Mud Pie

by Emma Lee Bole

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Cat and Fiddle

  Frank’s arms were full of wallpaper. He stood on my doorstep with the rolls sticking out on every side like clumsy, homemade armour.

  “Sue sent me,” he said.

  “Of course she did.” I made him a mug of tea, complimented Sue’s good taste in off-white parchment, and blithely left him to it. Sue’s plans were nothing to me. It was a new day. Jogging up to the Woolpack in the bright, icy sunshine, I whistled as I got down to work. I didn’t swear when a trout dived wetly onto my foot; just tut-tutted mildly as I rinsed it under the tap. The local trout were an innovation that Rhoda had grudgingly allowed. She looked up suspiciously as I hummed over the pans.

  “You’re very cheerful.”

  “It’s spring coming,” I said, although the blue sky was the legacy of a hard frost.

  “Spring was coming yesterday.”

  “I’ve moved on since then,” I said.

  Rhoda sounded cautious. “Lannie? Do you mean you’re thinking of moving on?”

  “I expect so,” I said easily. “I might go up to Scotland. Fort William way. Sue wants to sell the house as soon as possible. Frank’s round there now papering the living-room.” I didn’t care.

  “So,” said Rhoda thoughtfully. “Has he got rid of that bloody motorbike yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You should see to it. Be firm with him. Make sure he throws it out.”

  “It’s none of my business.”

  “No?” She studied me. “Did Frank ever tell you the story about Dean?”

  “Briefly.”

  “It’s a terrible road, that Cat and Fiddle. A motorcyclists’ graveyard,” said Rhoda, shaking her head.

  “M-hm,” I said, busy with trout. I didn’t want to hear the story again: Frank’s past had nothing to do with me, but she was determined to tell me with or without encouragement.

  “Frank wouldn’t talk about it,” she said. “I had the full story from one of the other lads, Chris. There were four of them out on the Bank Holiday Monday, coming back from Buxton. They’d just come over the top past the pub, when they got cut up on one of those dreadful hairpin bends by a car coming the other way.”

  She sighed heavily and stirred the risotto. “Chris said it all happened so fast he couldn’t think. He was kept busy just trying to get the bike under control. When he finally managed it and looked back, there was Dean draped along the crash barrier, with his bike about fifty yards further down the road. Helmet off. His arms flung out, like he was appealing for something.” She demonstrated with the wooden spoon.

  Drawn in despite myself, I stared at her, appalled. “Dead?”

  “Oh, aye. Chris said he knew straight away. Him and Brett were in a right panic, screaming at the car driver. Frank didn’t scream. He gave Dean mouth to mouth until the ambulance arrived, but it was no use. He was officially dead on arrival at hospital. Frank went with him. Holding hands with a dead man. Imagine.”

  Rhoda began to ladle sticky dollops of risotto on to plates. “They were only young lads, probably going too fast for that road. The driver never got charged. And Frank retreated into himself. He stopped talking.” She paused, mid-ladle. “No, he still talked, he just didn’t say anything. Only his lips moving, nothing behind them. I suppose he’d get bloody counselling these days. Fat lot of use that is.” It sounded like she spoke from experience.

  “Rhoda, why are you telling me all this?”

  “I thought you might be interested.”

  “What, so I’ll make him get rid of the motorbike?”

  “It’s symptomatic,” she said. “Dean’s dad was all for taking it down the tip. He couldn’t bear to touch it. Well, you can understand that, can’t you?” She shook her head forebodingly. “If you ask me, Frank’ll still have it when he’s an old man. But you could help him. You’ve been through the same thing with Becki, after all.”

  “Been through what?”

  “Well, seeing a friend die. You know.”

  “I didn’t see Becki die.” I was beginning to tense up, and I didn’t want to, not in my new carefree mood. “And she was his friend too. It’s not the same thing at all.”

  “It’s not that different. You should talk to Frank.” She waved the ladle at me. “Get him to talk to you. Sort him out.”

