Dying Fall, A (12 page)

‘Sam Elliot? No, he’s a modern history man. He was great friends with Dan though. Devastated at his death. Well, we all were.’

Anything less devastated than the laughing, champagneswilling crowd in the marquee would be hard to imagine. Still, Ruth supposes that they were upset at the time.

She takes another mouthful of salmon. The food is really delicious, though this hasn’t stopped Kate picking all the spring onions out of the salad and putting them on Ruth’s plate. Now Kate is feeding cocktail sausages to the dog.

‘Don’t,’ says Ruth. ‘It might make him sick.’

‘It won’t,’ says Clayton. ‘He eats what he likes. Spoilt little beggar.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Willoughby. Don’t blame me. It was Pippa’s idea.’

‘It’s a great name,’ says Ruth. ‘We met a dog called Thing the other day.’

‘Thing,’ repeats Kate, patting Willoughby on his curly top-knot.

‘How old is she?’ asks Clayton.

‘Nearly two,’ says Ruth. ‘Do you have children?’

‘Sadly not,’ says Clayton, looking anything but sad. ‘I’ve got a stepdaughter, though, Chloe. She’s away at uni at the moment but I’m a doting dad, I promise you.’

So Pippa was married before. Ruth tries, and fails, to imagine the path that led her to Clayton Henry. She also wonders what happened to Chloe’s father if Clayton can refer to himself as ‘Dad’. Maybe he died and Clayton provided a shoulder to cry on. It’s hard to imagine any other circumstances in which the affable, but distinctly rotund, Clayton would end up with the beautiful Pippa. Still, there’s no doubt that they look happy together and the house is fantastic (she’s had the tour). Cathbad had been delighted to discover that it was built on the site of an old plague pit. He’s probably off somewhere now, communing with the unquiet spirits. She hasn’t seen him for ages.

‘Must be hard,’ says Clayton. ‘Combining motherhood with work. How do you and Cathbad manage?’

She really must get this straight. ‘We’re not together,’ she says. ‘We’re just friends. Cathbad isn’t Kate’s father.’

‘Oh . . .’ Clayton looks intrigued, his eyes bright, but Ruth has no intention of saying any more.

‘I’m looking forward to seeing the bones on Monday,’ she says.

Clayton shudders. ‘You forensics girls are always so bloodthirsty.’

Ruth is annoyed at being called a girl. ‘I hardly think there’ll be any blood,’ she says coldly.

‘No. Just a pile of dry bones,’ says Clayton. ‘But you can tell everything from bones these days, can’t you?’

‘I wouldn’t say that,’ says Ruth cautiously. ‘Accuracy of tests vary. Carbon 14 tests can be out by as much as hundreds of years. They can be affected by sun spots, solar flares, nuclear testing—things like that. Isotopic analysis should be able to tell us where the individual was born, judging by the chemicals present in the bones.’

‘And how accurate is that?’

‘Usually pretty accurate. Analysis of calcified tissue gives a good indication of the palaeodiet.’

‘Paleo what?’

‘What the individual ate,’ explains Ruth, adding a cheese roulade to her palaeodiet. ‘By using oxygen isotope analysis we can get information on diet which can then point to the region where this man or woman originated and perhaps where they spent their last years.’

‘Why do you say “or woman”? Dan was pretty sure it was a man.’

‘I’m sure he was,’ says Ruth. ‘It’s just . . . I was caught out that way myself once.’

Clayton laughs. ‘Be a great thing if King Arthur turned out to be a woman. It’d make the papers all over the world. The feminists would love us. I’d be rich.’ He corrects himself. ‘The university would be rich.’

Ruth thinks that he sounds rather bitter. She remembers what he said about the department being unpopular, about not being able to attract students. She says, rather diffidently, ‘You said the department wasn’t very profitable.’

‘My dear girl,’ says Clayton. ‘We’re in desperate straits. Absolutely stony broke. But a big find could change everything. The publicity would mean everything to us. And I’m not going to keep this quiet, whatever anyone says.’ He looks quite steely as he says this and, for the first time, Ruth sees the head of department as someone to be reckoned with.

‘Who wants it kept quiet?’ she asks.

‘Oh, no one important.’ The breezy host is back. Clayton leans back in his chair and gestures to a waiter, who immediately fills his glass before turning to Ruth. ‘No thanks,’ she says hastily. As Cathbad has disappeared, she assumes that she’s doing the driving. Clayton raises his brimming glass to her.

