Touch (15 page)

 
Lucas' hands were stiff with cold. The veins stood out in blue ridges. He cupped them and blew into them, flexing the knuckles slowly. From the edge of the wood he could hear the ragged cries of rooks or crows. Everything was still: just the tips of larch branches stirring. Elena had been right. Nothing had really changed here. Except those new trees showed someone was taking an interest. Trying to make sure the wood survived the wind and the long winters. Maybe the same people who had mended the stiles and pathways.

Lucas moved deeper into the trees. Larch branches dipped down, trailing on the earth, which was brown with fallen needles. The rocking stone had always been tricky to find. He'd been here a couple of times before and failed. Sometimes it was as if it simply wasn't to be. At others, he went straight to it, guided by something. Instinct perhaps? Odd to feel that way, because he wasn't the least bit mystical. The wood seemed timeless, but other things had changed. James had fallen ill again, emerging from hospital gaunt and exhausted, his eyes dark with a wounded look. Elena had nursed him when he was unable to work. Then James had died – died in his sleep of all things – and Elena had gone away. Coming here had seemed pointless at first. He'd felt uncomfortable parking the car at the end of the track, right outside the house where the newcomers lived with their Range Rover and pony and their children, who he saw playing on a swing in what had been James' vegetable patch. He was chasing a memory, a lost moment, his own failure and foolishness. Knowing that gratified him at some level; failure itself was piquant, an indulgence to be sipped like a decent malt. Savoured without regret. So he'd returned every year. And here he was again.

 
Lucas moved in a slow circle through the wood, testing each slab of limestone before placing his weight on it. The rocking stone wasn't very deep into the wood: he knew that. And it was some way to the left of his entry point: he was sure of that, too. He was sweating under his winter jacket. He glanced at his watch and the luminous hands showed him four o'clock. It'd be getting dark soon. But even at dusk the wood was lit with an ambient glow that rose up as if the stone was burnished. He remembered the glint of Elena's earrings, her hot breath, her pulse moving under the pale skin of her throat. Then the way she'd cracked walnuts with a firm whip of her wrist and thrown the shells to the fire. James had watched them from his armchair, his trousers and sweater smeared with paint, his smile enigmatic, a little triumphant at the new frisson between them.

Quite suddenly, the stone was there under his feet. He'd strayed onto it without noticing. Odd that it was so elusive yet so unmistakable once you'd found it. He flexed his waist and threw himself sideways to begin the motion that would make the rock sound out. Nothing. He checked the stone again. It was surely the right one. He braced a leg against a tree stump and pushed again, straddling the stone. Nothing. The stone that had been poised on its sternum was locked. The boulder that had rocked here for centuries was frozen solid. Maybe a sapling had taken root there. Or a piece of stone had fallen into the gryke to chock it. Lucas knelt on the damp surface and ran his hand carefully around the rock, jamming his arm to the elbow. He could feel nothing and the light was fading. The stone had been silenced, its heavy tongue clamped into jaws of rock.

James glanced at his watch again. He must go. Before darkness came down to hide the path. He pushed on through the overhanging branches of the larch trees and out of the wood.
Nothing has changed here
. What had Elena meant by that? The wood
had
changed; it was changing all the time. He'd been a fool to expect that the past would be waiting for him. He'd been a fool not to reach for her and kiss her as she swayed there on the stone with him that time, letting its boom fill the space around them. She might have wanted that. For all he knew, she might have wanted him. But somehow the moment had passed and James' proprietorial air had come between them. Moments had passed, then years. One slipped almost seamlessly into the other and you hardly noticed.

The escarpment solidified from mist as Lucas made his way back up the path. It was dark, but limestone reflected the last light. His knee stung where he'd slipped again and grazed it climbing down from the wood. It lay behind him now, crouched, bristling like a wolf or a bear.
Spooky
. It was a childish word and he felt a childish fear tug at him as darkness fell. He wanted to be home in his empty house. To light the fire, sip hot tea, sit with a good book or an exhibition catalogue. He wanted to pass the painting on the landing and feel its faint tug of surprise again. Surely that was enough? Lucas hurried on, head down against the wind, against the gathering night.
When he reached James' house, he smelled wood smoke again. At the old limekiln he felt in his pocket for his car keys. He turned to the house once more, loosening his neck-band, unzipping his jacket. All the lights were on and Lucas was almost sure he could hear children's voices quarrelling in an upstairs room.