  “Why does he need sorting out? He seems okay to me,” I said, “mostly. Anyway, it’s not my job. It’s Sue’s.”

  “Is it now?” said Rhoda tartly. “And what do you think of Sue?”

  “Well…” I floundered, unprepared. “She’s very…sensible. I’m sure she’s very good for Frank.”

  “Oh, yes. That’s what she says.”

  “Frank’s a free agent. It’s none of my business,” I said determinedly, and turned to the salad. Rhoda started to speak, then compressed her lips and carried the plates out to the bar.

  I pushed away Frank and his motorbike. I didn’t want them spoiling my good humour. I wanted to shrug off all the blood and death and walk away light-hearted. Frank had Sue. He didn’t need me, and I certainly didn’t need him: I’d just proved that, with KK’s help. But KK was just a temporary, very pleasant fling. I was free to stay, free to go, free to brush off the mud and head out of here whenever I chose.

  So when Alice and Katy ran into the kitchen in their nighties demanding supper, I didn’t give them my mad chef’s glare but benignly fetched the broken meringue out of the fridge and watched them gorge themselves, every slice of the spoon scatter-gunning the kitchen with white pellets. Katy ran to pick them off the floor and pop them in her mouth.

  “Mum’ll get mad,” said Alice reprovingly.

  “The floor’s quite clean,” I said. It was clean enough for those two, anyway.

  “She shouted when I ate the toffee pudding off the floor,” said Katy.

  “She was shouting at that lady, not at you,” said Alice with contempt. “You know, the one who stuck her tongue out.”

  “How very rude,” I said.

  “It’s only rude for grown-ups,” said Katy. She stuck her tongue out at me to prove it.

  “Anyway, Dad told her off,” said Alice.

  “Told who off?” I asked.

  “That stupid lady with the ponytail. Dad said never to come back here or he’d make sure she never worked again.”

  “Waked up again,” corrected Katy.

  “It’s not waked, it’s woke up. Anyway, you don’t remember, stupid, you were only five.”

  “How long ago was this?” I asked.

  “Ages ago. Just after Bonfire Night.”

  “I do remember!” cried Katy. “Arthur’s dog tried to bite me.”

  “It was trying to bite Dad,” said Alice wearily. “Mum had to pull it off and the lady was screaming.”

  “Why was she screaming?” I asked.

  “Because of the dog, stupid.”

  “Arthur called me a mucky pup,” remembered Katy.

  “You are a mucky pup,” said Alice with contempt.

  “I’m not. I’ll tell Mum you’re being mean,” said Katy. Alice threw a piece of meringue at her, and Katy screamed like a train whistle. The joy of their company palling, I threw them both out of the kitchen and went outside to the car park.

  So Becki had come round to taunt Rhoda. Or scream at Brendan. Or something. I didn’t care. It was nothing to do with me. I was free, and the moon was up. Moonrise over Manchester meant a glimpse of a dirty plate on a dull brown cloth. Moonrise over Brocklow was a white blaze, ghostly and intense, that made the hills luminesce and the ground glitter extravagantly. Everything was fine. I perched on a wall sugared with frost to ring Charlotte.

  “Howdy-doody. What’s new?”

  “Same old stuff,” said Charlotte.

  “Business picking up?”

  “A bit.”

  “Spring will help,” I said. “Hot cross buns.”

  “They’re cheaper from Tesco.”

  “Yours are better,” I said con
fidently. “Give out free samples. I’ll wear a hot cross bun board for you.”

  “I might hold you to that.”

  “Don’t worry, Charlie, it’ll get better.”

  “It’ll have to!”

  “It will. Nothing lasts for ever. How’s Hugh?”

  “Doldrumy,” said Charlotte. “He’s still not himself. Even Daddy’s noticed. I think Hugh’s depressed.” She didn’t sound too great herself.

  In my new-found chirpiness, I had no patience for depression. “It’s hard. But he’s just got to try and put it behind him.”

  “I know that, Lannie. He knows that. It’s easier said than done. Though you seem to have managed it all right, haven’t you?”

