘I’m the officer in charge of the investigation,’ says Nelson. ‘I followed procedure. I contacted the coroner’s office and copied you in. Otherwise you wouldn’t have known,’ he adds.

‘I know everything that goes on round here,’ spits Whitcliffe. Nelson hopes this isn’t true.

‘Look – er – sir … I know this is difficult for you—’

‘Difficult!’ Whitcliffe looks ready to explode.

‘Your grandfather is dead and, naturally, you’re upset. But I have reasons to suspect that death was not by natural causes.’

‘I’ll be fascinated to hear them,’ says Whitcliffe nastily.

‘The day before your grandfather died,’ says Nelson, ‘Detective Sergeant Johnson and I interviewed him about the bodies found at Broughton Sea’s End. I asked him if he
remembered anything from his time with the Home Guard. His words were: “If I knew anything I wouldn’t tell you. I took a blood oath.”‘