27. Rounding up the Furniture
Chapter 27
Rounding up the Furniture
A morning of sledging meant that there was little chance to talk to Matt, as they flew downhill past each other at high speed. When they got back to the cottage they were exhausted as well as soaked through with snow which had penetrated every protective layer and then started to melt. Amy had got snow up her sleeves, down her neck, even inside the waistband of her trousers.
After lunch they tried to settle down to more sedentary pursuits, the grown-ups read and the boys played on their new hand-held consoles – Harry played on Oliver’s and Oliver on Harry’s, for reasons that made no sense but ultimately didn’t matter. It was peaceful and warm inside while snow still fell softly outside. Even the boys didn’t want to put on wet, cold coats to go out again.
It was difficult for Amy to settle and she wished she’d brought some sewing or knitting with her, something to keep her hands occupied while her mind raced. Matt was silent and reflective. Although he was looking at a book about fell running that he’d been given for Christmas he didn’t turn the pages with any regularity, and the fire held his attention more than the words in front of him. Diane read avidly, turning the pages of her novel so quickly that she must’ve been only skimming if she was reading at all. There was no sound other than the crackle of the fire, the wind in the chimney and the occasional electronic bleating from one or other of the games consoles. Afternoon turned to dusk and dusk to darkness. Outside, the snow stopped and the clouds cleared. Now the light of the waxing moon was reflected on the snow, sharp and cold, making it bright enough to see clearly.
After tea, Matt, Amy and Diane were all in the kitchen. Matt washed up, Diane dried and Amy was putting things away. She opened the pan cupboard below the window, and it was then that a movement outside caught her eye. Someone was walking on the track around the side of Elder Fell, up above the cottage that went towards the tarn, a dark shape silhouetted against the snow. A tall, thin, hooded figure in a sweeping coat.
‘There’s someone out there,’ she said, and Matt left the washing up and came over to stand beside her at the window.
‘Where?’ He looked out into the darkness.
‘Up there, on the high path.’ Amy pointed.
‘There’s no-one there,’ he said, and now Amy couldn’t see anything either.
‘There was, a moment ago, I saw them.’ She knew what she’d seen.
‘Perhaps it’s Peter going out after his sheep,’ Diane said from behind them.
‘But when we saw him earlier, he had that green waxed jacket, not a long coat,’ Amy said as she tried to work out where the figure had gone.
‘Who else could it’ve been, way out here in the dark and the snow at half-past-eight on Boxing Day?’ Matt said.
‘Nobody could be out there right now,’ Diane said, but her voice wavered slightly.
‘A trick of the moonlight,’ Matt suggested as he turned back to the sink. ‘That’s all it’ll be.’
‘I’m not sure,’ Amy said. ‘Maybe Mrs Thompson’s story wasn’t just an old tale, and it was the ghost of the grey lady?’
‘She’s come to claim her next victim!’ Matt said with some relish, as he finished washing the last pan. ‘What was it Mrs Thompson told you? A curse on your house, or something?’
‘Cursed be the path …’ Diane darted a glance towards the window.
‘… Cursed be the hearth. Cursed be the bed.’ Amy gazed up the hill to the spot where she’d last seen the figure.
Nothing moved now, everything was still and quiet, and there was no-one to be seen.
Amy climbed out of bed and went to the window, hoping that a thaw might’ve set in overnight and the roads would be clear this morning. She drew back the curtains onto a scene more like the Alps than the Lake District. There’d been more snow overnight and now the sun was rising behind the mountains and the sky was high and clear. She expected some lonely goatherds to yodel their way past her window any moment now. It was beautiful, and after the last few days of dark grey skies and darker grey mountains, it was almost dazzlingly bright, and so beautiful. Amy’s spirits lifted– and then she remembered all the extra snow meant Diane still wouldn’t be going anywhere .
In the morning light the house was silent, the weight of snow muffling the sounds from outside, and inside nobody else was moving. After all that sledging and snowballing yesterday the boys were still sound asleep and there was no sound from Diane’s room. Perhaps she could catch Matt alone?
She crept downstairs and opened the living room door, always keeping one ear open for sounds from upstairs. Matt was still asleep, and, looking down at him she didn’t want to wake him yet. Sleep had erased all the stresses and strains from his face. Let him sleep a while longer.
