On Beulah Height

by Reginald Hill

  Too soon put out to leave me dark and drear.

  (iv)

  I often think they’ve only gone out walking

  And soon they’ll come homewards all laughing and talking.

  The weather’s bright! Don’t look so pale.

  They’ve only gone for a hike updale.

  Oh, yes, they’ve only gone out walking,

  Returning now, all laughing and talking.

  Don’t look so pale! The weather’s bright.

  They’ve only gone to climb up Beulah Height.

  Ahead of us they’ve gone out walking

  But shan’t be returning all laughing and talking.

  We’ll catch up with them on Beulah Height

  In bright sunlight.

  The weather’s bright on Beulah Height.

  (v)

  In such foul weather, in such a gale,

  I’d never have sent them to play up the dale!

  They were dragged by force or fear.

  Nought I said could keep them here.

  In such foul weather, in sleet and hail,

  I’d never have let them play out in the dale.

  I was feart they’d take badly.

  Now such fears I’d suffer gladly.

  In such foul weather, in such a bale,

  I’d never have let them play out in the dale

  For fear they might die tomorrow.

  That’s no more my source of sorrow.

  In such foul weather, in such a bale,

  I’d never have sent them to play up the dale.

  They were dragged by force or fear.

  Nought I said could keep them here.

  In such foul weather, in such a gale,

  In sleet and hail,

  They rest as if in their mother’s house,

  By no foul storm confounded,

  By God’s own hands surrounded,

  They rest as in their mother’s house.

  TWO

  On the morning of the fourth day of the Lorraine Dacre enquiry, Geordie Turnbull rose early.

  He had a hangover, not the sort that makes you turn over in bed and burrow under the sheets in search of masking darkness and the sanctuary of sleep, but the sort that sends you stumbling to the bathroom to void the contents of your gut one way or the other, and wish you could do the same with the contents of your head.

  Ten minutes under a cold shower set at maximum force brought him closer to the possibility that there might be life after coffee.

  It had been a long time since he felt like this. His release from custody and return to Bixford hadn’t brought him the relief he’d hoped for. First off, there’d been the press who both in person and on the phone had pestered him all day. Then there’d been the attitude of his fellow villagers. Fifteen years ago in Dendale it had taken him aback to see the speed with which he’d declined from good ol’ Geordie to the Fiend of the Fells. But there he’d been an offcomer, an outsider tolerated because he was pleasant company and would soon be gone. Here in Bixford he thought he’d set down roots, but the taint of being questioned in a child abduction case soon showed him how shallow those roots were. Not that anything had been said, but an overheard whisper, a turned-away glance, even the over-sympathetic tone in which they’d asked about his ordeal down at the pub, had been enough to send him home early to his thoughts and his own whisky bottle.

  Now, towelling himself vigorously, he wandered from the bathroom to the kitchen. His brain was clawing its way painfully to

  normal consciousness level, but how far it had to go was evidenced by the fact that he’d filled his kettle before he registered that the back door on to the patio was wide open.

  This jolted him several steps further up the slope, and when he heard the footstep behind him, he twisted round, flailing with the kettle at the intruder.

  The man swayed back, easily avoiding contact with anything other than the lash of water whipped out of the spout. Then he stepped forward and brought his forehead crashing against Geordie’s, paused to examine the effect, before driving a vicious punch into the unprotected belly and raising his knee to receive the man’s face as he doubled up. Finally he strolled round the retching figure, pushed a kitchen chair against the back of his legs and pulled him down on to it by his hair. Blood from Turnbull’s nose and split eyebrow spattered his naked belly and thighs. The intruder pulled some sheets of kitchen roll and tossed it on to his bloodstained lap.

  ‘Blow your nose, Mr Turnbull,’ he said. ‘I think there’s something you want to get off your conscience. When you’re ready, I’d like to talk with you about it.’

  THREE

  On the morning of that fourth day, Elizabeth Wulfstan rose early too.

  She slipped out of bed and flung back the curtains on the deep sash window, drenching herself luxuriously in the light which flooded in, heedless of the fact that she was naked and the window fronted directly on to Holyclerk Street.

