She said ‘How’s your father?’
Her eyes were like Richard’s: pale and a bit bloodshot. I guessed she must have the same eye condition.
‘You know my Dad?’
‘Andy and I used to be good friends.’
‘Oh, he never said.’ Then I remembered that day when me and Peter had come up here and seen them moving in, and how Dad had gone really still and whispered her name. I thought he was angry she was back, but maybe it was something else.
‘Well, send him my love. Tell him I think of him often.’
Richard came back in on his own.
‘Don’t worry,’ his mum said. ‘I’m sure she’ll be back.’
Richard’s eyes had gone the same way, milky and unreadable. I looked at the clock.
‘I hadn’t realised it was so late. I think I should be getting back.’
‘I’ll walk you.’
‘It’s ok.’
I turned back to him, and his eyes were grey and clear. I was wrong. They were lovely eyes and he was smiling at me.
‘I would like to walk you home,’ he said. ‘Please.’
I smiled back at him and agreed.
Walking down the lane, he took my arm and I leaned into him. It was nice to be close to another body. I wondered where Peter was and when he’d be back.
The next morning when I got up Cassie was there. This was new. It was too early for her to have just come round. She was wearing the same clothes as the day before at teatime. When she went up to the loo I asked Dad about it.
‘Did Cassie stay over?’
‘Yes, she did.’ Dad was washing up, but he turned round and looked at me, his hands dripping with water and soap suds.
I took a bite of my toast. ‘Does Mr Lion mind?’
He looked surprised. ‘No, Mr Lion doesn’t mind. Why should he?’
‘He was dj-ing at the club last night.’
‘I know…’
‘Well, you two seem to have taken over his house and he has to go out all the time, tiptoe around when he gets back from a night. He probably feels like an unwanted extra.’
Dad sighed and grabbed a towel to dry his hands. ‘Is that how you feel?’
‘What?’
‘Like an unwanted extra. Because it isn’t true. Your mother really wants to get to know you.’
I took another big bite of toast and chewed it noisily. Dad waited.
‘Well I don’t understand,’ I said, ‘what the big deal is with now. Why does she want to get to know me now, when she hasn’t given a fuck for the last seventeen-and-a-half years? Why should I care?’
‘Give her a chance, Lauren. It’s not easy for her.’
I spluttered toast crumbs.
‘For her? What about me? And Mr Lion? Every time we turn around you two are gazing at each other, then she wants to take me into some corner and talk to me about when I was a baby. You’re always singing. It’s like living in a nut house. No wonder Peter never comes round any more.’
I started crying. Dad put his arms around me and I wailed into his shoulder. He smelled just the same as he always had and his arms were the same arms that had always held me and, although I was crying, for a moment everything seemed all right.
Then I noticed her. She’d come back from the loo and she was hovering in the doorway not sure what to do. I broke out of Dad’s arms and ran upstairs to my room.
Peter’s gone right into himself. Obviously A-levels are coming up and he wants to do well, but he’s turned into some sort of recluse. Even more of a recluse than before.
Everyone’s having parties for their eighteenth birthdays and, although we all have loads of work, there’s fun to be had. Peter used to come to parties sometimes, even if he didn’t stay long. But since his horns have come through he’s not really wanted to go. He doesn’t seem bothered by them or embarrassed. He doesn’t try and hide them like he always did his hooves. It’s like he’s just stopped trying to blend in. He doesn’t want to go to parties so he doesn’t go to parties. Not even for me. He says, you go, you’ll have a good time.
So I go and I try to have a good time. If I turn off all this stuff, don’t think about it, and just live in the moment, then I can. Sometimes after a party I go to the woods and find Peter and curl up next to him. He puts his arm over me and I try to sleep, but then I get too cold. I can’t cope with the winter nights like he can. I stay for a while, but I have to creep home to my bed to get the warmth back into my blood.
30. Peter
Peter was asleep, curled up at the back of the cave, his child legs tucked underneath him, his chin touching his knees. His dad crouched beside him and smoothed the hair back from his face. Peter moved his shoulder and twitched a cheek muscle. His face was streaked with tears. His dad covered him with a blanket, then set about building up the fire. He put a pan of stew on the stove. When it was bubbling and the savoury herb smells wafted through the cave, Peter woke and came and sat by the fire, the blanket still around his shoulders. His dad gave him a bowl of stew and a hunk of Mr Lion’s caraway bread. They ate in silence and watched the flames.
Peter was hungry. He wiped the bowl clean with the last crust of bread and leaned against his dad.
‘All right, son?’
‘Ok,’ he said quietly.
‘Things getting to you?’
‘Hmm.’
His dad put his arm round him and poked at the fire with his hoof. Sparks flew up and landed in their coats.
‘Why are we like this?’ Peter said.
‘Like this?’ His dad crushed a spark that had begun to smoulder.
‘Yes. And why do we live in a cave? And why don’t we feel cold like other people? And why do you have horns on your head? And why haven’t I?’
He was defiant and angry and his eyes shone in the firelight. His dad touched the hair on his head.
‘You will have horns one day, when you’re older.’
