by Susan Hill
I fell into a doze, and gradually the sobbing faded and the room was quiet again, save for the sound of rain on the windowpanes, a sound I had grown to love, partly because it was so different from the rain I had been used to abroad, rain that came in torrents, beating down madly upon frail buildings, gushing in fresh rivers outside, for days, weeks on end, and then, abruptly, ceased and came no more for months. But, as I drifted into sleep, I knew also that the soft rain here was a familiar, comforting sound from long ago, another echo of my childhood.
Two days later, I returned to Prickett’s Green. Lady Quincebridge had not tried to prevent it, knowing, though she had said little, that something had happened to disturb my quietude the day she had gone up to London. But I had welcomed her insistence that I return to Pyre whenever I wished, at however short notice, and I was sure, as I looked back fondly at the house from the end of the long avenue, that I would do so, for I had become attached to it, and been in many ways protected and strengthened there, sheltered by the walls of the house and the affection of those good people.
I hoped to find a letter from Miss Monmouth of Kittiscar awaiting me, but there was none; I had no communication from anyone, but found only the empty-seeming rooms overlooking the wintry sky, the bare trees, and dark flowing river, and the footsteps of the lugubrious Threadgold on the stairs. I missed Pyre that night, the rooms, the warmth, the company. I went out for my supper, and sat in silence, reading a newspaper in the coffee house until very late, before going back to organise a few belongings, and make some brief arrangements.
It was early on a bright, spring-like morning that I set off again, for another railway station, and a train that was to take me on the long journey north, to Kittiscar.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I had taken books and journals to read in plenty and bought the daily newspapers at King’s Cross, but I scarcely glanced at them, I was so absorbed in watching the countryside of England from out the carriage window, noting with fascination every change of scenery, from plain to hill to river valley, open farmland to black industrial chimneyscape. It interested and pleased me as well as any exotic landscape of my past travels.
As we journeyed further north, the weather began to change too; the sky, at first clear and mild, grew stormy, and I saw trees bending and tossing in the wind. Rain came, lashing the train windows, streams were rushing in angry spate down hillsides. But then we were out of it, and the clouds shifted again; I saw snow on the tops of the far hills.
I had consulted maps and guide books and found that a branch line would take me direct to the station at Raw Mucklerby, from High Beck Halt, though it seemed possible that I might have to wait some little time for a connection – the timetable was unclear. I meant to put up at the Inn which Sir Lionel’s friend had spoken of, and set out to Kittiscar on the following morning.
The light began to fade for the last hour of the journey, and there were flurries of hard, stinging snow on the wind. But I was still exhilarated by the views, the grand, wild, open scenery of bare hills and moors, with greystone walls and small flinty villages and isolated farmhouses huddled into the lee of the slopes. There were sheep and, here and there, the sight of a solitary cart, or traveller on foot or horseback, but once we had left the last small market town, the country was for the most part bare, bleak and empty.
It was a little after four when the train stopped and I heard ‘High Beck Halt. High Beck,’ being called along the platform. I was the only one to alight and, after a moment, the train gathered steam again and pulled away. I stood, with my coat collar turned up against the bitter wind and snow blowing towards me down the line.
There was a single platform, and a small wooden building that served as waiting room and ticket office together, with a meagre fire of hard little coals sputtering in the iron grate. I sat down on the bench. There were cracks and chinks in the window frames and under the door through which the wind whistled and moaned, cold as a knife blade. But, with every mile further north I had come, the higher my spirits had lifted, and, seeing the open moors all around me, I had begun to feel a deep contentment. I was home, this was familiar, I belonged in these places, though they were as different as anywhere on earth could be from the landscapes in which I had lived as long as I could clearly remember. The wind, the cold, the loneliness of this place did not disturb me, nor was I at all troubled by any thoughts of what might lie ahead.
I sat for some while, deep in thought and dreams about Kittiscar. No one came into the waiting room, no train drew in at the station. Outside, it was growing darker.
The porter who had called out the stop had not reappeared and, in the end, I was obliged to leave the shelter of the little room and go in search of him, to enquire when I could expect the next train that would stop at Raw Mucklerby.
He was ensconced in a small box at the far end of the platform, an oil heater at his feet, and a fug of fumes and tobacco enveloping him. He opened the door only a slit in response to my knock, peering out through watery eyes.
When I put my question to him, he shook his head, and at that moment, the wind came blasting down the line, taking away his words, so that I had to put my head to the crack in the door and ask again.
I learned that I had been misinformed by an old railway guide. The branch line had closed ‘long since’; there were no trains.
In the wind and gathering gloom, therefore, I hoisted up my bag, left the station, and set off, to walk the five miles across the road that led over the moor and thence, I was told, down the far side, to Raw Mucklerby.
I had walked many a long mile, in the bush, and over remote mountain tracks quite alone, I was fit and had a decent bump of direction, so the journey over these north of England moors held no fears for me. The dusk gathered and the night came on but after a mile or so, although it was cold, the wind began to veer and die down, and, looking up now and then, I caught a glimpse of a ragged patch of starry sky through the clouds, and some faint light shone through from a watery moon.
