The Hollow Tree, page 10
For one suspended moment, caught in a flare of starlight, he could see the upper branches of the great Hollow Tree, and caught in their mass and tangle, the plunging tumult of the Great Fosse. White water, hammering down in fury, held by black unyielding branches, encircled by living stones.
But no: that could not be. It was not possible. The geography, the geometry, the distance was all wrong. You could not see the Coine Tree from here. You could not see the great waterfall.
He blinked hard, and perspective and depth returned. The real world. All there was in the dale was darkness, and the drive of the valley delving into the earth. Its sides, like huge, cupped hands: a trough of hard flesh, gulping blood.
11.
Terry was driving, her eyes fixed on the road. They had left Darlington, and were heading west, into a land of small villages and whitewashed farms, and, as the hills rose, the deepening valley of Tyrdale.
Terry had turned out to be a woman. She was slim and tall, and had closely cropped white-blond hair. She had greeted Shona with a wide smile and a heavy handshake.
Her car was a mess—the back seat was home to a large black battered camera bag with multiple torn pockets and worn compartments, various items of camera equipment, a large tripod, a light, several umbrellas, discarded takeaway coffee cups, fast-food wrappers, a distraught map, a pair of dirty green trainers, a couple of anoraks, and an open plastic supermarket bag which seemed to contain old clothes, and boots thick with unusual clumps of wet sand.
For a while they drove in silence, as Shona tried to find Marton’s Farm on the map on her phone.
“So, star reporter, you worked for Ranald for long?” Terry said cheerily, as the road bit deeper into the hills. A broad river ran to the left of the road. The river Tyr, Shona’s map said. They were sixteen miles from Ullathorne. Terry’s voice was lightly accented. Shona could not place it.
“About six months,” Shona said. “Can’t find this farm on this bloody map.”
“It’s up on the moor, past Stainton, I found it earlier,” Terry said. “I did a recce. No one was about. Saw the big burnt-out thing.”
Shona glared at her and then looked out the window. “Did the farmer see you?”
“No one was about.”
“Right.”
“You from Glasgow?” Terry said, speeding up as the road straightened. The hills were higher and more wooded now. The fields were held by dry stone walls. Barns stood darkly. Feeding pens slumped in sumps of mud. In a distant field, sheep moved as one towards a gate, harried by a black dog, its mouth agape. The moors loomed like the return of a bad memory.
Shona felt the landscape briefly overwhelm her—the emptiness, the scale, the far horizons. There were no streets here to shorten perspective, no junctions and paths to cut the earth into journeys and neighbourhoods. Just a silence, and space, and hidden life behind and within the folds of the earth itself. She was far from the wrecked and gorgeous Glasgow of her youth. Far from the neat parks and languid crescents of Edinburgh.
Terry’s question had been left unanswered, and Shona remembered. “Aye, Glasgow,” she said at last. She gave up looking for the farm and thumped her phone back into her pocket.
“My old man is from Glasgow. Bearsden, you know it?” Terry said.
“Yeah. Dump,” Shona said.
Terry burst into a short laugh. “That’s not what he says.”
“Yeah, I have been six months with the Buried Lede. Ranald pays my invoices on time,” Shona said, attempting to change the subject.
“He does, aye,” Terry said.
“He never said you were a lass, though,” Shona said.
“Why should he?” Terry shrugged, and switched on the radio, which blasted out a liquid silver rope of electronic music. She flicked a look at Shona. “How long you had the stick?”
“Since I was a kid,” Shona lied.
Terry raised her eyebrows. It seemed she had heard a different story. But she let it go.
They came to a roundabout near a country pub with a large black sign of a Victorian prize bull.
“Aye, it’s a right here, I think,” Terry said, and took the turn. The road narrowed to a B-road and headed steeply through high hedges and thorns through the foothills of the Pennines.
Shona looked into the back of the car. “Your car’s a midden.”
“Hah—that’s what my ex always said,” Terry said, and grinned. “Well, I’m a snapper. That’s how it is. I need all this shit.”
Shona smiled. “Right enough. Wait a second . . .”
“What?”
“So, you’re Terry.”