‘Like yours?’
‘Yes like mine.’
‘And will I be able to run like you?’
‘Yes, we can run together.’
He nodded and sat quiet.
‘More stew?’
Peter shook his head. ‘But Dad, people laugh at me. Why can’t I be like everyone else?’
‘Who do you want to be like? Like Mr Lion? Like Jimmy who can eat fire? Like Lauren who can hear the plants talking?’
‘Just normal.’
‘Like Joel Wetherby? Like the other boys at school? Is that what you want? Do you want to live in a house with doors and a television?’
Peter looked up at the sky. The first star had just appeared. ‘Venus,’ he whispered.
They sat and watched her and she winked at them.
31. Richard
I dreamed of my first girlfriend, Laura, that night. We were walking together through the town but everything had changed. It was like it is now, with all the green trees and the clean stone of the buildings. The sun was shining and we came to the canal.
Laura said ‘This is all wrong. Why are there geese on the water?’
‘It’s different now,’ I said, ‘The soot has gone. The mills have gone. It’s a clean place.’
She grabbed hold of my arm.
‘Look!’ she said. ‘Look at that tree.’
There was a mature ash tree growing not far from the water. It was in full leaf and its trunk was covered in a pattern of greens and greys, liverworts and lichens.
‘The forest is creeping into the town,’ Laura said. ‘It’s taking over. Soon everything will be green.’
I turned around and saw that it was true. Moss was growing across the streets, spreading up walls and over cars. Ferns were growing in the mortar of buildings, from wheel arches, and lampposts; trees were bursting through where windows should have been; people were slowing do
wn, coming to a stop as the moss grew up their legs and torsos and fixed them where they stood.
Laura beside me was shaking with fear.
‘It’s ok,’ I said. ‘It’s beautiful. It can’t touch us.’
A mountain stream was bubbling and leaping down the main road over mossy boulders. I turned to her and her hair had become green fronds. There was a bird inside her clothes and when I looked she was hollow. The bird was nesting in her ribcage. Her face was decaying before my eyes, her cheeks sinking in and blackening so her eyeballs protruded.
‘Sorry Richard, this is not my time,’ she said, and her voice slowed, deepened as though it were being played at the wrong speed.
‘No Laura, don’t go.’ I grabbed at her, but there was no flesh, only clothes over bone. ‘I’ve come back for you. We can be together.’
She shook her head. Her cheekbones were visible.
‘Don’t you remember Richard? I left you. I married Jack and we had children, goats, chickens. I’m dead now.’
She vanished then, and when I looked around there was no sign of the town. I was standing on a wooded slope next to a stream and a small group of deer were upwind of me, eyeing me nervously. I ran at them shouting my frustration.
Then I woke and found I was thinking of the girl, Ali.
She was obviously hiding from those two, Smith and Jeannie, and until that business was sorted there was no way I’d be able to talk to her out in the open or get to know her. I’d never met anyone like her before. Her grandmother, Frances, the half-blood girl in Paris, was Meg’s obsession. I didn’t pay much attention then, or to Meg’s despair when she died. The blood was thinned in Ali, but apparently it shows more in some than in others.
I reckoned Smith and Jeannie would have gone back to Leeds, maybe leaving some scouts on the lookout, so that’s where I went. It wasn’t that difficult to find them. I asked a few druggies on the street corners where I could go to score, and gradually spiralled inwards through the city’s networks until by the evening I found myself at a club in a basement waiting for the pair of them to turn up.
They arrived around midnight with a group of friends and colonised a corner table which was kept empty for them, even though the place was busy. This was obviously their space. I was in a dark corner on the other side of the club. There was no table service, but the barman came over with their drinks. Smith was cutting up lines of coke on the table. I remembered him and Jeannie standing nervously by the bridge at the canal party in Hawden, out of their comfort zone, and I’d wondered why Ali was so scared. He snorted the first line, then made a joke and everyone at the table laughed. I was getting the picture. He might not be that big a fish, but this was his pond.
I didn’t stay. Although they had been friendly enough before, this wasn’t the ground to meet them on. I needed to find Ali. It was time she knew the score.
I asked Meg if she had any ideas where Ali might be living. Was there an old family home or something? But she said Frances had sold everything when she moved away. There were other people living in the house now, offcomers. She said she’d only been there once anyway, last time she was here. Frances had refused to see her.
‘She was angry with me because of Andy,’ she said.
‘You should learn to control your appetites.’
‘Yes, son, I should.’ She ruffled my hair. ‘And what about yours? Andy’s daughter is sweet. Has the first bite healed yet?’
‘Nearly.’
‘No boyfriend problems?’
‘The goat boy? I don’t know. She’s very attached to him, but the second bite should deal with that.’
‘Be careful. I’ve never turned anyone without their consent. I know it’s done, but it’s not always successful. She might turn against you.’
‘She likes me. I can tell that.’
We sat quietly for a moment.
‘And Ali?’ I said, ‘Is there any way I can find her? Her blood means we can’t hide from her, but can she hide from us?’
