Reginald Hill - The Long Kill

She nodded. Another shared judgement to bring them closer. He’d guessed that was how she’d feel and though his opinion of the Parkers was precisely as stated, he felt a twinge of guilt at the element of calculation in what he’d said.

So when she asked, ‘What then?’ he compensated with a dash of unsolicited confession.

‘To tell the truth I woke in a cold sweat wondering what the devil I was doing buying your aunt’s house.’

He’d expected a very positive reaction to this: fear for her aunt’s sake – anger at this hint of masculine dithering – at the very least a demand for reassurance that he hadn’t changed his mind.

Instead she nodded once more and said in a matter-of-fact voice, ‘Oh yes. The old four AM’S. They’re dreadful, aren’t they? You seem to see everything so clearly, and it’s all black, if that’s not contradictory.’

‘You’re speaking from experience?’

‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘The four AM’S and the four PM’S too. Doesn’t everyone get them, the AM’S anyway?’

He shook his head.

‘Not me,’ he said. ‘Last night was the first broken night I’ve had in years.’

Broken from within, that was. There had been plenty of early risings and sudden alarums. But he could hardly explain this to the woman who was looking at him curiously, and he found he didn’t particularly want to press her to reveal the grounds of her own despair at this moment.

‘So, where are we going?’ he asked brightly.

She responded to his change of mood, saying, ‘Well, I knew a Himalayan man wouldn’t want to waste his time on pimples, so I thought we’d do Bow Fell via the Crinkles, but to fit it into our limited time allowance I’ve decided to cheat by starting at the top of Wrynose.’

He nodded as if this made sense to him while he worked it out on his mental imprint of the relevant OS sheets. They had climbed out of Grasmere, passing Rigg Cottage en route, and now they were dropping down again. He glimpsed the blue sheet of Elterwater before they entered its tiny village and left it on the Little Langdale road. Soon they were climbing again and now they were on a steep, serpentine single-track road, with intermittent passing places, and viciously demanding on bottom gear both for ascent and descent. This was Wrynose Pass.

He said, ‘This would take us all the way across into Eskdale, right?’

‘Right. It’s the old drove road, of course. Hard Knott dropping into Eskdale’s even worse, I think.’

‘Then I’m glad we’re not going that far,’ he said firmly.

‘Oh I think you should. Halfway up the side of Hard Knott there’s a Roman Fort; perhaps you’ve been there?’

He shook his head.

‘It’s a place to go on a wild winter’s day,’ she said. ‘Almost a thousand feet up in country that’s still wild, so God knows what it was like all those centuries ago; looking out to the west towards a sea which offers only Ireland between you and the limits of habitable creation; thinking of Rome, and Tuscan wine, and the long summer sun, while the sleet blows in your face and you can hear the stones of your castle cracking in the frost during the night watches. You ought to go.’

He looked at her curiously.

‘That was … poetic,’ he said. ‘I’m not being sarcastic either. But why do you insist I ought to go?’

‘No, I don’t really,’ she answered, faintly embarrassed. ‘All I meant was, it must have taken a certain kind of man to survive all that.’

‘And you think I could be such a man?’ he said lightly. ‘Should I be flattered?’

‘I meant I would be interested in hearing you decide whether you could have been such a man,’ she said slowly. ‘As for whether you should be flattered, that depends on what you feel such a man ought to be.’

‘Or had to be,’ he said. ‘Another test?’

She laughed and said with a hint of bitterness, ‘That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?’

She parked the car by the Three Shires Stone which marked the head of the pass. Their path was clear, the ground firm, the gradients easy, and they walked side by side at a good pace, in a silence which was companionable rather than introspective. The Crinkle Crags, their first destination, at first merely an undulating ridge a couple of miles in the distance, assumed a different aspect as they got near. Instead of a gentle ridge, Jaysmith saw that they did in fact consist of a series of crags, jagged broken buttresses of rock, five in all, each a distinct and separate entity. Their ascent was no more than a pleasant scramble, and moving from one to another was easy enough also. But as Jaysmith enjoyed the exhilaration of the magnificent views, he was aware that this was not a place where he would care to be if the weather closed in and visibility was measured in inches instead of miles. There were precipitous rock faces and narrow steep gullies filled with shattered boulders waiting to crack bones and rip flesh.

They sat on the third Crinkle and drank coffee and looked eastwards. The sun was high in its southern swing and the contours of the fells were picked out in light and shade.

‘My God, it’s beautiful,’ said Jaysmith, almost to his own surprise.

‘You sound as if you’d just noticed,’ laughed the woman.

‘Perhaps I have. I’m still not sure why it’s beautiful, though.’

‘Oh, all kinds of reasons. Space, airiness, sublimity. The sense it gives of something more important than mere human guilts and sorrows.’

She spoke very seriously and her features had slipped back into that ageing watchful look.

‘Oh is that all?’ he mocked. ‘Like marijuana? It’s a long way to walk for a fix.’

It worked. She laughed and lay back, hands clasped behind her head, eyes closed against the light.

‘All right. If you want a purely sensuous explanation, I think it’s something to do with the way the light shows us all the curves and hollows of the slopes. It’s like drapery. Have you never noticed how important that is in painting? As if artists knew that there was some special magic in all that cloth; gowns, dresses, cloaks, curtains, all hanging and trailing in mysterious, fascinating pleats and folds and creases.’

‘Not forgetting sheets,’ he said. ‘And blankets.’

‘That is the kind of art you like, is it?’ she said. ‘That too. And the naked human figures lying on them. It’s the same thing, isn’t it? Curves and angles and hollows all washed with light.’

She spoke softly, almost dreamily. It sounded almost like an invitation and he leaned over and kissed her.

He knew at once he had been wrong. Her eyes opened wide with shock and her body stiffened as though holding back from some more violent act of repudiation.

‘Sorry,’ he said, sitting up.

‘No need,’ she replied, quickly regaining her composure. ‘It didn’t bother me. Though a respectable gent like you should be careful.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘You may think you can come up here and toy with the milkmaids with impunity. But you’re very exposed. There’s a hundred places where someone could be lying this very moment, drawing a bead on us.’

His eyes flickered round in such alarm that she laughed and said, ‘Hey, I’m joking. You’re not going to turn out to be so important that you can’t afford to be photographed making a pass on a mountain, are you? A mountain pass!’

It wasn’t a very good joke but they both laughed and Jaysmith said, ‘No, I’m not that important.’

She regarded him shrewdly, as if doubting him, then said, ‘No matter. Aunt Muriel will know all about you when you exchange contracts, won’t she? Have you contacted your solicitor yet?’

‘Yes,’ he lied. ‘Actually, he suggests it would be simpler if I got hold of a local man. I don’t think he really believes there’s much law beyond Hampstead. I think he’s probably right, about using a local, I mean. There’ll be searches and things, won’t there? It’d certainly be more convenient. I wondered if you had any suggestions?’