Haweswater, page 9
He holds his body out of the stream, better to preserve a supply of warmth, though the ground and rock under him steals at it. He allows a hand now and again into the water like a wingless bird diving for silver, keeping the other on a slippery, moss-covered stone above the river, which still has little pieces of ice tucked tight in its fur.
The crayfish is a good find, time-consuming, but he remains submerged for over fifteen seconds, unwilling to neglect other species in their tender cages.
Then the pain begins to dissolve all other sensation in his head and his eye rolls back to life. Spasms rock his flesh and he surfaces. Coming up, the air seems even colder than the water. The mountain breeze licks at his dripping ears, nips at them with quick bites, his forehead smarts. He breathes, unable to prevent a dry, clamped cough from coming up as the oxygen is taken into the halted lungs. He massages his neck and throat. The glands have tight knots. His wet collar has begun to freeze, stiffening against his neck, and chafing. He unbuttons the shirt, folds it off his skin. He puts the cold-staved fingers of his right hand under his tongue again but there is no heat left for either to borrow.
At least once or twice a day Isaac will come here to do this. In the summer he will swim down to the riverbed, wholly submerged, and in the winter he’ll break ice to feel water on his forehead. Even though his mother will scold him for the damp clothing and his frozen hands. He’ll tell her that God has made a botched job, that he should have been a fish, and his mother will scold him for that, too. But she knows it, really, that he cannot keep away from water. That he is mesmerized by it. Ella has set firm in her mind the notion that her son will meet his fate in the waters of the Mardale valley, though he swims well enough. That one day she will find his corpse, a pale bag locked full of water at the bottom of Hop Grumble ghyll, where the torrent meets the lake. Or that Samuel will have to wade out under the Measand bridge, grope a hand between the reeds and find a son. She has her visions, her omens. The drowned wasp suspended in a jar of honey, a silver birch leaf fallen into a puddle. She tries to explain the dangers to him, to encourage him into other habits. He will not be swayed. He is called to the river. Because there he has the freedom to fly, weightless and sighted through the currents of the valley’s water. It is a better world, where life is slower and quicker at once, and there is silence except for the movement of the river’s atmosphere itself.
After a while Isaac stands, turns down the path, dizzy and rigid with cold. Today he has stayed down too long. There are side-effects to his devotion of the river. Bright stars of yellow light are imploding near the corners of his eyes. His peripheral vision is destroyed. The horizon is dull and its lines are separating, closing together, separating. He stumbles, sits down on a rock, rubs the last of the river out of his eyes, crushing his palms’ heels into the sockets, smashing out frost and winter tears.
An impossible creature is just ahead of him, steaming on the roadside. A red dragon, maybe fourteen feet long. And beside it a man made of dark-green panels. The lines around the beast and the man chase and flex. It is a picture in a dream, an illustration from a medieval book made modern, a hallucination. As if the peculiar effects of the river have begun freezing the soft tissues inside his head. He does not trust his eyes, which are banging with light. But no, hallucinations are reserved for fevers, diseases. The river does not make him sick. He rubs his sockets, crushing yellow stars against his skull, opens his eyes, blinks. And blinks again. No, a dragon, definitely. Dragon.
When the man in the suit saw Isaac he thought at first that the boy was sick. He was pale and dripping with sweat. His shirt was dark with it. He did not seem stable and was swaying on the rock where he sat, staring intently straight ahead, but without seeing what his eyes offered up, it seemed. His hair had separated into bright blond icicles.
The man took a few steps towards the boy, as if to catch him if he fell. But he jumped up from the rock.
– Don’t run.
The boy stood for a moment, swaying, then sat again with a sudden jerky movement. The gesture seemed unrelated to the request. The man walked slowly up the steep path towards him, holding one hand in front of him as if to urge calmness, to dissuade flight. As if approaching a stray of some kind.
– There’s no need for running. No need at all. Just stay, and I’ll come to you.
Isaac squinted up one eye, bearing his teeth on that side of his face as his mouth followed upwards after the squint. There was a terrible pain behind that eye, a narrow, tunnel hole of pain going back towards his skull. An ache of bone. Ice-pain. The man sat next to him, flipping up the back of his suit jacket as he sat.
– You’re soaked. Are you unwell?
– No, I’m well enuff.
There was a brief silence, during which Isaac sniffled loudly. The man wondered whether he should offer the boy a handkerchief to dry himself with, blow his nose, but decided against it. They sat for a time quietly, without talking, a damp, cold boy in a wet shirt and a man who looked as if he would be more at home in the offices of Piccadilly or Manhattan, not the lake country. Both were dressed in wholly unsuitable attire, respectively out of place in the wintry environment.
– What d’yer want?
– Well, nothing, really. I just thought you might be unwell. You looked poorly.
– I’m grand as owt.
– You’re shivering.
– Aye, so’d you be, if you’d bin in t’beck.
– Did you fall in?
The boy grunted as if annoyed, as if the man had suddenly become very stupid and had asked a ridiculous question. He coughed without putting a hand over his mouth. His body was shaking.
