What he had said confirmed a point that had been worrying me. Nancy Ruston had been a woman of the Broads. Now he’d said she loved them, knew them, and was no doubt perfectly safe with them. Undoubtedly, drownings did occur. It would’ve been surprising if they didn’t, with all those amateurs playing about in boats. But not to Nancy. Death by misadventure, my foot!
The two young men came in to dinner. Apparently Larry Carter was treated as one of the family in this respect. As Angie had said, there was plenty to go round, and say this for her, she had a fine touch with beef stew. The steamed roll of jam pudding I had not encountered for years.
We talked. The atmosphere was cheerful, and everybody managed to put in a word or two. Inevitably, the general trend was towards college reminiscences, though it began to be evident to me that Amelia and Malcolm were carefully omitting to mention Olivia. My growing conviction was that Olivia, described as highly emotional in those days, which probably meant over-sexed, had played the field. And whereas Amelia — I had to allow myself to believe this — had concentrated unsuccessfully as it turned out on Philip, Olivia had spread her interests to include Malcolm. Perhaps?
‘If you’d only concentrated on your books,’ commented Angie, returning to a well-worn theme.
‘Now Angie...’ He turned to me to explain. ‘My father had this grand idea of reaching out — building our own craft, and perhaps making a name in the yachting world. He thought I could learn engineering and design. What a hope! I couldn’t design a matchstick.’
‘And besides,’ put in Mark, ‘there was the question of capital. Grandad knew that. You can’t refit a place like this for boatbuilding without a lot of money.’
‘Dad was a dreamer,’ Malcolm said fondly.
‘Like you,’ his wife said with some contempt.
‘What’s the matter with dreaming, for heaven’s sake?’
‘You can’t live on dreams.’ She turned to Amelia. ‘You wouldn’t believe. Nancy was a young girl. This was her life, what you see out there. The fens, the wildflowers, the wildlife. And what you see in here. Why couldn’t he have left her alone!’ Then she bit her lip to silence, and bent her head.
‘She wanted to go to college,’ said Malcolm in a chilly voice. Amelia spoke quickly. ‘What was she studying?’
‘Can’t you just guess!’ Angie was bitter. ‘Fantastically stupid, that’s what I think of these modern high-flown ideas. Whoever heard of a woman yacht designer!’
‘Oh, ma!’ Mark groaned.
‘And don’t you come oh-ma-ing me,’ she snapped, turning on him. ‘A girl’s place is in the home. And God knows I need some help with this mausoleum.’
Malcolm slapped both palms on the surface of the table. ‘She could have designed some lovely yachts.’
‘Perhaps that was all she was good for,’ she murmured. Then, abruptly deflated, she looked down at her empty plate.
But Malcolm glossed over the awkwardness. ‘Nancy was born to the water, and she had a feeling for it. All she really loved was the feel of the wind in her sails. Yes...all right...so she loved the wildlife, too. It was all part of it. Take her away from the water, and she’d...’ He stopped. Taking her away from it might have saved her life.
And Angie, more perceptive than I’d have thought her, jumped to her feet and said: ‘I’ll make some coffee.’
Mark, facing me and next to Amelia, looked after his mother with burning eyes. Amelia murmured something about helping, but Angie restrained her with a touch on the shoulder. Larry, beside me, muttered to himself: ‘Nancy was the water-girl, Nancy was the dream.’
Startled, I glanced at him. No one else had heard. He was looking across the kitchen and out over the water, and his eyes were the soft blue of the sky.
When I returned my attention to the others, the conversation had turned towards the Broads and its shipping. They lived with it and on it. Malcolm lapsed into his ultimate interest —his boatyard.
‘We’re getting a genuine old wherry in,’ he told me with enthusiasm. ‘A complete refit. The best contract we’ve had in years. I can’t wait to get my hands on it...’ And so on.
I listened, nodding. So far, I’d discovered little of my own main interest: Nancy. Carefully, I drifted him towards the subject, by way of the plans for yacht designing and expansion.
