28. We Don’t Have a Rope
Chapter 28
We Don’t Have a Rope
A s they walked back down the lane, Amy could make out all their footsteps in the snow from earlier. There were the boys, those larger boots must be Matt’s and the smaller pair must be hers. From the closeness of their footprints you’d never guess the distance that seemed to be growing between them. There were Peter’s with the dog’s pawprints, and even Mr Thompson’s, as well as a couple of hikers who had gone past this morning. They were still clear and crisp – no more snow had fallen to blur the edges, but neither had the snow melted much. Already the temperature was dropping quickly, and there was a tingle of ice in the air. If Mr Thompson had slipped, somewhere up the valley, they needed to find him before night fell.
‘Where’s Matt?’ Diane looked up from her book as they came in through the front door and pulled her cashmere cardigan tightly around herself to keep out the cold air that came in with them. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘He’s gone to search for Reg Thompson. We think he’s had an accident. Diane, I hate to ask this, but would you keep an eye on the boys for an hour or so? I thought I’d go out and have a look too. It’s freezing out there.’
‘We want to help, don’t we, Harry?’ Oliver paused half-way through removing his boots. ‘Can we come too? Please, Amy?’
‘I don’t think you should. Something bad might have happened to Mr Thompson.’
‘Then you shouldn’t go out there on your own either. Take the boys,’ said Diane.
‘You think I should?’ Amy was amazed. She would have expected Diane to be the first to say the boys should stay safely at home.
‘Yes. The last thing we want is for something to happen to you too. You shouldn’t go out there on your own and I can’t climb hills in the snow. Take the boys. They’re sensible lads, both of them.’ She glanced at Harry as she spoke, and Harry nodded back to her. ‘Is there anything I can do?’
Diane waited for Amy to reply rather than telling her what she thought Amy should do.
‘Ring the farm. Tell Mrs Thompson what’s going on, and keep an eye out for the mountain rescue team. Stay here, keep the fire going and put the kettle on in case we need to bring him here to warm up. He might need an ambulance – oh Lord, how are we going to get an ambulance up here in this weather?’ Cold dread seized her. It was only last winter she’d lost her own mother, swept away in an icy river. If the river hadn’t been so remote, the weather so stormy that day, maybe her mother wouldn’t have died. The ambulance couldn’t get there quickly enough to save her. What if it happened again?
‘That’s what the mountain rescue team will do,’ Diane said calmly. ‘They’ll be on their way. They’ll get him to an ambulance if the ambulance can’t get to him. Now, don’t put yourselves in any danger. You aren’t equipped to be out there in the dark so make sure you’re back before nightfall. Think of the boys. Take a torch, in case.’
‘I’ll take the big torch,’ Harry said. ‘I’m in charge of torches, okay everybody?’ He sounded like one of the characters in Winter Holiday, an outdoorsy child in charge of the situation. If the circumstances hadn’t been so grave, Amy might have smiled. Harry was growing up.
‘Have we got a rope?’ asked Oliver. ‘In the book, there’s a sheep stuck on a ledge, and they have to have a rope to save it. If Mr Thompson’s stuck on a ledge we’ll need a rope.’
‘Yeah, I’ll be the one to crawl along the ledge, like Dick in the book. I’m the smallest.’
‘No, it should be me. I know all the stuff about how to get along the ledge. And I thought of the rope.’
‘No, I –’
‘Nobody will need to crawl along any ledges, and we don’t have a rope anyway. If he’s stuck on a ledge and we find him, we call the mountain rescue people. This isn’t a game; we’re not playing Winter Holiday now.’
They nodded, suddenly serious again. ‘Do you think he might be dead?’ Harry whispered to her as they left the cottage. ‘He might have fallen in a river, like Granny.’
She paused before she answered. She didn’t want to upset them but she didn’t want to give the boys a false hope.
‘There’s obviously something wrong – but hopefully he isn’t dead, and we’ll find him and be able to help him.’
Because Peter and Matt had gone up the valley towards the tarn, Amy decided to take the old drovers’ track which ran high up along the side of the valley directly behind the cottage, along the flank of Elder Fell. Mr Thompson might have come back that way from the head of the dale. It was an easy path to follow, even in the snow, because it was wide and flat, not like the narrow paths further up the dale.
They climbed over the stile and scrambled up the steep path, keeping the stone wall close to their right-hand side. The wall gave them an idea of where the path went and kept them away from dips and ditches obscured by the driven snow at the other side of the field. It occurred to her as they climbed through the fresh snow and left a trail of footprints behind them, once they got to the broad path, they could check for footprints. If there weren’t any they’d know he hadn’t made it this far. ‘We have to hunt for footprints when we get to the next stile. There might be more than one set because I thought I saw somebody up here last night. But we’re looking for one pair of boots and some dog’s footprints too, because he had one of the sheepdogs with him,’ Amy said.
‘Which one?’ Harry asked.
‘I don’t know. I can’t remember which is which, Harry.’
‘Jack is the one with the big wide stripe down his nose, Joe’s is a thin stripe.’
‘Then I think it was Jack,’ Amy said, even though she still couldn’t picture the dogs.
‘Right. We need to look for two sets of prints, one human and one Jack. He has bigger paws than Joe, I think. This is like a real Swallows and Amazons adventure. I bet they did tracking in the snow. We could pretend to be like explorers and all that bollicks.’
‘Harry!’
‘What?’
‘Don’t say bollicks. It’s rude.’
