Ann Cleeves - A Lesson in Dying

‘Come on!’ she snapped at the children. ‘ We’re going for a walk.’

‘Mam!’ They were horrified. ‘Do we have to?’

She forced them into wellingtons, coats and gloves, knowing it to be an exercise in masochism because they would moan and whine all the time they were out. Let them. It would suit her mood. Jim was settled in a chair in front of the fire watching football on the television, and irritated her beyond reason. Ramsay might be a conceited, deceiving bastard, she thought, but she could not imagine him stretched in a chair like that, turning pink from the heat, his mouth wide open in the beginning of a snore. ‘You could do with some exercise too,’ she said and poked Jim viciously in the stomach. But he took no notice of her and turned back to the game.

It was a damp, raw day. A wet mist had blown in from the sea and immediately covered their clothes and hair with fine droplets of moisture. The smoke from the coal fires hung in the valley, so the fog was dirty and grey.

‘Mam,’ Andrew said. The word drawled into a wail of complaint. ‘It’s raining.’

‘You’re not sugar,’ she said. ‘You’ll not melt.’

‘Can’t we take the car and go to Whitley Bay?’

For a moment she was tempted. The children, she knew, were seduced by the amusement arcades, the prospect of ice cream or fizzy drinks in a café, but she liked the seaside town in the winter. She liked the long empty sweep of the promenade, the monstrous shapes of the Spanish city fairground looming out of the mist and the sound of the foghorn on the buoy at the mouth of the Tyne. Later, she wished she had listened to them and taken the car into the town where the coloured neon lights shone into the gloom.

‘No,’ she said. ‘We’ll go for a walk. The fresh air will do us good.’ She took their hands and dragged them along so they were almost running.

She wanted to get away from the village and took them along one of the lanes that led to the coast. They passed the old mill, where the Wilcoxes lived, and as always she looked in, fascinated by the style of the furniture, their imagined sophistication. But although both cars were in the drive, there was no sign of life and she presumed that they were all in the kitchen at the back of the house. Perhaps they were eating a late Sunday lunch.

I bet Hannah Wilcox doesn’t cook soggy vegetables, Patty thought. I bet her gravy isn’t lumpy.

She longed, for once, to do something well.

Out of Heppleburn the lane became narrow, and the grass verge where Patty made the children walk was sodden. On one side of the lane was a wood and the brown leaves dripped over the road and blocked out the light. The few cars that passed them were already using headlights and were identical dark shadows camouflaged by mist. On the other side, between the grass verge and the hedge, was a ditch. Patty knew that Andrew was attracted by it. Water of any kind acted like a magnet. She held his arm firmly and pulled him away. The hedge had lost most of its leaves and they could look through it into a muddy field where turnips were growing.

‘How much further?’ Jennifer asked. She had begun to drag her feet. Her trousers and anorak were splashed and stained.

‘Not much further,’ Patty said, beginning to relent. She felt better for being out of the house and the children had surprised her by being good. She wanted to be home when her father arrived. The thought that Ramsay might come in again excited her. ‘Up to the bend in the road, then we’ll turn back.’

Several hundred yards further on the road curved suddenly. There was a gap in the hedge there and a pull-in for tractors to get into the field. The ditch disappeared into a culvert, and emerged again. Andrew was fascinated by it and edged closer and closer.

They were about to turn back and cross the road to face the oncoming traffic when Andrew, with a splash of muddy water, fell in. Patty had released her grip on him for an instant to take Jennifer’s hand to cross the road. He had been leaning forward, trying to reach the hedge, when the bank collapsed and he slid down, the heels of his wellingtons gouging deep grooves in the mud. He sat in the water at the bottom, half crying and half laughing while Patty looked on. There was an inevitability about the scene which made her relatively calm and she felt exasperation rather than anger.

‘Stand up,’ she said, ‘and give me your hand. I’ll pull you out.’

He slithered to his feet and she reached out to help him. She was leaning over to haul him up by the sleeves of his drenched and slimy anorak when her attention was attracted to the ditch near to the entrance into the field. She stared with disbelief. Andrew was too concerned with his own drama to notice that anything was wrong.

‘Come on, Mam,’ he said, enjoying himself, ‘before I get stuck.’

She pulled the boy out and stood him on the road. She realized that she must be filthy.

‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Start walking back. Both of you. Quickly or you’ll catch your death of cold.’

Excited by the adventure the children started back towards the village, Andrew telling with great detail the horror of his slide into the abyss. Patty watched them go, then walked on a few paces. The track into the field was churned by tractor tyres. She forced herself to stare once more into the ditch. There, its hair matted and floating to the surface like weed, its head completely submerged by water, lay the body of a man. It lay face down and the shoulders and buttocks broke the surface of the water. Patty could not see the face but she recognized the clothes. No one else in the village had such a smart leather jacket, or wore jeans with an expensive label on the back pocket. The body belonged to Paul Wilcox. Saying nothing she hurried after Andrew and Jennifer.

The walk home was a nightmare. She was overwhelmed by a panic so intense that she could hardly move. It was not that she imagined a murderer lurking behind every hedge or tree. It was that suddenly the world was a dangerous and irrational place. It was the same feeling of panic she had experienced when she had left home for the first time to go to college in the south. She had felt then that she could trust no one. The prosperous town near to the college was so alien that she felt that houses, streets, might change or disappear overnight. Every time she went out she was frightened of getting lost. Now she had the same feeling of extreme insecurity. Harold Medburn’s death had provoked a different reaction. That was ritualized, a sort of game. There was nothing playful about the body lying face down in the ditch. It went against everything she had ever known. She felt the laws of nature had been reversed. She walked on in a dream and only Andrew’s increasingly loud complaints that he was cold and wet kept her sane.

The quickest way back was past the old mill, so she went that way though she wished she could avoid it. Her eyes were drawn to the window. Hannah Wilcox sat on a rocking chair there with Elizabeth on her knee. She was holding a book for the child but her eyes were on the horizon, as if she were waiting for someone to appear outside. Patty hurried past. She was terrified that the woman might come into the garden and ask if Patty had seen her husband. Ramsay had to be told first. He was a professional. He would know how to break such devastating news.

When they arrived home Ramsay’s car was parked in the road outside the house. Patty opened the door and sent the children upstairs to bathe. The men must have just come in because they were still wearing coats. Her father was talking. He seemed in a jubilant, almost drunken mood. She wanted to tell Ramsay about Paul Wilcox but her father would not stop talking and although she opened her mouth no words would come out. It was Jim who noticed how upset she was. The others saw her only as a clown, covered with mud. It was Jim who interrupted Jack Robson.