The Old Silent

through Ilkley.

Trying to circumvent the moors was like trying to get round London on the Circle Line. Every gritty little town seemed to have its moor. Ilkley Moor, Stanbury Moor, Haworth Moor, Keighley Moor, Black Moor, Howden Moor: they were fixed about like railway station stops. Nothing like the North York moors he had crossed several years ago in the snow, a vast expanse of Arctic waste; nor like Dartmoor, a lunar landscape of fogs and slanting rains. Here in Yorkshire's West Riding there was a plethora of moors. Nature, abhorring yet another vacuum, must have said, There's a space, drop a moor in it.

And this narrow ribbon of road he'd taken to connect up with Haworth was meant for sheep, not for man- certainly not man in a Bentley. He looked up at the sky, now turgid like brackish water, looked out at the sad-faced sheep and slid down in the driver's seat, his earlier euphoria dissipating.

Face it, you are no lover of Nature. He sighed. The only Nature he seemed able to appreciate was the picture-book change of seasons in his own parkland at Ardry End. Golden autumn, lilac-scented spring…

Oh, for heaven's sake; it wasn't like that at all. There wasn't a lilac bush within ten miles.

Was this the right road? It didn't even look finished. Macadamed on one side for a distance, rutted earth on the other, going nowhere, he imagined, but to Eternal Moorland. He pulled over, braked, opened the accordion map. Two moorland sheep raised their heads from the bracken, moved forward slightly, stared and chewed.

Yes, this appeared to be the road. But where was this pub so clearly marked? Any pub marked on a map must be worth a stop.

Good Lord, how self-indulgent. One would think he'd never set foot out of London, so citified did he feel at the moment. He looked over at the two sheep. They looked so clumsy with all that wool, he disliked them. Nor did they seem dying of curiosity to know him.

He tried to refold the map, which remained intransigent to his handling; why was it maps, such neat accordions when you purchased them, would spring apart and seem to grow larger, filling your car, rampant as wild things. Oh, the hell with it. He squared it off and stuffed it, resisting, into the glove box and sat there glooming away.

What was the matter with him? He must get out, stretch his legs, have a brief walk on the moor (very brief), and, warming to this mild burst of enthusiasm, decided to take the picnic basket with him. There might be another piece of chicken or a tart and he was hungry. Agatha had been so busy throwing the debacle in his face, she had actually missed out on some tasty morsels in the basket. He thought he spied a thin slice of salmon rolled around capers and caviar. He set off on his tramp through bracken and rocks, feeling like a true West Yorkshireman.

After cleaning his shoe of sheep dung, wrapping his handkerchief round the rash of bloody pricks on his hand, moving his ankle gingerly where he'd caught it amongst this clump of deceptive, moss-covered rocks, Melrose found a wide, flat stone and sat down to look at the running stream. Or beck, he supposed it was called.

He looked across the snowy patches beside the stream, past bracken and burnt-looking heather, to a distance where he caught sight of a woman who, probably because of the illusory quality of the moors themselves, had sprung from nowhere. She had simply appeared on the crest of a treeless hill, snow-covered, walking along it in a cape that billowed behind her, and nothing in hand that might identify her as a tourist, a walker along the Pennine or Bronte ways, empty-handed, going from nowhere to nowhere. The image fascinated him and he watched her walk, a silhouette against the white horizon, until his attention was called away by a sound. It was an odd grizzling sound, as if someone were trying to clear his throat, followed by a sort of cat-cry. He looked up, saw two birds circling. Curlews sounded like cats, didn't they? Well, if they were circling over him, they were probably buzzards.

Quickly he returned his gaze to the skyline. The woman was gone. He lit a cigarette, looked at the coal end, shook his head. Here he'd come with his picnic basket to commune with Nature in a Chesterfield coat and with a gold cigarette case. He shook his head again. Hopeless.

He must take decisions.

