Burial of Ghosts Read online

  Suddenly the stuff Dickon had told me made sense. That was why Philip had been sympathetic to Ronnie. It explained the dens in the woods and the campfires. Boys’ games. Even if Ronnie had had a difficult time as a soldier, he’d need to feel proud of some of it. The friendships, perhaps, the skills he’d learned. There’d have to be some good memories or he’d go under altogether. It was something I was starting to realize for myself.

  I was about to rattle on about post-traumatic stress. Ask if Ronnie had arranged counselling, tell her that even the army recognizes it as an illness now. I did a special study at college, so I’m pretty clued up. And of course since then I’ve had personal experience. I knew about flashbacks and panic attacks. I knew exactly what he was going through. I’d always thought we had something in common. Was it the Falklands? I was going to say. The Gulf? I’d read up on the conflicts, knew more about them than other people my age. I saw Ronnie in a different light. Not just as someone screwed up and desperately shy, but as a bit of a hero.

  But before I had a chance to show off she started to speak again. ‘It wasn’t the British army. That would have been easier. He could have asked for help. He did start the training, but he couldn’t finish. Not his fault.’

  Was anything his fault? I wanted to ask. But I had the sense not to interrupt.

  ‘So he worked abroad,’ she said. ‘There’s an agency . . .’

  Still I didn’t get it.

  ‘. . . run by former British officers. They provide assistance in conflicts when the government can’t be seen to be involved.’

  ‘He was a mercenary!’ That time I couldn’t help it. I was shocked. He’d always seemed too gentle for his own good. I’d imagined him bullied by an overcontrolling wife. And I thought I was a good judge of character. I couldn’t imagine him peddling violence.

  ‘No.’ She sounded shocked too. ‘He was an idealist. He thought he was helping. Anyway, he didn’t work for them for too long. It affected him too deeply.’

  Just long enough to get the cash for the garage, I thought, and wondered what the Methodist Wives would have made of his past.

  ‘It took some time before he could trust me to talk about it,’ Kay said. ‘He’s a private man, very reserved. Perhaps he comes across as unfriendly. I know my mother and father couldn’t warm to him, but their judgement is suspect at times.’

  ‘Has he ever tried to get professional help?’

  She shook her head. ‘He’s too proud. He says it wouldn’t help anyway, to relive those experiences. He needs to believe he’s in control.’

  ‘And is he?’ I asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Does he still have nightmares?’

  ‘Not so often. Not nearly so often.’

  ‘What about the other symptoms? The fits of anger, the depression, the sleeplessness.’

  ‘Things improved when Thomas left home.’ It was a terrible admission for her to make. ‘He provoked Ronnie. He didn’t understand. Ronnie wouldn’t let me explain. As I’ve told you, he saw the illness as something he had to deal with alone.’

  Not really alone, I thought. He drew you into it. You and Thomas and the kids.

  ‘Getting involved in the campaign with the Countryside Consortium helped. It was something he could get passionate about. It stopped him thinking quite so much about himself. He was good at the outdoor work. People recognized that and it gave him confidence.’

  ‘Wasn’t it awkward for you to think about him and Philip Samson becoming friends?’

  ‘What do you mean? Philip was a lovely man. He was so busy before he was ill, rushing round the globe for the television programmes and new commissions, but he still found time for Ronnie. It was a tragedy when he died. It shook us all.’

  She was convincing all right. I thought she’d spent so long blocking out the knowledge that Philip was Thomas’s father that she’d almost conned herself. I stared at her. She was still sitting on the little table, but she had her head bowed and her hands clasped like someone praying. Perhaps she was. She didn’t look up.

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  She raised her head. For a moment it seemed she’d forgotten where she was. I wondered if she was remembering Philip as a student, the irresponsible passion of that spring twenty years before. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘I know that Philip Samson was Thomas’s father.’

  ‘Where on earth did you get that idea from?’ She looked at me as if I’d made a joke in poor taste. Some instinct of self-preservation stopped me telling her. From Philip. That’s why I came to your house before Thomas’s death. Philip wanted to trace him. Instead I said, ‘Isn’t it true, then?’

