First published in 2016 by Moth Publishing, an imprint of Mayfly Press, a partnership between New Writing North and Business Education Publishers Limited, Chase House, Rainton Bridge, Tyne and Wear, DH4 5RA
Copyright Benjamin Myers 2016
All rights reserved. Benjamin Myers has asserted his right under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cover design by Courage, UK
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Paperback ISBN 978 1 911356 00 4
Ebook ISBN 978 1 911356 03 5
This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition.
Printed and bound by Martins the Printers Ltd, UK
www.mothpublishing.com
www.mayfly.press
‘Sacred love is selfless, seeking not its own. The lover serves his beloved and seeks perfect communion of oneness with her.’
– D. H. Lawrence
THE BLACK WATER shot through with silver. Scraps of the moon on the surface like a shoal of fish floating belly up. The slow rock and tip and the slap of the water on the side of the boat.
It is too dark for silhouettes but the hot glow of his cigarette seems brighter than the sun as he takes a final draw and sees the last burning shreds of tobacco fall down to the tarpaulin sheet and sit there just long enough to singe tiny holes in its cracked glaze.
He is down to the filter. He throws it away. He has nothing left.
There are no buildings on the reservoir’s shoreline; no cars in the car park. The wind turbines sit over the brow on the crest of the valley. No hills surround the body of water either – only the flat moor-tops flush with the late spring’s first sprouting of heather not yet purple.
It is not raining.
He lifts the clanking chain and feels the weight of it first in one hand and then the other. He throws it down and then lifts an oar from the rowlock. Steadies his feet. He throws the paddle out into the water. He waits for the splash then does the same with the second one at the other side of the boat. Swimming is the only way back now and that distance would challenge any man on a night like this.
A breeze picks up.
He has drifted and with no markers to guide the way he has no way of knowing if he is in the same spot as last time. Probably he is some metres off his target. Maybe many. But this is close enough to put him into that next dimension. To bring the two of them together.
He sits down and the boat rocks again. The tin in his breast pocket rattles. He waits until the boat has settled and then he feeds the chain through the hole in the centre of the first breeze block. He loops it through twice. He wraps rusting steel around powder dry coke and cinder.
He knots it. Pulls it tight. He does the same with a second breeze block. He does it slowly. He does it meticulously. He has to get this right.
The chain is the same length as the one he used last time but the extra knots that he ties take six inches off it. Their difference in height will not matter. They will stand together. Side to side or eye to eye. Weightless like flight or eternal suspension. Hovering between sky and earth. Angelic in the water until the sun rises and its rays beam down. The water keeping their secrets.
It will be silent down there; it will be the most beautiful graveyard imaginable.
He takes the chain and he threads one end through his belt-loops. When he has done that he crosses it over and threads it under then he runs it down one trouser leg. He snaps it tight and then wraps it around his ankles once twice three times again. He ties it. Binds his ankles and feet. Locks them in. Strapped. Bound.
He reaches into his pockets and he takes out the padlock and then brings the chain together and he puts the arm of the lock through the two ends of the chain and he snaps it into place. The sound of the mechanism locking is satisfying. Finite. He throws the key. Chucks it far out. The lack of hesitation makes his heart race. He doesn’t hear it hit the water.
The breeze picks up.
He turns and puts his legs over the side of the boat. He dangles his feet in the reservoir. The cold snaps at him. He hefts the first breeze block into his lap. The second one follows. One on top of the other. Stacked. He is a human hod.
He straightens the chain out on the floor of the boat. Makes sure there are no snags.
He holds the blocks in place.
Thinks of her face.
That day in the snow.
In winter.
Up top.
He thinks of her face. Her scent.
He thinks of all their faces. All of their faces.
All those secrets trapped inside him. He’ll take them with him. He thinks of other men thwarted. He thinks of victory – finally. Victory over the hills and the hamlet and the town and the city. Victory over everyone and everything.
He thinks of his mother.
Then he pushes the breeze blocks into the water and hears the rusting chain accelerating into the black and silver.
PART I
WINTER
1
MIRRORS. THERE ARE mirrors everywhere.
Brindle lets the water run hot and then he washes his hands. He scrubs each finger in turn using the soap that he keeps in the type of plastic case that campers and frequent travellers use. The cheap industrial stuff that the force buys makes his skin itch. It bothers him. So he brings his own. He looks at his face – briefly.
Mirrors. Mirrors and masks.
Brindle touches his hair. He runs his comb beneath the tap and then he confirms the neat side parting.
He washes the comb. He washes between each tooth and then uses a paper towel to dry it. Replaces it in his pocket.
The toothbrush. It is new. He adds paste and cleans his teeth in a circular motion as advised by the hygienist who remarked that his gums were in exceptionally good condition. He spits and swills spits and swills. Sees his face again.
