Sam Flood and Thor Winander sat facing each other. He had picked up a wooden chair, tipped its contents on to the floor and set it down a couple of feet in front of her so that their knees almost touched.

He leaned forward. At this distance the whites of his eyes were bloodshot and she could see a network of tiny veins on his strong nose.

He said, “Let’s get one thing out of the way so you don’t build up too many expectations. You say it was the spring of 1960 your grandmother sailed?”

“That’s right.”

He said, “Our Sam Flood didn’t come to live here till the summer of 1960. A year later he was dead. So that seems to cut out any possible connection with your gran.”

His tone was brusque, his expression blank, as if he were merely stating facts too abstract to be involving. But the stillness of his body gave this the lie. It was the stillness not of relaxation but of control.

Sam said, “You said you’d tell me about him anyway.”

“Did I? So I did. But I’m not always to be relied on, Miss Flood. I said I’d take care of Sam too, and look what happened to him.”

He was trying to maintain a calm tone but she detected an undercurrent of savage self-reproach. For the first time it occurred to her that maybe people might be reluctant to talk about her mysterious namesake, not because there was something to hide but because there was something to hide from.

But she’d come too far to back off now.

“Look, I’m sorry if this is painful…”

“Are you?” he said savagely. “Know about pain, do you?”

“A bit.”

“Yeah, yeah. The young know a bit about everything. OK. Let’s get this done.”

He sat back and his gaze focused away from her.

“Sam Flood,” he said softly. “Like I say, I don’t see any way you can be connected to Sam, but if you had been, then you’d have been very lucky. He was the best person I ever met. Absolutely. In every respect. The very best.”

Suddenly he smiled directly at her. Or was it the other Sam Flood he was smiling at in his memory?

“So how did a notorious reprobate like me meet up with such a paragon? By blind chance, as I would put it. Or by the grace of God, as Sam would have put it. For he wasn’t only naturally good, he was good by profession and vocation.”

He paused while Sam worked this out.

“You mean he was some kind of priest?” she said.

“Indeed. You don’t look impressed by the information. Not your favorite people, perhaps? Mine neither, but that’s what Sam was, curate of this parish, no less, back in the days when the C of E could afford curates. Nowadays it’s only the fact that Pete Swinebank is virtually self-supporting that means Illthwaite still has a vicar of its own. Of course, in Pete’s case, the hereditary principle applies too, but he looks set to be last of his line, unless he’s been ploughing fields and scattering the good seed in places we don’t know about.”

“Tell me about Sam Flood,” insisted Sam, sensing evasion.

“That’s what I’m doing,” he said. “I met Sam when I was doing my art course in Leeds. That surprises you? Me with qualifications, not just a natural genius. My father saw there wasn’t much future in shoeing horses so he started to diversify. Even traveled abroad, which no self-respecting Illthwaitean did, met a Norwegian girl and married her. That’s how I got to be Thor. Fitted somehow, as Winander is a Viking name anyway. Windermere means the lake belonging to Vinandr. I sometimes think I’ll put in a claim.”

For some reason this information put Sam in mind of her visit to the churchyard, but she brushed the irrelevancy aside.

“So you met this guy when you were a student,” she prompted.

“That’s right. He was at some vicars’ training college close by. There was this chap making some interesting furniture in the same neck of the woods. I rode out there on my motorbike one day to take a look round his workshop. The bike spluttered a bit when I set off back to town and I was just passing the college gate when it gave up the ghost. Also it started to rain. In a few minutes it was a deluge. A bus stopped close by and some young guys, students from the college, got out. Most of them sprinted through the gates, but one of them came over. He said, ‘Having trouble?’ I answered something like, ‘Who the fuck are you? The Good Samaritan?’ You know, really gracious.”

“Nothing’s changed then,” said Sam.

Winander grinned. He had a nice grin when it was spontaneous.

He said, “Wrong. Nowadays I’d recognize this guy was my best chance of getting out of the wet and come over all pathetic. Fortunately, as you’ve guessed, this was Sam Flood, and ill-mannered crap like mine just bounced off him.”

He paused, then repeated, “Bounced off him. When I said that to Frek Woollass, she said he sounded like Balder. You ever heard of Balder?”

Sam shook her head.

“Me neither, till then. Seems he was one of the Norse gods, the loveliest of them all both in appearance and in personality. He was goodness personified and everybody loved him so much that his mother Frigg had no problem getting everything that existed, animal, vegetable and mineral, to swear an oath that they would never cause Balder any harm. Eventually it became a favorite after-dinner game of the gods to hurl plates and spears and furniture and boiling oil at him, just for the fun of seeing it bounce off while he sat there laughing at them.”

“Sounds more like the Pom upper classes than gods. I guess they didn’t have any videos to watch in those days. We’re drifting away from the story again.”

“Not really. The only thing Frigg didn’t get a promise from was the mistletoe, which she reckoned was too young and slight to pose any danger. Another god called Loki, who got his kicks out of making mischief, took a sprig of mistletoe, sharpened it into a dart and gave it to Balder’s brother, Hod, who happened to be blind. Joining in the fun, Hod, guided by Loki, hurled the mistletoe and it pierced Balder right through the heart.”

He fell silent. Sam had a feeling there was stuff here it might be dangerous to stir up. But all she wanted at this time were the straight facts.

“So Sam the Samaritan helped you,” she prompted.

“That’s right. Invited me to come and shelter inside. I did. We drank coffee and talked till the rain stopped. Then we went back out to the bike and got it to start. I said thanks to Sam. He was a genuine Christian with a real faith in human goodness. Not many around. Also he was a trainee parson, a Bible puncher, an idiot who felt called by God to waste his life standing around a drafty church, preaching to six old ladies on a good Sunday. Too many of them around. But Sam was different. I really liked the guy. He said he enjoyed football, so I gave him my address in Leeds and invited him to drop in next time he came to see United play. In fact I said if he came before the match, we could go together, and if there’s anything I hate more than religion, it’s football!”

“He sounds a real winning character,” said Sam.

“Indeed. And before your brutish antipodean mind starts getting the wrong end of the stick, let me emphasize the attraction was queer only in the sense of odd. I had no desire to fondle his bum. I’ll admit to enjoying the sight of him when we swam together in the buff, but it was an artist’s enjoyment in beauty, the same that I might possibly get if you were to strip off, my dear, but without any of the concomitant carnal stirrings.”

He leered at her unconvincingly.

She said with some irritation, “OK, you weren’t after his body. What was it he was after? Your soul?”

“Certainly not my arse’ole,” said Winander. “He was so straight you could have drawn lines with him. No, we just got on somehow, despite all the obvious oppositions. An elective affinity, I think the scientists call it.”