A Dedicated Man

FOUR

Penny Cartwright locked and bolted the sturdy door behind her, drew the thick curtains tight and switched on the light. After she had put down her package and dropped her shawl over a chair, she went around the room lighting candles that stood, at various lengths, on saucers, in empty wine bottles and even in candlesticks.

When the room was flickering with tiny bright flames which made the walls look like melting butter, she turned out the electric light, slipped a tape in the cassette player and flopped down on the sofa.

The room was now as private and cosy as a womb. It was the kind of place that looked bright and happy in sunlight, and warm and intimate by candlelight. There were a few things tacked to the walls: a postcard-size reproduction of Henri Matisse’s The Dance, which a friend had sent her from New York; a framed copy of Sutcliffe’s photograph, Gathering Driftwood; and a glossy picture showing her singing at a concert she and the band had given years ago. Shadowed by candlelight, the alcoves at both sides of the fireplace overflowed with personal knick-knacks such as shells, pebbles and the kind of silly keepsakes one buys in foreign lands – things that always seem to bring back the whole atmosphere of the place and details of the day on which they were bought: a plastic key ring from Los Angeles, a miniature slide viewer from Niagara Falls, a tiny porcelain jar emblazoned with her zodiac sign, Libra, from Amsterdam. Mixed in with these were earrings, which Penny collected, of all shapes and colours.

Penny took out papers and hash from a battered Old Holborn tin and rolled a small joint; then she unwrapped the half-bottle of Bell’s. There seemed no point getting a glass, so she drank straight from the bottle, and the whisky burned her tongue and throat as it sank to stir a warm glow deep inside her.

The tape played unaccompanied traditional folk songs – a strong clear woman’s voice singing about men going off to war, lifeboat disasters, domestic tragedies and supernatural lovers of long ago. With part of her mind, Penny studied the vocal style critically; she admired the slight vibrato, but winced at the blurring on some of the high notes. As a professional, or an ex-professional, it was second nature to her to listen that way. Finally, she decided that she liked the woman’s voice, flaws and all. It had enough warmth and emotional response to the lyrics to make up for the occasional lapses in technique.

One song, about a murder in Staffordshire over two hundred years ago, she knew well. She had sung it herself many times to appreciative audiences in pubs and concert halls. It had even been on the first record she had made with the band, and its modal structure had stood up well to the addition of electric guitars and percussion. But this time it sounded fresh. Though the song had nothing to do with the bad news she had heard that afternoon, murder was murder, whether it had been committed the previous night or two hundred years ago. Perhaps she would write a song herself. Others would sing it or listen to it in warm secure rooms hundreds of years in the future.

The whisky and hash were doing their work; Penny was drifting. Suddenly, the memory of that summer so many years ago sprang clear as yesterday into her mind. There had been many good years, of course, many good times before the craziness of fame spoiled it all, but that summer ten years ago stood out more than the rest. As she relived it, she could smell the green warmth of the grass and catch the earth and animal scents on the feather-light breeze.

Then the general memory crystallized into one particular day. It was hot, so hot that Emma had refused to move out of the shade for fear of burning her sensitive skin. And Michael, who was sulking for some reason, had stayed at home reading Chatterton’s poems. So it was just Penny and Harry. They had walked all the way over to Wensleydale, Harry, tall and strong, leading the way, and Penny keeping up the best she could. That day, they had sat high on the valley side above Bainbridge, below Semerwater, where they ate salmon sandwiches and drank chilled orange juice from a flask as they basked in the heat and looked down on the tiny village with its neat central green and Roman fort. They could see the whitewashed front of the fifteenth-century Rose and Crown, and the River Bain danced and sparkled as it tripped down the falls to join the gleaming band of the Ure.

Then the scene dissolved, broke apart and shifted back in time. So vividly had Harry recreated the past in her mind that she felt she had been there. The valley bottom was marshy and filled with impenetrable thickets. Nobody ventured there. The hillmen built circular huts in clearings they made high on the valley sides near the outcrops of limestone and grits, and it was there that they went about the business of hunting, raising oats, and breeding a few sheep and cattle. A Roman patrol marched along the road just below where they sat, strangers in a cold alien landscape but sure of themselves, their helmets shining, heavy cloaks pinned at the chest with enamelled brooches.

The two scenes overlapped: ten years ago and seventeen hundred years ago. It had all been the same to Harry. She could sense the stubborn pride of the Brigantes and the confidence of the Roman conquerors. She could even, in a way, understand why Queen Cartimandua had sided with the invaders, who brought new, civilized ways to that barbaric outpost. The tension spread throughout the dales as Venutius, the Queen’s ex-husband, and his rebellious followers prepared for their last stand at Stanwick, north of Richmond. Which they lost.

Harry brought it all alive for her, and if there had been, sometimes, an inexplicable awkwardness and uneasiness between them, it had always disappeared when the past became more alive than the present. How bloody innocent I was then, Penny thought, laughing at herself, and all of sixteen, too. How long it took me to grow up, and what a road it was.

Then she remembered the coins they had gone to see in the York museum – VOLISIOS, DUMNOVEROS and CARTIMANDUA, they were marked – and the pigs of lead stamped IMP, CAES: DOMITIANO: AVG. COS: VII, and, on the other side, BRIG. The Latin words had seemed like magical incantations back then.

And so she drifted. The joint was long finished, the tape had ended, the level in the whisky bottle had gone down and the memories came thick and fast. Then, as suddenly as they had started, they ceased. All Penny was left with was blankness inside; there were vague feelings but no words, no images. She worked at the bottle, lit new cigarettes from the stubs of old ones, and at some point during the evening the tears that at first just trickled down her cheeks turned into deep, heart-racking sobs.