Mirrors masks and memories.
He tries to avoid them all. Especially mirrors. It is not easy. His face follows him everywhere. It confronts him around corners and is reflected in computer monitors and handheld devices. In rear-view mirrors and shop windows. The sunglasses of strangers on the street even.
His flawed face introduces Brindle to the world and neither the world nor he likes what they see: the crude imperfection of a birth defect. He wears a red mark caused by the haemangioma that signifies more than just mutant pigmentation and increased vessels filled with blood while still in the womb. The darkened strawberry shape on his cheek has marked him out as different since it was first pointed out to him with horror by a fellow toddler.
He does not need mirrors to remind him of this but mirrors masks and memories are to be avoided all the same.
None lead you anywhere good.
The bathroom door opens.
Brindle says a voice. He looks up from the sink. Sees his face. Mirrors masks and memories. Sees a colleague.
What is it?
You’re wanted.
HAT GLOVES SCARF.
Phone. Lighter. Papers. A cigarette half-emptied of its contents and the paper twisted at the end. Her old metal pencil case with some coins and photographs and bus tickets and a few small blims of hash in it. Squidgy black. Easy to burn and roll. Melanie Muncy puts them all into her pocket.
The house makes her anxious now. Since she has returned for Christmas she has been experiencing the unpleasant feeling of something fluttering and then tightening
inside her and when this happens she has to get out. She needs air and space and the moors.
Keys?
She goes into the kitchen. Her mother is at the table. She is moving toast crumbs around with the edge of her hand. Sweeping them into lines.
Are you going to be here in a bit Mam?
Her mother looks up and offers a wan smile but says nothing.
Mam.
Yes?
Do I need to take my keys with me? I’ll only be half an hour.
Take them where?
Mungo needs a walk.
Why?
Melanie sighs.
Because he’s a dog she says. That’s what they do.
June Muncy looks back to the table. To the line of crumbs.
Her parents especially make Melanie Muncy anxious. They wear masks all the time now. Her father that of respectability and confidence and her mother that of balance and normality. Her fear and quiet despair seep through the edges though. It is like trying to trap liquid beneath an upturned glass. Only now coming home for the holidays does she see just how bad it has become. This house way up the valley with its land and outbuildings and endless extensions and conservatory and paddock might outwardly be a sign of Ray Muncy’s business-success but for only the first time Melanie sees it for what it really represents: his insecurity and isolation. It is a fortress from the outside world; a retreat from reality. Even the campsite fields that they let out by plot during spring and summer are a strictly controlled area that her father polices with authority.
I’ll take them then shall I? says Melanie.
Yes says her mother. You walk the dog love. It’ll soon be Christmas.
Turning away Melanie rolls her eyes.
See you later then.
She calls the dog who leaps out of his basket in the utility room. She hears his claws scratching at the lino as he comes skittering through to the hall. He puts his paws up onto her thighs and she holds them for a moment and then takes his lead from the hook by the door and attaches it to his collar.
Come on then she says. Shall we go out for a walk up top?
The dog cocks his head at the mention of these familiar words. His ears prick up.
She leaves by the back door and follows the path round the side garden and across the front lawn that is deep with snow. It coats the large ornamental urns and the potted plants. It hangs top-heavy from the kissing gate and two garden benches.
Viewed from a distance the garden is a neat landscaped space in miles of rough and uneven terrain. It is a sanitised section with a rockery and a fountain now turned off for winter and decking around the back. Behind the house the camping fields run down to the river and round the other side are the outbuilding and the stable-door hatch from which they sell refreshments to the walkers during camping season.
The dog tugs at the lead eager to hit the higher ground and run free. Melanie walks down the lane and sinks deeper into the fresh snow. It comes up to her shins. The air is fresh and thin and her lungs feel tight as if they are coated with tiny motes of glass. She realises she has not brought her inhaler.
She goes through the old stone gate and round past the post office and the turning circle and through the newer gate with the rabbit-run gap to one side and onto the short path that leads to the old horse track curving up the hillside. She unhooks the dog from his lead and lets him run panting through the snow. Excited by winter he hops four-footed through the thickest drifts like a spring lamb.
Halfway up the hill Melanie Muncy turns right where the wall has tumbled down into a pile of old stones and into a field where a disused shepherd’s bothy sits in the corner. She has been coming here for years. Once men would take refuge in it when they found themselves caught out on the fells during whiteout storms or in the lambing month of March but it had not been used for that purpose in decades.
Now the sloped tiled roof has holes in it where slates have slid away but the walls are still sound and the view across the hamlet and down the valley always breathtaking. Always different.
A fallen piece of roof timber provides a bench on which to sit as the dog sniffs around the edges of the stone chamber with his ears pricked and wet nose roving close to the ground. In one corner is an old roll of carpet matted into a single grey heap that she has never dared move in case she dislodges a rat’s nest. There is also one shoe there and some twisted empty cans. Broken glass. A hairbrush. All the same stuff as when she was last here in early September. A whole term ago.
