The Little Death

by Sarah Till

  Eventually we stop on the ridge overlooking my house. Polly’s bag is empty now, save for some plastic covered maps and drawings. She lights yet another cigarette and blows the smoke into the wind.

  ‘You might as well have these. Your own set.’

  She hands me the maps and some other documents.

  ‘Have you been carrying these round all day? Oh, thanks, Polly, I’m going to write all this into my research. If I ever get it finished.’

  I hug her and she pulls away.

  ‘Steady on, lovey. Don’t start scricing again.’

  ‘I’m not. But you’ve given me loads of advice. And Gabriel as well. He must have been fond of you to tell you things. He must have.’

  ‘Mmm. I’m mum to everyone, me. Sounds to me like he was fond of you too. He knew your David before, you know. Said he was staying with you because he had something on him, knew something about him. But wanted to find out more.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know, dear. He didn’t tell me. But I think it involved money. I think Gabriel’s some kind of private detective. I’m sure he mentioned that Leanne girl.’

  I laugh.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so. He said he’s split up with his partner and he needed a room.’ I think about the day of the fight and pull my scarf tight to hide the purple bruises around my neck. ‘Although there didn’t seem to be much love lost between them.’

  She smiles now. The moon is round, big in the sky at the same time as the sun.

  ‘It’s my favourite time of day, this, when you can just about see the moon. And when it’s nearly full. I could be wrong about Gabriel. I often am, you know. So don’t go worrying yourself, sweetie. Nothing’s certain. And some things don’t have any answers at all.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, take my predicament. In a world where we can send a fella to the bloody moon, no one can tell me what happened to my Jimmy. You think everything has an answer, but it doesn’t. Everything doesn’t happen for a reason and there’s no explanation for some things. It’s took me all these years to find out, so I’m telling you, lovey, some things just happen because they do. And no matter what you do, how many times you ask God why, how deeply you look into it, there’s no reason. None.’

  I feel uncomfortable now. Isn’t that the whole point of me, the aetiologist?

  ‘There must be, somewhere. Someone knows. Something happened to your Jimmy, and someone knows.’

  ‘Yes, but they’re not telling me. And that leaves me with a lot of bloody possibilities, probables and maybes to follow up. It’s like being in a void between knowing and not knowing, a nothingness, somewhere outside where everyone else is, where you have a gut feeling, and instinct – but who believes in that, lovey? We need hard facts don’t we? Seeing is believing. Just somehow knowing isn’t enough. And obviously I’m so pig-headed that even though I know it, I have to keep on bloody searching, don’t I?’

  I nod. She’s right, of course. There is a place somewhere between probability and certainty, a deep chasm of nothingness that feels undiscovered. It’s the magic in the moor where we can identify the creatures, the ground, the sky and the weather, but we can’t know how they work together, how they provide and invisible world that pumps life into our atmosphere. Or that moment when we see life ebb away from something, or when a baby’s born, we can never know what that is. She takes my hand and holds it for a moment, her rough skin scratching me, and I think I see a tear in her eye. Polly speaks now. ‘Anyway. I’d best get back. I’ve got loads to do.’

  We walk down the valley and up the other side. She’s lingering and looking at the hills, her eyes not on the peat, and she stumbles a couple of times. I look behind me into the crepuscular rays, the kind of twilight that makes the moor look prettier than ever, and try to see what she’s peering into. When we reach the road she stands at the wall for a moment, then hurries to her car and drives off without another word. I go inside. It’s been a long day, and I pull out the maps and papers, and take off Leanne’s bracelet.

  Something’s not right. I’m still devastated about Gabriel leaving, still convinced he’s with Sarah and still not satisfied I know everything about David’s infidelity. With Leanne, my cousin? It had the makings of some sleazy film, where the other woman turned out to be a younger model of the wife, except Leanne was much younger. Too young.

