by Helen Mort
‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘We’re leaving.’
In her house, she made Caron tea and toast and let her flick through all the books she’d never bothered with before, the ones she’d only picked up and pretended to read. Caron sat bunched in the armchair. Leigh wanted to put her hands over her bare shoulders. Instead, she lent her a jumper and cleared space for her on the living-room floor and helped her through her physio exercises, manipulating her body gently. Afterwards, she got a chair up to the bathroom, knocking paint off the walls as she manoeuvred it and sat Caron in it and ran the water so it was just a bit too warm and leaned her back, holding her head carefully and soaped her hair, big, deep movements that lathered everything at once. Then she dried her neck and wrapped a towel around her head and the cat came to the door and yowled at the water on the floor, the strangeness of Caron in her white headdress.
Leigh left her to it for a while, giving her the empty bedroom. She went downstairs and took her cold tea out into the garden where it was late, as if it had been late forever, and the stars she didn’t know the names for were bright as normal over the terrace, and the woman next door twitched her curtains and watched Leigh watching them. Leigh stared at the cluttered sky, the faint outlines of trees, darker than the surrounding air, and somewhere behind it all, Stanage. She sat back and tried to invent new names for climbing routes. It was a game she and Caron liked to play, trading their favourites from the Peak District: Tequila Mockingbird, Oedipus! Ring Your Mother. Caron was better at making up names than Leigh. Because Leigh came from Chesterfield, Caron suggested Death in Chez Vegas, a pun on the local nickname.
Behind her, Caron clicked the bedroom lamp off and her house went dark. She drew herself back inside the kitchen, closed the door and walked quietly upstairs, the landing striped with moonlight or starlight, whichever it was. She stood in the doorway.
‘Night,’ she said. Caron grunted.
‘You know, you can stay as long as you like. Here.’
There was a long silence.
‘Thanks,’ said Caron.
‘This place is yours. I mean it.’
‘Why?’
‘I thought you might need some space.’ She paused and swallowed. ‘And that’s what friends do.’
An owl gave a high, melancholy call outside and nothing answered it. It called again. Leigh was always trying to work out how close it was, which tree behind the house it roosted in. They said you never heard one owl alone, it was always a pair of them. But this one was different. Solitary. She was sure.
She trailed the spare duvet downstairs after her, like a bridal train.
Hathersage
Before the weddings and the slanting tea shops and the vintage cars, I was unbalanced, teetering underneath the moor, looking up at Stanage, waiting for the gritstone to topple and wind me. I was full of millstones and hard labour, men who drank their wages, farmers who worked me properly. I’m trying to be polite. I don’t mind the coach parties and ramblers, the tourists weighed down by cameras, the day-trippers who come without walking boots and trudge up to the Plantation, tiptoeing over the muddy parts, the bogs where runners lose their shoes. But some days I watch the would-be climbers queuing up for gear in the outdoor shop or shovelling bacon butties down their necks in the upstairs café, comparing lightweight coats and brand-new guidebooks, and I want someone to hurt me, rattle me, pick me up and shake me, so they all topple out like coins from a pocket. I want to be cut, the way the edges cut the violet heather and divide the land from the sky. I want the wind to batter me so hard my stone houses start to creak and shift in their foundations. I want someone to drink my swimming pool dry, then turn, unsatisfied, and ask What next?, crunching the pubs between huge yellow teeth, leaving less and less of me, an empty place where Little John’s grave should be, gaps along my ribcage streets. I’m trying to be honest. I know it’s tough. I know you thought I was nice.
Alexa
Alexa had slept badly again. In the morning, she’d just drifted off when Leyton pulled the covers off her.
‘Get dressed. We’re going to be late.’
‘For what?’
She tried to pull the sheets back over herself, suddenly self-conscious, aware of her nipples showing through her tank top, her unshaven legs, the chipped varnish on her toes. How long since they’d seen each other naked? She had forgotten the real shape of Leyton’s shoulders. She could only guess them through his T-shirt. His face was set hard. He was an unfinished sculpture. Leyton rattled his keys.
