Dead Man Riding (27 page)

‘What's that in your hand, Nell?' Imogen said.

‘Nothing important.'

I didn't want another argument.

Chapter Seventeen

I'
D HAD ENOUGH. ENOUGH OF ALL OF THEM,
of worrying and quarrelling. The business of the resumed inquest next week and what I'd say was heavy on my mind, and there was nobody I could talk to. Not Alan or Imogen, obviously, and I'd never thought of Kit as a confidant and anyway he was too taken up with being jealous. Midge was normally a patient listener and a sensible adviser but she was too hurt over Nathan to be landed with my problems. As for Meredith, I could hardly bear to think about him let alone talk to him. What Imogen had said had struck home. In the sleepless times of the night I'd seen myself through her eyes – a besotted woman trying to impress. The blow to my pride was a bad one and I could only deal with it by walking away, not like Nathan had, turning my back on it altogether. As a witness I didn't have the choice – although I was sorely tempted. What I could do was what I'd promised myself in the train – go walking in the fells just for a day on my own. Since we'd got there so much had happened in the green Solway pastures and by the sea that the Lake District hills to the south of us might as well not have existed. Now I needed to run away to them like old friends.

At breakfast time I waited in the loft until Imogen had gone over to the house and told Midge I'd be back sometime in the evening. She didn't fuss and offered to bring me out some bread and cheese from the kitchen, sensing that I didn't want to talk to anybody. I put on my walking boots, washed my face at the pump in the yard and filled an old lemonade bottle with water then met Midge by the back door.

‘It's that peculiar hard cheese. Hope it's enough.'

‘Plenty thanks. Is Dulcie up?'

‘Yes. They've just been telling her about the man last night.'

‘What did she say?'

‘That it was probably some thief who'd heard the Old Man was dead and thought the house would be empty.'

I stowed the food and water in my pack, waved to Midge and walked away up the track. Rather than having to pass the raw earth of the Old Man's grave and the bonfire ashes I decided to go across Sid's field to the open hillside. He was there as usual, grazing knee deep in buttercups. He raised his head and looked as if he might come towards me but I looked away and walked on as quickly as I could. I went round the edge of the wood and up to the high sheep pasture where I'd walked before, but didn't turn back this time to look at the Old Man's neat fences or the red roof of Major Mawbray's place or the sea in the distance.

For the first few miles uphill I walked too fast trying to get away from them, got hot and lost my temper in a maze of streams that formed the headwaters of our little river. The ground round them was boggy even in a dry summer like this one and the only way to negotiate it was by striding from one tuft of coarse grass to the next, risking ankle-wrenching slides into mud holes carpeted in bright green moss. Clouds of flies orbited my head. I took off the old squashy linen hat I'd worn as protection against the sun and flapped it at them but it only made them buzz louder. Disturbed grouse kept rocketing up with that cackling cry that sounds so much like a laugh when you're floundering in a bog.

