We both know why he’s still with me – who else would go chasing after our son, and what about the mortgage? He loves this barn, far more than either of us, but it’s funded up to the hilt, along with his growing business. Get divorced and the house will have to be sold, simply to pay me off. Let alone the business. He can’t afford a divorce. But I can. I push back with my hands.
‘It’s not like you can have children anymore, is it?’ he adds with a snarl, holding me firm.
He doesn’t mean he wants more children. He’s said that because he knows how much it pains me. He went off and had the snip without even telling me, ten years ago.
‘You bastard!’
I twist under his grip, arms hitting up from underneath his. I refuse to be cowed.
‘I hate you, I—’
Something catches my attention. I cast my eyes over his head towards the hall. My eyes widen. It’s Joe. His gaze is fixed on Duncan.
‘Joe …’
Joe spins on his heels and runs from sight.
Horror fills my mind. He must have heard every word. He won’t understand, he’ll take it all literally, he’ll … Duncan sees the change in my expression. He turns round. But he’s too furious or drunk to back down.
‘Go on, boy, run! That’s all you’re good for,’ he shouts. His words are slurred.
‘No, Duncan. Don’t say that. Please …’
His words have finally shocked me into submission. This isn’t Duncan. Not the real Duncan, the man I fell in love with. It can’t be. It’s the alcohol speaking. Suddenly, I’m unsure. I remember him as he was before, dynamic, eager, full of unexpected gestures. Do I really understand him? Why he drinks, why he shouts, why he rejects me like he does. I’ve never wanted it to come to this. Me leaving him. Our lives were never meant to be like this. He’s just pushed me too far.
I drop my voice, clenching my fists in one last attempt to hold it all in and reach him.
‘Don’t hurt him like that, Duncan. I’ve stayed for Joe, it’s true. But I stayed for you too. Don’t you see?’
I feel the heat of his body against mine and I let my eyes soften in one last plea for a reconciliation.
‘Don’t you care for either of us at all?’ My voice drops away.
He turns back to me to look me in the eye. And lets me go.
‘No, Claire, I don’t. Not anymore.’
CHAPTER 52
CLAIRE – BEFORE
I take the stairs to Joe’s room two at a time. I almost fall against the opening of his door, to see him gathering his coat, the metal detector battery pack and what looks like the printout of a map.
‘What are you doing, Joe?’
He looks at me briefly but doesn’t say a word. His eyes are like those of a frightened rabbit, startled and confused by the world. Expecting the worst. He blinks then struggles with his jacket, as ever all arms and legs. He hastily folds the map and stuffs it into one of his pockets.
‘Talk to me, Joe, please. You’re not going out, are you? You can’t go out in this!’
The light outside has turned a dark furry grey. Large flakes of snow are falling like ash from a volcano, furtive and silent. The ground is already turning white.
I block the doorway.
‘Joe, your father’s drunk. He’s angry and upset. He didn’t mean it!’
‘He hates me!’ Joe speaks to me then, words pushed through his lips like stones spat from fruit. ‘He thinks I’m worthless, useless, that I can’t do a thing!’
‘No, Joe. No, he doesn’t think that. He just says stuff he doesn’t mean when he’s upset. People do that.’
I speak the words, but I don’t even believe them myself. Duncan hates us both – he made that very clear. Oh, Joe, Joe, I think, please believe me.
But his eyes don’t meet mine and he pushes past me, launching down the stairs. I look across the room. Those schematics I saw before are on the screen of his PC. I take a step towards them, trying to see what they are. The name ‘Belston Reservoir’ registers before I turn and chase after Joe, catching up with him in the utility room by the back door.
There’s no sign of Duncan. Gone back to his stinking man cave, I think, or throwing up in the downstairs loo. Joe shoves his feet into his trainers and grabs his metal detector. Arthur leaps to his feet, pattering across the tiles towards him. There’s a blast of cold air rushing through the kitchen from the open back door.
‘Joe, where are you doing?’ I lower my voice, sterner, fiercer.
He doesn’t reply. He’s fixing the battery pack on his detector.
