“You remember Eden, Griff?” said Muriel. “We met at Waterhead.”
“Of course!” He shook hands with me politely. “How could I forget a name like that?”
“Nice car,” I said. Muriel drove a pale green Citreon, almost new. I settled on the back seat with my drawing board and mobile studio, an old wooden cutlery box that used to be my grandmother’s.
“We’ve hired it for the holiday,” said Griff. “Ours was having a bit of trouble.” Muriel opened her mouth, then closed it again and kept on driving.
“How long are you staying in the Lakes?” I asked her. Griff answered.
“Just till Friday. Got to get home by the weekend and sort stuff out; we’ve got the grandchildren coming for a visit.”
“It’s called confabulation,” said Muriel over her shoulder.
“What?” said Griff.
“Filling in the gaps. Like on the boat. The mind abhors a vacuum. It’s not as bad as it was at first, though.”
“What?” said Griff.
“Isn’t that a glorious scene?” Muriel gestured out of the window at the clustered trees encasing the hillside like bees around a hive. It wasn’t something I would want to paint, but Griff, relaxing, began a discourse on the archaeology of field systems that took us all the way past Low Park.
“We must have driven this road dozens of times, yet I never realised there was a farm here,” said Muriel, as we trundled down the rutted drive to Borrans Rigg. The crown of hills slid into view to frame the farmhouse, sending a shiver down my spine.
Soon I would be studying it – her – him – pencil in hand, ready to capture and contain. To hold for ever. Timeless, simple, clear.
Bryony came out into the yard to greet us. She looked like a presenter off a children’s programme in a red jumpsuit, fair hair in a ponytail, face scrubbed and freckled. All she needed was a smile. But she was as prickly as a hedgehog. When I introduced Griff and Muriel she nodded curtly.
“Selena’s gone shopping. She’ll be back soon, I expect. She won’t want to miss you, after all. She was ever so excited about having her portrait painted.” Bryony spoke with a clumsy sarcasm which I guessed was rare for her.
“What about Isaac? Is he in?” I asked. The dogs were missing, apart from the grizzled old one who sat by the door, waiting.
“He’s gone up the hill. We’re bringing the sheep down to the in-bye land ready for lambing. It’s a busy time of year,” she said accusingly. “He’ll be back in a bit.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll just do some sketches of the house if that’s all right.”
“I’ll leave you to it.”
So I walked around the yard for a while, examining the farmhouse from different angles. Although it wasn’t really the house that I wanted to paint, I could use those mottled reds of the brick as a contrast to the smoky greens and purples of the land beyond.
At last I found the right view. My perfect landscape: it would be simple, singing, free of clutter. I dragged over a giant plastic feed tub that was exhorting me to Increase my Forage Utilisation, sat down on it with my drawing board and opened my cutlery box.
Muriel and Griff hung round at first, but when the wispy lines on my paper showed no signs of mutating straight into a Turner they unfolded their OS map all over their car bonnet like a recalcitrant table cloth, conferred and then tramped off down a path behind the cottages.
I sketched more freely in their absence. This was the bit I most disliked, though it was essential to get the structure right. As I drew I tried to feel the shape of the picture to come. I’d not worked so carefully for a long time. I scribbled UTS in the margin, then crossed it out. I wouldn’t be using my Usual Tree Stuff here, not on this one. It deserved better.
Bryony returned to look over my shoulder. She didn’t bother to compliment me, rightly. It looked like nothing. Those trumpeting hills, that slope as sueded as a saxophone, the oboes and piccolos of the clouds: none of these sounded through the paper yet. With a surge of discomfort that was almost panic, I thought that maybe they never would.
Be calm. Early days.
“Did Selena say how long she’d be?” I asked.
Bryony sniffed. “Wouldn’t make any difference if she had. She doesn’t stick to what she says.”
“Does she not?” I blocked in the farmhouse roof and stared at the chimney. Normally I would add a picturesque wisp of smoke. I left it.
“She’s changeable. Unreliable.”
“Right.” Those hills, now, what colours should I use? Burnt with bracken, nubbled with rocks, rich russet and charcoal. Patched with black, only I never used black; I mixed it. Bryony stood watching my careful pencil without comment.
“That policeman,” she said suddenly. “Do you know him well?”
“Sergeant Brigg? Not really.”
I didn’t need her there, distracting me, but after a minute she said heavily, “I suppose he’s told you it was suicide.”
“Luke’s death? Um – well, yes. It seems to be the obvious conclusion.”
“She drove him to it, though. Selena. She treated Luke like a piece of crap.”
“Did she?” My pencil stalled.
“Oh, she had him bewitched to start with. It was never going to last. She’d be nice as pie one minute, then turn round and scream at him the next.”
