Fell of Dark

by Reginald Hill

  I laughed myself to sleep.

  I think our fragile state in the morning might have induced us to spend another day in Borrowdale after all, but now it seemed politic to leave. We paid our bill, shouldered our knapsacks, and strode away with great dignity. Once out of sight of the hotel, however, we laughed so much we had to sit by the roadside till we recovered.

  Then we set off in real earnest, to cover as much ground as we could while the sun was still relatively low. It was obviously going to be another very hot day. Soon we had removed our jackets and tied them, rolled, to our knapsacks. After only half an hour I had suggested that we should abandon our notion of going up Scafell and should merely admire it from afar. Our plan was to go up Styhead, cut across to Sprinkling Tarn and thence via Esk Hause to drop down into Eskdale.

  We stopped for a rest. Ahead towered the immense crags of Great End, above us to the right was the stony sharpness of Great Gable. Welay back and looked behind us down into Borrowdale. Far below I could see the minute figures of half a dozen other walkers. A bird sang violently overhead for a minute, then was silent.

  Peter stood up and peered down the slope, shading his eyes with one of his extraordinarily large hands.

  ‘Can’t you rest?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ he said, and moved between me and the sun. For a second he seemed strangely menacing. Then quite close I heard the sound of boot on stone. Peter swung round. Approaching us were the blond-headed boy and his friends. They passed quite close.

  ‘Hello again,’ I said. ‘Warm enough for you?’

  ‘Yes indeed,’ he said.

  Peter said nothing and watched them out of sight. He obviously wasn’t going to settle, so I stood up and put my knapsack on.

  ‘Come on,’ I said.

  We didn’t stop again till we reached the top of the Hause (the top, as far as we were concerned, being the lowest point at which we could cross!), where we rested again before the descent which I knew could be more strenuous than climbing up. Peter regarded it as a kind of bonus, however, and let out little cries of excitement as he rushed away in front of me, carried on by his own weight and momentum.

  I shouted at him to be careful, then laughed at myself for sounding like an old woman.

  But when he got out of sight and I hadn’t caught up with him a few minutes later, I began to shout again.

  ‘Over here,’ came a voice from my left.

  There was still no sign of Peter and a faint stirring of worry began in my stomach, and suddenly it churned violently as I caught sight of his knapsack, abandoned on the ground.

  I ran up to it. It was near the edge of a deep, narrow, precipitous gully with a dried-up stream bed at the bottom. From about thirty feet down, Peter’s face looked back up at me. For a second I thought he had fallen, but almost immediately realized what he was doing. Just below him, apparently wedged in a crack in the rock-face was a sheep, its trapped legs bent at an angle that made me sick to see. It rolled its head up at Peter and let out a rattling bleat.

  ‘For God’s sake, Peter!’ I said. ‘Come back up! We’ll tell someone when we get down the valley.’

  He looked undecided, then turned as if to start climbing. The sheep, disturbed perhaps by the movement – though I must say it looked horrifyingly like a start of protest against our leaving – twisted sharply, half freed itself and fell outwards, its hideously broken foreleg now revealed plainly, dangling like a broken branch held only by the bark.

  I turned away. When I looked back Peter was beside the animal, bending over it with a thick-bladed bowie-knife (the object of much amusement earlier) in his hand.

  ‘For God’s sake, Peter!’ I called again.

  ‘I can’t just leave it!’ he snarled and stabbed down. The beast struggled violently, a great spurt of blood jetted out and ran up Peter’s arm, then it went dreadfully slack.

  ‘Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,’ said Peter, leaning back against the rockface and taking great gulps of air.

  ‘Now, please, Peter, please come up.’

  He turned without demur and began to climb towards me, his face white and set. Most of the strength seemed to have left his limbs and by the time he reached the slight overhang at the top of the gully, I began seriously to doubt whether he could make it without help.

  I lay down, leaned forward, took one of his hands in mine and began to pull. He seemed a dead weight.

  I was so immersed in what I was doing that when a voice spoke in my ear I almost let go.

  ‘Hello,’ it said. ‘Want a hand?’

