Black Car Burning

by Helen Mort

  ‘Don’t argue,’ said Sue. ‘Just move. Go home.’

  Every time Alexa tried to say something, tried to back Sue up, her mouth got dry. She froze. She was so tired. Last night, she’d just stayed up watching shit telly so she wouldn’t have to dream. Not even watching it – she had the sound off so as not to wake Caron. Just looking at the colours. Cookery programmes, mostly. People making things she’d never eat. Dried, misshapen mushrooms with exotic names. Bulbs of fennel. People whisking eggs in big, open plan kitchens with shiny work surfaces. She drank cold cups of tea until it was morning.

  The lads were all talking at once now, clamouring. They moved as one. Grudgingly, they started to shift towards the far end of the shops, kicking invisible things on the ground. Sue started the engine of the car. As they drove away, they could see the lads in the mirror, going back to their spot in front of the parade of shops.

  ‘I can’t do nothing,’ Sue said. She switched the radio off and they drove in silence, back through the denser streets of East Sheffield.

  As they got closer to the station, Alexa felt sweaty and feverish.

  ‘Sue,’ she said. ‘Can I tell you something?’

  ‘You’re not pregnant, are you? You’re not going on leave?’

  ‘It’s nothing like that.’

  Alexa cradled her stomach with her hand. She wondered if she looked fat.

  ‘Thank God for that.’

  ‘I’m not sleeping.’

  ‘I can tell.’

  The bags under Alexa’s eyes looked as if they’d been drawn on with crayon.

  ‘I keep having these dreams, you know, recurring ones.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘It sounds a bit mad, but they’re all about Hillsborough. I don’t know why. It’s like I’m there. I can see all the bodies and the ambulances. Sometimes I’m driving one …’ She tailed off.

  Sue didn’t answer. She indicated and drove into the station car park. She pulled up next to one of the vans, yanked the handbrake on and switched off the ignition. She wouldn’t look at Alexa at all.

  ‘I just can’t stop having nightmares.’

  ‘You and the rest of South Yorkshire, love,’ she said.

  Rivelin

  The afternoons are long and almost silent. I start where Crookes and Walkley peter out, and I get wilder as I stretch further from town. Past Rails Road, the allotments are neglected, except for retired couples who lift and stoop, lift and stoop, mopping their brows, holding up beetroot, spindly roots of vegetables they stack in wicker baskets. A dog with cotton-wool fur circles and circles into dizziness, lost in pursuit of a scent he can’t quite follow, but can’t drop either. There’s always an unattended child on the monkey bars or the metal slide, a mother intent on something blinking from the screen of her phone. Why aren’t you home? Did you take out the chicken? Deeper into me, the tracks are muddier, the walkers scarcer. There are great horses with shining, antique legs stepping out towards the dams, their steam-engine breath pluming in the air. Their riders sit proud and very upright, backs turned to the city, faces angled away from the suburbs, the high houses on the hillside. They are striking out, they won’t turn back now. A couple who used to be happy are walking side by side out of habit, keeping their hands in their pockets and their eyes on the ground. One is tall and blonde, she watches the horses and she doesn’t smile. There is no rain yet. They have been here before, but not like this.

  Leigh

  On Sunday Pete didn’t turn up for work. Leigh watched the wooden clock with its struggling arms. At five past eleven, the phone rang shrilly behind the desk.

  ‘Pete?’

  ‘Not last time I looked.’ Caron’s voice was husky.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Tell them you have to go home, you’re sick. Today’s the day. I feel strong. I want to try Black Car Burning.’

  ‘No. I can’t. What’s wrong with tomorrow?’

  ‘I need to do it before I change my mind. Come on, Leigh. I’m tired of fucking about.’

  ‘So am I.’

  She slammed the phone down.

