by Finch, Paul
However, there the romance ends.
For Bleaberry Beck, while the casual traveller might find it picturesque on a gorgeous August afternoon – as indeed I did during the final week of our college holidays, when I journeyed up there to spend a few days with young Purlock – is the only habitation of any note in the long, rocky, U-shaped valley that is Lorton Vale. The encircling fells tower two thousand feet above sea level and are sheer and precipitous. Vast aprons of scree spread down their lower slopes, while their peaks consist mainly of jagged granite battlements, which would defy even the most experienced mountaineer. As a result, evening comes early in Bleaberry Beck, tending to fall over the village in a sudden wave of shadow. The nearest road of any quality is the B5289, which, while it nominally runs between the larger townships of Cockermouth and Keswick, is something of a curiosity: a steep, narrow route, which loops tortuously and somewhat unnecessarily down through the Borrowdale mountains, only breaking out into the next valley via the perilous Honister Pass, which for much of the year is closed.
To hear that the village is also wreathed in tales of witchcraft should have been no surprise to me, and at first it wasn’t. But likewise, it was of no major interest. I was up here from Oxford ostensibly to have a few days fooling around with a college pal before we both commenced our third and final year, but in realty to break something to him that had been churning my guts out for the last six months.
“You and Francine?” he said, looking startled over his pint of Countryman’s Gold.
We faced each other across a table in The Mountain Drove , Bleaberry Beck’s quaint ‘olde worlde’ tavern. All around us Sunday lunchtime life went on. Groups of walkers guffawed over their baskets of trout and chips. A young family were also eating, their youngest member, a toddler in a highchair, constantly and furtively passing chicken nuggets to the cocker spaniel hiding under the table.
“I know it’s a shock,” I replied. “But I didn’t want you to find out from the wrong people.”
“And who are the wrong people, Richard?” I don’t think Purlock meant it to be a clever question. He still looked as if he was in a state of shock.
“Anyone but me. Look, Dean … we’ve been friends a long time. I value that too much to let something like this get in the way.”
“But not so much for it to stop you jumping in bed with my girlfriend?”
“It wasn’t like that,” I said.
And despite his sense of outrage, it wasn’t. To start with, Francine had not really been his girlfriend. He’d had a crush on her throughout our time at Corpus Christi. He’d dated her, he’d danced with her, he’d even kissed her at the occasional party. But he’d never actually ‘gone out’ with her, and I knew this because she’d told me herself. At first she’d found his infatuation flattering, then endearing, but finally, inevitably, a bit of an irritation. It wasn’t that he was overly persistent. He didn’t pester her to death, yet he was always there in the background, available for a chat if nothing else, ever ready to push his luck if he sensed she was in a receptive or vulnerable mood. Given his big, ungainly frame, his reddish hair and weathered complexion, I’d imagine this was the only way he’d ever really be able to worm his way into the affections of young ladies. They would certainly have made no approach to him, his good nature and easy humour notwithstanding.
“So that’s it?” he said with a matter-of-fact shrug.
I hadn’t expected violence or anger. I’d only known Purlock for two years, but those were two years of intimate association in that typical university style, so I’d been certain that he wasn’t going to throw his drink at me or turn the table over, or anything like that. But I hadn’t expected him to be so strangely calm.
“It’s best if it’s out in the open, Dean.”
He nodded sagely. “And I suppose I ought to thank you for leaving it until the last day – I mean you’re going back this afternoon, aren’t you? If you’d told me when you’d got here on Thursday, it would have spoiled the whole weekend, wouldn’t it?”
“Isn’t it best if we’re just grown-up about this?”
“How long have you been seeing her?”
I tried to smile. “‘Seeing her’ is probably too strong a term …”
“Shagging her, then?”
“Come on, Dean.”
“Alright, alright …” He made a placating gesture. “I appreciate your candour, Rich. I honestly do.”
An awkward silence followed. I still wasn’t sure what had ever made Purlock think that he and Francine had been destined for each other in the first place. He was bright and educated, but still a fairly rough-edged chap. His father was a forestry worker, and though the cottage they lived in was very cute and homely in that typical Lakeland way, it was still only a cottage. Francine Hutton’s home was a palatial residence in Berkshire. Her father was a major in the Life Guards and a successful polo player, her mother a senior public relations executive for a company with offices not just in London, but in Brisbane, Tokyo and New York. By contrast, Purlock’s mum worked in the local post office. It was a bit absurd when you thought about it.
We exited the pub in a non-communicative state. My train from Windermere was only due at four o’clock, and it wasn’t yet one, so we now faced a long, difficult afternoon together. I could have kicked myself for not saving my revelation until the very last minute, but how cowardly would that have looked? Besides, as I said, it had been tearing my insides apart keeping it a secret just for this long.
