The Mill on the Shore

by Ann Cleeves

  ‘I tell you what,’ Ruth said hurriedly, ‘if there’s any problem you can watch the television in my room. Then you can choose whichever programme you like. But take Emily with you now. I expect she’s had enough too.’

  ‘She’s had four meringues already,’ he said gloomily. ‘You know what she’s like with Rosie’s meringues. She’ll probably be sick.’

  But he went without a fuss to fetch his sister who was standing by the buffet, staring covetously at the last piece of coffee gateau. With relief Ruth watched them go quietly from the room.

  She took a deep breath to calm her nerves then went over to her mother and shyly took her hand.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she said. ‘You don’t have to go through all this, you know. We can tell them to go home.’

  They’re only showing off, she thought. Claiming they’re important because they knew the great Jimmy Morrissey. And they didn’t really know him at all. Not like we did.

  ‘No,’ Meg said. ‘ We can’t send them away. Not yet. I’ve got something to say.’

  She was a small woman, dark and fine featured, compelling. Ruth towered over her and always felt clumsy in comparison. After years of living in England Meg’s voice could still become Welsh when she was emotional. ‘Moulded by chapel and the valleys,’ James would say of her, half teasing. ‘And very principled indeed. When it suits.’

  He thought Mother was stupid, Ruth realized in surprise. And she saw that in one way her mother was indeed stupid. Her reactions were always passionate and instinctive. She was incapable of cool thought, of seeing anyone else’s point of view. For the first time she wondered how James could have liked her mother. It was an uncomfortable thought and she returned to the conversation.

  ‘What do you want to say?’ she demanded, confused, but her mother ignored the question and looked around her.

  ‘Where are Tim and Emily?’ she asked.

  ‘Watching television in the flat.’ She knew Meg disapproved strongly of the television. ‘ They did ask. Is that OK?’

  Why does my mother always make me feel so nervous? she wondered. Why can’t I trust my own judgement for once? She’s made us all too dependent on her.

  ‘Yes,’ Meg said, absent-mindedly, almost to herself. ‘Of course. It’s as well they’re not here. I’d be reluctant to speak in front of them. But it has to be said …’

  ‘What has to be said?’ Ruth cried. She thought her mother was going mad.

  But Meg seemed not to hear and walked to the front of the room where she clapped her hands like a teacher calling for attention. The noise in the room subsided and they jostled forward so they could see her.

  ‘My friends …’ she said. Ruth stood with her back to the window. Meg’s slight figure was hidden by the crowd but her words were quite audible.

  ‘My friends …’ Meg went on. ‘ I want to talk to you about my husband, to make one thing clear …’

  Ruth wished she had the courage to interrupt. Don’t listen to her! she wanted to shout to all the people in the room. My mother’s distressed. She doesn’t know what she’s doing. She can’t think it through. But she wasn’t sufficiently brave and the guests listened sympathetically, admiring Meg’s calm, thinking she would make a short loving speech to Jimmy’s memory and that then they could go back to the booze.

  ‘The verdict of the inquest was that James took his own life when the balance of his mind was disturbed. It was a reasonable decision considering his medical history. We all know that since his accident he’s suffered periods of depression. But it wasn’t a true verdict. I know that James didn’t kill himself. He wouldn’t have done it. As the days have passed since his death I’ve become more convinced …’ Her voice broke off. ‘I just can’t let it go!’ she said desperately. ‘There has to be an investigation. I have to know if there was a dreadful accident or some malicious intent.’ She stopped again. Perhaps she expected some reaction or encouragement but there was only awkwardness, a cough, an uneasy murmur from the back that Meg had been under considerable strain for years and it was hardly surprising if she broke down now.

  Meg looked around her and suddenly seemed her old self. She smiled.

  ‘It’s been a terrible day,’ she said. ‘I’m sure you’ll understand that I want to be on my own now.’

