A Night With No Stars Read online

  ‘Yeah.’ He switched on the AC and spread the new Ordnance map over both their laps. It was a kind of unifying thing which she didn’t seem to mind. ‘But you can’t blame folks for wanting the freedom of their own wheels. It’s human nature.’

  ‘There’s Clifford,’ she pointed to the spot with a pearly pink nail. Another black mark as far as he was concerned, mounting up now. One by one. Which was good.

  ‘Nice route, should be easy as opening a tinny,’ he grinned again, then sensed her hesitation.

  ‘I just need to make a call,’ she said out of the blue, bending forwards to reach her bag.

  His pulse was paying tricks. This was totally unplanned.

  ‘Right now?’ he asked, starting the ignition and urging her to click in her belt.

  ‘Yeah. I need to let my friend Cass know what I’m doing in case we’re held up.’ Her tiny silver mobile was already in her hand. It looked like some stupid fish he thought, anger tightening his chest. He hit the throttle and central locking simultaneously.

  ‘This friend, is she some kind of nanny, then?’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ she lurched forwards as the Ford moved off and gripped the top of the dash. The map slid to the floor. ‘It’s just a precaution. I always do it. Could you please stop this car?’

  No chance.

  The dial showed seventy not fifty.

  He could see her eyeing the handbrake so he steered with one hand to protect the only means of control his passenger had.

  ‘Stop now,’ she repeated surprisingly calmly. ‘Or I’ll call the police.’ She punched 9 but got no further, because with a scythe-like movement of his free hand he swept the gadget from her grasp on to the floor near his feet. He was well psyched up now, expecting a fight from her. Every nerve and muscle prepared. But she just sat there, hunched up, clasping her bare knees. And this surrender left him feeling oddly cheated.

  ‘So, Jade, let’s hear a bit more about your family,’ he encouraged as the road narrowed to a sharp and unexpected bend and she momentarily lost her balance. ‘What was it made you want to go round looking like some tart, eh? Was it your mother? Your father? Christ, d’you know, you’re all the same? The world’s pavements are full of you sluts. You’re like the plague. Fucking everywhere. What hope has the next generation got eh? Answer me that.’

  But as Clifford came and went, no answer came. She’d had her chance to take him just a little way into a particular kind of woman’s mind. And he’d have been quite prepared to listen. Oh, yes. As a Mature Student of the Female Psyche, he certainly wanted to learn. Gagging for it, in fact. Pity, he thought, shaking his sun-blonde head, because right now her yabbering could be making a big difference.

  Instead, he turned off in a north westerly direction towards New Radnor and a far more interesting destination than Clifford. Here the green summer hills became smudged by russet and the darker hues of forestry, which in turn became naked black.

  ‘Your favourite colour,’ he announced, taking extra care down the gradient into a gloomy cavernous valley. The Maverick’s windows began to mist up. The silence she was maintaining oppressive, and that perfume . . . Jesus. If he hadn’t seen water just then, there was no telling what might have happened.

  And seeing was feeling, no doubt about it. As he slowed up, ready to stop, that same flow from the hole marked MEMORY was once more filling his eyes, thinning his blood and bloating his mind.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Let him magnify the Truth, it will magnify him.

  Let him strengthen Truth, it will guard him.

  Let him exalt Truth, it will exalt him.

  MJJ & Brehan Morann Mac Caibre

  Despite the ruination of her jeans and trainers, and yet another unsettling conversation with Mark, Lucy was once more feeling upbeat about the whole Wern Goch project. She’d be thirty on Saturday and at last able to access her father’s money. Today was Thursday and at least a start had been made.

  Mark had already replaced the house’s two ancient locks with new, and had ordered five sealed double-glazed sash window units to be delivered there on the 27th. At her insistence, he was to ask ‘Simnai’ Williams from Maesybont to sweep the house’s chimney.

  ‘Waste of money,’ the sawyer had countered with surprising vehemence. ‘No one’s used that range for years. It’ll be as clean as a whistle. You’ll see.’