I did like Dean Purlock, not just because of his affable manner and northern wit but because he was a genuine friend. Despite our disparate backgrounds, we had lots of common ground. We were on the same course together, Medieval History , and socialised in the same circles – primarily the college rugby club. Before he’d gone to Oxford, Purlock had been a useful lock-forward for Egremont, while I, being of a leaner, sprightlier build, had represented my school at wing-threequarter. Purlock had never gone on to attain a ‘Blue’, as I had, but he wasn’t the sort of chap to hold that against you – not when at the end of the day it would all still culminate in a riotous song-and-drink session.
“Look … I’m sorry,” I said as we idled around the village. “It wasn’t intentional. I knew you had feelings for Francine; that was why I always kept my distance. But we were at Professor Hartington’s garden party last April, and …”
“Oh yeah, the one I wasn’t invited to.”
“Only a few of us were, mate.”
He grunted in reluctant acknowledgement. Professor Hartington ran our Medieval Social and Economics course. He was strictly old-school – elderly, laid-back and very camp. He saw no harm in having favourites, and everyone knew this.
“Francine and I just happened to be there together, and well … we got chatting, and hit it off.”
“You could have told me there and then.”
“I didn’t know it was going to lead anywhere.”
He gave this more thought as we trudged along. Hopefully, he was starting to see it my way. It wasn’t as if I’d really done anything wrong – he hadn’t had any kind of arrangement with her, and if he was honest perhaps he would recognise in his heart of hearts that Francine – a dazzlingly beautiful brunette, impeccably well-spoken, always dressed to the height of fashion – was some way out of his ‘yeoman’ league.
We’d now reached the end of the arched passage on the western fringe of the village. There was only shop here. I’d noted it on my first day, and had made a mental note that it might provide me with a useful gift for my young sister, Bella.
According to the arcane lettering over its bowed front-window, the shop was called Poppets , and it was built almost entirely from purplish-grey slate. Like many of the buildings in those charmingly cluttered Cumbrian villages, it didn’t possess a single square angle. There wasn’t a line in its frontage that you could call either ‘horizontal’ or ‘perpendicular’. City dwellers often view these rural buildings and wonder how they stand the test of tim
e, yet ironically, they usually do it better than the mundane, concrete structures that townsfolk are used to. In this case, a small shield was suspended over the shop door, painted in antique gold leaf with the date: 1625 .
“Look,” Purlock said, gazing out over Crummock Water, his carroty red fringe ruffling in the breeze. “If you two are serious about each other … I don’t want to get in the way.”
I felt better to hear this. Rough-edged he might be, but there was a kind of rustic sincerity about Dean Purlock. I could see that he wasn’t flannelling me, but making a genuine effort to deal with the problem.
“I think I always knew that Francine wasn’t really interested in me,” he said. “I was probably nothing more than her lapdog, if I’m honest.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that by the close of our second year, she regarded him in even lesser terms than that.
“You’re a good pal, Richard,” he added. “We met at the Freshers’ Ball and we’ve been close ever since. You’re right, there’s no point in letting something as ridiculous as forlorn love get in the way.”
There was something about that last comment, a slight inflection in his tone, which suddenly made me wonder if he was being less than sincere. But he now smiled bravely.
“I also appreciate that you’ve come all the way up here to tell me. It would have been a lot easier, but a lot less kind, to just let me find out next term.”
I nodded. “So what now?”
He shrugged aimlessly. “Well … we were going to have a walk around the lake, weren’t we? Before I drove you back to the station?”
Again I nodded.
He directed his gaze to the shop called Poppets . “Didn’t you say something about wanting to buy a present for your kid sister’s birthday?”
I appraised the quaint boutique. It seemed unimportant, but I now remembered why it had first attracted my attention. Its window and, from what I could see, the shelves inside were stocked entirely with dolls. But this was no run-of-the-mill toyshop. Every kind of doll was present here: adult dolls, child dolls; there were dolls dressed as babies, dolls wearing period costume, dolls in military uniform, dolls representing every walk of modern life, ranging from nurses to pop stars, from police officers to ballet dancers, from postmen to footballers, to fashion models, to beach boys and surf babes. The range of costumes was astonishing, and they’d been knitted or sewn with skill and an eye for detail. The dolls themselves weren’t exactly lifelike, though everything about them was perfectly proportioned. They had hair glued where hair should be, and it was always styled or combed and, in the case of the female figures, hung in ponytails or tied with ribbons. But they were rather inflexible objects. Without exception, they, each one, appeared to have been carved from a single piece of wood. There were no joints that I could see, no limbs moulded from plastic, no bodies sewn from beanbags.
More to the point, there were no faces.
Not a single doll in that shop-window – and I scanned it from top to bottom – had a face. And I don’t just mean that a face hadn’t been carved; I mean that it hadn’t even been drawn. Where their faces ought to be there were blank patches of shiny, varnished wood. Perhaps if I’d passed something like this in a city shop-window – maybe one or two such objects among a variety of other, friendlier-looking toys – it wouldn’t have struck me as strange. But on this occasion, because it was the whole story, I’d been quite taken aback – at least on first seeing it. But as I say, I’d had other things on my mind since then.
“Maybe I won’t bother,” I said. “To be frank, they look a bit weird, these things.”
“They’re supposed to be weird,” he replied.
