A Habit of Dying (13 page)

‘Are you looking for something in particular?’

Lydia’s head shot up and she looked directly into the face, into the dark grey eyes of a man.

‘No. I mean yes. Well not really, just places to visit.’ She was flustered, caught off guard.

His eyes did not leave hers as he smiled a warm and open smile. ‘I would be happy to help if you should need any. I’m not a native but I have some knowledge of the area.’

‘No. I mean, no thank you.’ For no reason that she could think of she felt the colour flood her cheeks and the more she felt it the hotter they became. ‘I mean that’s kind of you, thank you, just a little project that I have, that’s all.’ Suddenly she felt like a schoolgirl again, awkward and inexperienced in speaking to an older man. And he was, she thought, a much older man, perhaps twenty years her senior, although in her confusion she could not be sure.

He took her embarrassed rejection of his offer with ease, simply adding that should she change her mind she should feel free to speak to him. ‘Free to speak to him?’ What an odd way to put it, Lydia thought afterwards, surely most people would have said ‘feel free to ask’, or more likely simply closed the conversation.

He settled himself in the corner of one of the sofas and opened a book. Lydia had almost completed her list of places to visit but she pretended to study the map a little longer than was strictly necessary. It gave her the opportunity to glance sideways at the stranger, to gain a better impression of him. He appeared completely relaxed, sunk into his book. It seemed to be a novel, or rather, it was a paperback and she assumed it was a novel. Although she would never have openly admitted it, Lydia realised that she was checking to see if he was actually reading and not just sitting there secretly studying her. But his eyes flickered over the print and he turned a page at regular intervals, his interest in her apparently at an end. After a few minutes, shame got the better of her and she went out into the garden to catch the last of the evening. She was satisfied with the improvement to the plan that she’d left Oxford with, but disconcerted by her childish reaction to a casual exchange of words with a stranger. She felt quite odd, but did not recognise the oddness nor see any reason for it.

After a more modest breakfast on Sunday, Lydia checked her route one more time before heading to Lamplugh on the first leg of her zigzagging journey through the rolling countryside west of the fells. Again the sun shone on her throughout the day as she travelled through the little villages scattered across the landscape. On several occasions she found no need to stop as she passed a chapel that was no longer a chapel. Her greater wonder was that so many of these out-of-the-way buildings were still used for their original purpose. At Bridekirk she thought better of wandering the churchyard while a service was in progress and postponed her visit in favour of Great Broughton where the smell of the coal-field hung in the breeze. She paused a while to watch the bubbling Derwent, clear and swift beneath the bridge at Isel, and was blessed by a glimpse of a kingfisher as it flashed under the arches. From there it was but a few yards walk to the tiny St. Michael and All Angels, as peaceful a place as was imaginable, and likely had been for a thousand years or more. An inscription in the perfectly groomed churchyard of St Philip’s, parish church of Mosser, caught her eye. It wasn’t relevant to her search but seemed worthy of anyone’s attention. ‘
In Loving Memory of A Dearly Loved Lady ENID MAUREEN McLEAN’
. What a lucky woman, Lydia thought, to have such a memorial. Who could want for more than that?

There wasn’t a single place where Lydia stopped that she didn’t meet a friendly face and a friendly word. Most enquired if she was ‘doing her family history’, to which she replied that, yes, it was something like that, and they would fall in to brief conversation about such-and-such a name or family. Recollections of a Norwegian wedding, the number of parishes with woman priests, the tidiness or otherwise of the churchyard; these subjects and many more were touched upon. At Lorton a biker, leatherclad with helmet beneath his arm, stood alone and silently wept, lost in memories of a loved one who lay at his feet and oblivious to any other person. Having approached more closely than she might have otherwise done, Lydia saw his grief and slipped away as unobtrusively as she could. Curiosity as to whether it was mother, wife or child that brought him to that place went
unsatisfied, for she could not bring herself to go back and look at the grave to hazard a guess. It was a public place but the tears were private.

Lydia drove back to her hotel tired but content with her day. The notebook at last had some entries in it, even if some were unlikely. It had been all too easy to lose the focus of her quest in the tranquillity of the hidden places she’d visited, but she’d changed from being driven to being relaxed, enjoying the task and all it had brought. And now she had a clear plan to complete her search. The Lorton Road cemetery she would leave until last, now she knew exactly the extent of the work involved there. It would not be difficult, just lengthy and she would need to concentrate on the job in hand and not get sucked in to reading every word etched on the stones. She’d leave Lorton Road until Tuesday or allowing for poor weather, the next reasonably fine day. For Monday, Lydia had decided that she would explore the last of her churchyards, the one at St Bartholomew’s, just down the road at the other end of Loweswater. She would make a visit there as part of a gentle stroll right round the lake, treating herself to lunch at the village inn enroute. For two days running she had missed lunch altogether, although she’d had the benefit of a full English to keep her going. Monday would be almost a rest day, a day of holiday, one she felt she could afford now that she had a better picture of the remaining work in her search for ‘B’.

As she exchanged a few words with the hotel owner, the man with grey eyes also returned.

‘Have you met Stephen Kellaway?’ she said, introducing him. ‘This is Lydia Silverstream. Stephen is one of our regulars, how many years is it now? Ten or more I should think.’

‘We met briefly last night,’ he smiled, holding out a hand.

Lydia might have smiled back but she could not remember. Again she felt the tingle in her cheeks as their hands met. His were big and dry and warm, hers suddenly small and clammy. ‘I must get on, get myself changed before dinner’, she blustered and turned away to scuttle up the stairs to her room, leaving Stephen and the proprietor to their reminiscences.

