Ancient Echoes (8 page)

Face to face, Garth looked pale and haunted, his gaze watery, unfocused, cast more to the wide and bleak land below this summit than to the breathless boy in his anorak, jeans and muddy boots.

‘How did you know I’d be here?’

Garth ground the cigarette against the massive grey monolith beside him. ‘Angela told me. I paid a visit to her father two days ago. I thought it might be an idea to see you. Especially out here.’

‘On the moors?’

With a cryptic smile, Garth said, ‘Wide, wild open spaces – easier to dowse. Easier to hear. If there’s anything below the earth, moorland like this reveals it quickly.’

‘I saw you in Exburgh – before Christmas. You ran away …’

‘I had things on my mind. I couldn’t talk to you just then. But I’ve been keeping an eye on you, Jack.’

Jack stared at the man, cold in the rain, tugging his weatherproof tighter around his neck to stop the icy trickle of water down his neck.

Garth asked, ‘Dream of Greenface lately?’

‘A little. It comes and goes; it always has. There’s a strong feeling of a bull in the tunnel, below the shoe shop. I got scared again.’

‘You went back?’

‘I went back. There’s a real
life
in that place. Just like you said. The hidden city is alive.’

Garth stood for a few moments in silence, hands in pockets, watching the boy. Then he said, ‘You might be in trouble, Jack. I can’t be sure; but I thought I ought to warn you. To take care.’

‘In trouble?’ Jack shivered at the words.

‘They won’t let you alone. The bull-runners. You’re their channel to freedom. They’re coming closer. Can you feel that?’

‘Not for a while, now. I hear them, but they’re not close. Can you? Do you see them too?’

Garth shook his head. He lit another cigarette, huddled against the rain, his face momentarily wreathed in coils of an almost blue smoke.

‘Glanum
is
alive. You’re right. But not the ruins below Exburgh. That’s just an echo in stone. It’s important to make the distinction, Jack. What’s alive is in
you
and in
me
. We’re part of the same haunting, but it’s coming at us in different ways. The bull-runners have you in their sights; I have Glanum in mine.’

‘What do the bull-runners mean to the city?’

‘To the city? I don’t know. To the
heart
of the city? They belong together. Jack, I’ve been hunting Glanum for longer than you’d believe. Since before the Sixties!’ he added with a grin. ‘I’ve been hunting it so long I’ve forgotten when it started. I’ve even forgotten
how
it started … except that …’

He had drifted for a moment, eyes narrowed, thinking hard, remembering. Then he shook his head.

‘When
you
surfaced, Jack … when I found you – with your link with the bull-runners, I knew I was close to the end of the search. But I forgot the danger – to you, I mean. And since I can’t tell exactly what’s going to happen to me from one Godforsaken moment to the next, I thought I should find you. To tell you – warn you – that you might be in a lot of trouble.

‘But wherever I am, I promise you one thing–’

He squeezed the life from the cigarette and flicked it into the rain, then tightened his coat and tugged his wide-brimmed hat lower across his face as he smiled at the boy.

‘– I’ll keep an eye on you!’

And he turned and strode down the hill, a blurring figure in the misting rain walking deeper into the moors, heading towards the quaking ground, the low tors and fifteen miles of dangerous desolation. Jack wanted to call after him, but no words came. He watched silently until the city dowser was
obscured by rain and distance, then turned back to the hotel.

Garth was on his mind all the time, now; in dreams, at school, even when with Angela in the privacy of his house, his parents at work. When he articulated the ‘presence’ of the strange man, it was always in words that suggested a final reckoning was coming close.

‘Something’s going to happen …’

‘But with Garth, not the bull-runners.’

He hadn’t experienced any dramatic closeness of the bull-runners for a long time, now, and yet, especially when he was out on the hills, he could hear the woman’s breathing, her torn, ragged breath; his limbs sometimes ached with running when he had been standing still. There were shadows that alarmed him, of beasts rising from the marshes, or emerging from the swollen, roaring river down which he
sensed
he was swimming.

But they were not close. Only Garth was close. He was abroad in Exburgh, hugging the shadows of the old city, walking at dusk across the neon-lit streets, smoking, always smoking, glancing round, following the signs of the hidden town, kneeling at the ghosts of the shrines.