‘Then I’ll say crap. Crappy, crappy crap crap!’ he shouted. ‘It’s okay, Mam, Mrs Willies can’t hear me, and I won’t say it when she can. I did promise. Come on Olly, let’s look for crappy footprints.’ Their shouting might be useful. Maybe Mr Thompson would hear them if he was somewhere nearby – even if being saved by the sound of two lads shouting crap as loudly as they could wasn’t exactly conventional.
The boys were well ahead of her as they approached the top of the field, almost half-way up the side of Elder Fell behind the cottage. It was calm and still but bitterly cold. Below them, smoke from the fire in the cottage rose straight up into the air, and in the distance, the smoke-streams from the chimneys of Elderthwaite hung in a cloud above the village. Oliver scrambled up and over the stile and Harry followed him. At least in the snow it was easy to see where they were, and the whiteness would mean the light lasted longer. Beneath her in the valley bottom were two Land Rovers. It must be the mountain rescue. They drove past the cottage, up the track towards the tarn and out of sight.
‘There’s tracks, Mam! There’s tracks!’ Harry hurtled back down the field towards her.
‘Slow down or you’ll have an accident too.’
‘There’s one set of boots and one set of paws. It’s him, we’ve just got to follow.’ He stopped and waited for her to climb towards him.
‘Which way do they go?’
‘That way.’ Harry pointed along the high track in the direction of the farm where Oliver was waiting by the stile, his face pinched with concern. Mr Thompson had been heading home.
‘Right. Come on, let’s follow.’ She picked up her pace and followed Harry. ‘Keep shouting so he might hear you if he’s up there,’ she said, ‘though maybe try his name, this time, rather than crappy crap crap .’
The boys shouted for all they were worth, and she listened hard for an answering cry, but there was nothing. If only she knew more about tracking she might be able to tell how old these footsteps were. They could’ve been here since yesterday – she’d seen someone up on this path last night and these tracks could belong to them. And if they were more recent, Mr Thompson might already be back at Elder Fell Farm with his feet up in front of the fire and Mrs Thompson making him a nice cup of tea. She got her phone out to see if by any chance this was a spot with a signal, but there was no such luck.
‘We’ll follow the footprints,’ she said. ‘I think they’re going back towards the farm.’
If it hadn’t been for the twisted knot of worry, she would have enjoyed the freshness of the winter walk, the space and the light, but she couldn’t shake the fear that round every corner she was going to see something she dreaded – a rockfall, a smear of blood, a body half-covered by snow …
They were almost directly above the cottage when they rounded a corner and there was Mr Thompson, seated peacefully on a stone with his back against a huge boulder. Jack sat patiently at his feet and he looked up at their approach. A huge surge of relief swept through her. It seemed he’d stopped for a rest and simply nodded off.
‘Mr Thompson, you can’t go to sleep here, it’s freezing.’ She waited for him to wake up and turn his head towards her, but he didn’t move. Jack whined.
That’s when the adrenaline started to kick in.
‘Boys, stay where you are. Don’t come any further.’ She took his wrist and felt for a pulse but there wasn’t one. He was stone cold to touch, but so peaceful. In films, they always closed people’s eyes but Mr Thompson’s eyes were already closed .
‘Mum? Is he okay?’
Her throat was swollen, and it was hard to speak. ‘No, I’m afraid not. Stay there.’
‘Is he … dead …’ Oliver’s voice was barely louder than a whisper, but the air was so still she heard him perfectly.
‘He is. It looks like he couldn’t go on any further and sat down and went to sleep. Jack was here with him the whole time, though, and he wasn’t on his own.’ She bent down to pat Jack, who wouldn’t move from beside his master. ‘You’re a good dog, Jack.’
‘From up here you can see everything, can’t you?’ Harry said, his voice shaky. ‘He could see all the hills. And the farm, and the cottage. He’d’ve liked that wouldn’t he?’
‘Yes. Yes, I think he would.’ She knelt down beside the old man, and took his hand, even though he couldn’t feel it.
‘What do we do?’ Oliver asked. ‘Do we have to carry him?’ His voice shook.
‘No, we can’t do that,’ Amy assured him. ‘I think … I think we need to get the mountain rescue people to carry him down. They’ll have stretchers and things. But we can’t call them without a phone signal and they’re too far away to hear us if we shout.’ She looked up the valley but the mountain rescue team had disappeared from sight in the direction of the tarn. The closest building was the cottage, directly below them, but there was no way down the steep scree. They needed to follow the path the way they’d come to get down. She didn’t want to leave Mr Thompson alone in the snow; she could stay with him and send the boys back to the cottage. It wasn’t far – it had only taken them twenty minutes or so to get up here and would only be fifteen back down the hill at the speed the boys went – but would they be safe? What if they forgot where they were going and went the wrong way, or one of them slipped an d fell? But she couldn’t leave them here with Mr Thompson, that was unthinkable. Perhaps they should all go back together, that would be safest – but it felt wrong to leave Mr Thompson here alone.
The light was already fading; it would be dark soon and there was no time to prevaricate, she had to decide. She would tell the boys to go back. They would understand the seriousness of the situation, she was sure she could trust them.
She was nearly sure she could trust them.
She had no choice but to trust them.
She took a deep breath.
‘Boys, I’ve got to ask you to do something very grown up and sensible. I’m going to stay here with Mr Thompson, and I want you to go back the way we came, being very careful – can you do that?’
‘Yes.’ Two pairs of sombre eyes looked up at her from pale faces.
‘Go back to the cottage. You need to ask Granny Diane to ring the police and tell the mountain rescue where to come.’ It would be dark before the mountain rescue got there. They were heading in the wrong direction, and they might already be well beyond the tarn.
‘Or we could signal to Mars,’ said Harry. ‘I’ve got the torch.’