‘Nancy had the brain for it,’ he insisted quietly, as though trying not to upset his wife with further mention of the girl. ‘Don’t ask me where it came from, with me a dead loss at college, and Angie...well, Angie’s a farmer’s daughter. Her fingers are deep in the soil. But Nancy was different. She was adopted, you know.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘Oh yes. It’s true.’ As though I’d questioned it. ‘We had her from birth. Pretty well that. They told us her mother hadn’t even seen her. Angie’d wanted another child, you see. After Mark, the doctor said no hope. So we did this. Adoption. And there was the same fifty-fifty chance, because we’d arranged it before. Just like a real birth, you didn’t know what you were getting.’
‘I think they can tell, these days,’ I observed.
‘This was nearly twenty years ago. I think Angie might’ve preferred another boy.’ He contemplated his knuckles on the table. ‘Maybe I would’ve, too. I mean — help in the yard. It’s a bit of a laugh, really. Fate’s joke. In the end Angie was glad she was a girl, for help in the house, and me...well, I loved Nancy, and knew I’d got better than any boy. She wasn’t just going to be a help in the business, I could see her as the life-blood of it. That’s about all there is to it.’
I wondered whether his dreams would have been realized, had she lived. To emerge from college as a confident and expert design engineer, or to drift, as the indications were, into a passionate defence of the environment in which she’d been brought up? Norfolk, not yet exploited for motorways and concrete and fumes, must certainly be under threat. From such materials as Nancy Ruston, champions for the ecology are bred.
Beside me, Larry must have heard every word, but had said nothing. He was quietly smoking, not even talking to Mark. But I had the impression that Larry, of all of them, possibly had more empathy with Nancy, had been closer, and probably knew her best.
We sat over coffee. The chat became empty, with large gaps. The memory of Nancy was intruding. When Mark spoke up abruptly it was in a truculent voice, one that had been restrained so that now it emerged with too much force.
‘They never found out what she was doing in Norfolk. You’d have thought they’d have done that much.’
Malcolm explained to Amelia, apparently assuming it would be she who was most interested. ‘It was May. Near the end of term. We couldn’t understand why...why...’
Amelia smiled at him. ‘I’ll bet you’ve never been far from here, Malcolm.’
‘I’ve been to Oxford, and lots of times to Norwich.’
‘Not the same. Why on earth did you send her to Birmingham?’
Nobody had mentioned Birmingham, but Malcolm didn’t seem surprised that Amelia knew it. He went straight on.
‘Because they offered the appropriate course,’ he said simply.
‘If you’d never been anywhere but around here,’ she told him, ‘and you’d always lived on open air and water...oh, Malcolm, can’t you imagine! She’d be stifled in Birmingham. She’d hate the noise and the bustle and the confusion, the skyline, the smell, the air, the water...everything. And it was May. May here — it must be beautiful. There could come a time when she just had to see the water and the great big sky you’ve got here...’ She waved her arm. This was Amelia, letting her romantic imagination flow free.
Malcolm, who couldn’t imagine Birmingham, was not impressed. ‘Not like her. Set her to something, and she carried it through. The best thing they came up with was that she’d had some sort of message. To meet somebody.’
‘But who?’ demanded Mark. ‘And where? Damn it, she could’ve gone in the water pretty well anywhere, and ended up where they found her.’
‘Mark!’ h
is mother said sharply, rebuking his lack of taste. ‘Well, it’s no good waffling round it,’ he protested. ‘The police know nothing, and we know nothing. So what’s the point?’ There was a short silence, into which, because it was becoming awkward, I spoke quietly.
‘You said this was at the beginning of May.’
‘She was found,’ Angie said with tight-lipped disapproval, ‘on Saturday the 14th.’ She nodded. ‘If that matters.’
Not to be discouraged, I continued: ‘I believe that was a flag day.’
‘A what?’ Mark asked. ‘What’re you on about?’
‘Flag days, we used to call them, when they were little flags with pins in. Charity collections. Nowadays they use little coloured discs with a kind of rubber glue on the back, to stick to your coat. I suppose you get the same things round here. Mind you, the beginning of May doesn’t seem the best time to pick. I mean, all the holiday people wouldn’t be around. They’re the ones with the money. Just a thought, though...how would you collect from people on boats?’
