Kitabı oxu: «The Lost Guide to Life and Love»

Chapter Three

It had rained all the way up the A1. Grey roads, grey traffic, the constant spray from lorries. The further north we headed, the worse it seemed to get. I had long since lapsed into silence. Jake was concentrating hard on the road ahead as he peered past the windscreen wipers into the gloom ahead.

‘Shall I drive for a while?’ I offered.

‘Might be an idea,’ he said, ‘I could do with a break. Look, there’re some services soon. We’ll stop and get a coffee. Give the rain a chance to stop.’

The service station didn’t look promising. The only free space was at the far end of the car park and we had to run through the rain, dodging the puddles and then into a world of flashing video games and the smell of chips. We bought some papers and some coffees and sat down at the only table that wasn’t piled high with heaps of dirty, greasy plates.

The coffee was only just drinkable, but at least it was good to be away from the constant whoosh of the windscreen wipers. I leant back, stretched my legs and flipped vaguely though the heap of papers. Suddenly, I sat bolt upright.

‘That’s her!’ I said. ‘The girl from the club!’

‘What girl?’ asked Jake, puzzled, as I twisted the paper round to show him.

‘ “Supermodel sensation, Foxy, has hunted herself down a very tasty new contract”,’ Jake read. ‘“The stunning redhead, who has taken the fashion world by storm since her first appearance on the catwalks at London Fashion Week two years ago, has signed up to be the new face of Virgo cosmetics in one of the company’s biggest ever deals. No chicken feed for fabulous Foxy!” Was she at the club? I don’t remember seeing here. And’—he looked back at the page—‘I’m sure I would have…’

‘No. She left in rather a hurry,’ I said. And told him the story of how she had jumped out of the window and down into the street.

I expected Jake to laugh. Instead he was furious. ‘Why didn’t you tell me this?’ he asked so fiercely that the family at the next table paused in the middle of chomping through giant burgers, nudged each other and stared at us.

‘Because the princes arrived, and everyone was buzzing round them,’ I said, astonished at his reaction. ‘It just put it out of my mind. Sorry. I didn’t think you’d be so interested.’

‘Of course I’m interested.’ He looked at me as though he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘A top model jumps from a toilet window in a club full of Premiership footballers and royal princes. Don’t you think that’s just a little bit interesting?’

‘Well, yes, of course it is. But so was everything else that was going on. I just didn’t think…I mean, I just don’t understand why you care so much. What are you doing? It’s not the sort of story you normally do. I thought you were writing about dodgy millionaires. Or are you selling celebrity stories now? What’s happened to your famous principles?’

That was, I know, a bitchy thing to say. And I regretted it immediately. But too late.

Jake stood up. Very quietly, deliberately, he gathered all the papers, left his half-drunk coffee and walked out. I picked up my bag and ran after him. ‘Shall I drive now?’ I asked when we got to the car. But he just glared at me and got in the driving seat. We drove on in the rain and silence.

He was frowning, but I don’t know whether that was because of the weather or because of me. I never seemed to measure up to Jake’s standards. Even back at journalism college, where he was the star of the course. I always thought he would team up with one of the very bright, scary girls, like the Staveley twins, Felicity and Arabella, who were heading straight into television or national newspapers. But they all went their own ways and somehow it was just Jake and me and it seemed fine, even if I went into food writing, which for Jake didn’t count as proper journalism.

Jake practically lives at my place, but he still keeps his old bedsit, a few miles away, where the cupboards are full of his neatly labelled files and a few basic clothes hang on a hook at the back of the door.

As we headed north, I could feel the silence between us, and wondered why he was suddenly so concerned about models and footballers. But somehow I didn’t think he was going to tell me. He didn’t tell me much any more.

We left the motorway and turned onto a road that led through small towns, then large villages, then small villages, then just about nothing at all. The rain had finally stopped, which was just as well, as we seemed to be climbing higher and the road was little more than a single lane as we kept tucking into hedges to let cars and tractors pass. Soon there weren’t even hedges, or many trees, just a few scrubby bushes, bent from the wind, and dry-stone walls. And no more villages, just occasional houses spread out over a vast, empty moorland, dotted with sheep.

‘Where now?’ asked Jake. It was the first thing he’d said for an hour.

I scrabbled in my bag for directions. ‘We come to a place called Hartstone and, just past the pub—that’s good, it’s got a pub—and the old chapel, there’s a track marked “High Hartstone only”. We turn up there and in about a mile there’s a farmhouse and that’s where we go to collect the key.’