  I turned my head and my nose almost brushed against a remarkably fine pair of breasts. Or the nearer one at least. They were covered only by a flimsy bra over which they strained voluptuously.

  The girl reached over the edge of the gully and seized Peter’s other hand.

  ‘Heave ho!’ she said.

  Whether it was the extra pulling power of the girl’s hands or the attraction of the rest of her, I don’t know, but Peter popped up like a jack-in-the-box.

  He sat there, getting his breath back, and I stood up to thank our helper. But surprises were not over. There were two of them. I realized at once they were the foreign girls whose seats we had taken in the bar the previous night. But their legs were no longer the eye-catching feature. Above their mini-shorts, all they wore were their bras. They had a small haversack with them and I could see their blouses tucked through the straps.

  They both wore their hair long and might almost have been twins. The only instant way I saw of separating them was that Peter’s saviour wore a white bra and the other a deep blue one.

  I must have stared too hard at the difference for suddenly White-bra giggled and put her hands up to her breasts. She was obviously nearer sixteen than the twenty-five her figure could have claimed. I noticed with a start her right hand had blood on it. From the sheep by the way of Peter, whose left arm was caked with a dusty red.

  He stood up now.

  ‘Are you all right?’ the girl asked sympathetically.

  ‘Yes, thank you, dear,’ said Peter. ‘It was very gracious of you to help.’

  He solemnly kissed her hand. White-bra giggled again and said something to Blue-bra in the language I had heard the previous night. Blue-bra giggled back.

  I must have looked puzzled.

  ‘Olga’s my pen-friend, from Sweden,’ White-bra explained.

  ‘A fine country,’ said Peter, who had never been anywhere near it. ‘Thank you both again, for the help you have given me, and the spiritual stimulus you have given this old gentleman here.’

  Well, you’re fully recovered, I thought, and set about dragging him away before his whimsy took him too far. He saw what I was at and strode ahead with a broad grin on his face. I murmured my own thanks and set off after him. After fifty yards or so, I glanced back and waved.

  They waved back, two arms over four circles; two blue, two white.

  I smiled at the thought of the odd impression they must have of us, and hoped we wouldn’t meet them again.

  It was a hope the realization of which was never to give me any pleasure.

  FOUR

  We stopped twice more on our descent into Eskdale, the first time to eat the stringy ham sandwiches Stirling had probably picked personally to go into our packed lunch. To wash them down I had a super-sized flask which I had filled with iced lager by courtesy of Peter’s waiter. I mentioned this.

  ‘Clive?’ he said. ‘That was nice of him especially when we were in such disgrace.’

  We laughed once more at the memory. Peter seemed to have recovered completely from the episode with the sheep.

  Our second halt was in the valley. We had diverted slightly to have a look at Cam Spout as it poured down from Mickledore and had followed the stream down to Esk Falls where it mingled with another which came trickling down from Bowfell. Here the track levelled out and we were able to take our ease after the exertions of the steep descent. Eventually we reached a spot where the waters broadened into a pool ab
out a dozen feet across. Peter decided he wanted to bathe. There was no one around, but I don’t think it would have mattered if there had been. Quite unselfconsciously he took off his clothes and stepped in.

  ‘Come on in,’ he said. ‘The water’s lovely.’

  Prudence, or prudery, made me hesitate a moment. Then my clothes were off and I leapt in beside him.

  Peter flung a handful of water at me with a laugh and next minute we were engaged in a splashing match which soon degenerated into a wrestling match. Eventually, half drowned, we relaxed again and let the sun warm all that was uncovered by the water. My eyes were closed, but suddenly I sensed a shadow on my skin and looking up I saw a man standing on the bank. He was dressed for walking and looked an imposing figure as he tood there, my angle of view making him seem taller than he was. His broad sunburnt face and thick grey-red beard added to the general impression of forcefulness and power. I was sure I had seen him before.

  ‘Good day to you,’ he said with a slight Scottish accent. ‘If I wasn’t so modest, I’d join you.’

  ‘Please do,’ I replied.

  ‘No, no.’ He grinned. ‘I’m getting old. I couldn’t stand the comparison. Good day.’

