I didn’t go upstairs, though. I slipped quietly out of the front door and closed it behind me. It was time to go and find answers somewhere else.
Part Two: BEGINNINGS
13. Richard, 1889
I kept my eyes closed as I climbed. If I opened them there would be no difference. The blackness in the stairwell was as complete as that behind my eyes, and I didn’t want to see it. The last time had been terrifying, and I thought that if the darkness was of my own making it would be more bearable. I kept my hand on the wall to my right, feeling the curve in the cold stone as it spiralled upwards. I went slowly, feeling with my foot for each step.
I knew the climb took only a couple of minutes, but it seemed longer before I felt the wind lift my hair and I emerged at the top. It was a fine day and the sun was hot on the heather, but even so there was wind up here. The last time I’d felt as though the gale would gather me up and blow me like a sparrow across hills and valleys right into Lancashire. That time I clung to the balustrade, torn between fear of the wind and fear of the darkness awaiting me on the climb back down. Today the wind was of a different nature, a breeze carrying the warmth of hot grasses and dry stream beds, the smell of warmed heather and the sound of bees. I walked around the four sides of the balcony, able this time to do what I was supposed to the last: survey the grandeur and the vastness of the landscape from this high vantage point. In each direction, to all four compass points, the land rolled away to unimaginable distance, myself at the centre, the world at my feet. That was what they had wanted me to experience. In actuality I had pressed against the stone, crept around barely looking, filled with awe for the ferocity of the elements, but feeling no power within myself. It was only now, on this hot summer’s day, that I got an inkling. Awe with no fear. I was meant to be a part of this greatness, not subject to it. I should stand tall and let the wind fill my clothes, lift my hair by the roots, feel I had dominion over this land, rather than grovel and cling to the walls. It was easier in the sunshine.
Over the next few weeks this monument was to become my place of work and I would become familiar with it in all of its moods. The renovations shouldn’t take us beyond the summer months, but I couldn’t hope that this fine spell would last. July is oft beset with storms and winds and I knew that Mr S would expect me to work whatever the weather.
Having circled the monument and come back to the top of the stairs, I was reluctant to return to the darkness. I leaned my back against the stone and let my legs fold beneath me, sliding down until my buttocks reached the stone floor. Through the balustrades I could see stripes of land and sky, blue at the top, green below, framed by grey stone. I ran my fingers across the floor and my limbs had lines of light and shade. The stone had not absorbed the sun’s warmth, was cold and impermeable, letting through neither heat nor light. It occurred to me that if the square upon which I sat were removed, the stairwell would be illuminated.
I sat for a long time, perhaps an hour, listening to the sounds of the moorland before I heard voices from further down the hill. I stood and looked, and three boys were running, shouting, chasing each other with laughter. One of them was carrying a bucket. They ran right up to the monument, and then in circles around it, but they didn’t step into the dark and climb the stairs, and they didn’t notice me watching them. They were ten or eleven years old, out on the moors and free.
Before they ran off I heard one of them say ‘I dares ya,’ but they all laughed and they weren’t serious. I saw their bare legs flying down the path, their boots a jumble of scuffed black and brown leather flashing against the dry ground. It wasn’t long since I was their age, and suddenly I wanted to follow them, be a part of their rough and tumble even if only from a distance.
I ran down the stairs, trailing my hand on the wall behind me, keeping to the wide side of the steps, too fast to let the dark enter my consciousness, blinded anyhow by the sudden change from sunlight to dark. My eyes hadn’t had time to adjust before I was out again, my feet on solid ground, my legs running like the boys’ across the hilltop. They were out of sight, but they’d gone in the direction of the reservoir and I went that way too.
The path lies across the wide sweep of hillside like a piece of dropped thread on the heather. I could see the three of them still running while my breath was ragged in my chest. Knowing what I do now about the dangers of the smoke that billowed from the chimneys across the valley day in day out, I’m surprised that the boys could run. But their youth stood them in good stead and the gap between us widened as they got nearer to the reservoir. By the time I reached the lip of hill the boys were on the other side, already embroiled in their next adventure.
Two of them had stripped down to their undergarments and were talking excitedly to the third, waving their hands about and gesturing towards the water with their heads. The third and smallest boy was obviously reluctant, but after a few minutes he sat down on the ground and began to unlace his boots.
I smiled and sat down on a rock. The surface of the reservoir was smooth and reflected the sky perfectly, the few white drifting clouds as clear and soft in the water as they were in the sky. I could feel the sun warm on my back. I had nothing else I had to be doing that day – the only day where I could please myself for some time to come.
The two boys were knee deep in the water by the time the youngest had folded his clothes into a neat pile next to his bucket. They held out their hands to him and he tiptoed in. I remembered rare excursions with my sisters. The cold bite of the water when I dipped my toe, then the cool smoothness as it swallowed my whole foot, the circles of water lapping higher and higher up my legs as I ventured out.