– You mean you went in voluntarily? That’s a bit irregular at this time of year, isn’t it? Won’t your mother be angry? Won’t she scold you?
– Shi’ll not if she dun’t know.
– Oh. Of course. Well, rest assured you can count on my complete discretion.
The man in the suit put out his hand, paused, then laid it on the boy’s wrist.
– You’re frozen. You feel like ice cream, you look about as pale as ice cream, too.
Then the man laughed. His laugh was full of genuine mirth and there were small, fine lines around his eyes.
– Well, what’s your name?
– T’s Isaac.
– Pleased to make your acquaintance, Isaac. I’m Jack.
The boy hopped off the rock and turned to face the man. He stuck out a hand in a blunt gesture. He was still squinting one eye savagely. They shook, the older of the two charmed by the unexpected manners of the boy.
– Well Isaac, I’m a little concerned with how cold that hand is.
– Warmin’ up.
– Yes. But, if it’s right with you, I’ll put my coat on you and escort you home in case you melt. Where do you live? One of the farms?
The boy shook his head quickly, sending a spray of icy water out from his hair like a dog shaking after retrieving a thrown stick from a lake. He pushed away the offered coat.
– Cum wid us, if y’like, but I’ll not wear it. Shi’ll know.
– Yes, your mother might be a problem. Tell you what, then, put it on now and take it off when we get close to the house, before she spies you. She’ll be none the wiser. Do we have a deal?
Isaac considered the proposal for a moment. It seemed fair enough. The man noticed how pale his non-squinting eye was, almost clear apart from a faint bluish smudge around the pupil. He found the child a little disarming to look at. The boy took the coat and put it on, struggling with its size. The arms almost reached the ground and its shoulders drooped off his back. The man buttoned up the front, though it made little difference for a snug fit. Under his jacket the man had on a pale-yellow shirt with gold armbands on his biceps. Isaac reached out and touched the one on his left arm.
– Whatter them for?
– To stop my arms from falling off. How’s the coat? Better?
– Feels like rabbuts’ ears, ?
– Rabbits’ ears?
Isaac went over to the water, dropped to his knees and hunted around for a second in the grass. The man winced as the coat was knelt into the earth. Then Isaac came back over, holding out a small green and white leaf. The man took it. It was long and slightly concave, covered with downy hairs, similar in shape and texture to a rabbit’s ear. The reference made sense. The boy was grinning and seemed pleased at the lesson he was giving about flora. He snatched the plant back and began to tickle a palm with it as he walked away. He walked clumsily and with tripping steps down the steep path towards the red car. The man followed.
– Yor t’fella that’s gunna mek lake bigga.
– Yes, I am.
A cold wind was blowing off the top of the mountain and snow from the summit was being whipped into the air. As the two made their way up the rocky track to Whelter Farm they were both shivering. The man wished he had stopped at his car to collect his overcoat and hat. It was ridiculous to be running around outside without them. Further up along the path there was a low shout, which the wind brought down to them.
– Zac? Isaac?
A young woman came round the corner of the lane by the stream. Her hair was twisted into a loose knot before it fell a good way down her back. The mass of it made her head look smaller in comparison, the face taut, leopard-like. The direction of her gaze was up towards the slope of the fell, towards the river cataracts, where she expected her brother to be. She had on a shawl and a cotton dress. Her arms were tightly crossed over her chest and clouds came from her mouth as she shouted into the fraught air. Her legs were bare from the knees down, until the beginning of two heavy, black leather boots, which looked like army surplus.
The man paused on the path to look at her. From a distance, her hair looked as if it had an almost blue sheen, but as she came closer it disappeared into dark yellow. There were sculpted angles in her face, high sheered bones, but her eyes were deep set, becoming lost within the shadow-pools of their own sockets and the man could not tell what colour they were. She lacked the combed, powdered quality of the women in the city tearooms and dancehalls, and also their stunted manner of walking. This woman strode. The hair lifted off her back in the wind. He thought to himself, she is not beautiful.
Isaac paused also and turned to face his companion.
– It’s m’sista.
The young woman’s head came round to face forward and she saw her brother standing with a tall stranger. His attire was fine, immaculately tailored. She knew immediately who he was. She approached them without smiling, her eyes lost, her face showing too much bone. The man addressed her politely.
– Good evening.
There was no response. She continued walking towards them, a slow walk now, careful, a prowl almost. And as she reached them, the man thought again, where are her eyes? There were dark hollows where they should have been, perhaps the edge of an eyelash, nothing more. She looked tired or blind.
– Tek it off, Isaac.
There was no malice to the words. The muscles of her voice stretched, sinewy and elastic, like a lazy yawn under a tree, and did not mirror the flagrant position of her request. She reached out and pulled some frosty water from her brother’s hair with tightened fingers. He was comfortable with this gesture, his head moving slightly to one side under the strength of her hand.
–Tek it off. Get on, gaily lad.
Dutifully, he began to fumble with the jacket buttons. She bent down to him, setting one bare knee on the ground in the position of a marriage proposal, and carefully removed the coat for him, then stood. She still had not looked at the man accompanying her brother. This was disarming for him and he sensed a deliberate banishment. He spoke to gain her attention.
