She shook her head as if to shift this surreal dispute from her brain and sounded the car’s raucous horn at a dithering moped rider ahead. She felt instantly better, for Barbara Mitchell had been in a rush to get to some teachers’ union meeting and had needed answers fast. Answers which Lucy couldn’t give. Such as, what will happen to your pension contributions? To Jon? Why choose to live somewhere you barely know? And, as I’m your mother without your father to help, it’s a bit rich you’ve so far not said one word to me about this crazy project of yours . . .
After a strained silence which Lucy had broken by stating that in the interim, the Rusholme address had to be on both her driving licence and insurance certificate, the line had died. ending in a final non-negotiable click. Barbara Mitchell had put the phone down on her.
With the petrol tank half full, Lucy pulled in at a Little Chef outside Gloucester and felt the light kiss of rain on her skin as she locked the car. Then suddenly a chill seemed to envelope her whole body and, for a moment she stalled outside the cafe’s welcoming entrance, truly aware for the first time since she’d left London of the enormity of what she was about to do. Ignoring at least two warning voices, she was cutting the cord which had connected her to the past twenty-nine years of her life, while overhead the light disappeared from the sky. In its place came those huge rolling clouds she’d noticed earlier. But this time ominously bruised, laden with water, descending low over the summer trees. And still the temperature stayed cool.
She crossed both arms and slapped her body to generate some warmth . . . Was this some kind of portent? she asked herself. Some divine signal sent courtesy of Barbara Mitchell? She shivered once more as she held the cafe door open for a woman even younger than herself to emerge, struggling with a double pushchair. Her twins’ eyes also focused on the sky then closed simultaneously as if to shut it out.
At Ross-on-Wye, instead of taking the A44 north to Hereford, Lucy chose a B route south which would take her past the Black Mountains and eventually on to the A470 to Builth Wells. Having crossed the swirling Wye at Hay where, during her first year with Hellebore, her invitation to take part in a literary panel had been swiftly transferred to her editor, she set her wipers to full speed. The rain wasn’t the only obvious and visible change since leaving Gloucestershire. The foliage too was different. Here oak and beech crowns glistened darkly against the gunmetal sky and the surrounding landscape grew starker, with firs cresting the odd bare hillside like so many Mohican spines.
Here too, a tractor slewed into the middle of the road in front of her leaving thick ochre tracks in its wake. There a bullock cavorted on the wrong side of a shorn hedge and at Hinton dirt-brown sheep of no particular breed picked their way across the tarmac while a few yards further on she saw one lying upturned by the roadside, its legs stuck in the air. She was tempted to stop and see if the creature was still alive, but one glance at those blind eyes, that grimace of tiny teeth told her to keep going.
That sixth form trip from the Ursuline Convent had brought her to Rhayader and the Elan Valley from the north, via Oswestry and Welshpool through summer fields and pretty villages. Her little book come to life, she’d thought at the time. However, here was clearly another country and by the time she’d re-crossed the now overflowing Wye at Glasbury, she was cocooned by the downpour and a gradually thickening vapour rising from the earth.
She switched the de-mister to maximum and leant forwards to clear the inside of her windscreen with a free hand, only to see what looked like giant burial mounds rearing up on either side of the Tarmac. She also noticed with an anxious lurch of her heart that the road’s reassuring white lines had vanished, so that when some vast thing with no lights loomed up in front of her, she skewered the Rav into the soft spongy verge, and sat there watching the mud it had flung slowly slide down her newly valeted windows.
Having checked her open map again and after some tortuous mental arithmetic, she realised that with 5 miles to the inch or 3.2 kilometres to 1 centimetre, Rhayader was still over half an hour’s drive away. And that didn’t include Wern Goch which, according to the agents’ map could only be reached by a long twisting minor road. What state was that likely to be in after all the heavy rain? she asked herself as she moved off, casually glancing at the petrol gauge before settling the Rav on the road’s steep camber.
Damn.