I came to a cross-roads at the highest point, and, although one of the arms was broken off and the lettering on the other faded, I felt sure I should continue ahead, following the gentle downward slope of the road. For a moment or two, though, I was forced to rest, setting my bag down on the ground beside me. The air smelled fresh and raw, of bare earth and the recent layer of snow, and I was not unhappy, but my limbs had begun to ache, I was very tired and I remembered how ill I had been only recently, and that I was still somewhat convalescent. Perhaps it had been foolish to walk this way tonight, and I had better have tried to find a bed somewhere at High Beck. But there was no point in turning back now, I was, as near as I could tell, at a halfway point, and I took up my bag again and moved off, for I thought that it would be more unwise to stand long in the bitter cold and risk catching another chill, than push myself onwards.
And then I saw the light, a steady single glow from what must be a window in some dwelling, perhaps half a mile away. It had the slight flickering look of an oil flame, and I stirred my step, grateful that I might be coming to some isolated cottage where I could perhaps get refreshment and a bed for the night. The path narrowed to little more than a track, and once or twice it seemed that the light was further away rather than closer, and once I hesitated, bewildered that I seemed to be going in the wrong direction altogether. But when I looked it was there again, wavering but clear, and I stumbled on, my legs numb, my neck and back sore, longing for any shelter, and a chance to rest.
My delight in the openness and wildness of the moor was giving way to nervousness that I might become lost on it, faint, or fall by accident, so far from help, but I summoned up all the strength I could from past experience of being in far more godforsaken places and forced myself to be calm and hopeful.
The strap of my bag was chafing and working loose and I stooped to adjust it, which took a little time. When I had finished, and was preparing to continue, I became quite suddenly, and horribly, certain that I was being followed
, had been observed and stealthily pursued by someone the whole way. Also, looking up, I saw that the little light had disappeared. I stared and stared ahead, and all around me, turned a full circle, but there was only darkness, occasionally softened by the fleeting appearance and disappearance of the moon as the clouds parted and drew together again.
I was cold, I was exhausted, I felt ill, I had lost my way, but these things I could have endured and overcome, they were real and not unfamiliar challenges. It was the fear that would prove my undoing, fear of the creeping and concealed shadow that had followed me here and was somewhere just out of sight in the gloom of the moor.
The wind keened faintly, a high, thin singing sound.
I hauled my bag onto my shoulder again and began to run. I ran for perhaps two hundred yards, in a blind panic, careless of the direction I was taking, consumed by a wild desperation to escape, though to what and from what I could not have told, for I was past rational, careful thought or deduction, I allowed fear to be my master on that open moor.
It was a sudden fall, as I caught my foot in a rabbit hole, that sent me crashing forward onto the ground and brought me to my senses. I lay stunned, the breath almost knocked out of me but, after a few seconds, I looked up at the sky and saw that it was clearer now, and that the stars were bright, the moon riding high and serene in their midst.
I sat up. All around me lay the quiet, rolling moor. I could see no one, had been followed by nothing, save creatures of my own imaginings. I was shivering and my ankle was wrenched, I was cold and weary, but the darkness and the countryside were not unfriendly. Was I so nervous and on edge then that I conjured up ghosts at every turn, was I as easily frightened as some little child or silly woman? I did not think so. I considered for a few moments. I had been watched, and followed, though not by anything real and visible, not by any human enemy. It had been there, darkening and souring the air, oppressing and terrifying me – and now, quite simply, it was gone, just as the malevolent presence in the library at Alton and at Pyre, and the sobbing of the boy, had been – and then not been.
I rose and somehow gathered my wits, pulled myself together, and went slowly on, following the path carefully again. From somewhere in the valley, a fox yelped, yelped again. Only a few yards further on, I saw the light once more, gleaming out from the window of a single, low cottage, and made towards it, with as brisk a step as I could muster, and a lightening heart.
The door opened directly onto a low-ceiling kitchen, with a black iron range and a rocking chair beside it, in which sat an old, toothless woman, wrinkled and gnarled like the root of some ancient tree, who wore a scarf about her head and mumbled her mouth as she rocked gently to and fro. But the one who admitted me was younger, ruddy-faced and cheerful, and at once offered me hot soup and good bread and a place beside the fire.
‘I had planned to make the Inn at Raw Mucklerby,’ I told her, ‘but I have not long recovered from an illness and the walk across the moor tired me more than I expected. I confess I was heartily glad to see the light from your window and make for it. It is a bitter night.’
She nodded, filling up my bowl with the steaming, meaty soup.
‘T’Ram Inn is another four mile on and th’track runs along by the stream for the last part and that’s in full flood, you’d easily have toppled in in’t dark.’
I listened entranced to the sound of her voice, and the broad, flat vowels she used, for the accent rang familiar to me, I felt at once at home with it.
‘You’re not from this way.’
‘I have come today on the train from London. But in a sense I am near home. I have lived in many countries abroad, but it seems likely, I was born near here.’
She had sat down opposite to me at the table. She seemed interested in and well disposed towards me and I warmed to that, as well as with the relief of being here in safe shelter. The oil lamps were turned up, and the one in the window that had beckoned me here gleamed out bravely.