  Hail to the joyous morningtide! The words formed on her lips but she did not speak them, much less sing them.

  Below her the street was empty, not even a milkman to enjoy the spectacle she offered. Not that hers was a classically voluptuous body. She had a singer’s good chest development, but her breasts were small, almost adolescent, and there wasn’t enough spare flesh to hide her ribs’ corrugations. Indeed, what was most likely to have caught a prurient milkman’s eye was the complete absence of hair from her head and her pubes.

  What caught her eye were two spaces in the line of residents’ cars parked along the kerb. As she stood there, going through a sequence of breathing exercises, she checked to left and right and couldn’t spot either Walter’s Discovery or Arne’s Saab.

  She finished her exercises, crossed the room, opened the door and, with the same total indifference to the possibility of being seen, strolled down the corridor to the bathroom.

  Here she brushed her teeth, then gargled gently with a mild antiseptic mouthwash, rinsed, and examined the moist pink interior of her mouth with critical interest.

  Now she sang the words, pianissimo.

  ‘Hail to the joyous morningtide.’

  Finally she showered in lukewarm water so there wasn’t too much steam, towelled vigorously, and returned to her room.

  Inger Sandel, dressed in shorts and suntop, was sitting on the bed.

  Elizabeth didn’t break stride but went to her dressing table, sat down and began to make up her face. It was a slow delicate process. Her skin was naturally sallow and it took meticulous work to transform it to the flushing fairness of her preference.

  Satisfied at last, she met the other woman’s eyes in the mirror, then spun slowly round on her stool to face her and said conversationally, ‘You an active dyke or do you just like gawking?’

  Inger said, ‘Am I a practising lesbian? Yes.’

  ‘Always? Sorry, that’s daft. I mean, when did you suss it? When you were a lass, or not till later?’

  ‘Always.’

  ‘So you never tried it with a man? Not even Arne?’

  Inger gave one of her rare smiles and said, ‘Of course with Arne. Once. He wanted. I wanted to work with him. It seemed necessary, and once out of the way, it has stayed out of the way. And you?’

  ‘Not with Arne, no way.’

  ‘But someone?’

  ‘A tutor at college. Thought I’d best try it to get it over with.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I got it over with.’

  ‘So there was no relationship after between you and this tutor?’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘You are sure of yourself, I see. But what about him? Did he not want something more?’

  ‘Well, I left a fiver on my pillow next morning and went off early. I expect he got the message.’

  It was a moment when, if they were ever going to share a smile, they might have done so. But it passed.

  ‘Any more questions?’ asked Elizabeth.

  ‘Why do you shave your bush?’

  ‘To
get a match with this,’ said Elizabeth, patting her bald pate. ‘Turns you on, looking at me, does it?’

  ‘It is … pleasing, yes.’

  ‘Pleasing?’ She stood up, yawned, stretched. ‘Well, don’t get your hopes up, luv.’

  She slipped into a pair of pants and pulled a black T-shirt over her head, careful not to touch her face. Then, taking the blonde wig off its stand, she fitted it on to her head and studied herself in the dressing-table mirror.

  ‘I had no hopes,’ said Inger.

  ‘Best way to be. It’s always midnight somewhere, my dad used to say. So if it weren’t hope that brought you here, how come you’re squatting on my bed end?’

  ‘It is the Kindertotenlieder. I agree with the others. I think you should not sing them.’

  ‘Which others?’

  ‘Arne. The fat policeman. Walter.’

  ‘Walter’s said nowt.’

  ‘When does Walter ever say anything in contradiction to you? But I see the way he is when you sing them.’

  ‘Oh aye. That’s a clever trick when you’re banging the piano. Got eyes in the back of your head, have you?’

  The woman on the bed didn’t answer but just sat there, monumentally still, face impassive, her unblinking gaze fixed on Elizabeth who made some unnecessary adjustments to her wig.

  ‘So what’re you saying, Inger?’ she asked finally. ‘That you’re going to take your piano and play in some other street?’

  ‘No. We must all make our own choices. I will not make yours for you. If you will sing, I will play.’

  ‘Then everything’s champion, isn’t it? Ist’a coming down to breakfast or what?’

