The Stranger House (36 page)

“You shouldn’t confuse immersion with absorption,” she smiled, “I am a scholar. My interest is primarily academic. Yours should be also. Personal involvement may add a spice to research, but it should never be allowed to get in the way of objective truth.”

“Truth,” he echoed, “A young man who was one of my ancestors was shipwrecked on these shores and treated monstrously—you’ll admit that as true, I suppose?”

“You forget, I haven’t studied the document myself,” she said, “But, accepting your interpretation as accurate, you shouldn’t ignore the fact that he was also treated with more kindness and compassion than an enemy of the state might have expected in those troubled times. The Gowder woman saved his life and offered him all the comforts a woman can offer a man. His life was saved a second time by my own ancestors, at no inconsiderable risk to themselves. Would an English sailor shipwrecked in Spain have received the same treatment, I wonder?”

“I don’t think there’s much point in comparing brutalities,” he said.

“Of course not. In any case, behaviour must always be judged in the social context in which it occurs. I see you have the Swinebank
Guide
with you. His take on the events at Foulgate makes interesting reading, don’t you think? There are two sides to everything. Now I must be off. I’ll talk to my father and grandfather and ring you later. I can’t offer you more than that, Mig, believe me. Good day. I’ll be in touch.”

She walked away, upright, unhurried, a column of pure white light in a world of shifting colours. He sank back down on the rough bench and watched her go. Into his mind, uninvited, dropped Winander’s comment yesterday about the marble angel.

Cool even in the sunlight.

The sun dappling his bare arms did not seem so warm now. A winged insect settled on the back of his hand. It was a pale green and translucent white, a lacy fragile thing.

But when he brushed it off, it left a red mark on his skin.

For several minutes after Frek’s departure, Mig sat, staring sightlessly at the river’s sparkling surface. He felt unhappy, he felt frustrated, above all he felt foolish.

He had observed the cycle of desire and rejection often enough during his school and university days, and sometimes when he wasn’t too busy struggling to subdue his own body, he had felt rather smugly that an intelligent observer probably knew more about the game than many players.

Wrong! And the result? Here he was, a twenty-seven-year-old adolescent, feeling sorry for himself!

To divert his mind from these painful speculations, he opened the Illthwaite
Guide
and read again the passage describing the fate of the waif boy.

It was an ill-judged attempt at diversion. Emotional and sexual frustration was a mere cat’s-paw compared to the tempest stirred up by the measured terms of the Reverend Peter K. He felt again what he had felt that first night as he approached the Stranger House—the mist swirling around his head; the fear coating his tongue; the desperate pumping of his lungs inflating the chambers of his heart to bursting point.

He leapt up to escape it, but he bore it with him. And
when he reached the fork in the path which led to Foulgate Farm, his feet seemed to turn uphill of their own accord.

But the ghost of an experience four hundred years old could not serve to strengthen living limbs, and certainly not to lend grip to a pair of casual shoes which were fine for a gentle stroll but ill suited to this increasingly rough and rugged track.

Soon he was back wholly in the world of here and now. His bad leg was aching and he was breathing so hard it must have sounded like the approach of a traction engine to the inmates of Foulgate.

The Gowders certainly looked as if they’d anticipated his coming, he thought with a shiver. They were standing in their cobbled farmyard, one holding a plane in his hands, the other a bradawl. Between them on a trestle lay a half-assembled coffin.

This, he thought with a shock of recognition like a blow, this was the house in which that other Miguel had fought with Thomas Gowder. There was the barn in which he had first lain with Jenny Gowder. Across these cobbles and up that track ahead he must have fled, almost naked, from the fury of the younger brother.

And these two men standing looking at him with eyes that were neither surprised nor welcoming, these were the descendants of that Andrew who had driven the wooden spites into Miguel’s hands and feet, and left him hanging from the blasted oak tree.

One of them spoke.

Laal, he thought, recalling what Sam had said about identifying them.

“Can we help you, mister?”

“I’m going to Mecklin Moss,” he said.

