Next day I aired the guest-house, opening the windows to let the breeze waft through carrying cool green scents of spring and frenetic birdsong. On Sunday, the Pattinsons returned and nodded their approval of my guardianship, as a reward offering me a few more days in the tiny top single.
So I was happy. I woke early on Monday morning hearing the blackbird’s carol and knowing things would work out okay.
I would move to Raven How for Easter, and perhaps borrow Russell’s studio, and go over to the farm where Isaac would welcome me with his slow, crinkly smile. Forget Hunter; he knew nothing. I would paint those hills and learn to do them justice. I would capture Isaac in pigment and water.
Freddie would sell lots of my inspired new paintings. After Easter the Ruskin Hotel would take me on. And the future… well, it unrolled ahead of me, sunlit for a change if inevitably hazy. I had a place again, a part to play in life. I was turning myself back into a proper person.
So I attended to business, like a proper person should. First I did the rounds of my outlets in the Southern Lakes – Tiggywinkles, the Blue Pig and the Hunny Bee – and was only slightly downhearted to learn they’d sold a grand total of four cards in the last week.: three Waterheads and a Tarn Hows. That wouldn’t keep me in beans for long.
But things would pick up. Spring would bring the crowds and their fat wallets. I pulled a large chunk of my remaining savings out of the cashpoint in carefree optimism, and splurged a quarter of it on petrol.
Then I buzzed up to Grasmere like a bluebottle with my painting gear tied precariously on the back of the scooter. Wordsworth’s country was adrift in daffodils now, yellow as shop cake, inviting a host of visitors to gather round them hungrily. The sun threw rose petals across the hillsides and made the young leaves glow like lemons.
I set up on the far side of Grasmere, looking towards Dunmail Raise. There I painted three swift cards and one slower, larger picture on semi-rough, overlaying, sponging out, blotting: and everything I did went well. Not just that I had no technical disasters, no irrevocable bleeding of colours, but I managed to get something and hold it down. The way those clouds shone as if they harboured heaven: the wistful arches of those reaching hillsides.
At half past eleven I packed up, elated, feeling it was not impossible that I might turn myself into an artist at last, produce something of a pause and a “Who’s that?” The scooter loaded, I set off over Red Bank towards Little Langdale and the farm with hope and anticipation tightening in my chest. Now for Isaac.
Rattling through the craggy landscape scattered with the gold of daffodils and sun, I felt my good fortune in living in this famous place, at the centre of a certain cultural universe. The Lakes at that moment seemed as magnificently meaningful as anywhere in England except perhaps Westminster, where to stroll must be to walk into the heart of not just Literature but History and the News.
At last, I felt at home here. For the first time since I’d left prison, crawling like a sick and pallid animal from its hole, the mountains slid into their proper places round me. I fitted: I was welcomed. In Isaac I had found a harbour; in his farm, an ancient haven where I could anchor myself to the world.
I would paint Isaac as rocks and cloud and water. I could do it. I sputtered past Loughrigg Tarn in a sunny haze of confidence, fizzed through Skelwith Bridge, buzzing round the bends; moved out to avoid a sheep grazing on the verge, and drove straight into a car.
I just had time to think “What the-” and then “Oh, shit” as the car loomed up on me. I felt myself swerving frantically. The car hit the bike: the bike hit the wall: I hit both of them and then the ground where I lay thinking, My paintings! and knowing I should get up and check, but being for some reason unable to move. My second-hand helmet was skittering away across the road trailing a broken strap.
Doors slammed. Feet thudded. Voices shouted.
“What the hell do you think you were doing?”
Middle-aged woman, fierce spectacles, angry. I managed to sit up and look at her. But I had no voice.
“What the hell do you think you were doing? You were going way too fast for those bends!” Youngish man, angry with middle-aged woman. I couldn’t work out why. Had she knocked him over too?
“I don’t expect to meet some idiot on a scooter on the wrong side of the road!”
“Sheep,” I said. I turned my head. The sheep was fine.
“Are you all right?” the young man asked, bending down to me. “Are you hurt? Do you want me to call the police?”
Fierce woman began to expostulate. I shook my head emphatically. “No. No police. I’m fine. Really.” To prove it, I got to my feet, although my legs didn’t want to obey. They just wanted to sit there. I leant against the wall. “I’m fine,” I repeated.
“Bloody hell!” said the woman, inspecting her bumper.
“You should think yourself lucky,” said the young man. I wasn’t sure who he was talking to. “Can I ring someone? Or give you a lift?”
“No.” I tried to gather my thoughts. “I’m not going far. I’m nearly there.” The bike looked okay. So did the box. The portfolio was bent, but not excessively. I went and picked up my helmet, to prove I could walk, although my legs still didn’t want anything to do with the matter. I had to lean against the wall again before they handed in their notice altogether. As I pretended to inspect the helmet for damage, the sight of the staples sticking out of the failed strap barely even registered on my jumbled brain. I wished everyone would just go away and let me sit down again.
Which they did, eventually, the helpful young man climbing back into his pickup only after I waved my mobile at him and told him I’d ring a friend. But once they’d driven off I slumped down on the verge. Bruises were making themselves known. My left hip was on fire: my head was aching as if I’d spent the last hour crying, and I’d managed to acquire a bump on my temple worthy of the Beano.
Eventually I got up and began to push the scooter. Either it or I felt wobbly: I wasn’t sure which, but either way I wasn’t going to risk riding it. I kept feeling waves of nausea, and three times had to stop and rest while they washed over me. It wasn’t until I at last reached the end of Isaac’s lane that I felt able – no, obliged – to climb onto my scooter again and ride it fearfully, phut-phutting up the track to the farmhouse.
