Chapter 8
The quarry eats its own
The girls are both pale, but one is more so and the other one has a free hand clamped over the paler sister’s mouth.
There’s no way they cannot be sisters because they look so completely like each other: same long blonde hair rat-tailing over their faces, same eyes staring at us, caught in the same shocked moment as we are, two pairs of strangers, eyes locked on each other across a chasm of air that contains nothing but the endlessly falling rain.
They are both wearing boots that are too big for them and the same sort of patched and age-worn blue cotton trousers that I’m wearing, with baggy shirts worn on top – one with blue squares on white ones, the other the torn yellow of the rag I mistook for a person.
The one with blue squares also wears a bulky leather coat that hangs off her like a dripping crows wing.
The other has an orange rain cape hanging off the back of her neck
The dog strangle-howls. It seems to wake everyone out of the shocked paralysis.
She’s broken her arm, says Cat. The one in the leather coat.
Now she says it, it’s obvious. Her arm seems to be twisted out of her shoulder at a very wrong angle. The gagging hand clamped over her mouth, her sister’s hand, is leaking blood down her chin from where she’s clenched her teeth into it.
The other one’s stopping her screaming, says Cat. They’re scared of us. They were hiding.
We’re not going to hurt them, I say.
I know, Cat says. But they don’t.
Cat has shucked the go-bag off her shoulders and is rummaging in it. She looks up at me.
What are you doing? she says. Mouse! Get your rope.
The dog is whining desperately. The girls are still unnaturally silent, swinging slightly above the long drop as the rain streams down their hair and falls off their boots into the void below.
I’ll go, I say. My fingers are wet and clumsy-stupid as I fumble, trying to free the loop of rope from the tie-down on my bag. Cat has already made a rope sling around her legs, like a harness, and is holding her hand out impatiently.
I’ll go, I say. Cat!
I know she won’t agree, but I have to. It won’t make it better after what I did to their father, but because of killing him I know I at least have to stop them from falling. Cat yanks the rope out of my hand and ties it to her harness with swift, decisive tugs.
No, she says. I’m lighter and you’re stronger.
She looks into my eyes in that way she has, the one where she thinks she’s reading my thoughts.
Mouse, she says. You’re still going to rescue them. You’re just going to rescue me too. Don’t pull until I say. Keep a hold now. In case the edge gives way.
And she sits down quickly, legs already dangling over the precipice, and carefully reaches for the thick cable. She ties off her homemade harness around it, making a safety loop. She looks up and sees me.
If I slip, this will catch me, she says. Mouse. It will be fine.
She’s good at knots. We both are. But old power cables are thick, nasty things.
These ones have been hanging there in the sun and rain and snow for ever.
The black plastic rubber covering has got brittle and is breaking up like all plastic does in the end, cracking and shaling off in long curving strips.
You can see the grey twist of aluminium wires inside in a several places.
They look like the exposed sinews of a rotting animal.
In a couple of spots, the aluminium wires have already broken and are sticking up like sharp barbs waiting to jag into Cat if she slides too fast or moves in the wrong way.
Yes, I lie, it will be fine. Come on then.
It won’t be fine, I think, as I belay my end of the rope round the tree trunk so I can brake against it if the cable snaps. Win or lose, it won’t be OK.
If the cable snaps, then I could lose Cat and the girls.
If Cat succeeds and rescues them, the prize for winning is that we have to tell them their dad is dead. And who killed him. If they don’t already know it. None of this is fine. There is just bad and worse.
Cat climbs on top of the cable, which is the right way to do this.
It’s how we cross the other cable over the canal.
But that’s not dangerous. Just a few feet to fall and the worst you can get is wet.
This is lethally different. She lies down, crooking one foot over the cable behind her and using it to inch herself forward on her stomach, her other leg hanging down and acting like a counterweight to keep her stable.
As she crawls slowly forwards, her careful movements still sway the cable, and the girl with a broken arm whimpers in pain.
I’m sorry, Cat says. I’m coming.
It’s not easy to start with because the cable is looping downwards and she is trying not to slip forwards on the rain-slick surface.
It starts well. But then there’s a crack and a nasty scraping noise as the length of black plastic insulation breaks loose and Cat slides forwards on it as it moves down the cable, becoming a sort of mobile saddle she’s attached to.