  There’s no one to phone, no one to call to ask for an explanation. My head whirrs with it all, and I fall asleep in the bath, my aching legs comforted. I wake and giggle at the sight of Polly shouting obscenities on the moors, until I remember about Gabriel, and Leanne and David, and Sam. I can’t face it. I can’t face up to any of this yet, I need more time in the nothingness. I’ve semi-enjoyed the past couple of days, walking in Polly’s shadow, feeling what her life is like, and there can’t be any harm in doing it for a bit longer, until the hurt subsides. Until Sarah and Gabriel settle down or go away. Until David collects his things and goes to live with Sam. Until I can sit in my own home, and not wait for the next sledgehammer blow to hit me.

  The Moorland Attacks and Defences

  Birds of prey living on the moorland include Buzzard, Merlin, Hen Harrier or Short-eared Owl. At the top of the food chain, along with foxes, birds of prey attack only for food. Most animals and birds will use attack as defence only in desperation, when they feel their life is in danger. This may be a perceived danger, sometimes invisible to other animals, but alerted throughout the local species through calls and hormone release.

  Similarly, a honeybee away from the hive foraging for nectar or pollen will rarely sting, except when stepped on or roughly handled. Honeybees will actively seek out and sting when they perceive the hive to be threatened, often being alerted to this by the release of attack pheromones. In people who are allergic to bee stings, a sting may trigger a dangerous anaphylactic reaction that is potentially deadly.

  Little is known about the language of moorland birds, save for mating calls. It is widely considered that birds communicate through behavioural signal and stances, as well as through calls and hormone release. However, as with migration mapping, this has not been commercially studied. The mythology of the heath endows all birds with different qualities, particularly the owl, who symbolises wisdom and cyclic death.

  Chapter Twelve

  When I wake up the first thing I think about is Gabriel. I can see Sarah’s kitchen window is open, and her car is back. I can even smell the coffee, wafting across the moor. It’s already light and I’ve missed her morning stretches. I think about what Polly said about her and giggle. All part of the showing off. Otherwise, why didn’t she do it out of sight, round the other side of her house? I resist the urge to go over, choosing dignity over temper. Anyway, no doubt they would both sit there and stare at me. She’d tilt her head to one side, counsellor mode, and look pitifully at me, as if I am slightly mad. Why should it be any different now? That’s what she had done up until now when I’d poured my heart out to her about David and Sam. I finger the bracelet, Leanne’s bracelet, lined up with mine and Mum’s on my wrist, and wonder if there’s any point ringing Aunty Jean. I feel stupid now, silly and immature, when I realise all the accusations, all the shouting at her, were all false. It had never been her.

  I pick up the house phone and punch in the familiar number. A number from my childhood. It rings twice and a man answers.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hello. Is that Uncle Trevor? This is Patti. Susan’s daughter. Is Leanne there?’

  There’s a long silence and I hear Trevor breathing and swallowing.

  ‘Leanne? Haven’t you heard?’

  ‘No. What? What’s happened?’

  In the silence I imagine him standing in their familiar hallway, near the aspidistra plant and wrought iron phone stand.

  ‘She’s run away. Two years ago now. We haven’t seen her for two years.’ I can hear the sadness in his voice as he struggles to explain. ‘Like you did, Patricia. Just li
ke you did. But you came back, didn’t you? The police think she might be dead.’

  I end the call, probably leaving Uncle Trevor wondering where I had gone. Leanne had gone. Dead? How was she dead? I dismiss it straight away, citing myself as a good example. They thought I was dead too, didn’t they? She wouldn’t be dead; she’d be shacked up somewhere enjoying herself. Wouldn’t she?

