Too Near the Dead

by Helen Grant

  “Right,” he says, more resolutely than either of us feels, and we step into the dark.

  After another couple of hundred metres, the pavement runs out and there is tarmac under our feet. There are potholes too, full of rainwater that gleams like ink in the torch beam. Wet vegetation overhangs the edge of the road, so we walk a little further out. If a car came, we’d see the headlights long before it reached us, but nothing does come.

  Neither of us says much. We are too busy concentrating on where we put our feet. I am alive to every tiny sound – every rustle and scurry. We hear something far off, a brittle cry that I think might be a fox. Once, something passes overhead and in the light of the torch that James directs upwards we see the white wing of an owl. The cold damp air seems to press very close.

  After what feels like an interminable time, we come to the turning that leads towards Barr Dubh. The surface underfoot is worse here, but at least the house is visible in the distance; we left the outdoor light on for when we came home. We toil our way slowly towards it. Mostly, I look at the ground, afraid of stumbling, but then I look up, at the house.

  “James,” I say.

  “Mmm?”

  “Is that someone outside the house?”

  He stops for a moment and looks towards Barr Dubh. Once again, I am struck by how quiet it is.

  “I can’t see anyone,” he says at last. “It’s a bit late for anyone to come calling, anyway.”

  I look too. “Just to the left of the light,” I say.

  He shakes his head. “I can’t see anything.”

  “Maybe it’s just a shadow,” I say, to convince myself as much as him. We watch for a few moments and then we start walking again.

  I am tired and my head is starting to throb, so when I glance towards the house and see it again, I don’t quite trust my eyes. It looks as though someone is standing there, outside the door, someone thin and crooked; they stand quite still, but a wind I can’t feel makes their clothing billow out for an instant, raggedly.

  I blink hard, and now all that I can see is the patch of light at the front of the house, and the shadows that shift and blur from a shrub planted near the door.

  We turn in at the gateway and trudge up the drive, crunching over the gravel, James fishing in his pocket for the keys. Of course, there is no-one here. I wait while James finds the right key and fits it into the lock, looking around me into the dark. I see nothing, hear nothing. The darkness is like a holding of breath, a waiting. A watching.

  James opens the door, and we go into the house.

  Chapter Fifteen

  No grey Perthshire rain today; cool bright sunshine filters down through the coppery autumn leaves as James and I travel through the countryside. I am driving; James is map reading. We are going to see the little mediaeval chapel Holly told me about. The directions are distinctly hazy in my head, and the chapel is on a country lane so insignificant that it isn’t on the mapping software on my phone, so James has a map spread out on his lap. I can tell that if we decide to hold the wedding ceremony there, we are going to have to give the guests some very specific instructions on how to find it.

  “There’s a stone circle up here,” says James, scrutinising the crumpled paper as we take a left turn onto a narrow road. I can hear the relish in his voice.

  “James,” I say, “What about the chapel?” I am alert to the risk of being sidetracked into investigating a fascinating potential story location.

  “Second left,” he says, sounding dangerously preoccupied.

  Luckily for me, the chapel is signposted with one of those brown signs they use for historic places. We make a very sharp turn onto a track that is even worse than the one that leads up to Barr Dubh House.

  The car bounces and rattles so much over the ruts and holes that my teeth chatter.

  I can see the chapel ahead of me, just before the road takes another sharp corner, leading off towards some farm buildings. It is a very plain grey stone building with a stubby tower. It is nothing like the picturesque English church in the town where I grew up, with its pale golden stone and elaborate stained glass windows. All the same, I like it. It looks at home in its setting, with the mountains in the distance beyond it. A low stone wall encloses the kirkyard but outside the wall, the ground is rough and overgrown. I cannot see anywhere to park.

  Eventually, after driving up and down, I decide to leave the car at the side of the road, with two wheels on the grass, and hope that nobody decides to drive a combine harvester down the track or anything. I look at James, who is folding the map.

  “Forget getting a Rolls for the wedding,” he says. “We should get a four by four.”

  “Who said anything about a Rolls? I thought we were having a small, intimate wedding.”

  “A tractor, then.”

  “A white one.”

  “With a muck spreader on the back.”

  “Romantic,” I say, and James grins.

  We get out of the car and walk towards the chapel, circling puddles on the way. When we get to the gate, I’m surprised to see that there is a battered-looking bicycle leaning against the wall. So we are not alone, although there is nobody in sight as we go into the kirkyard. It is completely grassed over; there is no path leading to the main door. Our feet whisper through the grass, making barely a sound. James’s hand in mine is warm, his grip firm.

  The door is truly ancient-looking, made of thick wood studded with black iron nails and set into an arch-shaped stone frame with carvings so weathered that you can’t tell what they are supposed to be any more. It stands ajar, and inside I can only see darkness.

  James pauses to study the outside of the building, so I let go of his hand and go first, pushing the door open with a great squeal from the hinges. I step inside and immediately discover that it is colder indoors than out. It is less dark than I expected. Although the windows are small, they are made of clear glass, and the light streams through them, illuminating a bare stone floor. The chapel is entirely empty: there are no pews, and no pulpit. I can’t even tell where the altar should be. If we marry in here, we will have to have chairs brought in.

