On Beulah Height

Except it hadn’t worked. There were two in already. Arne Krog and Inger Sandel.

I knew them quite well ’cos Aunt Chloe often invited me to Heck to play with Mary. Also Arne remembered me from singing in the school choir last year, and when he heard I were singing ‘The Ash Grove’ solo this year, he asked me to sing it to him one day. I were so pleased I just started right off without waiting for him to start playing the music on the piano. He listened till I finished, then sat down at the piano. It were one of them baby grands, Mr Wulfstan played a bit himself, but he’d really bought it for Mary to practise on during the holidays. Mary didn’t like playing very much, she told me. I’d have liked to learn but we didn’t have a piano and no hope of getting one. Anyway, Arne played a note and asked me to sing it, then a few more, then he played half a dozen and asked me which was the one that came at the end of the second line of ‘The Ash Grove’.

When I told him, he turned to Inger and said, ‘You hear that? I think little Betsy could have perfect pitch.’

She just looked at him, blank like, which meant nowt ’costhat was how she usually looked. She could talk English as good as him, only she never bothered unless she had to. As for me, I had no idea what he were talking about but I felt really chuffed that I’d got something that pleased Arne.

This piano at Heck had to be shifted to St Luke’s for the concert. There were an old piano in the village hall but it were useless for proper singing, and the one at school weren’t much better. If a cat ran up and down keyboard, he’d have made it sound as musical as Miss Lavery when she tried to play it. So it had to be Mr Wulfstan’s baby grand.

My dad came to Heck with a trailer pulled by his tractor. He’d brushed most of muck off trailer and put a bit of fresh straw on the boards, so it didn’t look too bad. It took Dad and two lads from the village to get the piano out of the house while Aunt Chloe and Arne gave advice. I tried to help, but Dad told me to get out of the bloody way before I tripped someone up. I went and stood by Mary and she held my hand. Her dad never spoke to her like that. If he hadn’t seen her for half a day he made more fuss when he got home than my dad had made of me when I came back from hospital after I spent a couple of nights there when I broke my leg.

Mr Wulfstan wasn’t there that day. Most days he drove into town to see to his business and this was one of them. We went through the village in a sort of procession, Dad driving the tractor, the lads standing on trailer making sure piano didn’t slip, Arne, Inger, Aunt Chloe, Mary and me, walking behind. Folk came to their doors to see what was going off and there was a lot of laughing which hadn’t been heard for a bit. No one had forgot about Jenny and Madge, but grieving doesn’t pay the rent, as my mam said. Even the policemen who were in the hall looked out and smiled.

Rev Disjohn were waiting at the church. Getting it through the door weren’t easy. St Luke’s isn’t a big fancy building like you see some places. We learned all about it at school. Couple of hundred years back there were no church in Dendale andfolk had a long trek over the fell to Danby for services. Worst was when someone died and you had to take the coffin with you. So in the end they built their own church by Shelter Crag at the foot of the fell where they took the bodies out of the coffins and strapped them to ponies that carried them over to Danby. And when they built it they applied same rule as they did to their houses which was, the bigger the door, the bigger the draught.

At last they got it in and set it up. Dad and the farm lads went off with the trailer. Inger sat down at the piano and tried it out. It had had a right jangling, getting it on and off trailer and through that narrow door, and she settled down to retune it. Aunt Chloe said she had some things to do in the village and she’d see us back home. Mary and I asked if we could stay and come back with Arne and Inger and she said all right, so long as we didn’t go outside of the church. Arne said he’d keep an eye on us and off Aunt Chloe went. Arne wandered round the church, looking at the wood carvings and such. Rev Disjohn sat in a pew watching Inger at work. I often noticed when she were around he never took his eyes off her. She were too busy to pay any heed to him, playing notes, then fiddling inside the piano. It was dead boring so Mary and I slipped outside to play in the churchyard. You can have a good game of hide and seek there around the gravestones. It’s a bit frightening but nice-frightening, so long as the sun’s shining and you know that there’s grown-ups close by. Not all grown-ups, but. You can still see the old Corpse Road winding up the fellside from Shelter Crag. I were hiding behind a big stone at the bottom end of the churchyard and I could see right up the trail through the lych gate and I glimpsed a figure up there. Like I told the police after, I thought it were Benny Lightfoot but I couldn’t be absolutely sure. Then Mary suddenly came round the headstone and grabbed me, frightening me half to death, and I forgot all about it.

Now it were her turn to hide, mine to seek. She were goodat hiding because she could keep still as a mouse and not start giggling like most of us did.

I went right round the church without spotting her. As I passed the door, I heard Arne start singing. Inger must have finished tuning and they were trying it out. I stepped inside to listen.

The words were foreign, but I’d heard him sing it before and he told me what it meant. It’s about this man riding in the dark with his young son and the boy sees this sort of elf called the Erlking who calls him away. The father tries to ride faster but it’s no use, the Erlking has got his child and when he reaches home the boy is dead. I didn’t like it much, it were really frightening, but I had to listen.

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.

TWO (#ulink_a9c7916a-3249-564d-a6ba-cdc00bea6ccc)

‘And now the sun will rise as bright

As though no horror had touched the night.

The horror affected me alone.

The sunlight illumines everyone.’

‘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.