  * * *

  Two hours later she was walking up from the lay-by to Apparent North, Caron’s figure looming bigger, more solid in front of her as she got near. The rocks were growing, too. One of those days when she felt hemmed in on all sides. The sky was like a kid’s attempt to shade in with a pencil, vague bits of white at the edges. It looked like rain over the Snake Pass. Her rucksack was heavy with gear neither of them would need: all her own stuff and some of Pete’s she’d lifted from the staffroom. She wished Pete was here now, with his bad jokes and broken biscuits. It would lift the cloud of expectation.

  If Caron was nervous, she didn’t show it. She didn’t hug Leigh when she arrived. She’d already laid her gear out on the floor. Too many quickdraws. Small cams. They looked almost delicate set out like that. As if you’d use them for darning.

  ‘Need to get a move on before the weather changes.’

  Leigh nodded. She was thinking about all the other times she’d been here with Caron, practising, debating the early moves. The days when they didn’t even make it to the buttress at all, just hid by the fire in Fox House and made a cup of coffee last three hours. Too bitter. Not enough milk. Leigh always liked that feeling that you could sack things off, play truant from your own good intentions. It reminded her of cross-country at school, her and Gemma Robson legging it round the first playing field and then sprinting down the hill, listening to Gemma’s CD player on the damp bank instead, while everyone else scissored off into the distance, white T-shirts against the green. Once, Gemma had pulled down the neck of her polo shirt and showed Leigh her first love bite. It was no bigger than a slug, purple and grey. Then Gemma bit Leigh, so she’d know what it felt like. She did it on her shoulder, where nobody could see. They’d always make sure they left enough time before they jogged back along the hedge to join the other runners – not too quick, or it looked suspicious. But Leigh always looked suspicious anyway. She had the kind of face parents didn’t trust.

  That was often the best part about climbing. The drive back from the crag at sunset, after the proving-yourself was done. The sweetness of sore knuckles and bashed knees. Or even a long drive out in bad weather, keeping up the pretence that you’d find somewhere to climb that day, the private joy at seeing it all rained off. It wasn’t that she didn’t love climbing. But some days you had to know you could let yourself off the hook.

  Leigh opened her mouth and a vague sound came out. Not quite a word.

  Caron turned to her sharply. ‘Eh?’

  ‘Sorry. Nothing.’

  ‘Are you up for this? I’m going to need you with me all the way.’

  She raised her eyebrows. Yes. She would belay Caron until her neck killed her and her shoulders felt like they were made of stone. She would watch until she couldn’t. Belaying’s an art. As much as climbing. You have to anticipate the climber’s moves before they do, know when to give slack and when to keep the rope tight, a reminder of the lifeline, the link between you. You have to be as solid as a tree. And, at the same time, you have to know how to make yourself disappear. Like a road someone could pass every day and never think of taking. A sign you only notice when it’s gone. Like a relative.

  Caron had tied her figure of eight. She checked her gear. Once. Twice. Shook her arms out and rolled her shoulders back. She was ready.

  ‘OK. Climbing.’

  Even getting off the ground on Black Car Burning was hard. Especially for someone of Caron’s height. The footholds were a bit lacking and the hands were high. Caron had to stretch out of her own skin.

  Leigh held the rope and felt useless. She was a good belayer. If she was afraid for her partner, she never showed it. Leigh was superstitious like that – she thought fear could be transmitted through the rope, as if it was a telephone wire. When you climbed with someone, the rope was taut with everything that was between you. Leigh never shouted instructions, just matter-o
f-fact things, reassuring things. Your gear looks good! Go on, you’re there! Can you get something else in that break? She kept the rope tight, but not too tight. Just enough so you’d know it was there. If you lost your nerve, you sent all your panic through the sheath and it nipped and pulled at your climbing partner, making them heavy. It made no sense, but she believed it. She wondered what was travelling through the rope as Caron climbed, what was between them. She was watching her, but she had to keep blinking with effort. She kept thinking about Stretcher. The last time she’d been to Stanage, he was there, talking bollocks with Pete, his laugh like a knackered engine echoing across the valley. He was there and then he wasn’t. The boy at the party hadn’t said much and Pete hadn’t pressed him, just watched as he drank whisky straight from the bottle, passed him another when the Laphroaig was gone.