  And lights, I think, glancing around me. There is no sign that the chapel is lit by anything other than natural light from the windows.

  I slip my phone out of my pocket and take a few snaps; I know Belle will want to see this.

  I am not sure how I feel about it as a place to get married. It is cold, stark and dimly lit, a shell with few traces of its past usage. There is a faint minerally smell of damp stone. On the other hand, it is a kind of blank slate that could be adapted to whatever style of wedding we wanted. We could arrange the chairs in lines in the traditional way, or have them in a circle, facing inwards; we could have untidy bunches of the wild flowers I fancied, or trees in pots. I think that I would like it to be as different as possible from a conventional wedding. There would be too many elements missing from that: nobody to give me away, for example. I shall give myself away.

  The church takes the form of a cross, which means that not every corner is visible from where I am standing. It is several minutes before I realise that I am not alone. Even then, I hear his halting footsteps on the flagstones before I see him: a tall, thin, rather stooped old man in a shabby tweed suit with a startling crimson tie. He is carrying a ring with several large keys on it; when he sees me, he holds them up.

  “You’ve timed it well. I only opened up five minutes ago.”

  “Oh,” I say. “I thought–”

  He shakes his head. “Yes, it’s supposed to be open from ten. But most days nobody bothers to come at all, so I thought I’d finish my coffee first.”

  “Is that your bicycle outside?” I ask him. It’s hard to imagine him riding it around the lanes; he doesn’t look fit enough.

  He nods. “One day it will pitch me off into the ditch,” he says, as though the b
icycle were a live thing. “Anyway, miss, is there anything I can tell you about the chapel before I take myself off home?”

  “We just came for a look around, really,” I say. I glance behind me and yes, James is there in the doorway. “We’re looking for somewhere to hold our wedding.”

  “And you’ve come up specially?”

  He’s noticed my English accent, of course.

  “No,” I say. “We live here.”

  “Well,” says the old man, “This is a fine place for a wedding... in the summer.”

  “It’s a beautiful old place,” says James. “When was it built?”

  It takes the old man quite a long time to answer this question. James listens to an extensive history of the building, which may or may not have replaced an earlier one, and has had various additions and repairs over the centuries. The history is peppered with references to local places and families I have never heard of, and James rashly asks some further questions. Judging by the avid way in which the old man replies, he is thrilled to be asked. I suspect he will not be off home for another coffee any time soon. I only half listen to what he is saying, occupying myself instead with imagining what it would be like to get married in here. It certainly wouldn’t be the place for an off-the-shoulder dress. I pull my jacket closer around me, shivering a little.

  The old man seems to know an unimaginable – some might say indigestible – amount of local history. So I wait until he has come to the end of his account of Perthshire history, and say, “I wonder if you know anything about the area where we live? We’d love to know something about its past.”

  “You can try me.”

  “It’s called Barr Dubh House. It’s not old – just a couple of years – but I think it’s named after the place, or maybe after an older house that was there before it.”

  I catch James’s eye as I say this, and I see him raise his eyebrows questioningly. Of course, he doesn’t know about Belle’s dream, or mine. I’ll have to think what to say about that later.

  The old man is silent for a few moments, considering. At last he says, “Where would this be, Barr Dubh House?”

  I do my best to describe the location, which is neither in the town itself nor properly in the next village, and not directly on the main road either. All the landmarks I can think of are natural ones, and that’s not very helpful because everything around here is a short distance from either a hill, a forest or a river.

  The old man listens, and then he says, “Hmmm. I thought so. You’re talking about Barr Buidhe.”

  I shake my head. “It’s definitely Barr Dubh.”

  He looks at me for a long moment, sharp grey eyes peering from under bushy eyebrows. “Barr Dubh is what local people call that spot. Have done for a long while. But Barr Buidhe is its real name.”

  I must look unconvinced because he continues.

  “Look,” the old man says, “The place is named for the hill near it. Barr Buidhe, the yellow hill – because of the gorse that grows there.”

  “Oh.” That makes sense. I remember seeing the yellow gorse when we first came to look at the house, earlier in the year. “But why would they call it Barr Dubh, the black hill, then?”

  “I can’t say. But you are right that there was an older house there, a long time ago. Perhaps the owners thought Barr Dubh sounded grander.”

  So there was an older house. Just like in Belle’s dream.

  It means nothing, I say to myself. You shouldn’t even be surprised. You’ve seen the old gate posts – they had to belong to something.

  “Do you remember the house, the older one?” I try to keep the edge out of my voice.

  Up go the bushy brows. “I’m seventy-seven, young lady, not one hundred and seventy-seven. There’s been nothing there in my lifetime, not until they built the new one, which is your home.”

  “I’m sorry,” I start to say, but he waves away my apology. “Never mind. I dare say I look one hundred and seventy-seven to you. And I’m too old to stand about in this damp building blethering all morning. I’ll be off, and leave you two to think about your wedding plans.” He pauses. “If you’d lived at Barr Buidhe in times gone by, when the old house was there, you could have got married in your own chapel, you know.”

