“Maybe,” he said. “In the end all that matters is that he’s dead.”
He had already lost interest in Cassie’s opinion, because it arose from observation and not experience. No one would ever know what had really happened to Thomas, and yet his daughter wanted to blame Alice for his death. Gregory decided that this was because she wanted to protect him; she was worried that he would take a path that would be similarly irrational.
Cassie was settled and at ease in a predictable life; Gregory accepted that. But he saw no need to be so wary in the closing stages of his own life; instead all that he saw was the necessity of satisfying a longing that refused to let him rest.
11
The road became narrow as it threaded its way between bushes, fences and trees. Gregory drove slowly, half expecting to meet an oncoming vehicle that would make him reverse to the last passing-place, but the way ahead remained deserted. Alice sat in silence, sometimes turning her head to look out of the windows. She had last spoken when he had taken shots of the cross in the churchyard. As soon as he had lowered the camera she had asked him to leave it locked in the car boot from then on. Alice did not think it right that he should make a visual record of the place where Thomas had died; and besides, she would never wish to be reminded of it. Gregory had reluctantly agreed, for without a camera he always felt strangely unmanned.
He stopped the car on an area of gravel, puddles and compacted earth marked by tire tracks. Dead leaves were plastered on the drying mud like faded messages.
“It seems that from now on we walk,” he said.
Once the car doors were open Alice looked around and then glanced up at the sky. Little of it could be seen between the high trees. The river could be clearly heard as it coursed behind a raised bank colonized by saplings and scrub.
“Will it rain, do you think?” she asked.
“This doesn’t feel like a place that avoids bad weather,” Gregory said. He handed Alice her waterproof jacket and then put on his own.
“There’s something in the air. Don’t you feel it?”
“I’d check the lacing on your boots,” he suggested by way of an answer, and bent to check his own.
Alice had last worn outdoor clothing when she had visited archaeological remains with Thomas, and for almost a year it had remained unused and half-forgotten in a cupboard. She had not wanted to wear it now, but Gregory had insisted. She felt cumbersome, unattractive, and with boots that were far too heavy.
He lifted his rucksack from the back seat, hoisted it on his back, and adjusted the straps over his shoulders. Spare sweaters had been packed beside the urn, but it still felt unwieldy and oddly shaped against his back.
“Should I carry the pack?” Alice asked.
“I don’t mind.”
“I thought that maybe you wanted me to do that. After all, you didn’t know Thomas.”
“I don’t want you to do anything. What’s important is what you want. When we get there you can be the one who empties it—if you think you should.”
“I don’t even know if I should do that. The truth is that I’m only here because no one else would bring Thomas to where he should be. But after the argument we had when we split up . . .”
She stopped and then started again.
“I had to tell him things that were very hurtful. There was no choice.”
Gregory nodded briskly. Alice had made similar remarks several times, and there was little point in entering another discussion now. He wanted the ashes carried to where they would be scattered, and once the job was done he wanted to return to the hotel as quickly as possible. The disposal of what little was left of Thomas Laidlaw would close off that part of the past. Afterward, her duty discharged, freed from guilt and memory, Alice would wish to delay no longer. Gregory’s single room was big enough for the purpose, or he could go to hers.
His imagination had already excited itself with possibilities. Secretly he had rehearsed how to make their first bout of lovemaking uninhibited and exhausting. He hoped that running through Alice’s mind there would be a similarly adventurous heat: imperative, overwhelming, but as yet unexpressed.
They walked side by side down a short stretch of metaled road alongside huge trees whose shadows had starved the earth around their roots. In a field on their left a white horse stood motionless as it watched them pass.
Gregory had studied the map closely. “The lower crossing should be here,” he said, and after a few more yards Bleng bridge came into view. They walked over it without pause and immediately came to a fork in the road. A board pointed to the right with the name of Scalderskew Farm painted on it. They stood looking at it for a moment.
“Thomas must have taken the forestry road,” Alice said, reiterating their understanding as if she expected a challenge. “If he’d gone to the left he’d have reached Sampson’s Bratfull before he got to the upper bridge. Is that right?”
“According to the map, yes.”
“And he can’t have done that because there are no photographs of the Bratfull. I’ve thought about this and even if he’d been disappointed I’m certain he would have taken some. You agree?”
“If you think so.”
“So if we go to the right then we follow in his footsteps.”
“All right,” Gregory said, adjusting his pack again. “The quicker we move the sooner we’ll get back.”
At first the road climbed so steeply that they had to lean forward to obtain a better purchase on the surface. Gregory dropped back a little and studied Alice from behind. He liked seeing the movement of her limbs as she pressed onward, because he could not help but think of her naked body angled in such a way. And then he luxuriated once more in the memory of how, undressed, she had paced across a room that was hushed by dustsheets, had willingly laid her body open to his lens, had spoken with a goading frankness that had keyed up his sexual expectations. By now he had studied those photographs many times, stared at tableaux that both challenged his gaze and questioned it, become absorbed in her eyes and nipples, skin and hair, the shaping of ivory and shadow.