“I thought his father said they got on well,” I said, and then wished I hadn’t, because it was Hunter who had told me that. But Bryony didn’t notice. The words came out in agitated bursts, as if now she’d unscrewed the lid of her emotion it refused to go back on.
“Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? He’s Luke dad, he didn’t want to question his choice of wife. But Luke was mine first–”
The words ended in a strangled whimper. I swivelled round on my plastic pot and saw Bryony’s face twisting with grief.
“Oh Christ,” I said, dropped my pencil and jumped up. Giving her an awkward hug, I patted her sturdy, heaving back, as if she was my little sister, although I’d certainly never hugged Greta in that way. I’d consoled a few weeping prison inmates, though; some of them only teenagers yet bearing a lifetime’s disappointments. I didn’t mind offering a shoulder to cry on in jail because it stopped me from crying myself. I’d never cried in jail. Or since.
Bryony drew back after a minute, wiping her face with her fingers. “Sorry.” Digging in her pockets, she produced a tangle of string, a penknife and three humbugs, like a storybook schoolboy, before finding a shredded paper handkerchief which fell to bits as she dabbed her nose with it.
“Let me get this straight,” I said. “You were with Luke?”
“We were together for six months,” she said huskily. “Until his mother died. That changed everything.”
“Grief can make people behave in strange ways,” I said.
“It wasn’t grief that changed Luke. It was Selena. She took him over. She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” Bryony’s voice quivered.
I nodded, although I heard my mother warn in her decisive way: Beauty is as Beauty does. “You say Selena used to scream at Luke? What about?”
“I dunno. Anything. If his coffee went cold. If he had the wrong boots on. If he touched her the wrong way. He never knew where he stood. All right,” she said, “so I’m no beauty, not like her, but I loved him. I would have been a better wife for him than she was.”
I made a non-committal noise which Bryony must have taken as agreement, for she went on shakily, “Luke had been through bad times, he’d been in a bit of trouble when he was younger, and he kept worrying about whether he was cut out to be a farmer. But I supported him. I steadied him. I’m tough, I work hard, I know animals, I’ve learned this business from the bottom up. Selena knows nothing. She doesn’t even try.” Bryony ended on a hiccup.
“You think she was all wrong for him?”
“I know she was. But Luke thought she was the fairy queen. The gateway to mystery and adventure. God, that’s a laugh! She’s so ignorant! She’s been nowhere. She doesn?
??t even have a passport. There’s nothing to her – no substance.” Bryony wiped her eyes again, angrily. “Luke realised that at the end,” she said. “That’s why he turned back to me.”
“He–?”
“He was mine first,” she insisted. “Selena stole him off me. But he came back to me the week before he died.” She took a shuddering breath. “I was so happy.”
“Then what went wrong?”
Her shoulders slumped. “Luke had always been anxious. Usually I could pull him up again, but this time it was different. He’d heard a rumour about foot and mouth disease. Luke had a thing about it, an obsession. I tried to reassure him and he wouldn’t listen. He wouldn’t talk to me. He cut me off. When the cow fell sick, he was distraught. It was all too much for him. He had nobody to turn to. No other friends.”
“What about Matt? From the Keswick bookshop,” I added when she looked blank.
“Oh – him. I believe they were big buddies once, but I hardly know him. He came back up to Cumbria just before Luke met Selena. He went drinking a few times with Luke but not with me around. I think he despises me actually. And once Selena turned up – well, Matt stepped aside. He stopped visiting and let Selena take over. And she did take Luke over, believe me. She bewitched him.”
“Mm,” I said noncommittally, for what man was ever bewitched that didn’t want to be? Poor Luke, caught between an erratic wife and a jealous girlfriend. “Did Selena know about you and Luke?”
“I don’t know. She wouldn’t have cared anyway. Lying around on the sofa half the day watching telly. She wasn’t interested.”
Although I found that hard to believe, I let it pass. “Will Selena stay here now, do you think?”
“God knows. I’ll stay, though.” Bryony gazed up at the farmhouse, her mouth set in determination. “I’ll stay as long as Isaac wants me to. This is my life, now.”
I studied her: small, unadorned, and dogged. It was hard to imagine Selena in those overalls and with those dirty hands.
“How long have you worked here, Bryony?”
“Four years. I wanted to be a vet. I started working here to get experience while I was retaking A-levels. But I didn’t get the grades and anyway I’d fallen for Luke by then. And he felt the same about me. Only Isaac didn’t approve, and then Selena came–” She swallowed and clamped her mouth closed.
“Are you okay?”
She glanced round. Isaac was striding down the lane behind the farmyard, two sheepdogs whizzing round his ankles. The old dog by the door got stiffly to its feet and wandered up to him.