  ‘Maybe so, but I still can’t risk a fire. Anyway,’ she’d reminded him, handing over her mobile for him to ring the number, ‘you said yourself that once it gets chilly I’d need to light it and have an open fire in the parlour. End of August, you reckoned. And have you forgotten what you told me about the mists?’ How they hang around the Mellte for days?’

  He’d shrugged, then reluctantly dialled. She’d been puzzled by the oddly short one-sided conversation which had followed. And why had she shivered just then as if autumn was already upon them, as they’d both stood there in that bare neglected place? Why too had he insisted that the salting slab and the cauldron remain in the kitchen at all costs? She could clean them certainly, he’d said, but to get rid altogether would bring the Morrigan’s curse upon everything. This awesome goddess of Death would poison her water supply, draw her very air up from the Underworld’s foul depths and woe betide any hopes for restful sleep . . .

  She’d stared at him in disbelief, yet recalling what Mrs Evans had said, asking herself how could such dark primitive forces be believed as if they were ever-present in the world? And more worryingly, his world? It was then he’d handed over his poem in a homemade envelope, but neither this nor the gloriously sunny day could purge his freaky scenarios from her mind as she left Horeb House at 10 a.m., having declined the usual greasy breakfast and the landlady’s inevitable quizzing as to why. She stood in the sun against the B&B’s black railings organising her thoughts. For a start, she had two new calls to make on her mobile – the first to Anna, the second, because she knew this could be the trickiest, her mother.

  Dammit.

  Enid Evans was on look-out duty. She could tell by the slight movement of the parlour’s net curtains. Ever since Tuesday morning when the landlady had handed over Wern Goch’s two old keys wrapped up in a filthy torn page from Tractors Today, her manner towards her had cooled to the point of rudeness.

  ‘My Bryn’ll be taking his ewes off the land sharpish as well, so you can please yourself what you do with it,’ she’d muttered, delivering a plate of sausages sealed in a cawl of fat. ‘And don’t say I didn’t tell you.’

  ‘Tell me what?’ Recalling Mark’s remark about her mental health and not being entirely convinced by it.

  ‘A sin never dies. Remember that.’

  Lucy punched Anna’s number more forcibly than usual, and waited for her to answer while two teenage girls in riding gear walked past giggling to themselves.

  ‘Hi, you,’ she said to the voicemail, disguising her disappointment that her friend hadn’t answered. ‘It’s me, Lucy. Just touching base. Speak soon . . .’

  Then she heard Mrs Evans shout from her front door.

  ‘What time will you back here, then?’

  She headed for her car, unlocked it and folded back the sun roof.

  ‘And will you be wanting liver or rabbit tonight?’

  Lucy’s insides lurched at the prospect of either delicacy.

  ‘I’m meeting a friend,’ she lied. ‘So I’m not sure. But thanks all the same.’ What the woman didn’t know was that her getaway tomorrow would be swift and silent. She’d paid up until the Saturday so her conscience was clear, besides, Hector Jones had offered her a spare room at the Hall until completion and Wern Goch’s water and electricity had been installed. Strictly business of course, but cheaper than Horeb at £40 per week with the added possibility of finding more out about the Joneses.

  She reached for her sunglasses and opened out her AA map on the passenger seat and with Furtado’s Like a Bird filling the car, proceeded along the A44 towards Kington with an almost full tank of petr
ol. She needed a change of scene, to enable her to see Wern Goch in a wider context. A chance to think about everything, especially Mark. Why he’d fielded her question about his brother with that innuendo about Mrs Evans. Why he was so uptight around his father and that uncanny relationship he’d got with those ravens. She thought of his poem in her pocket. To be read in just the right place. Suddenly, just beyond the Red Lion pub at Llanfihangel-Nant-Melan, she noticed a bilingual sign which read, WATER BREAK ITS NECK HALF A MILE ON THE LEFT.

