Black Car Burning Read online

  Shining Clough

  If you try to find me, you’ll get lost. You’ll walk under the crackling pylons and follow the signs for ‘Open Country’ by the gate, congratulating yourself on your keen eye. By the copse, you’ll pick a good line through the undergrowth, skirting the rhododendron bushes. It’s twilight, and a barn owl flies out of one of the trees behind you, glides on muffled wings. It seems darker under the trees. The path is dividing, lessening. Soon, you’ll slow through heather and bracken, anxiously checking your bare legs for ticks. You’ll lean into the hillside, fix your sights on me, think of the solidity of rock. It was summer down by the reservoirs, down in the lap of the Woodhead Pass, but by the time you reach me, I’ll be cloaked in mist and silence. Scottish weather. You’ll stand under a corner climb, uncertain where the route goes, how to start. There will be no one to nod a greeting to, just a pair of climbers from Hayfield on the far buttress; a man who seems poised forever on the same hard move. You’ll place your hands against me tentatively, lean against me as I lean back at you, taking your weight, feeling all the bones inside your body. On the way back down, you’ll lose the path again and stumble on a mink trap, its snarl a furled lip. Dragging your feet along the track, you’ll meet a gamekeeper who slows in his Land Rover, wants to know if you’ve touched anything, if you’ve interfered with his traps. You’ll look down at your hands as if they don’t belong to you.

  Him

  Asphyxia. He did not think he could spell it. He did not belong in the library with its tidy women behind desks, its serial numbers and grey trollies. But he felt like he was a proper researcher in here, not like in the house with its street noises and crap central heating. He had chosen the computer furthest from the reception, the one tucked away in a booth on its own. They probably thought he was looking at porn. He pushed his reading glasses higher up his nose. He didn’t wear them when he was supposed to and they made him feel clumsy. The screen kept going black. Energy preservation, no doubt. The efficient girl with braids on the front desk had asked him if he needed any help with the PCs and he felt ancient. She was attractive in an unobtrusive, tidy kind of way. Twenty years ago he could have asked for her number.

  In cases of death from traumatic asphyxia caused by crushing, the victim would lose consciousness within a matter of seconds from the crushing of the chest which cuts off the ability to breathe and would die within 5 minutes.

  He opened his black notebook, the one he’d bought from Smiths on Fargate this morning, running his hand over the leather cover. It was the first notebook he’d had since the force. He never even wrote shopping lists these days. He’d got a flashy pen, too, one of those rollerball ones. He clicked it to distract himself.

  Traumatic asphyxia. He wrote it down. It looked wrong, so he crossed it out and tore the page out.

  He started again.

  Hicks v. Wright (Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police).

  He stopped. He added the word RESEARCH in capitals, drew square brackets around it. You should always start with a title, that’s what they said in school, in English Literature. His English teacher was the only good teacher he ever had. He couldn’t think of her name, but he could see her face blink into life when she talked about Macbeth, holding up her hands and pretending they had blood on them. Out, damned spot. He stared at his writing for a minute, relishing the neatness of the ‘v’ – ‘v’ for versus – remembering how meticulous his notebook always used to be at work. He drew a line under it. The thick black mark reminded him of something. Another page. Other words. Underlining the parts that didn’t fit.

  He wrote asphyxia, neater this time. He dropped the pen. He could see another A4 sheet. His own handwriting. Crossed out and annotated. The careful word-processing. This is a personal and graphic account. He may wish to reconsider the statement … He must have sworn out loud. The braided girl at the desk looked over at him sharply, and he bent down to the floor to fetch his pen. His hands were shaking. He could do with a drink, but it was only quarter past ten. Start again. If he couldn’t write, he could read.

  Unless the law were to distinguish between death within seconds of injury and unconsciousness within seconds of injury followed by death within minutes … these findings, as Hidden. J himself said ‘with regret’ made it impossible for him to award any damages.

  Death within seconds and death within minutes. He wondered how he could read the words death and unconsciousness so many times and almost feel nothing. And yet a scarf could set him off, a clutch of flowers in cellophane, a view of a stadium on the news. It was as if the words on a screen didn’t mean the things they were supposed to. They were bubble-wrapped.

  It is perfectly clear that fear by itself, of whatever degree, is a normal human emotion for which no damages can be awarded.

  He found that phrase unusual. Damages can be awarded. Damage was something that happened to you, not something you got. But in the eyes of the law, damage was money. Damage was something to be proved. He wrote down fear is a normal human emotion. He closed that window, opened the next case. This one was about psychiatric injuries and how you define them. He looked back and noticed there was a man asleep in the wooden chair behind him, next to the ‘Life & Leisure’ shelf, and he’d started to snore. He had a white beard flecked with ginger and a small bottle of vodka sticking out of his anorak pocket. Beside him, one of those square shopping bags on wheels. The girl behind the desk went on with her paperwork.