‘We’re counting on you, Ruth,’ he says, jovially. ‘If you confirm that the bones are . . . who we hope they are . . . then I’m saved. We’re all saved. You really do hold the future of the department in your hands.’

After lunch, Clayton makes a little speech, full of in-jokes and many references to the Dean (Gail Shires) who isn’t present. Ruth gathers that Ms Shires is not a fan of the history department, also that the feeling is reciprocated. She is starting to feel tired and wishes they could go home. She has switched to orange juice as the last time she saw Cathbad he was in the conservatory with Pippa and several other gilt-edged women, holding forth on exorcism, glass brimming. Despite herself, she feels rather resentful. She wanted Cathbad to enjoy himself but not to become a fully fledged member of Clayton’s beautiful people. He might really be her husband, the way he’s taking her for granted.

Grumpily she takes Kate back to the bouncy castle and watches her falling about. The motion of the giant pink mushroom is starting to make Ruth feel slightly sick.

‘Look, Mum!’

‘I am looking.’

‘Hello. Ruth, isn’t it?’

Ruth swings round and finds herself facing the Brideshead man, Guy Whatsit. Like Elaine, he isn’t as glamorous close up. Although the day isn’t exactly torrid, he is sweating heavily and his white shirt is sticking to his back.

‘We didn’t get a chance to chat earlier,’ he says, smiling charmingly. Only because your girlfriend seemed hellbent on insulting me, thinks Ruth. She doesn’t smile back.

‘I was a great friend of Dan’s,’ says Guy, wiping his brow with one of Clayton’s linen napkins.

Another one, thinks Ruth. She must remember to ask Caz if any of these so-called friends were at his funeral.

‘I worked very closely with Dan on the Ribchester dig,’ says Guy. ‘It was really a joint project.’

The hell it was, thinks Ruth. She remembers Dan’s words in his letter.
I’ve made a discovery.
No mention of anyone else. Ruth is as sure as if she had been present at the excavation that this find was Dan’s alone, his personal discovery.

‘So,’ Guy is saying, ‘if you find anything, anything interesting, and want to discuss it with someone . . .’

I’ll ring Max, Ruth vows silently. Aloud, she says, ‘Clayton tells me you’re a graduate student.’

‘Yes,’ Guy stiffens slightly, recognising the challenge in her words. ‘But Dan treated me as an equal, we were always bouncing ideas off each other.’

Before Ruth can answer, Kate does her own bouncing, falling heavily on her face. She bursts into tears. Ruth gathers her up. ‘She’s tired,’ she says, over Kate’s head. ‘I’d better take her home. Have you seen Cathbad anywhere? My . . . er . . . friend?’

‘He must be inside,’ says Guy. ‘I’ll come with you.’ This is the last thing Ruth wants but she can hardly protest. Carrying a still sobbing Kate, she allows Guy to shepherd her through the French windows.

In the conservatory, she finds Cathbad attempting to find ley lines using a barbeque fork as a dowsing stick and Elaine in floods of tears, weeping on the shoulder of a very embarrassed Sam Elliot.

Cathbad and Kate sleep all the way home. Ruth winds her way through the unfamiliar roads accompanied only by gentle snoring. That’s the last time she’s going to a party with Cathbad.

The barbeque had not been without its compensations though. She has, at least, met some friends of Dan’s. But were they really his friends? She can imagine Dan getting on with Sam but is not so sure about Guy, with his cricket flannels and claims of joint projects. But then again, how well did she really know Dan? She hadn’t seen him for twenty years. People can change a lot in that time; she knows she has. Maybe Dan was best friends with Guy and spent many a happy evening bouncing ideas around with him. She just knows that if the bones yield any great surprises Guy won’t be the first person she rings. And what about Elaine (such a sweetie), where does she fit in? And why was she crying at the end of the party? Is she Guy’s girlfriend or Sam’s? Oh well, the tangled love lives in the history department are nothing to do with her, thank God.

And why are the bones being held at a private forensics laboratory? Clayton gave her the address as she left. Why weren’t the bones kept at Pendle? Clayton mentioned a strong-room, and surely with all those science departments there must be a few laboratories going spare? She knows that the police are using private forensics firms more and more but surely this isn’t a police case? These bones are hundreds of years old, there’s no need for an inquest. She wonders again who it was that wanted the investigation kept quiet.

Back at Lytham, Cathbad goes straight to bed. Kate, though, is awake and inclined to be grouchy. Ruth decides to take her for a walk to the windmill. It’s seven o’clock but a mild evening and at this rate Kate won’t be asleep for hours.