‘Joe, please, don’t do this now. I need you at home, I—’
White streaks of snow are swirling through the open door.
‘Gotta go,’ he says.
He’s moved outside. Arthur trots up to him uncertainly, but Joe shoos him away.
‘No, Arthur. Stay!’
His voice is unusually sharp and he’s holding up one hand. Arthur sits down and stands up, then sits down again, giving a soft whine. There’s a puzzled expression on his face. I throw my head back across my shoulder, but there’s still no sign of Duncan. I don’t want another confrontation like last time and I’m torn.
It’s too late. Joe has run out onto the drive.
I plunge from the back door after him, barefoot on the gravel.
‘Joe!’ I scream.
He’s already reached the top gate and I’m only halfway across the gravel. The grit stabs like thorns under my feet and the cold is numbing on my flesh.
‘Joe, no! Wait! Come back! Joe!’
My voice disappears unanswered on the wind.
CHAPTER 53
CLAIRE – AFTER
I take Arthur for a walk. It’s a new day but my nerves are still shot to pieces from my visit to the Hall and I can’t face walking through the village. So I take the car and drive down to the water instead. The paths have been flooded on and off, but this morning they are clear and the valley is bright with frost with a beauty that’s crisp and innocent.
Behind me, Arthur snuffles along the shore. I hear his soft breath and the water supping at our feet, and the sad, guttering cry of a cormorant. Arthur picks up speed, racing in and out of the water despite his gammy leg. Like a small child on the beach, he’s excited to feel the waves against his feet yet too wary to plunge right in. It’s not just the cold, he’s always been a funny dog that way, curious yet nervous too when we’re out and about. I think that’s why he and Joe connected. Duncan said it was because Arthur had had a bad start in life. I don’t know the details, he never told me, but I know that he came to us healthy, albeit an unusually quiet and subdued puppy.
I look out towards the distance. On the far shore, a stray heron drags itself into flight. Its looped silver neck and skinny legs hang from its body like a stork making off with a baby. The huge wings beat up and down and it slowly gains height. Then it crash-lands into a tree. The wings fold, its legs and neck too, until it disappears into the foliage. All that can be seen is its bright yellow bill, long and shaped like a butcher’s knife. And black eyes, glittering as they scan for prey in the water.
When Joe was little, we’d hike the trails of the Peak District, Joe strapped to a carrier on Duncan’s back. There’s nothing better than climbing to the top of windswept crags overlooking vast horizons. Derbyshire is full of dramatic landscapes, from the epic wall of rock that is Stanage Edge, to the stepping stones of Dovedale, names that conjured sleeping giants and prehistoric monsters – Thorpe Cloud, Mam Tor – the mother hill or shivering mountain.
When he was older, Joe’s favourite place was Stanton Moor. It’s a gritstone plateau overlooking half the county. From a distance, it’s like a stone goblet held up to catch the rain. At the top, there’s a series of sandstone pillars punctuating a wide sea of purple heather. Joe would climb them until we decided that was probably not a very good idea, that if he wasn’t careful, he would damage them. Surprisingly, he was okay with that. He cared about nature – mineral or animal.
Joe particularly liked the stone circle. It stands at the far end of the plateau, sheltering under a copse of silver birches. It’s known as the Nine Ladies, turned to stone for dancing on a Sunday. This was a place trapped in time, where people came to celebrate the old beliefs, in defiance of modern science, Church or State. The wind blows on loose strips of bark hanging from the tree trunks, tangling with the tattered ribbons of pagan tributes fluttering from their branches. Paganism has always been alive and well, here in the heart of Derbyshire.
I’ve never quite understood what ‘pagan’ meant. But I know it has nothing to do with the cliché stories of films and books, wild sacrificial dances and plots to raise the Devil or the dead. There are people I know who are really funny about pagans, as if they’re all in league with the bastions of hell.
