Pippa gave nothing away as she sat stroking her little dog, occasionally extending a soothing hand to her daughter. It was only when she was showing Tim out that Pippa had said, ‘I warned him. I knew that all this King Arthur business would lead to trouble. There are some very strange people out there.’ This was the first indication that Pippa had known anything about her husband’s membership of the White Hand.
Tim had agreed that there were, indeed, some strange people out there but inwardly he doesn’t feel that the pagans are any stranger than his mother’s fellow worshippers in Basildon. People everywhere need ritual and make-believe to get them through their lives. Tim firmly believes that he is different, that he can exist in a purely rational world. But he is young; he knows he has a lot to learn.
*
Nelson too found himself rather enjoying the lunatic pagan service. Well, enjoy wasn’t exactly the word. Appreciate, maybe. Certainly it seemed to make more sense than some Christian funerals he has sat though; dreary events in anonymous crematoriums where the minister struggled to remember the name of the deceased and the mourners looked bored rather than heartbroken. A fullblown Catholic funeral is something else, such as the service that Maureen has planned for herself, in exhaustive detail. ‘You’ll outlive me, Mum,’ said Nelson that morning, as he ploughed through the list of music (most of which would need the Berlin Philharmonic for maximum effect). ‘Don’t say that,’ said Maureen, crossing herself. ‘It’s a terrible thing for a parent to outlive their child.’ Well, for a few terrible hours last week, Nelson had thought that this would be his fate, that he would lose the daughter he still can’t fully acknowledge and would be doomed forever to grieve in silence. The thought of this made him feel unusually tolerant towards his mother and he had given Maureen a quick, unexpected hug. ‘You’re good for a few years yet,’ he had said. ‘Oh I know that,’ Maureen had replied. ‘Cuthbert read the tea leaves and said I’d live to be ninety.’
But today’s ceremony was different. There was something fitting about the early morning, the clear sky and the chanting figures. Nelson hadn’t known Pendragon but he is sure that the air and the earth meant more to him than some half-imagined deity. He remembers the day that he came to Dame Alice’s cottage with Cathbad, the day when, unbeknown to both of them, Pendragon’s body had been hanging in the wood store. Why had he done it? No one will ever know, though Cathbad said that he was terminally ill, which might explain some of it. Guilt at Dan Golding’s death might also have contributed, plus a realisation of the sort of organisation that lurked behind the Arthurian posturing of the White Hand. Nelson doesn’t understand any of it, he is only here today at Cathbad’s request. ‘I think it’s important that you come,’ he had said and Nelson was hardly in a position to argue, given Cathbad’s recent heroics. He hasn’t brought Michelle; capering about on hills isn’t exactly her scene and, besides, he’s hoping for a few words with Ruth later. ‘Rest in peace, Pendragon,’ he says now to himself, looking up at the white house on the hill. ‘Wherever you are.’
As he begins the trek up the path, he finds that Tim is walking beside him. The two policemen smile at each other although Tim carefully maintains his expression of respectful neutrality. Tim, Nelson thinks, will go far.
‘A pagan funeral,’ he says now, taking the slope with a long, easy stride. ‘One to tick off the list.’
‘What else is on the list?’ asks Nelson, panting slightly. The only thing he dislikes about Tim is that he makes him feel old and unfit.
‘Swim with dolphins,’ says Tim. ‘Read Ulysses. Learn Italian. See the Taj Mahal. Leave Blackpool.’
Nelson turns to look at the young policeman. They are almost at the house; he can hear Thing barking inside and the sound of quavery Celtic voices singing. Jesus, please don’t let Cathbad have brought his Enya CDs.
‘Are you serious?’ he asks.
‘Yes,’ says Tim, ‘I’d like to move back down south. I’m an Essex boy really. Just ended up in the north because of university. I’d like to try somewhere new.’
‘What about Norfolk?’ says Nelson, only half joking.
Tim turns to him. ‘Would you give me a job?’
‘I can’t promise anything,’ says Nelson. ‘My boss is a stickler for procedure. But I’d certainly put in a good word for you.’ He smiles to himself, thinking how much Tim would stir things up at King’s Lynn. Cloughie would hate him, he’s sure of that, and the sight of a bright, ambitious young sergeant wouldn’t exactly fill Judy and Tanya’s hearts with joy either. But new blood is always good. Tanya isn’t ready to be a sergeant yet and he sometimes doubts whether Judy will ever return from maternity leave. He had a very strange phone call from her the other day, almost accusing him of covering up Cathbad’s accident. ‘If he had died,’ she had said, ‘would you have let me know?’ ‘Listen, Johnson,’ said Nelson, ‘It’d take more than a two-hundred-foot fall to kill Cathbad.’
Cathbad now greets them at the door of the cottage, offering them coffee or a rather dubious-looking ‘Loving Cup’. Nelson chooses coffee: the Loving Cup looks potent and he has a feeling that the local police won’t extend the same leniency to him as they do Sandy if they catch him driving under the influence. All in all, he’s not sorry to be leaving Lancashire tomorrow. It has been great to catch up with Sandy and to ride the mean streets again but it’s not his home any more. For years he’s been labouring under the delusion that one day – when the girls have finally left home, perhaps – he and Michelle will go back to Blackpool. Now he knows that this will never happen. He has lost his accent and, according to Sandy, his edge. It’s time to admit that he could never go back to those hard-drinking, fast-driving, politically incorrect days. It’s not just that Norfolk has softened him up, either. It’s more that the Blackpool Nelson was a product of his upbringing, a reflection of what Archie Nelson would expect in his son. The middle-aged Nelson is a product of his marriage to Michelle and, if he’s honest, his affair with Ruth. He’s now a husband and father first and a policeman second. Jesus, what an admission. Next thing, he’ll be looking forward to retirement in a Cromer seaside chalet. No, that’s going too far. When he retires it’ll be to a place with decent rail links.
Inside, a long trestle table is filled with food and drink. Nelson moves forward, remembering what Ruth told him about Cathbad’s cooking. To his disappointment, though, breakfast is light on bacon and heavy on things like kedgeree and grapefruit compote. Across the room he can see two of the druids tucking in with a vengeance. He takes a roll and some cheese and then, on second thoughts, goes back for a Danish pastry. Might as well make the most of the last days before his traditional post-Blackpool diet.
‘Detective Inspector Nelson.’
It’s the blonde woman, Elaine Something, who was mixed up in the Clayton Henry murder. She is rather inappropriately dressed in a flowing dress and shawl and has a look in her eyes which Nelson privately characterises as ‘bonkers’. Nothing that Sandy has told him about the history department makes him revise this judgement. Sam Elliot seemed to spend most of his time dressing in women’s clothes, Elaine and the others were all members of some loony sect that danced on the hills at night pretending to be King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. He remembers Clayton Henry bouncing around his converted windmill on a giant rubber ball. It’s not exactly a good advertisement for higher education.
‘Hello,’ he says now, warily.
‘I’m so pleased to meet you,’ says Elaine. ‘Ruth has told me all about you.’
Nelson glances at Ruth who is standing by the door to the garden talking to Cathbad. Cathbad is holding Kate, looking for all the world as if he is her father. Nelson suppresses his irritation, knowing that he’s not in a position to object. He doesn’t believe Elaine’s statement anyway. Ruth never tells anyone all about anything.