Catherine feels herself being excluded and decides not to let it happen again. “Police have left the file open but they seem to think he’s just gone off on one of his pilgrimages. He used to give assemblies about it. He was a shaman.”
“A what?”
“They talk to the dead,” explains Violet. “Or they think they can. They travel between this world and the other world. I dunno if it’s rubbish but he was nice.”
“Wish I’d met him,” says Freya, smoothing her eyebrows in the mirror. The cuffs of her jumper ride up. Catherine sees white lines across the blue veins of her wrists. She looks away before the new girl can see.
“He won’t be back now,” says Violet. “His van’s still there because they can’t get it back to the road but they’ve had a bonfire with his stuff.”
“They?”
“Tunstall. Rideal.”
“I met them. They seem nice.”
Violet snorts, scornfully. “Tunstall’s alright, but he’s wetter than an otter’s pocket. Rideal’s just a posh wanker.”
“What do your parents think of this place?” asks Freya, chattily.
“I couldn’t care less what they think,” snaps Violet, angrily. “They pay the bills and leave me alone and don’t make a fuss when I get in trouble. They’re perfect parents, really,” she adds, nastily.
“Your dad seems nice,” says Freya, plaiting her fringe and then unplaiting it again. “He’s the vicar, yeah? I met him on my induction day. Friendly.”
“He does his best,” says Catherine, loyally. “He didn’t know you were joining, actually. He was surprised that there was a new girl. He’s on the Board, you see. He was a bit miffed. Said so to Mummy.”
“Mummy,” snorts Violet.
“It was all a bit last minute,” shrugs Freya. “My family work away. My guardian’s out in Saudi Arabia making money but the school I was at before couldn’t take me for the whole summer so they got me in here, last minute.”
“Your guardian?” asks Catherine.
“I’ve moved around a lot,” says Freya, pushing her hair up like a matinee idol. The action exposes a patch of torn scalp; a perfect patch of ridged flesh, completely hairless. Violet spots it too and Catherine has to reach out and squeeze her arm to stop her commenting.
“What about your mam? Your dad?”
“Are you two coppers or something?” asks Violet, looking from one to the other. Then she grins. “Do you smoke? I’ve only got a few cigs left? Do you know anybody who might pop to the shop for us? I’ll share if you do.”
Catherine doesn’t get a chance to answer. Violet jumps in for both of them. “Smoke? Yeah, I love a ciggie. Trying to kick them but you know how it is. I reckon you could get served. We go shopping in Keswick sometimes. It’s boring unless you like fell-boots but I need some things and I’m good at getting stuff past the security guard in Boot’s. There’s a bus on a Tuesday. Do you want to come?”
Freya turns from the mirror and looks from one to the other, weighing them up, surveying them like she’s choosing a Christmas turkey. At length, she nods. “I’m Freya, in case you didn’t know. Like the goddess.”
“The goddess?” asks Catherine, and she feels a strange prickling anxiety all over her skin.
“I’ll lend you some books,” smiles Freya. “I’m into things that not everybody understands.”
”Like what?” asks Violet, brightly.
Freya rolls up her sleeve. On her forearm, picked out in fine white scars, is a stick figure. He carries a spear, and shield, and there are crude tusks protruding from the ruined mass of his face.
“Like this,” she says.
24
12.48pm
An unnamed road on the north bank of Wast Water
“Second…. Snowdrop, second yeah… up and to the right, that’s third …now turn the radio up….Christ, that really is some view….sorry, nearly lost control there, bloody silly wooden steering wheel, who’d have thought that was a good idea? …fuck, are you hot, I’m roasting….here, can you light this when you get a free hand?.... good lass, cheers…aye, turn it up, turn it up…,”
Rowan’s fingertips slip from the steering wheel and the little car lurches to the right, the tyres on the driver’s side briefly chewing gravel and air. Beneath them is a 15-foot drop down to sharp rocks and icy black waters. Swearing, Rowan grabs at the wheel, swinging them painfully back onto the winding grey road that hugs the curve of the lake.
“Don’t mention that to your mum,” mutters Rowan. “Or any of it, really. We went for a nice walk. I wanted some air. We bonded.”
“Do I have to fib? She might be okay with it.”
Rowan shoots his niece a look. “I’m going to educate you, little one. Pay attention, after you’ve lit that fag. Look, lies are horrible, terrible things. They’re a virus. They’re bad for the soul and can spread like cancer. When coppers and politicians use them, they should be roasted on a spit. It costs me a little bit of myself every time I have to resort to an untruth or exaggeration. But - and like the rear end of your mother’s wife, this is a big butt – they’re also a kindness. You see, it’s the people who respond poorly to the truth who force people like me, and you, to employ the compassionate balm of fiction. Fabrication. Duplicity. One day, we’ll all be able to tell each other things with full and frank honesty. Until then, best say shtum.”
“Shtum?”
“Aye. It’s an onomatopoeic word. It’s the sound of a truth suffocating behind superglued lips.”
“Sorry?”
“Don’t be.”
Rowan looks out at the burnished pewter bowl of the valley, f ringed in places by dense, spiky woodland. It’s a brutally cold day, the wind and rain assaulting the car like fists and boots. It’s his first time behind the wheel of the vintage Nissan Figaro that Serendipty and her wife like to use for picnics when they feel like treating themselves to a little luxury. It’s recently been restored to the pale blue of the factory floor. It’s Jo’s pride and joy. She takes the family Kia to work each day just so that using the Figaro feels more like a special occasion. Dippy hadn’t believed her uncle when he said that her two mums wouldn’t object to him borrowing it. But he’d shown her the message on his phone; a carefree acquiescence and instruction to ‘be careful’. Rowan had been quite proud of the speed with which he had typed the message with his bandaged hands, and the ease with which he had mimicked his sister’s text-voice. Mud streaks are already making a mess of the white-wall tyres.
In the passenger seat, Snowdrop is doing her best to obey his multitude of requests, holding his mobile phone to his ear while changing gear, operating the radio and attempting to light a cigarette on the broken lighter by the gearstick.
Rowan glances down to the lake. A VW Transporter is parked in a small bay a few feet above a shingly cove at the water’s edge. It is being investigated by half a dozen Herdwick sheep. In the water, two men stand bare chested, their skin alabaster white; steam rising from their shoulders and from swimming caps that make them look like spent matches.
Rowan rolls the car to a halt in the parking area at the end of the road. The copse of trees that surrounds St Olaf’s is a couple of hundred metres ahead. There are several vehicles in the car park; mostly working vehicles; flat-bed pick-ups and bottle-green Land Rovers. There’s a blue BMW, a black Jeep and battered red works van; its mudguards clogged up with torn grass and thick mud. Beyond the car park, the road peters out at the front of the big hotel. It’s a long, imposing building that looks up to the task of doing daily battle with the elements. Its front is the colour of old butter and thick black gloss serves as thick mascara around the dark windows. Rowan scanned the website before they left, taking a mental note of the names of the owners and a little about the place’s history, in case he needed a tool with which to start a conversation with a taciturn local. He now knows that this is where British climbing began. It has been a hotel for two centuries or more, providing much-needed lodgings for the peddlars, merchants and tradesmen who laboured over Black Sail, Sty Head and Burnmoor passes to ply their trade in adjacent valleys. It has played host to the great men of British climbing; Victorian upper-class daredevils who pitted themselves against the towering crags and made daily wagers with the elements. Many of those early pioneers are buried in the consecrated ground of St Olaf’s.