The House At Sea’s End

‘Mr Hastings,’ begins Nelson, ‘last time I was here we talked about the Home Guard, about any members that might still be alive. You mother mentioned Archie Whitcliffe. He used to send you Christmas cards, apparently.’

Hastings looks over at his mother, who is making another pot of tea, deep in concentration.

‘I remember…’ he says hesitantly.

‘Mr Whitcliffe was living at the Greenfields Care Home. Did you ever visit him there?’

‘No.’ Hastings looks bemused now.

‘What about Hugh Anselm? We spoke about him on the phone.’

Suddenly Irene Hastings puts down the teapot and bustles purposefully from the room. Nelson wonders if he ought to call her back. She’s the one who remembers the war years, after all. Jack Hastings does not seem to have noticed his mother’s departure.

‘Hugh Anselm,’ he says. ‘I don’t remember the name.’

‘You mother mentioned him. He was one of the younger members of the Home Guard. Archie Whitcliffe was another.’

‘She has wonderful recall of those years,’ says Stella, who has briskly taken over the tea-making. ‘But thinking about it can make her upset. They were desperate times here in Broughton, I think.’

Nelson continues to address Jack Hastings. ‘So you’ve never met Archie Whitcliffe or Hugh Anselm?’

‘I don’t think so, no. What’s all this about?’

‘Archie Whitcliffe died last week. Hugh Anselm a few weeks earlier.’

‘But you can’t think there’s anything suspicious about their deaths, surely? I mean they must have been old men. On the phone you said that you thought this Hugh chap had been murdered.’

Judy looks at Nelson. It’s unlike the boss to say something like this to an outsider. Never assume, that was Nelson’s mantra. Why would he suddenly start sharing his assumptions with a member of the public, especially someone who appears almost to be a suspect? She remembers the initial investigation into Hugh Anselm’s death. At the time Clough had described it as a tragic accident, there was even a sort of black humour about the situation. ‘Old dear dead in a stairlift.’ Now the everyday deaths of these two old men are taking on a very different aspect and there is something sinister at work in the cosy room, even if Judy can’t work out exactly what it is.

‘We’re following several lines of enquiry,’ Nelson replies now, perhaps regretting saying so much in the first place.

Jack Hastings looks at his wife and it appears as if she is about to speak when Irene comes back into the room. She walks up to Nelson and places a photograph on the table in front of him.

‘That’s Archie,’ she says quietly, ‘with his hat at an angle. My Buster used to have a go at him about that. That’s Hugh, with the glasses.’

Judy peers over Nelson’s shoulder. The picture is in black and white and shows a group of men standing in front of a grey-walled house. This house, she realises. At first glance they look identical, homogenised by baggy, ill-fitting uniforms and by a sort of sepia-tinted nostalgia. But, looking closer, Judy sees that the three men in front are a lot younger than the others. Even in sepia, they look full of life.

‘I’ve seen this picture before,’ says Nelson. ‘There was a copy in Archie Whitcliffe’s bedroom.’ He looks at Irene. ‘Which was Buster?’

Judy is betting on the walrus moustache, who looks like a old-style army major, the sort of man who could be described as a ‘real old devil’. But Irene points to a small, insignificant-looking chap at the far right of the picture.

‘That’s Buster. Jack looks very like him, doesn’t he?’

‘Very,’ says Nelson.

‘That’s Edwin Butler next to him, he’d been badly shell-shocked in the first lot. That’s Syd Austin, he had the fish shop in the village. His son was killed at Dunkirk. That’s Donald Drummond, he was the gardener here. That’s Ernst Hoffman, the one with the moustache. He was German by birth but his family lived in Broughton for years. He was interned at the start of the war and sent to the Isle of Man. Buster kicked up such a fuss that he was released. Ernst was a scientist, a very clever one.’

Stella wasn’t wrong about the old lady’s memory, thinks Judy. She looks back at the photograph. It’s hard to connect these faded figures, like something from a history book, with the stories of life and death. But to Irene the photo isn’t a historical curio, it’s a memento of her husband, of his friends.

Hugh is unsmiling, as awkward and intense as in his First Communion picture. He looks like the sort of boy who might grow up to do the Telegraph crossword. Archie looks far more cheerful, grinning away as if the whole thing is a game of cowboys and Indians. He looks like his grandson, Judy realises. The same good looks and proud bearing, but where Gerry Whitcliffe seems afraid of showing his true feelings, Archie looks afraid of nothing.

‘Mrs Hastings,’ Nelson addresses Irene who is still looking at the photo, smoothing its edges lovingly. ‘Do you remember any talk of a German invasion in 1940?’

Jack Hastings laughs but Irene says serenely, ‘There was always talk but it never came to anything, did it?’

‘Was invasion a big fear in these parts?’

‘Yes,’ says Irene, carefully covering the teapot with a knitted cosy. ‘We were sure they would come. Buster was sure. He insisted on nightly patrols. They had a boat too. I think it was Syd’s. They’d go out on the moonless nights, sailing along the coves. Buster thought it would happen on a moonless night.’

Judy hears Archie’s voice: On moonless nights, the darks we called them, we went out in the boat. What happened on that dark night, nearly seventy years ago?

‘He set up defences along the beach,’ Irene was saying. ‘Ernst helped him. He knew all about explosives, you see. “They won’t take us by surprise,” Buster used to say. “They won’t find Broughton undefended.”‘

‘What happened to the defences after the war?’ asks Judy.

‘I don’t know’, says Irene. ‘Later on, the invasion didn’t seem likely any more. We never spoke about it again.’

‘What about you?’ asks Nelson. ‘Were you part of this defence scheme?’

‘Oh yes,’ says Irene proudly. ‘I was on the listening post.’

‘Listening post?’ repeats Judy. It sounds made-up, almost childish. Stella takes up the story, smiling at her mother-in-law.

‘During the war, Detective Sergeant, there was a military listening post at Sheringham, a few miles from here. It was literally a building, a tower really, where people listened for Nazi ships out to sea. It was manned by women. Irene was one of them.’

Womanned, thinks Judy. She knows better than to say it aloud though.

‘What do you mean, they listened for ships?’ asks Nelson.

‘Just that. There were German E-boats out at sea. They could listen in on their Morse code. How do you think the code-breakers at Bletchley Park got the codes in the first place? From the listening posts. It was really important war work.’

‘The E-boats didn’t use Morse code,’ cuts in Irene. ‘We could hear them talking to each other in German. Where are you, Siegfried? I’m here, Hans.’

Nelson and Judy exchange glances. Now it seems more like a children’s game than ever. Where are you, Siegfried? Nelson turns to Irene. ‘Did you husband ever discuss with you what you’d do if the invasion actually happened?’

‘Oh yes,’ says Irene. ‘My job was to shoot the children and shoot myself. Buster didn’t want us taken prisoner, you see.’

‘He was mad,’ says Judy. ‘Buster Hastings was mad.’

They are sitting in Nelson’s car. Nelson has turned on the engine to demist the windows. Outside it is still raining, the windscreen wipers struggling under the weight of water. Occasionally a gust of wind rocks the car.

‘Kill the children and kill yourself,’ says Judy. ‘Didn’t some Nazi do that?’

‘Frau Goebbels, yes. She killed her six children rather than have them live in a world where Germany had lost the war.’

‘It doesn’t make sense,’ says Judy. ‘Even if the Germans had invaded, women and children would have been okay. They wouldn’t have come to a crazy little place like this anyhow.’

‘But they did come,’ Nelson reminds her. ‘Six Germans arrived and six Germans were killed.’