‘There’s someone you need to meet.’ He pulled a roll-up from behind his ear and lit up. Then he changed his mind and stubbed it out in Caron’s ashtray.
‘No time. Come on.’
His eyes were serious. She’d always thought they were the colour of gritstone. Now she couldn’t decide if that was quite right. She believed him. She always had. She pulled on a pair of Caron’s jeans. On her long legs they looked like pedal pushers. Leyton looked and snorted.
‘Might as well wear these,’ she said. ‘Don’t know if she’s coming back for them.’
When they got to Shalesmoor, she knew at once where he was taking her to. Her favourite hill, utterly nondescript and beautiful, off the road just before Pitsmoor, behind the ex-foundries and climbing walls and new restaurants on Mowbray Street. The first time she’d found it was by accident, a wrong turn on the bike after work. It was a long, thick slope of badly tended grass leading down to a bridge where people went to dump rubbish. But when you stood at the top of it, you could see the whole of town, the vivid red of the modern university buildings, the cranes swinging above everything. Standing here now, she thought with a lurch about Tony’s roof in Page Hall, the long view and how she’d stared into it, willing him down. She walked a step behind Leyton. Neither of them spoke. The sun was trying to rise above the city, but the city was holding it down. There was an underwater feel about everything. They sat on the grass and Leyton lit up.
‘Do you remember when I first brought you both here?’ she said.
He nodded, exhaled.
‘After the Kelham Island Tavern. Caron rolled all the way down the hill.’
A smile bothered his face. Then it was gone.
‘It’s where I come when I want to get some space.’
Leyton nodded again. ‘I know. I know you better than you think.’
‘Better than you should.’
Then Alexa saw her, a shape in the corner of her eye at first, then something more like a shadow. She was approaching from the east, from the scrappy parking bay by the road, the place where only dealers and dog-walkers ever stopped. Her walk was hesitant at first. Leyton got to his feet and waved. She raised a hand in return.
‘Lex, come on,’ he said. She trusted him. She got to her feet.
The woman held out her hand and Alexa didn’t know how to take it. She was saying Alexa’s name.
‘You don’t know me,’ the woman said, ‘not really.’
Alexa remembered her at the party. Her head slightly tilted to one side. Her way of nodding before you’d got to the end of your sentence. Her thin hands and long fingers. Her interested eyes. Her way of smoothing back hair she didn’t have, tucking imaginary strands behind her ears. She remembered the back of her neck. She felt as if she must be drunk. The woman was still talking.
‘There’s no reason why you should like me. But just hear me out.’
Alexa was listening. She didn’t know what else to do.
‘There’s someone who wants to talk to you. A good friend of mine. He’s waiting in the van. He’d like to say hello if that’s OK.’
She gestured back towards where she’d approached from. She did it nervously, something superstitious in the movement.
Alexa turned to Leyton. He was still smoking, looking down at the ground, at Sheffield, spread out. The sun was higher now, everything was fake gold. Cars were teeming up from Hillsborough. The city was so awake. She blinked and it did no good.
She hadn’t said any
thing, not yes and not no, but the woman had backed off; she was loping off up the incline. She watched her get smaller. Leyton seemed a long way off. She thought about reaching for him, but she didn’t quite know why. She thought about reaching for Caron and then she remembered she wasn’t there.
A bird landed on the grass a few metres away from them and pecked at nothing. It was dark and quite large, some kind of crow. There was no breeze and she wished that there was, something to lift the bird away. At the foot of the hill, down towards the bridge, an old man was walking and stooping, picking up old cans and litter and putting them in a black plastic bag. Now Leyton’s hand was on her shoulder. Now it wasn’t.