“What do you mean?”
“Surely you’ve heard of Poppets before?”
“Funnily enough, I don’t buy dolls very often.”
He didn’t laugh, just pursed his lips. I got the feeling he’d been about to tell me something a little out of the ordinary, but suddenly lacked the heart for it. “That’s all it is really. A doll shop.”
Doll shop or not, there was something unsettling about those flat, emotionless visages regarding me through the mullioned glass.
“How can something that doesn’t have a face make you feel like it’s watching you?” I wondered.
“It’s part of the superstition,” he said. “There’s a witchcraft angle, if you’re interested.”
I glanced at him. Despite everything that had happened between us that day, this did interest me mildly – more so because I’d never known Purlock mention anything like this before. We studied Medieval History together, but his interest was less in the arcane and esoteric, and more in the factual. I’d read a couple of his essays, and thought them informed and analytical but also painfully dull.
He explained what he could as we started walking. Like many Lake District villages, Bleaberry Beck tends to end abruptly rather than peter out. One moment you’re patrolling its maze-like passages and courtyards, the next you’ve left its limits entirely. The narrow lane connecting it with the B5289 is accessible only from the east side of the village, so from the west side, where Poppets is located, we found ourselves on unspoiled hinterland. The natural landscape in northern England, particularly in Cumbria, is magnificent. Golden gorse and purple heather grow on every mountain and moor, while the lakeside forests are often filled with bilberries, saxifrage and bright yellow asphodel. Agriculturally, the district is given almost exclusively to sheep farming, but there is much open green space that is simply unused, and this was where we found ourselves now. There was a footpath of course; footpaths snake all over the Lake District like arteries, fell-walking, hiking and nature-spotting being such popular past-times. This one led us down first to the edge of Crummock Water. Wavelets lapped on the pebbly shore, though further out the lake was serene, the surrounding summits mirrored in its glassy surface.
“I take if you’ve never heard of ‘the Cumbrian Witches’?” he said.
I shook my head.
He didn’t seem surprised. “Hardly anyone has. It’s nowhere near as famous as the story of the Lancashire Witches, which happened about fifty miles south of here.”
We walked on, the path leading us through several stands of pine until ascending a low, broad hillock.
From this point, looking southeast over the village’s jumbled slate roofs, we could see the other of the twin-lakes, Buttermere, and the white sail of a yacht cutting swan-like across its middle. High to our rear, tiny red and blue dots revealed climbers on one of the craggier faces of Scale Knott. There was a tranquil silence, which it was tempting not to break, though eventually Purlock continued with his narrative.
“It was some time at the beginning of the seventeenth century, during the reign of James I.” He surveyed the hilltop where we stood, taking in its every feature as though he hadn’t visited it for some time. “Apparently a travelling man came to this area, a tinker or something. The village was a lot smaller then. I don’t know what they lived off, but the main business around here was wool. Think of it as a sort of Rob Roy / Scottish highlander-type existence, without the tartan of course, and you won’t be far wrong.”
I nodded.
He continued. “As far as I’m aware, when this travelling man turned up, a local girl approached him and asked if she could go with him when he left. By all accounts, she was a ‘comely lass’, as they always are in these stories. So the tinker, though he had no intention of letting her travel with him, saw his chance and took it. He said he’d help her and, later on that night, he gave her a good seeing-to. Probably in the nearest barn. The next day, he sold his wares and was off again. The girl accosted him in the middle of the village and insisted he keep his promise. He laughed at her and told her to go home. It seemed that seducing innocent girls was his main pastime …”
He let those words hang as he gazed out over the lake.
I didn’t rise to the bait, if indeed he was dangling one for me. There was no way that Francine could be likene
d to an innocent village lass. She was ex-public school, and she hadn’t needed to be seduced. Not only was she not a virgin the first time I’d taken her to bed, but she’d known more tricks than I had. For the first time I began to feel a little aggrieved with Purlock, not so much because he was clearly still harbouring a grudge, but because of his obstinate naivety. Had he genuinely not recognised Francine for the sophisticated society girl that she was? What chance did he honestly believe a moose-like rustic of his ilk had stood with a debutante?
“Anyway,” Purlock said, “he left the girl behind and set off without her. Left her crying in the street, and of course no-one would go and console her because she was now soiled goods.”
Clearly this was what he expected would be the result of mine and Francine’s relationship.
“So she cursed him.” Purlock half-smiled – that was the first smile I’d seen from him since my big admission. “Not unusual, I suppose, for a lass who’s just been spurned. The only trouble was that as soon as she did this the tinker dropped to the ground, had some kind of seizure. And died.” His brow creased as he pondered the details. “As you can imagine, there was big trouble. The girl was questioned, and eventually confessed to having been given special powers by an evil spirit, which had appeared to her in the form of a black ram. She said she’d been introduced to this spirit by her grandmother, a wizened crone who lived in a shack on the outskirts of the village.”
“Not by any chance where the shop now stands?” I said, making no effort to disguise my disappointment that, as old wives’ tales went, this one was more of a cliché than most.