Reginald Hill - On Beulah Height

Arne saw me in the doorway and all of a sudden he stopped and said, ‘No, it’s not right. Something’s wrong with this place, perhaps it’s the acoustics, perhaps you haven’t got the piano quite right. I have to go back to the house now. Why don’t you play your scales to little Betsy here? She has a better ear than either of us, I think. Let her say what is wrong.’

I recall the words exactly. He were looking straight at me as he spoke and sort of smiling. He had these bright blue eyes, like the sky on one of them sharp winter’s days when the sun is shining but the frost never leaves the air.

He picked me up and set me on his shoulder and carried me up the aisle. I remember how cold it felt inside after the hot sun. And I recalled the time Dad put me on his shoulder in the hay loft.

Arne set me down in a pew next to the vicar and ruffled my hair, what there was of it. Then he said, ‘See you later,’ and smiled at Inger but she didn’t smile back, just gave him a funny look and started playing scales as he went out. Every now and then she’d pause and look at me. Sometimes I’d nod, sometimes shake my head. Don’t know how I know if something’s right or not, I just do.

We must have been there another half hour or more. Finally she were satisfied and we said goodbye to the vicar. He wantedto talk but I could tell Inger weren’t interested in him, and we went out of the door. It were like stepping into a hot bath after the cold church, and the bright light made my eyes dazzle .

Then I remembered Mary.

I called her name. Nothing. It were like being at the bottom of Madge’s garden again.

Inger called too and Rev Disjohn came out of the church and asked what were up.

‘It’s nothing,’ said Inger. ‘I think Mary must have gone back to the house with Arne.’

She said it dead casual, but I saw the way she and the vicar looked at each other that they were worried sick.

I were sick too, but not with worry. Worry’s for what you don’t know. And I knew Mary were gone.

We hurried back to Heck. Arne were there and Aunt Chloe. I thought she were going to die in front of us when we asked if Mary had come home. I’d heard folk say that someone had gone white as a sheet often enough, but now for the first time I knew what it meant.

Vicar had stopped off at the hall on the way through the village and the police were close behind us.

I told all I could. ‘Are you sure it was Lightfoot?’ they kept on asking and I kept on saying, ‘I think it was.’ Then Arne said, ‘I think that this young lady has had enough, don’t you?’ And he put his arm around me and led me out of the house and took me home.

They went searching up the Neb again, with the dogs and everything, just like last time. And just like last time, they came back with nothing.

And they went looking for Benny again, and he weren’t to be found either.

His gran said he’d been with her all afternoon till he saw the police cars turning up the track. Then he’d taken off because he couldn’t stand any more questioning. No one believed her, at least not about being with her all afternoon.

Then Mr Wulfstan came home. He were like a mad thing. He came round to our house and started asking me what had happened. At first he tried to be nice and friendly, but after a bit his voice got louder and he started sounding so fierce that I began to cry. ‘What do you mean, you don’t know where she was hiding? What do you mean, you think you saw Lightfoot? What do you mean, you stopped playing and went inside to listen to the music?’

By now he’d got a hold of me and I was sobbing my heart out. Then Mam, who’d gone out to make some tea, came rushing back in and asked him what the hell he thought he was doing. I’d never heard her swear before. Mr Wulfstan calmed down and said he were sorry but not sounding like he meant it, then he rushed off without having any tea. We heard later he went up to Neb Cottage and had a big row with old Mrs Lightfoot, and the police had to make him come away, and he told them it were all their fault for letting Lightfoot loose when they had him in their cells, and if anything had happened to Mary he was going to make sure every one of them suffered.

I asked my mam why he were so mad with me. She said, he’s not mad with you, he’s mad with himself for not taking better care of the thing he loves most in the world. I said, but it’s not his fault that Mary got took, and she said, aye, but he thinks it is, and that’s why he’s running round looking for someone else to blame. And I wondered if my dad would run around like that if I got took. Weeks passed. They didn’t find Mary. And they didn’t find Benny. The concert was cancelled. Arne and Inger went away. And the day came when we all had to move out of our homes.

I were glad to go. Everyone else had long faces and there were some who were wailing and moaning. Dad went around like he were looking for someone to hit and Mam, who were having one of her bad turns again, could hardly drag herself out of the house. But I sat in the back seat of the car with Bonnie held tight in my arms and bit my cheeks to stop myselfsmiling. Remember, I were only seven and I thought that grief and guilt and fear were things you could drive away from like houses and barns and fields, leaving them behind you to be drowned .

And when, as we drove down the village street for the last time, the first drops of rain we’d seen in nigh on four months burst on the windscreen, I recalled Rev Disjohn’s Friday talk and felt sure that God was once again sending His blessed floods to cleanse a world turned foul by all our sins.

‘Nice voice,’ said Peter Pascoe, his mouth full of quiche. ‘Pity about the tuba fanfare.’

‘That was a car horn, or can’t your tin ear tell the difference? But no doubt it is Tubby the Tuba leaning on it.’

‘Why do you think I’m bolting my food?’ said Pascoe.

‘I noticed. Peter, it’s Sunday, it’s your day off. You don’t have to go.’

He gave her an oddly grave smile and said gently, ‘No, I don’t. But I think I will. Give you a chance for a bit of productive Sabbath-breaking.’

This was a reference to Ellie’s writing ambitions, marked by the presence of a pad and three pens on the patio by her sunbed.

‘Can’t concentrate in this heat,’ she said. ‘Christ, the fat bastard’s going to rouse the whole street!’

The horn was playing variations on the opening motif of Beethoven’s Fifth.

Pascoe, ignoring it, said, ‘Never mind. You’re probably famous already, only they haven’t told you.’

Ellie had written three novels, all unpublished. The third script had been with a publisher for three months. A phone call had brought the assurance that it was being seriously considered, and with it a hope that was more creatively enervating than any heat.

The doorbell rang. The fat bastard had got out of his car. Pascoe washed the quiche down with a mouthful of wine and stooped to kiss his wife. With Ellie any kiss was a proper kiss. She’d once told him she didn’t mind a peck on the cheek but only if she wasn’t sitting on it. Now she arched her bikini’d body off the sun lounger and gave him her strenuous tongue.

The doorbell went into the carillon at the end of the ‘1812’ Overture, accompanied by cannon-like blows of the fist against the woodwork.