No Way Of Telling (10 page)

“Come on, Mick.”

Their sudden appearance alarmed the ewes who huddled away in a panic, but for once Amy spared them no attention. Her mind was fixed now on a single objective. She took her tin toboggan and set off uphill through the deep newly-fallen snow. Even at the top she did not pause. She never looked back or round about her, but sat down immediately on the toboggan, pulled Mick on to her lap, scuffled with her heels to get started, and in a moment was off.

They swerved past the old haystack and flew on down the hill, down and down, on and on. With eyes stretched wide she stared ahead, desperately trying to steer a course on a track that was overgrown at the best of times and now lost under snow, with even the snow itself scarcely visible in semi-darkness. They seemed to be going much too fast. Surely she ought to be aiming further to the left? She dug in her left heel: that was too far—she dug in her right. They missed a thorn-bush by inches, leapt over a bump. The ground flattened and then dropped again, and still they flew down and on—on and down—as though there were no end to the hill and Tyler’s Place had vanished like a dream.

Again the ground levelled. The toboggan went more and more slowly, almost stopped, crept over a rise and once again gathered speed. Ahead, strung across their path, was a ragged hedge, and beyond it a low cluster of trees. Amy saw what she thought was a gap in the hedge and steered for that. When she was close upon it she realised that it was not after all going to be wide enough to let them through and she tried to stop, but they were too near and going too fast. She jammed her heels down, skidded sharply, lost control, and was flung off against a barrier of hazels.

For several moments she lay where she was in the snow with Mick held tight in her arms. She had expected to be hurt and it was a surprise to find that she was not. Then Mick began to wriggle and she stood up and looked back the way they had come, and her heart failed her: how were they ever going to get to the top again? She felt as though they had come to rest at the bottom of a huge dim white pit, and the thought of it choked her with dread. Her resolve disintegrated. She wanted only to get free, to escape. Escape from what? From whom? Amy bent and peeped between the bare sticks of hazel at Tyler’s Place.

Not much of what had been a house remained. The north wall had long since fallen, spilling its great stones in heaps on the ground, and alders and sallies had seeded and sprung up amongst them. Jagged roof timbers stuck out over space. The main kitchen had lasted the longest, being supported on one side by the massive chimney-breast. It was even slated, although the gaps in the slates enlarged with every passing year.

Once Tyler’s Place had been a familiar playground for Amy. Here, during the weeks of summer when school was closed, she used often to meet the three Protheroe boys, Colin and Ray and Ivor, who would ride over on their ponies with a satchel of bread and cheese and cake and apples for dinner whenever there was not too much work to be done on the farm. This remote and private spot had seemed then to be utterly theirs: Tyler’s Place was their place, and many long hot afternoons had been spent by the four of them in total and satisfying possession of it before Mrs Bowen had come herself and seen the sliding hanging slates and the tottering chimney stack and said it was unsafe, and they were not allowed to play there any more. It was two and a half years since Amy had been down to Tyler’s Place. In that time it had changed—not so much decayed further as simply become strange to her, as though the welcome had faded out of it: almost as though it had died.

“Mick—shall we have a look? Shall we?”

Mick licked her cheek.

But still she stared through the hedge, wondering. There was not a sound. It was the absolute silence that frightened her most, the sense of emptiness, of Mick and herself being quite alone. And yet if this were so, why should she feel frightened?

“There’s no one there, Mick,” she whispered.

She was sure there was no one there. The silence said so, over and over, like a heart-beat: no one—no one—no one. If she dodged through the gap it would be quite safe. She could go right up to the house and look in and nothing would happen to her; nothing—nothing.

But then, what about the light she thought she had seen down here last night? Could she have been mistaken? Well—perhaps. In that huge dark landscape, with torches flickering on and off, and stars appearing and disappearing, and her own feelings unsettled, it was possible that she might have imagined she saw the faint spark of a hurricane lamp shining far below. Yes, Amy admitted to herself, it was possible.

