The Watershed
She packed the postcard. No Guests After 10, Please! It was a funny souvenir but she also had a secret, sentimental notion that it might someday have significance, become a future relic. In the short term, she would have to face down the landlady. In the breakfast room there was no mention of the scandal, just a pinched smile as she asked for no fry-up, just toast and coffee, and before long she was out into the day, the landlady watching from the doorstep, Marnie with an insolent swing in her hips, Michael waiting a safe distance from the house, the local bad lad. He looked pale, a little bashful. No kiss but they touched their shoulders against each other as if chinking glasses and laughed.
‘I feel like the local floozy. I feel like I should be chewing gum.’
‘Hop on my Harley,’ he said.
‘And what about my marriage prospects? No decent man’ll have me now.’ They settled their backpacks and were off, crossing the Eden River, the pretty side-streets turning into lanes that began to ascend towards the Pennine ridge.
She had the illusion that they were walking not just across the country but through the seasons. The sky made her think of the phrase ‘robin’s egg blue’, though she’d never seen a robin’s egg. The hazy blue of an airmail letter then, and soon there were hawthorn blossoms as white as A4 and gorse flowers in Post-it note yellow, and everywhere a bright highlighter green so vivid that it seemed to fizz. They passed a shallow black pool, bubbling like a cauldron, which, on closer inspection, was dense with writhing tadpoles and she didn’t find this gross. Even with her sore eyes and a hot, aching head, she felt that time was passing quickly and lightly and that a real summer, the first for many years, lay ahead. In the years of the great seclusion, she’d found herself wishing for the darkness so that she could justify going to bed. Now she wanted to prolong the days, to wish them brighter and to occupy them fully. It would be a mistake to name it, but what was this sensation of optimism and receptiveness?
Eventually they left the clear track and began to clamber towards the horizon and nine spikes of stone, each a different size, like teeth set far apart. ‘That’s Nine Standards Rigg,’ he said in his teacher’s voice, though she didn’t mind, ‘marking the ancient border between Cumbria and Yorkshire.’
‘And do you have some interesting facts about it?’
‘I do! It’s significant because— Are you listening?’
‘Yes! Tell me more.’
‘When we get there. That’s your incentive. Local interest.’
Despite the dry days the ground remained boggy, the path badly eroded, so she endeavoured to tread lightly, as if walking on a mopped floor. Soon breathless again, her sweat carrying a sour, hoppy taint, they climbed, not looking back until they were on the ridge itself, the jagged teeth revealed as cairns, intricate and sturdy but sinister even in the sunlight and stillness. The air was as clear as the vacuum of space, the view to infinity and only the eastern high moors prevented them from seeing the North Sea and then on to … Holland? Norway? They were quiet for a moment, taking in how far they’d travelled, where they were heading, looking everywhere but at each other until she said, ‘So. Tell me.’
‘Well, this is a watershed, which in geographical terms means that if it rains over there,’ he pointed west, a little downhill, ‘it will end up in the Irish Sea, and if a raindrop lands where we’re standing, it will end up in the North Sea.’
‘And where do you stand to end up in London?’
He pointed to her feet. ‘There, I suppose.’ A moment passed, and then they were embracing, his chin on the top of her head just as when they’d danced last night, and in return she patted the sides of his rucksack, a little drum riff. A close embrace, sober and in daylight. Another landmark, she supposed. ‘Let’s keep going, shall we?’ he said, and they broke apart.
They turned to follow the ridge and began the descent towards Swaledale, striding along on flagstones set in the mud, the landscape a series of embankments and swampy hollows. On the next ridge, they saw a group of four walkers, heads down, standing a little apart as if waiting for a bus, and she braced herself for the banalities. Nice day for it. Where are you heading? Maybe we’ll see you there!
But as they got nearer, she saw something on the ground, a fifth figure reclining beneath a silver sheet, the light foil blanket that athletes wear at the end of a marathon. It seemed almost comical here, like a joint resting after the oven. Perhaps one of the group had overreached themselves. Even so, it was unusual for the face to be covered like that.
But as they got nearer she recognised them: Barbara standing stunned and expressionless, her family too, faces fixed, their eyes red-rimmed, shifting from foot to foot as if they’d been caught out in something. She was close enough now to see Brian’s pale hand protruding from the silver sheet, palm upwards. ‘Oh, no,’ she said, and looked to Michael, but he was already running over to them, and while they spoke in low voices, she stood alone in the glare of the sun.