‘That only works one way, I’m afraid. I could tell you how to find any supernatural beings within a twenty mile radius of here, but half-blood smells just like human blood. You’ll have to do some detective work.’
I walked into town and went for a pint at the White Horse. It was a quiet evening and I sat at a table with my beer and thought about where to start. After a while I’d tied my head in knots, but I thought I might go back up to Old Barn and see if I could talk to Sally. She might have some clues, something Ali had said or left behind.
I let my mind wander and found I was thinking about stonemasons, something I’d not given a moment’s thought to for decades. I only worked with Mr S for a few years, but I think if a chisel were put into my hand right now I’d know what to do with it. I walked past the stonemason’s yard the other day with Lauren and stopped to look at the blocks and slabs piled up in the yard. I touched the nearest stone and its surface beneath my fingers made my palms itch. I thought I might come back on my own and talk to the masons, ask if I could have a go. I remembered the hours it took to make that hole in the monument platform, chipping and scraping in the hot sun, day after day, and the sound it made and the grit that got in with my bread and cheese.
‘We weren’t employed to do that, lad, so we can’t take it out of their time,’ Mr S said to me ‘That would be theft. Thou shalt not steal, that’s what the Lord said, lad.’
‘Well if we weren’t employed to do it, should we be doing it at all?’
He looked a bit shifty at that.
‘Well, it’s the people’s monument, and we’re some of the people. You were right, lad, about the stairs being too dark, and if it encourages them strange goings on…’
As a fully paid up member of the Baptist church, Mr S found masonic ceremonies quite scandalous.
‘Sit, Beauty, settle down.’
I looked up and saw Mr Lion leaning at the bar, his little white dog at his feet.
‘She’s a bit excitable today,’ he told the barman, ‘doesn’t take anything to set her off. And she’s got a thing about that old ruined cottage up above the woods at Hawtenstall. I can’t walk past there without her barking fit to raise the dead.’
Beauty slumped down heavily and put her chin on Mr Lion’s feet, her eyes closed.
‘That’s it, girl,’ he said to her, and she opened one eye to look at him.
Sometimes I’ve wondered if I would like to get a dog, but their lives are over so quickly.
The next day I walked up to Old Barn and this time it was Sally herself who answered the door. She was smiling as she opened it, but when she saw me standing on the doorstep her smile faded.
‘What do you want?’ she hissed.
‘I just wanted to ask you some questions. Can I come in?’
She took a step forward and put her hands on the doorposts blocking the way.
‘Can I come in? Do you think I’m stupid? I’m not going to fall for a trick like that. You can stay right where you are. What questions?’
I took a breath before I spoke, relaxed my face muscles to keep from grinning.
‘About Ali, the girl who was staying here. I want to find her.’
‘She’s not here.’
‘I know she’s not. I just wondered if she said where she was going, if she said anything.’
She stared at me and said nothing. I said nothing either and the moment stretched out. I could hear the birds in the trees and the sound of someone humming to themselves in the house. I remembered the man who opened the door to us last time.
‘She was Frances Greenwood’s granddaughter,’ she said at last, spitting out the name.
‘Yes.’
‘Frances was one of your kind. A half blood. She should have banished you from this place, you and your mother. She ruined our lives, mine and my sister’s, made us hate each other. You should go awa
y from this place, we don’t want your sort.’
‘I just wanted to find Ali, I have something important to tell her.’
‘She’s a half-blood too, my husband could tell immediately.’
As if on cue he appeared behind her, his figure like before, both bulky and insubstantial as though he were made of shadows.
‘Everything ok, Salgirl?’
She turned to him, keeping her hands firmly on the doorpost. When she smiled at him her face transformed.
‘Yes, Terry. I haven’t invited him in. He’s looking for the Greenwood girl.’
‘He came looking for her before. That time he had your niece with him.’
She peered back at me, her eyes full of suspicion and hate.
‘Don’t you think your lot have done enough to my family? Leave us alone. Stick to your own kind.’
She took a leap back from the door and closed it in my face. I stood staring at it stupidly for a moment or two before turning and walking back to the lane.
I walked over to Hawtenstall by the straightest route, down into the valley then up the other side. I hadn’t been this way since we’d been back and it was a different place to the one I used to know. In the valley bottom I looked for landmarks, but there was only a chimney where the silk mill used to be. It was in the middle of woodland now, some of the trees reaching up half its height. I followed a footpath along the river from the bridge and the water was clear. The trees were nearly bare and the ground was covered with the brown mulch of fallen leaves. I found the mill, a few remaining walls tracing its shape, hinting at its size. I thought of my mother and sisters trudging up here day after day with their snap bags under their arms. What would they think if they saw it now? Would they miss the smoke that filled their lungs and caused their early deaths?
I followed the track up to Hawtenstall. Half way up, the woods stopped and the view opened onto fields, portioned out by stone walls. This was familiar enough, but when I looked back I still expected to see an industrial valley: Silk Mill, Lumb Mill and Crossley Mill following one on the tail of the other, the length of the valley marked by the thick slug of smoke that hung above them, held in place by the valley sides. Now so verdant.
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