THE HOUSE AT SEA’S END

the conversation with Tatjana.
    But Tatjana has her own issues. Ruth knows this but she still shies away from talking properly to her friend. She has had her chances over the past weeks, but she has been toocowardly to take them. Tatjana will go home tomorrow and Ruth may never see her again.
    They have left Broughton now and are crossing the beach where the barrels were found. The tide is out, rock pools stretch in front of them and Ruth can see the remains of the Victorian sea wall, like a green-slimed monster rising from the water, but something in the air perhaps, or in the wild calling of the seagulls, tells her that the tide may be about to turn. They’d better keep an eye on it. There’s no way off this beach and the cliffs are too high to climb.
    ‘How much further?’ she asks.
    ‘Just round the next headland.’
    They have to climb over rocks, sharp with barnacles and crusted mussels, then in front of them lies another bay, a perfect semicircle scooped out of the sandstone cliff. And there, rearing out of the shallow water, is the unmistakeable hull of a ship. The water has eaten away at the wood and Ruth can see the blue sky through its prow but the shape is still there, a largish boat, about the size of the launch that took them to the lifeboat. It looks both menacing and strangely sad.
    ‘Have you any idea how old it is?’ asks Ruth, splashing forwards, despite the fact that she isn’t (for once) wearing her wellingtons. The water is freezing.
    ‘I don’t know but I think about sixty or seventy years old by the shape of it.’
    Ruth knows nothing about the shape of boats but this one looks as if it has been here forever. ‘What makes you think it was a fire ship?’ she asks.
    ‘There are barrels inside,’ says Craig. ‘Take a look.’
    ‘We’d better be quick,’ says Ruth, looking out to sea at the waves coming in towards them, shockingly fast.
    ‘Oh, we’ve got all the time in the world,’ says Craig.
    Nelson is still staring out of the window when Stella comes back into the room.
    ‘How is she?’ he asks.
    ‘As well as can be expected. Peaceful.’ That note of resignation again. It casts a shadow on the bright afternoon, a shadow reflected on Stella’s face as she joins Nelson by the window.
    All that is left of the garden at Sea’s End House is a thin strip of land, about a metre across, that runs alongside the house. The back garden has disappeared completely. But someone has taken trouble with the tiny piece of ground that is left. There is a narrow ribbon of lawn and someone has been tending the flowerbeds.
    ‘Strange to see the flowers coming up again after the snow,’ says Stella. ‘They’re hardier than you think, spring flowers.’
    ‘Are you a keen gardener?’ asks Nelson. He isn’t, though he quite likes mowing the lawn. Michelle loves garden centres; they’re her idea of heaven.
    ‘No, but we have someone who comes in. There’s not really enough for him to do now but he’s always looked after our garden. And his grandfather before him.’
    Something stirs in Nelson’s brain as he looks at the spindly tulips pushing up out of the chalky soil.
    ‘Wasn’t he in the Home Guard? Your old gardener?’
    ‘Yes, Donald Drummond. He was devoted to Buster. And to Irene.’
    As clear as if it is being amplified into the air around him, Nelson’s hears Hugh Anselm’s voice:
Donald said they were only filthy Jerries and would do the same to us
. Donald Drummond, the gardener.
    And, like a kaleidoscope spinning before his eyes, so fast that the colours are blurred and the shapes indistinct, Nelson sees himself looking down from Archie Whitcliffe’s window. He is watching the gardener mow the lawn. Then, he sees himself at Hugh Anselm’s sheltered accommodation, admiring the grounds, so beautifully kept, recently mown, newly planted.
    ‘What’s the name of the gardener you have now? Donald’s grandson?’ he asks, so sharply that Stella steps back.
    ‘Craig. I assumed you’d know him. He’s an archaeologist too. One of Ruth’s team.’

CHAPTER 30
     
    The hull of the ship is so weathered and encrusted that it seems part of the rocks around it. Peering inside, Ruth sees pools of stagnant water, mussels like obscene growths clinging to the wood, a crab scuttling warily across the remains of a bench seat. But the basic structure remains, there is even a rudimentary cabin with the door bolted shut and, in the lowest part of the ship, partly submerged, two