Believing the Lie - Elizabeth George [13]
Tim watched the passing scenery, silent. The drive from Grange-over-Sands to his father’s farm spun them north in the fading daylight, up through the Lyth Valley. There the landscape was patchwork: paddocks and pastures that were the green of shamrocks and emeralds and that, like a wave, rolled into the distance to swell up to the fells. On these, great outcroppings of slate and limestone burst forth, with grey scree fanning out beneath them. Between the pastures and the fells stood groups of woodland, alders that were yellow with the autumn and oaks and maples that were gold and red. And here and there erupted buildings that marked the farms: great hulking stone barns and slate-fronted houses with chimneys from which wood smoke curled.
Some miles along, the landscape altered as the wide Lyth Valley began to close in. With that closure came the advent of woods, and the leaves from their trees banked the road, which began to wind between drystone walls. It had started to rain now, but when didn’t it rain in this part of the world? This part of the world was known for its rain, and the result was moss thickly growing on the stones of the walls, ferns shoving themselves out of crevices, and lichens underfoot and on the bark of the trees.
“It’s raining,” Gracie said unnecessarily. “I hate that old house when it rains, Mummy. Don’t you, Timmy? It’s horrible there, all dark and damp and creepy and horrible.”
No one replied. Gracie dropped her head. Their mother made the turn into the lane that would take them up to Bryanbarrow, quite as if Gracie had not spoken at all.
The road here was narrow, and it proceeded upwards in a series of hairpin bends that carved a route through woodland of birch and chestnut trees. They passed Lower Beck farm and a disused field that was thick with bracken; they coursed along Bryan Beck itself, crossed it twice, climbed a bit more, and finally swung into the approach to the village, which lay below them, nothing much more than the juncture of four lanes giving onto a green. That it had a public house, a primary school, a village hall, a Methodist chapel, and a C of E church made it a gathering place of sorts. But only on evenings and Sunday mornings, and even then those gathered in the village either drank or prayed.
Gracie began to cry as they crept over the stone bridge. She said, “Mummy, I hate it here. Mummy. Please.”
But her mother said nothing, and Tim knew she wouldn’t. There were certainly feelings to consider in this matter of where Tim and Gracie Cresswell would live, but the feelings were not those of Tim and Gracie Cresswell. That was the way it was and the way it would be, at least till Niamh gave up the ghost or finally just gave up, whichever came first. And Tim wondered about this last, he did. It seemed that hate could kill a person, although when he thought about it, hate hadn’t yet killed him so perhaps it wouldn’t kill his mother either.
Unlike so many farms in Cumbria, which maintained a distance from villages and hamlets, Bryan Beck farm sat just at the edge of the village, and it comprised an ancient Elizabethan manor house, an equally ancient barn, and an even more ancient cottage. Beyond these the farm’s pastures opened up, and in these grazed sheep, although they were not the property of Tim’s father but rather belonged to a farmer who rented the land from him. They lent the farm “an authentic look,” Tim’s father liked to say, and were in keeping with “the tradition of the Lakes,” whatever that was supposed to mean. Ian Cresswell