She would have a nice relaxing bath. Diane wasn’t awake to suggest that perhaps, after all, she would like a nice relaxing bath, now Amy had mentioned it, and Harry wasn’t there to demand that he had to have a poo now and Oliver was in the other bathroom. It was all hers. Amy luxuriated in the hot water and used some of her new frosted cranberry shower gel. Then she got dressed and made herself a nice, hot cup of tea, just like her mam used to in a big, sturdy mug, not a delicate china cup.
She wrapped herself in a woolly blanket and went out through the back door into the tiny garden to drink in the views of the frozen valley. Her mam would’ve loved this. She raised her mug in a silent toast as the first hiker of the day toiled slowly up the track, a lone dark figure in the icy whiteness, followed by a dog. She put her mug down on the windowsill and raised a hand in greeting.
She realised, as the hiker touched his cap in return that it was old Mr Thompson, one of the sheepdogs at his feet.
‘Morning!’ she greeted him cheerily. ‘You’re out early.’
‘Not early enough. Checking on the ewes. Our Peter’s gone out with the snowplough, so he can’t go ‘til later. They pay him to clear roads between here and Three Stones Pass, but someone needs to check on the sheep.’
It was the longest sentence she’d ever heard Mr Thompson utter. Usually, he was monosyllabic in his responses, and a nod of his head was his way of greeting people. He stopped on the other side of the gate and the dog ran around his feet, eager to be off.
‘Can we do anything to help?’ Amy asked. Mr Thompson must be in his eighties, too old to dig sheep out from snowdrifts.
‘Nay; you need to know what you’re about. Our Peter’ll do the hard work when he gets back, but he don’t know the hills like I do – boy and man for eighty-two year.’
‘Eighty-two, that’s a long time!’
‘Ay. It is that. Wouldn’t have it any other way. I know all the nooks where the ewes hide, all the gullies and streams. Hefted to the land, that’s what they say. It’s part of me.’ He looked up towards the high peak of Elder Fell behind the cottage.
‘The boys’ll want to know – have those puppies arrived yet?’
‘Nay. Taking her time, she is. That’s women for you! Well, better get on.’ He whistled to the dog who had trotted off down the track, and instantly he was back at his heels.
‘Come for a cup of tea on your way back down!’ she called after him. She remembered how her mother had helped him with the shearing suppers all those summers ago. Mr Thompson had liked plenty of cups of strong tea in those days.
‘Thanks. I’ll see.’ He nodded his head to her and continued his trudge up the valley. His isolated figure grew smaller and smaller until it was entirely lost in the whiteness of the valley. He didn’t seem lonely, though. He had his dog at his feet for company and was so perfectly at ease with the landscape he was a part of it.
Amy turned back to pick up her mug of tea to find it had melted a perfect circular hole in the snow on the windowsill – and it was now icy cold. Inside somebody was moving about upstairs, so either Diane or one of the boys was awake. She should go back in. She turned her back on the snow-bright valley and shut the door.
Matt was the last to wake. The lines of worry that sleep had smoothed away were back and there was nothing she could do to soothe them. The travel news had reported that the A66 was still closed, so there was no way Diane would be going home. If the snow didn’t thaw quickly she probably wouldn’t be going home the next day either. The boys had a snowball fight in the morning, and then they dried their coats, hats and gloves in front of the fire ready to go sledging again in the afternoon.
‘Can we go and see if Jess has had her puppies?’ Harry demanded, as he and Oliver were having a tug of war with Harry’s scarf.
‘Mr Thompson said they hadn’t come yet. I saw him this morning,’ Amy said. ‘Here, give me that scarf, you’re going to stretch it.’ She’d knitted the scarf for Harry, in his favourite colours, and she didn’t want him to destroy it.
‘We’re not going to stretch it. It’s our dog lead, I’m the farmer and Oliver’s the dog.’
‘I am not. You’re the sheepdog and I’m the farmer. Harry’s rounding up the sheep.’ Indeed, Harry raced round the living room pretending to round up the furniture and barked loudly .
‘That’ll do! There isn’t enough room to round up sheep indoors. Here, let me have the scarf.’ She restored some of its shape so it might still keep his neck warm.
‘Can we go and see tomorrow then?’ Harry stopped running around to wait for the answer.