That year the autumn was dry after a summer of drought. In December the lake was low and the first sub-zero temperatures of winter froze it hard. The water didn't look solid at first because the ice remained clear like a fine skin.
Pellucid
was a word I found for it. But at the edges it was at least four inches thick. That was when we started to hear of the accidents, in the papers and on the radio news. How a girl had chased her dog onto a lake and first the dog, then the girl, then two men who tried to rescue her fell through the ice and died in the terrible cold.

I remember the talk of suspended animation, how a body can stay alive without a flicker of a pulse. How drunks found frozen in shop doorways sometimes came to in hospital beds and reclaimed their lives. Some of them experienced ecstatic visions whilst unconscious. Others had miraculous conversions to religion and featured in those evangelical Christian magazines that come piling through the letterbox with free-sheets and advertising brochures.

But not this time: the girl, the dog and the two men were all drowned. That got me thinking about water, about ice. The way it was all so clear, so deadly: so purposeful.

 
I used to go walking by the lake with my little sister, Annie. I was twelve and old enough to be sensible, or so my mother thought. Annie was only seven. She looked up to me, I suppose. One day, after the lake froze over, we went walking along the gravel path under the fir trees that came down almost to the water's edge. I remember Annie was excited. She kept running ahead shouting.

‘Katie, come on, Katie! We've got to get there!'

I wasn't sure where we had to get, except to the end of the path at the top of the lake where there was a green-painted cabin selling cups of tea to tourists. Then she gave a gasp of delight and knelt down by the lakeside where the big yew trees grew.

The trees were sombre green. Their branches dipped down into the lake and curved out again, just like someone testing the water with their elbow. The way my mother used to gauge hot water in the enamelled iron bath at home to make sure it was safe for us. The level of the lake must have fallen after it had frozen because there, suspended above the surface, were these exquisite candelabra of ice glinting on the yew branches. Annie was reaching out over the ice to try to catch hold of one and I had to drag her back by the hood of her anorak. That got me thinking about water too. About the way ice could be sculpted by freeze and thaw. It got me thinking about the beauty of ice.

 
The cold weather didn't last long and soon the ice had melted and the family of coots that were breeding on the lake were busy again. We had mallard as well, occasional moorhens, even grebe. Once I'd seen a red-throated diver plunging into the dusty water under the evening's early yellow moon. But that was special and in the day-to-day run of things the coots were my favourites. I loved their white foreheads and the way they sculled along so quietly, jerking their necks, leaving a vee-shaped wave of water behind them. The way they suddenly dipped down their heads and dived until they were totally submerged, swimming below the surface. So unlike the mallards that had to upend themselves and stick their backsides in the air. Especially, I loved their cries, like fine porcelain teacups chinking on thin saucers.

At the bottom end of the lake, nearest to the village, was a series of low meadows that spread down from the hall. In one of them was a little boathouse built of rickety planking that stood on stilts over the water. We'd been warned never to go near it because the water was deep there and the planking rotten and unsafe. I knew that in the boathouse was an old varnished rowing boat. Bob, the under-gardener at the big house, had shown me one day when I was out in the van with my father delivering groceries. I remember because it was late afternoon on a summer's day and I sat close to my father on the big bench seat, our shoulders jostling as he steered. The Spanish chestnut trees along the driveway were all in bloom, filling the air with scent. It was a strange smell, intimate as perfumed sweat. That night there was going to be a party at the house and the driveway was full of long, expensive cars. I could hear the sound of a dance band tuning up somewhere inside the hall.