  ‘Of course it’s not true. I’d never met Philip before Ronnie started going to the Countryside Consortium meetings, and I never knew him well. Ronnie met him at one of Joanna’s social evenings and they seemed to get on. The closest I’d got to him before then was through seeing him on the television.’

  I believed her. If it wasn’t true, she was way ahead in the Dan Meech school of acting. I was still trying to get my head round the implications of it when she started talking, pouring out a story which had been bottled up all that time, which she’d never told anyone, not Ronnie or her mother or her son.

  ‘I was young,’ she said. ‘Naïve. I wasn’t like the young girls today, who are brought up to see sex wherever they look. If I led him on, I didn’t know what I was doing. I’ve gone over and over it in my head. I feel it was my fault but I don’t see how it could have been. I was still a child. Not legally perhaps, but in every way it matters. He was old enough to be my father. He was the responsible person.

  ‘I used to baby-sit. Mum and Dad arranged it. We’ve fixed you up a little extra job. Proud as punch, not so much for me, but because they could do a favour for a smart friend. And I enjoyed going there at first. It was a treat to spend time in the big house. There was a freezer with a box of choc-ices and I was allowed to help myself. That shows you how sophisticated I was! I’d put the children to bed, switch on the television and eat ice cream and it was my idea of a good night out. Afterwards I’d get a lift home in the car with the leather seats and the radio. In my memory Frank Sinatra’s always on the radio. “Fly Me To The Moon”. It can’t always have been playing, but that’s what I remember. You know the tune?’

  I nodded, but she didn’t really expect a response. It had taken me a moment to concentrate on what she was saying, but now I was hooked. It’s like when you know the end of a story but you don’t know how it’s going to get there. That’s still exciting, isn’t it? And there was something mesmerizing about watching this woman who was usually so controlled and self-protective suddenly letting go, just telling it as it came to her, desperate to get it right.

  ‘The policeman, Inspector Farrier, asked me about Thomas’s father,’ she said, ‘and I didn’t tell him. I couldn’t. Not even when it might have helped him track down the killer. I was too ashamed. Not by what I’d done, but that I could be so stupid. Can you believe it? I was afraid that they’d laugh at me, so I kept quiet.’

  She was wearing a calf-length cotton dress with a flower print. It had small covered buttons at the neck and the wrist. She looked very prim and schoolmistressy, literally buttoned up. But she was shaking with anger at herself and the man who’d taken advantage of her.

  ‘He had a wife. That made him safe. I thought that and so did my parents. I didn’t like the wife as much. She wasn’t friendly to me. When he tried to press me with gifts or persuade me to stay a bit longer, she’d say, “I expect Kay would rather go home.” Her mouth was pinched with disapproval. I thought it was me she disapproved of, but it wasn’t. It was Mr Pool.’

  She broke off and stared out of the window. I wondered if speaking his name was a big thing for her, the first confession, but it wasn’t that. She hadn’t even realized. She was just reliving it in her head.

  ‘It happened one night when Mrs Pool was at her mother’s. I think there’d been a row. She’d t
aken the children with her. I don’t think he planned it, he wasn’t that devious. I mean, I don’t think he even remembered it was Friday and I always baby-sat on Friday night. When I rang the doorbell he seemed surprised to see me. I’d hate to think he’d set it up. He’d been drinking. I don’t know if that was the cause of the row with his wife or the result of it. I always hated to see Thomas drunk. Perhaps that was why.

  ‘He asked me in. Usually the children were in their pyjamas ready for bed when I arrived and I took them up and tucked them in and read them stories. They’d be waiting for me in the living room. But I saw from the hall that they weren’t there. “Are they in their rooms already?” I asked, and started up the stairs. He followed me. At the top, near the landing, he put his arms around me. I could smell the whisky. He was whispering in my ear. “You’re a lovely girl, Kay. You know I think you’re a lovely girl.” And then he was unbuttoning my blouse.’

  She stopped abruptly. Her arms were folded across her chest. Her mouth was a line. Even today she couldn’t bring herself to describe the details.