  ‘Come on,’ said Caron. She was talking to herself, not Leigh. She had hardly moved.

  The boy told them it was an avalanche. That was about all he’d say. An easy route for Stretch. No one much out. He said that a few times. Then his eyes got that glassy sheen again and Pete patted him on the shoulder, told him to drink up. Leigh shook the thought out of her head. She had to be here, with Caron. Caron’s movements were staccato. Even her way of hanging from the rock looked laboured. It made no sense. She was stronger than she’d ever been. She’d been climbing hard and she’d been in the gym. All the softness had gone from her. Even her face looked more angular than before. She kept trying to make a reach and stalling. Leigh got ready to pay out the rope and then took it in again. Caron’s breath escaped in a hiss. Then she said something Leigh had never heard her say before.

  ‘It’s not happening. It’s not going to go.’

  She was hardly off the ground. It didn’t take her long to step back to earth. She took her shoes off, crouched over with her back to Leigh.

  Leigh didn’t ask questions on the way back down to the lay-by or in the car. She just drove without intention, past the Popular End car park, filling with walkers and amateur photographers who didn’t mind the weather, past the Plantation with its scruff of woods, across to Dennis Knoll, where the road turned its back on Stanage.

  ‘Turn right,’ said Caron and she did.

  They passed Bamford Edge and started the steep descent towards Ladybower. Leigh’s car juddered all the way down the hill, her foot shook on the clutch. By instinct, she turned right on to the main road and, soon, the reservoirs opened up on either side, bright and impassive. You weren’t supposed to swim in them, but she did, often, after dark. Somewhere under the water were the remains of Derwent village, the streets the flooding took. The old church spire that used to poke above the waterline like a beckoning finger wasn’t there any more – blown up – but there had to be something at the bottom of the reservoir. Cobbles. Crossroads. Leigh always thought about sinking down through the black water until her feet met something solid.

  At the traffic lights she turned right, heading back towards Sheffield. She could take Caron home. She’d never been to her house. But as they turned, Caron told her to stop. She pulled into the car park opposite the pub. The beer garden was already full of hikers, dogs chained under the tables, bikes propped up against the far wall.

  ‘Ladybower Quarry,’ Caron said. ‘We can do something there.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s sheltered. The wind won’t matter.’

  ‘No, I mean, why do you want to?’

  Caron opened the passenger door. ‘Because I’m pissed off.’

  ‘With me?’

  ‘With myself.’

  The track to the quarry seemed disappointed in itself, too. It rose a quarter of a mile from the car park, then stopped abruptly. One minute they were walking on shapely stones, then they were vaulting a fence and scrambling down through bracken, over hidden clefts and holes. Leigh tripped over a tree root and swore. She ducked under a branch and her rucksack got attached to the tree, so she was almost hanging from it. Caron was happy now they were moving, trying to guess where the best part of the quarry began. She scrambled on ahead, looking at her guidebook and zigzagging through the foliage. They had gone too high and had to clamber down, through bracken and roots that trapped their shins.

  ‘Did you pack a chainsaw?’ asked Leigh.

  Once, Caron slipped and came up clutching a handful of thick grass. It was still in her hand when they reached the bay they were looking for. From below, the quarry looked forbidding. It wasn’t particularly high, but it was slightly overhanging, punctuated with greenery. The rock was a sandy colour, rough. The cracks and breaks were damp with old rain. All the most obvious lines were smooth and wet, parallel cracks just a bit too wide for a hand.

  ‘Doesn’t look like it’s been climbed this century.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Caron grinned. ‘Adventure climbing.’

  Caron had started unpacking her gear. Leigh noticed she hadn’t even taken her harness off since they left Black Car Burning.

  She picked up the guidebook. ‘What are you doing, the corner line? It looks a bit wet.’

  Caron shrugged.

  ‘I’m making it up as I go along.’

  She was standing underneath the main wall of the quarry, the only part that wasn’t scored with cracks and obvious lines. At intervals, there were squares and pebbles of rock jutting out. It was drier than the rest, a vertical slab at the start and then a slight overhang. At the top there was a spindly tree that might take a belay. Silvery, watching over the face.