“Yeah,” Terry said.
“Short for—Theresa?”
“Right. Theresa.”
“So, your name is Theresa Green?”
Theresa looked to Shona, unsmiling, and then quickly nodded. “Trees are green. Funny, right? My parents are idiots.”
Shona laughed. She felt something hard and tight leave her chest as she did. She felt her cheeks blush. “I’m sorry for your troubles.”
“I bet.”
“You know, there was a girl at my school called Iona Carr,” Shona said.
“Really?”
“Nah,” Shona said, smiling, looking the other way.
Terry glanced across to Shona. “Listen, Ranald said you were stabbed back in the day. In the line of duty. Is that the reason for the stick?”
“Jesus fuck, what’s with all the medical queries? Wee Ranald should keep his neb out,” Shona said, irritated, tapping the top of her stick.
“Right. Of course. Look—sorry,” Terry said. She held up a hand.
Shona sighed. “Aye, I was stabbed by . . . I was on a job,” she murmured.
“Well, that’s shite.”
“Wasn’t the best night of my life, but.”
“But what?”
“Got the story, didn’t I?”
They looked at each other briefly, and then turned their eyes to the road.
“So, you live in Darlington?” Shona said.
“Nah, not in Darlo,” Terry said. “I’m in a village, Newsham. Not far from here. Do stuff for Ranald now and then, but mainly it’s Yorkshire Post, Northern Echo, Guardian. Do some commercial stuff as well—pays the bills. No weddings, funerals or bar-mitzvahs.”
“Ever been to Scotland?”
“Aye. Went to Edinburgh College of Art, didn’t I? Did I not say that?”
“Ah, right. Nice.”
“It was. A degree in fine art,” Terry said, shaking her head. “A lot of good that did me.”
The fields weren’t fields now, but wide rolling acres of unfarmable land—dull marsh, hard grass, gorse and rocky hills. The sky was vast. Cold becks ran in rocky runs. There were abandoned stone buildings—houses or barns. Large buildings, holding volumes of darkness and stench. The desolate heath ran to the arc of a white horizon.
They came to a halt beside a hard, rocky, high cambered track, which bent raggedly off the main road.
“It’s here,” said Terry, and they turned into it, and the car bumped along the track. They rumbled over a low rise, and down, and they saw a large farm half a mile away—a central stone house, outbuildings, a concrete yard, parked tractors. But before the farm, there was a field, with a black mess near its edge amid twisted trees tortured by the moor gales.
As they slowed, the black mess became clearer—it was the burnt-out caravan. It was listing on burst, melted wheels, its sides folded in and black, and charred metal parts lay sunk in the mud and ashes and mess. It was black and ruined, and open to the sky, like a gutted metallic animal, gralloched and charred.
Terry pulled the car around so that it faced the main road. “You gonna speak to the farmer?”
Shona nodded. She left her bag on the seat and, holding her notebook out and with her Dictaphone app on her phone turned on, started to walk down the lonely road to the farm. She had taken a few steps before she felt the cold air on her skin, and the breeze across the moorland, ruffling her hair. Her feet, in trainers, walked unevenly on the road. Her stick banged on myriad tiny hard surfaces, dunting edges with worn rubber.
The farm seemed to be empty of life. There was no one in the yard. Nothing was moving. She looked back, and Terry was doing her work—photographing the remains of the caravan. She was crouching, her elbows out, the lens an extension of her hands, her eyes.
Shona reached the farm. Something flickered in her vision, and she looked up. A bird of prey swung around in circles, looking for a tiny life to kill in the land below. The moors were a dry purgatory of emptiness. A watchful desert.
“What’s all this?” a deep voice said.
A man in blue overalls had appeared. He was in his late teens, fresh faced, with a large grey bucket in one of his pink hands.
“Hi, maybe you can help me—is Mr. Marton about?” Shona asked.
The youth rubbed his hair and looked behind him. The large sheds were silent. The stone house was in good order—it looked solid and clean. “Nah, he’s away in town,” he said. He pointed to Terry. “What’s all this?”
“We’re from the papers, just doing a piece on the fire,” Shona said.