  And she left the room without saying anything more. There was a stunned silence and the crowd broke up. Ruth stood at the front door and watched them run through the wind to their cars. She had expected some comment about Meg’s state of mind but no one spoke to her. There were only sympathetic and embarrassed glances as they dashed away.

  When she returned to the common room Caitlin was draining dregs of wine from the empty bottles.

  ‘What was all that about?’ she demanded. She was flushed and unsteady. ‘What the hell was she trying to say?’

  ‘I rather think,’ Ruth said quietly, annoyed by Caitlin’s flippancy, wanting to shock, ‘I rather think she was trying to say James had been murdered.’

  Caitlin went very pale, dropped heavily into a chair and began to laugh out loud.

  Chapter Two

  Cathy Cairns was pleased when Aidan Moore asked for a lift to the church with them. She thought her husband Phil would want to talk about James. She had avoided the subject since his death and was still not quite sure what to say. In Aidan’s presence, surely, even Phil would restrain himself to polite and superficial expressions of sorrow.

  They arrived at the church early and waited outside for the family to arrive, shivering in the cold. Phil who usually seemed impervious to extremes of temperature bounced around like a puppy, slapping himself to keep warm. He was a plump jolly man with a thick black beard and boundless nervous energy. He could never stand still. At last Meg’s car drew up and it was like a royal procession when she and the children paraded into the church, the flashlights snapping as the local press took pictures.

  Cathy, as usual, felt the shock of recognition as Emily climbed out of the car, then the old bitterness and anger. The girl looked so like Hannah at the same age that she wanted to go up to her and take her into her arms. She turned away with tears in her eyes. Phil, who had never noticed her reaction to Emily, patted her shoulder and said: ‘Nay, lass, don’t cry. He had a good life,’ which made her smile despite herself because ‘good’ was never an adjective to describe Jimmy Morrissey in any context.

  Cathy had been married to James Morrissey briefly in the early seventies. During the courtship she had been overwhelmed by him, infatuated beyond reason, but after the wedding she had seen quite soon that it would not work out. The main problem was that he was never there. He was at the height of his fame and besides the routine trips abroad to film for the BBC he was invited to lecture, to advise, to promote internationally the interests of conservation. He had been public property and had never really belonged to her. It would never have occurred to him to turn down these invitations. He needed the admiration and the excitement, the sense that life was full, that he was always rushed off his feet. So Cathy had been left on her own, abandoned, she felt, out of preference for elephants and rhinos. Even when Hannah was born James had turned up late, still dressed in some ridiculous safari suit, and had entranced the midwives and doctors so they clustered around him asking for autographs while she and the baby were left alone, forgotten.

  She saw now that she had not made sufficient fuss. Meg had not let him get away with anything like that.

  How had she managed it? Cathy wondered, looking at the little woman in the pew in front of her. How had Meg managed to tame him? Perhaps James had been prepared to make the sacrifice because he loved Meg more, but that seemed unlikely. None of his loves had been that important. Perhaps she had just been better at maintaining the façade of family life. The accident of course had been the best thing that had ever happened to her. After that James had been dependent on her and it seemed she could do what she liked with him.

  The organ played a phrase of the first hymn and they stood up to sin
g. Cathy was reminded of Hannah’s funeral and how James was late even for that. Then there was a scuffle at the back of the church; Rosie and Jane, the two young housekeepers from the Mill, flew in, scarves and coats flapping. Cathy smiled, pleased that someone was late for him too.

  Phil was worried about Cathy. He thought she was grieving for James more than she was prepared to let on and it would do her good to talk about it. She should know by now that he wasn’t jealous, not of Jimmy Morrissey. He was grateful because it was Jimmy, in a way, who had brought them together.

