Authors: Emma Smith
The tall man, instead of answering Mrs Bowen, had walked across to the one supporting the skis and ski-sticks. Whatever he said was spoken too low for Amy to hear but the other man, who was short and dark and wore a green knitted cap with a bobble on top, immediately propped his burden against the porch and tramped off round the side of the cottage in the direction of the shed. Amy could see that he was holding something and for one confused moment she imagined it was a black torch, unlit, before understanding that it must be a revolver. She had seen plenty of guns in her life but they had always been shot-guns with long barrels, the kind that farmers used for shooting rabbits. It was no rabbit this man was after. Amy felt a curious gap in her breathing.
His tall companion strolled back to the porch where he rested one foot nonchalantly on the step Mrs Bowen had cleared of snow that afternoon. Mrs Bowen stood, adamant, in front of the door. Why? Amy wondered.
“Are there any other houses near here?” he asked conversationally. “Or any buildings, for that matter—outhouses, barns—that sort of thing?”
“No, there’s not,” she answered curtly, “no buildings at all. The nearest farmhouse to us would be Dintirion, Mr Protheroe’s place, and that’s some miles off.”
“I see. So there’s nothing over the brow of this hill, then? When we were further up the valley we rather thought we could see another roof, but we must have been mistaken.”
Amy could bear her grandmother’s inexplicable taciturnity no longer.
“It’s Mr Protheroe’s haystack they’d have seen, Granny,” she broke in. “That’s what it was—sure to have been. They could have seen it easy enough when they were up higher, couldn’t they?”
“Don’t talk so silly, Amy—a haystack’s not a building,” said Mrs Bowen with a sharpness that was altogether different from her usual tone of voice.
The man in the knitted cap reappeared. Once again there was a consultation out of earshot.
“Granny, where’s Mick?”
“In the side-kitchen where no harm can come to him,” said Mrs Bowen enigmatically.
“Why don’t you tell them?” whispered Amy, going close to her grandmother. “About
him
—why ever don’t you?”
“Hush, Amy!”
The tall man had turned towards them.
“Where do those tracks in the snow lead to—the ones going up behind your cottage—to that haystack?”
“It’s no haystack,” said Mrs Bowen. “Not any more, it’s not—just a few bales left over, that’s all, with a rusty old roof on top.”
“The size of your haystack is of no importance to me,” he said, quite gently. “I’m simply wanting to know if it’s where the tracks lead to. Do they?”
“Well, of course they do—where else?” she answered irritably. “We’ve been fetching down hay for those few sheep that’s back in the shed there—we’re minding them for our neighbour, Mr Protheroe. They’re his sheep and it’s his haystack, not ours. So now I’ve told you all there is to tell and if you’ll excuse me I’m going back inside—it’s cold work standing about out here. Come along, Amy—it’s time you were inside too.”
But Amy was offended by the undeserved sharpness with which her grandmother had spoken to her, and she stayed where she was. Except for Mrs Bowen putting her hand on the latch, nobody moved.
“We shall have to have a look at this haystack,” said the tall man imperturbably. “Perhaps you’ll be kind enough to lend us your little granddaughter and then she can show us the way.”
“You don’t need any showing,” said Mrs Bowen. “A blind man could follow those tracks—they’re clear enough.”
“I’ll go with them, Granny—I’d like to go,” burst out Amy.
“No, Amy—I’d sooner you came on in.”
“Oh, but she wants to show us the way—don’t you, Amy? You needn’t worry—we shan’t keep her out for long.”
He had called her Amy as casually as an old friend would have done. She was startled; and pleased, because it showed that somehow he knew
she
welcomed him even though her grandmother was so hostile. Grateful for such tolerance, Amy took a step towards him and as an old friend might have done, he caught hold of her hand. Again she was startled. His manner was careless but his grip was unexpectedly tight. It told her, like a secret between them, that no matter what her grandmother said he fully intended Amy to go with him.
“I don’t mean to sound rude,” declared Mrs Bowen fiercely,
“but I don’t care for Amy to be out on the hill with strangers—and it nearly dark too.”
“Oh, come now!” he said, refusing to treat this scruple seriously. “She’ll be perfectly safe with us. I give you my word.”