‘It may be that you can be of help to me – that you know something of my family.’
‘We’ve lived here at Goose Foot some twenty year, but before that my aunt and all hers before come from over at Scarsgate.’
‘How far is that?’
‘Seven mile.’
‘Is it close to the place called Kittiscar?’
‘No, no, that’s over Rook’s Crag way.’ She spoke dismissively, as though it was foreign territory.
‘Then perhaps you will not know my name. It is Monmouth – James Monmouth of Kittiscar.’
She shook her head, but then turned to the old woman, still rocking, rocking, her chair pulled up close to the hearth, and raised her voice a little.
‘The gentleman’s from up Kittiscar. You’d know them up there, aunty.’
The old woman opened her eyes and I saw that they were faded and sightless, filmed over with cataracts. But when she spoke her voice was strong.
‘Kittiscar. That’s a climb.’
‘Would you know of Kittiscar Hall, Ma’am?’
‘Aye.’
‘You have been there?’
‘Not been, no, though it’s well enough known about.’
‘What is known?’
‘Tales. Haven’t you heard the tales?’
‘The gentleman has been abroad, he’s only just back after years away.’
‘Many years,’ I said. ‘Do you know anyone who lives at Kittiscar now?’
‘Family, I daresay. Last I heard.’
The younger woman was shaking her head and spoke across the table to me in a half-whisper.
‘Only she doesn’t go out much now, it’d be way back, she’s speaking of.’
‘Never mind – I’m anxious to hear whatever she can tell me.’
‘They’ve shut it up now, so I heard.’
‘The Hall?’
‘’T chapel. No one goes nowadays.’
‘Chapel?’
‘Up at Kittiscar. That’s where you mean.’
‘I believe that a relative of mine still lives at the Hall. Miss Monmouth. It is my own name. Do you know her – or remember her in any way?’
‘That was the name. Monmouth. That was some of them. We were kept out of it. Nobody would go.’
‘You mean go to Kittiscar?’
‘Kittiscar, aye. Only I know they did close it up, years back. We never went.’
I gave up, feeling the same frustration I had felt when old Mr Quincebridge had half-remembered my name. But now I was here and it scarcely mattered; I would go to see Miss Monmouth at the Hall, I hoped on the following day, and find out everything for myself. I only wondered about the chapel, now closed, and the vague mutterings the old woman made that they were ‘kept out of it – never went’.
I was offered a bed in a tiny, cold room at the top of the steep staircase and accepted gladly, for my head ached now, and I felt a touch of fever about me again. I washed in a basin of cold water that was left for me, and drank some from a jug, and it tasted as sweet and clear as any I had ever known.
My bed was narrow and high, but I was warm enough beneath a great feather quilt, and I slept at once, and heavily, as cosy and safe as a little child, and woke the next morning, to a brilliant blue sky, and air, when I opened my casement window, blowing fresh and cold and clean from off the moor.
I did not know yet how long I would be staying in the area and, although the woman expressed perfect willingness to let me keep on the room in the cottage, I felt it better to press on to the Inn where I could put up without inconveniencing anyone, and also, in a little more anonymity, though in that hope, I quickly realised, I was mistaken, for a stranger in any such remote country places provokes interest and comment at once and for miles around.
Raw Mucklerby was a dull little village lying in a dip along the main road, somewhat gloomy, and enclosed by the moors that rose behind it and which, when I arrived that morning, were in shadow, dun and featureless. But the Inn, though dark, with poky rooms, was comfortable and the landlord
friendly.
On a sudden whim and for no reason I could have expressed clearly, I did not give him my full name, but merely asked for a room in the name of Mr James, of Chelsea, London.
‘For how many nights would that be, sir?’
‘I am as yet uncertain.’
‘You have some business here then?’
‘I – yes. In a sense. Interests, let us say.’
‘Only that it’s early on, for visitors. Nobody much gets up this way until t’summer months, when they come walking. And for t’shooting, later.’
Although I had eaten an excellent breakfast at the cottage and felt completely revived, I was wary and intended to conserve my strength more carefully. After unpacking my few belongings, I returned to the bar and sat there reading the paper and enjoying a pint of the local ale, sipping it slowly and with enjoyment. I was almost like a child saving up a treat, I anticipated something so momentous, such a wonderful revelation, at Kittiscar, that I held back from it a little longer.
The landlord busied himself about and did not intrude upon me. By twelve, several local men had come in, nodded to me, and then settled themselves, and their talk, in the broad, rough accent I was becoming familiar with, was of farming and other domestic matters. I ordered bread and cheese and sat enjoying it, listening to the voices as though to a background of murmuring music, until a name came ringing across the room to my ears.
‘Kittiscar.’
I turned towards two burly men, seated at a table with their backs to the window, and, after a moment or two, crossed the room.
‘Pardon me, sir …’
They greeted me in a friendly way.
‘I could not help but overhear – I am a visitor of sorts, newly arrived here, but I have connections with the neighbourhood. You spoke of Kittiscar.’
‘Aye.’