I looked round, raising my eyebrows in polite enquiry. They all seemed to consider I was slightly insane. Including my wife, perhaps.
‘What on earth are you talking about?’ asked Angie.
‘Collections. Did you have one on that Saturday? The day she was found. Or around about then.’
Frowning, Angie agreed. ‘The previous Saturday, yes. I was in Wroxham myself, selling them.’
‘Were you? What was the charity?’
‘The Wildlife Protection Society. Nancy’s favourite. She’d asked me to do it for her.’
‘Ah yes,’ I said. It figured, as they say. ‘What colour were they?’
‘What the hell does it matter?’ demanded Mark with unnecessary anger. ‘I was doing the same thing. Selling ‘em in Potter Heigham.’
‘So what colour were they?’
‘They were damn well yellow. That suit you?’
I smiled at him, trying to cool him down. ‘It does. Thank you.’
I had talked myself into a trap, having seen an opportunity to become better acquainted with the background to the yellow disc that had been on Nancy’s anorak. But I would’ve had difficulty in explaining my own knowledge and interest.
Malcolm was eyeing me with suspicion. ‘What’s this all about?’ His voice was a deep growl.
‘Why...don’t you see!’ Amelia chided him. ‘Richard was trying to find some reason for Nancy being in the district. Perhaps she travelled here to take part in the collection —’
‘They’d have the same collection in Birmingham.’ Angie lifted her chin in challenge.
I smiled her down. ‘They’d have very little interest in wildlife in Birmingham, I’d guess. Their own wildlife consists of car drivers.’
I was past the worst. Malcolm allowed himself a laugh, though there was no force to it. ‘Like our summer sailors!’
‘Precisely.’
‘Then she could’ve done that, I suppose,’ he accepted. ‘But she’d have surely let us know.’
‘Yes,’ Amelia commented. ‘Then it remains a complete mystery.’
We all contemplated this. Mark scraped back his chair. ‘Better check on that fibreglass job, I suppose.’
‘I hope it’s sound,’ his father grunted.
‘If it’s not, you can blame him.’
He meant me. I beamed at him. He said: ‘You coming, Larry?’
‘In a sec’.’ A shadow crossed Larry’s face. He resented Mark’s foreman-like attitude, recognizing only one boss, who was quick enough to notice and himself got to his feet.
‘I’ll have a look at how you’re getting on, Larry.’
‘The weld looks sound, but I’ll need some more sanding discs.’
‘I’ll let you have ‘em.’
And while this was going on, Amelia and I were saying goodbye to Angie, who wiped her hands on her apron and managed to smile.
‘You must come again.’
‘We’d like to do that.’
The result was that the five of us walked out together, Mark and Larry trailing at the rear but not saying anything.
Malcolm led the way down the steps and through the yard, pointing out the damage to the craft as he went along. The water to our right looked dark and motionless, with the sun way over on our left and declining.
Malcolm now walked in front with Amelia. I hadn’t been listening to him until a name caught my attention.
‘Whatever happened to Olivia, anyway?’ he asked. ‘I suppose she married...’
‘Philip,’ she told him. ‘You remember Philip Dean.’
‘Not that weed!’
‘She’s a writer now.’
‘Is she? I don’t read much.’
‘Not your sort of stuff, anyway Malcolm. Romance fiction. Under two names, Christobel Barnes and Lovella Treat.’
‘Well never...’
Was it possible that he didn’t know she lived only twenty miles away? If he did not, I hoped Amelia wouldn’t tell him. But she, too, recognized the problems this might bring about, and said nothing.
‘I bet she’s been doing well for herself,’ he decided.
She was non-committal. ‘I should imagine so.’
‘Old Philip hit the jackpot, then, the cunning devil.’ We got his haw sound again. ‘More strength to his elbow, I say.’
We reached the car. Mark and Larry hung around. Malcolm asked where we were staying, and I told him. He said we’d do better going back by way of Horning. We shook hands, then got in the car. It seemed advisable to turn in the yard, rather than back out. I did that. The three men watched stolidly. We drove away with a wave.