“Things to do,” muttered Bryony, and clumped away.
Isaac stooped to give the dog a pat, and then straightened up to nod at me, flicking his cap with a forefinger. “How do. Nice to see you back. Thought you might not want to waste your time on this old pile.” The words were casual, but the eyes smiled.
“Hallo, Mr Staithwaite.” Feeling my face split into an idiot’s grin, I pulled it back into shape. “I was hoping to find Selena here so I could start painting her, and a couple of friends who met her at Waterhead have come over to see her too, only Bryony said she’s out so they’ve just gone off for a walk and I’ve started sketching the farmhouse, hope you don’t mind.” I was burbling.
He took a look at my sketch. “Not bad,” he said courteously, although it still looked like nothing.
“Don’t worry, it’ll get better. I’ve only just started. It’s a beautiful landscape.” I hesitated, about to wade into deep water, not knowing how cold it would turn out to be. “But what I’d really like is to paint you,” I said.
Isaac looked startled. I might as well have propositioned him. “Me? Why?”
I’d prepared my answer earlier. “You’ve got a classic farmer’s face.”
“What’s that when it’s at home?”
“It’s very characteristic of Cumbria,” I said. “It’s the sort of face you see in old photographs. I’d really like to paint you against that backdrop of the hills, with the dog at your feet.”
He relaxed a little at being generalised. “And how long would that take?”
“Twenty minutes to start with,” I said, thinking that might just be little enough for him, and I was right.
“Is that all?” The eyes creased. “Thought you were going to say days. Well, let me go and get some coffee, and I’ll give you twenty minutes.”
I followed him to the farmhouse and leant on the kitchen doorway while he put the kettle on, a dark figure moving around the equally dark kitchen. I heard myself burbling again, about the house, my cards, my lakeside sketches. I was like a child on a sugar rush. My chatter seemed to amuse him, but it was all gibberish. I made myself stop.
“Selena’s all right, is she, after her dip in the lake?” I asked.
“Aye, seems to be. I’m surprised she’s not here for you, though. She was pretty pleased with herself after you came round last.”
“Where do you think she’s gone?”
“Shopping.”
“Does she help out much on the farm?” I watched his deliberate movements, fetching down mugs, spooning instant coffee into them. He put everything down gently.
After a while he answered. “She’s not unwilling. It’s foreign to her, though, this sort of work. She wasn’t brought up to it, like.”
I thought, she’s had nearly two years to get used to it, surely? I didn’t say so, though. Instead I blurted out,
“My grandfather was a farmer. In Ireland. He bred horses.” There was no reason why this should interest Isaac, but he answered politely.
“Did he, now? We’ve no horses. Enough on our plates with the bull, stroppy old bugger.”
He handed me my coffee. When he said, “Right then. Where do you want me?” it was without innuendo.
At least it made positioning him easy. He had no self-consciousness, and I was able to treat him like a life model, making him lean on the stone wall beside the house, arm there, cap off, head up a bit, a little bit more this way, the old dog here, yes, that’s it. And then I drew.
The other two dogs lay on the ground nearby, uneasy at his lack of movement, whining now and then. After a while they got up to patrol the yard. The old one stayed, guarding his master.
“All right, Tag Lad,” said Isaac. The dog’s ears pricked and drooped again.
“How’s business?” I asked him, to fill in the space made by sketching. Silly question. For farmers, business was never good.
“I can’t afford to retire just yet, put it that way,” said Isaac without moving. Most untrained models move as they talk. Isaac didn’t.
“What about when you do retire? What happens then?” Even worse. Terrible question. I felt my face begin to burn.
Still Isaac didn’t move. “The business was to go to Luke,” he said ruminatively, “but I don’t know if he really wanted it. Couldn’t blame him. Hard to see a future in farming these days. Most of the young ones want out.”
“That’s such a shame!” I protested. “I mean, this is such a beautiful place…” I hated how trite and inane I sounded.
“Oh, aye. It is – in summer, any road.” A flicker of humour crossed his face. “It’s the tourists that keep us afloat, hiring the cottages. And the rent for Raven How. Everyone needs a sideline these days. That’s all we’re good for now, raising sheep at more than we can sell them for and keeping the hills pretty for the visitors.”
“Is that the way Luke felt?”
“He never told me so outright,” said Isaac.
I couldn’t do justice to his face. I was hunting for an iconic image: his rock-like quality, the calm kingship. But my pencil lines pulled tighter and tighter on the page, and it looked less and less like Isaac. I couldn’t draw people. Whatever made me think I could? Abandoning his features, I set to work on his hair.
“It can’t be easy without him,” I said, and heard the platitude fall with a dull thunk like a stone into a pond. My conversation was no more original than my drawing.