Even so she meant to approach with extreme caution, to avoid the gaping doorway and gaping windows in front of the house, and instead to creep up on one side of it and climb the flight of stone steps that ended abruptly in air. Once there had been a barn standing back at right angles to the house and the steps had then led up to a loft, but now they led nowhere for the loft had long ago fallen in, and most of the barn as well. Only a fragment of its wall survived, and these ghostly steps with which Amy had an old and intimate association. Summer after summer she and the Protheroe boys had swarmed up and down them, had conquered and held them, been defeated, leapt from the top of them, pushed each other off them. The steps had been used as a platform for speeches, as a tier of seats during endless discussions, as a starting-point and finishing-point in nearly all of their games. Amy had never before seen them in winter, and now they were thick in snow, and she was going to climb them alone.

She squeezed between the stems of hazel, bringing down a light patter of snow. One hand she held over Mick’s muzzle just in case after all the silence was a lie. It would have been a comfort to her to feel that she could get across the intervening open ground in a single dash, but the snow lay too deep for running and she was forced to plod slowly forward in full view of the blank window spaces. It seemed a long way to the tangle of sloe-bushes and brambles at the foot of the steps. When she reached them, she paused. The hammering inside her quietened; the silence continued. No one had shouted. No one had given the least sign of having seen or heard her. The only watcher had been the house itself; emptiness filled it, surrounded her, hung from the trees. Even if there had been someone here last night, he was gone now. She was sure of it.

Suddenly Amy ceased to be afraid. This was Tyler’s Place and she had known it all her life, and it knew her. Except that the Protheroe boys were somewhere else, and instead of being August it was February, and very early in the morning, everything was really the same as everything always had been.

She climbed the steps to the top, where she set Mick down. A mountain-ash had rooted and grown up in the right angle formed by the building and the house. Amy took hold of one of its branches and leaned over, steadying herself with her other hand on a rafter. The slates at this corner of the roof had slipped off, leaving a yawning hole. By craning as far as she could she was able to look directly down into the dim interior of the old farm kitchen.

It was so indistinct that at first she could make out nothing. She thought there was nothing to make out: that she had been right and the kitchen was empty. Then she found herself staring at a pale splodge, a blur, not understanding what it was. As she stared, it moved. Had it really moved or had she blinked? Amy kept her eyes steadily on the pale blur, straining to see more clearly. And then all at once she realised that she was looking straight at a sheep. Relief overcame her—more than relief: joy! Her fearful enterprise had been worth while, had been justified after all. It was the missing ewe!

She almost fell down the steps in her haste to get to it, and floundered round to the doorway that was always open, its door having disappeared years before.

“Wait!” she said to Mick. “Wait there, now!”

She ran in and dropped on her knees on the cold and grimy flagstones, embracing the ewe as though it were indeed her dearest friend. But even as she did so, even as the ewe, twisting in her grasp, bleated nervously, Amy heard another sound. It came from behind her, the small careful sound of something or someone shifting position. Her heart gave a jump and stopped and her breath stopped with it and her blood dried up and she dared not move. She shut her eyes tightly and waited and time passed and nothing happened. She listened with bursting ears and before her own breath came out in a rush she heard, like an echo the wrong way round, a breath not hers, a long soft sigh.

Inch by inch, Amy stood up. She thought she could never turn her head and yet in spite of herself she turned it: and there he was, a huge mountain of a man lying sprawled on the floor with her blankets heaped on top and beside him, within his reach, their hacker.

He lay there, watching her. He neither moved nor spoke but stayed as he was, pushed up on one elbow, watching her. Mick in the doorway whined and then gave a short sharp bark. From the corner of her eye she could see the doorway. She knew how close it was. All she had to do was to run for it, and through it, and away. But would he not leap after her as she ran and catch her with one mighty bound from behind? Her legs were too weak. She was shaking. And as she stood there, trembling, unable to save herself, he lifted an arm and held it out towards her, the hand doubled back into his chest. He was showing her something: what was it? The sleeve of his coat and the sleeve of the jersey underneath it and the shirt under that, all hung down in tatters, sliced open from shoulder to wrist so that even in the murky half-light she could see the great crooked wound, clotted with blood, disfiguring his bare arm. She stared in horror. He made no sound; he was speechless, showing her his wound, as though it was all he had to show or say. Then he groaned and lay back flat on the ground and turned his head away. Amy walked very quietly to the door.