Whilst my father was in the house the gardener took me for a walk down to the lakeside. He explained how the squire's family had used to row out onto the lake just for pleasure, no other reason. He showed me where the oars were stored and the brass rowlocks that fitted onto the boat so that the oars could be moved about in the water. Night after night I dreamed of that boat, of gliding over the face of the water, staring down into the depths where huge fabled trout swam and the faces of the village people drifted. Those who'd given up the struggle and given up hope to drown themselves there. Dying for love or despair or grief. Their bodies had been pulled out and laid streaming on the bank, but their spirits still spiralled in the dark waters, each one a tiny silver fish drawn to the moon's reflection.

Those were the stories my mother told me to keep me away from the water and its fringe of yew and turkey oak trees. To warn me of its danger. But I loved its dark mirror. The way such a black element on a December day could spurt flashes of silver light when a flight of mallard touched down from the skies.

You'll think that I'm beginning to romanticise, that I'm pretending that all the days of my childhood were like that. I'm not. The village was no idyll and I knew it. Even so, there were days when the glory of God stood in the air like something absolute and tangible. Days when I almost wanted to weep, without knowing why.

 
Like all children we explored, gradually widening the circle of our curiosity. In the woods on the squire's land we discovered a kind of larder dug into the earth above the house. I asked my father about it and he told me that before the war the squires had used to boast that they could eat game birds from the previous shooting season the night before the new season began, so perfect was the cold for preserving them. The larder was packed with ice broken from the lake and then filled with birds that had been shot down in the woods and on the moors. I could never bear the thought of a bird being killed and hated the other village children who went birds' nesting or beating for grouse on shooting days.

The winter when we discovered the ice-house was the same winter that the lake froze over. It was the winter of voices. They started in the night when Annie and I lay huddled up in our double bed. Voices downstairs, coming up through the floorboards. Voices from my parents' bedroom. Sometimes the voices were very quiet, going on and on through the night like machinery left running. Sometimes they were loud and violent and I had to hold Annie and hug her and stop her tears, even though I couldn't stop my own.

One morning, after a terrible night of voices, I went down into the kitchen where my mother was cooking the porridge. I noticed that she had a dark bruise across her cheekbone. When I asked her how it had happened she told me, sarcastically, that a bad angel had brought it in the night. I knew all about bad angels. At least, I knew about this one. I had to shush Annie up when my father came in. I remember that day because he kissed my mother and made a special fuss of her as if nothing had ever been wrong. Then it was quiet for a few nights, just the creaking of the beech tree outside the window, the hissing of wind through the power lines that sagged over the rooftops of the village.

We had a quiet Christmas Day that year with no visitors. My father brought home Italian chestnuts from his green-grocer's shop and we found tangerines and oranges and tinsel in our stockings where they'd been draped over the bed. On Boxing Day, my two uncles, Norman and Alfred, came with their wives and their children, my cousins Robert, Anita and Colin, who spent the day quarrelling, bored with the countryside. The uncles were my father's brothers; my aunts were loud and brassy and their kisses tasted of cigarettes. My mother's family lived too far away to visit, though we had once been on a train to Aberdeen to see our grandmother and had watched miles of heather go past the windows, just like our own moors at home.

After Christmas, the lake thawed and the beck turned peaty brown, swirling and muscular with meltwater. Gradually the days lengthened so that the light lingered on in the afternoons. Birds began to sing again and the rooks formed into pairs, ready for the mating season. Outside our house was a broken oak tree that had been pinned together with an iron bolt by some forester ages ago. The tree's split trunk had healed and each year a family of jackdaws was raised in a hollow in one of the large branches.

 
One February day, I was off school with a sore throat and a high temperature, all alone in the bedroom with a coal fire burning in the grate. That fire was only ever lit when we were ill and smelled of fallen soot. My mother brought me a cup of tea after taking Annie to school, and through the muzziness of my fever I saw my father standing by the bed. I remember him putting the back of his hand to my forehead. Outside, sunshine alternated with terrific storms of snow that whitened the hillside through the window. The sheep huddled, dirty yellow, chewing on bales of hay that the farmer had dropped into their feeders.