As advised, I turned left out of the entrance, heading roughly towards Horning. As Malcolm had indicated, in a quarter of a mile we passed his main entrance, which offered a more impressive invitation, with two gate posts, but no gates, and a recently re-painted sign: Ruston and Sons.
‘So what did you make of that?’ I asked.
‘One thing I’m certain about — she didn’t die from any accident. Nancy was completely at home with the water. She knew all the dangers, and I expect she could swim like an eel.’ Amelia was using her flat, decisive voice.
‘Nancy — the water-girl.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Something young Carter said.’
‘Hmm!’ She nodded to herself, as though I’d confirmed something.
‘Suicide?’ I asked.
She hesitated over that one. ‘Didn’t you get the impression she was an unhappy young woman? Perhaps she didn’t want to take that degree. Perhaps she wanted to devote her life to the ecology. Heavens, Richard, just imagine! To be studying for a degree that you’re taking only because it’s expected of you —and all the time yearning to do some naturalist kind of thing! She’d find that depressing, to say the least.’
‘You heard what Malcolm said: set her to something, and she’d carry it through.’
‘That’s just it. Don’t you see. Set her to something. The impression I got was that she was a quiet girl, even withdrawn. A lonely girl. No — not lonely. An alone one. She loved going out on her own on the water. And don’t forget, she was adopted.’
‘What on earth can that have to do with it?’
‘Oh, Richard! A great deal, I suspect. She was taken from her natural mother at birth. That implies a pre-arranged adoption. The psychologists reckon it’s better like that, for the mother and the child.’
I was sceptical. ‘Psychologists have been wrong.’
‘You’re a man, Richard. I know you can’t help that, but it does mean you’re deprived in a lot of ways.’
‘It’s a good thing I’ve got you, then. Carry on.’
‘I intend to. You know nothing of motherhood.’
I admitted that.
‘Then you’ll just have to manage with your imagination. Sometimes a woman expecting a baby doesn’t want it, and has every reason for intending to part with it. Nowadays, of course, abortion’s easy, but we’re talking, h
ere, about twenty years ago.
Then, it was probably the best thing to arrange a prior adoption. But the doctors have to think about emotional disturbance. For the mother and the child. And as far as the child’s concerned, the first arms to take it are its mother’s. Are you with me?’
‘I’ll take your word for it.’ I was managing still to make light of it, though my first wife and our child had been killed in a car crash.
‘That’s the theory, anyway,’ she went on. ‘And it does have a certain amount of the logic you enjoy so much.’
‘It sounds logical,’ I admitted.
‘Yet you heard them talking openly about it. They wouldn’t be doing that unless they’d always been open about it, and that means to Nancy, too.’
‘So?’
‘So why did they tell her? They need not have said anything. Mark must have been very young at the time, and he’d never realize. She could’ve grown up as their own daughter. But she was told she’d been adopted. And with both Malcolm and Mark being forceful types, and Angie probably sour and disillusioned, you can imagine what that would do to Nancy.’ She gave me time to do so, but I didn’t respond. She went on: ‘She was a quiet girl, and meek. No — not meek. I got the impression she’d developed a quiet resistance. But withdrawn. She certainly wasn’t forceful. Her caring for the environment indicates that. Those people are against force, the force that destroys landscapes and wildlife. In that respect, I could imagine her working up quite a bit of steam, emotionally.’
‘Is all this leading to a suggestion that she committed suicide?’
‘What! And destroy herself? That’d be self-betrayal.’
I smiled to myself fondly. ‘So we get round to foul play?’ I asked.
‘Of course. What else did you think?’
‘We’ll phone Mary, when we get back to the hotel.’
‘What on earth does that mean?’
‘To tell her we’ll be stuck here for a while. Quite clearly, I’m not going to be able to drag you away before we’ve seen it through.’
‘I should say not.’
‘So there we are. Now you know how I always seem to get myself involved.’
‘But it’s different for you,’ she pointed out kindly.
Death of an Innocent (Richard and Amelia Patton) Page 9