– Leave it on him for a while, I really don’t object. He’s very cold, the poor lad will probably catch pneumonia. And I’d hate to see him pass away. He’s really my only ally at present. I can’t afford to lose him.
The man attempted humour, found it absent from his words. Finally, the woman turned to him. Her eyes were bronze when they suggested anger to his face, an unnatural shade, somewhere between orange and grey.
– He could live under an iceberg and it wouldn’t bother him. In fact, he’d prosper.
Her listless, subdued tone held, working against the bruised, shining eyes, but the accent thinned perhaps for his benefit. He guessed at her age. Not more than twenty. If that. Yet she seemed older, capable of immense control and poise. He offered her a hand.
– My name is Jack …
– I know perfectly well what your name is. Who y’are. And yer position at Manchester City Water. I’d congratulate you on yer timing, right on the brink o’ lambing season, but then it’s been done before this way, so that’s not necessary. It’s an old trick isn’t it, get them when they’re busiest? Less time to think, less time to … act. A good tactic. Tried and true.
Her laugh was quiet, sarcastic. She continued.
– In a week or two I might shake with you, but you’ll have to come back to me when we both know more about where we stand. I’m sure you appreciate that, Mr Liggett.
He pulled the wires of his smile a little tighter and brought the hand down. His exterior was unruffled, but in truth he had not expected the first real verbal sparring on the subject of Haweswater to be with a young woman on a fell in the biting March cold. The idea had been to take care of things indoors, in a controlled environment, in his way. Her eyes glimmered. Now he could not get rid of her gaze. Her feline face, lank, raw. He thought again, she is not beautiful, and though it did not resound as clearly in him the second time, with this thought he found a little more courage and a little more certainty.
– The timing, I can assure you, bears no hidden agenda, as you imply. We simply weren’t all go until recently. These things do take time, and we have known for a while, that’s true, but it also takes a lot of organization before … well, before take off.
– That’s three takes I counted. That’s a lot of taking.
Isaac had not been following the conversation. He had begun walking away up the path to the thick stone house in the distance. He turned and waved to them both, though they did not see him, then he ran skittishly upwards. The man switched himself to another tone, quickly, as if he’d meant it all along. A chameleon bringing fresh colour up into his skin, regurgitating bark texture instead of rock.
– I should apologize. Here I am with your brother, a perfect stranger …
– No. Don’t.
She would not even allow him that. Cut short, the man breathed out quickly, nodding his head a little and looking down. He almost laughed out loud at the difficulty he was having, moving with her. He continued to look down at the trickling path for a time, the measled snow. Her boots were scuffed at the toe, unpolished, the heels tipped back on the uneven ground. If he had pushed her, square on her breastplate, her balance would surely have failed. She must have been extremely cold but was not showing it. Her arms were open, angled, hands fastened to her hips, allowing the air freedom to remove warmth from the expanses of skin. There was no protection against the cold blowing down off the mountains and circling them. She moved a leg back, as if unwilling to accept his gaze on it, as if she had read his mind and was securing her position on the ground, her boot splashing a tiny puddle of water up on to the pale, downed skin.
When he looked up again, she had his jacket next to her face, as if she was trying to find a scent kept there in its fibres. He had not even thought to ask her for it back yet. One of the buttons was torn off with her teeth, she held it half in her mouth. He breathed in without smoothness, startled by the gesture. It might have been erotic if it had not been so unusual and brutal. He breathed in again. The air seemed lacking in something vital for use in respiration. She brought the button from her lips with finger and thumb, took the dark cotton thread into her mouth, rolled it on her tongue. He half expected her to spit it out but she did not. Then she held the button out to him.
– It was loose. You’d have lost it.
His chest was moving rapidly under his shirt, perhaps because of the cold or perhaps because of this woman’s confidence, her balance, he did not know which. He took the small, moist object carefully. He had no wish to drop it. It seemed important that he did not. Then he took the coat from her.
– Thank you for yer concern for Isaac. And fer seeing him back.
Now her voice was nothing but that which it sought to convey. She bade him goodnight, saying it was late and that he would be wanting to get away. But she waited on the path for him to turn and leave, her expression absent as it had been when they first met minutes before. He wanted to offer a handshake again but thought it pointless. He simply bade her a goodnight also. As he turned to leave, the button was pressing hard into his palm, and by the time he reached his vehicle it had left the circular imprint of a quarter-pierced moon in the soft flesh on the underside of his hand.
After a good amount of time Janet began to walk back up to Whelter Farm. The roar of the man’s car had left the valley. It was almost fully dark. Her hands were numb with cold by now, they had lost all feeling, so much so that if someone had touched them she would have thought them alien, would not have believed them to be her own.
She had watched him walk down to his automobile, not looking back once, becoming smaller in the valley and finally climbing into his new car. She had watched his shoulders rocking under his cotton shirt, he still had not put on the suit jacket, as if she had somehow tainted it, until he was no more than a form in motion within the clothing. Then, too far away to recognize, he was a pale shell on the valley floor.
