Dying Fall

a combination of Peter Kaye and Wallace from
Wallace and Gromit
. He’s heard them imitating him.
    ‘You have a bit, Harry,’ said Michelle. ‘So have I.’
    And that’s always the pattern of visits to Blackpool. Michelle is continually shocked at the abuse directed at Harry by his ever-loving mother and sisters. She throws herself into the breach as a peacemaker, not realising that all four of them actually enjoy these exchanges.
    Now Maeve snaps at her mother. ‘She’s fine, Mum. The sun’s not out anyway.’
    ‘It’s not the sun that gives you heatstroke,’ says Maureen unanswerably. Maeve rolls her eyes and wheels Charlie off in the direction of the gift shop.
    Rook Hall is a perfect Georgian house, almost scarily symmetrical, set in beautiful landscaped grounds. Nelson doesn’t mind trudging round over-decorated rooms and oohing and aahing over dovecotes and lily ponds but he does wonder why, in her seventies, his mother has suddenly got into culture. When he was growing up, Maureen would have been actively suspicious of anyone whose idea of a good time was visiting National Trust properties. He still remembers what she said about their neighbour who listened to classical music. But now Maureen is actually a member of the National Trust as well as a friend of the local theatre and a frequent operagoer. Do you just get more interested in these things as you get older? Nelson, remembering a God-awful modern play Michelle made him see two years ago, doesn’t feel that the process has started with him.
    In one aspect, though, Maureen hasn’t changed at all. She is determined to get her money’s worth and to see every inch of the house, even though she has visited many times before. Maeve soon gives up and takes Charlie out into the grounds but Nelson and Michelle follow Maureen’s indomitable figure through dining rooms laid for some invisible banquet, up and down ornate staircases (marvelling at the rococo ceilings), through kitchens complete with plastic meat that reminds Nelson of an autopsy, and into myriad rooms whose only function seems to be to display collections of eighteenth-century thimbles.
    Nelson is soon tired of ancestral portraits and mouldedcornices. His mind starts to wander, reliving his conversation with Sandy yesterday. Was Dan Golding murdered and, if so, what does Ruth expect him to do about it? Where is Ruth anyway? He rang her at home last night and there was no answer. He’ll have to try her mobile. He still has to be careful where Ruth is concerned. Michelle might have forgiven him for the affair (if two nights counts as an affair, which Michelle assures him it does) but the subject is still very raw. Michelle understands that he wants to see Katie (and few wives would understand as much, he knows) but any sign that he is interested in the mother rather than the baby would jeopardise the whole, fragile consensus.
    He thinks they’ve finished but, at the last moment, Maureen leads them up another staircase into a green and white room that reminds Nelson of a Wedgewood vase he once impounded as stolen goods. Bored, he looks out of the window, wondering if he can catch sight of Grandma Maeve and Charlie.
    As he scans the paths criss-crossing the lawn at the front of the house, his eye is immediately drawn to a figure with a pushchair. But it’s not Maeve. It’s a man in a flapping cloak-like jacket with long grey hair in a ponytail. Nelson rubs his eyes. He must be going mad because, for a moment, he thought that the man with the baby was Cathbad.
    *
    Ribchester is a picturesque town nestling in a bend in the river. Ruth is beginning to realise that Nelson wasspeaking the truth when he once told her that there were pretty places near Blackpool. Preston isn’t one of them but Lytham is certainly an attractive town and the Pendle Forest – well, if she had nightmares last night about Dame Alice and her familiar, that’s not the fault of the countryside, which was undeniably beautiful. Ribchester is cosier – grey stone houses looking as if they’ve grown there rather than been built, a church, pubs, the winding river – it’s all very English and tranquil.
    Clayton Henry parks his car, a sporty red number, behind the church.
    ‘The church was actually built slap-bang on top of the Roman fort,’ he says, ‘You can see the remains of a granary in the graveyard. The baths are behind one of the pubs. The White Bull.’
    As they walk around the town, Ruth begins to