“Then you’re going right,” said the other. Who must therefore also be Laal.

It was very confusing. It was hard enough separating the living from the dead without the separation of the living from the living being a problem too.

He made his way carefully around them and out of the other end of the yard. He was sure they would stand and watch him out of sight, but after only a couple of steps he heard the rasp of the plane.

Their indifference felt more of a trouble than their interest.

The track here was wider and rutted by wheels. It wove upwards through tummocky drumlins, and soon the buildings of the farm were out of sight.

Beyond the drumlins this main track began to bear to the left, following the contour of the fell. Eventually it must curve downhill and become Stanebank and descend to the Hall. But at the highest point of the curve, his feet chose a narrower path, scarce more than a sheep-trod, which led straight on.

He knew with a certainty beyond need of proof that this was the way his young terrified ancestor had fled.

The main track had been worn to the visible bedrock but now, as the ground levelled off into a relatively flat expanse of moorland, he felt the path beneath his feet become increasingly soft and damp, as though here the earth’s bones lay too deep to reach. Yet strewn across this marshy moorland were huge boulders, deposited there by God knows what glacial drift or subterranean tremor.

He paused to examine two massive slabs, or perhaps the halves of one even vaster rock, leaning drunkenly against each other to form a lofty tent. The dark recess looked uninviting now, but in a storm with no other
choice it must look almost welcoming. That someone had found it so was suggested by a circle of scorched earth at its mouth. Fire, the fourth element, which might help a man survive the perils of the other three, when earth became treacherous and air surged with invisible violence. As for water, no longer content simply to seep up around his shoes, it now gleamed darkly in sinister pools amidst the coarse grass, and soon he found even apparently solid patches of bright green turf dissolving beneath his feet to sink him deep in clinging mud.

He glanced at the sketch map in the
Guide.
While not detailed enough for precise navigation, it confirmed that he was on the edge of Mecklin Moss. Mecklin Shaw must be somewhere over to his left. Or rather, must have been. Even in the Reverend Peter K.’s day, it had almost disappeared. Now, a century on, what could remain? But to that other Miguel, as he glimpsed the darkness of the trees swaying against the lighter darkness of the sky, it must have looked to offer some slight hope of refuge.

Ahead, now as then, there seemed nothing but the certainty of getting irretrievably bogged down in the space of a couple of dozen metres.

His thoughts turned to Sam Flood’s namesake who had drowned himself up here in the Moss. Self-destruction, a fearful choice for any man, for a priest far worse. And what a place to choose! No simple plunge into deep drowning waters was on offer here, but a long struggle out through quag and bog till at last the mud held you fast and you must prostrate yourself as though in worship to bring the longed-for end.

He shuddered and said an intercessory prayer for the poor lost soul. A man who by all accounts was informed by an overwhelming desire to do good.

Much good it did him.

A bitter tribute to futility.

He arrived at the place where the wood must have been.

All traces of it had vanished, at least on the surface. Perhaps deep below there still lay ancient roots. But for too long now there had been no thirsty trees and, left undrained, inevitably the ground had been taken over by the relentless slough. He had no way of knowing for certain this was the right location. So far he had experienced nothing more up here than the natural reaction of any sensitive being to such a dreary place.

It could be that, having brought him so close to the end of his voyage of discovery, his other-world guides were leaving him to his own devices. If so, he should feel glad. They had often been uncomfortable travelling companions, and dealing with this world on this world’s terms looked likely to present enough problems to occupy him fully.

But no man who has for so long felt different is ever completely grateful to lose the feeling.

He turned his back on the Moss. Another thin trod ran away downhill to rejoin the curve of Stanebank. It was in this direction that the other Miguel, bleeding and lame, must have staggered after Jenny Gowder had released him. Knowing what her own fate must be were she caught in his company, she had not dared to help him further, yet what she had already done was an act of great courage.

And so the injured youth had limped and crawled downhill till he was too weak to move further, then lain exposed to the savagery of the elements till by the grace of God the young Woollass had chanced upon him.

