The House At Sea’s End

‘I don’t hold with all that Catholic nonsense,’ said her mother, when Ruth informed her of this fact. Ruth’s parents were both Born Again Christians and considered that they alone of all denominations knew The Truth – a delusion which, as Ruth could have told them, they probably shared with every religious cult since the Assyrians first started burying bits of pottery alongside their ancestors, just to be on the safe side.

When Ruth had looked down at her daughter’s furious little face, she had been surprised by a rush of recognition. Whatever she had expected, it wasn’t this. The books had talked about Mother Love, about euphoria and joyfulness and feeding on demand. Ruth was too exhausted to feel euphoric. She wasn’t even sure if, at that moment, what she felt was love. All she felt was that she knew her baby: she wasn’t a stranger, she was Ruth’s daughter. That feeling carried her through the agonies of breast-feeding (nothing like the bucolic descriptions in the book), through the loneliness that engulfed her as soon as her parents had left, through the sleepless nights and zombie-like days that followed. She knew her baby. They were in this thing together.

Her mother had been pleased with the choice of name. ‘Short for Catherine, just like your Auntie Catherine in Thornton Heath’. ‘It’s not short for anything,’ Ruth had retorted, but she found that, increasingly, when she spoke, people tended not to hear. This was a shock for Ruth, who has been a university lecturer for all her working life. People used to pay to listen to her. Now, unless she was talking specifically about the baby, her mouth simply opened and shut like one of those nodding dogs in cars.

Cathbad had also liked the name. ‘After Hecate, the witch goddess. Very powerful magic.’ Her friend Max, an expert in Roman History, had made the same point. ‘Hecate was sometimes called the child nurse, you know.’ Ruth did know, but Kate was not named after Hecate or Auntie Catherine or Santa Caterina of Siena (suggested by a Catholic priest of Ruth’s acquaintance). She was simply Kate because Ruth liked the name. It was attractive without being twee, strong without being hard. You could hear it prefaced by Doctor or followed by MP. At the same time it was cute enough for a baby.

The future Dr Kate Galloway continues to yell in the back seat as Ruth makes for home. She lives outside King’s Lynn, on the North Norfolk coast, not in one of the many picturesque seaside resorts but in an isolated cottage facing a desolate but beautiful stretch of land known as the Saltmarsh. ‘You won’t be staying in that awful house after you have the baby, will you?’ her mother had asked. ‘Why not?’ Ruth had answered.

She loves the house, loves the view that stretches over the marshes into nothingness, loves the expanse of sky and the sound of the sea, loves the birds that darken the evening sky, their wings turned to pink by the setting sun. But she has to admit that the winter was hard. She spent Christmas with her parents in south London and was only too glad to leave, having had enough of praying before meals and listening to her sister-in-law talk about calories. But when she and Kate were finally home, alone in the little house with the wind roaring in from the sea, she had felt a slight but none the less real stab of fear. They were on their own; they truly were in this thing together. Ruth’s cottage is one of three but one house is empty and the other is owned by weekenders who visit less and less often now that their children have grown up. Her nearest neighbours are in the village, a mile away along a dark, exposed road raised up over the flat marshland, and the houses were mostly boarded up for the winter.

Throughout the whole of that January, Ruth and Kate scarcely left the house. Ruth was sustained by Radio 4 (the two episodes of The Archers were oases of delight in her day) and by watching Kate. She hadn’t realised that a baby would change day by day. One day Kate could smile – she mostly smiled at Ruth’s cat, Flint – the next gurgle, and on one joyous occasion she slept through the night. Soon she was greeting her mother with a whole-body wriggle and delighted waving of the legs. This probably saved Ruth’s sanity.