The bath that she ran was plenty deep enough but as she settled in, it felt too narrow to stay for an enjoyable soak. Could it be that she was too wide, rather than the bath too narrow? Lydia pondered that unwelcome thought for a few moments, contemplating the excess inches that she carried on her hips. No, she was sure it was the bath at fault in this case, even allowing for the inches. And they were her inches, nobody else’s to see or criticise. Like her hair and the absence of make-up, the inches were another line of defence, a reason for nobody to take any interest, and without interest there was no need for any reaction to that interest. She might as well be a spinster herself, like the elusive ‘B’.

It struck her how difficult it had been to find any memorials to aged spinsters, never mind ones which fitted the description she was working from. ‘
Loving Mother’
, ‘
Sadly Missed Nan’
, ‘
Beloved Wife
’ and their like were everywhere. ‘
Beautiful Daughter
’ was predictably reserved for the young. How unfair life was, even the wrinkled and decrepit had been somebody’s beautiful daughter at one time. Maybe the aged spinsters had no-one to bury them, no one to compose a loving thought for their headstone. A simple plaque might be the best that could be expected, quickly overgrown with grass. B’s grave might never have been marked, an idea Lydia had all along sought to suppress. Was that how it would be when her own time came, an unmarked grave or scattered ashes, with no one to remember her as ‘
A Dearly Loved Lady
’? Lydia regarded the prospect briefly, not wholly with indifference. If she survived her brother, then who would there be to bury her with anything like interest, not to mention affection or loss. There was no sister, no parent, her nieces were growing distant, and certainly there was no man. Which brought her back to Stephen Kellaway and the unsettling effect that he had had on her.

After a leisurely start to the day, and a little less breakfast than previously, Lydia set off with her already familiar new map and her notepad stuffed in her bag, along with a little fold-up umbrella. As
she emerged from the drive, Stephen Kellaway appeared from the path to her right.

‘Good morning. How are you this morning?’

‘Oh, hello Mr Kellaway,’ Lydia began with a little more confidence than the previous evening.

‘If it’s all right with you, please call me Stephen.’

This put Lydia back in her unsettled state. She had half surprised herself by remembering his surname, and thought she’d taken control by using it with assurance.

‘Stephen, yes. I am well thank you,’ and thinking it only polite to add her own enquiry, ‘and you, Mr Kel . . , er, Stephen, have you been out walking already?’

‘Just a few steps up the hill. I’m just popping back to my room to collect my backpack and then I intend to walk round the water down to the village. And you, are you headed far?’

Lydia’s heart did an uncomfortable somersault as it tried to be both excited at the prospect of this man’s company and deflated at losing the planned solitude of the walk. The result was Lydia swallowing hard, thinking of lying, thinking of changing her plans, thinking of waiting for him or walking quickly so that he would not catch up. But ‘Oh’ was all that she managed to actually say.

‘Enjoy your walk, we may see each other later,’ and with that he was walking away up the drive to the hotel entrance, patting the black and white collie on the way.

Momentarily paralysed, she stood staring after him before she gathered her thoughts and set off along the farm track opposite the drive. After a short time it began to climb steeply, seemingly taking her away from the lake. The gradient clawed at the backs of her legs and doubting her route, she stopped to check the map. From her higher vantage point she could see the expanse of the lake before her, cupped between Burnbank and Darling Fells, fringed with woodland. She could not resist a look back to the hotel where a figure she knew to be Stephen Kellaway was walking down the drive. Would she wait until he caught up with her or walk on? In either case he would certainly be faster than she would be. She waited a little longer to check his route. He was not following her,
he was taking the opposite way round, taking the road to the village. And again there were conflicting sensations in her chest. Relief and disappointment combined into one unfamiliar feeling.

Once through the farmyard at the crest of the rise, the stony path descended as steeply as it had risen, back down towards the lake and the cool Holme Wood that borders its western side. Then she was walking on the flat, her view of the water again obscured by the hedgerows. It was easy going and, under the brightest of blue skies, Lydia began to relish the day ahead. Lunch at the village inn had been recommended, the walk was relaxing, the scenery spectacular. And there was the possible bonus of adding to her list of candidates for ‘B’. Not that she really held out much hope, Loweswater was right on the outer edge of her area, and if she’d not been staying so close by, then most likely she wouldn’t have included it. But it was only a twenty minute drive to Cockermouth, so not entirely out of the question. These thoughts were running through her mind when a voice from close behind interrupted them.

‘Hello, again.’

Startled, Lydia turned, knowing before she did so that only one person in the world could use that phrase to her this morning. Stephen was about ten yards away, emerging from a little-used path between two bushes.

‘Oh, hello. I thought you might have gone a different way.’ The sensation in her chest was more muted this time.

‘No, I have always preferred the anti-clockwise route, don’t know why, just seems more natural. Which is a little silly, as whichever way you go the sights and sounds are very much the same.’

‘It’s just that I thought I saw you on the road.’ Lydia did not want to give him the idea that she might have actually watched him.

‘Little path across the fields. Strictly speaking not a public path, and it can get rather wet underfoot close to the water. It just means that you don’t climb up to the farm and then down again.’

They had both stopped walking and stood right at the very edge of the wood. Lydia was sure that if she set off again then he would
accompany her, but if she stayed where she was then he might just go on without her.

As if to read her mind Stephen said, ‘I’m sure that you planned to walk alone today, as had I, so if you like, I will head off. But if you would like some company then we could continue together. I certainly would not be offended if you were to choose to walk alone.’