Guilt Trip (6 page)

I blushed, remembering what Paula had said
about all the boys being ‘after’ me. I hoped he didn’t think I’d done it
deliberately - for him.

But then, he seemed to like it…

I smiled to myself as I followed him inside:
he’d been waiting for me. Actually waiting.

So maybe he didn’t see me as a burden after
all.

<><><>

It turned out that I was hopeless at darts.
Useless. While Luke seemed to be able to manipulate
his
darts into doing exactly what he wanted,
mine
wouldn’t obey
me at
all. It was as if the target and darts were fitted with magnets of the same
pole: they just repelled each other. I would aim at the board and they would
start off fine, but somewhere in mid-flight they always managed to veer off,
missing the spot completely and slamming into the walls instead.

In the end, I was so frustrated that I
forgot to be shy. “It’s not
my
fault,”
I complained. “I’ve still got numb hands from being out in the cold. I can’t
even feel my finger ends yet.”

Luke shook his head, laughing at my
excuses. “Let’s have a look, then,” he sighed dramatically, moving closer and taking
both my hands in his, a tiny shock of electricity crackling down my spine at
his touch.

“Actually, they
are
a bit cold,” he said.

 
“See,” I cried. “You can’t expect me to
throw darts properly when I’ve practically got frostbite.”

“
Frostbite
?”
He raised one eyebrow at me and grinned. “Getting worse by the minute isn’t it?”

Bringing my hands together, he enveloped them
in his own which were large and warm. And then he began to rub. His fingers
were rough and dry, and made a slight sandpapery sound as they chafed against
my skin. And despite the cold in my fingers, I felt a warmth spreading through
my body.

 
“Right,” he said after a few moments, “let’s
see what you can do
now
.”

But it was no good. I was still hopeless.

Taking aim for my final shot, I huffed and
puffed, resigned to failure. But before I could throw it, Luke moved in behind
my right shoulder. Leaning forward, his face down at my level, he wrapped his
hand gently around mine as it held the dart.

I stopped breathing, all my senses alert. He
was so close that I could feel his body heat, and the tickle of his breath as
he whispered next to my ear.

“Now, eyes on where you want it to go.” He began
rocking my arm backwards and forwards, rhythmically, in a smooth, gentle arc. “And
…go…”

I watched as the dart left my hand and flew
through the air, straight at the board… only to hit it with a mighty thud and
fall to the ground.

I heard a snigger next to my right ear. “I
don’t think that was frostbite, you know,” Luke said, letting my hand drop. “I
think you’re just rubbish at darts.”

Then, laughing at my squeal of outrage, he
strolled over to the bar where he poured us a Coke each and threw me a bag of
crisps.

And so for a while I sat at the bar, quietly
picking at my snack, watching him as he practised some shots on his own.

It was a peaceful-enough scene, but inside,
my mind was in turmoil. What was going on? We had been so tinglingly close, and
yet now he was acting as if nothing had happened.

Had he not felt it too?

And what about our understanding? Our
connection? Wasn’t he aware of that either?

But no - he
had
been aware of it. I’d heard it in the tone of his voice. Seen
it in the look in his eye. I was sure of it.

So what had gone wrong? Was it that, after only
an hour in my company, he was already bored? Had I failed to meet his expectations?

As the silence lengthened, I began to feel more
and more uncomfortable, like I should say something, fill the void. But
everything I could think of sounded dull. Then I remembered what I’d heard in
the market. About how someone had had an accident. Someone whose mum had been
the waitress before Sandy. I wondered if that was the same Sandy I knew. The
waitress at the pub.

“Luke…” I began.

“Mm?” He was concentrating, aiming for the bull’s-eye.

“How long has Sandy worked here?”

“Sandy? Dunno. About five years. Why?”

 
“Oh, nothing. Just something I heard.”

“About Sandy?”

“No - about the waitress before her. Someone
with a daughter.”

Crash. Luke’s dart went wide, hitting the
wall with some force - the first shot I’d seen him miss. He swore angrily.

