On Beulah Height - Reginald Hill

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your car.’

      ‘It could have been someone else’s.’

      ‘No. You’re the only bugger who changes up three times between here and end of the street.’

      He shrugged and said, ‘I was restless, the light woke me also. I wanted to go for a walk, but not where I’d be surrounded by houses.’

      ‘Oh aye? See anyone you know?’

      He fingered the soft hair of his beard into a point beneath the chin and said, ‘So early in the day I hardly saw anyone.’

      She said, ‘Give us a knock next time, mebbe I’ll come with you. Listen, now you’re here, couple of things in the Mahler you can help me with.’

      He shook his head wonderingly and said, ‘You are incredible. I tell you, I think you made a mistake to sing these songs on your first recording and that you will be making another to sing them at the concert. You ignore my advice. You make outrageous accusations, and now you want me to help you to do what I do not think you should be doing anyway!’

      ‘This isn’t personal, Arne. This is about technique,’ she said, sounding puzzled he couldn’t make the distinction. ‘I might think you’re a bit of a prick, but I’ve always rated you a good tutor. Mebbe that’s what you should have gone in for instead of performing. Now listen, I’m a bit worried about my phrasing here.’

      She pressed her zapper and the song resumed.

      ‘Oh, yes, they’ve only gone out walking,

      Returning now, all laughing and talking.

      Don’t look so pale! The weather’s bright.

      They’ve only gone to climb up Beulah Height.’

      ‘You hear the problem?’ she said, pressing pause again.

      ‘Why did you say up Beulah Height?’ he demanded. ‘That is not a proper translation. The German says auf jenen Höh’n.’

      ‘All right, keep your hair on. Let’s say on yonder height, that keeps the scansion,’ she said impatiently. ‘Now listen, will you?’

      She started to play the song again. This time Krog concentrated all his attention on her voice, so much so that he didn’t realize the door had opened till Elizabeth said, ‘Chloe, what’s the matter? What’s happened?’

      Chloe Wulfstan, heavier now than she’d been fifteen years before, but little changed in feature apart from a not unbecoming pouchiness under the chin, had come into the room and was leaning against the back of a sofa and swaying gently. ‘I’ve been listening to the local news,’ she said. ‘It’s happening again.’

      Krog went to her and put his arm round her shoulders. At his touch she let go of the sofa and leaned all her weight into his body so that he had to support her with both arms. His eyes met Elizabeth’s neutral gaze and he gave a small shrug as if to say, so what am I supposed to do?

      ‘What’s happening again?’ asked the younger woman in a flat, calm voice. ‘What have you heard?’

      ‘There’s a child gone missing,’ said Chloe. ‘A little girl. Up the dale above Danby.’

      Now the man’s gaze met Elizabeth’s once more. This time it conveyed as little message as hers.

      And around them the rich young voice wound its plaintive line;

      ‘Ahead of us they’ve gone out walking

      But shan’t be returning all laughing and talking.’

       EIGHT

      Ellie Pascoe was ready for fame. She had long rehearsed her responses to the media seagulls who come flocking after the trawlers of talent. For the literary journalist doing in-depth articles for the posh papers she had prepared many wise and wonderful observations about life and art and the price of fish and flesh, all couched in periods so elegant, improvement would be impossible and abbreviation a crime.

      For the smart-arses of radio and television she had sharpened a quiverful of witty put-downs that would make them sorry they’d ever tried to fuck with Ellie Pascoe!

      And for her friends she had woven a robe of ironic modesty which would make them all marvel that someone revealed as so very much different could contrive to remain so very much the same.

      She’d even mapped out a History of Eng. Lit. account of her creative development.

      Her first novel, which she steadfastly refused to allow to be published, but whose discovery in her posthumous papers was the literary event of 2040 – no make that 2060 – is the typical autobiographical, egocentric, picaresque work by which genius so often announces its arrival on the world stage. Much of it is ingenuous, even jejune, but already the discerning eye can pick out that insight, observation and eloquence which are the marks of her maturity.

      Her second novel, which after much pressure and considerable revision, she allowed to appear at the height of her fame, is the story of a young woman of academic bent who marries a soldier and finds herself trying to survive in a world of action, authority and male attitudes which is completely foreign to her. The autobiographical elements here are much more under control. She has not merely regurgitated her experience, but first digested it then used it to produce a fine piece of … art.

      (That metaphor needed a bit of work, she told herself, grinning.)

      But it is in her third novel, which exploded her name to the top of the best-seller lists, that the voice of the mature artist – assured, amused, amusing, passionate, compassionate, compelling and melismatic – is heard for the first time in all its glory …

      After Peter had left that Sunday morning, she lay in the sun for a while, playing the fame-game in her mind, but found that it quickly palled. If it ever did happen, she guessed it would be very unlike this. Reviewers, interviewers, and programme makers might be the poor relatives at the great Banquet of Literature, but one tidbit they were always guaranteed was the Last Word.

      So finally her thoughts turned to where she had been trying to avoid turning them – to Peter.

      She knew – had known for some time – that something was going on inside him that he wasn’t talking about. He wasn’t a reticent man. They shared most things. She knew all the facts of the case which had thrown up the devastating truth about his family history. They had talked about them at great length, and the talk had lulled her into a belief that the wounds she knew he had suffered would heal, were already healing, and only needed time for the process to complete. She was sure he had thought so too. But he’d been wrong, and for some reason was not yet able to admit to her the nature of his wrongness.

      So far she hadn’t pressed. But she would. As wife, as lover, as friend, she was entitled to know. Or, failing those, she could always claim the inalienable right of the Great Novelist to stick her nose into other people’s minds.

      The thought made her pick up her notebook and pen and start considering the jottings she’d made for her next opus. But looked at with these personal concerns running around inside her head, and this sun beating down on its outside, the jottings seemed a load of crap.

      Dissatisfied, she got up and went into the house in search of something that would really stretch her mind. All that she could come up with was a pile of long neglected ironing. She switched the radio on and set to work.

      It was, she discovered (though she would not have dreamt of admitting it outside the cool depths of the confessional which, as a devout atheist, she was unlikely ever to plumb anyway), a not unpleasant way of passing a mindless hour or so. From time to time she went outside again to give herself another shot of ultraviolet, followed by another slurp of iced apple juice, while the local radio station burbled amiably and aimlessly on. She even ironed some bed sheets with great care. Normally

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