Overnight, snow had fallen thickly again in Croftendale and now in the morning the fells on the other side of the valley were pure white against the sky. Farther down, where the sun had not yet reached, the wood by the beck was steeped in shadow and would stay cold all day. The freezing mist that was twined between the leafless beech and birch had already driven a hungry fox to seek food elsewhere. A line of deep paw prints came out of the gloom and into the pearly light that washed over the drifts on this side of the dale. Yet the animal seemed to have changed direction abruptly; startled into a hollow or a ditch by the folk out shooting nearby—men from Micklebrow, probably, who’d walked over the moor to take advantage of the wide empty canvas on which the grouse and pheasants were as bright as streaks of paint. The sound of shotguns and whistles doubled in air that was uncannily still and expectant after the blizzard. The storm had lasted for hours and the extent of its fury was marked by icy cornices blown over the dry-stone walls. They were wild jagged crests, like those of a sea surge breaking on inadequate defenses.
So the winter went on. Adding to itself day by day. Making the houses in the dale seem even more remote from one another than usual.
None of the farmers had been out yet with a plow, and on the road by Starve Acre the snow cleared the evening before had frozen solid. All along the verges it was piled like crumbled pieces of cumulus.
• • •
From his study, Richard Willoughby heard another volley of gunfire and watched the rooks burst from the ash trees outside the window. They scattered in a mess of wings and curses and flapped away to the field across the lane. For days now, they had gone foraging in the frosted hummocks there out of desperation and had found little or nothing in the way of sustenance.
It seemed to Richard that February simply refused to leave the dale. He wished that it would and soon. There was something about being able to say that it was March. Something in the name that suggested energetic purpose and the onward movement of things. A time to work. A time to shoulder the yoke. There were lines of poetry about the early spring that he thought he should like to learn as reassurances that the world would turn green again. On a day like this, it was easy to have doubts. Everything was starving and puny. Everything was waiting, just as he was.
The rooks spun in the sky, their calls cracking on the frozen air and, as he watched them, Richard felt a swelling sensation in his head—something akin to the start of a migraine.
He blamed himself for getting distracted. When he was in the study, he was normally so attentive to his work (devoid of family photographs, it was his oubliette), but Ewan could find him in the strangest of ways.
The rooks reminded him of the paper birds he’d once made in the small hours when the boy had been frightened and restless. And how, when the birds had been folded into shape, he’d told stories with them and Ewan had eventually gone, his big eyes closing in much needed sleep.
• • •
Richard left the sentence he’d been mulling over half typed, moved to the armchair next to the bookshelves and switched on the radio. One of the Brandenburg Concertos was in full flow. He put on his headphones and turned up the volume until the strings and horns were distorted, trying to lose himself in the noise and banish Ewan to the dark hole from which he had emerged. If he had to be absent, then why couldn’t he remain so? A blank could be coped with, just as a man
might become used to a missing hand or foot and improvise a way of living until it became habit and habit a kind of normality.
After the funeral at the end of the previous summer, Richard’s tactic, just as it was now, had been to work as hard as he could—so that when the new academic year began he’d turned apian, darting from one thing to another but giving each new task his full devotion.
Perhaps he had been naïve to expect people not to treat him any differently, but their insistence on doing so became frustrating and his colleagues in History had quickly learned that if they approached him with a look of sympathy he would avoid them.
He had never been pitied before. He found the attention unbearable. Can’t stop, he’d say, or, running late. And if they persisted anyway, walking with him across campus, then he ensured that conversation turned to some work-related matter. Work was all he talked about. Work was all he did. Before lectures, he would ensconce himself in the depths of the library and return after he’d finished teaching for the day. He’d attend every meeting, even those that didn’t directly concern him. He’d come in early to prep; he’d stay late for tutorials with his Masters students.
It was unsustainable, and he’d known that before long it would be noted. And then anxious discussions would be had and the wheels would turn and a smiling face would invite him into an office and nudge him toward the sabbatical he ought to have taken years before.
“It’ll give you the opportunity to really concentrate on your research, Richard. Take whatever time you need. Just come back to us refreshed.”
Of course, he knew that they were thinking of themselves rather than him. Shunt him out now and they could avoid all the difficulties and embarrassments that would become manifest when the tidal wave of grief finally crashed on Dr. Willoughby and he drowned in the middle of a lecture on Persepolis or Lascaux.
Responsibility for getting him to take some leave had devolved to Stella Wicklow, who had received her doctorate the same year as him but had had a great deal more ambition and risen to head of department.
“Look,” she said. “Think of them doing Juliette a favor rather than you an injustice
. I’m sure she’d appreciate you being at home at the moment, wouldn’t she?”
At first that had been true, but not now.
When Richard took off the headphones he could hear Juliette crying softly again in the room above. He was determined to let her after what she’d said.
From the scullery he picked up his wellingtons, and from the cupboard under the stairs he collected the butane lantern and the matches, shaking the box to make sure there were some left. Then, dressed in his university scarf and the tweed coat Juliette had bought him one Christmas, he closed the front door behind him and went down the driveway, leaving bootprints a foot deep.
The shooters had gone home with their illicit bags of game, and the living birds had returned to the sky: a curlew softly lamenting, three buzzards banking mutely over the fells. In the wintertime there was often a profound quietness in the dale, especially up here on the edge of the moor. The lane that ran past the house—the top road, as it was known—had no other function than to connect one lonely place with another: Micklebrow with Stythwaite, which sat two miles from the house along the vale, the roofs and chimneys bundled around the church tower.
Across the lane was the field—his field, it was still strange to say—which sloped down to the wood and the beck. This little plot of land was one of the things that had attracted Juliette to Starve Acre in the first place. As far as she was concerned there was no better gift they could give their children than a natural playground that grew as they grew.
On the other side of the valley, beyond the Westburys’ hayfield, the limestone terraces of Outrake Fell looked even more severe than usual with their fringes of icicles, and the Burnsalls’ sheep, which were normally left to look after themselves on the high pastures during the winter, were down in the farm. The sound of their bleating rose with the slow smoke from the cottage chimney. It was the kind of scene that Juliette had imagined before they’d come to live here. A simplicity of movements and sounds.
• • •
Opening the field gate, Richard waded through the snow and headed for the tent that he’d set up before Christmas. It was a good solid bit of kit, army surplus, and had stayed put during even the wildest weather.
October had been full of cold, brilliant sunshine, but November had brought gales and endless rain. Any ditches Richard dug had been quickly filled with oily green water and so one particularly sodden afternoon he’d driven down to Gordon Lambwell’s to see if he had anything useful for sale. ...
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