Reginald Hill - On Beulah Height

She said, ‘Betsy, please, what’s he mean? What is he trying to say?’

‘Pay no heed,’ said Elizabeth harshly. ‘Load of riddles. It’s the way these buggers talk when they’ve got nowt to say.’

‘Betsy, we can’t pursue the dead, however guilty,’ said Pascoe. ‘But the living need to speak out. Think of the pain your silence has caused. OK, a mixed-up child can’t be blamed for keeping quiet, but you did more than keep quiet, didn’t you? You misdirected. Think of the consequences. Think of that poor man drowning in a cellar. Think of little Lorraine. All these spring from your silence. There has to be an end.’

‘Aye,’ she said dragging her arm free from Chloe’s grip. ‘And I’ve reached it. I’ve had enough of this. I’m off first thing in the morning and I’d like a good night’s sleep if no one else would. Walter, I’m sorry the way things have worked out, but they can’t do much to you for an accident. Chloe …’

In one last desperate appeal, Chloe said, ‘Elizabeth, if you know anything, please, please, tell us.’

‘Know what? What should I know?’ cried Elizabeth.

‘Where she is. Where my daughter is! Tell me. Tell me! ’

Last chance, thought Pascoe. But to admit she knew would be to admit everything. Not least that she had let the suffering of her adoptive parents stretch out over all those years. Would she have the strength? He could see it was tearing her apart.

He murmured something to Wield, who delved into the files he was carrying and came up with the map he’d drawn of Dendale fifteen years earlier. He gave it to Pascoe, raising his eyebrows interrogatively. Pascoe took it in his left hand at the same time showing Wield what he held in his right.

Instantly Wield was back on the sunlit fellside, the dale spread out below him like the Promised Land, behind him the fold built from stones first raised into walls here four thousand years before, beside him the dark, wiry shepherd, his dogs obedient at his feet, and in the gloaming air the song of larks and the bleating of the folded sheep …

You bastard! thought Wield, recalling his thoughts when he realized the dead sheep had been used to hide the missing child’s whereabouts. Different man, but yes, the same trick!

And Pascoe like a conjurer held up the map and CD, then turned the latter through forty-five degrees so that the silhouetted face became the outline of the Dendale fells with a formalized sun arrowing its rays down into what had been the girl’s mouth.

He knew now what the notes coming out of her mouth signified. Ellie had recalled the presenters discussing it on the record review programme she had been listening to that Sunday morning which now seemed a million light years away.

‘Mahler’s Second is known as the Resurrection Symphony,’ she’d said. ‘It’s about the awakening of the dead, and judgement, and redemption. These bars are a quote from the first sounding of the resurrection theme, and there was a lot of speculation why she’d used them instead of a quote from the lieder themselves.’

Well, the speculation was over.

He held the disc cover close to the singer’s eyes.

‘I think you’ve told us where Mary and the others are already, Betsy,’ he said. ‘I think you’ve been longing to tell somebody for ages. You want it to be finished, you want to start moving forward, don’t you? But you know there can’t be any hope of redemption and renewal without resurrection. That’s what you want to tell us, isn’t it, Betsy? We’ll catch up with them on Beulah Height. In bright sunlight. The weather’s bright on Beulah Height.’

And though very little physical change was possible, it was as if they saw Elizabeth Wulfstan shrink to Betsy Allgood as she sat heavily on her chair and began crying.

Though he’d only heard them once, Pascoe could not get the words of the song out of his mind. They sounded there as he lay in bed and they were still with him next morning as he toiled up the fell.

There was no laughing and talking among the men who laboured up the hillside with him. It was already warm enough to make them sweat under the burden of picks and shovels, even though the sun had not yet risen high enough to fill the valley. But up ahead the eastern flanks of the double peak were already washed with gold.

Now they were close enough to see the sheep fold, a semicircle of dry-stone wall built against the craggy face of the saddle.

Still no one spoke. Like men in a dream they moved, needing no instructions when they reached the fold, but advancing on the crag as if to some well-rehearsed choreography, and swinging their picks in unison as they probed for the weakness they knew must be present in its apparently solid facade.

Three times they swung and three times they struck, and at the third blow a strange thing happened.

Sparks flew as metal clashed against granite and all at once the air seemed to ignite as a bright lava of sunlight poured down the ridge into the hollow of the fold.

At the same time a huge slab of rock swung open like the gates of a fortress.

The men stepped back, amazed. And fearful too. Only Pascoe held his ground, straining his eyes to see into that black cavern, straining them so much that after a while his fancy created the impression of movement.

Fancy? This was no fancy. There was movement in there. He could see shapes in the darkness, small forms advancing slowly towards the light.

And now the first was close enough for the sun to give detail to the uncertain outline. Oh, Christ! It was a child, a girl with long blonde hair, blinking her eyes against the unaccustomed light and bearing in her arms a bouquet of fresh-picked foxgloves. Behind her came another child, also carrying flowers. And another … Oh, sweet Jesus. He recognized these children from their photographs. The first was Jenny Hardcastle, the second Madge Telford. And the third Mary Wulfstan, her mother’s features unmistakable in the small solemn face.

How to account for this Pascoe did not know. Nor did he care. His heart was swelling with such joy he could hardly breathe. So this was how it ended. All that pain and grief and despair hadn’t been for nothing. They were alive, alive, alive …

But the miracle wasn’t over. Another figure came forward. He looked and did not dare believe. Lorraine. Lorraine Dacre, holding her flowers in one hand and rubbing her eyes with the other, as though just awoken from sleep.

And behind came another …

Now it wasn’t joy that pumped Pascoe’s heart, it was fear. He was choking. Not with fear of the child he was seeing, but fear of the knowledge that came with her … the knowledge that she had no place in this wild, high landscape, that it was only his imagination that could have put her there …

The fifth figure was Zandra Purlingstone.

He threw back his head and shrieked his rage and despair to the empty sky. For a second it seemed he stood alone on the bare hillside. Then even that illusion was gone. He was lying in his bed with the pearly light of dawn turning his window into a magic lantern screen against which moved the slender boughs of the silver birch which grew at the bottom of his garden.

He rose and dressed swiftly. He had plenty of time to keep his first appointment of the day, but there was something else he needed to do which took him in quite the wrong direction. Not pausing for breakfast, he got into his car and drove through the still empty streets into town.