  Watching the man’s chest rise and judder back down made him shiver. Some nights, he fell asleep in The Byron, after last orders. They never said as much when he came to, but he knew he did it. It was Absolution that did him in. He was all right on Moonshine, but the stronger beers made him drowsy. He hoped he never slept long, hoped his mouth never lolled open like this man’s.

  He scanned the screen. The law expects reasonable fortitude and robustness of its citizens and will not impose liability for the exceptional frailty of certain individuals.

  He wrote exceptional frailty and finished it with a question mark.

  This is not to be confused with the ‘eggshell skull’ situation, where as a result of breach of duty the damage inflicted proves to be more serious than expected.

  The man in the chair almost choked on his own snore. He was spread-eagled right next to a display of books on Mindfulness, the white covers printed with pictures of brunettes doing yoga poses or standing next to waterfalls.

  The law cannot compensate for all emotional suffering even if it is acute and truly debilitating.

  Above this, there was a numbered list, a set of criteria for establishing whether psychiatric injuries have been sustained. He decided not to look at it. He wanted to make his own list instead. He wrote DAMAGE TO THE MIND in large letters and scribbled the numbers 1 to 5 underneath. Then he started to fill them in:

  Seeing things you never asked to see.

  Not being able to forget.

  Loss of livelihood.

  Loss of mental faculties.

  He realised he did not have a fifth idea. He went back to number 3 and wrote i.e. job, sense of pride etc. Then he looked at the real list. It was nothing like his – it mentioned plaintiffs and victims and immediate aftermath. When he read these court cases, he couldn’t picture anything. Not even the face of the lawyer who said the words. But he liked that, liked to be able to switch his imagination off for once. Skimming the screen again, he wrote down eggshell skull. He wondered if he had an eggshell skull. It felt like it was more than that. He felt as if he was made of cement.

  After that, he shut the computer down and shouldered his bag and walked through the maze of shelves for a while, clutching his new notebook and thinking about the word asphyxia and how it almost crushed you just to say it. He thought about climbing accidents in the news, how an avalanche presses down on the hill, how the snow presses down on the climber’s chest. Then he just tried to picture the snow without thinking about things underneath it. A white sheet. The first page in the notebook h
e’d bought when he first picked it up in the shop this morning, imagining all the things he could do with it.

  Wharncliffe

  I know you, old man. I know your Lowe Alpine rucksack with the corners frayed, your walk more cautious than it was ten years ago. I know your damaged skin and your leathery palms, the silver afterthought of your hair, your surprisingly wide shoulders and your surprisingly narrow waist, legs skinnier than they should be. Strangers might put you in your early fifties, but I remember how long you’ve been coming here. I know you the way I know the curve of the bridge that nobody walks across, buried under green leaves. You’re a black dot among the clustered trees, then you’re a slip between the angular, black rocks. I smell of the bypass and the garage up-wind, the slight musk of wet leaves and wild garlic, but you smell of coffee and new sweat. An hour ago, you were a premonition – the way dogs can sense a car approaching before it turns into the road. I see you until I barely notice you, part of me, like the hunched, miserly overhangs and lost paths, the woodland tunnels, the open land where I’m trodden lightly by sheep, grazed and gently tended. Every night this week I’ve been washed clean, the ferns sagging with water, the rocks a private bowl for mist and dampness, soaked then dried too fast by the wind. When I feel a man grip down on me and start to climb, unroped, I’m patient and calm. The birds that scatter from the wires and pylons and clatter skywards are not a sign of fear.

  Leigh

  That girl, Caron. She was back, gliding round the climbing shop, last customer of the day. Pete had been jangling his keys for a good five minutes now, clearing his throat theatrically. He wanted to get gone, off to his old five-a-side reunion. It was Derby night, the pubs off Bramall Lane would already be sweating out United fans. But Caron was standing in front of each display shoe in turn, stroking the uppers or picking them up and holding them. She reached to get one from the highest shelf, then stared at it as if she’d picked a rare apple.

  Leigh shot him a pitying look. ‘I could lock up if you want to get off?’

  He was turning a screwgate round and round in his hands.

  ‘Traffic on Eccy Road … don’t want to get stuck in all that.’

  ‘Go on then, piss off.’

  ‘Do you remember the code? For the alarm.’

  ‘Yes. Get out of here.’

  He scooped up his bag from the corner behind the counter. ‘Don’t forget to do the lights.’

  ‘Piss off before I change my mind.’

  ‘I’m already gone!’

  ‘Oh, Pete?’

  ‘What?’

  He was half in and out of the doorway.

  ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.’