‘I’ll ring up tomorrow and see if they’ve been born, and I’m sure Mrs Thompson won’t mind you going down to the farm if they have.’
‘Great. Come on, Oliver, let’s go and do some sledging. I’ll be a husky dog and pull sledges like in the book. Only we haven’t got sledges so I’ll pull a plastic sack instead. Have we got any string?’
Amy and Matt decided to accompany them and Diane graciously offered to sit by the fire and keep an eye on it while they were out. The air was fresh and the sunlight glittering on the snow lifted Amy’s spirits. She was content to stand at the bottom of the slope and watch Matt and the boys slide down the hill towards her – in Harry’s case, quite often right towards her so she had to jump out of the way, much to Harry’s hilarity.
‘This is the best Christmas ever, isn’t it!’ he yelled as he shot past her at top speed and nearly knocked her over.
No, this was not the best Christmas ever. This was quite possibly the worst Christmas ever, and she’d had some awful ones in the last couple of years of her marriage to James.
‘Best. Holiday. Ever!’ Harry crowed as he rolled of his sack before he hit the wall.
Just then she spotted Peter Thompson coming up the lane with one of the dogs. He must be off to do whatever tasks his father had found for him this morning.
‘Are the puppies coming yet?’ Harry jumped to his feet and brushed off the snow as soon as he saw Peter .
‘Not yet,’ Peter said. ‘Maybe tomorrow, she can’t be far off.’
Harry shrugged and set off back up the hill. He was nearly knocked over by Matt, who found it much harder than the boys to steer his plastic sack, and much harder to stay on it too.
‘Don’t suppose you’ve seen our dad?’ Peter turned to Amy.
‘Not since first thing this morning,’ she replied.
‘First thing this morning?’
‘Yes, it was before nine o’clock. He said you were out on the snowplough and he was going to go and check on the ewes.’
‘The bloody old fool. I told him to wait ‘til I got back.’
‘Don’t worry, he said he wasn’t going to do anything other than look, and he’d come back and get you to do any heavy work. He hasn’t been back?’
‘No, and that must have been four or five hours ago. Our mam’s in a right state – she thought he’d gone out in the shed. Five hours, oh bugger … I don’t suppose he said where he was going?’
‘He set off up the valley. Do you think he might have had an accident?’
‘Ay. I do. He’s not as steady on his feet as he thinks he is, and he’s probably slipped on the ice somewhere. We might be able to follow his footprints in the snow, at least. There’s been a few hikers this way but they’re probably on the long-distance footpath. Our dad’s prints’ll go off towards the fells at some point, so hopefully we’ll be able to follow.’
‘What’s this? Not your dad?’ Matt came to stand behind Amy, his cheeks flushed and his breathing heavy after flying down the hill.
‘Yes. I think we should help search for him. Peter thinks he might’ve fallen and it’s so cold.’ Amy looked up at Elder Fell behind her where a frozen waterfall stood out against the grey stone.
‘Would you come and help me look, Mate?’ Peter said to Matt. ‘Amy, have you got your phone with you? Can you nip up to the barn and ring for the mountain rescue?’
‘How do I phone them? Do you have the number?’
‘Ring 999 and ask for mountain rescue. They’ll sort it.’
‘I’ll do it now. Good luck, I hope you find him.’
Matt abandoned his sack, shouted a quick goodbye to Oliver, and the two men headed up the track towards the tarn and the head of the valley, and Amy started to run up the slope towards the barn where the signal was strongest. The boys followed, trailing their sacks behind them.
‘What’s up?’ said Harry.
‘Where’s Dad gone?’ Oliver spoke at the same time.
‘Poor old Mr Thompson’s got lost in the snow. I need to get the mountain rescue people out to try and find him in case he’s had a fall. I’ll be as quick as I can, but this is important.’
She finally had enough bars of signal and explained the situation to the police who told her the mountain rescue team would soon be on their way. It was nearly two o’clock now, and would be dark in a couple of hours, though the sun was so low in the sky it had barely made it over the tops of the mountains. Already, the shadows were lengthening. Every now and then there was a faint shout from up the valley, but there were no answering calls.
‘I don’t think I want to do any more sledging now.’ Harry looked up the valley.
‘Me neither. I think we should go back to the cottage and wait for Dad to get back.’
Shoulders bowed, walking silently they headed back down the track.