The Troutbeck Testimony

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘So then I worry I’ve gone too far the other way.’

  ‘Stop it. I’m perfectly all right with things as they are. This past year has been exactly what I need to get over – you know – everything that happened. The business is working out nicely. I’ve got friends, interests …’ she tailed off, painfully aware that when it came to friends and interests, her parents both felt things were somewhat thin. She had not made friends easily, and any incipient interests had been dashed by the succession of calamities that had befallen her since the autumn. Calamities which had come on top of the loss of her baby and collapse of her marriage. Regaining any sort of balance after these events had been slow and exhausting, and she was still unsure whether she had accomplished it.

  ‘You were lucky to find Melanie,’ he said. ‘She’s been a big help.’

  ‘Yes, and she’s leaving in a week or two. She’s already doing way fewer hours, because she’s job-hunting. I was a fool to think it was sensible to employ somebody on such a short-term basis. I was scared that a permanent person would end up wanting to become a partner in the business. I can’t even remember now why that would have been such a bad thing.’

  ‘She’ll stay in touch. You’ve been very good for her, you know. She won’t forget you.’

  They were approaching the pinnacle of Wansfell Pike, the ground growing steeper again and the landscape more stark. The path divided, and they took the left-hand branch, which had no stone walls to mark it. Tufty grass and lichened rocks were doing their best to create an appearance of green, but there remained a persistent greyish hue on all sides. The bright sky of the morning was hazing over as they climbed. ‘At last we can truly call this spring,’ said Russell. ‘With summer only a few weeks away. You know – it doesn’t matter how old you get, it still comes as a pleasant surprise every single time.’

  The exposed fellside made Simmy think about guilty secrets and how hard it would be to hide anything out here. She had grown up in Worcestershire, where there were great trees and ancient verdant banks and concealed pathways in which all manner of illicit behaviours could be conducted out of sight. Up here, a human figure would be visible for miles, witnessed by walkers who came onto the fells during every season of the year. It made her feel oddly safe, and somehow cleansed. Admittedly, violent crimes had been perpetrated close by in recent times, but mostly amongst man-made settlements, not in the wide open pikes and fells.

  ‘This is glorious,’ she said, throwing her arms wide. ‘How could you possibly think I could regret having come here?’

  Then Bertie started yapping at something he’d found behind a large boulder and Simmy knew instantly that her sense of safety and cleanliness was about to be wrecked.

  Chapter Three

  ‘It’s a dead dog, of all things,’ said Russell. ‘Poor creature! What can it have died of?’

  ‘Exhaustion?’ Simmy suggested.

  ‘Its people wouldn’t just leave it here, would they? They have funerals for dogs these days.’

  ‘It doesn’t look damaged.’ She spoke optimistically, having avoided a prolonged inspection of the corpse. ‘Does it?’

  Her father was less squeamish and leant down for a closer look. ‘It’s stiff,’ he pronounced. ‘And I have an awful feeling it’s been strangled. Or had its neck broken, more like. It’s a terrier, some sort of Jack Russell. Male. Neutered.’ He was getting into his stride, reminding Simmy of young Ben Harkness and his forensic tendencies.

  ‘Leave it, Dad. There’s nothing we can do, is there?’

  ‘Seems a shame.’ Of the three Straws, only Russell had any particular feeling for dogs. Simmy and her mother found them irritating, as a general rule. He straightened and sighed. ‘But you’re right, of course. We might watch out for any lost dog notices when we get back, though.’

  ‘Right. We’ll do that.’ The outline of Wansfell Pike still lay ahead and above and Simmy was eager to achieve it. It was three o’clock and the afternoon would soon be waning. ‘Come on, then.’

  Bertie had been hovering a few yards away, evidently discomposed by the body of a fellow canine. His relief as the people began moving again was palpable. His little legs revealed unlimited energy as he trotted ahead, the dark-sand colour of his coat camouflaged against the bare rocks. ‘Good boy,’ Russell approved, for no apparent reason.

