Harriet Crozier’s handbag was gone with them. Stephen began to laugh when he thought of Harriet Crozier’s bag being sent off to Lyn. He lay down on the bed and laughed but when he put his fingers up to his face because the skin itched, he found it wet with tears.
20
In the past days he had occasionally felt as if a cord were tightly stretched inside his brain, stretched from one side of his cranium to the other, from the eyes to the occiput. At some time during the evening or the night that cord had snapped and the freedom he desired had come with it. He walked about the house, wondering how he should dispose of his furniture. Dadda could have it and sell it. Or it might go to Lyn. He bore Lyn no ill will any more. He wrote a note to Dadda and a note for Lyn and left them on the chestnut leaf table. The sight of the notes there made him giggle, for it looked as if he were about to commit suicide instead of embarking on a new life.
There had been no sign from Peter. Of course there would be, sometime during the day, but Stephen felt impatient, he didn’t want to wait. Perhaps he should go to Loomlade and find Peter himself. The objection to that was that the girl might be there and Peter might not want the girl to know too much. He tried to reconstruct the conversation between Peter and himself in an effort to recall what Peter had said about the girl. And as he went over it there came back to him two things of profound significance Peter had said, though they hadn’t registered with him at the time, though they had been lost in the generality of their talk.
‘I’ve got a place to stay’ and ‘You know where to find me’. What a fool he was! What a fool he had been not to see what that meant. Of course he had a place to stay and of course Stephen knew where that place was. Peter had meant, I shall be in the mine, come up and meet me in the mine. He was going back to London on Sunday, so today he would be in Rip’s Cavern, waiting …
Stephen felt almost unbearably excited. He was breathless and laughing with excitement. For a moment only his happiness was checked when it occurred to him that Peter might have been waiting in the mine all day yesterday, waiting in vain. But no. Yesterday had been Friday and he would have supposed Stephen to have been at work. Saturday was the day, all the pointers indicated it. Peter was probably making his way up there now, across the Vale of Allen.
Stephen’s laughter became rather shocked and awed when he walked about the house, looking at things and realizing he might never come back there. He wouldn’t waste time going into the village to post the letter to the council. Might as well leave it with the notes for Lyn and Dadda. What should he take with him? A change of clothes, of course, and a blanket for the night. There was food enough in the cavern. Later on, say on Monday after Peter had gone back, it would be his turn to stock up with food and drink. A sleeping bag would have to be bought and a mattress for himself. He would make the cavern welcoming and homelike for Peter’s return …
The last he saw of Tace Way was the pram on the bright green square of the Simpsons’ lawn and the last he heard was the urgent crying of Joanne’s baby. I am shaking the dust of this place off my feet, he said to himself, shaking it off my feet. The expression pleased him and for a while he walked in a prancing way, shaking his feet as he lifted them, repeating what he had said, and then, as he crossed the Jackley road, lifting up his eyes to the hills.
His rucksack, containing the rope, the big torch, candles, clothes, was on his back. Under his right arm he carried a blanket, rolled up and tied with string. He had decided to grow a beard like Peter’s; he had shaved for the last time. There was no one following him, he was as alone as he had ever been when out on the moor. Behind him a car passed along the road, going towards Jackley, then after a moment or two another heading for Hilderbridge, but Vangmoor itself where there were no roads was stripped of people. It was empty and silent and now at the end of summer no birds sang.
In the Vale of Allen there was here and there a golden flower on the gorse. It was a curious thing about gorse that although the season of its flowering was springtime, there was always blossom on it even in the depths of winter, even if it were just one solitary bloom. He should have written about that for the Echo but it was too late now. He didn’t think he would ever again write the ‘Voice of Vangmoor’. Someone else would have to take over, for he, though not far away, would nevertheless be removed from such activities. Pleased with the idea, he understood he was making himself into an outlaw, a modern Robin Hood. He and Rip together would be a kind of robber band, though it was not robbery they would come out of the hills to commit.
The mist which enclosed the moor, which almost since sunrise had been shot with gold, should have lifted by now, but instead it seemed to be closing in, growing colder, whiter and more autumnal. He could see the foin only as a vague blurred shape, rising out of the flat land ahead. The coe and the windlass were invisible, and when they did appear it was to loom up like men advancing.
He fastened the rope to the lip of rock and clambered down Apsley Sough. The sides of the shaft were moist and slippery but not running with water and there was no water lying in the chamber at its foot. Stephen felt relief. There had been times in the past days when he feared a flooding of the mine.
All the rain seemed to have done was intensify the sour chemical smell. He made his way along the winze, wondering if Rip were here already and if the sound of his footfalls might be audible to him through the rock walls. The atmosphere felt colder than usual, laying a thick chilly breath on his skin. His throat tightened with excitement but he walked slowly, he walked with measured tread, to give Rip a chance to know that he approached.
The end of the winze, where it opened out into the doorway to the chamber, he saw as he rounded the slight bend in the passage, was in darkness. If Rip had come he was there no longer. Unless he sat waiting in the dark. Stephen remembered that Rip didn’t know he was called Rip, that was only his own secret name for him, and he called in a loud clear voice, ‘Peter! Peter, it’s Stephen!’
There was no answer. He hadn’t come yet. Stephen had a sudden feeling that Rip might have been alarmed by the discovery of the third girl’s hair and have emptied the cavern for safety’s sake. He didn’t know, couldn’t then have known, the identity of Harriet Crozier’s killer. Stephen raised the torch. The light leapt across the rocky walls and showed him everything as it had been before, the boxes, the bottle of cider, the clothes, the bedding, the candles in the bottles and the candle in the candlestick.
Being in the cavern, the cavern as he had always known it, made him feel happy again. He sat down on the mattress, unrolled his blanket and lit all the candles. Like someone who, though long intimate with a friend’s house, has always been a visitor, he had now taken a room there himself or moved in to share and might take liberties that were previously forbidden. He lit the calor gas burner. The kettle, he found, had been filled with water. It would take a long time to boil but eventually he would get himself a cup of tea. Into the box where the tins were and the biscuits Rip had put two packets of cigarettes, and Stephen seemed to smell again the scent of tobacco that had come to him as he opened the gate on Foinmen’s Plain.
The gas burner gave a little welcome warmth. Stephen ate biscuits while the kettle boiled. There was only dried milk for the tea but he didn’t mind. Doing without, making do, added to the fun of picnics. He saw before him a vista of future picnics with Rip, hard-won tea, the sweeter because it took so long to brew, biscuits softened with keeping, meat dug out of a tin. He had slept badly the night before, after he had buried Tace. He lay down on the mattress and covered himself with the blanket and fell asleep.