Their progress, without the pushchair, is painfully slow, but when they reach the promenade, Kate cheers up and runs towards the windmill. It looks very different from Clayton Henry’s carefully restored home, thinks Ruth, following more slowly. This windmill, although obviously scenic, is still workmanlike, standing sturdily on its patch of grass, looking out to sea, its black sails intact. Clayton’s home had been a wonder of glass and exposed wood, old and new artfully combined, with a minstrel’s gallery and an observatory at the top, where the sails had been. How could a professor in a failing department afford a home like that? Ruth wishes there was someone she could ask. Not for the first time, she imagines chatting to Dan about his colleagues, forgetting that if Dan were here she wouldn’t be.

Her phone bleeps. Probably Cathbad, wondering where they are. Kate runs up to her and Ruth hoists her onto her hip, clicking on Messages with her free hand.

But it’s not Cathbad. It’s her mystery friend again.

‘If u know what’s good for you,’
runs the text,
‘stay away from the bones.’

Ruth stands still for so long that Kate becomes bored and scrambles down. Is this message from someone who was at the party? Someone who, only a few hours ago, she was chatting to by the bouncy castle? How many people know that she’s going to see the bones on Monday? What
is
the mystery about Dan’s discovery? Something or someone is responsible for Dan’s fears, Clayton’s bluster, maybe even Elaine’s tears. But what or who? She knows she should ring Nelson. Someone is threatening her and, by implication, Kate. But she shrinks from Nelson knowing that she has followed him to Lancashire. The texter is probably just a nutcase. None of the preening figures at the barbeque struck her as dangerous exactly. Nevertheless, she shivers in the mild evening air and, gathering up her daughter, walks home without looking back.

Sunday in Lytham has a beguiling, Fifties feel to it. Cathbad, Ruth and Kate stroll in the park, eating ice creams and watching the world go by. Pensioners are playing bowls and children are shrieking from the swings. They walk past brilliantly clashing flowerbeds and a curious metal fountain in the shape of a man holding what looks like a rake.

‘Funny, isn’t it,’ Cathbad says. ‘Sunday has a different atmosphere from other days, even if you don’t go to church.’

‘I know what you mean,’ says Ruth. She has noticed this herself, even in her house where the only sign of the Lord’s Day is the omnibus edition of
The Archers.
She thinks of her parents, who will often spend all of Sunday in church. It seemed a joyless thing to her when she was growing up, but lately, she has been thinking more charitably about her parents’ faith. It keeps them off the streets at any rate.

‘Did you go to church as a child?’ she asks Cathbad as they stop at a cafe overlooking the bowling green. Cathbad orders tea for himself and Ruth. He still looks slightly delicate after yesterday. Ruth wipes Kate’s face and hands. She even has ice cream on her neck.

‘Of course I did,’ he says. ‘I was brought up in Ireland and we all went to Mass every Sunday.’

‘I’d forgotten you were Irish,’ says Ruth. The tea comes in a proper pot with thick china cups.

‘I’m Celtic through and through,’ says Cathbad. After a pause he says, ‘She was a great character, my mammy. I wish you could have met her. I thought of her when Pendragon was telling us about Dame Alice.’

‘Why?’ asks Ruth, surprised. Kate, who loves the word, repeats ‘Pendragon’ in a whisper.

Cathbad grins. ‘In olden days Mam would have been called a witch. Oh, she was a good Catholic but she thought you could mix praying to the Virgin with making spells and no harm done. Everyone knew if you had a problem Bridget Malone was the person you went to.’

‘Is she still alive?’ asks Ruth. It’s funny but she has never thought of asking Cathbad about his family. She has never really thought of him as having a family.

‘No.’ Cathbad looks away, towards the white-coated figures on the green. ‘She died when I was sixteen.’

‘What about your dad?’

‘I never knew him. Mam never talked about him. Of course, that was a real scandal in our village, Bridget Malone having a baby with no man in sight. But she toughed it out, never said a word about it, just went about her business as usual. My gran was a big support to her, I know. She was another amazing woman. I lived with her after Mam died—before I went away to college.’

No wonder you like the company of women, thinks Ruth. She knew that Cathbad did a chemistry degree (presumably in Ireland) and then went on to study archaeology at Manchester under Erik. At some point he acquired a daughter. Beyond that, he is a blank. Almost as if he is the semi-mystical figure he pretends to be.