On Beulah Height - Reginald Hill

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that as far as my dad were concerned, I might as well not have existed, while Madge were like a goddess or a princess or something to Mr Telford. Not that he didn’t get angry with her, but that was only because he got so worried about her. Like if she came home late, even if it were just ten minutes after school, he’d tell her he was going to lock her up with the coffins till she learnt obedience. I don’t think it would have bothered Madge. Sometimes we used to sneak into the old barn where he stored the coffins, and we’d play around them, even climbing inside sometimes. I’m not saying I’d have liked to be in there by myself, but it would have been better than the belt. Any road, he never did it. When he got his rag back, he usually blamed someone else, like me, for keeping her late. Now he were on at me all the time, looking for someone or something to blame, I suppose. But I think mebbe it was himself he blamed most. ‘It ’ud be different if only she’d come back,’ he’d say. ‘I’d never let her out of my sight.’

      But I think like me he knew she were never coming back.

      The lady policeman asked me all sorts of questions, like, had Madge ever said anything about any man bothering her? and how did she get on with her dad and her Uncle George? I said no she hadn’t, and grand. Then she asked about the afternoon she went missing and had I noticed anyone anywhere near the Telfords’ house when I were looking for Madge in the back garden? And I said no. And she said, not even Benny Lighfoot? And I said, oh aye, I think I saw Benny up the fell a way, but nobody paid any heed to Benny. And that was when she asked me about the time we were playing in the water and Jenny went off, had I seen Benny that day too. And I said yes, I thought I had. And she asked why I hadn’t mentioned it then, and I explained that I didn’t think that seeing Benny counted.

      Now no one in the dale believed any harm of Benny Lightfoot and it were thought a right shame when police car went bumping up the track to Neb Cottage, right up under the Neb, where he lived with his gran. Nobby Clark explained that the glorrfat one without a uniform had kept on bothering him to know if there were anyone a bit odd lived local. ‘I telt him I didn’t know many that wasn’t a bit odd,’ he said. (This were reckoned a good joke and spread round the dale right quick.) But he’d had to tell him about Benny.

      Benny were about nineteen, and I’d heard say he had an accident when young and had a bit of metal in his head, and mebbe this helped make him so shy, especially of lasses. You’d see his long lean figure hanging around village hall when there were a social on, or up by Wintle Wood where the big lads and lasses used to lake around on a fine evening. But once he saw he’d been seen, he’d vanish so quick, you wondered if you’d ever really seen him in the first place. ‘Never knew a bugger better named,’ folk used to say, and everyone had a right good laugh when they heard that as the police car pulled up at the front of Neb Cottage, Benny went out of the back and took off up the hillside.

      One of the bobbies tried to chase him, but there was no point. Once Benny had been persuaded to enter the Danby Tops which is the big fell race out of Danby Show in August. They got him to the start all right and when the gun went, he were off like a whippet and when they turned for home half an hour later at top of the Danby side of Lang Neb, he were half a mile ahead. He came down like a loose boulder, just bouncing from rock to rock, with never another runner in sight. Then he heard crowd cheering and he stopped a couple of hundred feet above the showground on Ligg Common and looked down at all them people.

      Next thing he’d turned round and were running back up the fell almost as fast as he came down, and I doubt if he paused till he were over the ridge and back in his gran’s cottage in Dendale.

      So like I say, most folk just laughed when they heard this ’cos they reckoned it was a waste of time, especially as they were certain it weren’t anyone local the police should be looking for, it were some offcomer, and most likely one of the contractors working on the dam.

      They’d been round a long time. They’d started work soon as Mr Pontifex had sold them his Dendale estate. They couldn’t start on dam proper until the result of the Enquiry, but this made no difference, I heard my dad say later. The Water Board knew they were going to get the result that they wanted, and by the time it came through, they’d laid new drains up on Black Moss between Neb and Beulah Height on Highcross Moor so that what had just been a great bog were now a wide tarn waiting to be spilled down into valley. And at Dale End, they’d cleared the land and put down hardcore tracks for heavy machinery and built cabins for their contractors.

      So they’d been around for a long long time by that long hot summer when dam were getting close to being finished and the dale had got used to them. There were odd bits of trouble, but not much. When some chickens got stolen at Christmas and when someone started nicking undies from washing lines, everyone said it must be the contractors, and Nobby Clark went and had a word, but apart from that they weren’t any bother. They’d get in the Holly Bush an odd time, but they had their own bar and canteen and games room down at Dale End and seemed to prefer sticking together. But there was one of them who were different. This was a man called Geordie Turnbull.

      Geordie wasn’t anyone important, he drove one of the big machines that dug up the earth, but he liked to come into the village, drink in the pub, shop in the post office. Everyone liked him, except mebbe for a few of the men who didn’t like the way he got on so well with the women.

      Even Mrs Winter our old head teacher thought he were grand, and Miss Lavery seemed fair stricken. Few months earlier, Water Board had put on some lectures in the village hall to explain all about the dam, dead boring, I heard my dad say. He stood up and asked questions and it got into a row and he wanted to hit the lecturer but some of the others stopped him even though most agreed with him. Anyway, the Board asked Mrs Winter if they could send a lecturer into the school, and she said no, it would likely just worry the children but if they sent someone we all knew like Geordie Turnbull to explain about the dam, that would be OK.

      So Geordie came.

      He had a funny way of talking which Miss Lavery said was because he came from Newcastle. He didn’t lecture us but just sort of chatted and answered questions. I recall him saying, ‘Which of you kiddies ever tried to dam a stream?’ And when all the hands went up, he said, ‘All right, so tell me, bonnie lads and lasses, what’s the best stuff to work with when you’re building your dam?’ And some said earth, and some said stones, and some said branches. Geordie nodded and said, ‘Good answer,’ to all of those. Then he said, ‘Now here’s a hard one. What’s the worst stuff of all for your dam?’ And while everyone was thinking, Madge yelled out, ‘It’s the watter!’ And Geordie laughed out loud, and we all laughed with him ’cos you had to laugh when he did, and he picked her up and swung her on his shoulders and said, ‘Yes it’s the watter,’ – taking her off – ‘the very stuff you’re trying to save that fights against you saving it. So when it’s hot and dry like now, building a dam’s a lot easier than when it’s cold and wet. In fact, you might say it’s a dam sight easier.’ We all laughed again, and even Mrs Winter had to smile.

      Then he swung Madge down and gave her a kiss and said if ever she wanted a job moving earth, she just had to come and see Geordie Turnbull.

      So it were a great success. And Geordie were even more popular after that. And everyone used to say that it were the well-off folk in their big offices in the city who were responsible for drowning the dale, no use blaming the contractors who were just ordinary working lads trying to earn a living.

      But when Madge got took, everything changed. Suddenly we were told not to go anywhere near the site, not to speak to anyone working on the dam, and if anyone tried to talk to us, to run off fast and tell Constable Clark.

      And above all we were warned not to talk to Geordie Turnbull. At the talk he gave in the school, no one had been bothered by him putting Madge on his shoulders or giving her a kiss or telling her to come and see him if she wanted a job. Now everyone was talking about it and they wouldn’t serve him in the Holly Bush any more, and there was nearly a fight when he wouldn’t leave. Then one day we saw him took off in a police car, and everyone was saying they’d got him and he ought to be lynched. Two days later, but, he were back at work, though he never came into village again. But it didn’t matter because now there

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