&
nbsp; Isaac stared away over my head before answering. “Aye. I couldn’t keep the place going without Bryony. Good lass, works hard, knows the animals. She’s a quick learner. I wasn’t sure she’d stay.”
“Bryony told me she used to go out with Luke once,” I ventured.
“More than once.”
“So it must have been difficult when Selena came along.” I had a dim awareness that my question might be cruel. But the bereaved always wanted to talk about the dead, didn’t they? It was a kindness to allow them. Anyway, I wanted to hear his version of the marriage.
“Well, Luke and Bryony had already broken up by then, I think. Around that time, anyway. I had other things on my mind: it was just after my wife died.”
“That can’t have been an easy time,” I said. Inane. Hollow. Fake.
“No,” said Isaac on a rising note, and left it. He gazed into the distance again. After a moment he added abruptly, “Luke worried.”
“About foot and mouth?”
“About everything. It all built up in him like a volcano. Selena didn’t know how to cope, but then how would she? It wasn’t her fault. I should have seen the warning signs. Should have hidden the shotgun, maybe. But he was over thirty. What can you do? You can’t treat a man like a child.”
“No,” I said, pleased at these melancholy confidences, and sad that I was pleased. My dad had never confided anything more personal than problems with an engine mounting.
I rubbed at the hills again, unable to get their line right, any more than my line of questioning. I’d make a terrible detective.
“What about Bryony?” For I wondered if Isaac knew of Bryony’s sad boast: Luke came back to me before he died. But as soon as I asked, I saw the weariness in his eyes.
“Bryony? What could she do?” He broke his pose to look at his watch. “This is a long twenty minutes.”
We still had seven left. I didn’t want to lose him. “I’d like to spend the last few minutes painting, not drawing,” I said. “I’ll just go and get some water.”
“In that little thing?” He eyed my small jar. “That’s no good for you. I’ll fetch a jug.”
I followed him back into the kitchen with its sudden disconcerting intimacy. The gloom seemed to gather us close.
“But you still feel responsible,” he said quietly to the sink. “No matter how old they are, your child is still your child. You still feel it’s your fault. You should have done something.”
I wanted to offer comfort, but felt useless and inept. “It was an open verdict,” I said.
“Aye.” He clunked the jug down on the ancient table. “Wait on.”
He strode into the dark, polished back of the house, the slow clock ticking, an underground elfland with a different time. I heard the scrape of a drawer being pulled open and the jangle of a metal handle. Isaac re-emerged carrying a flimsy box that had once held assorted Christmas cards.
He peeled off a rubber band and tipped out a small, creased stack of papers that slid across the table. Picking one out, he unfolded it for me.
“What do you make of this, then?”
I knew at once what it was, and my heart turned over. He was trusting me, a stranger, with his son’s last words.
Yet I didn’t want to read the note. I felt like it was cursed: the last thing Luke had touched before he picked up the gun.
It said:
I CAN’T TAKE ANY MORE OF THIS.
EVERYTHING IS AGAINST ME.
THERE’S NO PLACE LEFT
I MISS YOU MUM
The block capitals were uneven and roughly written, the pencil stabbing into the paper.
“Suicide or not?” asked Isaac. His eyes held mine, as bleak as the open sea, and I didn’t want to answer. But I had to.
“Yes,” I said reluctantly. “If you’re certain that’s his writing?”
“Aye.” Again that impatient, upward lilt at the end of the word. “Not a great one for handwriting, Luke, but that’s his all right.” Isaac’s face was stony as he swung round to turn his back to me and began to wash his hands thoroughly in the sink. “Makes no difference in the end.” His voice was rough. “He’s dead either way.”
Gently I refolded the note and tidied the spilt papers back into the box. Health cards. A tax notice. A death certificate, Carol’s, dated 20th May, two years ago. Exactly a month after my first panicky phone call from Lionel: my first gut-wrenching interview with the police.
Isaac was spending a long time scrubbing. A birth certificate unfolded itself: I opened it fully, curious to learn his birthday, his place of origin.
But it wasn’t Isaac’s. It was Selena’s, the short version: Selena Crabbe, a birthday in Bolton thirty years ago. I was surprised that she was so much older than she looked and acted.
Something about the certificate caught my eye. On an impulse I folded it back up, and put it in my pocket.
There was no time for second thoughts, because Isaac turned back round to face me, drying his hands. I piled all the other papers hurriedly inside the box. He put the lid on and twanged the rubber band around it.
“This painting,” he said. “You don’t really need me in it, do you? It was Selena you were going to paint.”
I could see he’d had enough. He’d lost heart; that was my fault, for talking about Luke.
With the birth certificate rustling like a clarion in my pocket, I left him and went back outside. He did not follow.
Chapter Eight