  So saying, he touched his stick to the floppy hat he wore and strode away down the track.

  Shortly after this, we clambered out and dressed ourselves. I noticed Peter did not put back on the shirt with the blood-stained sleeve, but replaced it by another.

  It was only a few miles now to the village of Boot. There was a fairly large inn nearby with hotel pretensions in the summer. We were both now feeling very tired.

  ‘If,’ I said, ‘if they can fit us in, I suggest we leave the seaside till tomorrow. It won’t go away.’

  By luck, there was a double room available, a cancellation, almost a miracle at this time of year, the manager assured us. An expensive miracle, it appeared when we enquired the cost. But I hadn’t got the will-power to go any further now.

  We were shown upstairs to our room and I collapsed on the nearest bed and closed my eyes for a couple of seconds. Or so I thought.

  When I woke Peter was standing over me dressed in his ‘respectable’ kit.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘or we’ll miss dinner. I’ve been down already and it smells gorgeous.’

  ‘Borrowdale seems a million years ago,’ I commented as I sipped a well-diluted scotch in the bar.

  ‘Yes, doesn’t it? I bet it’s raining in Seathwaite.’

  An anxious little waiter stuck his head round the bar door and waved at Peter.

  ‘Jesus,’ I said, ‘do you always make friends with the most unimportant members of the domestic staff?’

  ‘That,’ he said, ‘is Marco. He is Italian. He is here for the season. He is telling me that if we really want our dinner, we’d better get a move on or else the chef, a man with a vicious tongue and I suspect a gangrene on his shin will run amuck. I have ordered for you.’

  We went in. Nearly everybody else was at the pudding stage. Over in a corner with a rather pretty young girl was the bearded man who had passed us as we bathed. His semi-formal attire made him look even more distinguished but older too. He must have been well over fifty at least.

  He had his back to us but to my surprise the girl on seeing us enter reached over and touched his arm and he turned to look.

  With the attractive smile I had remarked earlier, he waved genially, then returned to his food. The girl watched us to our seats, though not blatantly.

  The mystery was explained when we sat down.

  ‘That,’ said Peter, with a flicker of his left cheek muscle in the direction of the bearded man, ‘is Richard Ferguson, the bird-man. With him is Annie Ferguson, the bird.’

  ‘His wife?’

  ‘His daughter, you fool. It’s no use looking for reassurance that your advancing years have not put you on the shelf. They’re v. devoted, almost incestuously so. His wife, I believe, is an invalid. Might even be dead.’

  I had heard of Richard Ferguson, had even listened to a radio talk of his on one occasion when I had been too comfortable to reach out of my bath to change the station on my transistor. He was much sought after, so I gathered, as a broadcasting pundit. Some accident of chance had led the BBC to adopt him as one of their panel game and quiz team ‘characters’. It seemed almost incidental now that he was also one of the country’s leading ornithologists.

  ‘How did you meet him?’ I asked.

  ‘Introduced myself in the bar. When a man’s seen you naked, you’ve taken the first step to friendship after all.’

  ‘From the way his daughter’s looking at us, he’s obviously described the scene to her too.’

  ‘Well, it’s too good a tale not to be retold.’

  Our soup arrived in the slim brown hands of Marco. I ate with gusto.

  Peter’s suggestion that we had a couple of drinks in the bar after dinner I firmly refused. I left him there and watched the telly for a while, struck up a conversation with a couple from London, read half a page of the Daily Telegraph, then went to bed.

  It had been a splendid day. I had a self-congratulatory sense of physical achievement. I was well fed, pleasantly sleepy and lay in a comfortable bed. To cap it all, a large yellow moon shone right outside my window. I saluted it and fell asleep.

  I don’t know what time Peter came up but when the knock came at our door in the morning he was already up and dressed. He looked pale and told me as we went down to breakfast that he was suffering from sunburn as a result of our bathing party the day before.

  ‘I can’t walk today,’ he said. ‘I doubt if I’ll ever walk again.’

  Marco’s smiling greetings had gone almost unacknowledged and the little Italian did not look at all happy when he brought us our bacon and eggs.

  ‘Not to worry,’ I grinned. ‘Today we go by train.’