The boys were going further than I had ever dared. The older two were holding the smaller one by the hands and pulling him, and I could hear their shrieks of laughter rolling across the water, his voice lower, murmuring dissent beneath their high spirits. I wondered if they could swim. Not many people could in the whole valley. I had learned when I worked up at Gibson’s for a short time after my dad died and Mr Gibson put me in charge of cleaning the millpond. He had made me stay on late every night for a week, splashing about at the end of a rope until I had learned not to drown.
One of the boys seemed to trip or slip on something. He shouted and disappeared under the water. Before I grasped what was happening the other two were in trouble as well, the second of the bigger boys sinking suddenly so that only the top of his head was showing, and the smaller one splashing wildly, flailing his arms in an attempt to tread water. I knelt, unlaced my boots and threw off my jacket. By the time I stood up the surface of the water was smooth and there was no sign that there had ever been any boys at all. Except of course the three piles of clothes, two higgledy-piggledy and one neat, on the rocky beach.
I ran to the wall edge where the water was the deepest. As I dived I realised I wasn’t alone. Another young man had stripped off his jacket and trousers and was diving in on the other side of the reservoir.
It was shockingly cold and I couldn’t hold my breath for long underwater. I surfaced and swam towards the point where I’d seen the boys disappear. The other man was doing the same. When we reached the place we nodded at each other and then dived under. The water was clouded with mud as though there had been a disturbance or a struggle. It was impossible to see anything and the particles got into my eyes and nose. I tried flailing my arms about to see if I could find anything by touch, but the air was bursting in my chest. I had to shoot to the surface again and let it out in great gasps.
The other young man surfaced a few seconds after me. We both trod water, unable to speak for the rush of breath in our lungs. Then one of my feet hit something hard and I explored it with my toes. There was a ridge under the water. I put both my feet on it and pushed against it and I rose up into a standing position, my feet on solid ground, the water only reaching to my waist.
‘It falls away,’ I said.
The other man nodde
d. ‘It gets deep here suddenly. They were out of their depth.’
‘They couldn’t swim.’
It had been a few minutes now since the boys had disappeared and the only disturbance to the water was made by the two of us. We both knew the worst had happened. This time I filled my lungs full of air before I dived and kept my eyes half closed against the motes in the water. I was under for longer than I’d ever been before, feeling with my arms and my legs for any sign of the three young boys, but I found nothing. The murk was such that even if I had been only a foot or two away I could have missed them.
I burst to the surface and the other man was just behind me.
‘It’s hopeless,’ he said. His voice was soft and low.
‘We should raise the alarm.’
‘It’s too late to save them.’
We swam back to the opposite sides of the reservoir where we had each left our clothes. I thought I would let the sun dry my underclothes a little before I dressed. As I turned, I noticed a third man descending on the far side from the path to the Basin Stone. He was walking quite fast. He reached the beach and stopped short as he noticed the piles of clothes left by the boys. He crouched and looked at them, reached out his hand and turned them over. He looked out across the water which was lying still and innocent as a sleeping cat in the warmth of the sun, reflecting the blue of the skies. For a few moments he knelt there as though contemplating the meaning of what he had discovered, then he was on his feet and running, back in the direction he had come. He hadn’t noticed either me or my companion on the other side.
We met on the beach. I was carrying my clothes but he had put his shirt and trousers back on top of his wet underclothes. It must have been very uncomfortable. We sat next to each other on a large rock and looked at the reservoir. I noticed there was water running down his cheeks. It might have come from his wet hair, but I thought not.
‘What a waste of life,’ he said, and again I was struck by the softness of his voice.
I looked at him more closely, and drew in my breath.
‘Good grief, you’re a woman!’
She smiled at me through her tears. I would never have mistaken her for a man if I had met her under different circumstances. Her clothes were a man’s and her hair was cropped short like a man’s, but her cheeks were smooth and hairless, and I have never met a man as pretty as she was. Her smile creased her skin into tiny lines around her eyes and mouth and I saw she was past the first flush of youth, and quite possibly the second too, though she was strong and vigorous.
‘I thought you would have noticed, having seen me undressed.’
I flushed and felt the heat in my face. ‘I was thinking only of the boys.’
Her smile faded.
‘The gentleman who was here,’ she gestured with her arms, ‘he will be raising the alarm now.’
‘Yes. He will bring help. Boats and poles. They will find the bodies.’
She looked thoughtful.
‘I might not stay.’ She looked at me almost defiantly, as though I might contradict her. ‘There’s nothing we can do now. And if many people come they will see me…’ She looked down at her male garments and I understood. Her disguise was only effective from a distance. Once you looked closely her gender was clear and, even with the tragedy at hand to fill people’s minds, questions would be asked.
I nodded. ‘I will stay. I might be of some help if they need someone who can swim.’
It would take at least an hour for help to arrive and we sat for a while letting the sun and breeze dry our clothes. I wondered if I ought to put my trousers and shirt back on now that I knew she was a woman, but somehow the normal social niceties didn’t seem relevant. The shock of the boys’ drowning threw a cast over the day which would have made embarrassment seem frivolous. If she had been a young woman I might have felt differently, but she was probably around the same age as Mr S, or as my own parents would be if they were still alive.