  She shuddered. That name again, accompanied by the words PERIGL! and DANGER! in larger red letters. She recalled the boy’s story at the Texaco garage on Saturday, and slowed up wondering why just four ordinary words could collectively create such a presentiment of evil. But because they did, she glanced again at her map and made the decision to take a look at this so-called attraction. After all, the weather was summery and there’d probably be other visitors there. So, nothing to fear, she told herself and once the densely fir-covered hills had passed and the countryside opened up, she wondered how, with such beauty ready and waiting, she’d managed to survive those six years in London. She duly turned left and found herself in a single lane bordered by the lushest foliage she’d ever seen and an array of wild flowers she’d forgotten existed, except of course in Magical Tales which was still keeping her travel sweets and car service history company in the glove box.

  Here was Heaven and now that she had a part of it, nothing or no one was ever going to take that away from her. It was on this high that she knew she must call home as Barbara Mitchell was still after all, her mum.

  No reply. Just the faintly crackling answerphone bringing the teacher’s breezy professional voice into the car. Lucy felt a sudden stab of longing for those days when they’d looked after each other just after Dad had died. And now that longing became regret that she couldn’t personally reassure her that all was well. Nevertheless, she left that very message in the most upbeat way possible, naming Ravenstone Hall as her next billet and leaving the address. Finally she suggested that once things were sorted this end, she must come and stay.

  With the call ended, she sat for a moment watching drifts of black-nosed sheep move amongst the surreally green landscape of tumuli and what must have been some vast burial mound. Time to read Mark’s poem, she thought, feeling the hot sun on her cheek, embedded in silence, save for the occasional burst of birdsong. She held her breath as she opened the envelope and extracted the single white sheet headed with the Hall’s details. Three short lines and how innocuous they looked. How oddly formal, given everything she’d learnt so far about the place.

  RAVENSTONE HALL

  RHAYADER

  RADNORSHIRE

  The Celtic prose and verse form of the englynion has its origins in Sanskrit showing how the heroic epic grew from a verse dialogue, with the actual story left to the creative memory of the reciter. You should look up the Red Book of Hergest for the verse dialogue which takes place between Llewarch Hen and his sons Gwen and Maen.

  Here anyway, is mine. Purists will argue for the four line, thirty syllable englynion, but since when have I been pure?

  Lucy, bringer of Light to my dark world.

  As brightest star, you foil the deepest night,

  And keep the gloom from gathering in my mind,

  Like worms uncurling in the cold red earth.

  MJJ 23/8/01

  Her skin felt cold as if the sun had suddenly slipped behind a cloud. But there were no clouds, just an overriding taste, like sour milk, filling her mouth. She gathered up spit and pulled a tissue from inside the door to expunge the effect of that last line from her mind. Boy, he’d got some baggage, she thought, looking for any signs of a litter bin. And was she the one to turn his life around? For God’s sake, she’d got a derelict house on her hands. She didn’t need an emotional cripple as well.

  Cruel again? Just like with Jon? ’Fraid so. Thanks, James Benn. Catching, isn’t it? And then as she restarted the car came the unwelcome realisation that maybe she was just as screwed up as the sawyer, except that maybe he, Mark Jones, was being more honest about it.

  She executed a poor three-point turn back on to the main road, only to be reminded of her father by seeing another more discreet sign, this time for a nearby Crematorium. She thought of his final selfless act towards her, even though he’d been seriously ill after open heart surgery and, noticing a car emerge from that particular turning, wondered if its occupants were also carrying ashes away, just like she and her mother had done. Then for a brief and numbing moment she imagined it was her own plastic casket being clutched by white fingers, its lid unscrewed and all that remained of her scattered over where the ancient dead lie sleeping.

  Mark’s poem lingered in Lucy’s mind as she followed further signs for the waterfall and swung left on to a large parking area which had obviously been recently resurfaced. Soon his words had lodged there indelibly, just like the contents of Magical Tales, and threatened to spill like a dark stain over all those other happy associations. She looked up at the sky for some reassuring blue and saw instead a large brown bird of prey bearing a squealing rabbit towards the nearest hills. Ted Hughes would have done something with that, she thought bleakly, but to her, he’d never been a patch on RS Thomas. Now there was jaundiced in capital letters. But powerful, nevertheless.