  Without waiting for an answer, she left the room and ran down the stairs. In the kitchen she found the back door open and Chloe standing on the patio, drinking a mug of coffee. The garden, long and narrow, flanked with mature shrubs and shaded at the bottom by a tall pear tree, showed the effect of the drought everywhere, with the rectangle of lawn looking as cracked and ochrous as an early oil painting.

  ‘Morning,’ called Elizabeth, switching on the electric kettle. ‘Wet the bed, did you?’

  ‘That’s an idea. If we all peed on the lawn, do you think it would help?’ said Chloe. ‘Walter went out very early and woke me, so I got up. And I’ve come out here in hope of seeing a bit of dew, but even that seems to have stopped.’

  ‘Mebbe it’s been banned, like hose-pipes. I’d not try a pee. Likely that’s been banned too.’

  Chloe came back inside, smiling. There could never be a mother/daughter closeness between them, but sometimes when alone together their bond of Yorkshire blood allowed them to relax into an earthy familiarity which threatened neither.

  Just as common were the times when she felt she’d given houseroom to an alien.

  ‘I’ve been talking to Inger. She reckons I oughtn’t to sing the Mahler cycle. What do you think?’ asked Elizabeth suddenly.

  Chloe pretended to drink from her empty mug and wondered how someone so direct could be so inapprehensible.

  ‘Why are you interested in what I think?’ she prevaricated.

  Elizabeth chewed on a handful of dried muesli then washed it down with a mouthful of black coffee.

  ‘She said Walter and Arne and yon glorrfat bobby thought I shouldn’t. But she didn’t mention you. So I thought I’d ask if them songs bother you.’

  ‘Because of Mary, you mean? The part of my mind which deals with that has long been out of the reach of mere songs,’ said Chloe.

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Oh, by the way, thanks.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For bringing me up.’

  Chloe opened her mouth in a mock-gape which wasn’t altogether mock. Before she could say anything, the door opened and Inger came in. Elizabeth finished her coffee, grabbed a handful of fresh grapes, said, ‘See you,’ and left.

  Inger said, ‘Does she eat enough?’

  ‘For a singer, you mean?’

  For a woman. This morning I saw her naked. She has strong bones so I had never realized before how little flesh is on them. She was anorexic once, I think?’ Another member of the unreadably direct tendency, thought Chloe wryly. The only way to respond was either silence or a directness to match their own.

  She sat down and said, ‘After Betsy had been with us some time - she was still Betsy in those days - she was diagnosed as being anorexic. She had treatment, both medical and psychological. Eventually she recovered.’

  There. How easy it was to be completely direct and yet give next to nothing away!

  ‘So she went through a phase many modern children go through, you spotted it, had it treated. Why do you feel so guilty?’

  Give nothing away! Who was she fooling? Not this sharpared woman, that was for certain. She’d once asked Arne what made Inger tick. She’d been a little jealous of her in those long ago days when the young singer had surprised her body on to levels of pleasure her experience with Walter had hardly even hinted at.

  Arne had laughed and said, ‘Inger is gay, so no need to feel that kind of jealousy, my love. But don’t feel superior either, which, though they will deny it, is how straight women feel about lesbians, because they think they offer no threat. Inger hears more in the silence between the notes than most of us hear in the music itself.’

  Perhaps also she had heard things from Arne that should not have been spoken, or at the least listened carefully to the silences between his words.

  Ironically, it had been the crisis with Betsy which brought Arne back into her bed. After Mary’s disappearance she had broken off relations with him for reasons too incoherent to merit the term, but which included a sense of being punished for her infidelity and a revulsion against anything which even threatened to dilute her pain.

  But the Betsy crisis had been different. This time she needed escape from herself, and had found it in the singer’s company and caresses.

  She couldn’t remember now exactly how much she’d revealed of her feelings to Arne. But, if he’d spoken of it to Inger, then even a little was probably enough. So let her have it from the horse’s mouth now, why not? The human heart can only shut so much away, and her dark cavern was full.