  I’d grown up with Leanne. She was five and a half years younger than me, and there are lots of family photos of me holding her as a baby. A stranger would probably mistake her for my sister, both of us blonde and well built. She was like a mini version of me. I knew she looked up to me, and that’s was partly why I left. I had a horrible habit of chewing the skin from the side of my fingers until it bled. It was something I would do when I was too engrossed in a horror film, or I was getting a good telling off. I’d also pick at my eyebrows until they were thin and the skin underneath was scaly, mainly when I was reading. It wasn’t until I saw Leanne’s bleeding fingers and naked eyebrows that I realised she was hell bent on being my double. My life had already taken a slippery slope of older boyfriends and shagging in the back of vans, even in my bedroom while my parents were out. She’s stumbled in on me more than once, always turning up when you least expected her to. As she got older, she’d have a peevish look on her face and when I told her to fuck off, she’d say ‘I’ll tell’. She probably saw more than she needed to, but she would have seen it anyway, in another alleyway or at the back of another chip shop.

  I wonder now if that’s why she did it. Her face on that night when I had burst in, all red and smiling, as if she had won something. But she hadn’t won anything. She was a child that David had taken advantage of. How could it be her? She was a kid? It had to be Aunty Jean. The older woman with the deep cleavage and short skirts, the come-one smile and the constant suggestion that Uncle Trevor ‘just wasn’t up to it’. David was older than me and she was the archetypal Mrs Robinson, just waiting to be fucked. But I’d got it wrong, and David hadn’t corrected me. Why would he? It was hardly likely that I would find out his dirty little secret, now that me and Jean weren’t speaking. It was a mess, a big fat mess.

  I take Gabriel’s phone and lean out of the window. I press call and hold it away from me. I look into the misty first light of the morning and I can hear a faint ringing. It stops and his voice clicks in. I listen, and then, not knowing what to say to someone sitting just across the road, I switch it off. I wonder what kind of fucked up world it is where we can’t just talk about what happened? Perhaps Sarah didn’t want him near me? Had he told her about our night together, how he came on to me from the minute he saw me, with her as a brief interlude? Or maybe he just doesn’t want to. I throw the phone in the drawer and get my walking boots on. Another day up there with Polly, cursing the world and eating cake. What harm could it do?

  I wait by the wall with my plastic covered map, but she doesn’t come. I wait for half an hour, and see Sarah come outside. She’s waving me over, so I jump over the wall quickly and run down into the valley. It’s rained overnight and I hurry through the bright purple thistles and sit in the shelter. I can see her at the top of the hill, shouting down.

  ‘Patti. Come back. I need to talk to you.’

  I stand up and wave my arms at her.

  ‘Fuck off. I don’t want to be anywhere near you. Or him. Just fuck off.’

  I run around the back of the shelter where she can’t see me. I’m in tears and seething at her, but now isn’t the time. I stomp off across the moor, and almost step on a nest of bird eggs. I stop and get the map out. There’s only one strip left un-shaded on Polly’s map and I set off to where she must have begun her journey, all those years ago.

  She’d been here every day, and it looked like she’d covered some of the areas twice. When I used to sit in my window seat, obsessing about David and Sam, checking his phone, and watching Sarah, I’d thought her a little bit mad. But like she herself said, what’s wrong with being a little bit mad? It was easy to judge her from behind my window, watching her head bob up and down in rain or shine, thinking she was crazy or worse, getting a kick out of the crash victims. Of course, when I found out she was looking for her partner I got a little more perspective, but I could never have guessed in a million years what she was up to. I wonder how many drawings she’s done of the birds and plants and what she’s done with them? I wonder why she was so keen on Gabriel writing a book about it, and how he convinced her to write the story? Maybe she didn’t take much convincing. After all, he’d managed to convince me to sleep with him.

  She’d told me that he knew something about David, and I wondered what it was, if it had anything to do with Sam? Or Leanne? She had mentioned Leanne. Was he here because of Leanne? Did Uncle Trevor and Aunty Jean suspect that David had been with Leanne? Was that why she had run away? She was still a child. It was bad enough when I thought it was Aunty Jean, but this was mind blowing. I couldn’t credit that David would do anything so bad. He’d used me as his respectability, and I could understand why he needed that, what with his job and everything. But that was one thing. Had he done something worse?

