Free The Skeleton Man by Jim Kelly Page A

with a slight effort, as if her body was a burden to her, but now, seated, she seemed to relish the stillness.
    ‘Mum was always very careful to say that it was the family decision for her to leave – that she didn’t flee, or seek refuge. The idea that the Nazis had succeeded in forcing her out of her home, even if it was a caravan, made her very angry, but of course it was the truth. She stayed with an uncle in the suburbs – Croydon – but they got bombed out when they attacked the airport in the Blitz, so they moved out to Harlow in Essex. It was just villages then, of course. That’s where she met Dad, he was a farmer, although I think that’s actually a bit grand. A smallholder perhaps, with pigs. I always think that was so important for Mum – that he was of the land, as it were, something she’d never had. He belonged, didn’t he? In a way she never could. Jacob, my brother, was born in the farmhouse – a cottage really, but very idyllic.’
    She stopped herself, suddenly worried. ‘You can’t have something that’s just a bit idyllic, can you?’
    ‘I guess not.’
    She patted her knee. ‘So. Idyllic then. But Dad died in 1970 after a long illness, which was not the kindest of deaths.’
    Dryden wondered how much suffering was salted away in that casual phrase. A breeze blew open the door of the mobile library and they could see that the rain was falling steadily now, the playground deserted.
    ‘No one will come now,’ she said. ‘Would you like a coffee?’ There was an automatic cuppa-machine behind the counter and Humph accepted one too, retreating with it to the cab.
    She sat eventually, one of her large hands almost encircling the plastic cup, and looked Dryden flatly in the eye.
    ‘I was there when they found the skeleton – she was a slight woman, your mother?’ said Dryden.
    Ruth laughed. ‘I take after my father, Mr Dryden – the Hollingsworths are all country stock, big boned. Although I’m relying on mother’s descriptions and the photographs of course. I was born at the Ferry six months after he died. We never met – like Posthumous in the Greek story.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ said Dryden, trying to think of something else to say.
    ‘So am I,’ she said, smiling and tilting her chin. Dryden could see how strong she was, how she never used the past as an excuse for weakness.
    ‘Mother,’ she said with emphasis, ‘was petite by comparison. She was also very depressed about losing her home again. Such an irony, to be driven out by the fascists, then the Luftwaffe, and then the MoD. She was quite calm about it, quite accepting, and devastated in a way. She’d found a place for herself at the Ferry. People liked her – well, most people liked her. And she hadn’t compromised much at all. My mother was a flamboyant character, Mr Dryden, not a trait much prized in the Fens. But we were certainly part of the community – Jake and I. So I think that after all that anguish – the flight to England, the bombing, Dad’s death – she had this notion that she’d found a place that belonged to her. And then they took it away. It was profoundly depressing for her and I think the idea of starting again really frightened her. After all, she didn’t want us around, she wanted us to use our educations and get on. But what was she to do?’
    ‘Do you mind if I quote you in the paper? I don’t have to,’ asked Dryden, unsettled by her frankness.
    ‘It’s kind of you to ask but it’s OK. The library service sent me on a course, on how to deal with the press. So I know that if I don’t want it in the paper I should just not say it. But I’m proud of Mum, what she achieved, and what she left behind.’
    Dryden tilted his chin by way of a question, sipping the gritty coffee.
    ‘The diary,’ she said, something like arrogance in the square set of her shoulders. ‘When Dad died she took the store at Jude’s Ferry. Grief led to depressioneven then and she needed something to focus on,