The Living and the Dead in Winsford

33

I think I realize it’s a mistake the moment I turn off onto the road leading to Hawkridge.

We’ve been shopping in Dulverton. Had lunch at The Bridge Inn and visited the second-hand bookshop. There was no book by Bessie Hyatt on the shelves, but the obliging owner, who reminds me of a dying dandelion every time I see her, has promised to have acquired both of them if I call in on Monday or Tuesday next week.

‘They’re quite good, actually. I read them thirty years ago — then things didn’t go so well for her, poor girl. But I’ve never come to grips with that Tom Herold character, I’m afraid. . Is there anything else I can tempt you with?’

I explain that I’m only halfway through Lorna Doone, but thank her for being so helpful.

In fact it’s Lorna Doone who makes me want to take a look at Hawkridge: the place is mentioned in the book, and we pass the worn-looking signpost every time we drive between Winsford and Dulverton. If nothing else, we could do with a walk, both Castor and I: that’s the real reason, and there are a couple of hours of the day left.

Not much in the way of daylight, however, but at least the rain that fell all morning has now stopped, and no doubt we shall find some public footpath or bridleway. But even after a few hundred metres I realize that I must tone down my expectations.

The road to Hawkridge is gloomy and full of bends. It’s also sunk down several metres below the surrounding countryside, and I have no idea where we are as I’ve left the map behind at Darne Lodge. We are like two blind rabbits in a deep ditch, and we edge our way forward with extreme care — but that is a poor image: Castor would never agree that he is a rabbit. We are a half-blind beetle — or rather, two of them of course — that’s better, on our way under the earth, on our way to. . No, enough of all these silly images that flicker away unbidden inside my head, I think: to hell with you, for this is serious.

And fear is sitting beside me in the passenger seat: I don’t know how to cope with this, it’s new to me.

New dirty signposts pointing along even narrower roads to even more dreary places. Ashwick. Venford Moor. West Anstey. I don’t recall any of the names from the map, and we don’t meet any other vehicles at all. That’s just as well, bearing in mind that the road is at no point wider than three metres. Blackmore writes that the wheel didn’t reach Exmoor until the end of the seventeenth century: people moved around on horseback without carts, and it is evidently those bridle paths and winding tracks between ancient villages and dwellings that were eventually tarmacked over several centuries later to create what are now called roads. That must surely be what happened: these lanes have been trodden down by the hooves of weary horses over thousands of years.

We eventually get to Hawkridge. There is no sign of any people in the village, which seems to comprise about ten houses and a dark grey church on a hill. At the only crossroads is a red letter box and an equally red telephone kiosk. And a tiny little parking area where we stop alongside a deserted tractor. We get out of the car and look round. It’s not only the tractor that looks deserted.

I catch sight of a sign pointing down to Tarr Steps. I gather the path must lead to Barle from the opposite direction to ours, and that it’s not possible to get there by car. I recall John Ridd’s comment to the effect that as everybody knows, the big block of stone in the merrily flowing river was placed there by the Devil himself, and that it is somewhere to avoid unless you have urgent business to do there.

Despite the fact that we don’t really have any urgent business to do there, we start walking down the steeply sloping road. Car drivers are warned that the slope is one in three, and that there are no possible turning places for a mile and a half. But it strikes me that a woman walking with her dog must be able to turn round whenever they feel like it, and so we head down the slope in determined fashion. There is no direction to look in apart from downwards, as the embankment on both sides of the road is more than two metres high. I assume there are muddy fields on either side of the road, but it’s simply not possible to leave it.

All of a sudden Castor decides that he has no yearning to go any further. He sits down in the middle of the road and looks at me with an expression that makes it clear he’s had enough. I explain to him that we’ve only been walking for ten minutes, and we’d agreed to walk for twenty minutes before turning back

But it doesn’t help. I argue with him for a while, but he refuses to budge. I take a couple of liver treats out of my pocket, but he’s not interested. He merely turns his head and looks back up the hill towards Hawkridge. The sky is low up there, leaden-coloured and heavy. I think things over for a while, and decide that there really are places that God seems to have abandoned. It must have been this very road that the Devil walked along when he carried the stones down to Tarr Steps in order to cross over the river to the brighter side — there seems no doubt about it.

And then I see the raven. It’s sitting on the top of the left-hand embankment ten metres ahead of us, and I understand straight away that this is the reason why Castor has refused to go any further. You simply don’t pass underneath a raven that is sitting there staring at you. Most certainly not, that’s something every dog learns in its first class at school.

And at that very moment, as I am standing there, staring at the raven while the big, black bird sits glaring at us with one eye and Castor looks studiously in another direction, it starts raining. Not the familiar, pleasant and gently caressing rain that usually falls over the moor, but a veritable cloudburst from directly above us. Fistfuls of hailstones clatter down on the asphalt. There is nowhere to shelter. I shout to Castor and tell him he is absolutely right, and we start hurrying back up the Devil’s road. Behind us I can hear the raven croaking a threatening message as it flies away. If we could, we would run all the way back to the car: but it’s too steep. My heart is pounding away in my chest as a result of the effort, and perhaps for other reasons as well, and I assume that Castor’s is pounding similarly. He is staying close by my side all the while, and he doesn’t usually do that.

It takes us much longer to get back to the church than it took us to get down to the raven, and the rain persists all the while. Aggressively and stubbornly as if it were intent on destroying something: that seems to be the kind of rain it is, and we can’t avoid it. Not for a metre, not for a second.

But it hasn’t managed to make our filthy Audi look much cleaner. At least not the front door on the driver’s side, which has been slightly screened by the abandoned tractor — and somebody has written in very clear letters rubbed out of the dirt: DEATH.

Probably with an index finger inside a glove, by the looks of it.

I stand and stare at it.

I look round. No sign of anybody. Darkness is falling fast. No lights are lit in any of the houses round about us, not a single one. The church seems to be leaning over us.

Can that message have been there earlier, when we left Dulverton? Can somebody have written it when we were in The Bridge Inn? Death?

Or has somebody written it during the half-hour we left the car in this remote place?

What difference would it make? What kind of an idiotic question is that to ask? I rub out the letters with my jacket sleeve. Castor is whimpering by my side: I let him into the back of the car, and I clamber into the driver’s seat. Soaking wet dog, soaking wet missus. But at least we have a roof over our heads now. The rain is pounding away. I lock the doors and sigh deeply.

Turn the ignition key: but the engine doesn’t start.

I close my eyes and repeat the procedure.

Nothing happens. Not a sound from the engine.

I whisper a desperate prayer.

Third time lucky. The engine starts, I back out quickly from the parking area, and drive away.

I’ve no idea in which direction I’m heading, but that doesn’t matter. I must get away, I think. Away from here.

No, it was a mistake to go to Hawkridge.