Mouse! she shouts, but I’ve seen it. And because I’ve looped the rope once round the tree trunk I use it as a brake to slow her.
I know instinctively that if I tug her to a too-sharp halt she’ll fall off, so I try to do it gently but fast, but she still jerks to a stop and the section of broken plastic she was riding keeps going until it falls off and skitters away down into the quarry.
Everyone watches it twist and tumble for what feels like a very long time before it smacks into the jumble of rocks below and breaks into three smaller shards.
Cat doesn’t move, hanging on, her head pointing downhill.
Maybe this is a bad idea, I say.
Yeah, she says. Pity it’s the only one we’ve got.
I can hear the strain pulling her voice tight. But she punches out a short laugh and cranes her head back to look up at me behind her.
Let’s just get it done, right? she says and moves forwards.
This time I don’t give her any slack on the line. I keep it taut so she has to pull it with her. It’s a bit of resistance, but it means she won’t slide again. It’s when she gets to the girls that things get complicated.
She stops, just out of reach, and I hear her say, Hi, I’m Cat. What are your names?
They don’t answer. The hurt one is whimpering, and the other one just stares at Cat like a wild animal that’s been cornered with nowhere to run. The look in her eye says enough: it says she thinks the only way to survive might be to fight what’s in front of her.
OK, says Cat. We can talk later. After we get you both safe.
Cat, I shout. How are we going to do this?
I see her take a deep breath as she crawls closer to the girls.
Slowly, she says. Very slowly. And very steady.
And that’s what we try to do. But in the end it’s very, very slow.
And not at all steady, because the only way Cat can do it is to hang under the cable on her harness.
She makes the girls put a foot in the loops her legs are in so they can take the weight off their cuffed wrists.
And then Cat lifts all three of them by sort of chinning up on the cable, and I pull them up a foot – or often less – at a time, and then we wait for Cat to move her harness up the cable the next little bit.
It seems to take for ever and for the longest while the only sound is the rain falling, Cat grunting and the hurt girl gasping.
Even the dog is quiet. It just stands beside me, looking at them getting closer, occasionally lifting his head to stare at me, as if to say, can’t you pull faster?
I promise, I never saw an animal so close to talking.
Slow and steady, I say to it as I take up the next six inches of rope around the tree trunk.
What? grunts Cat. She’s only about twenty feet from me now.
Talking to the dog, I say. It’s…
Then it happens. The loop of rope holding the safety harness round the cable snaps. If Cat hadn’t been hauling up, holding on to the cable itself, they’d all have fallen to their death right then.
We stare at each other in horror. Cat is holding the weight of all three of them with her hands on a slippery cable that had already almost killed her once, with no safety for her if she loses her grip now. And she will. It’s too much weight for her to hold, let alone move with.
Cat, I shout.
She looks sick, jaw clenched, cords standing out on her neck, shaking with the effort of holding on.
Mouse, she rasps through her gritted teeth. You have to get the girls. They won’t fall. The cuffs will hold them. You have to get them.
I’m not looking at her any more. I’m tying off the rope to the tree as fast as I can.
Mouse, she gasps. Listen. I can’t hold on. It’s wet and I’m losing my grip… There’s nothing you can do. After I fall, you have to get the girls to safety.
You’ll be OK, I shout, cinching the knot tight and standing up, light-headed with relief. Even if you fall, I’ve tied you off. You’ll just bang into the side of the quarry and then I’ll pull you up. Protect your head if you do—
It’s not going to be okay, she says. I can see the cliff face. You can’t see from where you are. It’s as dangerous as falling to the bottom. It’s all sharp, broken fence posts and metal. Just make sure you save the girls—
I’ve got my knife out and I cut the extra rope off the tail of the knot from where I’ve tied it to the tree.
I turn back. Terrified Cat won’t be there, but she is still holding on, though I can see she is at the very end of her strength.
She stares at me and she can see what I’m going to do as I scramble to the edge and double the rope I’ve cut off around the cable.
Her eyes are hot, burning through the falling rain at me, and she’s almost crying.
Cat never cries. Her voice is thick and raw and chokey in a way I haven’t ever heard before.
Mouse! she yells. Mouse! Don’t… Don’t you… Don’t you DARE do that!