  Her voice was acerbic, for Charlotte. So after I’d rung off, I phoned Hugh and dispensed sympathy and goodwill onto his answerphone, promising him undying affection and a free pudding if he should ever bring Tamara into the Woolpack. I even described, rather flamboyantly, the full moon sailing over the pub roof, as if that would induce him to immediately leap in his car and drive down.

  But the milky purity of the moonlight made me happy. So did the yellow warmth of the pub kitchen, and the number of orders for trout that evening, which impressed Rhoda and relieved Brendan.

  “We’re doing well on the food lately,” he told me as he drove me home after closing time. “Meals are up by almost half on this time last year. That’s your doing, Lannie. Word’s getting around.”

  “Maybe,” I said modestly, although I knew damn well it was my doing. When I left, I would leave the pub in good order. Charlotte would be proud of me.

  As Brendan drove away, I paused, key in the door, to admire the moonlight which had transfigured the street with a gleaming Gothic makeover. White greasepaint was plastered on the black houses. The hills were wound in sequinned veils of net, which here and there had caught the clustered ghosts of sheep. Moondance began to play inside my head. I did a skip to it across the pavement, accompanied by my black moonshadow, a midnight imp that mimicked every step and twirled around the lamp-post, Gene Kelly-style. Dancing in the moonlight.

  And then, as I scampered with my shadow back to Nan’s door, a piece of night nosed round the corner of the houses, a black shark disguised as a car cruising slowly down the silvered road; long, and smooth, and almost silent.

  I didn’t wait. I knew. I let myself slickly into the house as if I’d noticed nothing. I locked and bolted the door behind me with fumbling fingers. I switched on the parlour light – rolls of paper still on the floor, a smell of paste – and closed the curtains with two big, hasty strokes. Then I went quietly into the kitchen and straight out the back door, pulling it gently to behind me.

  Accompanied by my moonshadow, I silently crossed the yard. There was a loud bang on the front door. A whole barrage of bangs, shaking the house. But I was already over the back wall and scrambling up the tussocky slope.

  At first I was glad I was wearing my black Oxfam coat and funeral trousers. I stopped being glad when I realised the frosty grass wasn’t nearly as black as I was. I would have been better in grey. I was a huge inky splotch on the landscape, the negative of the baffled sheep.

  At a clatter down behind me, I threw myself onto the grass. Brittle and crusted, it crunched beneath me. Three doors down from Nan, I saw a piece of malignant shadow separate itself from the harmless shade of the ginnel and became a man, climbing over the wall into Nan’s yard. A tall man, and agile.

  I watched him bang on the back door. He paused a moment, put his shoulder to it, and was in. Either I hadn’t closed it properly, or the dodgy catch had given way.

  Jumping up again, I began to leap and scramble up the hillside, feeling as exposed as a trout on a grill, burnt black under the searing moon. When I paused, crouching, to glance over my shoulder I saw an upstairs light go on; then off. In a minute he would be after me.

  He? Or they? Was he alone? Another pursuer could be after me right now. I whirled around and galloped clumsily on, terrified by the deafening crunch of my feet and rustling coat and too-loud breathing. I hit a dark clump of gorse and scratched my way behind it before I dared look down again. To my horror, I saw that my footprints laid a clear black trail across the frost.

  And there he was again, the long shadow sneaking out of Nan’s house into the muddy shade of the yard, heading for the back wall with my beautifully laid trail shouting at him to come and get me, here I was.

  I set off scrambling further up the receding slope until it took me out of sight of the house. Remembering a long stone outcrop over to my right, I made for it in the hope that it might disguise my footprints at least.

  It did; but my moonshadow leapt up at me from the rock, even blacker than before, until I jumped off into the heather, aching all over, throat rasping but too terrified to stop running. I didn’t think I could keep up the pace much longer.

  I was sure I heard him behind me now. As the ground levelled out on the top of Brocklow I galumphed over the tussocks, tripping and stumbling, arms out as if I were trying to fly.