We had friends once who invited us to celebrate the winter solstice. They’d hired a tiny one-roomed eighteenth-century village hall about twenty minutes’ drive from our barn. It was a typical Derbyshire gritstone building, with stone mullioned windows and square leaded casements. Candles had been placed in every nook and cranny, with more crammed onto the mantelpiece. The fire was lit and the flames flickered against polished floorboards and whitewashed walls. The whole building had been decked out with flowers and winter greenery as if for a wedding.
It was an evening I will never forget, faces glowing with the warmth of innocence and wonder, an eloquent celebration of nature and her union with man. There were songs and good wishes, shared food: the friendship of strangers bonded by a common belief. It was a far cry from the cliché spooks and spells of the cheap tourist shops in Matlock Bath dedicated to witchcraft: hoodoo, voodoo, tat and tell as Duncan used to call it.
He’s never been very patient with the superstitious type, those people who leaned towards the mystic and unfathomable, who thought that spirits lived on in the shape of animals and plants. One of the guests had a wand. A magic wand, he claimed, made of ash. The wood supposedly had special protective properties. He told us how St Patrick himself had banished snakes from Ireland with a stick of ash. ‘St Patrick?’ said Duncan, speaking to me under his breath. ‘What’s a Christian saint got to do with paganism?’ He laughed at them then and I didn’t like it. But Duncan is no more patient with formal religion, the outdated language and patriarchy of the Church. He hates the rules and rituals of faith.
‘It’s a con,’ he said. ‘The lot of it. Doesn’t matter which faith or church. They’re money-making machines. Look at all that land and property they hang onto.’
‘It’s more than that,’ I said. ‘It’s history and faith. Think of the Reformation and their desire to bring the Bible to the masses – they rebelled against the Church’s wealth.’
He wasn’t having it.
‘What about those weird sects?’ he said. ‘No, it’s not just the weird sects, it’s all of them, in their different ways, selling forgiveness and confession. Like the pardoners in the Middle Ages. They want to count pennies, not souls.’
Pardoners – he meant as in The Pardoner’s Tale, Chaucer’s story of hypocrisy and greed, a tale of three thieves who separately plot to murder each other behind their backs. They only succeeded in fulfilling their own prophecy of finding Death.
‘That’s not quite fair,’ I said. ‘I think for those who find comfort in these things …’
I shrugged. The pardoner was meant as a character of irony, not faith.
There was no arguing with Duncan; he was so adamant he was right. The power of science and logic over blind mysticism, that’s how he saw it. I was annoyed with him that night. I wanted to absorb the pagan welcome and relax and enjoy myself, not judge those who’d been kind enough to invite us. I think we all of us need a little magic in our lives.
Then we found the witch marks in the Barn. One of the builders pointed them out. Concentric circles and daisy wheels etched into the old beams. Like the ones at my rented cottage and the Hall. Once we’d found the first one, they kept turning up everywhere. Then we discovered something else buried behind a wall. It looked like a piece of cloth, an old heart-shaped scrap of leather wrapped around an object. Duncan slowly unfolded each half and inside was a bottle. It was made of brown stoneware with a bearded man carved on its neck. It might have held liquid once, judging by the stains. Inside rattled a collection of iron pins, human hair and something else – I wasn’t sure what it was. Only later did we find out. Whole human fingernails.
It was a witch bottle, apparently, created either to cast or defend against a spell. It had been carefully hidden all those years, probably to protect the Barn. And we’d uncovered it, removed it. Released the Barn from its spell. Who knows what that meant. What we’d done.
No one listened to me when I said we should have left it there, buried in the wall.
CHAPTER 54
CLAIRE – BEFORE
He’s gone. Gone from the house without even taking Arthur. He always takes Arthur. And those schematics – I feel horror like a pool of blood in my mouth. I think I know where Joe has gone.
I burst into the kitchen calling for Duncan. Arthur’s on his feet, whining. He doesn’t understand. He stands in the doorway wanting to run after Joe, but he can see my distress. He backs away from the door, tail between his legs, and whines some more. He looks like the small, frightened puppy he once was when he first came to live with us.
Duncan exits the cloakroom. He hears and sees me straight away and he stands upright, taller, straighter, like he’s suddenly sobering up.
