The Old Silent

Melrose looked up. 'Oh, sorry. No, I don't think so. I was just wondering, have you seen Miss Taylor this morning?'

'Not this morning, not since I heard her shoot through the night on that motorcycle probably mashing everything in her path.'

'That's just it: wouldn't we have heard it when she came in?'

Major Poges checked his watch, shook it, held it up to his ear. 'Who said she did? She's from New York, after all.'

He turned and left the room, murmuring something about bullying Rose into joining him on Stanbury Moor.

New York or not, thought Melrose, there was hardly anything in Haworth to be getting up to. He sat there, feeling decidedly uncomfortable, staring out at the slow fall of snow. It might have been five minutes or fifty, as he brooded over collisions on icy roads, when he was more or less brought round by the voice behind him.

'Are you coming, then?'

He turned from the window and saw Abby Cable in what looked like proper gear for an Eskimo. He could barely see her face; he could feel the glare, though, like ice struck by light. 'What? Coming where? Have you built an igloo?'

There was a silence. Her face was muffled in scarves, shawls, and something feathered on the edges that moved with her breath. But he felt the penetrating stare. 'To find the sheep. You said you wanted to.'

He had? When he didn't jump from his seat, she said, 'Good-bye, then.'

Adults lie. That was in the tone, pure and simple, something she was used to.

'I don't know what to wear for this adventure.'

Silence. The Eskimo turned. 'A coat would help.' She left the doorway to which Melrose rushed. 'Can't you wait for three minutes?'

She opened the door to the great snow-swamped outside. The dog Stranger sat there with snow on his coat. 'Okay,' she said, flatly.

As he strived with his Wellingtons he could hear the clock ticking.

22

He felt ridiculous tramping along with a crook in his hand.

'You need it,' she had said. 'That stick-thing won't do you any good.'

It wasn't, he had said, a 'stick-thing.' It was a nineteenth-century cosher. Finding out it was a weapon had stirred Abby's interest. She'd hefted it, inspected it, asked if police had used it to kill people, and seemed disappointed that that hadn't been the cosher's primary use. But her attention ripened again when he added that it was, of course, possible to strike a mortal blow. Why? he asked her.

The question went unanswered as they'd set off in some northerly direction to the rear of Weavers Hall.

'I don't see why we can't keep to a well-worn path,' Melrose noted irritably as they'd been stolidly walking for twenty minutes. What he suspected was the last of civilization had been left back on the Oakworth Road where a red telephone kiosk stood quietly alone. He saw two paths crisscrossing like long dents in the fresh snow. The snow wasn't deep; it was merely forbidding, given this landscape.

Her sigh at the hopelessness of taking along this person untutored in the ways of sheep was rather exaggerated and punctuated with a swipe of the cosher, which she had appropriated, and with which she dealt mortal blows (swish!). 'Sheep don't use paths. I expect you don't know nothing about sheep.'

Must she begin every comment regarding the possimnty of some small fund of knowledge on his part into a total lack of faith that he had any? I-expect-you-don't this and I-expect-you- don'tthat?

'I certainly do. I know that under the outside coat is an inner one that keeps them warm.' Melrose wished he had an inside layer, as he worked the hand holding the crook to keep the circulation going. His fingers felt like ice-packed twigs.

But she trampled on his small bit of sheep-knowledge, saying, 'People think they're stupid. They're not. Come up against some stroppy old ewe and you'll see.' It was almost a challenge as she pointed the cosher in the direction of a large, black-faced sheep some distance away.

'Is that so?'

Abby did not answer rhetorical questions; clearly she felt there was no reason to replay her statements. He got it; he didn't get it; it made no odds to her. Melrose imagined that whatever information he did manage to get from her would come out dry as cold toast, unlaced with jam. She was certainly not one to embroider like Ethel.

'You never know where Mr. Nelligan's sheep are. They wander off.'

'Who's this Mr. Nelligan, anyway?'

In answer, Abby turned and pointed with the cosher in the direction of a hillside that could have been a mile off but was probably closer. In this landscape, judging distances was an art in itself. 'That caravan over there.'

Melrose shaded his eyes, looking toward the distant hillside where he thought he saw a small structure, smoke curling from its roof. 'A caravan with a smokestack?'

'He cut a hole in the roof.'

He didn't bother questioning this. 'Then why isn't Nelligan out here saving his own sheep?'

'He drinks poteen. Once he had over a hundred sheep got down in a gully. Stranger rounded them up.' She shook her head, clearly implying that if it weren't for her dog they'd all be down in a gully.

They plowed on, heading for a broken wall 'yonder.' It occurred to him that he didn't even know what this egregious errand was for. He stopped. 'Where are we going?'

'Wherever Stranger goes,' she said, looking up at him. Beneath the circle of the hood her eyes shone out, a dark and fathomless blue.

'We're following the dog?' No reply. 'My own dog follows me.' This was not technically true: Mindy's residence by the fireplace was seldom interrupted by anything so banal as a 'walk.' Well, Mindy was old. And so, he felt, was he. Another ten minutes of it and he would grow a beard of hoarfrost. He wrinkled his nose; his nostrils seemed to be glued together from the cold dry air.

The landscape was like the negative of the landscape he had seen last night, standing with Ellen (and where was Ellen?) outside of the Hall. A dead white moon against a black sky, the silvery reservoir beneath. This sky was sickly pale, the clouds low and leaden and the blackened moor beneath the covering of snow, bracken, and heather so dark and withered the ground looked singed, as if they had come upon a moon crater. Melrose was fond of the natural setting of his own house, its woods and lanes; the grand view, the scenic vista. Sometimes, sitting in his comfortable chair before the fire watching Mindy vegetate, he had felt he should jump up, get his binoculars, and rush out and watch birds. A country gentleman of good breeding and lavish means should certainly be more involved with his natural surroundings. Melrose compromised and kept his binoculars on the floor, occasionally picking them up when something flew by the drawing-room window.

'Where are we?' he asked again, his eye searching this waste of snow for some marker, some directional sign. A while back they had crossed a beck (precariously, he thought) whose waters, replenished by yesterday's melting snow, curled over choked roots and around stones.

'Nowhere particular,' said Abby.

He stopped, jamming the crook in the snow, and said, 'You really mean you don't know, correct?'

She regarded him coolly. 'You're not lost.'

The dog ran, spewing up snow, toward an old drystone wall.

He felt lost. 'I should have brought an ordnance map.' He watched her tramp on ahead of him, toward the wall and the dog, brandishing the cosher. For her it was probably a jolly old adventure, some kind of game. It occurred to him he still didn't know precisely what their goal was. 'Wait up, for heaven's sakes. What is the object of this communion with the moors?'

'I expect you wouldn't like it if you were in a tomb, buried alive.' The blue eyes were looking stormy.