  ‘Not the slab?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It looks loose.’

  ‘I’ll be careful,’ said Caron. ‘And I’ll be quick.’

  Leigh fed the rope through her belay device. Caron had to kick her way through a rubble of stones and a tangle of bracken just to get to the start of the climb. She was happy and purposeful.

  ‘Hey,’ she said, ‘if it hasn’t been climbed, that’d be a great name.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Fast and Loose.’

  Leigh had no time to reply. Caron was off, making short work of the slab, whistling quietly through her teeth. She placed a small nut too far out to the right and clipped into it. Better than nothing. Then she hopped her feet up, too absorbed in the movement of climbing to look for any other gear. She was fluid again, enjoying herself.

  ‘Anywhere for some more gear?’ Leigh tried to keep her voice flat and level.

  ‘I guess.’

  There were two jutting squares of rock, angled out from the face. Caron whacked one of them with her palm and, seeming satisfied, slotted a small friend between them.

  ‘OK,’ she said.

  She was almost halfway up the face now and the slab had steepened. Leigh watched water running down the crack to her right, slow in the darker grey of the quarry’s seams. There was something book-shaped about the place. Caron was in the centre of a page. Leigh let herself relax into her stillness, knowing she was the only one standing for miles. She felt small in the privacy of the quarry, contained by it. And, holding Caron’s ropes, she felt important. This could be a new climb. A sliver of history. Even if it meant nothing to anyone else, it would mean something to them.

  When it happened, it happened quickly. Caron’s feet were in a good break. She reached up to one of the nubbins of rock on the steeper wall – a big hold, almost a chickenhead – and it came away in her hand.

  Leigh had no time. She didn’t hear her cry out. She didn’t see anything but movement, Caron’s body in flight. To her, the quarry was still silent. Then the whip of the rope in her hands. Leigh trying to run backwards, taking in. The rip of gear coming out.

  She ducked as another lump of rock sailed past, close to her head. Caron was crumpled on the ground. She didn’t move.

  Ladybower Quarry

  Somewhere in my still heart, a goshawk drops the squirrel it was carrying in its talons – inexplicable, momentary lapse – and it falls into the leaves with a papery crash. I understand letting go. You might
say I’m an expert. Every morning I release the sun above me like a child who’s clung to a balloon too long, watch it rise over the Derwent Dams and the flat reservoirs. I let the sparrows and geese go easily, throw them like paper aeroplanes. They move as if they weigh nothing. Sometimes I let stones go, a hail of them, small parts of myself that dice-rattle down into the bracken and debris, little tooth-shaped bits of rock. I’ve been quarried and shaken. Every year there’s less of me. As each piece falls, I breathe out – like this. When frost decorates my edges, the grass and hard ground, I hold it as long as I can, then I let it melt. When the downpour starts – a drop first, then a smattering, then a riot – I let it run down and away from me. I only drink what I need. I am not jealous: I let the evenings go, let the long afternoons darken and pass. With practice, it becomes easy, inconsequential, not loss exactly but something lighter. So when the woman moves against me, higher than she should, metres above the slip of metal she’s worked into me, when she reaches out to her left and shifts her weight to her feet, I feel as if I’m stepping backwards gently. A slow withdrawal and release. I begin to lessen, crumble under her touch. I let her fall the length of the rope that holds her. The metal pops out, hardly making a sound. I let her go further, then. I let her fall the whole length of me.

  Alexa

  Dave removed the clammy mask of his hands from Alexa’s face and the world became bright again. She blinked, twice.

  ‘Surprise!’

  It was an icing sugar and sponge bike, the wheels more spiderweb than spoke. The frame was studded with striped candles. She tried to count them, then stopped. Nobody knew her age anyway. A crowd had gathered around the cake. Sue was there. Big Paul was there. The attractive PC with corkscrew hair was there. Even Darren, the new PCSO who addressed everything to your shoes, was standing at the side of the table with his arms folded.