He could tell that Alice felt a satisfying pleasure in her own movements. Even the thick clothing that she wore could not fully mask her feline pride. When they returned to the hotel she could throw that clothing to one side. Would he be able to strip her with the slow, easy confidence of his many past seductions? Would she encourage him to linger over each part of her flesh as he laid it bare?
Already he imagined the texture of the nape of her neck, the curve of her hip beneath his hand, the taste of her lips, the sway of her breasts, the feral heat of her vulva. As lovers, could they be as thorough and exploratory as it was possible to be? Would she relish his timing, his touch, his attention to detail?
They labored upward in silence. Neither spoke. The only sounds were of their footfalls on the gritty road, their breathing and the distant muffled noise of water.
After a few minutes they came to a point where they could stand on the road’s grassy edge and look down. Trees with fanned-out roots clung to a precipitous and gloomy slope. Through the dark trunks, a few hundred feet below, the riverside path could be distinguished. Water glittered across its surface like a glaze.
“It looks as if the river has burst its banks,” Alice said.
“I see it.”
“Maybe that’s why he was forced to take this road.”
“Maybe.”
“If he’d gone that way, down there, he’d have been able to fill his water bottle easily.”
“Alice, you can’t spend your life thinking of things that never happened.”
“You think not? I think it makes sense to always wonder why.”
Ever since they had begun the journey Alice had been brooding once more on the workings of what others called chance. If Thomas had been able to take the lower path then he would have reached his destination and returned by the same route. He need never have seen, or crossed, or paused by the upper bridge. He need never have scrambled do
wn what had been reported to her as a steep, dangerous slope. He would not have slipped and fallen into the torrent. He would still be alive.
And yet she did not wish to believe that Thomas’s death was an unforeseen consequence of chance decisions and events; she had to believe that it concealed a hidden purpose. People did not die without reason; individuals were never pointlessly destroyed. There was a kind of celestial mechanism that gave meaning to everything, even if that truth often remained hidden. Whether or not Thomas had committed suicide—and Alice was certain he had not—his death must be part of a design whose pattern she could not yet read. And perhaps, she thought, it was not intended that she should ever read it. Maybe the signs were designed to be understood by someone else. It was even possible, but unlikely, that it was Gregory who was the most important person on this pilgrimage.
They were considerably higher now, and the landscape opened out so that raw moorland could be seen in the gaps beyond the regimented plantations of spruce. The choked roadside ditches ran with thin streams.
“The air’s so heavy,” Alice protested. “This jacket feels cumbersome.”
“I think it’s going to rain. Better keep it on.”
Gregory studied the scenery to either side. He could make no interesting compositions from it; there was an exhausted monotony about everything. Bracket fungus jutted from the trunks of trees and spongy moss grew across mulch. Sometimes the edges of the road had been carved into raw banks by heavy machinery, and spindly black roots of bracken protruded from these like dead feelers. High above the moor two buzzards circled slowly against a sky that had become so low and bruised that all of the colors bent toward a jaundiced yellow. It felt as if the world itself was running down.
“I’m tired and my boots hurt,” Alice said.
“For God’s sake, you knew this wouldn’t be a stroll in the park.”
The vigor of Gregory’s response was surprising even to him. Irritation bled from his words as if they had been cut.
She did not respond. Gregory felt the shape of the urn against his back. He considered apologizing, but did not. To one side were a dozen or so trees that must have been toppled years before. Their gray roots were dry and brittle and their bark was sheathed in moss.
Maybe Cassie had been correct, Gregory thought. After all, in the past she had often been proved right. And his daughter had never expressed an opinion, or given advice, that had been in bad faith. There was only one reason that he was toiling up this bleak slope with a dead man’s ashes on his back. If he had not been so obsessed by Alice Fell, he would have refused.
A piece of stone cracked beneath his boot. He was thirsty. The air had grown heavier and beneath his waterproof clothing he was clammy.
“Let’s drink,” he said, taking a bottle of water from a rucksack pocket and opening the top. “You first.”
Alice took it from him and tilted back her head to drink. The skin of her throat was an unblemished white. Gregory imagined her head thrown back in pleasure.
When she handed the bottle back he could see that she was thinking of Thomas.
“I know,” he said. “Never set off without a supply of water.”
“You could tell I was thinking him. There’s no need to underline it.”
Alice was ahead by several steps before he could return the bottle to his pack. Her boots crunched softly on the grit.
Gregory had no idea what kind of person Thomas Laidlaw had been. He could not know if Alice had spoken the truth about him. Probably, he thought, Cassie was right—Alice had encouraged Thomas to feel more for her than she had been able to feel for him. Maybe that was a pattern in her life. Alice courted the attention of men and encouraged their love. As soon as they were helpless, she lost interest. Maybe, Gregory brooded, she was more like him than he had ever been willing to admit.