The narrow road suddenly rose so steeply that it was almost perpendicular. Then, as Jake steered carefully past a large jutting boulder and rounded another bend, I gasped. ‘We’re on top of the world!’

After all that climbing, we were now on a plateau. To left and right the moors stretched out for miles. Ahead was a small group of buildings and beyond that the road tumbled down and we could see another valley, a stony blur of blues and greens and greys stretching out into a hazy purple distance.

Never before had I had such a feeling of space and distance. I don’t think I’d ever been in such an empty space. Bit of a shock for a city girl. Even Jake in his foul mood looked momentarily impressed, and slowed the car to take in the vastness of the view. Then we drove past the pub, grey and solid and hunched against the weather, saw the old chapel, which now seemed to be an outdoor pursuits centre. Or had been. It was boarded up and looked sad. Apart from that there was only a handful of houses. Where were the people who came to the pub? Where were the people who had come to the chapel? Were there even any people up here?

I spotted the ‘High Hartstone only’ sign and we turned and bumped off up the track, which twisted across the vast open space of the moor. It seemed a long mile.

Suddenly we could see a small collection of buildings, dropped down at the base of another high hill that seemed to soar right up to the sky. The road led straight into a farmyard and stopped. That was the end of it. Literally the end of the road.

‘Is this it?’ asked Jake.

‘I suppose so,’ I said, having no idea. With that a woman emerged from one of the barns across the yard. She was tall, striking, with a heavy plait of greying auburn hair and, although dressed in jeans, wellies and an ancient battered waterproof, moved with a casual sort of elegance. I’d never seen anyone quite like her before.

Jake sat in the car, arms folded and a deliberately blank expression on his face as if to say that this was nothing to do with him. So I got out of the car, stiff from the journey, and walked towards her. She would have been intimidating, if she hadn’t been smiling in welcome. ‘Mrs Alderson?’ I asked tentatively.

‘Hello there!’ she said cheerfully. ‘You must be Miss Flint and’ she glanced towards the car, ‘Mr Shaw?’

‘That’s us,’ I said, relieved, thinking how nice it was to hear a friendly voice after the hours of silence in the car. She had deep dark blue eyes and the most amazing skin, and her wrinkles were definitely laughter lines. Tucked into the neck of her jumper was a vivid jade scarf that lit up her face and contrasted sharply with the dingy mud of her jacket.

‘Good journey? Found us all right?’

‘Yes, fine, thank you. Excellent directions,’ I said, extra brightly to make up for Jake’s silence. She gave us both a quick look and I swear she knew that we’d had a row en route. But she just smiled again. ‘That’s the cottage up there,’ she said, pointing up the hillside behind the farm.

In the middle of its vast steep expanse of fellside, I could see a solitary grey stone house built into a hollow. It must have been half a mile from the farm and the only building for miles, apart from a few tumbledown cottages and some abandoned stone barns, with high, dark doorways. It was a weird, empty landscape. What’s more, there seemed to be no road up to it. I began to wonder just what I’d booked.

‘You’ll have to back out of the yard and follow the track through the stream. Don’t try and get over the bridge. It’s built for horses and pedestrians, not cars. The key’s in the door. I’ve put the heating on and I think everything’s self-explanatory. But if not, just pop down and we’ll put you right. Anything you need, just ask. If I’m not here, I’m not far.’

I thanked her and we got back into the car and Jake manoeuvred it out and along the track.

‘A bloody ford!’ he muttered. ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t rain much more or we’ll be washed away. You couldn’t have chosen anything further away if you’d tried.’

‘But Simeon Maynard’s grouse moor is just over there,’ I waved vaguely, ‘That’s why I chose it. Only a mile or so as the crow flies.’

‘I am not a bloody crow,’ said Jake through gritted teeth as we splashed and bumped through the ford, past the narrow packhorse bridge.

The stream…the ford…the packhorse bridge…

My mother’s voice echoed in my ears. This must have been where she came with her mother, my grandmother. This must be where part of her family—my family—had come from. So I wasn’t coming somewhere new and strange. I was coming home. What a thought. My ancestors had lived and worked in this strange, empty landscape. I tried to get my head round it and felt quite ridiculously excited.

Unlike Jake. ‘This track is going to do nothing for the suspension of the car. We’ll be lucky if the exhaust doesn’t drop off before the end of the week,’ he grumbled as he pulled up alongside the cottage.

