Haweswater Read Free Page B

in the bedroom and took out the brass key to the church door, which she used every Saturday and Thursday when she carried out her cleaning duties. Her gown was yellow with sweat and a woman came to her and put a blanket around her shoulders. Ella steadied herself on the banister as she came down the stairs. She walked through the kitchen, past the table of empty cups, oblivious to the smoking crowd, and at the front door she paused to look back at the stunned, silent men, and at her husband, who had followed her down from the bedroom, not knowing what to say. He had their daughter in his arms. A small, screaming, blue and yellow kitten, lit up with hurried blood.
    The church key pressed its shape into Ella’s fist as she held it tight. Her feet were bare on the flagstones. She lifted the latch and opened the door and an icy gust of wind swept into the kitchen. The freezing air seemed to bring her round a little. She stepped into a pair of shoes and hung at the door frame. Ella looked at the child held by its father and again looked out into the night. Then she called out a name which was half lost under the voice of the wind, and she was gone, down to the tiny church in the heart of the village.
    As she said ‘Janet’ for her grandmother’s namesake, Samuel, half-hearing the wind, mistook her word and thought he heard ‘January’, for the month of her birth, and even later, when the mistake had been rectified, he always did call his daughter that, when his wife was not around to hear. And when she could, he settled for Jan, which was neither here nor there. So Ella went to the church to pray for forgiveness, and she would not curse God again for another twelve years, not until her son Isaac was born. So Samuel Lightburn grew the first of many hearts for his daughter.

    Before school, when she is six years old, she will accompany her father to the paddocks and the lower fields backing up on the moors. It is early morning and a green dawn light covers the valley. There are flashes of dark green behind the night clouds, which she notices, looking up, as she walks next to her father. It is as if metal has found its way into the air and is burning. They walk on, down the rocky stone path, sightless, but aware of the distance of the walls on each side of the lane, their feet scuffing up loose pebbles. She takes three steps to his every long stride, a skip in the middle to keep pace. Their eyes strain and after a while adjust to the near-dark. At this time of day unnatural, optical physicality occurs, owlish intuitions. Her father is a dim outline. When she looks at him, she sees his breath coming out in short bursts. From time to timehe also looks down towards his breathing daughter. Behind and in front, two dogs slip silently along the drystone walls like ghosts swimming between their human keepers. Canine kelpies. She feels the presence of the near mountains, the pressure of them within the valley’s space of air. If she were to peer into the darkness she might make out the grey rock of Nan Bield pass or the ridges of High Street. She could summon their exact position from blindness. As the girl unhooks the latch of a wooden paddock gate, the cows, with a half-remembered instinct, gather for the run up to the farm. Her father and the dogs begin moving them from the back.
    Janet helps him drive the herd of cows upwards to the dairy barn each morning, slapping the hot flanks of the animals as they pass by if they rock too far out of the channel of their own traffic. Their gait is heavy and slow, their udder sacks swollen, a taut pink-white, so that the legs splay out further to avoid the underbelly. They slug towards the dyke and are smacked back by her small hand on their rumps. Tripping hooves on the uneven road and the occasional murmur of a cow are the only sounds in this dawn landscape. Not even birds sound from the hedgerows yet. The cows are huge forms compared with the thin young girl, with lolling pink tongues and