‘He’s keeping an eye on me.’

‘How do you know?’ Angela turned in bed, her fingers walking across Jack’s chest, marking out each rib until he squirmed. She was pungent with a perfume called
Opium,
and with sweat, her long hair tousled, damp and matted across her forehead.

‘I just feel it. He’s here … he’s close.’

‘Why hide?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘If I hadn’t met him, I’d think he was another of your
archaeo-stories.’

She had meant the reference to be a moment of humour, but Jack repeated the word in exasperation and Angela turned irritably away, propping her head on her hand, picking up the book by Jack’s bedside and snorting with derision as she saw that it was a ‘Help to Pass Advanced History’ book, a time-saver for slow students.

Jack was hopeless at history. He should never have agreed to take the subject in his final year.

Angela’s paper had been rejected by
Nature,
and then by two psychology journals, and then by
New Scientist, Science,
and finally by the local paper. Most disappointing of all, when she had sent a copy of her essay to the Canadian scientist whose work had so inspired her, Jandrok had sent back a kind but short note through his secretary to the effect he was fascinated by her theories but regretted he had no time to deal with individual correspondence on the nature of his ideas.

She had taped all the letters of rejection to the inside of her school locker and could occasionally be found staring at them, and willing harm and despondency upon the authors.

The paper had impressed her teacher, however, and under his tutelage she was preparing for a University course in Psychology, attending an evening class and reading more widely in the subject. The school curriculum was insufficient to address the level of her understanding, and she was clearly being marked out for a top college of further education, probably at Cambridge.

The unexpected sound of a car pulling into the drive interrupted both tension and passion in the mad scramble for clothes. By the time Jack’s mother had opened the front door, both pupils were staring at open books on the dining table, their overt dishevelment put down to natural, youthful scruffiness.

He was laughing, chin up, and shaking his head …

Greenface was exploding in his face,
sunlight
making her glorious as she leapt from the stained glass of the church window
…

Garth
followed, reaching down to him, shaking him
…

‘Quiet! Jack, be quiet! Sssh!’

Jack came out of the dream and sat up. The bedroom window was open, the air in the room crisp and fresh. Garth settled back on his haunches, a crouched shape by the bed, his body rank with sweat, his breath heavy with the smell of tobacco.

‘Who’s Jocelyn?’ he asked quietly.

‘Jocelyn?’

‘You were moaning the name Jocelyn when I came in through the window. So who is she? Your new girlfriend?’

Jocelyn?

Jack’s head cleared suddenly. ‘Jocelin! He’s a priest. In the book I’m studying.
The Spire.’

‘Never heard of it. Who wrote it?’

‘William Golding.’

‘Him I’ve heard of.’

Jack was still disorientated. What was Garth doing in his room at – he checked his bedside clock – four twenty five in the morning.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I’ve come to fetch you. I’m expecting to leave today. It’s taken longer than I thought. I need some help.’

‘You’re leaving?’

‘I’m leaving. What’s it about? The
Spire.’

‘A priest.’

‘Jocelin. We already got that far. But what about him? Why does he make you dream?’

‘He wants to build a spire on his Cathedral. But it’s going to be too high, too heavy. The foundations won’t hold it. But it’s his dream and he won’t listen to common sense.’

Garth seemed taken with the idea, looking away, thinking hard before he said quietly. ‘Like the Tower of Babel, then. Building for personal glory rather than the glory of God.’

‘I don’t know. I’m not sure …’

‘The Spire isn’t ready to be built. The human mind that wants to build it is too far ahead. Dreaming. But the building won’t accept it. The earth won’t accept it. Am I right?’

Jack didn’t know. He’d prepared several set-answers to do with the book, and with William Golding in general. But mediaeval priests and the construction of churches in the Middle Ages held as much interest for him as … well, mediaeval priests and the construction of churches in the Middle Ages! If the
Antichrist
had featured, Beelzebub, Satanism, maybe some exorcism, even a minor demon or two, the story might have taken on a different dimension.

‘It’s a bit dry. It’s about more than the story itself. Subtext, metaphor, all that stuff.’

‘I know. I know,’ Garth said wearily. ‘All that stuff.’