We sat in the car and stared at it. It wasn’t a pretty house. No roses round the door. No cottage garden. Grey and solid, it was a no-nonsense, take-me-as-you-find-me sort of house, looking down the hill and across the moors. The road was so steep I felt I could drop a stone down the chimney of the farmhouse far below us. We got out of the car into a gust of wind so sudden and strong I thought it would blow us away as we ran indoors, heads down and jackets flapping. I wondered where on earth we’d come to.

But inside the cottage was warm and welcoming. As well as the central heating, there was a wood-burning stove in the small living room, which was cheerful with brightly coloured curtains and rugs and a big squashy sofa. The kitchen was modern farmhouse, lots of terracotta and pine and a stunning view from the window above the sink. On the table was a tray with mugs, a teapot, a fruit cake and a wedge of cheese and a note saying there was milk and a bottle of wine in the fridge.

Relieved that there were at least some elements of civilisation in this wild and windblown place, I dumped my bag on the floor, switched on the kettle and looked at the huge folder of information.

Jake, meanwhile, was stamping round, clutching his mobile and muttering angrily.

‘No signal! No bloody signal!’

‘Try outside,’ I said, calmly, ‘it might work better there.’

But two minutes later he was back. ‘Not even one rotten bar. Absolutely nothing.’

I’d made some tea and was looking through the notes Mrs Alderson had left. ‘It says here that there’s Internet access from the pub.’

Jake looked horrified. ‘From the pub! The pub all that way across the moors? You mean we haven’t got it here?’

‘Nope,’ I said, still reading. ‘Problem with phone lines, or lack of them. Too isolated apparently.’

And that’s when Jake lost it. ‘You mean I’ve got to drive down the track and through that bloody stream to the pub every time I want to check my emails?’ he shouted. ‘That you’ve brought us to a place in the back of bloody beyond, that has no mobile phone signal, no phone and no Internet access and is halfway up a mountain in the middle of a bloody moor in the middle of nowhere? Tilly, I’m meant to be working here. This isn’t a bloody holiday! How can I work without the tools of my trade?’

‘Well, it’s not far to the pub,’ I said soothingly. ‘You can get a mobile signal there too, it says here. Come on,’ I continued, trying to coax him into a better mood. I seemed to have been doing a lot of that lately. ‘Have a cup of tea and some of this fruit cake. It’s really good.’

‘Don’t you understand?’ he yelled in a fury, ‘I can not work here. It is utterly impractical. Out of the question. We can’t stay here. End of. Put your bag back in the car. We’ll have to find somewhere else. Maybe the pub for tonight until we find something else. Come on.’ And he walked out of the warm, welcoming kitchen and back to the car.

I started to follow him and stopped. As he stood by the car waiting for me, his jacket billowing out in the wind, I thought about how tricky things had been with Jake. I thought how he seemed to have changed lately. I thought about how I seemed to spend so much of my time trying to please him, keep him happy—and failing. I thought about how we hardly spoke about his work and never ever spoke about mine. I thought about the way we just didn’t seem to fit together any more. I thought about the long silence all the way up the Great North Road. And I wondered if what we had was really worth another row, another few days of tiptoeing round him trying to keep him happy. I thought about that stream and the ford and the packhorse bridge. And without really meaning to, I made a decision.

‘I’m not coming with you,’ I said, my voice shaking only a bit.

Jake looked at me as if I were mad.

‘Come on, Tilly, don’t be stupid. It’s no time to play games. It’s been a long day. I’m tired. We need to find somewhere else to stay.’

‘I’ve got somewhere. I’m staying here,’ I said, very calmly, though I knew as I said it that it was about much more than where we stayed tonight. Or where we stayed for the next two weeks. I knew that—as far as Jake and I were concerned—after two years together, this was a point of no return.

Jake was quieter now, but impatient, exasperated. ‘Look, be realistic. I can’t stay here with no phone reception and no Internet. And you can’t stay here by yourself.’ He looked at me as though I were terminally stupid. Come to think of it, he often did that. And suddenly I’d had enough.

‘Why not?’ I thought of the little packhorse bridge and the stream. My family had lived here. It might be strange, but I had roots here. Already I could almost feel them tugging at me. I wasn’t going to turn round and go before I’d had even a day to explore.

‘Because you’d be on your own and—’

‘Maybe I want to be on my own.’