  Simmy paused to examine a small beck trickling between rocks and creating a modest pool close to the path. ‘Oh, look!’ she exclaimed. ‘Tadpoles!’ There were numerous big-headed creatures with wriggling tails visible in the clear water. Russell turned back to see, and together they watched and reminisced about occasions where they’d made homes for just such as these, waiting for them to grow legs and miraculously turn into frogs. ‘Pity we haven’t got a jar to take them home in,’ said Russell. ‘They could live in my pond.’

  It was windy on top of Wansfell. Simmy breathed the untainted air and turned in a slow circle. Windermere was spread out below them, to the south-west, its entire length plain to see. Rocky ridges were visible in a rippling pattern, rising and falling into the far distance. The one to the north had a stone wall running along its brow. Patches of surviving forest lined the edges of the lake. ‘Wow!’ she gasped. ‘This is amazing!’ She pulled her camera from the shoulder bag and spent ten minutes setting up her shots. Photography was something she had always taken seriously, but had given little time to in the past few years. Her husband had given her an expensive ‘bridge’ camera, during her pregnancy, saying she would have to capture every passing moment of their child’s early life. Remembering those words had made using the camera impossible for at least a year after the baby was lost.

  She set it to monochrome, on a whim, recalling early Lakeland pictures where the shapes and misty gradations had managed to reveal more than bright colours would have done.

  Russell waited contentedly, the dog flopping down at his side. ‘Did you bring the mint cake?’ he asked.

  ‘I most certainly did. A whole slab each.’

  ‘We’ll need it, if we’re to take in Baystones. It’s a bit windy, but I think you’ll like it.’

  ‘Um …?’

  ‘It’s this ridge, look.’ He pointed in a direction that Simmy guessed might be north. ‘It’s got that helpful stone wall to make sure we don’t get lost.’

  Simmy cocked an eyebrow at the dozen or more other walkers spread across the landscape. ‘Not much risk of that,’ she judged.

  ‘All the same, the wall helps to keep us straight,’ he persisted. Staying on the subject, he went on, ‘Then we double back, meeting Nanny Lane again at the point where we branched off. All quite simple.’

  ‘If we carried on from here, we’d come to Ambleside, right?’ Simmy remembered an evening several months earlier, spent in a large house close to the spot where the path emerged onto an Ambleside street. She had been curious about how everything connected up ever since then.

  ‘Right. But we don’t wanna do that, do we? We’d end up without any transport.’ He mimicked a TV quizmaster whose name Simmy had forgotten, and she laughed obligingly.

  ‘Another time,’ she agreed equably.

  The sense of being on top of the world continued all along the ridge, following a path that was barely visible at times, and which at one point necessitated a slippery climb up and over a broken wall. Russell’s pace was slowing, Simmy noticed. Eventually they came to a small cairn that Russell said marked the top of Baystones. ‘Stones – geddit?’ he smiled, still with the transatlantic accent. ‘We’re at the furthest point of the path here. We need to turn back towards the village and find this lane, look.’ He prodded his map, which to Simmy’s amateurish eye looked to be covered in confusing dotted lines that doubled back on themselves and traversed ominous scribbles that indicated rocky terrain.

  ‘Lead the way,’ she invited, trustingly.

  The way turned out to be less straightforward than anticipated, and despite being able to see Troutbeck below them, the actual detail of how to get t
here became unclear. When they found themselves in an oozing bog with thick, brown sludge covering their shoes, they both knew a moment of panic. ‘Lucky it’s not Dartmoor,’ panted Russell. ‘We’d be swallowed up, never to be seen again.’

  A few determined strides saw them back on drier ground, and a more obvious path visible ahead. ‘Must have lost the track for a minute,’ said Russell apologetically. ‘We’ll be more careful from here on.’ He looked pale, Simmy noticed, and was moving more slowly. They had been out far longer than she had expected, and climbed more steeply. She couldn’t remember a more demanding walk – and yet it was known to be one of the more gentle examples in the area.