The needle had mysteriously slipped a whole section and now lay perilously near the red slash meaning empty. No. It was impossible! She peered again as her pulse moved into overdrive, but nothing had changed.
Builth wells was a good fifteen miles away and the time between now and her crucial appointment was shrinking by the minute. None of the hamlets or small straggly villages which she passed through at a steady 30 mph possessed anything resembling a garage and it was with a numb dread of being stranded in the middle of nowhere that she arrived at Builth’s outskirts. However, even the bright Texaco sign which had instantly lured her onwards was a con, for both the garage’s entrance and exit was blocked to all vehicles by a double row of orange and white traffic cones.
What now?
She swung the car alongside the nearest cone barrier and switched off the engine. Within ten seconds she’d sprinted around an oil tanker parked alongside the pumps and was inside the vivid strip-lighted shop facing a young Asian lad who sat behind the counter flicking through a Play Station catalogue.
‘I’ve got to get some petrol,’ she began, trying to keep hysteria out of her voice. ‘My tank’s empty. Dead.’
That last word made the boy look up.
‘Sorry, but you’ll have to wait until our new supply’s in.’
She remembered her father with his lawnmower and the full red petrol can he always brought back from the local garage.
‘Can’t I have some in a can, then?’
‘Not for half an hour at least.’
She bit her lip hard as she stared out at the damp scene beyond the shop’s widow where nothing was happening. Nothing that is, except more rain and a deep conversation taking place near the air pump between the Texaco driver and an adult version of the lad by the till.
‘Does it always rain so much here?’ she asked no one in particular.
‘Water Break Its Neck.’
She spun round to face him.
‘What?’
‘My best mate from school drowned there last year.’
‘I don’t understand . . .’
‘Up near New Radnor. It’s one hell of a waterfall.’
‘What a weird name.’
‘There’s a lot weird round here, I’m telling you. I keep asking me dad if we can all go back to Small Heath but he goes deaf on me.’
‘Perhaps this is his dream.’
‘You must be kidding.’
‘Well, just be patient,’ was all she could say. She’d absorbed enough gloom and doom already and for a brief moment, thought almost longingly of Curlew Road and Albion Villa with its blackened London brick, the chipped windowsills. And then her mother’s recent comments flooded her mind.
‘I give it three weeks at the most,’ she’d said. ‘You’ll have seen sense by then, my girl. You mark my words. And don’t forget how hard your father worked so he could leave you something . . .’
She paid the lad for a packet of Orbit gum and six second-class stamps, knowing in the marrow of her bones that after just two hours her mother and another Hellebore author who’d also uttered warning words, being proved right.
‘Which way you goin’?’ the tanker driver asked as she left the shop.
‘A470 Rhayader. Why?’
‘There’s a Murco garage on the left after the main roundabout out of town. Shouldn’t be telling you that, mind,’ he smiled.
‘Thanks.’
Aware of both men’s curious stares as she returned to the Rav, praying the engine would start. It did, and in her urge to get away she crashed first gear and took off as if the devil was on her tail. Ten minutes later on yet another damp f
orecourt surrounded by gloomy dripping pines, the 95 Unleaded nozzle was throbbing reassuringly in her hand to the tune of £28 and still rising. When she paid, using her card, she asked the girl at the till if there was anyone around who could take a look at the car and explain the strangely malfunctioning gauge.
‘Ain’t no one here at the moment, only me,’ the girl replied. ‘Me uncle’s not back till five. Where ye from, anyway?’
‘London.’
‘Join the club.’ Her ruddy cheeks widened in a smile, then to Lucy’s surprise she lifted an old anorak off a nearby hook and pulled its hood up over her head. She locked the till and came round from behind the mountain range of travel sweets and snacks to lead the way outside. ‘Me and me mum used to live in Streatham. Hey, this is mad.’
‘Small world.’ She followed her to her car where the girl promptly squatted down near its tank and sniffed for petrol.
‘Definitely a leak,’ the girl announced, straightening up. ‘Just drive her over the pit in the Service Bay and I’ll take a proper look.’