  She got out and locked the car, still aware of the rabbit’s cries diminishing. The air was fresher here, and she pulled her denim jacket closer around her as she followed a rutted track towards the waterfall, wishing she’d brought her little camera with her. Soon the sound of rushing plummeting water reached her ears, swamping all other sensations. It was awesome, and so deep and steep did the way down to the cascade appear, that she preferred to stand where she was to take it all in. A furtive peep over the barrier was enough, because that sour taste had returned together with a whiff of fear. She spun round but there was no one else. Just her and the noise and the high hot sun.

  Suddenly, over the roar of water came what sounded like a scream. It couldn’t be anything else, surely? Lucy instinctively looked up, but this hadn’t come from some animal. It was definitely human. Definitely a woman.

  ‘Jesus.’ There it was again. Just like what she’d heard on Saturday but somehow more real, solid. More penetrating, somehow.

  She began to run back to the car park and, to her surprise, she glimpsed a large black vehicle pulling out from behind a clump of bushes to the left. This had got to be too much of a coincidence. And the way the thing sped off with a shriek of tyres told her this was no ordinary picnicker off home. At first she was tempted to follow in the Rav, but when she reached it, just the combined smell of diesel and tarmac remained. She tried her mobile only to find 0 CREDITS flashing up.

  Damn. What the hell was she to do? She listened again for that same haunting sound, but this time just the torrent’s fury filled the air and her head once more as she made for her Rav. No point in looking at the map, she told herself, deciding to head back towards Llanfihangel-Nant-Melan. There’s sure to be a farm or somewhere, or even a public phone.

  After a steep hill and a bend in the road, she noticed a sign for home-cured ham as the smell of pigs wafted into the car. Undeterred, she drove in and parked near the gate for a quick exit if need be, before braving the farmyard which was thick with semi-dried slurry, crisp on top, sloppy underneath, plus a trio of Alsatian dogs who circled non-stop around her. In an adjacent grassless paddock a mass of saddleback pigs snuffled at the earth. She sniffed. Here lay the concentrated source of that earlier smell, which now, together with the dogs made her stop and shout her introduction.

  Moments later, she saw a stout young woman emerge from a hay barn, call the dogs to heel, then approach the Rav with a defensive look on her face. Lucy held her breath. She still had time to beat a retreat, but decided to stick it out. This stranger could well prove useful.

  ‘Hi,’ feeling her nostrils closing. ‘I’ve just heard awful screaming coming from t
he waterfall over there. It sounds like someone’s in trouble.’

  ‘Kids mucking about, most like,’ the countrywoman smiled, removing her sleeveless quilted jacket and shaking it free of hay. ‘At it all the time they are.’

  ‘This didn’t sound like kids. More like a woman.’

  ‘Whereabouts exactly?’

  ‘By the cascade somewhere. I didn’t dare look down.’

  ‘It’s deep. Don’t blame you. Look,’ the farmer pointed to a single-storey building behind a hilly copse in the middle distance. ‘There’s an Outward Bound place up by there. They go abseiling, canoeing, you name it. Why don’t you try them? It’s a nice walk. We’ve never closed off the right-of-way.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Yeah. Me and my partner. We run this outfit together. Though God knows we fancy breeding bloody pigeons after what we’ve been through. Anyway, ask at the centre. That’s what I’d do.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Sorry I can’t help you.’ The woman turned to go.

  ‘I ought to call the police. Just as a precaution,’ Lucy called after her. ‘I couldn’t use your phone, could I?’

  At this, the other spun round, her demeanour quite different. Far more wary.

  ‘I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about. Here’s our number,’ she scribbled with a Lottery pen on to a scrap of paper from her pocket. ‘If you like, I’ll pop up there round midday. Got to check the pig wire in the back field anyway.’

  ‘That’s great.’ Lucy tucked the scrap in her shoulder bag, wondering why the P word had been such a problem for her.

  ‘I’m Mel, by the way,’ the farmer said. ‘And you?’

  ‘Sonia.’ Anna’s mother was the first name she could think of.

  ‘Buzz me at one, then.’

  ‘Will do.’

  With that, and the blood-curdling screams still ringing in her ears, she swung the Rav round and re-traced her journey back to Rhayader.