The dogs ran up, barking: the bull bellowed, unseen, in its shed; but there was no sign of Isaac or anyone else. Of course, I thought dizzily, I must be at least half an hour late. I tried to check my watch but couldn’t make sense of the hands. I just couldn’t quite remember what they meant. I banged on the farmhouse door to ask the time, then realised it was open.
I pushed it open further and peered into the kitchen. My hip was hurting quite badly. I wanted a shoulder to lean on, a broad chest to cry on.
“Hallo?” When no-one answered, I limped across to the inner door and opened it. The corridor was dark. There was the clock, ticking portentously next to a long metal case. No other sound.
“Hallo,” I said to nobody. I felt like Goldilocks.
Selena’s birth certificate was in my pocket. I’d brought it along in case I got a chance to put it back unnoticed.
Well, now was the chance. Clever me, I thought, as I crossed the corridor and pushed open the next door.
This was the parlour. Gloomy, listening. A mirror-black table with a small lace cloth in the middle. A stone fireplace, its angry mouth swallowing all warmth. Against the near wall the huge, dark dresser gleamed like a shadowed pool. Its brass handles glittered: a wan and wilting peace lily lamented over it.
I pulled at the drawers. Nothing but tablemats in the first one. Nothing but jumbled stationery in the other. As I closed the drawers jerkily, everything rattled. I panicked and fled back to the kitchen with the birth certificate still in my pocket, certain that I must be audible throughout the house and would be accosted any minute.
But the house remained silent as I hobbled out into the yard with the distrustful dogs. I didn’t want to leave. I knew
I was too shaken up to paint; but neither could I ride the scooter all the way back home.
Looking for Isaac, I limped over to the big barn, which was half full of spiky machinery and half of young cattle that lowed at me reproachfully, prompting a deeper answer from the distant bull.
“Oh, bugger it,” I said. I wanted to lie down. Maybe it was time to do my Goldilocks impression after all. I retreated from the barn and for the first time noticed a cap lying on the ground near the bull’s shed. That was surely Isaac’s cap. I clicked the latch and looked in.
The bull, its rump facing me, snorted and shifted threateningly. There was something under its feet, something in the way. For a few seconds I couldn’t tell what it was.
Then as my eyes accustomed themselves to the dark, I realised with a shock that it was Isaac. He was lying on the floor in the gloom amidst the straw and muck, a scatter of small white objects round him.
“Isaac!” I said. “Isaac, what are you doing? Get out of there!” My voice was hoarse. He didn’t move. He couldn’t hear. I would have to pull him out.
But I couldn’t reach him. When I managed to get hold of one of his Wellingtons, it slid right off while Isaac barely budged. The bull’s hind leg stood on his chest. One of the round white objects was stuck to his boot: it looked like a mint.
I eased a few inches further forward and tried to grab his clothing. The bull did not like it. It stamped and trampled on him. I dreaded to think how much it weighed. Shouting hoarsely at it, I looked round frantically for the bull tongs. But I couldn’t see them on their shelf and in any case wouldn’t know how to use them safely.
Instead I reached out again to seize a handful of trouser and pulled, fruitlessly: the bull’s back leg kicked out and grazed my forehead.
I yelped and staggered backwards. I was feeling sick and dizzy again and couldn’t think. I had to phone someone – police, ambulance: but they’d take too long. A neighbouring farmer, but I knew none of their numbers. I fumbled in my pockets and couldn’t find my phone. Too slow. Have to run and fetch someone. I stood up, wobbled, sat down again in the doorway.
Someone was coming, thank God, across the yard. Red and green: it was Ruby, although there seemed to be slightly more than one of her.
She hurried over and stared down at me. “Eden! Are you all right? Your face – you’re bleeding!” The bull roared and she looked past me, through the door.
“Oh, my God,” she said. “Is that Isaac? Have you rung an ambulance? Ring an ambulance! I’ll try and get the bull away.”
She knew better than me how to handle it. She untethered its head and with firm, even words persuaded it out of its stall, trampling over Isaac as it shuffled into the adjoining one.
Meanwhile I found my phone at last and tried to ring an ambulance. My phone wouldn’t work: my fingers wouldn’t work. When eventually I got through, my mouth wouldn’t work. I couldn’t remember the name of the farm.
“It’s Isaac,” I said uselessly. Ruby took the phone off me and gave curt, businesslike directions. “And the police,” she said. “We need the police.”
Then she went back into the shed and squatted down beside the mangled, dirty huddle of clothes on the floor, touching them gently. “Oh, Lord,” I heard her murmur. “Oh, dear Lord.” She came out again and yanked me up by my elbow. “He’s dead,” she said roughly.
“He can’t be! How do you know? He can’t be!”
“He’s dead. What happened?” she said fiercely.
I didn’t know. I didn’t quite remember how I’d got there, or what I’d done, or why I couldn’t stand up but had to slide back down again. I didn’t know why my extra-strong mints were scattered around the shed instead of in my pocket. I saw a sheet of paper lying in the dirt next to me, in the shadow of the door, and put my hand out to it as if it would tell me all the answers.
Ruby snatched it away. She smoothed it out and frowned at it, and then at me.
“What’s this?”
I looked at it stupidly as she held it out. It was a painting, a water-colour. Signed. It was one of mine.
Chapter Twelve