Rowan climbs out of the car, wincing as his fingers touch metal. It’s a cold, desolate spot. A cold breeze seems to lift from the lake, casting patterns onto the still silver surface, lifting the dead leaves from the pock-marked car park. For a moment Rowan’s mind seems to spin and eddy, as if some part of him were drifting into the dank gloom. He feels cold all the way through.
Sharp air chafes his cheeks. Beneath the smeared pink salve, Rowan can feel virgin skin turning duck-egg blue.
“Good God, you look like Shane McGowan’s stunt double!”
Rowan turns at the unexpected greeting. It takes him a moment to recognize the small, bald-headed man who stands in front of a budget hatchback. Last time he saw Damien Crow was 20 years back and then he had seemed a colossus of a man: lantern-jawed and straight-backed the sort of Biblical icon that Charlton Heston did so well. Age has withered him. He’s probably a little shorter than Rowan and there’s a touch of a stoop to his posture. He wears glasses atop a prominent nose and looks cold inside his waterproof and fleece. His smile shows teeth that are all his own, though whether he cherishes them is open to debate. They’re a colour that Rowan could best liken to salted caramel.
“Bloody hell,” says Rowan, returning the smile. “Good job we’re meeting at a graveyard – you look like you need the lie down!”
Pleasantries exchanged, Rowan holds up his hands. “Ouch,” says Crow, wincing in solidarity. “Have you got the little bastard who did it yet?”
Rowan nods. “Wasn’t so little, to be honest. If he’d been little, it might not have happened.”
“That was the problem, was it?” asks Crow, closing the car door and crossing to where Rowan stands. “Just too big for you?”
“That and the crowbar, yeah.”
“I always imagine opened a place called The Crow Bar,” says the old reporter, wistfully. Up close, Rowan’s gratified to get the smell of lunchtime ale and last night’s fags. There’s something reassuring about somebody who sticks with their vices in the face of all the evidence.
“You were always better this side of the bar,” says Rowan, as Snowdrop comes and joins him. She smiles, politely. “This is Snowdrop, my niece.”
“A pleasure, love,” says Crow, and the flat vowel sound betrays his Yorkshire roots. He’s been a local reporter since 1981 but is still an outsider in the valley. He gives Rowan his attention. “You didn’t mention whether there might be a fee for my expertise.”
Rowan grins. “There’s the pleasure of my company,” he says, doubting it will be enough. “And an acknowledgement when the book comes out. And a chance to remember a time when you were as young and good-looking as I am now.”
“You always were a gobshite,” smiles Crow, then mouths an apology at Snowdrop. “You should have seen this one on his first day in the job. Purple hair, tattoos all over him, earring in each ear. We thought the gaffer had gone mad for hiring him and by Christ he was a pugnacious little sod. Do you know what that word means?”
Snowdrop nods. “Fighty?”
“Not far off,” smiles Crow. “Told me on day one he was going to have my job inside a year.”
“I never did,” says Rowan, surprised at the accusation.
Crow looks at him with intelligent blue eyes and nods, fulsomely. “You bloody did, son. Couldn’t tell whether to laugh or smack you in the face. I decided neither would end well for me. You’ve done well for yourself.” He narrows his eyes. “Could have done better, of course, but couldn’t we all?”
Rowan nods in the direction of the church. They fall into step, crunching over the pitted, damp floor.
“So, no fee?” asks Crow, a little disconsolately.
“I’m a one man band,” says Rowan, apologetically. “And if this story doesn’t work out, I’m going to find myself in more debt than Germany circa 1919.”
“Chris said it was a book – not a story…,”
“I don’t know what it is – I just know it’s got legs.”
“It’s my story,” butts in Snowdrop, as they approach the little track that leads to the copse of yew trees that hide St Olaf’s. “We’re going to share the credit.”
“I’ll bet,” laughs Crow, giving Rowan a knowing look.
“Chris told you what I’m looking into, yeah?” says Rowan, hurriedly.
“The girls in ’91?” Crow nods. “I looked out my old notes for you. You must know something I don’t because it wouldn’t even make a footnote in my memoirs.”
Rowan looks away, over the low stone wall to where a ram with the largest testicles Rowan has ever seen, is trying to mount a ram with the second largest testicles Rowan has ever seen.
“Bloody hell,” mutters Crow beside him, as he subtly manouvres Snowdrop out of the way.
“Country folk with country ways,” mumbles Rowan, and they share a nice moment as they arrive at the lych-gate. Even in the dreary grey weather, the churchyard looks inviting.
“Smallest church in England,” says Crow, with a touch of pride. “Highest mountain, deepest lake. I’ve never much liked this valley though – a bit too bleak for my tastes. Always makes me want to go and become a painter or a poet or something.”
“Let me know how you get on with the ‘something’,” says Rowan, leading the way. He knows from a quick glance at a local history website that there has been a place of worship on the spit for 500 years, but the current scout-hut style building has only been here since 1892. The roof-timbers are said to come from Viking ships. Before the grounds were consecrated, people from the valley had to carry their dead across the old Corpse Road to St Catherine’s at Boot. He’s read grisly tales about processions of mourners becoming lost in the fog crossing the fells – of horses, coffins, wagons and mourners all swallowed up by the elements. He wonders how much is exaggeration and how much fact. Wonders when that started to matter.
“He’s over yonder,” says Crow, gesturing towards the furthest corner of the graveyard. Around them, headstones rise from the damp ground like shark-teeth. He glimpses a perfect rectangle of polished black – a memorial to a climber lost on great gable in 1919. Steps between family plots: weathered inscriptions alongside fresh memorials, bright bouquets beside little plastic flowers weathered down to a translucent white.
Rowan ducks beneath the boughs of the overhanging yew and looks upon the grave of Derrick Millward. His name, together with date of birth and death, are etched in white letters on a simple grey headstone. There is a space beneath, and in the centre, a line by Yeats.
Step Softly: A Dream Lies Buried Here.
“It was a good turnout,” says Crow, stopping to look past the church to the mass of Great Gable beyond. “There weren’t many people knew he was a valley lad when he first moved back here and this is a place where they have a hell of a long memory.”