  Still, there was no choice but to carry on, and the ground sloped reassuringly downwards as they headed in the direction of the village, with the final section of Nanny Lane almost uncomfortably steep. Bertie gave himself up to the temptation to scamper down the hill, scenting the end of his marathon. ‘The old chap’s survived his long walk pretty well,’ laughed Russell. ‘Better than his aged master, anyway.’

  ‘I still think he’ll have sore feet tomorrow.’

  ‘I doubt it. He’s bred to this place, after all.’

  ‘Unlike either of us. I have a feeling we’ve both overdone it.’

  ‘Not at all. It’s just what we needed,’ he protested.

  ‘What’s in that bag, do you think?’ She changed the subject abruptly as they rounded a bend in the track and found themselves following a man carrying a bulky black plastic sack. It was an incongruous sight, where walkers wore backpacks or canvas satchels.

  ‘I have no idea,’ said Russell quickly; but Simmy had already conceived a suspicion. Something about the obvious weight of the bag, the way it was held slightly away from the man’s legs, and – most conclusively – the interest Bertie was showing in it, led to an inescapable conclusion.

  ‘It’s that dead dog, isn’t it?’ she muttered. ‘He’s been up and collected it.’

  ‘Could be. What if it is?’

  From the back, the man was unidentifiable. His clothes were unfamiliar, but Simmy was not generally very observant of people’s garments. She thought she would recognise any permanent resident of Troutbeck, perhaps even from behind. But she was too tired to try to catch up and overtake the man, so as to see his face.

  Then fate stepped in. The man was clearly irritated by Bertie’s attentions, and moved sideways in an effort to avoid him. His foot landed on a patch of slippery mud, and slid from under him. In a second he was almost horizontal, one side of his body propped against the stone wall bordering the track, the black bag still held tightly. A wordless cry escaped him, and Bertie sidled away with a guilty expression.

  ‘Uh-oh,’ said Russell and went to assist. ‘Bertie, that was all your fault.’

  The man was up on his feet before Russell or Simmy could reach him. His right side was generously coated with dark-brown mud, which appeared to be the only damage. ‘Are you okay?’ asked Russell.

  Simmy had a good look at his face, as it twisted in disgust and fury. It was the same man she had seen standing outside the pub, a few hours earlier. Weathered skin, beard and penetrating brown eyes. He had donned a greasy-looking hat for his fellside walk, and his clothes had apparently not been especially clean even before his fall into the unfortunate patch of mud. ‘Bad luck,’ she said to him. ‘There must be a spring just here, making it so boggy. The rest of the track’s almost dry.’

  ‘Yeah, well,’ he said. At least he wasn’t going to make wild accusations against Bertie, she concluded.

  ‘Have you got far to go?’ asked Russell, sounding hopelessly patronising. ‘Before you can get dry, I mean.’

  Simmy hoped fervently that her father wouldn’t invite the man to her cottage to get clean. It was definitely within the bounds of possibility that he would, giving no thought to the consequences. However protective he might wish to be of his daughter, his old-fashioned notions of trust and good fellowship could easily lead her into jeopardy. The man could make a mental note of her few valuable possessions and come back later to steal them. At the very least, he would learn more about her than she wanted him to.

  But the danger passed. ‘I’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’ And he loped off, still holding the sinister black bag.

  Russell’s car was waiting at the pub, and Simmy invited her father to tea and cake at her cottage. They would drive the few hundred yards, relieved at having no more need to walk. ‘Call Mum and tell her we accomplished our mission,’ she suggested.

  ‘You think she’ll be worrying? Which one of us is more likely to cause her anxiety, then?’

  ‘Me, obviously.’ But her father was over seventy and inclined to portliness. Despite all his brave talk, such walks were so infrequent as to present quite a significant physical challenge. Simmy herself had suffered broken bones shortly before Christmas, and still regarded herself as slightly fragile.

  ‘We’ll do it all again next weekend,’ he said recklessly. ‘I could get used to this.’

  ‘No, we won’t. I’m happy to explore with you now and then, but I’m not making four-mile hikes a weekly routine,’ she protested.

  ‘I thought you said you wanted to get outdoors more.’