Amy stood passive, her hand in his. She was glad he had asked her to guide him to the haystack and she meant to do it. Never before had she defied her grandmother; but then, never before had she felt for her grandmother what she felt now: resentment. Why should she be deprived of this treat, this moment of glamour? Why should she not go with him? Why not? He was on their side. He was what they had needed so badly last night and might even be in need of again—someone to help them, a protector. So why not?
“Amy!—you heard me!”
It was her grandmother who was behaving badly, Amy argued with herself—she was behaving unfairly, unreasonably! And mixed in amongst all Amy’s other emotions was a small wicked desire to punish her.
“I’ll be all right, Granny—really I will.”
“Amy!” cried Mrs Bowen.
But Amy took no notice.
They skirted the shed. He paused to flash a torch up and down the length of it. The sheep shifted uneasily. Again, climbing the slope, he reached for Amy’s hand. He had brought a ski-stick with him and went so fast she was glad enough to let herself be towed behind, though whether he did it playfully, or really so as to help her, or even because he thought she might otherwise change her mind, Amy was not sure. Half-way up he stopped. The man in the knitted cap who had been following, stopped as well.
Her companion leant on his stick.
“I’m afraid your old grandmother isn’t very fond of strangers,” he said.
“There’s not many come this way,” she replied, meaning it as an apology, and added shyly: “I waved to you this afternoon.” At once she regretted her words: they seemed to reproach him.
“Yes, I saw you. It was most kind of you. Thank you for waving.”
He was not annoyed with her; he was smiling. She caught a gleam of his teeth in the dusk and felt relieved. He was very good-natured.
“Has there been anyone else to wave to today?” he asked.
“Oh, no!” she said, thankful the question was easy to answer truthfully.
For Amy’s conscience perplexed her. She longed to pour out to him the whole story of what had happened last night, but because her grandmother had kept silent about it she felt under an obligation to keep silent too. It distressed her to do so. She knew they ought to tell him; it was wrong not to tell him. Why should they show mercy to someone who had behaved like an enemy, breaking into their home, terrifying them, stealing things?
And yet when, in her mind, she called their intruder an enemy she seemed to hear her grandmother’s voice: “He never harmed us, Amy.” And when she tried to conjure up his dreadful face all she could see was that arm slung, wounded, across his chest. “He acted like he was in a daze... he didn’t know what he was doing.” A confusion of echoes and pictures filled her head on the snowy darkening hillside.
“Amy!” She was recalled by an actual voice, a soft, slow, insistent voice. “I want you to tell me if you’ve seen anyone about—anyone at all—since it started to snow?”
Suddenly she knew, forlornly, that he had brought her out here alone, had taken her hand and called her Amy, simply so as to ask her this question and be answered without interference. It had meant no more than that. Well, she could astonish him with her answer if she wanted to! She did want to, and yet she heard herself saying, evasively:
“There was Mr Protheroe—that was yesterday, though, just after I got back from school. We got sent home early. He was fetching his sheep down. It was coming on hard then, a real blizzard. He missed to get five of them—there’s one out somewhere now.”
The remembrance of the lost ewe pained her as sharply as a forgotten thorn in the finger.
“And you’ve seen no sign of anyone else?”
“What sort of a sign?” she asked him, stupidly.
“I mean, have you noticed anything unusual? Anything to make you think there might have been someone about—during the night, for instance?”
“No!” said Amy quickly, loudly, and her heart sank like a piece of lead for she had committed herself to a lie and now he could never be her friend. Never! She had deceived him without even knowing why she had done it. They went on up the hill again in single file.
At the top the two men halted and stared in all directions.
“The haystack’s on a bit, down there,” said Amy, timidly.
They looked briefly where she pointed and then resumed their intent scrutiny. It was dark now, and yet because of the snow not very dark. Mysteriously pale, the land stretched away. The sky was starry. And still there was no wind, no sound, no movement, not even a sense of time passing, only a sense of waiting and of a curious empty vastness.
“Nothing!” said the man in the knitted cap at last, uttering what was the first clear word Amy had heard from him.