  ‘It was rape,’ I said. ‘Not your fault.’

  ‘I could have fought. I’m not even sure if I screamed. It was such a shock. I couldn’t believe it. And I’d been brought up to be polite. It was like a nightmare I was powerless to stop. I thought the scene would run to its end like bad dreams do, and then I’d wake up. But of course I never did.’

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘Harry Pool drove me home. As if nothing had happened.’

  ‘He must have realized that Thomas was his son.’

  ‘I suppose so. We never discussed it. They didn’t ask me to baby-sit again. My mother asked if I’d done something to upset them. I couldn’t tell my parents what had happened. There was this dreadful embarrassment. Harry was my dad’s best friend. Dad admired him. His energy, his enterprise, all the money he made. They wouldn’t have believed me and I didn’t want to make a fuss. And it never dawned on me until too late that I could actually be pregnant.’

  ‘Why did Thomas start working at Harry Pool’s?’

  ‘Harry offered him the job. He made out that he was doing his old mate’s grandson a favour. What could I say? Thomas needed work. I didn’t like it but there wasn’t much I could do.’

  ‘I think Thomas might have found out that Harry was his father. You didn’t tell him?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Does Ronnie know?’

  ‘I never told him,’ she said. ‘But Ronnie has his own ways of digging out information.’

  Chapter Thirty-four

  What happened next was farcical. It was like one of those interludes in Shakespeare when the mood suddenly changes. You know, everything’s really heavy and people are obsessing about statesmanship or death, and then in the next scene you get a couple of clowns or jolly rustics drinking and joking.

  I was thinking through the implications of everything Kay had told me. There was too much to take in all at once. It had never occurred to me that Philip might not be Thomas’s father. Why would he lie? Wasn’t the deathbed the time for truth? And what would be the point? Had it just been a ruse to get me to accept the money? That seemed too elaborate to make sense, and I had to start all over again.

  Perhaps the story hadn’t been invented by Philip at all, but by someone else. It had certainly been his signature on the bottom of the typed sheet. I recognized the handwriting from the letter he’d left me in Marrakech. But there could have been a lot of papers which needed his signature before he died. Legal stuff, drawn up by Stuart Howdon. Perhaps by then Philip had been too ill to read through everything properly. He trusted Stuart. He could have told him about our fling in Morocco. But why would Stuart send me on a wild-goose chase to track down Thomas Mariner? The obvious answer was because he wanted Thomas dead. I just couldn’t work out why. At that point I gave up and turned my attention to Harry Pool.

  So Harry Pool was a bastard who’d assaulted Kay Mariner and got her pregnant. She’d kept the secret for twenty years, demanding nothing of him, trying to pull together a life for herself and her kids. It seemed to me that it had taken more courage than screwed-up Ronnie swanning back from some Third World skirmish with a bag full of money and a few unpleasant dreams. That must sound unsympathetic. Perhaps I should have had more fellow feeling for Ronnie. But his self-obsession irritated me. I was beginning to understand how irritating I must be. Not something it was pleasant to face.

  Harry must have worked out that he was Thomas’s father. No one had ever suggested that he was thick. And when he heard from his old pal Archie that Thomas was going through a bad time, some vestige of conscience made him offer the boy a job. Or more likely it was that male pride again. He couldn’t stand the thought of his son being unemployed. It must have been hard when Thomas left home to live in a hostel with junkies and asylum seekers. Harry wouldn’t have liked that.

  So Thomas started working at the haulage yard. But Pool couldn’t leave it at that. He couldn’t resist telling Thomas they were related. He had to poke the bear. And maybe instead of being all grateful, and full of admiration for Harry’s money and the flash car and the big house, Thomas got angry on his mother’s behalf. Angry and self-righteous. He wrote the letter to Shona Murray, threatening Harry with exposure over whichever racket he was operating – smuggled fuel or smuggled people. Perhaps he even threatened to tell Archie Mariner that his best mate wasn’t a good guy after all. Perhaps that was what led to his death, and Philip and Stuart had nothing to do with it.