“You shouldn’t listen to gossip,” he said,
looking at me seriously, an edge creeping into his voice. “Small towns like
this are full of it.”

I was horrified, wishing the ground would open
up and swallow me whole.

If only I’d stayed tongue-tied and
pathetic; at least I’d been silent. But now I’d finally opened my mouth, I’d
ruined everything - said completely the wrong thing. Given the impression that
I was an idle gossip, tittle-tattling about other people’s affairs.

Suddenly the silence was shattered by a
blast of tinny music: my phone. It was Dad letting me know he was on his way
back to the pub to collect me for our afternoon exploration of the caves at Hell’s
Mouth
.

Relief flooded through me at the sound of
his voice.

Obviously, I should have done the mature
thing: apologised to Luke; set things right. But I was a coward, and Dad’s call
gave me the ‘get-out’ I needed.

So, avoiding Luke’s eye, I quickly made my
excuses and dashed off to meet him.

By now, the whole sky was smudged with sooty-grey
clouds which stifled the sun so that the world seemed darker. And maybe this
was what affected my mood. Or maybe it was the humiliation I felt over what had
happened with Luke. But as Dad and I drove up and up, into the landscape of the
Devil’s Lair, it seemed to me to be a hostile place, barren and cold. A land strangled
by coarse bracken and strewn with broken rock. The hills which reared up on all
sides seemed forbidding, their summits hard and grey and uninviting. Other
landscapes had filled me with awe at their beauty and power, with a sense that
I belonged to their huge, natural world. But here I felt nothing but a strange
sense of foreboding.

And then we drove over a cattle grid and up
into the highest fells: and straight into low-lying cloud.

Dad swore and switched on his headlights.

“Maybe we should turn back,” I suggested
tentatively.

But he wasn’t listening, too busy
concentrating on the road ahead, switching on the wipers to clear the thin
drizzle which clung to the windscreen. He had no intention of turning back; he
wanted to see the caves.

He clicked the radio on, tuning in to one
of his factual shows. This one was about animal defence techniques.

And so, as the mist enclosed us in its
gossamer shroud, we listened to a voice informing us about the bombardier
beetle and how it sprays boiling toxic bodily fluids at its predators.

The topic, while fascinating to Dad,
obviously did nothing to raise my spirits. It simply increased my general
feeling of unease.

Nature certainly had a cruel side.

My mind flashed back to the story of the changeling
girl; then that poem about kittens being drowned in a bucket, the teacher
calling it a fact of nature.

I thought about my own cruel nature
recently: how I’d labelled a woman a witch; how I’d casually judged the man in
the bow tie to be a total prat; how I’d angered Luke by poking and prying into things
that were none of my business.

Sighing, I looked out at the mist, at how
it was wrapping itself so thickly around the surrounding hilltops, concealing
them from us.

<><><>

Finally we began to descend, driving down
and down, out of the clouds, until, eventually, Dad turned right into the car
park of the Hell’s Mouth Show Caves.

Walking up a short flight of covered steps,
Dad tapped on the little ticket window. When he explained who he was, he was invited
into the office to confirm the arrangements for his photography session. He
stepped in, leaving me in the cold outside, idly reading the notices stuck to
the glass, about opening times and suitable clothing.

While I was waiting, more people turned up
in their cars, and then a local bus pulled up at the stop beyond the car park,
depositing a number of tourists on the roadside before driving off. They headed
up the steps, buying their tickets at the window.

When Dad came back, we queued up with
everyone else by the entrance, waiting for the next scheduled tour.

“I’ve agreed to go on a public tour first,”
he said, “just for a quick look. But then if there’s anything particular I want
to shoot, they’ll arrange for another guide to go back in with me and help
carry the right equipment and stuff. That way I can take my time getting the
lighting just right et cetera.”

“Okay.” My heart sank. It sounded like we
were going to be there for forever. I blew on my hands, trying to get some
warmth into them while the damp air plastered my hair in thick strands to my
face.

