daylight came they still couldn’t see anything because of a fog. They called out but only their lifeboat had survived, they thought. Just six men left.
‘Alby said the worst thing was knowing the ship had gone down — they’d all seen the prow sticking up out of the water, then just dropping out of sight. He said they felt so alone. They spent a day in the fog — freezing fog — and two of the men died before nightfall. Alby said he thought he came close to giving up that second night and he was actually surprised to wake up at all. That was when his illness began, of course. Looking back — the fear of the space around him, making him feel so small. It took years to emerge, but that was the seed, that night in the open boat.
‘When dawn came the fog had gone. The sea was still calm. And floating fifty yards away was the stern of the
She laughed, shaking her head, and Shaw wondered how many times she’d been told the story in her childhood.
‘Alby was a leading seaman and the senior man left alive. Which was odd, because he’d been an engineer, and spent all his time below, but technically he was in command. So the four of them got back on board — the rope frogging was still hanging down from when they’d been given the order to abandon ship. The electrics had blown, and there was a small fire smouldering which they never really put out, but otherwise she was OK. They got the engines going that night, then headed southwest. An RAF reconnaissance plane picked them up off the Humber a day later. The day after that they found another life raft with most of the officers on board — including the captain.
‘Once the War Ministry got hold of it, the story was everywhere — radio, papers. “The ship that wouldn’t die” — that’s what they called it. And it was good for class solidarity as well, how the men below decks had brought the ship back. Or half of it, at least. We went down to the quayside when she came in — large as life. There used to be a picture in the bar at the Flask but Nora had it taken down. They gave Alby the freedom of the city. My dad — Arthur Melville — was running the pub then and he invited the crew to the Flask for a celebration. That’s when Nora met Alby. They married in 1947. I think Alby fell in love that first night too — with the pub.’
The sun had set, but its rays still radiated from beyond the horizon, catching high pearlescent clouds.
Shaw picked up the billhook. ‘And this?’
‘When Alby left for sea again in the fifties, after they lost Mary, he left his kit from the
‘And that chest had been there since 1944?’
‘Yes. In their room — well, it was theirs when they married. Lizzie said that after Alby finally came back they had separate rooms. But it was their room. It’s upstairs — the second floor, under the roof.’
Shaw thought Alby Tilden had the quality of being permanently elusive, like a smoke ring, unbroken and perfect until you tried to touch it.
‘Alby’s still alive, isn’t he?’ he asked, fishing. ‘At least, we think he is. You forward all the mail to some middleman in Retford? Lizzie says she’s had nothing back for a year. What about you?’
She shook her head. ‘No. Longer than that, even. We keep writing, but nothing. I know it all sounds crazy but Alby really doesn’t want to see anyone. We all visited in the early years, but it really did upset him. He asked us to stop, so we did — but he knew we’d never be able to leave him be if we had his address. He told us to write care of a friend — I think it’s someone he met in Lincoln. But there’s less and less to say.’ She was going to stop there but pressed on. ‘Which is selfish, isn’t it? He’s right, I know, it would be painful. But mainly for him.’
Shaw thought about the report they’d received from the local police. That there was no post waiting to be forwarded from Lynn. He wondered whether Bea was lying to make herself feel better about neglecting a difficult elderly relative, or for another reason. Or perhaps she was telling the truth and someone had taken the letters from Retford.
‘The sea chest — it’s locked?’ asked Valentine.
She shrugged. Out at sea the winter light had gone and the sky had instantly turned to a dark grey. She shivered and from the chair beside her picked up the vivid blue pashmina she’d been wearing at the Flask when they’d first seen her, draping it around her neck. Happy to answer more questions, she said she’d ask Kath to make some tea, but they said they ought to go.
Kath Robinson saw them out. On the step Shaw turned to study her face, the blameless eyes avoiding his.
‘So Ian’s around a lot?’ he asked, zipping up the RNLI jacket.
‘Yes.’ Again that curious innocence, as if the question could hold no ulterior motive.
‘Is he like his father?’
The question was too much for her, so she stepped out from the shadows of the hallway on to the path — to give herself time to frame an answer, Shaw guessed.
‘Like Pat? No,’ she said, struggling for the right word. ‘Ian’s good — to Bea, to his mum.’
‘But Pat wasn’t good to you, was he?’ Shaw asked.
She looked out to sea, then stepped back quickly over the threshold. ‘Only once,’ she said, and tried to close the door but Valentine had his foot in the gap.
‘I got the signals wrong,’ she said, as if repeating an alibi. ‘I had to stop him going any further.’
‘Where?’ pressed Shaw.
Her face was in darkness. ‘In the cemetery, one night. That summer before the wake. I wanted …’ She covered her mouth with her hand. ‘Him. I shouldn’t have gone down there. I couldn’t do what he wanted me to do. He got angry. That’s all. He said he wouldn’t see me again. And he didn’t.’
Shaw glanced at Valentine, who slid away his foot, and she closed the door.
For a moment they all stood, the door between them, and Shaw could see the silhouette of her head through the coloured glass. Then the light in the hallway came on and she was gone, leaving just the picture in the glass: a whale again, a harpoon flying towards it across a stormy stained-glass sea.
25
The first flight of the narrow stairs of the Flask took Shaw up to the room in which they’d first interviewed Lizzie Murray and Bea Garrison. Shaw had counted the steps — eighteen — aware that each one had helped to shatter the bones of Nora Tilden. The wood itself was worn and as black and stained as a ship’s beam. The first- floor landing was panelled in the same wood, a narrow doorway giving on to a second flight which led up to the attic. There were two attic rooms: to the left, Ian’s bedroom, said Lizzie; to the right Alby and Nora’s old room — now used largely for storage. The door here was more like a hatch, a hinged flap that you had to step through into the room beyond, which had six dormer windows, three looking over the river, three over the cemetery. Light flooded in from a streetlight by the cemetery gates. Over their heads they could hear seagulls scratching at the tiles. The room held a double bed, some shelves, a wooden cot and an old stainless-steel sink unit, unconnected to any pipes.
‘This was their room,’ said Lizzie, reluctant to step up from the stairwell. Her voice, usually hard, had a suppressed tension that almost exactly matched her aunt’s. She too seemed to be strangely watchful, as if here, in the attic of her own home, something lay waiting, hidden. When they’d asked for her at the bar they’d been told she was resting. When she appeared they could see the sleep in her eyes, and she hadn’t added the pearl lipstick, so that her mouth looked dry, compressed, and her eyes were red, as if she’d been crying.
‘Staff use it now if they’re stuck here late. There’s an extra sofa bed over there,’ she indicated the far end of