And if Cassie were right about Alice, she was right that Gregory had been foolish in allowing himself to be captivated. The only hidden depth in Alice was one of ambition. The best thing to happen would be for them to share a bed for a night, maybe several nights, and then part. She would care nothing for him and he should care nothing for her. His fascination had been an error, an aberration. Cassie’s insight was valid; as soon as he had slept with Alice the truth would become obvious. Satisfaction would generate clarity.
They stopped for a few moments while he consulted the map again. The only mark that Thomas had made on the land between the courses of the Calder and the Bleng was a thin box that he had drawn around his destination. Every other site that he had visited had a date and time noted beside it, but there was nothing beside Sampson’s Bratfull.
“According to this we should come to a fork quite soon. When we do, we need to take the forestry road to the left. The other one eventually leads you out to the main road to Wasdale.”
“And Thomas’s bridge?”
“Maybe another ten minutes after the fork. It’s difficult to tell.”
They set off again. The ground had flattened now, and above the geometry of the conifer plantations they could see the high bare moor that separated the two rivers. Beneath their feet the road was still broken stone and gritty mud. A spine of bright green turf ran along its center, untouched by the wheels of timber lorries and Land Rovers.
Alice resented Gregory taking control of the map. She could read city plans easily but was less confident with contours and bridleways; nevertheless she had come to the conclusion that she should have insisted on carrying and studying Thomas’s map. She would have been happier if Gregory did not act as if they were on an expedition. And although Alice had initially been pleased that he had volunteered to carry the urn, she had begun to feel that that, in ways that she could not fully rationalize, it was she who should take it to the tumulus where the ashes would be scattered.
Perhaps Gregory had adopted the role of guide to ingratiate himself, or perhaps it was an extension of his need to control. He had never regarded her as a true equal. Instead he had been driven by his need; Alice had always found that obvious. And yet Gregory’s desire had always been expressed through his professional activities. His compulsion to photograph lay like a grid across everything. She had asked him not to bring his camera now, and he had agreed; but would he have consented to leave it aside for a longer period? Gregory had always kept a distance from the world by studying it through a lens; was he even capable of living without a camera?
It was not so long ago that she had thought of warning him. Remembering the distress that she had caused past lovers, Alice had wanted to look hard into Gregory’s eyes and tell him not to fall in love with her too deeply. If he had asked why, she would have been honest. Because, she would have said, I cause pain that no one ever expects to suffer.
But now Alice believed that she must have misjudged Gregory. He would never suffer pain; it was not in his nature. His only reactions would be of inconvenience, irritation, and perhaps embarrassment. He was incapable of the anguish that Alice was secretly proud of causing. Gregory could shrug off his love for her, just as he must have shrugged off his affairs with countless other women who had been mercenary and vain enough to sleep with him.
They came to the fork. The road ahead continued across fields of recently planted trees, their tips only about six feet from the ground, toward a wall of mature woods several hundred yards away. From within it came the sounds of a motor, rising and falling in tone. It reminded Alice of how, sprawled on the pavement, she had heard the robbers’ motorbike roar away from her.
“What’s that?”
“Forestry workers must be logging up there, but that’s not the way that we’re going. This looks like the road we want.”
They stood in a turning circle of packed soil and shale, its far edge indented with the broken chevrons of tractor tires. Another road led down from the circle, bending round the side of a turf bank and then dipping out of sight as it followed the valley contours back in the direction of the river.
Gregory adjusted the straps o
n his rucksack. “The upper bridge can’t be far now,” he said, setting off again.
The road became steeper. Streams draining from the moorland ran along narrow man-made channels on their right. To their left a broad area of logged-out plantation opened up. Hundreds of ragged stumps, bleached as if they had been submerged, stuck out of a slope strewn with decaying pine needles and lopped brushwood.
“Listen,” Alice said.
Gregory looked at her. He could still hear the chainsaw whine in the far distance.
“It’s the river,” she told him.
It was true; the Bleng could be heard again as it rushed through its channel beyond the harvested trees.
“I felt we were getting near,” she said.
When the upper bridge came into view it was disappointingly bare and functional. Both Alice and Gregory had imagined that in some undefined way it must be distinctive. Instead the bridge was nothing more than a broad unadorned concrete slab laid down across abutments to link one drab section of road with the next.
“Are you sure this is it?”
“No doubt about it,” Gregory said. “Look how the land rises on the far side. Sampson’s Bratfull must be beyond the next plantation.”
They walked down the slope, its angle making them unconsciously gather pace. Alice’s boots had begun to chafe and she was increasingly uncomfortable. The noise of the river grew ever louder.
When Gregory stepped onto the bridge it made a hard unyielding sound. He took a few paces forward and then stopped just short of the lip at the edge of the slab. Dry mud had thrown its shallow depressions and furrows into relief, so that he appeared to be standing on the dispersing outlines of a carpet. Beneath him the Bleng tumbled between steep banks and boulders before flowing out of sight behind the trees.
Now Gregory decided that if they could empty the urn within the next few minutes, without further thought or ceremony, the ashes would vanish immediately. He and Alice could stand together as if in prayer for a short while longer and then they could go back, never again to set foot in this bleak, forsaken place.
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