  All this was going round in my head as I drove back to Newbiggin. As I’ve said, it was pretty heavy. Tragedy not comedy. Not many laughs. Then when I got back to Sea View it was like walking into a madhouse. Ray and all his mates from the folk club were there drinking home-brewed beer out of old cider bottles and bursting into song every five minutes and generally making prats of themselves.

  Jess had been looking out for me. ‘Lizzie, pet, there you are. You’ve got ten minutes to change before the mini-bus gets here.’

  I must have looked blank.

  ‘The ceilidh, the engagement party. You’ve not forgotten?’

  She looked so disappointed that I lied. ‘Of course not. I’d just not realized there’d be a mini-bus.’

  She beamed. ‘Ray laid it on so we could have a few drinks.’

  ‘Great,’ I said. I had to shout. A fat bearded bloke was sitting on the table and playing a penny whistle in my ear. ‘Great.’

  The lassie who was getting engaged lived on her parents’ farm in the hills and the ceilidh was held in a real barn. I mean, there were stalls down one side and bales of hay, and the sweet smell of cows, but it wasn’t so mucky that I felt uncomfortable. I’m a town girl at heart. I’ve always thought the countryside’s full of things to catch you out – bulls and electric fences and piles of shit.

  The barn was as tall as a church and you could see right up through the rafters to the slate roof. Swallows had nested there. Someone must have been in during the day with a long ladder, because there were bunches of garden flowers tied to the beams and along the wooden railings of the stalls. A low stage built from pallets stood at one end and that’s where the musicians played. There was a young woman with long straight hair on the Northumbrian pipes and two old geezers on guitar and accordion, and often one or two of Ray’s friends joined in. The guests were of all ages. There were elderly couples in their Sunday best and little kids in party clothes. Not many teenagers. Perhaps they’d slink along later when the pubs closed. A shared supper was being laid out. Women ferried in stuff from their cars in relays – bowls of salad and cold meat covered by cling-film, Tupperware boxes of fancy cakes, flans and quiches, and dishes of fruit.

  It all seemed too good to be true. A townie’s dream of country living. The community coming together in celebration, the sort of event the incomers from Newcastle in their barn conversions would brag about to their friends over dinner. And perhaps it was too good to be true. I had the same feeling as
when I’d looked at Joanna’s photos. This was a fiction and we were all colluding in it. People in the country aren’t any nicer than everyone else. They don’t get on any better. But I’m a cynic and why shouldn’t they cover over the cracks to give the young couple a good party? We can tell the story of our lives whichever way we want.

  I had a good time. I’d imagined myself sat against the wall cringing with embarrassment, but once I let go of the crap about Thomas Mariner and had a few drinks, I really started to enjoy myself. Ray’s friends were nerds, but they were harmless nerds. They asked me to dance and swung me around the floor until I was breathless, but none of them tried anything on. They didn’t expect anything more from me. Jess had probably warned them I’d been through a bad time and ordered them to treat me with kid gloves. When I took a break from the dance floor it wasn’t because I was being snotty about it, but because I was exhausted. I didn’t spend ten miles walking over the hills every weekend in big boots. I didn’t have their stamina.

  I sat out next to a little elderly man with bright beady eyes and an almost impenetrable accent. They say Ashington people are impossible to understand but I’m used to those. After a while, though, I tuned into his voice and I didn’t miss much of what he was saying. It was clear he loved to have an audience, especially an audience of a woman younger than himself. He must have been a real charmer in his day. And it seemed then that there was no escape from Thomas Mariner, because as the old man talked about growing up in the valley, gossip mostly about personalities, I realized that this was where Stuart Howdon had lived as a boy. The characters I’d been fretting about all day returned to haunt me.

  It started off with the old man shouting to a friend, who seemed to be sleeping, ‘Did you see in the paper that there’s talk of Howdon standing for Parliament? Someone’s got to speak out for the farmers, he says. And what would he know about that?’

  The friend stirred but didn’t respond, and the old man turned his attention to me. ‘He’ll stand as an independent, they say. Or representing that Consortium.’ He snorted.