She picked it up and said, ‘Hello? Beryl, hi! Yes, it’s fine. No one here, not at the moment. No, that doesn’t mean … well, perhaps it does … My God you’ve got a disgusting mind … but if you’ve got an hour to spare, and as you’re paying for the call, relax, and I’ll tell you all about it.’
NINE
‘Don’t imagine just ‘cos you don’t show it, I don’t know you think this is a waste of bloody time,’ snarled Dalziel.
Wield, by his side, viewing with his customary impassivity the overgrown hedgerows reducing the already narrow road along which they were moving at a perilous speed, did not bother to reply.
They were on their way from Danby to Nether Dendale to talk again with Mrs Holmes, and though the sergeant was certain he’d got all there was to be got out of the woman, and that he’d done all there was to be done about it, viz put out an alert for a white camper with a C, 2, and a 7 in its plate, arranged for copies of his updated picture of Benny Lightfoot to be distributed to all reliefs, and sent a fax to Adelaide saying their previous enquiry about the Slater family was now urgent, he didn’t think this revisit was a waste of time. This enquiry was building up a head of frustrated energy in the Fat Man which a wise subordinate took every opportunity to release. And besides, the very sight of the Fat Man at full throttle was often a remarkable aide-memoire even to the most co-operative of witnesses.
In fact, in terms of Mrs Holmes, it did turn out to be non- productive. She had given Wield her all. Dalziel kept on pressing till finally her husband growled through his tangle of beard, Enough’s enough. You buggers got no beds to go to? You missed him last time, what meks you think all this durdum’s going to get you any closer this?’
What’s that you say?’ demanded Dalziel rounding on him.
Holmes didn’t flinch.
‘I said, my missus has told you all she’s got to tell and it’s about time…’
‘No, no,’ said Dalziel impatiently. ‘You said, all that durdum, right?’
‘It means fuss, or noise,’ Wield interpreted helpfully.
‘I know what it bloody well means,’ said Dalziel. ‘Mrs Holmes, I’m sorry to have kept you up late. You’ve been a great help. Thanks a lot. And Mr Holmes …’
‘Aye?’
‘I seem to recollect it’s a farmer’s responsibility to keep his hedges from blocking public roads. You should get them seen to afore there’s an accident. Good night.’
They got back in the car, but instead of heading back to Danby, Dalziel drove up the valley till they reached the locked gate across the reservoir road.
‘Fancy a walk?’ he said.
They took torches but didn’t need them. There was an almost full moon hanging like a spotlight in the inevitably clear sky. By its light they climbed the steps up to the top of the dam wall and stood there, looking across the silvered waters of the shrunken mere to the sharp silhouette of Lang Neb and Beulah Height.
‘Search is knackered over Danby side,’ said Dalziel. ‘And Desperate Dan wants his plods back. Mebbe we should have spent more time looking on this side, eh? At the very least, we should have looked in the mere. I’ll have a team of mermaids over here first thing in the morning. What do you think?’
‘Good idea, sir,’ said Wield. ‘I’ll see to it if you like.’
Privately he thought that trawling the mere was a waste of time, but he knew that the Fat Man was being driven by more than duty here, so he looked up at the magnificent sweep of stars and held his peace.
Nor did he complain when back at Danby, though there was nothing more to be done, Dalziel kept him from his bed for another half hour or more with fruitless speculation. But finally they were done and took leave of each other, and drove their separate ways home. Or rather, Wield drove home, but Dalziel drove back to Cap Marvell’s flat.
He didn’t know whether he’d have gone in if a light hadn’t been showing, but it was, so he did.
Cap was waiting up. She looked at him enquiringly and said, ‘Anything?’
He said, ‘Nowt that makes sense. If it is Benny back, it needs a wiser head than mine to suss out why.’
As on his first arrival, the revelation of vulnerability touched her deeply and she went to him and took him in her arms.
This time their love-making was slower, deeper, though its climax was as explosive as ever.
‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘That was like … like…’
‘Like what?’ he said.
‘I don’t know. Like as if someone had shaken a bottle of bubbly up in heaven and popped the cork, and we were in one of the bubbles streaming out across the cosmos.’ Then she laughed at her own floweriness and went on, ‘Sorry about the purple prose, but you know what I mean, don’t you?’
‘Oh aye,’ he said. ‘But likely it were just God farting in his bath.’
She pushed herself far enough back from him to beat his insensitive breast, then let him pull her close again.
‘How on earth have I let myself get involved with a Neanderthal like you, Andy?’ she asked.
‘It’s the uniform,’ he said.
‘You don’t wear a uniform.’
‘I’m speaking metabolically,’ he said. ‘It’s the authority turns you on. I’ve had snouts like you before. It’s my body they want, not my money.’
‘I’m not your snout,’ she protested.
‘No? Then it must be my natural charm. Am I to keep the key in case I can get tomorrow night?’
‘I suppose it’s marginally better than having you kick the door down. But tomorrow night I shall be busy myself till quite late. In Danby, oddly enough. It’s the first concert of the festival.’
‘I’d not forgotten,’ he said. ‘The Turnip and yon Wulfstan lass. I’ve been thinking about her.’
‘Me too,’ she said. ‘In fact, I’ve been doing more than thinking. I’ve been talking. My friend, Beryl - you remember, the headmistress who had Elizabeth in her school… ?’
‘Oh aye. One of your spiders on the worldwide web.’
‘Thank you for that, Andy. Well, she rang, and during the course of our conversation, I quite naturally mentioned Elizabeth Wulfstan
‘You pumped her!’ exclaimed Dalziel delightedly. ‘I always knew you were a natural!’
‘In its Elizabethan sense, I think I must be,’ said Cap. ‘What she told me was of great interest. And as I cannot see how it can be relevant to your enquiries and therefore qualifies as simple gossip, I shall not hesitate to pass it on. Of Elizabeth’s early history, Beryl knew nothing, except that she was in fact distantly related to Chloe Wulfstan … What’s the matter?’
‘Durdum,’ said Dalziel.
‘Sorry?’
‘Durdum. Means a lot of noise and fuss. I heard this farmer use it tonight. He’s from Dendale. It rang a bell. That’s the only place I’ve heard it used.’
‘Philology now,’ said Cap impatiently. ‘Shall I go on?’
‘The Wulfstan girl used it too,’ said Dalziel. ‘And glorrfat. Another Dendale word. She called me glorrfat. Either she’s really turning the screw or she’s from Dendale! And related to Chloe, you say?’
His mind was trying to superimpose an image of a tall slim woman with shoulder-length blonde tresses on an image of a small chubby child with cropped black hair. Nothing matched… except mebbe those dark, unblinking eyes …
‘Shall I go on?’
‘Yeah. What happened?’
‘Well, it was all very sad really, though happily it seems to have worked out more or less all right. It seems that when she first came to the school, Elizabeth was a rather unprepossessing, chubby child with short black hair… Andy, I wish you wouldn’t twitch? Is it a revival of sexual passion or merely the DT’s?’
‘Just keep talking,’ he urged.
‘Best offer I’ve had all night,’ she said. ‘But a change took place. Tell me, was the Wulfstans’ real daughter, the one who went missing, a slim, blonde child?’
‘Aye, were she,’ said Dalziel. ‘Pretty a
s a picture.’
‘Well, it was that picture which probably got into Elizabeth’s head. That’s what they all guessed she was trying to do. Turn herself into the child her adoptive parents had lost. She started to lose weight, but no one paid much heed. Adolescent girls do go through all kinds of changes. And she let her hair grow. Only of course it was the wrong colour. And that’s where the tragedy, or near tragedy, happened. It seems one night she shut herself in the bathroom with a bottle of bleach and set about trying to turn her hair blonde. The results were devastating. Fortunately, Chloe heard her screams and got her under the shower. But her scalp was badly damaged. She was lucky not to have got any in her eyes. And while she was in hospital they realized that far from just losing puppy fat, the girl was severely anorexic.’