He had much to thank the Woollasses for, thought Mig. It had been that sense of obligation, as well as his sense of desire, that had made him unburden himself so comprehensively to Frek. Now it was up to them.

He set off down the trod and within a few minutes found himself rejoining the relatively broad track of Stanebank.

Left would take him back to Foulgate, right must lead downhill past the Hall.

That was his quickest and easiest way, though he found himself unhappy at the prospect of meeting any of the Hall’s inmates in his present befouled condition. It wasn’t just his shoes that were ruined. The mud had managed to reach his knees, though he had no memory of ever sinking so deep.

He set off down the grassy track. Walking downhill on a firm surface was a pleasure after the Moss. He felt as strong as he’d been before his accident. Soon the Hall came in sight. He paused where a natural terrace on the fellside gave a fine oversight. The ground dropped steeply then began to level off towards the kitchen end of the house. A flat area scooped out of the slope and levelled with gravel caught his eye. It looked like a niche prepared to receive some piece of garden statuary. Maybe Dunstan had picked up a marble Venus on his last trip to Rome! He worked out that one of the first-floor windows he could see was probably the old man’s bedroom. Perhaps even now he and the statuesque but very non-marmoreal Pepi were enjoying themselves up there. With an example like that, no need for a late starter like himself to worry. He still had half a century to learn the game!

The thought stayed with him as he strode past the Hall and as he approached that other reminder of
the possibilities of age, the Forge, it returned to make him smile again.

“Dear God! It doesn’t take much to make you monks happy,” said a mocking voice, “Why didn’t you roll in the mud and really enjoy yourself!’

Thor Winander was standing in his driveway.

“Good morning, Mr Winander,” said Mig.

“And good morning to you. What the hell have you been up to?”

“I went for a walk and found the ground wasn’t as hard as I’m used to.”

“Edie Appledore isn’t going to thank you for tracking that clart into her house, and you must be in her black books already for messing up her kitchen. Come in and clean up. No, I insist. We didn’t really get a chance to talk about last night, did we?”

Not too reluctantly, Mig let himself be drawn into the house. Winander took him upstairs and opened a door which led into a bedroom.

“Bathroom in there,” he said, pointing to another door, “I’ll leave some clean things on the bed for you. I’ll be downstairs with a hot drink when you’re ready.”

Five minutes later, Mig descended the stairs wearing trainers and chinos, both a touch too large but not unmanageably so.

“In here,” called Winander.

He tracked the voice into a basic but well-ordered kitchen.

“Sit yourself down,” the big man commanded, “Won’t take you into the parlour. Had the little Aussie in there yesterday and she was a bit satirical about the mess. Doesn’t mince her words, does she? So, how do you like your coffee? With or without?”

“Just a very little milk, thank you.”

“I wasn’t talking about milk,” said Winander, holding up a bottle of rum, “This stuff will put the colour back in your cheeks. It did wonders for the British Navy’s cheeks, so they say—above and below.”

He poured a generous dollop into a mug, topped it with coffee and passed it over.

“There we go.
Salud!”

“Cheers,” said Mig.

“So,” said Winander, back into a chair, “And how are you after last night’s adventures? And the marvellous midget, how’s she bearing up?”

“Miss Flood, you mean? She’s gone. Drove off first thing.”

“With never a goodbye? After all I did for her. There’s Aussie manners for you.”

“What exactly did you do for her, Mr Winander?” said Mig.

“Call me Thor. Well, now I come to think of it, not a lot. But I’m sorry to have missed her. Sort of grew on you, didn’t she? Which was just as well as she seems to have stopped growing on herself!”

Mig surprised in himself a pang of resentment which came close to being jealousy. Changing the subject, he said, “I didn’t thank you properly for your prompt action last night. I gather it was you who worked things out so quickly.”

“Not difficult. Pulley ropes broken, hooks under the table, voices from the ground. Scratch the patina of artistic sophistication and you will find us Winanders are still basically jobbing craftsmen.”