  She said, ‘I never wanted Betsy to come to us, you know. We’d moved away to the south, I had used every ounce of my will to close a door on Dendale and the past, and now here was this child threatening to open it all up again. I’d never really liked her, she was such a plain child, dark and fat, and strange too, you’d get this uneasy feeling and turn around and there Betsy would be, watching you, waiting till you noticed her, then asking if Mary was coming out to play. We put it down to her mother, Lizzie, my cousin, who’d always been highly strung, and had the baby blues after Betsy was born and never seemed truly to get out of them. It didn’t surprise most people, I think, when she took an overdose. The inquest said it could have been accidental, but I think they were just being kind. Jack, that’s Betsy’s father, was much more of a shock. He was real down-to-earth Yorkshire, hard as nails, he’d see off anything, so most people thought. So when he drowned himself…’

  ‘There was no doubt this time?’ asked Inger.

  ‘Not a lot of people go swimming with their pockets full of rocks,’ said Chloe. ‘So there was Betsy. Eleven and a half years old. An orphan. Without a relative in the world, except for me.’

  ‘So you took her in?’

  Chloe shook her head.

  ‘I took to my bed. I screamed and shouted and blubbered gallons of tears every time the possibility of her coming to live with us was mentioned. It was Walter who persuaded me … no, not persuaded … that implies an appeal to rationality … he just worked on me, you know the way the sun can still be burning you even when you think you’re protected by a thick layer of cloud? Well, I put up my layer of cloud, but all the time Walter was up there, burning through. And in the end, he won.’

  ‘You think he was right?’

  ‘Of course he was right.
The child needed a home. And when she came, it was a lot easier than I thought. Far from bringing a pressure to open that door I’d worked so hard to shut, the girl showed no desire to talk about her parents, or Dendale or anything in the past. In fact, she talked very little at all, and less and less as time went by, and I thought (if I thought at all), oh good, she’s closed a door on the past too. And it seemed to me we could co-exist very well in this untroublesome silence.’

  ‘She was a child,’ said Inger in a neutral tone that was none the less judgemental.

  ‘I know. I should have … but I didn’t. She seemed fine to me. OK, she lost a bit of weight, but that pleased me. I used to tell her sometimes she shouldn’t eat so many sweets and cakes and stuff, and I thought she was just growing out of a puppy-fat stage.’

  ‘How old was she when you realized there was a problem?’ asked Inger.

  ‘Realized?’ Chloe laughed bitterly. ‘I never realized. One night there were these terrible screams from upstairs. I rushed up to find Betsy in the bathroom. Her head… Oh, God, what a mess. She’d decided to turn her hair blonde, and she’d mixed a hideously strong solution of bleaching powder … I got her under the shower and screamed at her to keep her eyes closed and held her there far longer than I should have done, because all the time I was holding her there, I felt I was doing something right and I didn’t have to start thinking about what I had done wrong. But finally I got her to hospital. They sorted her out, said she had damaged part of her scalp so badly that her hair would probably fall out and might grow back in patches, but that wasn’t what they were worried about, it was her anorexia, and they wanted to know what treatment she was getting for it.’

  ‘And you had no idea of this?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps I did, deep down, but just didn’t want to let her be a trouble to me. Walter had been away on a long trip, a couple of months. Perhaps he would have noticed. He was always closer to her than I was.’

  ‘It does not seem so now,’ said Inger.

  ‘No?’ Chloe smiled to herself. Perhaps after all the pianist by listening so closely to the silences missed some of the notes. ‘Ah well. Certainly back then, it must have been very clear. She was treated by a child psychiatrist, Dr Paula Appleby - you may have heard of her. I believe she’s quite well known. Walter never settled for anything but the best. Dr Appleby treated Betsy for eighteen months, two years, I don’t know how long. I sat back and let Walter take care of all that. I felt guilty now, yes, but I still didn’t want to get involved. I had closed a door on Dendale to shut it out. Betsy too had closed a door, but it seems she had shut herself in with it, and I didn’t want any part of opening all that up again. And when Dr Appleby said that the business with the hair and the anorexia was her attempt to turn herself from a little fat dark-haired girl into a slim blonde so that she’d be like Mary and we’d love her, I just felt sick. Do I sound like a monster?’