The sun was high before I got to the road leading to Caldbeck, but at least this was the edge of the real Lakeland fells and the Old Man's territory was safely behind me. I crossed the road, followed a track up to Greenhead and once I was past the farm buildings sat down in a grassy place beside a stream for a drink of water and a look at the map. My plan for the day, as far as I had one, was to get to the summit of Skiddaw for the view southwards over the other Lakeland hills. It was an ambitious one even for a long summer day and when I checked the map I found I'd been over-optimistic in thinking it was a simple uphill hike from where I was. I'd have to climb another thousand feet or so up Great Sea, drop steeply down following a stream to join the path that ran over a pass from Bassenthwaite to Keswick, then a steep drag from the head of the pass up the eastern side of Skiddaw. Too ambitious almost certainly, but at least it gave me something else to think about. Meanwhile, it was restful here by the stream. A kestrel hovered overhead, the fanned-out feathers of its tail almost transparent against the sun. A sheep was bleating from the other side of a clump of bracken that closed in this little area of turf almost completely. A slab of slatey grey rock, turned sideways on by some convulsion of the earth millions of years ago, stood like a door in the bracken and completed the closed-in feeling. If I got benighted and had to sleep out on my way back, there'd be worse places than this to choose. Then I laughed because I realised the thought must have been put in my head by the signs that somebody else had done just that. I hadn't noticed at first because he – almost certainly he – had cleared up so carefully after him. If you looked closely there were cuts in the grass, marking out an area about two foot square divided into four, so that the sections of turf could be lifted up neatly without tearing them. There were some little fragments of charcoal and wood ash on the outside of the square, so small that you wouldn't have seen them unless you were looking. Somebody had neatly rolled the turf back and made his fire then just as neatly replaced it next morning when the ashes were cold, leaving no damage. Very few people would take that trouble. Almost everybody I knew would happily make his fire on the grass just as it was, leaving a burnt patch behind. Everybody I knew, in fact, with just one exception. And when I thought of that exception I was back at the Old Man's place as if I'd never gone to all this trouble to leave it. Back by our college barn, when we'd gone up to join the men for our first picnic there. I'd noticed then how carefully they'd made their fire, on a patch of bare earth with the turves taken away and rolled up by the barn wall where they'd keep cool and moist. Nathan had done that, as he did most of the practical things for us – neat, craftsmanlike, considerate Nathan. I told myself I was being stupid, making too much of a small thing. I remembered Imogen's bitter words and thought she was right. The place didn't seem so comfortable any more and I could hardly wait to refill my water bottle and get away from it.

I walked on, too fast again, but after a while the steady rhythm you need when you're walking uphill calmed me down. Nathan had probably got on a train and was hundreds of miles away by now. Hundreds, thousands of men would be just as careful making fires. Higher up, a little breeze blew from the west, scattering the flies and making walking a pleasure. The view from the top of Great Sea was like life opening out again, Bassenthwaite Lake two thousand feet below to the right with white sails of little boats moving slowly, nearer right the deep crease in the hills between the Uldale Fells and Skiddaw, with a well-marked track running along it that led to the pass. There was a group of hikers on it looking no bigger than tin soldiers, walking up from the Bassenthwaite side towards the waterfall. I'd forgotten about the waterfall until then but the name came back to me from when I was about twelve and my brother and I had first toiled up there with my father – Whitewater Dash. It was well named, a narrow but impetuous streak of water that looked near vertical from a distance, pinched at a few points between outcrops of rock. From up here it was a silver-white flourish on the hillside, like an Arab horse's tall. (No, don't think of that. It's just a waterfall with the sun on it.) I stayed where I was for a while, enjoying the height and the view, then started scrambling down a little stream between Meal Fell and Frozen Fell that, according to the map, should join Dash Beck about a mile below the waterfall.

It wasn't an obvious route because most people didn't get to the waterfall from this side and there was no path, only sheep tracks that dwindled away into clumps of bracken or ended under stunted rowan trees where sun-sodden ewes dozed. So it was a surprise when I looked back and saw another walker coming down after me, about half a mile away. It was a man, walking quite strongly. I was amused at first, guessing that he'd got lost on the fells and was following me down. It became a game, whether I'd get to the path alongside Dash Beck before he caught up with me. I walk fast, but it's one of the little unfairnesses of life that trousers always go faster than skirts, especially when skirt hems are clotted with dried bog mud, bracken and wisps of sheep wool and keep snagging themselves on rocks and gorse bushes. When I next glanced back he was catching up with me fast, no more than a few hundred yards back. He was wearing a tweed jacket that flapped unbuttoned over his white shirt and he was hatless. Then I recognised him and my heart bounded and turned over. For a moment I had to fight an insane urge to run away from him, risking ankles and even neck on the steep ground. I stopped, turned away and took a couple of deep breaths, looked back towards him. He'd stopped too, just within speaking distance.

‘Miss Bray … Nell?'

His black squashy hat was in his hand, his face sweating and there was a scratch on his cheek, probably from a gorse bush. It was obvious he'd been walking long and fast to catch up with me, but now he'd managed it he seemed unusually at a loss for words.