  “Really?” says James, sounding interested; he has evidently recovered from the torrent of local history poured out on him a few minutes ago.

  “Oh yes. As I say, the house was gone long before I came along, but the chapel was still standing when I was a lad – well, the remains of it, anyway. I expect it’s gone now.”

  “Whereabouts was it?” asks James.

  “Let me see. Are the gates to the old estate still there? They are? Well, it would be south-west of there, I suppose. But it’s no use thinking of holding your ceremony there. I doubt there’s one stone left on top of another after all this time.”

  During this conversation, we have been drifting towards the doorway. James opens his mouth to ask something else, and then all three of us hear something from outside: a loud irritable blast on a horn.

  “Parked on the road, are you?” asks the old man. “You’d better go and move it, quick.”

  I’ve already got the keys. I hand them to James and he takes off at speed. Whatever the horn belongs to is making an ominous rumbling sound. As the old man and I follow James out into the kirkyard, I see the most enormous tractor in the lane, looming over our car.

  “Don’t worry,” says the old man, unperturbed. “He’ll let your young man move the car. Angus has only had that tractor a couple of months. He won’t want to scratch it.”

  I have no idea whether he is joking or not. We stand side by side and watch James reversing the car down the track, until he reaches a spot where it is wide enough for the tractor to pass without crushing it.

  “Can I ask you one more thing?” I say, without taking my eyes off the car.

  “If you must,” says the old man drily, and then, more warmly: “Of course you can.”

  “Do you know why the colour lavender is unlucky around here?”

  There is a slight pause before the old man says, “Where did you hear about that?”

  “In the town,” I tell him. “Well, in the wedding shop. I went in to chat about wedding colours. And we heard a song in the pub, Lavender Lady, and I thought it might be connected.”

  “Hmmm,” he says. “Well, if I say it’s true, you’re not to put us down as a lot of superstitious teuchters.”

  Teuchters? I don’t know what that means but it doesn’t sound flattering and I’m not inclined to ask.

  “But why is it unlucky?”

  The old man glances at me. “Well, that’s a question. A hundred and fifty years ago, lavender was a mourning colour. Half-mourning, they called it. I should say it was something to do with that. Not the colour for a wedding, hey?”

  “I suppose not,” I say slowly.

  “Well, I must be getting on,” says the old man abruptly. “It was nice meeting you, miss.”

  “My name’s Fen–” I start to say, but he’s already stumping away across the grass, heading for the gate. I watch him go, hugging myself against the chill breeze. I feel as though I have been snubbed.

  He probably didn’t hear you, I say to myself. But I am pretty sure he did. And I don’t believe he told me everything he knew about the lavender superstition. I noticed the way he hesitated when I asked about it.

  It’s just bad luck, Seonaid told me. But I feel sure there’s something more. As I pick my way across the kirkyard, I see the old man walk past the car, wheeling his bicycle. James has just got out and is standing next to it, waiting for me. He says something to the old man as he passes, but the old man doesn’t stop. He raises a hand in acknowledgement and carries on past James, his head down. It is not until he is perhaps fifty metres further up the track, well out of conversational distance, that
he stops and climbs very carefully onto the bicycle. Then he pedals away.

  “Do you want to drive, or shall I?” says James when I get to the car.

  “You drive.” I climb into the passenger seat and reach for the discarded map. As James starts the engine, I unfold the map. It’s not new enough to have Barr Dubh House on it, but I find the place pretty easily anyway. I study it carefully but can see no trace of a chapel marked anywhere on it. There are other things marked: a memorial, several cairns. But there is nothing to show that there is – or was – a chapel at Barr Dubh.

  Perhaps the old man was mistaken, I think. He could have mixed it up with somewhere else.

  The more I think about it, the more likely that seems. The estate agent never mentioned any other buildings on the land and there is nothing on the map. And if there is no chapel, perhaps there was no house either.

  The map crackles as I fold it again.

  “Did you find anything?” asks James.

  “Not a thing.” I slide the map into the side pocket.

  “How on earth did you know there was an older house there?”

  “I didn’t,” I say. “Not really. I just thought there must have been something, because of the old gate posts.” I glance at him. “There still might not be anything. Maybe the old man was thinking of somewhere else. The two different names, that’s fishy.”

  “He was right about the yellow gorse, though.”

  “There are probably hundreds of hills with gorse on. Thousands.”

  “Well, there’s one way to settle it,” says James. “Look for the remains of the chapel.”

  I sit back and watch the fields and trees slide past the windows and think about that. We will look for the chapel. Of course we will. But do I want to find it?

  Chapter Sixteen

  Rain is falling when we arrive back at Barr Dubh House. Within seconds, a few light drops on the windshield of the car have turned into a heavy downpour and neither of us can see through the glass. There’s no point in trying to sit it out. I know from experience that rain like this can go on for ages. Instead, I open the car door and dash for the porch. The rain is coming down so hard that it stings the skin of my face and neck.