What decisions? They'd all been taken for him. Polly Praed was no doubt right now sitting with her amethyst eyes glued to the page in her typewriter on which poured forth the fates of dogs or doges, and Vivian Rivington-

Oh! But wasn't he disgusted with himself? Blame it on Trueblood; it was all Trueblood's idea. Liar. Trueblood got the cut-out book, but he himself had gone right along with it. Well, what fun could you get out of life if you couldn't devil Vivian, after all?

What he couldn't stand was change. He thought, sitting here, perhaps he could become a Zen Buddhist. If he watched the water, if he flowed with the beck… Wasn't that the idea? Weren't they always saying that one must flow? One must forgo attachments? That life must be considered a running stream and to try to hold water in one's hand was total illusion? The trouble was, though, that all of this transience only seemed to apply to friendship, love, and beauty. Not wars and plagues and people one loathed. You didn't see them go floating down the beck…

So what kind of comfort did flow offer? He wanted things to stay absolutely the same, the same little group at the same table in the Jack and Hammer; the same rat terrier outside of Miss Crisp's secondhand furniture shop)-

Melrose looked round, for he heard the sound again.

Well, what about the Everlasting Now? Wasn't that a Zen notion too?

He rummaged through the basket and yanked out a chicken wing covered in crumbs of broken roll and knew one of his problems was his total lack of vocation, except for those zombie lectures he inflicted on students of French Romantic poetry. He studied the chicken wing and thought of Rimbaud.

Did he have to choose a genius who'd died at nineteen? At nineteen all Melrose was doing was falling off horses. He was going cross-eyed trying to find bits of meat on the wing and gave it up, tossing it in the basket. Naturally, Agatha had drunk the half bottle of Pouilly-Fume that his cook had put in specially for him.

He allowed himself a huge, self-pitying sigh. He'd simply got to take stock of himself… Gevrey-Chambertin, Chateau Margaux, the incomparable finesse of the Montrachets; Chevalier, Batard, Chassagne. The ones Dumas had said should be drunk kneeling; the Chablis Grands Crus; the Cote de Girarmes Napoleon loved. And then the port… it was more interesting taking stock of his wine cellar.

The noise this time was nearer and more distinct. Melrose left the cobwebbed environs of his wine cellar to squint through the mossy rocks. That mewling noise he had taken as the curlew's was, after all, a cat: it sat there, blinking its yellow eyes, looking starved.

Start thinking of your private stock of port and something comes along to shame you, he supposed. Melrose put the cat in the basket-clearing out the chicken bones first-and lugged it back to the road.

A woman standing at a crossroad apparently waiting for a local directed him to a hamlet the other side of which was an animal hospital. Since she had nothing better to do but stand there and gape at his car, she took a long time about it.

***

The True Friend Animal Hospital lay at the end of an infernal, potholed track of road that ended at a square, gray-stoned building with a cleared-off patch of equally rutted earth meant as a car park. Occupying it were a Ford truck of '40s vintage, a Mini Clubman Estate, a Jag, and a couple of bicycles with wire baskets. A drenching rain had started up right after he'd left the woman still staring after the Bentley. He turned up the velvet collar of his coat and jogged to the unfriendly-looking door of True Friend.

The waiting room was furnished with three wooden benches, one against each wall, and the counter behind which a tired-looking woman in steel-rimmed glasses and hair like a Brillo pad sat with a pile of filing folders.

Melrose's acquaintance with veterinarians was minimal; he wondered, though, why these places always had names like Animal Haven and Loving Kindness when they generally resembled jails and had receptionists like wardens. This one told him that as he had no appointment, he'd have to wait until the regular customers were taken care of. Her tone registered her disapproval of his casual and his damp and his rather noisy cat as she nodded toward the benches for him to be seated.

Not that there was any shortage of noise in the room already. A bullterrier and an Alsatian were having an awful row, each straining at his lead to see which could grab a portion of Melrose's ankle first. Some ineffectual