“Tyrdale Times?” the boy said, pulling at an ear. He looked down at her stick and furrowed his brow.
“No . . . we’re freelance,” she said. “When is Mr. Marton back?”
“He’ll be a bit,” he said. “I don’t think he wants any of this business. I’d come back another time.” He stood looking at Terry and shook his head. “Aye, I’ll tell him you’ve been, like. Come back another time.” He sucked his lower lip. He looked concerned, his cheeks blotching.
“Were you here when the fire happened?” Shona asked.
He studied his heavy fingernails.
“Did you help put it out?”
“Nah, it was all out by the time I shipped up,” he said. “All out. You could see it, like. Marton had called in the engine, but he had got the foam on it from the house. Near put it out. The fella had removed the gas tank. Or it would have gone up.”
“It did go up,” Shona said, with a smile.
The boy kept staring at Terry.
“The fella—I hear he’s died. Something like that,” he said, quietly.
“That’s right—what was he like?”
“Quiet.”
“Would you say he kept himself to himself?” Shona said, wincing at the cliché. Hector would have laughed at her.
“Aye.” He gestured to Terry. “Is she done?”
“Think so,” she said. “How long was the man living here for?”
“Oh, couple of weeks. Maybe three. Mebbe a month. He went away for a bit—down south I think—then he was back. Then we heard he was in Scotland. He was no bother. Never saw him. And then the news. Marton was happy he wasn’t in there when it went up, mind. Are you off now?”
“I’ll be giving Mr. Marton a call,” she said.
“Right, well,” he said, peering again at Terry.
“Did the man have a car?” Shona asked.
“Aye—police took it. But it was scrap, even when it were working. He had a bike, too. That was probably in the fire, like.”
She nodded. “What kind of bike?”
He shrugged. “Red one.”
“And what’s your name—so I can tell Mr. Marton you told us to piss off?” she said, lightly.
A flicker of a smile briefly played across his mouth and eyes. Then it was gone. “Tell him you spoke to Mark and I told you both to get lost,” he said.
“Fine,” she said.
“Mebbe . . .” he said. He scratched his nose.
“Mebbe what?”
“Mebbe you should speak to Old John,” he said. “He was friendly with the fella.”
“Who is Old John?”
“Old guy lives down there, on the fellside. They were always talking, like. That’s him,” he said—pointing past Shona with a thick finger.
She turned around. Past the burnt-out caravan, and across the lonely moor road, there was a track leading further down into the valley. Amidst a small stand of firs huddled a cottage, with dim smoke rising from it.
“Well, that’s me,” he said, and without a change of expression, stomped off across the concrete yard. He did not look back, and disappeared through a large door into one of the barns.
Shona walked up the track again. The sky was changing colour—high white clouds were smeared across the sky, and it felt colder. She noticed remnants of snow on the high moors, white lines across the long banks of rock.
Terry was taking general views of the area with a different lens. She was standing on a large flat rock, blotched with lichen, wincing with her spare eye. She pulled down her camera as Shona approached.
“That’s me done,” Terry said. “Farmer about?”
“No. I think he’d probably tell us to get fucked anyway. I’m just going to look at that house over there. There’s some old dude who apparently used to speak to Merrygill.”
“Oh yeah? I’m going to take some more GVs. Call me if you need me over there. Caravan was well and truly torched, wasn’t it?” Terry said, tilting her camera in the direction of the pyre.
“I like it when snappers state the bloody obvious once in a while,” Shona said.
“Ya what?”
“It’s kind of comforting,” Shona said.
“Give over,” Terry said, and resumed her work.
Shona walked down the track and crossed the main road, her stick skittering on the gravel. As she neared the cottage, in a copse of twisted firs, she could see a raked slate roof, tiny windows, and a tatty fence around an overgrown garden. Outside, lopsided on the uneven track, was an old green bicycle, spattered with mud, with rust around its wheels. It had a basket attached, and inside was an open canvass bag of sooty potatoes. Out the back she saw a glimpse a pile of clapped-out machinery and white goods, a shattered caravan, and a gross peeling oil sump amid knots of high grass.