When our guide showed up, he began doling
out the regulation safety helmets from a crate.

“A large group today,” he smiled,
collecting another crateful. “You can always tell when the weather’s bad. All
the holiday-makers head underground.”

Listening to him chatting and joking with
the tourists, I thought he seemed pleasant enough. But not as cheerful and
funny as Luke would have been when he was a guide in the area. I bet the caves
would have been much more exciting with him.

And then I cringed, remembering his
reaction when I’d mentioned the waitress and her daughter. Why hadn’t I kept my
big mouth shut?

 
When everyone had a hardhat, the guide
began: “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Mike and I’d like to
welcome you to Hell’s Mouth, a fascinating group of passages and caverns formed
over the last million years.

“And
how
were they first formed?” He paused, looking round at us, but I sensed that
we weren’t supposed to answer him. “By ice-age glaciers melting, the water gradually
dissolving the porous limestone which was first laid down in this part of the
world 350 million years ago.”

He continued his set speech: “This is of
course a show cave, open to the general public, but still, it
does
involve a few tight squeezes; so if
anyone feels at all uncomfortable at any time, please just let me know.”

He led the way through the entrance, the
crowd shuffling after him in eager anticipation.

But, stepping through the metal gate, I
paused for a moment. I felt odd. Strangely nervous. Not about caving: I’d done
that loads of times before - and not just in show caves. No - it was the same
feeling I’d had on the journey there, only stronger now. Like some kind of
sixth sense. A vague notion of unease.

There was
something disturbing about this place; I could feel it in the air.

And yet no one else seemed to notice it. Many
had already herded inside quite happily. And behind me, people were starting to
mutter about the delay, wondering why I wasn’t moving forwards.

So it was just me, then. Me and my
overactive imagination.

Breathing out slowly and deliberately, I
told myself not to be so stupid. It was just a cave for God’s sake, like the
many caves Dad had dragged me to. And then I took one step, and then another,
and I was inside Hell’s Mouth.

The already-low temperature dropped further
still as we made our way down the narrow passage. We were on a metal grid
walkway, following the natural path of a stream which we could hear gushing
beneath us. I shivered, trying to pull my coat collar further up my neck.

On either side of us, limestone walls glistened,
thick and pale, as if something had oozed down from above, congealing into a
heavy sludge. And in a few places it became more bulbous, its surface lumpy -
bubbled. It was as if we’d somehow stumbled onto the pages of a child’s
storybook - the tale of the magic cooking pot which boils over, covering the
land with a never-ending river of porridge.

Gently, I put my finger out and touched it.
It was very cold and hard and covered in a thin film of water. I shivered
again.

At the head of the throng, Mike paused. He
pointed up into the darkness above us, to where a spotlight shone through what
looked like pieces of cloth hanging down in folds, shot through with bands of
orange and brown.

“Cave draperies,” he called loudly, trying
to reach us all. “Sometimes called curtains. Made from calcite deposits. They
get their colouring from minerals in the soil.”

I stared up at them. They were very delicate
and beautiful. But, in my current mood I found them unsettling. Otherworldly. Surreal.

But then someone called out from behind me.
Apparently the people at the back couldn’t hear, so those at the front began to
relay the information down the line to them. As their voices echoed back and
forth, like rubber balls bouncing from wall to wall around us, I started to
feel oddly cramped and confined.

Dad touched my arm, signalling that he
wanted to hang back for a moment to take some quick test-shots, so I gladly stayed
with him, letting the others pass us by, relieved to be out of the crowd.

And so we were left alone to explore this
strange, subterranean world.

 
Having taking some shots of the draperies,
Dad’s attention was soon caught by some helictites - bizarre, white, straw-like
structures which burst out of the walls in clusters of thin, twig-like branches.
They looked like hydra - those weird fresh-water creatures from science
lessons. Or some kind of obscure, blind, worm-like species writhing and
wriggling out of the rock.