She plays some music on her phone and with cold hands Melanie begins to make a joint. When it is rolled and licked and twisted she lights the end and takes a hit. She calls the dog over and scratches behind his ears until he wanders off to urinate on the carpet. She plays with the lighter wheel. She flicks it so that the flint shoots sparks. She stands and stretches and then leans in the doorway.
From here the hamlet below seems impossibly small. Drawn down to miniature. It is nothing more than a cluster that could fit into the grounds of her school three times over though of course she understands that it isn’t the hamlet that is shrinking but she who is growing.
Once it was her entire world but Melanie Muncy knows that soon she will be too big for this backwater entirely.
She takes the smoke into her lungs and lets the feeling of it wash over her body. Through her. She feels her eyelids drop. She feels that anxious flutter inside of her finally slow to a manageable thrum. She breathes out and lets the smoke take her tension with it.
She imagines it floating high above the valley. Her tension released as smoke like a grey swan silently rising.
HE WALKS THE old Corpse Road. No map marks it as that but that’s what the locals call it. The Corpse Road.
It is the long back walk up from town where coffins would be dragged from the coffin-makers to be buried in plots on the tiny hillside cemetery that is now grown over so infrequent is its use.
The rocks are frosting and the sky is coming in. It has that weighted feeling like it cannot hold its snow for long. A dusting is already circulating and there’ll be a heavy fall by sunset. He walks slowly.
Up ahead beyond his house wind turbines spin on the valley’s crest. Their blades thrash at the sky.
He picks his way along the top path through the trees. He walks a hundred feet or more above the glistening levels of the river and the slow pools that form as it drops down a series of elongated shelves. There are six falls of varying heights along this stretch and each sounds different. His ears are long since tuned to the wavelengths of the upper end of the dale and now he can recognise each waterfall with his eyes closed.
There are trout in the pools. Over the years he has fished them all. Not for a while but. Not for half a lifetime but. There are strange associations with fishing since the last time. Memories of the place have become polluted.
He peaks the valley and walks the final mile or so along the moor-edge. It’s easier than clambering across the rocks that have fallen down the gorge to the gill or scrambling the slippy dirt banks of the wood.
He comes out of the trees and walks up a ways then is out in the open amongst the stiff heather and blackened soil. It’s like pushing up through the clouds into a purer more rarefied atmosphere.
The snow is circulating in spirals of light dust that falls to dot the ground; an advance party for what is to follow.
Up top the moors are punctuated by irregular scars. They are half-healed wounds that reveal the bedrock and clay that lie beneath the skin of the earth. They are the negative imprints of houses down in the hamlet built from the rock that has been mined and hewn and dragged and shaped from these gaping holes.
They exist unseen from any distance as the moorland heather around them suddenly plunges away to nothing. Their sides steep and treacherous like waterless tarns or quarries reclaimed by nature. The scars are not signposted. There is no wayfinding for the walkers. They are obscure and occasionally dangerous relics from the industrial past. Hidden worlds. Subterranean.
It is always silent in these many basins. Some do not see people for months or years. In the absence of human disturbance it is the rabbits that have taken up residence. Scores of them in each scar their complex warrens running wide and deep. They are not threatened by humans because they have never seen humans. In others – in the bigger excavations – there are deer and foxes and badgers too and many birds nesting in the steep rock sides around the jagged rim.
Even in winter the wind barely penetrates these remote amphitheatres.
The biggest is his favourite. It is so big it has a name: Acre Dale Scar. That sits further along. A mile past his house up the back way. He will not pass it today.
Acre Dale is its own world. A sunken forest supporting its own infrastructure and hierarchy of animals; its own wet and windless climate.
A child died in one of the base pools there. Years back. Since then it has been fenced off and condemned. Hewn and plundered then abandoned. A doomed space. In his mind he has assumed ownership. He treats it as his place alone. His barren fiefdom.
He cuts through the heather of the moor-lip and sees the chimney of the house as if it is protruding from the stiff earth. A shape against the sky. Home.
Then the sky can no longer hold itself and the snow falls and lays thick. White on black filling in the gaps. He walks towards it.
ON BRINDLE’S DESK there is: a MacBook and a bottle of water that he fills every morning at home with filtered water to avoid the dusty-tasting water from the office cooler. There is a box of tissues. There is a Tupperware tub containing dried apricots dried cranberries dried pineapple goji berries banana chips macadamia nuts cashew nuts peanuts raisins sultanas and shavings of dried coconut. There is a yellow legal notepad. A phone and charger. And there is a framed photo of a kitten in a wellington boot given to him as a joke by his colleagues on his last birthday.
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