  Now I cursed the moon. It made the landscape into a giant, nightmarish, monochrome, still photo, with me as a moving flaw right in its middle. A photo with sound effects: small, close scufflings suddenly conjured rocks into sheep that jumped up, baaing protests as they bobbed away.

  Alison’s Australia. I knew now what she meant. This place was haunted too, not by sheep or rocks or even moonlight, but by itself. The moor held me like a fly in a silvered web, and the more I floundered, the more I felt myself winding in its trap. My feet slipped suddenly off a tussock and sent me sprawling on the ground. As I fell, I glimpsed him again, a silhouette on my horizon, bowed and running.

  Now I was flat on the earth I couldn’t see him any more. Therefore he couldn’t see me: yet. So I crawled. I slithered between clumps of heather like an out-of-season adder, only noisier, until I found myself abruptly, helplessly sliding face down into a trough of soggy peat.

  I let myself slide. Not much choice. I rolled into the trough, two feet deep, and then pushed myself back into its overhang, hugging the earth’s curved, sweaty sides. I pressed my face passionately against the peat so that I would not see him coming. I begged the moon’s forgiveness for my curses and the earth’s for my clumsiness, and prayed for them to hold me tight and hidden.

  I tried to hold my breath. Above the banging of my heart I heard a single shout. I couldn’t tell what it was. “Lannie”? Or was it “Herron”? Or even “Hell”? It sounded crazed, inhuman.

  Immobile in my bed, I lay nose to nose and toe to toe with mud. The peat vibrated as something tore through the heather directly above me. Judders rocked my head and sent trickles of earth down my back. As the thuds moved away across the trench, I guessed that I had just been jumped over.

  “Lannie Herron!” I couldn’t tell if it was the same voice. It was harsh and cracking, rough with effort. Someone hacked and spat, and then went quiet.

  I lay listening. Nothing. Was he standing right above me, waiting for me to pop out of my hole like an unwary rabbit? Well, he could wait. No matter that he knew my name. I didn’t know who he was, except that he was big, and fit, and wanted to kill me.

  So I stayed where I was. The earth wasn’t frozen enough for comfort: water leached gently from it, sending cold inquisitive fingers through my clothing. I felt the wetness creep up my cuffs and down my collar and straight through my trousers. It seeped into my hair. At last it infiltrated my coat, and I began to shiver. I couldn’t control it. I couldn’t lie still.

  I made myself count. Ten minutes. Five more. Moondance had been replaced inside my head by Muddy Water Blues, on a long, dismal loop. At last I couldn’t stand it any longer. I would have to move or die of exposure where I lay.

  So I relaxed and let myself roll backwards into a slough of mud. Sitting up, I swore without thinking, then ducked and cursed my stupidity, silently this time. I poked my head up over the grassy parapet half inch by half inch, to make sure no one w
as visible.

  Then, seeing no-one, I unstuck myself from the trough and sat on its edge, head dangling, shivering and spent. I couldn’t go home to Nan’s house: that was clear.

  I fumbled in my pocket with numb fingers. Apart from my key, I had £3.50, a safety pin, the well-worn end of a packet of Polos and my phone. I wondered who to ring. It was quarter to one. I had not many numbers to choose from: the Woolpack, Charlotte, Hugh and Grimshaw.

  Grimshaw was the obvious one. I wondered what to say to him. I’m half way up a mountain, come and fetch me down? And how would I prove anyone had been after me? Attention-seeking again, dragging the police out in the middle of the night, when I wasn’t even hurt, or lost.

  Just a bit cold and wet. And bloody terrified.

  I switched the phone on anyway. There was no signal.

  “Come on Lannie,” I told myself, “Best get moving. Lovely night for a walk.”

  No way was I going back down to Brocklow or even to the pub, not with that black shark of a car waiting for me. I imagined it slowly cruising the road below, looping and back-tracking. So I stood up in the fierce pale floodlight, and began to walk away from Brocklow, across the barren, moon-bleached moors.