Beyond it, the watching moors rose and fell. This could be the first house of the moor, or the last.
The front door was peeling and green. There was a foggy window set in it, a diamond of blur. A glare of light suddenly fell on the house. She looked up—the sun had emerged from the high clouds. Light glittered on the door knocker: a bearded man, cast in brass. She looked closer: the beard was vines and leaves, and the eyes acorns. The knocker between his teeth was a tongue, bowed. On a board attached to the door were painted the words: THE GROVE.
She knocked on the door and, to her surprise, it boomed, hollow and deep. Her hand jumped from the metal. She looked up to the main road—but the lie of the land meant Terry, the burnt-out caravan, and the farm were all out of view. They may as well have not been there.
Shona banged the knocker again. Again, it boomed as if behind the shabby door there was a tunnel dug deep into the guts of the earth. Then she turned it, and it rotated clockwise. The door opened. A long hall was now ahead, shadowy with dim shapes of bulk and weight. The marble eyes of a dead rabbit stared at her, chilly teeth in its open dead mouth. Its body was laid, with other mounds of fur, on the top of a sideboard.
Shona moved into the hall, her feet and stick tapping on bare floorboards. There was a thick smell, a sweet soup of mould and spores. Her eyes adjusted to the gloom and began to tingle with itch. There was heavy furniture everywhere—a large wooden wardrobe, several chests of drawers, a stand filled with walking sticks, some topped with smooth brass heads of dogs and deer. Heavy coats hung from hooks, and beneath them, a glossy slop pile of waterproofs, slung on top of filthy wellies, rank with mud and slime.
“Hello?” she called. No answer. Just the ticking of a large clock, somewhere, and a wheezing noise. There were paintings on the wall: hunting scenes of men in red on horses chasing invisible foxes. There were blotchy scenes of rural disarray. There was one large portrait of a woman, pale and severe, in a high-backed chair. She was in black, with a large ruff about her throat. Her head looked decapitated, as if presented on a plate. The eyes had been scored out with a knife. There were circles of bare wall where the pupils should have been.
She looked up; the rough ceiling was stained with smoke and grime, and a flowering field of mould in dark patches, tiny black spots, scattered like acne.
Halfway down the hall, an open door exposed a room with wooden floors. She peeked in. It was an empty room, lit by a large window. But it was not quite empty. On the floorboards, in a circle, were various stones.
Shona looked at the strange arrangement. The stones had been cleaned or polished, and seemed to gleam. The circle was carefully arranged and exact. The pebbles were pale and brown, orange and grey. At the centre there was a candle, a wooden cup, and a small pile of gravel and pebbles. Leant against a plain white wall was a large mirror.
The mirror distracted her. Something was written on it in white paint, or a correction fluid. Shona looked closer. There were two shapes in the shape of empty eyes. Inches apart, five feet up the glass. Two white dots where a nose might be. Where the mouth might be, someone had written: s o r l e y
She heard a loud snort, or snore, and jumped.
“Hello?” she called again, less sure. She moved back into the hall. The wheezing was still there. She listened closely. It was breathing. There was a solid propulsion to it, a pneumatic certainty.
She reached forward and pushed at the door at the end of the hall, and it moved inwards with a creak. She put her head around the edges, smile fixed, ready for human contact. She saw a small, busy, dark room. It was warm. Low flames moved slowly behind the sooty window of a stove, and heat throbbed from the squat iron.
On a small couch by the fire, covered in a woollen blanket, a large old man slept soundly. The brown couch was burst, the stuffing hanging in shags from its green seams. Across multiple deep brown wooden surfaces there was a sea of rumpled, rolled papers and open books. On either side of the stove, recessed shelves were jammed with antiquarian volumes and yet more papers, rolled and tied, folded and open.
The chaotically bearded man was bundled. He had a shock of white grey hair with tawny streaks. His lined brown face was at rest, his lower lip hanging, his mouth slightly ajar. His eyes were screwed tight, like two walnuts pushed into a warm dough. He was wearing heavy overalls and several pairs of stringy woollen socks. His hairy hands were clasped on his chest over a rifle with a wooden stock. Its metal gleamed dully.