My words hung in silence. Jake stood and looked at me for a few, long seconds. I stared back. Coolly. Calmly. I hoped he couldn’t hear my heart thudding.

‘Right,’ he said, ‘I’ve got no time to play games with you. If that’s the way you want it, suit yourself.’ And he got into the car, slammed the door and drove angrily down the track.

I watched him go, watched the car twist down the hill, sploosh through the ford, past the farmhouse and the bridge, and then disappear, like a little Dinky Toy along the winding track over the moor, getting ever smaller until he was out of sight, and I was alone. In a little house on the top of a moor, miles from anywhere.

For a moment I wanted to run down the hillside after Jake, saying sorry, sorry, all a mistake. For another moment, I felt desperately sad and abandoned—even though I was the one who had done the abandoning. For yet another moment I was panicking, terrified of being alone miles from anywhere.

But then, while all that was going on, I felt the small stirrings of a strange new feeling. I was so surprised that it took me a moment to work out what it was. Then I realised. It was relief—relief at not having to put up with Jake’s increasingly sour moods, of always having to do things his way, of living with the feeling that I didn’t quite measure up somehow. And there was something else too—a sort of excitement at a sudden sense of freedom.

This was my decision. My choice. I’d taken control. That’s it. Deep breath. I had taken charge of my life. So now what do I do? There was only me to ask, only me to answer and only me to worry about. This took some getting used to. Wonderful but frightening. I tried to think, be practical.

It was late afternoon and already getting dark. I quickly explored the rest of the house. Up a steep narrow staircase was a double bedroom where you could lie in bed and look straight out at the miles of hills. There was a smaller bedroom and a tiny bathroom that looked reassuringly new. I unpacked my bags, which didn’t take long. My few things looked a bit lonely all by themselves in the wardrobe. I drew the bedroom curtains and put all the lights on.

Then I went downstairs, sat on the sofa and wondered what to do next. I looked at the stove. The house was warm enough, but a stove would be cheery, wouldn’t it? A house like this needed a real fire. It should be fairly easy to light. There were even instructions. I’d never been a girl guide, but I reckoned I could light a fire. Of course I could. Buoyed up by new optimism, I had no doubts. Well, not many. I knelt down in front of the stove as if I were praying to it, found matches and a couple of firelighters, handily left on a shelf, followed the instructions carefully. Ow! The first time I let the match burn down and scorched my fingers. But at the second go it was suddenly blazing, flames licking round the sticks. Result! I left the doors open and sat back in the glow to feel the heat. Lighting a fire was very satisfying in a deeply primitive sort of way. I felt quite proud. Already in my new independent life I had achieved something I had never done before.

For the first time I noticed the samplers hanging on the wall above the stove. Framed pieces of needlework, probably done by a child and, by the look of it, many years ago. Age had faded the bright colours of the embroidery, but the tiny, careful stitches were as sharp as ever, the message clear.

‘Tell the truth and shame the Devil,’ it said, firmly. Right. No messing there.

The other sampler was more difficult to read, the reflection of the glass blanking out the message. I looked at it from different angles until in the end I stood with my nose almost on the edge of the frame and suddenly the letters snapped into focus.

‘Carpe diem,’ it said. ‘Seize the day.’

Well, that’s what I’d done, hadn’t I? I had seized the day, well, the moment anyway. To be honest, I wasn’t usually very good at spur-of-the-moment. I always wanted to know whether the day was going to be worth seizing first. And by the time I’d done that, it was often too late. Letting Jake drive off without me was the boldest thing I’d done.

Had I been right to let Jake go? My new-found confidence after the fire-lighting success was beginning to ebb away. Never mind just now, this evening, tonight—what about next week, next month? What was going to happen?

As I drew the sitting-room curtains I could see that outside everywhere was grey and misty. Seriously creepy. My heart thudded in panic. Where were the lights? There were no lights! All my life I have lived with streetlights, advertising lights, car lights, lights from shop windows, petrol stations, tube stations. I don’t do darkness. Don’t think I’ve ever really seen it. There was a glow of murky yellow light from the farmhouse below and, apart from that, nothing. Just a thick, misty, grey silence, smothering the house and miles of moors in all directions, swallowing everything up. Despite the heating and the fire, I shivered. What was I doing?

There was a sudden noise outside. I leapt back from the window, my heart racing. Then laughed at myself, a little shakily. A sheep. Of course it was a sheep—there were hundreds of them outside. I listened carefully and I could hear the sound they made as they tugged the grass up with their teeth and chomped away. Amazing what you can hear in the country. I closed the curtains again carefully, shutting out the mist and the moors, pretending they weren’t even there.