‘Thanks, but what about your shop?’ She’d spotted a middle-aged couple heading towards it, grey heads bent against the rain.
‘This won’t take a mo.’
Lucy positioned the wheels on to the tracks either side of the pit then watched as her saviour descended into the black oblong beneath the Rav.
‘Who sold you this pile of shite then?’ she called up a few moments later. Lucy’s heart sank recalling the helpful salesman at the Battersea garage and the three-month guarantee.
‘Private sale. Camden,’ she lied.
‘Well, whatever. You’ve been ‘ad. Unless a stone or summat’s hit you underneath.’ She emerged from the darkness up the pit’s corner steps, uncoiled two lengths of flex and dragged them down with her.
‘What are you going to do?’ She got out and peered after her.
‘Put my GNVQ metalwork into practice, ain’t I? Soldering over the ‘ole in the fuel pump. Might need proper welding later on, mind.’
Lucy thought of her insurance cover, less than a day old.
‘Surely there’ll be sparks?’
‘Nah. You’re thinking arc or oxy-acetylene.’
Suddenly a man’s cough echoed in the Service Bay. Lucy looked up, startled by the grey-haired customers’ sudden proximity.
‘Isn’t anyone serving in the shop over there?’ he grumbled. ‘We’re late already for our next appointment.’
Next appointment? She eyed them both up and down. What did that mean? she asked herself. Were they house-hunting as well? And if so, was it possible they were going to see Wern Goch?
‘Won’t be a sec,’ muttered the girl as the smell of sizzling solder filled the shed. ‘Got an urgent repair to do ‘ere first.’
‘Forget it.’ The man took his companion’s arm and turned to go. ‘However, I’m sure Murco will be pleased to hear about your attitude.’ With that both scuttled away towards their car and slammed its doors shut as loud as they could.
‘Miserable old crusts,’ said the girl. ‘Always the same with the grey brigade. Fuck-all to do all day but hassle everyone else trying to do a job of work. They’re ten a penny round ‘ere now, I’m afraid. And tight as fishes’ arseholes. So,’ she grinned mischievously, ‘welcome to God’s waiting room.’
‘Don’t any younger people move in, to say, start new businesses etcetera?’
The girl re-appeared, winding up the soldering iron’s wires.
‘Nah. It’s too bloody quiet. Besides, the locals don’t want no one takin’ work from ‘em. Was bad enough getting this place. My uncle’s had dog shit through the letterbox and a death threat. Anyway, where you off to?’
‘Rhayader.’
‘Right. You livin’, workin’ there, or what?’
‘Just looking around.’ She climbed back into the Rav and reversed it out into the forecourt.
‘Bit too quiet, that place an’ all,’ the girl went on, securing her anorak hood under her chin. ‘Gives me the willies.’
Lucy tried not to listen. Instead she fumbled in her wallet. ‘Anyhow, what do I owe you? You’ve saved my life.’
‘Nothing. But p’raps we can keep in touch. I ain’t got many friends, specially round ‘ere. My name’s Hazel. Hazel Dobbs.’
‘And I’m Lucy. Short for Lucinda.’
‘That’s posh. Got an address?’
‘I will have after next week.’
‘Least you know where I am.’
She left her picking up a damp newspaper from the outside rack and, as she drove away with the petrol gauge steady on full, wondered why she’d not heard any stone or any other object hit her car underneath. It was a total mystery, yet she had a gut feeling that this wouldn’t be the first to contend with.
A distant thunder murmured over the Cambrian Hills to the west and a now night-black sky released bigger, heavier drops of rain. Not angled or driven by any wind, but straight and to the point, battering the Rav’s soft top, casting what felt like yet another curse on her future plans.
Chapter Four
‘Ev’ry time we say goodbye, I die a little,
Ev’ry time we say goodbye, I wonder why a little,
Why the gods above me, who must be in the know
Think so little of me they allow you to go . . .’