  Then I remembered. He had to me. He’d broken my fingers, then told me not to go to hospital, taping them to each other so they mended. On cold days like today I could feel the break. He’d lashed out with a kitchen knife and caught my arm, slicing a deep groove, then dressing it with plastic stitches. The kicks, the pushes, the holding me so hard his fingers left bruises. Then the withdrawal of himself. He cried, he was sorry, I reluctantly forgave him, then he withdrew any affection. Why did I stay? Now he’s not around, it’s hard for me to find a reason. But on the days when he towered over me, threatened to kill me and bury me out there on the moor, where no one would find me, then taunt me that there was no one to look for me, it was very real. Don’t try to leave because I’ll find you and I’ll kill you. I’d even tried to have a baby with him. I shake my head at myself now, then understand why I did it. I had no one, no one at all. Until you are completely alone, completely at the mercy of someone else, it’s hard to hear your own voice begging for help, begging for the hurt to stop.

  I look up and a huge bird of prey is circling above me. In that moment, I realise that my life will never be like that again and I’m free. I might not ever know the answer to everything, to who Sam is, to why Gabriel left, but I know I’m free. It’s the best feeling in the world, and I run, arms outstretched, Polly style, over the moor, shouting all the way.

  ‘Free! I’m free!’

  Birds scatter and creatures scurry, the heather bursts with pollen until I’m in a cloud, jumping over half hidden rocks and waving my arms. Maybe I am a little bit mad. Maybe Polly is. But there we are. On the backbone of England, the Pennines, where Gabriel told me he would like to run his fingers along. If this was the backbone of England, I’d be standing around L4/L5 where the hips widen and run out into sumptuous curves, the curves he held the other night. I laugh at his explanations about the islands, all designed to get me into bed, and about him telling Sarah about the sun. I laugh at his chat up lines, his awkward truthfulness about his masculinity, and his eventual surrender. I laugh out loud, so loud and manic that Polly would be proud of me.

  Eventually I stop laughing and get the map out, focusing on the task in hand. It’s clear now why Polly spends so much time here; a walk that should take two hours might take her four with all the cursing and skipping. I stomp up across the moor, through the heather patches, and over the brook that had six steppingstones. I’m getting nearer to the place where she started her search all those years ago, where stood looking at the plane wreckage. I shiver a little at the thought of it, this piece of moor, so similar to the rest, singled out by the dark shape, the heather trampled and the tiny purple moor flowers squashed.

  It was easy to see why she started here; it leads to the site of the place where the bodies of the people from the plane were found. It would be the first place she would look, and the last place I wan
ted to be on my own. All my bravado has gone now Polly isn’t here, and I’m shaking a little. When I step over the lip of the valley and see plane wreckage close up I freeze. All the photographs in my file come to life. The damp moss and the call of the curlews, words out Polly spoke, fit here, as the heather peters away to marshland and scrub. The road cuts through the moor, and every now and then a car zooms through, death tourists craning their necks to see the dark form of the plane. An area has been cleared, and, just above me, some people have a picnic table and chairs. It’s true that they may be admiring the view over the valley and reservoir, but their line of vision is in an opposite direction, over the expanse towards the crash site.

  I’d been obsessed with the accident and the victims yet I’d never been here. Now, here, a final realisation comes to me. This was a final outcome, a graveyard that had been full of bodies. Some of them must still be here. The inquest had told different stories of how many people had been died, counting only what and who they found. No real mention of those who were not found. They were relegated to ‘missing’. But six people including Jimmy wouldn’t have walked away, would they? He’s probably here somewhere, in the nothingness, no one looking for him except Polly.

  I look back over the moors and hope Polly’s behind me, catching me up with her backpack and fancy headscarf blowing in the wind. But she isn’t. She mustn’t have come today. I pick my way back through the marshy ground, and wonder how people can sit up here, so near to death. Then I laugh – I’ve chosen to live up here. I get the map out and trace my finger along the un-shaded area and back up the valley toward my house. I’m making good progress, when it starts to rain. At first it’s light and I pull my hood up, but then it’s huge drops, splashing me in the face and making me wince. I duck underneath one of the many rock outcrops and sit on the ground.