Moving further down the dark passage, we
came to a sign: ‘The Devil’s Hand’. It was an accurate description, for above
it was an almost sinister formation where deposits had hardened into long,
jointed, knuckled shapes - like brown, wizened fingers. As I looked at them,
they seemed to be clutching at the walls, grasping, clinging, and my head
filled with images of those horrific spidery-crab-like creatures from science
fiction - the ones which attach themselves securely to your face as they lay
their embryos inside you.

<><><>

Continuing on, following the twists and
turns of the tunnel, we eventually caught up with the others. However, rather
than the noisy crowd of before, they were all still and silent, as if waiting in
anticipation of something.

Dad asked what was happening.

A man at the back of the crowd pointed up
ahead to a wide, flat flowstone formation hanging from the passage roof.

“You have to be careful of that one,” he informed
us cheerfully. “It’s called Lucifer’s Tongue. The story goes that if it drips
on you as you pass under it, then you have the Devil’s spit on you. Very
unlucky, apparently.”

I looked at it glinting in the artificial
lighting, water flowing over the surface and gathering at the tip, then
dripping down onto the walkway below - just where the tourists would be passing
underneath it. And so the story of the Devil’s spit had been invented, made up,
to entertain the crowds. And it seemed to be working, the tourists lapping it
up, each one passing under it self-consciously while the others looked on with
pretend baited breath. Dad rolled his eyes at me, but there was nothing for it,
so we stood in line, waiting to take our turn.

But as the queue got shorter, a chill started
up my spine. It wasn’t that I believed in the superstition of the Devil’s spit -
I mean obviously that was just nonsense; but for some reason that day I
couldn’t take any more. My nerves were jangled enough already. It was a
culmination of everything: ten months of nightmares, the déjà vu, the teddy
bear, the voice on the wind, the failure of the stronger medication, the poster
of
Nirvana
, and falling out with Luke,
to the journey here in the eerie mist, and now being crammed into this strange,
confined landscape inside the ground with all these people, and the lack of
air, and the ever-constant dripping of water in the background, and the
unbearable tension of waiting...

And then it was my turn.

All were silent, watching me. I
had
to do this. Holding my breath, I looked
up at the glistening tongue above me. At the drip gathering there, waiting for
gravity to play its part. To fall. The Devil’s spit.

And then I lifted my foot, about to take a
step, waiting for exactly the right moment. When,
tap!
Something dropped onto the top of my helmet.

I let out a scream. And the tension
shattered into merry laughter around me.

“Dad!”

“Sorry, Mel…” He gave me a sheepish grin. “Just
couldn’t resist it.”

<><><>

As we moved on, Dad ahead of me now, the
passage widened out enough so that people began walking side by side.

He looked back when I didn’t immediately
join him: “You okay?”

“Yeah, fine,” I said. But I was lying. His silly
trick had actually hurt me: it seemed so insensitive, so uncaring.

But then, of course, Dad didn’t know that I
was in the middle of some sort of brain meltdown. Obviously he knew about the
recurring dream; but I hadn’t told him that it had changed now, or anything
about the voices or the visions. Nothing at all.

So it wasn’t his fault: he was simply
trying to have fun with his daughter.

I caught up with him, smiling, punching his
arm. Poor, clueless Dad.

<><><>

“This next section of the tunnel we like to
call
Darwin’s Parade
,” said Mike
after a while, “because the roof is very low for fifty meters or so.” He looked
at our blank faces. “You’ll see what I mean in a minute.”

Puzzled, we stooped down, trying not to hit
our heads. And then the laughter began as people realised: walking like this, knees
bent, arms seeming longer than usual, we looked like our ancient ancestors, the
apes.

Dad started acting up again, comically scratching
his armpit and making stupid chimp noises at me. But though I tried to laugh
like the others, I actually found it a little overwhelming. The noise was just
too much for me, amplified as it was by the low roof. And I began to feel
claustrophobic again. Trapped. Boxed in.