That day, my father came home from work for his lunch and the voices started, just like they did in the night. It was strange and frightening to hear them by day. I couldn't make out the actual words, but caught the bass of my father's voice and the whip-like replies of my mother, sharp with spite. I crept from the bed and put on my nightgown, huddling on the landing above the hallway. The voices were coming from the kitchen, my mother saying over and over,
Go to her, then. 
Go to her if that's what you want. I don't care anymore. Just go
. She spoke as if she had iron in her throat. I couldn't make out my father's reply, but it was low and harsh. I felt dazed, huddled there with snow blowing outside against the window, obliterating the sun.

It was years later that I found out my father had another woman whom he visited when he was out with the grocery van. And it was years after that I learned not to judge him or the woman or my mother for their lives. It takes a long time to learn how love can bloom unexpectedly and then wither just as suddenly. It takes too long to learn not to be wise after any event or to know how little good it does.

I know that I lay listening to the voices until I couldn't bear any more. They were wearing me away, unmerciful tongues licking away at me as if I might dissolve and fade. I remember getting dressed and creeping downstairs, putting on my overcoat and shoes, stepping out of their blizzard of words and through the front door and into the day that had gone on without me. My father's van was still parked outside our house, the gold lettering of his name gorgeous against scarlet paintwork. Years later, I realised why everybody knew what was going on.

I ran through the village to the woods, skirting the bottom edge of the lake and heading over the ornamental bridge that led to the hall. It must have stopped snowing because my first impression of the woods is of pale sunlight striking against tree trunks, glowing on their sleeves of ivy and moss. There was snow on the fallen leaves and pheasants pecking underneath it, cackling alarm as I went by. And there were tracks in the snow: cloven deer tracks and the footprints of pheasants placed one behind the other, precise as if they were walking a tightrope. I could see where a rabbit had hopped and squatted, then the longer, cantering patterns of a hare.

A thin wind sang in the uppermost branches where some rooks were beginning a nest. The sky was dizzy with blue space and white clouds. As I ran, the light glanced away through the trees, a blinding ricochet. Flurries of snow began to wet my face. It was terrifying how quickly the snow set in, taking away everything with its stinging mist. I was stumbling through the flat meadows then. The hall above me was faintly lit, its rows of windows almost invisible. Below me, to my left, I could just make out the little boathouse with its crooked planking and sunken roof.

I remember running. Running with snow blinding me, snow freezing my face beyond all feeling. I remember the stink of creosote, my numbed hands dragging the boathouse doors open, then entering a sudden absence of snow. Inside was the smell of old rope, dust and dank water with its depth of rotting leaves. Through the open front of the boathouse the lake was choppy, almost lost in even fiercer gusts of snow. Fever was in my head, blurring everything. Blurring this memory. But I must have got the boat down somehow and into the lake. Must have taken the oars and fitted them to the rowlocks as I'd once been shown.

 
Whether I rowed or drifted out onto the lake nobody knows, but in the legends that were told afterwards I did both. There was one moment of clear sunshine where my head was close to the water, its little waves brilliant with light and wind. And there were two coots sailing towards me, their pale foreheads serene, their black bodies rocking in the wind.

Then everything was taken away by snow. I remember watching my hands holding onto the varnished gunwales of the boat, blue as swallows' wings. Later I heard how a servant from the hall had seen the boat on the lake and how the gamekeeper had gone down to the lake with his field glasses. How running down to the village for help he'd seen my father, who'd already started to look for me. He told him that a child was on the lake and my father had begun to sprint through the woods towards the boathouse and the jetty. Now I think I remember voices shouting, a man's hands parting the water towards me where the boat was sinking lower and lower. His dark hair is bobbing, his forehead pale, his mouth spitting out the lake into the sudden sun. I'm already too numb to feel the water take me, or the man who is my father take me.

When I awoke I was burning with fever. Blurred faces above me where I'd been laid on the grass, my father sobbing in a blanket close by. Then faces wavering above the bed in a room where there was a fire burning in the grate and a glass bottle of medicine on the cabinet. Days of fever followed where hot dreams came every night. Dreams in which everything was cut from the burning beauty of ice. Dreams filled with brilliant light and space. And dreams of darkness where the feathered bodies of birds were packed into crystals of ice, the golden rings of their eyes still moist and alive.