‘Well, Mr Meredith?'

It sounded as formal as Stanley to Livingstone and I meant it that way. I was rattled.

‘Do you mind if I join you?'

‘Do I have any choice?'

I'd intended that to sound just as formal, but I can't have managed it because he smiled and his voice when he answered was relieved, more like his usual self.

‘If you tell me to climb back up there…' he jerked his chin towards the summit of Great Sca, ‘then I'll do it, only it really is very hot so I hope you won't.'

‘I was going to the waterfall,' I said. It seemed a more realistic choice than the top of Skiddaw, still a long way off. He seemed to take that as permission and came on down to where I was waiting, stepping more carefully now along the stream bank. I leaned against an outcrop of rock, aware of being tired and having come a long way.

‘You set a fast pace, Nell.'

He propped a foot on the lower shelf of the same rock.

‘How long have you been following me?'

‘Midge said you'd gone for a walk on your own. I thought she meant just above the local wood. I went up there and saw you heading off into the distance as if John Peel and all his hounds were after you.'

‘So you decided to join them.'

‘Hunting you?'

‘Or dogging me. Why?'

‘What if I said I was concerned about you? Most women don't go off hiking on their own.'

‘Ergo
I'm not a woman?'

‘A most erroneous conclusion. But I was concerned, yes. I thought you might have decided to leave us, like Nathan.'

Until he said that I'd forgotten about the little square of turf. He must have seen something in my face.

‘I've offended you?'

‘Not really, no. Only thinking about all that was something I wanted to get away from. I know I can't really, but for a day at least…'

‘I'm sorry.' He genuinely looked and sounded it. ‘Shall we walk?'

He let me lead the way. A little further down our stream joined another one with a narrow path beside it. It led us to a bridge of stone slabs over the Dash Beck and on the far side of that the broad track to the pass that I'd been trying to reach most of the day. It was late afternoon by then, high time to turn back. If he'd pointed that out I'd have snubbed him because I was determined to get to the waterfall at least but he simply fell into step beside me when I turned uphill.

‘The truth is,' he said, ‘I wanted to talk to you, only I can see now that was selfish of me. I thought you were seeing all this as a kind of intellectual diversion…'

‘Do I seem that cold-blooded?' Shades of Imogen again.

‘Very far from it. I'm sorry, I know you're concerned for your friends. But the other evening when you were looking at the hoofprints I thought you were seeing it objectively as well…'

‘I wonder if there's any such thing. So you came after me hoping for a nice objective discussion? I'm sorry if I'm disappointing you.'

‘Are you still angry with me?'

‘I'm angry with myself.'

‘Why?'

There were several answers to that. Angry for being either too cold-blooded or not enough so. Angry because, in spite of everything, a part of my mind was turning somersaults with the delight of walking alongside this clever and good-looking man in the hills I loved better than almost anywhere in the world, finding that he seemed to care about what I said or did. The fly-away reckless feeling I'd had when I kissed him was fluttering inside my chest, threatening to take over again. So I said nothing and we walked along in silence for a while. There were shouts and laughter from up ahead of us. The hiking party I'd seen from up on the fell must have got to the waterfall. I wished we were just out for an uncomplicated walk like they were and must have sighed because his hand touched mine. It might have been accidental with our arms swinging so close together as we walked, but I knew it wasn't.

‘You're sad, Nell?'

‘I've quarrelled with Imogen.' It wasn't what I'd intended to say, it just came out. ‘She accused me of playing detectives to impress you.'

‘Ah.' The long sigh from him was almost a groan. ‘What this is doing to all of us.'

The pain in his voice surprised me. In spite of what I felt for him he was still older, still a don and I hadn't guessed it affected him as badly as the rest of us.

‘We're all coming apart,' I said. ‘Imogen and I have quarrelled and Kit's hardly speaking to anybody because of Imogen, and Midge is hurt because of Nathan. You know, perhaps there's something to be said for convention after all. If we'd all gone our separate ways and not made such a point of coming away together, none of this would have happened.'