He might be dying.

She reached her toboggan and peered again through the hedge as she had done when she first arrived. Tyler’s Place looked as it had looked then: deserted. Not a sound came from it, not a wisp of smoke, no movement, nothing.

Amy was cold. Her grandmother would have lit the fire by now. It would be snug at home with the kettle on the boil and porridge and hot buttered toast for breakfast and cups and cups of hot tea. And still she remained crouched, irresolute, staring across the snowy gap at Tyler’s Place, and through the stone walls at what lay inside.

“He won’t hurt us, Mick,” she said. “It’s him that’s hurt.”

Slowly, fearfully, she retraced her steps until once again she stood in the doorway. Here she stopped, uncertain of what to do next. He lay so still she was awed. His face was covered. There might not have been a man there at all, but only an untidy mound of blankets on the floor.

“Would you like a mince-pie?” she said at last.

There was a violent disturbance amongst the blankets, so that Amy stepped back and half turned, ready to flee. Head and shoulders heaved up. In the filthy bristling face she saw astonishment, and a gleam, surely, of something more. Again he reminded her of a wild animal, only now it was not of a wild animal roaming dangerously loose, but caught in a trap, and she seemed to hear her grandmother’s words: “They’re bound to hope there’s maybe a chance you’ll help them. You can read it in their eyes.”

Very warily, with a mince-pie balanced on the palm of her outstretched hand, Amy advanced. He let her draw near without moving, without a word. When she was close enough for him to have been able to grab hold of her if he had wanted, he picked the mince-pie off her hand with huge dirty fingers and put it in his mouth. Amy’s breathing grew easier. She felt about in her pocket and dug out the crumbled remains of the other two mince-pies.

“That’s all I’ve got.”

Now at last he was talking. Words poured from him. She noticed that when he spoke his face altered, lit up, so that instead of looking like a wild animal he looked like what, after all, he really was—simply, a desperate man. He was touching his chest, motioning towards the doorway with wide sweeping gestures. She shook her head.

“I’m sorry—I don’t know what you’re saying.”

He stopped talking. Amy sat down like a visitor, politely, on an old iron kettle-stand, and glanced about her. The ewe shuffled and stamped: Mick had come inside, sniffing along a trail that led him to their sack in a corner. She called him away.

“Mick—here, boy! Keep still, now.”

The rusty fireplace was stuffed full of twigs and bits of chopped wood and on the floor was a pile of hacked-off branches and broken rafters. Obviously he had intended to make a fire to warm himself by and no doubt to cook the leg of mutton on. Why had he never lit it, then? Had he run out of matches, or had he feared the smoke would give him away and preferred to stay hungry and cold to being caught? Her eye fell on their hurricane lamp. He had given himself away, though—to her, at any rate.

“The police are after you, mister,” she said. “They came to our place, searching. He’s foreign, Mick. He can’t understand a word I’m saying, no more than I can him. I don’t know what we ought to do. Is your arm very bad?” she asked him, getting up for a closer look.

The sight of it made her feel sick.

“You ought to have that seen to,” she said. “I think it’s gone poisonous, that’s what I think it’s done. They do, if you don’t disinfect them. I think we’d better fetch him back up to Granny with us, Mick—if we leave him here I do believe he’ll die.”

Amy burst into the front-kitchen, boots and all, her eyes alight, her cheeks as bright as her scarf.

“Granny, Granny, I’ve got him, he’s here—he’s in our shed!”

Mrs Bowen stood transfixed, the toasting-fork raised in one hand.

“Amy? Him?”

“It’s all right, he won’t hurt us. He’s got a great horrible gash on his arm. I think it’s gone bad.”

“
Amy?”
 said Mrs Bowen again, absolutely unable to get out another word.

“He’s foreign, Granny. It’s no use talking to him—he can’t understand. And we’ve fetched the ewe back up as well—she was down at Tyler’s Place with him. And Mrs Protheroe’s leg of mutton. He didn’t have a fire to cook it on—they’d have seen the smoke, wouldn’t they? I think that’s why he didn’t have a fire. Or it could have been he didn’t have any matches.”