She thought about Caron and all the hours they must have spent in this place, hours lying down over their own shadows on the grass. Summertimes. Nights when it was too cold to sit out, but they wrapped up and sat on the hill anyway. Caron’s broad face. Caron’s hair. Caron kissing someone else; Caron laughing for someone else; those nights when she didn’t come home until early morning. Caron kissing the woman with short hair – this woman who was holding back now, hovering somewhere near the van, while a tall man walked in front of her, hands in the pockets of an oversize khaki duffel coat. Now he was near them. Now he was close enough to see. And now, only now, he was close enough to hold out his hand to her, hold out his left hand and leave it there. His hair was greyer. He’d lost weight. His eyes were slightly hooded, but they were very clear, very blue. He held out his hand and, without thinking, she took it.
‘Hello love,’ said Pete. ‘It’s been too long.’
Pitsmoor Road
I watch the girl as she takes the old man’s hand and holds it. I am below them and above them, the yellow grass and the thin sky. I’m cluttered these days, decorated with the things people leave behind. Bicycle tyres and copies of The Sun, polystyrene cartons from the chip shops down by Kelham Island. People who come to look down at the river. The two of them an unsteady bridge across me now, their touch uncertain. The others slink away, back to the road, and it’s just the two of them, facing each other like partners at a dance. As if there’s never been anyone else. You can see the family resemblance. It’s obvious. The same ears. Same delicate noses. Same curvature of the spine. She is a part of him, in her stance, in the things that can’t be seen: the way her patient blood moves, the way she says shouldn’t and makes it sound like shunt. Her thin hair and her unfinished sentences. Their shadows overlap on the ground, taller than they are. From up high, they are a kind of dash, punctuation, a small pause in the day. Neither of them wants to move, but he turns away first and begins to walk and – though she hesitates – she starts off up the slope, following his stooped walk until she’s beside him. I let them pass, out of my shade and shelter. I’m left with the crows, how they pick up cigarette packets, shake them and let them drop, the world so much less than they thought.
Leigh
Autumn was in Leigh’s blood. It was in her hair and thigh bones and shin bones. On her lips. Her fingers were like dry leaves. She rode the bus back through the city, noticing the burnt toffee colours of everything, the cloaked pavements. She had always hated that feeling, that new-school-year air hanging over the city. September always smelled like unopened exercise books and patent shoes. Students in the climbing shop. A faint dread you had to drag yourself through. Knee-high, dying bracken.
Today was different. Today was the start of something. She’d slunk away from Pete and Alexa on the hill, resisting the urge to look back. Leyton had offered her a lift, but she’d refused, preferring the stop-start of the bus into town. A plump woman looked up from her newspaper and glanced at Leigh. She smiled a full-lipped smile. It made the woman uncomfortable.
When she got off the bus outside The Crucible, Caron was already there, small next to two black holdalls and three cardboard boxes, bursting at the seams. The sun cast a long line across her body, sideways.
‘How’d you get those here?’
Caron shrugged. ‘Taxi.’
She fumbled a set of keys from her pocket. Shoppers pushed past them, on their way down to the Interchange or the tram stop by the old hole in the road.
‘Do you want to come in?’
‘Where?’
It was like a hidden door in the high street. There was a painted-over sign, cream and purple. If you squinted, you could read the words Mulberry Tavern in cursive script. Caron shouldered the door and they plunged into blackness, Leigh dragging the holdalls behind her.
The staircase was unlit, steep and narrow. Caron had to haul herself up by the bannister. They left the boxes at the bottom and inched up in the dark, feeling their way slowly. The stairwell was silent and their feet dragged loud. The smell of stale beer got stronger as they approached another double door. It gave way to a deserted bar room, scrunched John Smith’s towels underneath empty optics, the pumps in their orderly line. The carpet was almost bald. Even in this state, you couldn’t shake the feeling that someone had just left the room, that a long lock-in had only just been abandoned. There were faded squares on the walls where the pictures used to be. One of them showed pencil graffiti: Wentworth College, Class of ’94.