On the deep stone windowsill was a curious collection of objects. A clay pipe, some small ridged blue bottles, a larger green one, two doughnut-shaped circles made of clay, I think, with holes in the middle, a brooch with no pin, a bone comb with no teeth, a Victorian penny…

They were, I supposed, all things that had been found round and about. Small objects lost or thrown away hundreds, maybe even a thousand or more years ago, by people who had lived here. I thought of that huge grey misty emptiness. Hard to imagine that anyone had ever lived here, so remote from anywhere.

Gently picking up the brooch, I wondered who’d worn it and when, who’d bought it for her and why? Who had used the comb or the liquids from the little bottles? They’d lived here, probably surrounded by mist and sheep too. And they’d been my ancestors. Down the years, I felt a small connection with them, whoever they had been. This had been their home. For now, at least, it was mine.

My tummy rumbled. And I remembered that the little box of emergency supplies I’d packed for our supper—cold chicken, cheese, bread, butter, a bottle of wine, was still in the boot of Jake’s car. This definitely wasn’t the place where you could dial up a pizza. Even if the phone worked. I wondered idly where the nearest takeaway was and I remembered something from Mrs Alderson’s notes.

‘Ready meals in freezer. Price list on lid. Settle up at end of stay. Emergency cupboard in back porch. Anything used from this MUST be replaced as soon as possible. Very important. Thank you!’

I looked in the freezer at a neat stack of obviously homemade dishes. Lamb casserole. Lamb stew. Lamb and capers. Lamb curry. I thought of the sheep whose bleat had made me jump. ‘Aha,’ I thought, ‘I know where you’ll end up.’

There were also some pork, beef and chicken meals too. It seemed rude to eat lamb while the creatures were roaming round outside. So I opted for a chicken and herb casserole and bunged it in the microwave. While I was waiting for it to ping, I went to look at the Emergency cupboard in the back porch. Candles, Primus stove and gas cylinders, torches, a couple of lanterns, a tin marked ‘matches’, tins of beans, sardines, corned beef, tuna, soup, a selection of vacuum-packed ready meals, two pairs of wellies, a spade and a snow shovel. Thank goodness it was still only October.

I found the wine in the fridge—thank you, Mrs Alderson—and what with that and the casserole—very good, proper chicken, with parsley and lemon and a touch of thyme, followed by some of the light, crumbly Wensleydale cheese—I had a very nice supper in front of the fire. Being independent, I found, makes you quite hungry. Yes, of course, I still felt a bit nervous, but I was warm and cosy and had already got used to the sound of the sheep.

I thought about Jake. Had I been a bit too hasty? It would be much nicer if he were here with me, beside me on the squashy sofa, watching the flames in the fire…Except we probably wouldn’t be, would we? He’d be working or watching what he wanted on television. I cradled the phone in my hand and looked at Jake’s picture on the screen. Did I really love him? Did I miss him? Had I ever loved him?

The last few weeks had been tricky. Jake had been moody, distracted. When I was talking to him he had hardly been listening to me. His mind was elsewhere. I wondered if he’d found someone else. He had plenty of opportunity with his work.

Maybe he was just fed up with me. I sometimes wondered if we’d only got together because we were the two left behind when everyone else had paired off. Yes it was good, but…We still had separate lives. Or rather he still had a separate life. I gazed into the flames and tried to find answers. There weren’t any there. Not tonight at least. I was suddenly very tired.

After locking the doors and windows—and going round them all again to make sure I had—I went up the stairs, singing loudly as I went. I needed a noise. I didn’t like the silence. I wasn’t used to it. Another thing I’d never known. At home there was always a buzz from the street and from the other flats. You’d hear people going up and down the stairs, the distant murmurings from a television, music or bathroom. I regularly went to sleep with the noise of the drunks rolling home and woke to the sound of traffic. But here there was nothing. Apart from the sheep, all I could hear was my own heartbeat, pounding away more loudly than usual.

I sang louder, wondering what people would think if they saw me. The double bed seemed very big and cold without Jake alongside me. I shivered slightly. ‘Good night’, I said to his photo on the phone, preparing myself for a night of worrying, as outside the mist swirled, the sheep bleated. I was miles from anywhere, with no man, no car, no phone signal, no Internet. Utterly alone.