  Marco slammed Peter’s plate down in front of him. His thumb was in the fringe of the egg. As he removed his hand the egg came with it, then sliding free, it fell towards Peter’s lap. Peter with the casual rightness so hated by Jan lifted the edge of the tablecloth and caught the greasy object. He looked expressionlessly at Marco, then spoke.

  ‘Marco, can’t you organize something that makes sense out of this chaos?’

  Marco’s underlip suddenly shot out and he began to gabble in Italian, lowly at first, but soon swelling in volume till everyone in the room was looking at us. Ferguson and his daughter, I noticed, had just come in and were standing by the door openly observing the scene with great interest.

  Marco reached some kind of climax and halted. I thought of applauding, but a look at his face made me think again. He was very angry. Peter still sat there holding the tablecloth like a bridal train.

  Ferguson moved over to us and spoke sharply in Italian. Marco caught the remnants of the egg up in his hand, flung it on to the plate and strode away to the kitchen.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Peter, releasing the tablecloth and standing up, partly to avoid the last oozings of the egg yolk, partly in acknowledgment of Miss Ferguson who was hovering behind her father. ‘That was kind. May I introduce my friend, Harry Bentink.’

  ‘Hello, Bentink. We have met in a manner of speaking. And I heard a great deal about you last night.’

  ‘How do you do,’ I said, half standing up with a bit of fried bread impaled on my fork which I waved nonchalantly at the girl. The bread fell on to the table.

  ‘You’re not having much luck with this table, are you?’ said Ferguson. ‘Come and share ours.’

  He did not stay for an answer but moved across to the corner where he had been sitting the night before. We followed.

  ‘My daughter, Annie,’ he said. The girl smiled politely but said nothing. I got the impression she was scrutinizing me very closely behind her impassive façade.

  ‘Are you here on holiday or business?’ I asked.

  ‘Bit of both,’ he said. ‘Never know what you’ll see on the mountains.’

  ‘Tha
t’s true,’ said Peter in what I recognized as his facetious tone. ‘We saw a blue and a white tit only yesterday, didn’t we, Harry?’

  He kicked my leg gleefully under the table. I lashed back and caught the girl’s ankle. She drew away in greater unease than I felt the situation warranted.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  ‘That’s all right,’ she said. ‘Will you excuse me?’

  She rose and left. She’d only had a thimbleful of grapefruit juice. I let my practised eye recreate the limbs under the skirt as I watched her go through the door and smiled approvingly.

  She did not come back and we finished the meal practically in silence.

  Replete, Ferguson folded his napkin neatly, looked at each of us in turn and asked, ‘What are your plans today?’

  ‘We’re going to see the sea,’ said Peter. ‘But first we’re going on a mysterious train journey.’

  Ferguson laughed.

  ‘Oh, Lile Rattie,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ said Peter.

  ‘The miniature railway. It’s great fun if the weather’s fine. And it runs to time.’

  Peter looked across at me and raised his eye-brows apologetically at having spoilt my surprise. I grinned back and looked suggestively at my watch. He nodded.

  ‘Well, Mr Ferguson, thank you for the use of your table. We must be off, however, while the day is young.’

  We all stood up and shook hands.

  ‘Enjoy yourselves,’ said Ferguson.

  ‘You too.’

  As we went out of the dining-room I looked at Peter curiously.

  ‘Why didn’t you answer Marco?’ I knew he spoke excellent Italian.

  He shrugged.

  ‘He was just being rude.’

  ‘What did Ferguson say to him, then?’

  Peter laughed.

  ‘He told him to bugger off or risk losing his unmentionables!’

  Half an hour later we were striding down the road into the railway station. More than a station, it is a terminus and the incongruity of both setting and proportion have always endeared the place to me. Peter looked without comment at the narrow track and the low platform. There were not many people around at this time of the morning, I mean not many waiting to catch the train to Ravenglass, though when the train itself arrived it was quite full of trippers and hikers. They got out and dispersed. We put our knapsacks in one of the tiny open compartments and walked up the track to inspect the locomotive. Peter examined everything very closely, full of amused delight.