  Phil had been brought up locally in Salter’s Cottage, the whitewashed single-storey house where he still lived, facing the Mill across the bay. His dad had worked in the Mill when it was operating and in his spare time he’d been a bit of a fisherman, going out in a small boat for crab and lobster. Phil had thought he would work in the Mill too but it had closed the year he left school and he was taken on as an apprentice at Mardon Wools, the textile factory up the river. He had never considered leaving the district, moving away like his school friends. His passion was the wildlife on the shore. He was something of a botanist too but the birds were most important to him. Since he was a child he had kept regular wildfowl and wader counts and every summer he ringed the arctic tern chicks which were born on the shingle. He had been the county’s British Trust for Ornithology rep for years.

  He threw himself into work with the same enthusiasm as he did his birdwatching, staying on late even when there was no overtime to be had, going to college in the evenings. He worked his way up to become manager and could do the job now, he thought, standing on his head.

  Cathy had joined Mardon Wools some years after her divorce from James. The company wanted to change its image. It had a reputation for quality but the clothes it produced were staid, boring. The loyal customers were slowly dying off and it needed to attract a younger clientele. After her separation from James, Cathy had established her own company, designing sweaters, selling on the patterns and the wool for customers to knit in their own homes. She had been head-hunted by Mardon, offered a good salary, substantial perks if she became their chief designer. She was flattered by the approach and accepted. She had never liked the idea of Hannah being a teenager in London.

  Phil had fallen for Cathy as soon as he saw her. He had a romantic nature sustained since adolescence through lack of experience. Women had always seemed unable to take him seriously. The glamour of her name and the fact that she had known intimately Jimmy Morrissey, his great hero, added to her appeal. He still could not believe his luck that she had agreed to marry him. He loved her with a boyish devotion and would have done anything for her.

  Cathy was attracted to Phil Cairns because he was everything James was not: reliable, self-effacing, considerate. She was reluctant to take the step of a second marriage and he wooed her in a diffident, old-fashioned way with presents and flowers. Sex, which had been the impetus for all Jimmy’s relationships with women, had hardly come into it.

  Now he supposed they were still happy, living in Salter’s Cottage. She had been glad of him at the time of crisis after Hannah’s death. He had never let her down. She had left Mardon Wools when Hannah died. She couldn’t face seeing them all every day and thought anyway that self-employment suited her better. Phil was still there, making the best of it, looking forward to early retirement when he could spend all his time on the shore.

  He had taken a day’s leave to be at the memorial service and though he was too good-natured to resent it, it came to him now as he stood through the dreary hymns that his time would be better spent counting the brent-geese on the mudflats. Jimmy would have thought so too.

  Aidan Moore had been a tutor at Markham Mill every winter since the field centre opened three years before. He spent January and February there as artist in residence and taught one long course and three weekends. Aidan was famous. There was always a waiting list for his courses and some students booked one year for the next. Meg could charge double the usual fees.

  Aidan had first come to the attention of James Morrissey when he was a boy and James was editor of Green Scenes, a campaigning natural history magazine taken by everyone working in conservation. The magazine ran an annual competition, for amateur artists. Aidan, ten years younger than any of the other competitors, had won with a pen and ink drawing of goldfinches on a thistle head. The picture had appeared on the front cover of Green Scenes and the original now hung in the Morrisseys’ flat in the Mill. James went on to commission other work for the magazine and to support the teenager through art school by employing him during the holidays as a junior reporter and general dogsbody. As soon as he left college Aidan managed to make a living out of wildlife art and he became a very highly respected illustrator.

  Now in his late twenties he still had the look of a student, with sandy hair and small oval spectacles. He was a shy, inarticulate man. Teaching was a trial to him and he came to the field centre only as a favour to James. This year he had tried to cancel the arrangement, had made the excuse that he was too busy but James had insisted.

  ‘Come on, old boy, you can’t let me down. Don’t leave me to face all the bloody punters without a friend in the camp.’