“You’d better run along home,” the other one said to her. He spoke neither kindly nor unkindly, merely as though she had ceased to be of interest. He dismissed her. So that was over.
Amy watched them descend the slope towards the dim outline of the tin roof and the pitch-black pile that lay beneath it. Presently all the shapes merged together. Then she heard the rattle of the stiff plastic sheeting being flung back, or dragged off. Having played innumerable games of hide-and-seek she reflected, almost scornfully, that anyone with any sense wanting to hide would avoid the haystack simply because it was so likely. Her gaze wandered. Somewhere down there, right at the bottom was Tyler’s Place. By now it was too dark for her to be able to see even a smudge of the surrounding trees. But just suppose, she thought, those footprints this morning had been misleading? Hunted animals doubled back on their tracks. Or suppose he had fallen over the cliff of Billy Dodd’s Dingle and then followed the stream down? It would have brought him to the ruins of Tyler’s Place. Suppose he was there now—just suppose?
She glanced again towards the haystack. There were faint fitful gleams of light in its vicinity, as though they were switching torches on and off. All at once Amy felt the great loneliness of someone left out of a game: unwanted. She was about to turn and make for home when a breath of wind touched her cheek. She looked up and the stars overhead were fewer. Towards the north there were none; there the sky was blank, and the blank-ness was moving, spreading fast. Soon there would be no stars left. The wind was rising and bringing the snow-clouds with it.
At this moment Amy’s attention was attracted and held by a scarcely visible spark of light. It was too low to be a star, and it was not one of their torches either. It was nowhere near the haystack—not near at all but far off, made feeble by distance.
She heard the voices of the two men talking, and then the stamp of their feet and the scrunch of snow. They had given up their search among the bales of hay and begun to climb the slope. A feeling of panic came over Amy. Hide-and-seek was a frightening game; it was too frightening. Always when Ivor leapt out at her, caught her, she screamed. Suddenly, passionately, she wanted them not to see the light, for if they did the game would be ended and the end would be more frightening than the game.
Amy was shivering. Every moment the wind increased. It blew cold on the bare skin of her face and whipped at her scarf. She tilted her head to watch clouds rush at a terrifying speed across the sky, putting out the stars, and as she watched the two men loomed into view. A few paces more and they would reach her and stop and turn round and see what she was able to see; and then that small give-away light down there, still foolishly shining, would be extinguished like the final star.
“Didn’t I tell you to go home?”
The voice that a short while ago had sounded to Amy so pleasant, now, in her guiltiness, seemed harsher. She had got to prevent them from turning round. Any pretext would do. She began to gabble:
“Down there—down there, look! Down by our shed, see! By the cottage—look!”
“Look at what?”
“I saw something—down by our shed.”
He took hold of her shoulder. “What did you see? What was it?”
“A light,” she said, faintly.
“I can’t hear you.”
“A light—I saw a light,” she shouted. “Down by our shed, I saw it.”
“Are you certain?”
Amy was silent. Her frenzy subsided. She felt cold and tired, muddled in the head, depressed. She was certain of nothing.
“It was her old granny of course,” said the man in the knitted cap, impatiently. “She’s probably wondering where the girl’s got to.”
But the steely fingers dug into Amy’s shoulder. “What made you think that it wasn’t your grandmother? Who else might it have been?”
“I don’t know,” cried Amy. “Whoever it is you’re looking for, I suppose—whoever it is you’ve been asking all those questions about and hunting down there in the haystack for. You’re the police, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” he said after a moment, short and sharp, and let go of her shoulder.
Amy kept very quiet. They seemed to forget she was there and talk spoken above her reached her in fragments, torn by the wind.
“...passed him further back...”
“...impossible...”
“Well, I told you... dead... couldn’t have got as far as this.”
“...tomorrow... tonight...”
Beating their arms, stamping their feet, they turned at last for a final surveillance, but even as they turned the first blast of the storm struck them in a splatter of icy pellets, and if a light still shone down at Tyler’s Place it was invisible now, hidden from the watchers on the hill by countless million snowflakes whirling between.
Mrs Bowen and Amy regarded each other.
“Well?” said Mrs Bowen.