‘I knew it!’ exclaimed Dalziel. ‘From the start. First off I thought she were taking the piss with the way she spoke. Even when I realized she weren’t, I still had this feeling she were having a secret laugh. It were because I didn’t recognize her.’
‘You knew her? When? How?’
‘Back in Dendale,’ said Dalziel. ‘She were the last of the girls to get attacked, the only one to get away. She were little Betsy Allgood.’
TEN
BETSY ALLGOOD [PA/WW/18.6.88]
TRANSCRIPT 3
No 2 of 2 copies
Like I said, I thought everything were going to he all right forever.
If things worked out, sheep would have gumboots, my dad used to say.
But they don’t. And Dad didn’t get Stirps End either.
When we heard that Mr Hardcastle had got it, Dad wanted to rush off and speak to Mr Pontifex straight off. But Mam got in front of the door and wouldn’t let him pass. She didn’t often stand up to him when he were ireful, but this time she did, and told him he’d best sleep on it, and she knew it weren’t right and Stirps End had been good as promised, but she reckoned Mr Pontifex had given it to Cedric Hardcastle out of guilt.
‘Guilt over what?’ yelled my dad.
“Cos he thinks it were him selling land to the Water Board that set things off back there in Dendale, so he’s given Ced the farm ‘cos they lost Madge, which makes us the lucky ones, ‘cos we might not have Stirps End but we’ve still got our Betsy!’
And when she said this, I saw my dad’s eyes turn to me, and they were black as grate-lead, and I knew he were thinking he’d rather have the farm.
Well, he held off seeing Mr Pontifex till next morn, but it didn’t do much good from all accounts, and he came back saying we’d best pack as he’d told Mr Pontifex to stuff his job, and likely the old sod would be coming with the bum-bailiffs to turns us out of our cottage afore nightfall.
Mr Pontifex did turn up later that day, but he were on his lone and he talked a long while with my mam first, ‘cos Dad went out into the back yard when he came through front door, then he talked to them both together, and upshot was, Dad stayed on as his sheep man with a bit more brass besides and the promise of first refusal on the next farm to come up. But that would be like waiting for a drink from a methodee, said Dad, seeing as all the farms on the Pontifex estate were let to families who’d got sons to carry on the tenancies. And though he didn’t look at me this time, I knew he were thinking of me again.
So everything were spoilt now. I thought for a bit after we left Dendale that it was all going to be all right, but now it were back to what it had been before only worse, with Mam taken badly again and Dad walking round like he had come to the end of things but just couldn’t stop moving.
That’s how it were, you see, for all of us, I mean. It’s funny how you can know inside that everything’s knackered, that there’s no point in owt, but outside you just carry on living like nothing was different, like it made some sense to be going to school and doing your lessons and learning stuff by heart to help you for the future.
I don’t know how long this went on. It could have gone on forever, I suppose. Some folk have been dead forty years before they get buried, Dad used to say. I know I were in the top class and next year I’d be moving on to the secondary. I remember thinking mebbe that would change things somehow for me. They gave us a lot of stuff about it at school one day and I went home with it to show Mam.
And I found her dead.
No, I don’t want to talk about it. What’s to talk about? She’d lived, now she were dead. End of story.
Which left me and Dad.
They wanted to take me away and put me with someone. They wanted to write to Aunt Chloe straight off and see if she could help.
But I said no, I were going to stay at home and look after Dad. Someone had to look after him now, didn’t they? And what with Mam being so ill for such a long time, I’d been doing most things round the house anyway, so where was the difference? They said we’d need to have someone from Social who’d come in to help and I said that would be OK even though I didn’t want them, ‘cos I could see this was the only way they were going to agree.