  So as he had always done, whenever James asked anything of him, Aidan had agreed, only to find that he was as miserable as he was every year. He was frightened of offending and found it impossible to criticize the students’ work, even the appalling daubs turned out by some of the regulars. He made stammered suggestions then escaped out into the saltmarsh with his sketch book until it was dark. He could only relax in the evenings after a few beers. Then James would invite him into the flat to spend some time with the family and there he seemed to lose all his inhibitions, laughing and telling jokes to Emily and Tim, drawing cartoons for them of all the visitors.

  He went to the memorial service because it was expected of him and to please Meg but he thought it was a pointless exhibition. James would have mocked the occasion and it seemed to Aidan appropriately ironic that he would not be present even in his physical form. He supposed the service provided some comfort to Meg, who seemed frightened now of being alone. On the morning after James’ death he had said to her:

  ‘I expect you’d like us all to go now so you can spend some time on your own with the children. I’ll see to it if you like, talk to the students. They’re a good crowd. But perhaps we should offer a refund?’

  It would be less embarrassing, he thought, to send the students packing if he could offer them a financial incentive. He was shocked that James’ death had left him with a sense of relief. At least there need be no more teaching. Meg, however, had been surprised by the suggestion as if it had never occurred to her that the students should leave.

  ‘I suppose that would be best,’ she said at last. ‘ If you don’t think it would appear too rude. But you stay on, Aidan. The children are wonderful of course but I don’t want them to feel responsible for me. Do stay, Aidan, and see me through it.’

  Of course he had agreed though the sentimentality of her plea had embarrassed him. Her bereavement gave her a special status. She could ask anything of anyone. And now he thought it was a mistake to have sent the students away. The Mill seemed so dead, the dormitories echoing, everywhere lifeless and cold. He saw that he would have to stay on as long as Meg needed him.

  Aidan had never learnt to drive. When his parents gave him lessons for his twenty-first birthday present he had been sick with fear and had a nightmare about the car he was driving going out of control and killing a child. The nightmare had recurred regularly after the accident when Hannah died and James was injured and still haunted him when he was anxious. Lately even being a passenger was an ordeal and he was glad when Phil Cairns offered him a lift to the church. Phil was practical, optimistic and he inspired Aidan with confidence. And he drove a Land-Rover which was strong enough, Aidan thought, to survive most kinds of disasters.

  They had arrived at the church early. Cathy made a joke of it. That was Phil f
or you, she said. He got everywhere early. They stood outside, sheltering from the wind as best they could and waited for Meg and the children to come. In the lane a young man from the local BBC station was doing a piece to camera, describing some of the famous mourners who were starting to gather. Then the family arrived, seemed to emerge from the car as a group, a single unit, and Aidan thought with dismay that it would be impossible for an outsider to break it up.

  Aidan listened to the vicar’s address with some surprise. There was so much to say about James Morrissey. He had been a writer of distinction, author of many field guides most of which were still in print. For five years he had hosted BBC2’s serious natural history programme and had found a means of describing complex conservation issues in a way the viewer could understand. He had gone on to found Green Scenes and had taken it from a small, photostated newsletter to a magazine with a circulation which other specialist journals envied. Even after the accident, when he had resigned as editor of Green Scenes, there had been achievements. He and Meg had discovered Markham Mill, seen its potential and developed a field centre which everyone agreed was a success. Despite astronomic fees and a recession the most popular courses had a two-year waiting list and the academic research which had come out of the place had rocked established notions of estuarine ecology. Meg had sold the place to the punters, made them so welcome that they wanted to come back, but the science had been James’.

  The vicar, however, mentioned none of that. He burbled at length about James as a family man and husband. It seemed to Aidan that Meg and the children were so close that James had been excluded from the family. His attitude to his children had been unpredictable – he either lavished them with affection so they felt smothered or was moody and bad tempered. The relationship between Meg and James was so strained and odd that Aidan felt unable to make a judgement about it, but it was hardly worthy, he thought, to be celebrated at a memorial service. He was pleased when at last the whole thing was over and he was out in the open air. The salt wind blowing from the sea revived him.