Cole Porter
Although her watch showed barely three o’clock, as Lucy reached Rhayader’s southern outskirts, the afternoon could easily have been mistaken for a November evening, and the fog lamp of the driver in front led the way like the Devil’s eye through the wet dark streets lined with lit-up houses.
When she reached the town centre’s prominent white clock tower, she suddenly found herself on her own. The place was completely deserted, eerily quiet as if the locals had guessed that worse weather was to follow. This wasn’t what she’d remembered at all from her sixth form trip or even visualised from her glassed-in sixth floor office at Hellebore. The very name Rhayader had promised quaint shops from another era, friendly folk only too happy to reassure her, a peaceful sky folded between fir-clad hills.
But this was different. As if some cosmic artist had peevishly chosen this one spot to overdo the black and finally tip his dirty water out. And dirty it was too because most of her screen wash was already used up and its last-gasp spurts effected no change to her visibility at all.
Just when she needed it most. Just when the expected turning to Ravenstone Hall was imminent.
She parked on the main road’s verge and, having been drenched by a speeding coach and nearly run over by a latter-day Hell’s Angel doing a ton, she ran over to where, according to her map, the minor road should be.
This can’t be right . . .
But it was.
The unmade track in front of her was barely wide enough for a car let alone anything bigger and, once she’d manoeuvred the Rav into its tight confines, she could hear the scraping of hawthorn against her paintwork. No way could she stop to check the damage because there wasn’t enough room to get out. A wave of panic hit her. She must keep going, because the longer she was there, the greater the risk of something else meeting her head on and wanting to pass.
She took in everything of her surroundings. Here a squalid hamlet lining the verge, there a solitary cloaked figure with a sheepdog staring after her. She said a silent prayer because there was still no way any other vehicle could get by, nor could she turn the car round. But after three more miles with no widening of the track, that prayer soon multiplied.
Her face felt on fire while her fingers gripped the steering wheel to keep the car from veering into the unending hedgerows. What the hell was she doing here? she asked herself. Supposing it was some kind of trap? All this and worse coursed through her mind as yet another mile went by with still no sign for Ravenstone Hall. It was as though the place didn’t exist. As if the plans she’d been sent and the blurred picture of Wern Goch were part of some sick joke and someone somewhere was laughing themselves stupid.
Chapter Five
I am shadow of another
I am guardian of this place
I am a wind of the sea
I am a tree of the forest
I am a teardrop in the sun.
M J J 1987
Mark Jones pulled his old parka hood up over his wet head and waded purposefully through the slipping mud towards what had been his treasured den for as long as he could remember. He’d borne the brunt of yet another angry exchange with his father up at the Hall over its forthcoming sale, and endured yet more hurtful remarks from that inebriated mouth. There was only so much grief he could take . . .
‘I hate him. I fucking hate him,’ he chanted, turning his face away from the lowering clouds for today was Gethsemane all over again, only this time two thousand and one years later. This creeping gloom signified not only the end of his world, but also yet again, the end of his will to live.
As the tall young man slithered further down the track which levelled out to bisect the waterlogged marsh, his curses at Hector Jones’s betrayal grew. He stopped for a moment to take in the scene around him as if for the last time. Then he checked his watch. Last year’s Christmas present from his father, when the best gift he’d offered had been a promise never ever to sell his special refuge. Now that promise was broken and there was just half an hour to go before the first viewing. His head felt ready to explode. It was stress. He didn’t need a doctor to tell him why or to suggest he give up chainsawing the firs in the Coed-y-Bryn Forestry. No, it was because he’d been harnessing all the psychic energies brewing in his head, to effect a change on a certain inanimate object.
Her car.
Yesterday, having finished an early shift and after his mission in Hereford, he’d called in to the estate agency in Llandrindod Wells where Lloyd Griffiths had told him of Miss Mitchell’s change of plan. Instead of next weekend, the young woman was coming to view at 3 p.m. today. ‘Keen as mustard she is,’ he’d added. ‘Driving all the way from London.’
A Night With No Stars Page 3