‘Lots of vertigo, though. That’s cool.’

‘But a dry book. Like stone? Like earth?’

‘Yeah. I suppose so.’

Garth smiled. ‘Or maybe you just don’t get it. Yet.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘And the earth itself may have some surprises for you. Get up, Jack. Get dressed.’

‘Why are you here?’

‘I told you. I’m expecting to leave today.’

‘Leave for where?’

‘Good question.’

‘What’s happening to you?’ Jack asked gently, suddenly sad.

‘The White Whale,’ Garth said, winking at the boy. ‘Come
on.
Get dressed. And make a substantial packed lunch. We have some walking to do.
Vertical
walking,’ he added with a leathery grin. ‘As opposed to horizontal.’

Jack left a note on the breakfast table, pretending that he had left early for a swim before school, a less frequent occurrence now than a few years ago, but a suitable enough explanation for his absence.

Garth had hired a car, a sleek, peacock-green Renault whose back seats were now pushed down to make sufficient space for two heavy coils of rope, each with a gleaming grappling hook at its end.

‘You
can
drive, can’t you?’

‘No. Not officially.’

Garth spun the wheel too hard for its power-assisted steering and the car skidded and screamed on the road as it sped away towards the hills. ‘Well, that’s too bad. You’ll just have to take a chance. It’s easy enough to handle.’

As he spoke, he crashed the gears, which complained with ear-splitting stridency. He frowned as he stared down at the gear lever. ‘I’m used to automatics; this was all I could get at short notice. Where’s the overdrive?’

‘You’re about to hit the kerb!’

‘Shit!’

By the time they parked, in the thin woodland that ran along the bottom of the Mallon Hills, the day had developed into strong sunshine and warm breezes and Jack felt he had aged ten years, the result of the dowser’s appalling driving. From the car park they could see the traffic heading to Exburgh for the start of the working day. But away from all that, the hills rose in silent, solitary splendour, cloud-shadowed and brilliant with dew. Everything here was fresh, unspoiled, the new season bringing a scintillating green to the land.

They struck off through the beechwood, found the path, the kissing gate and then the rough track that wound up the first
of the hills, towards the Mallon valley. Garth led the way, his long oilskin coat and heavy leather pack slung over one shoulder, a coil of rope over the other. Jack carried the second grappling hook, and his own knapsack with roast beef sandwiches, two apples and a chunk of game pie.

At the first summit they gazed over farmland, the river valley itself, and the wooded slopes of Windover Hill, a good hour’s stride away. Garth crouched down and listened to the wind. His face almost shone in the bright sun.

‘I know this place so well, now,’ he said. ‘I know the springs, the windbreaks, the snow-shelters, the pipes and caves that riddle the rock.’

Jack watched the man carefully. Aware of the attention, Garth turned on him, still crouching, then pointed to a clump of trees and a dry-stone wall, half-way down the slope to the winding brook below.

‘I’ve lived there for more than a year. There’s a deep crevice, runs a hundred yards into the hill, quite dry. I’ve had some dreams there, some wonderful dreams.’ He laughed. ‘I’m a sort of bear, Jack. I hibernated over the winter to make sure I was in the right place.’

‘The right place?’

Garth stood, stretched, then picked up the rope and his pack.

‘It’s been a long hunt, but I’m at the end of the trail, now. I’m sure of it. And it’s partly thanks to you. When I found Glanum, I found my quarry. But it
was
a long search …’ he added, almost sighing. He stooped quickly and tugged up a small tuft of grass, rubbing the moist earth and roots between his fingers as he again stared down at the boy. ‘I’m going home, Jack. Or I’ll die in the attempt. That’s why I asked you to come with me.’ He put the crushed grass to his nose, closed his eyes as he inhaled briefly, then let it fall.

‘But don’t be concerned,’ he added. ‘You’re in no danger yourself. I promise you that.’

‘Up on Muldon Moor, you said that I
was
in trouble.’

‘In trouble, yes. But not in danger. If I die, you’ll remember what you’ve seen. If I don’t, I’ll be keeping an eye on you. You’ll always have a friend in me, Jack. Over the years I’ve made that promise many times, and always kept it. Now let’s walk. I’m getting hungry and I can smell that game pie …’