‘What’s wrong?’ he says.
He has been sick. Maybe he feels better now, not that I feel one iota of sympathy for him. I don’t reply. It’s all too much and to my shame, tears are welling on my face.
‘Crying, Claire? Bit too late for that!’
There he is. Old Duncan. He’s back again.
‘You fool!’ I yell at him ‘He’s gone to the tunnels! What have you done? He must have heard every word and now he thinks you hate him, that you despise him.’
‘Good!’ says Duncan. ‘Perhaps that’ll be his wake-up call to sort himself out and get a job! What do you mean, gone to the tunnels?’
He frowns at me. His brain still isn’t quite there.
‘He’s been searching for a hoard. Thinks he’s found one. This is Joe, our son, Duncan. If he’s gone in there, you have to go after him!’
I don’t ask him if he cares. He’s already answered that one. He does care, doesn’t he? I think of that moment when he let Joe take the axe when he was little. He must do, he’s Joe’s father. In his clumsy, patriarchal, stupidly blind kind of way.
‘I don’t know why on earth you think he’s gone there. And I can’t go after him now, I should be at work.’ Staccato words, monosyllabic. Then, after an imperceptible pause, he says, ‘If he’s gone off metal detecting again, he’ll be back once he’s calmed down.’
He’s the voice of masculine reason. Rational Duncan, crazy Claire. We’ve played that game before.
‘No, you don’t understand,’ I say, lowering my voice. ‘We need to call Martin and the police.’ I’m almost out of breath.
‘I think that’s an overreaction, Claire, and it won’t help.’ Duncan still isn’t taking me seriously. ‘He won’t go anywhere near those tunnels, why would he? And he’s eighteen now. He’s gone off so many times, the police won’t take a blind bit of interest. Martin has helped us out enough. Joe has to grow up. He’s upset, sure, but he’ll come back.’
‘You don’t understand! He’s left Arthur behind. He wouldn’t do that if he was just metal detecting like he normally does. Those tunnels are lethal if you don’t know what you’re doing!’
I have an image of Joe out there on his own, wading through rising water with no Arthur to keep him warm and safe or bring him home. Knowing Arthur is with him is the one thing that’s always kept my anxiety at bay.
‘Joe has no reason to go in those tunnels. He doesn’t know anything about them. He’s gone off like he always d
oes. You know he has to let off steam. He’ll dig around for a bit then go into town to one of his mates and crash out somewhere. Try his phone after an hour or so. Send him a text. You know he’ll be back when he’s ready, especially in this weather. And you can give him a bollocking then.’ There’s a bitterness to his tone.
I swallow. The knot in my stomach tightens.
I take a deep breath. This is Joe – I can’t let how I feel about Duncan and my plans to leave cloud my judgement. Suddenly, I know that I have to tell Duncan about the puppetrider coin, even though I promised Joe I would not.
I press my eyes shut and debate it briefly in my head. Courage, I need all my courage now. We’ve not spoken of this for more than twenty-two years. But it’s always been there between us.
‘He found it.’ The words slip out and the air snatches from my throat. ‘The coin we used to mark the grave.’ I feel a cold sweat blister on my skin. I wait for Duncan to take it in.
There’s silence. A long silence. And then it sinks in.
‘I know he knows about the tunnels,’ I say, ‘because I saw a plan of them on his computer. He thinks there is a hoard, coins washing down from the old works. I think he’s gone to find it, to prove himself to you. He’ll find her, Duncan, never mind the danger.’
Duncan stares at me.
‘You can’t let that happen,’ I say. ‘You can’t let him go down there.’
His face is shuttered and pale.
‘I’ll find him, Claire. I’ll stop him. I promise you, whatever it takes.’
His voice is so perfectly calm and reasonable. And yet there’s something else. In the cold timbre of his voice.
I feel my brief courage slide into fear.
CHAPTER 55
DUNCAN – AFTER
The generators grumbled across the driveway, a physical throbbing that went right through Duncan’s body. Martin was completely still, watching his friend in silence.
The House of Secrets Page 22