So that’s what we did and it was OK for a bit, and it would have been OK forever if only Dad could have got his farm and if only Mam hadn’t died like she did and if only …
Any road, he went off one morning and I never saw him again. They said he went up over the Corpse Road and down into Dendale, and over to the far side of the reservoir closest to where Low Beulah used to be. Then he filled his pockets with rocks and walked into the watter so that when the divers found him, he were lying close by the pile of rubble which they’d made out of the old house.
I said it weren’t so, he weren’t dead, he’d just gone away and he’d come back for me one day. They wanted me to look at his face afore they closed up the coffin and buried him, but I wouldn’t. Of course, I know that he’s dead, but that’s not the same as knowing for sure, is it? That’s what Dad used to say. There’s knowing and there’s knowing for sure and there’s space between the two of them for a man to get lost in. That’s where he is for me, in that space. Lost.
And after that? After I came to live down here with Auntie Chloe? I had to do something, you can see that. Things don’t just stop and start again, like nothing had happened before. But things can be changed. I read in this book about yon singer called Callas, how she changed herself from being plain and glorrfat, so that’s what I was aimed at, changing myself; that’s how come I burned my head and all. To be like Mary? Oh yes, I wanted to be like Mary. And Madge. And Jenny. I wanted to be like any of them as were wanted and missed …
That’s all. You said I just had to talk about the old days, I needn’t talk about now if I didn’t want. Well, I don’t. And I don’t want Aunt Chloe to hear this, that’s definite. But him, oh aye, you can show it to him if you like, let him hear what it’s like to be me, I’d like him to understand, that’s for sure. Because who else is left in the world to understand?
DAY FOUR
Songs for Dead Children
ONE
Lieder are usually sung in their original German, but the young mezzo-soprano, Elizabeth Wulfstan, feels strongly that something essential is lost to an English-speaking audience, the majority of whom have to get the sense of the songs from a programme note. Unable to find a satisfactory performing translation of the cycle, she has made her own, not hesitating from time to time to use her own Yorkshire demotic.
The original texts were the work of the German poet, Friedrich Rűckert (1788-1866) who had reacted to the death of his son by writing more than four hundred poems of lament, some specific to his loss, many more general. Mahler used five in his song cycle. His interest in setting them was primarily imaginative and artistic. He was unmarried and childless when he started working on them in 1901. By the time he completed the cycle in 1905 he had married Alma Schindler and they had two children. After their birth, Alma could not understand his continuing obsession with the Rűckert-based cycle which superstitiously she saw as a rash tempting of fate. The death of their eldest daughter of scarlet fever in 1907 seemed confirmation of her worst fears.
/> Here are the poems in Elizabeth Wulfstan’s own translation.
(i)
And now the sun will rise as bright
As though no horror had touched the night.
The horror affected me alone.
The sunlight illumines everyone.
You must not dam up that dark infernal,
But drown it deep in light eternal!
So deep in my heart a small flame died.
Hail to the joyous morningtide!
(ii)
At last I think I see the explanation
Of those dark flames in many glances burning.
Such glances! As though in just one look so burning
You’d concentrate your whole soul’s conflagration.
I could not guess, lost in the obfuscation
Of blinding fate which hampered all discerning,
That even then your gaze was homeward turning,
Back to the source of all illumination.
You tried with all your might to speak this warning:
Though all our love is focused on you,
Yet our desires must bow to Fate’s strict bourning.
Look on us now, for soon we must go from you.
These eyes that open brightly every morning
In nights to come as stars will shine upon you.
(iii)
When your mother dear to my door draws near,
And my thoughts all centre there to see her enter
Not on her sweet face first off falls my gaze.
But a little past her seeking something after
There where your own dear features would appear
Lit with love and laughter bringing up the rear
As once my daughter dear.
When your mother dear to my door draws near,
Then I get the feeling you are softly stealing
With the candle’s clear gentle flame in here,
Dancing on my ceiling! O light of love and laughter!
On Beulah Height Page 29