When the sun had passed the highest point in the sky and our clothes had dried enough that they didn’t stick to the skin, she left. I watched her disappear along the path I’d walked earlier. Then, I had felt carefree, enjoying a day to myself before the work of the coming weeks. She walked lightly, but the tears were still running down her cheeks.
I put my clothes back on. It wouldn’t do for the search party to find me sitting here in my underclothes.
As I waited, I wondered if these three boys had families, mothers and fathers and siblings who would grieve for them, or if they were orphans like myself. And I wondered if I would meet the woman again. I hoped I would.
14. Lauren
I was eleven or twelve. Mr Lion was having one of those afternoons when he played records in the back room with the doors open onto the back garden and a spliff constantly on the go. He didn’t talk or involve me. I lay on the carpet near where the curtains touched the floor and kicked my legs behind me. Sometimes he put on one of my favourites. Dad came in to smoke with him. They drank beer and made comments about the musicians and the record companies. I didn’t listen to them, only to the music.
This particular afternoon he put on a new record. Mr Lion haunted charity shops, markets and jumble sales, looking for new stuff, so there were often songs I hadn’t heard before. This was something else, though. The moment the needle touched the vinyl I could feel the difference in the garden. The plants were paying attention. It was music I’d heard outside that no one else seemed to notice. It was the sound of a hot day after weeks of hot days, of dried earth and empty stream beds, of dried grass and plants desperate for water. The singer had a longing for rain and sang in the voice of the grass.
‘Who’s this?’ I asked.
‘It’s Tallara Graham,’ said Mr Lion.
‘Do you like it?’ Dad asked, sounding surprised.
‘I love it.’
Mr Lion told me she was from Australia, an orphaned aboriginal girl who was brought up by white farmers. A three-year drought meant they nearly had to sell up, but then she began to sing and things turned around for them. The rain came and the cattle began to thrive. The crops grew and grew. People wanted to buy her music and the family became the most successful farmers in the area. She was wooed by record companies and taken to New York, where she was murdered in an alleyway by a thief with a knife. The white family grieved, but they played her music and the farm continued to thrive.
I listened to the story and something settled in me. I may not have a mother, but here was an aboriginal girl who sang the song of parched grass from across the world, across the span of years, across death itself. I was not the only one who could hear.
Later I crept off to the woods and called for Peter, and when he came I sang him the song of the aboriginal girl.
He said ‘That’s your song. You sing like that all the time.’
I smiled. ‘Let’s go and build a dam in the woods.’
So we did and Peter caught a fish. We built a fire, and cooked the fish on hot slabs and ate it with our fingers, wrapped in ramsons. I took some roots home to plant beneath the hawthorn in my herb garden.
A vase of flowers had appeared on the front windowsill of our old house. In the evening the curtains were closed and the lights on. There was a bag of rubbish at the end of the path on bin day. She wasn’t trying to hide.
I watched Dad. He must have known, there’s no way he couldn’t have, but he didn’t say anything. There might have been a slight edge to him, a brittleness in his voice, a hint of awkwardness in his movements, but it might just have been that I was looking for it.
I had to walk past the house on the way to the bus stop or into town. Some days I took a detour and tried to forget she was there. Other days I went past slowly, looking out for new signs of her presence. Once I saw a figure moving across one of the upstairs rooms and I ran.
She left when I was a small baby and she wasn’t
part of my world. I didn’t think I had any feelings for her at all. The force of my anger took me by surprise.
How dare she leave this great empty space in our lives, this empty house full of memories and the hopes of a young family? All these years. Then just come back and take up residence as though nothing had happened, as though it was her right. I knew this was just the beginning. Now she was living in the house, in the town, our lives would never be the same.
Two days later I got home from college and Dad was in the kitchen singing. He was washing up, his arms in the suds, singing some old song along with the radio. There was a pink rose on the table in a glass of water. My dad never sings. I put my bag down on the chair and backed out of the kitchen. He turned just as I closed the door quietly behind me.
‘Lauren?’
But I was running down the road and through the town. I had to find Peter. I could talk to Peter.
He’d been at college that day and I didn’t know if he’d be back yet: he often stayed to do extra work, finish off things they’d not completed in the lesson. I’d go to the woods, to our stone, and wait for him. He’d turn up sooner or later.
Peter’s mum lives in Greece. When Peter was born she married his dad and came to live with them here in Hawden, but she couldn’t cope with the cold. She was like a hothouse flower put out in the winter’s frost. She wilted and blackened at the edges. She was ill all the time and refused point blank to leave the house while the hours of daylight were fewer than ten. She stayed inside with the heating on full blast, her baby sweating in layer upon layer of blankets.
His dad had never lived in a house before. He bought it for her as a wedding present, and now he struggled to stay inside its four walls. He would go out late at night when the dry heat felt like it was slowly cooking his muscles into meat and he couldn’t stand it any longer. In his hideout in the hills, the cold air in his nostrils and the warmth of animal skin to protect against its bite, he would lie down and sleep, only to awaken in the morning to loneliness.
TAINTED LOVE Page 10
