Midwinter of the Spirit

6

Sweat and Mothballs

‘OH YES,’ MOON said, ‘he was outside the window, peering in – his face right up to the glass. His eyes were full of this awful, blank confusion. I don’t think he knew who I was. That was the worst thing: he didn’t know me.’

‘He was in the… garden?’ How do I handle this? Lol thought. She’s getting worse.

‘I ran out,’ Moon said. ‘Then I saw him again at the bottom of the steps leading up to the camp. And then he wasn’t there any more.’

She was sitting on a cardboard box full of books. There were about two dozen boxes dumped all over the living area. Lol hadn’t been into the kitchen or the bathroom but, except for the futon in the open loft, it looked exactly the way it had been the last time he was here. She’d refused offers of help from Denny and Lol, and from Dick Lyden’s wife Ruth. You had to arrange your possessions yourself, she’d insisted, otherwise you’d never know where anything was.

But nothing at all seemed to have been put away, nothing even unpacked. It was as though she’d gone straight to bed when he left her on Saturday and had just got up again, four days later.

Sleeping Beauty situation, fairytale again.

The point about Moon was that she was utterly singleminded. Most of the time she had no small talk, and no interest in other people, although she could be very generous when some problem was put under her nose – like buying the busker’s balalaika.

But now she’d found her father, and nothing else mattered.

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘and he was wearing a flat cap which I recognized.’

Moon was wearing an ankle-length, white satin nightdress which had collected a lot of dust, a thick silver torc around her neck. She’d had on nothing over the nightdress when she’d opened the door to Lol. She didn’t seem cold. It was wildly erotic. Lol wondered how doctors coped with this.

‘It was this grey checked one with all the lining hanging out. Mummy always kept it – I mean for years, anyway. She talked about all the times she used to try and get him to throw it away. Denny threw it away in the end, I suppose. Now my father has it back.’

Delusional, Lol thought. Because she doesn’t seem scared. It has to be wishful thinking. But what did it mean, that she’d wished up a father who didn’t seem to recognize her?

The long nightdress rustled like leaves as Moon stood up, glided to the window.

‘When I was little, I used to wonder if that was the cap he’d worn when he shot himself, so that was why it was all torn. Of course, the gun would have made much more of a mess than that, but you don’t know these things when you’re little, do you?’

It occurred to him that this was the first time she’d spoken about her father.

Her father had killed himself when she was about two years old. Denny said she had no memories of him, but there was probably some resentment because his folly was the reason they’d had to sell up and leave the hill.

This fucking insane investment. Some mate of the old man’s had developed this sweet sparkling cider he reckoned was going to snatch at least half the Babycham market. Dad threw everything at it – sold off about fifty acres, left the farm non-viable.

They’d lost the farm. Which was said to have been in the family since at least the Middle Ages. Or much longer, if you listened to Moon.

Denny had said, The day we left, the old man took his shotgun for a last, short walk. It’s a thing farmers do when they feel they’ve let their ancestors down.

‘How, um…?’ Lol’s mouth was dry. He sat down on another box of books. ‘How do you feel about your dad now?’

Moon turned to Lol, her eyes shining. ‘I have to reach out to him. The ancestors have enabled me to do that, OK?’

The crow. By bathing my hands in its blood, I’m acquiring its powers.

‘They sent him back. He doesn’t know why, but he will. He has to know who I am – that’s the first stage. I have to let him know I’m all right about him.’

‘You’re not… just a bit scared?’

‘He’s my father. And I’m his only hope of finding peace. He knows he’s got a lot of making up to do. To Mummy as well, but that’s out of our hands now.’

She went silent, the fervour in her eyes slipping away.

‘Your mum… do you feel she’s at peace?’ Lol didn’t know why he’d asked that, except to get her talking again.

‘I don’t know. She was never the same afterwards. I mean, all my life she had problems with her nerves. It was lucky Denny was practically grown-up by then, and so he took charge. It was Denny who was always pushing me to do well at school, determined I should go to university because he hadn’t. Taking the father’s role, you know? He owes Denny too, I suppose.’

‘How can he make it up to you?’ Lol said softly. ‘How can your father help?’

She blinked at him, as if that was obvious. ‘With my book, of course – my book about the Dinedor People. He can help me with the book. He can make them talk to me. They sent him to me, so I must be able to reach them through him.’

‘Who?’

‘The ancestors.’

The barn was quite small: just four rooms. It had been converted initially as extra holiday accommodation by the present owners of the farmhouse, some people called Purefoy, who apparently ran a bed-and-breakfast business. But this had not been a very good summer for weather or tourism, and they’d presumably realized they could make more money with a longterm let. Not much ground, of course. No room for a garage, quite difficult access, but a beautiful rural situation.

Moon had come up here on the mountain-bike Denny had bought her in the aftermath of the shoplifting case. It was a hot day and she was pushing the bike up towards the camp when she suddenly, as she put it, felt her ancestors calling out to her.

It was the most incredible experience. Like the one Alfred Watkins must have had, when he first saw those lines in the landscape. Except I was aware of just one line, leading from me to the hill and back through the centuries. The hill was vibrating under me. I was shaking. I realized this was what I’d been training for, during all those years of digging people up. But that was only bones. I want to unearth real people. I want to communicate with them. I knew I had to discover the story of the hill and the Dinedor People. It was just an amazing moment. I felt as light as a butterfly.

Moon had been up here until the dusk came. She’d found herself almost frantically knocking on the doors of farmhouses and cottages all around the hill to find out who was living here and who had lived here for the most generations. Discovering, as she’d suspected she might, that the oldest Dinedor family was her own. Moon maintained that her family had come out of the original settlement on Dinedor Hill, all those years before the time of Christ.

But none lived here any more. Her father had snapped the line.

Close to sunset, Moon had arrived at Dyn Farm, at the old, mellowed farmhouse near to the camp, to find the Purefoys – Londoners, early-retired – in the garden.

Usually, as you know, I’m so shy, unless I’ve taken something. But I was glowing. They didn’t seem very friendly at first, a bit reserved like a lot of new people, but when I told them who I was, they became quite excited and invited me in. Of course, they were asking me all sorts of questions about the house that I couldn’t really answer. I was just a toddler when we left.

Then they showed me the barn. And I felt that my whole life had been leading up to that moment.

Moon came over and stood in front of Lol, close enough for him to see her nipples through the nightdress. Oh