Caron led Leigh slowly past the bar and round the back, through another entrance. A corridor with a pale rectangle of light at the end of it. Suddenly, the flat began to take shape, make sense. A box room. A slim bathroom. A room with just enough space for a bed. And last, the living room, full of upturned beer crates. But that wasn’t the remarkable thing about it. The surprise was what it led to, the sliding doors and the open plateau of rooftop, dressed with scrawny bunting. Caron stepped out first and beckoned her, steadying herself against the doors with one hand.
It was like walking out into a Lego world, the small, exact buildings below. The sky was very white with cloud, a washed sheet on the line, a sheet you could get tangled up in and never see anything else again. They were right above The Crucible. If the snooker tournament was happening, you could almost reach down through the roof and steal the black ball. The buildings that screamed Sheffield to Leigh when she was growing up were laid out, all present and correct, within jumping distance, gobbing distance. She could see Park Hill Flats and the station, the trains pulling away with their short and long promises.
‘Is this yours? Is it all yours?’
‘Yeah. Until they decide to do something with the building. As long as I’m here, it’ll stop squatters moving in. Matt tipped me off. It’ll do.’ She grimaced. ‘They could at least have restocked the bar, eh?’
‘It’s beautiful. This is what I thought Sheffield was when I was a kid. All this.’
She wanted to leap off the edge towards the Winter Gardens, fall down through the glass and the wide, exotic leaves, land between a couple on a bench, knocking them like skittles.
‘Why do you think it is,’ she said, ‘that things only make sense to people like us when we’re above them, looking down?’
‘There’s no such thing as people like us.’
‘There might be.’
Caron picked up a pebble, smaller than a ten-pence piece, and lobbed it in the direction of The Lyceum. She just missed a teenager with high-waisted jeans and an armful of shopping bags. The stone sailed out of sight and landed somewhere they couldn’t see.
‘Unlucky,’ said Leigh. ‘Next time.’
‘There’s always a next time. That’s what I’ve been telling myself anyway. You always get another chance. Until you don’t.’
Leigh was almost dizzy with happiness. She thought about the last time she felt like this. She was on top of The Chief in Squamish on a day so hot the granite was a skillet. Whistler and Powder Mountain somewhere out of reach, topped with snow. She spent her days climbing routes and eating fried bread and pancakes in the lonely cafés. She was filled with the sudden compulsion to emigrate. Her fingers were sanded down and her fingernails were black and blunt. She had not even considered the possibility that the feeling would pass. That her life would be full of moments lik
e that, moments of looking down and thinking everything was simple. Until you had to climb down.
Caron was leaning against the wall. Leigh hadn’t even noticed she was crying.
‘I’ve fucked up so bad this time. I’ve been playing a game. And I don’t even know why. That’s the stupid thing.’
Leigh walked backwards until she was leaning up against the wall next to Caron.
‘Have you talked to any of them?’
‘No. I left Alexa a note.’ She let out a ragged breath. ‘I stopped talking months ago, didn’t I? That’s the problem.’
‘Maybe things happen because they have to.’ Leigh knew she sounded pretentious.
The cobbles of the square looked so neat you could hopscotch on them.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Like … I don’t know … you’ve got to learn to trust yourself before you can trust anyone else.’
Leigh expected her to laugh. But she didn’t. She just nodded, her mouth set in a thin line. Leigh looked away from her. She wasn’t in love with Caron, or Tom, or anyone. She was in love with this city, the guts and grime of it. The tenderness of its spaces. The people eating sandwiches in the Peace Gardens. The man holding a paper cup outside Wicker Stores with a blanket over his knees. The early drinkers in The Brown Bear, making the afternoon shine. The cyclists going nowhere fast.
‘You got time to help me shift these boxes?’ Caron’s tears had stopped. Her face looked clean, washed-out.
The sun had started to sink. It was perched above Caron’s new roof like a piece of fruit, something fancy on the edge of a cocktail glass.
‘All right. Come on.’
Division Street