  ‘I do. But not a whole afternoon every weekend. I’d get jaded.’

  ‘Jaded! With all this around us.’ He waved an all-embracing arm at the pikes and fells and howes on every side. ‘We’d never see a hundredth of it, if we went out every Sunday for the next ten years.’

  ‘It’s lovely, I know,’ she conceded.

  ‘But …?’ he prompted.

  ‘But a little goes a long way.’ She felt mean and obstructive. The walk had been a delight in every way, apart from the dead dog. Her father’s company was undemanding in general and more than agreeable much of the time. It made no sense to live in Cumbria and fail to make full use of the opportunities it provided. Perhaps she was too influenced by Melanie who was twenty and regarded the open uplands surrounding her as nothing more than a draw for tourists and a pleasing backdrop to the more urban features of the region. Melanie never walked if she could avoid it, and valued human beings and all their works as the only really meaningful things in life.

  Ben Harkness was more complicated. He had an adolescent passion for the vistas and planes of the natural world, eager to render the landscape into words and drawings. Ben was a lad of many skills, and felt constrained to exercise them all as far as was humanly possible. His mother had led family excursions onto the fells from his earliest days and he had no fear of the wilderness. Ben’s problem was that there was never enough time for all the claims on his attention. A precocious student, he was deeply into sixth-form studies, competing as much with himself as with any fellow pupils. His ambition, conceived within days of first meeting Simmy and witnessing a murder, was to become a forensic anthropologist. A dedication to the TV series Bones had a great deal to answer for in this matter. Almost effortlessly, he had found himself a place on the most eminent university course for such studies, due to commence in a year’s time when he would be almost nineteen. He had even landed a provisional agreement to accept him onto a postgraduate programme in America, several years down the line.

  ‘At my age,’ Russell began, rather ponderously, ‘there is no sense in such a sentiment. There can never be too much of a good thing. Seize the day and all that. I could break my hip at any moment and be confined to the lowlands forever after.’

  ‘You’re not going to break your hip,’ Simmy said, thinking she had come close to doing exactly that herself not so long ago. ‘Take Mum instead of me sometimes. She’ll be feeling left out if you’re not careful.’

  ‘Your mother – as you very well know – has little patience for this sort of thing. She regards walking as a bygone means of transport, to be used only in cases of dire necessity. And she’s always too busy, anyway,’ he complained.

  ‘Cake,’ said Simmy decisively. ‘And stop trying to plan everything in advance. If
we’re seizing the day, then let’s just be happy we had such a lovely afternoon.’

  She let them into her cottage, eyeing Bertie’s feet critically. Russell noticed and defended his pet. ‘He’s perfectly clean,’ he said.

  ‘Has that family with the twins gone now? And the other couples?’ asked Simmy, when they were settled in her kitchen. She was referring to the bed-and-breakfast guests who had filled her parents’ house in Windermere to bursting. Although busy throughout the year, the real season began at Easter, with a relentless stream of customers to be expected until October. Simmy made no attempt to follow the endlessly changing names and family compositions, but some stood out of the crowd and made themselves memorable.

  ‘The twins left this morning, thank the Lord,’ he nodded. ‘The rest have another three days, and there’s another lot due on Wednesday. I’m supposed to be helping with sheets when I get home. And tomorrow I’m destined for the cash and carry.’

  ‘I’m not expecting many orders for flowers this week. I can do some work on the tax return. I like to get it done early.’

  Russell shrugged. Tax was a topic he implacably refused to discuss. If pushed, he would laugh and claim that he and Angie just made up the numbers and hoped for the best. ‘I don’t think we’re cheating anybody,’ he would add.

  ‘They’ll put you in prison one of these days,’ Simmy warned. ‘And you won’t like that.’

  ‘It would be an interesting experience. Besides, I’d just put all the blame on your mother. She does the books.’

  ‘I really did enjoy the walk, Dad.’ She was feeling that perhaps he’d gained a different impression. ‘It was all wonderful, apart from that poor dog. Do you think it belonged to that man? If so, how did he know where to find it? And why was it up on the fells in the first place?’