Reginald Hill - The Stranger House

It took Sam a little time to accept Frek’s repeated invitation to tea at Cambridge, but when she did she found she rather enjoyed it, especially once she realized that Frek’s introduction of her as “my Australian cousin who happens to be a mathematical genius” sprang as much from genuine pride as it did from a desire to take the piss. She was helped to this conclusion by reasoning that Frek was hardly going to risk offending someone who could cut the ground from under her feet at any time by saying, “Actually, she’s not my cousin, she’s my auntie.”

Anything else? Oh yes. Laal Gowder was presumed to have died in the fire, and some ashes were found which were probably his. But Illthwaite being Illthwaite, a legend soon grew that he had in fact escaped and was living a solitary, half-animal life on the high fells where there were soon plenty of locals ready to claim they’d glimpsed him trudging through the mist, with his axe over one shoulder and half a slaughtered sheep over the other. Eventually this story was conflated with the legend of St. Ylf, but that was much further into the future than this brief rounding-up and winding-down cares to venture.

As for Mig, it took him some time to be persuaded that there was no place for him in Sam’s immediate plans. Even then he did not give up hope, but kept in constant touch. His thesis never got finished, which Max Coldstream said was a shame. But with the destruction of so many original documents in the Illthwaite Hall fire, it would have been a sadly diluted affair.

Eventually he got involved once more in the family business, taking on overseas marketing, which Cristo thought was great so long as it kept his brother overseas and a long way from Jerez.

Mig’s hopes for a romantic future were nurtured by Sam’s rather surprised discovery of just how reluctant she herself was to let the relationship fade into nothingness. Though there was much about him that still exasperated her, she felt a closeness to him that not even mere sexual attraction could explain. So they stayed friends – occasionally, if the moon was full, the air balmy and the wine red, passionate friends.

Noddy Melton went to Spain on holiday, and had a snack in a certain taberna on the Costa Brava, and let the grossly overweight chain-smoking English patrona buy him a drink. When she asked about his background, he told her he was a retired insurance salesman from Slough, paid for his food by cash, and returned to Illthwaite in such a mellow frame of mind the locals opined he should go on holiday more often.

Talking of travel, when Sam went back to Vinada during the long vacation, Mig invented a necessary business trip which took him to Australia at the same time. Exasperated, flattered and amused in equal proportion, Sam finally introduced him to her parents. Lu took to him at once, saying she could feel the spirits liked him. Sam’s pa greeted him with, “You the bastard who makes the Bastard? You’ll not sell a lot out here. Too thin and sharp.” But even he, after a while, had to admit that, in spite of all the contraindications, there was something about Mig that drew him to him, though God alone knew what it might be, and He wasn’t telling.

But if you know where to look He may drop hints.

It is Christmas 1589.

In a smoke-filled hut in Eskdale in Cumberland, Jenny, widow of Thomas Gowder of Illthwaite, sits and nurses her infant child.

She is expecting a visit from her brother-in-law, Andrew, and she is not expecting him to come laden with gold and frankincense.

As the baby sucks greedily at her breast, she recalls her last sight of Miguel, the waif boy, after she had cut him down from the tree. As he staggered away on his makeshift crutches, he had looked back at her once in the corpse-light of dawn, and she had felt a huge shame that she was not brave enough to stay with him. But she knew that it would almost certainly mean death not only for herself but for the child she had only just become aware she was carrying.

Whose it was, she did not know. Had Thomas in one of his brutal sexual assaults finally planted a fertile seed? Or was it the fruit of those joyous escapes from her daily miseries in the arms of the foreign boy?

Even her return to Foulgate and her acquiescence with Andrew’s version of the night’s events did not guarantee safety.

She was certain in her heart that Thomas had been alive but unconscious when Miguel fled, and that Andrew, seeing the chance to take over the farm for himself and his sons, had been responsible for his brother’s death.

Having done that, he was not going to let a little thing like a sister-in-law who might be carrying his brother’s legitimate heir stand in his way.

So she kept quiet about her condition and after a short period craved his permission to return to her family in Eskdale, which he gave most willingly, glad to see this reminder of his brother removed from Foulgate.

In Eskdale as her condition became increasingly more difficult to hide she had turned to her first cousin, Michael, five years her senior and the man everyone thought she would marry till the eyes of her more distant and much more powerful Skaddale cousin had fixed upon her. A quiet, thoughtful man, he had listened to her story, then proposed that they should marry and he would declare the child his own.

News of the intended marriage only two months into her widowhood had necessarily been sent to Illthwaite. Andrew had turned up at the wedding, ostensibly to offer his blessing, but Jenny had felt his sharp piggy eyes fixed on her waistline.

And news of her labor at the end of November, barely seven months after the marriage, must have set the dreadful machinery of his Gowder mind clanking to a dire conclusion.

He waited a couple of weeks. Infant mortality rate in the first few days was high. With premature births it was near one hundred percent.

But the child was flourishing and now Andrew was coming to see for himself.

The baby has finished feeding. Softly she croons it to sleep. But she does not set it in its cradle, holding it close in her arms as she hears the noise of a horse outside.

A few moments later Andrew comes through the door.

“Give you good day, sister,” he says. “And this is the child.”

“It is, brother Andrew,” she says.

He stoops to look closer, then seizes a brand from the fire and holds it over her head so that the flickering light falls full on the baby, waking it.

Already the features are becoming individualized. Full, dark eyes, a fine rather sharp nose, well-defined cheekbones, a light golden skin, and Jenny’s own bright red hair, though still sparse, promises a rich harvest on the noble head.

There is no resemblance in even the smallest detail to the solid brutal face that squints down at it.

Satisfied, Andrew stands upright as a thin, slightly built man comes into the hut.

“Give you good day, cousin,” he says softly.

“And you too, cousin,” says Andrew. “I have been admiring your fine child. And what will you call him?”

It is Jenny who answers.

“Michael,” she says. “After his father. Michael Galley.”

Most of what I know about the incredible scandal of the estimated 150,000 child migrants shipped from Britain to the furthermost corners of its Empire derives from Margaret Humphrey’s moving exposé, Empty Cradles (Doubleday, 1994; Corgi, 1995), which I recommend unreservedly. But no character in my book is based on any individual involved in any capacity in that sorry tale of abuse of persons and of power.

Australia figures in my story and anything I have got right about matters Australian is almost certainly down to Mel Cain and Christine Farmer of HarperCollins, who organized my only visit to their lovely country and made sure I had a great time. By the same token, anything I’ve got wrong is down to me, so let me put my hand up now and save you the bother of writing!