  His two raised fingers were the last thing to disappear. He’d be in town in twenty minutes, wiping the sweat from his brow, flanked by men at the bar who wouldn’t look directly at each other, then he’d carry his pint back to the table and sit with other men who didn’t know what to say. They’d meet twice a year out of a sense of duty. None of them ever shared any news. What’s new with you, lad? Oh, you know – keeping on. There’d been deaths, grandchildren and separations, lawyers and minor heart operations, but none of it was spoken of. If they saw each other in the supermarket or in town on Saturday in the intervening months, they’d nod and wave cheerfully.

  Caron was facing away from the counter and Leigh could see the slim tattoo on the nape of her neck, red hair cut close. She moved as if she knew people were always watching her. Leigh slipped out from behind the till.

  ‘Sorry to be a pain, but we need to shut up shop.’

  Caron just carried on, pressing the tip of a shoe against the wall to test its grip. It was only this close that Leigh could see the silver of her small, in-ear headphones. She wondered what she was blasting through them. Electronica, probably. Or something transcendental. Whale song. Leigh always liked to imagine that those tapes were really made by a load of blokes in a basement somewhere in Barnsley, honking and wailing into a borrowed microphone, someone splashing a bath out back for effect.

  Leigh wanted to touch her, but she didn’t know how. She just reached out her hand, hesitated, let it fall lightly on Caron’s shoulder.

  ‘Sorry,’ Leigh backed away. ‘Didn’t mean to startle you.’

  ‘No, I was miles away.’

  With one headphone trailing down her top, Leigh could hear the bassline of an Arctic Monkeys’ track. She was obscurely relieved.

  ‘We’re closing now.’

  ‘I was trying to get some more shoes, left mine at the wall yesterday.’ Caron handed the shoe to her, the movement only slightly too lavish. ‘Some arsehole will have made off with them by now.’

  ‘Never know. One of your mates might have them.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Her laugh was like a sneeze.

  ‘We must climb with the same utter bastards.’

  ‘Haven’t I seen you out with Steve?’

  ‘Depends which Steve you mean. I know an embarrassment of Steves.’

  ‘Four foot something. Goatee.’

  ‘Big Steve. Guilty as charged. He used to work here. Left to train dogs in Stoney Middleton. That’s why he’s only got half an ear. He – ’ She tailed off, ashamed of her own sudden earnestness.

  Caron looked at her sideways. ‘I’m sure we have lots of people in common.’

  There was a short silence that felt long. Caron held out her hand. ‘Nice meeting you, Leigh.’

  Caron’s handshake was firm. Leigh didn’t know when to let go. ‘How do you know my name?’

  She was already walking away. ‘I said we had people in common.’

  It was turning dark. A reminder that the days of climbing after work were on their way out, and the evenings spent in the cottage, nursing a whisky and an imaginary cat were on their way in. Practising how she’d answer the phone if Tom called.

  ‘We drink in The Sheaf on Tuesdays. If you ever want to compare Steves.’

  Caron was out, without waiting for an answer. Leigh beat the shoe absently against the palm of her hand a couple of times. Then she put it back on the shelf, scooped her bag from behind the counter and, before setting the alarm, switched the light off and stood in the shop in the dark for a moment, liking how the place looked.

  * * *

  Leigh went back to the house with no storage cupboards, her naked house with everything on display. Five minutes from shop door to front door. Back to the Peak Advertiser wedged in the letterbox and the sound of the old woman next door running a loud bath. She was restless, so she made herself climax, jeans still on, and then fell asleep on top of the covers with her flies undone, and dreamt badly. A woman like Caron, soloing on Stanage. Or someone she thought was Caron, seen from a grey distance, her car in a lay-by with the engine ticking over. Then the focus shifting, the dream tightening, a close-up without permission. Not Caron’s face at all. The hair too light, the lines around the eyes and forehead revealing someone older. How carefully she reached the top and turned round, incredulous at how she’d got there. Leigh woke, shook the dream away and sank back into a fitful sleep.

  ‘I want you to watch me,’ dream-Caron said, her face wobbly as if she was underwater.

  Leigh felt her whole body stir – in the dream, Caron was naked and close. She straddled Leigh, made her keep her hands locked behind her while she touched herself, slow, holding her stare. Then neither of them was naked any more and she was out on Froggatt in summer, under an impossibly pink sky, and Caron was above the first break of Three Pebble Slab, stepping gently. Leigh was below, watching the whole performance. And it was a performance: every time Caron placed her palm against the rock or moved her feet up, it was exaggerated. Slow motion. Big. Leigh watched until her neck ached. And as Caron went for the last moves, she cried out – a single, shrill cry – and Leigh saw that it wasn’t rock she was climbing after all but the smooth, untouchable face of a mirror. Her hands slipped off. The glass let her go. And as she fell, Leigh realised that when she said Watch me she had meant Guard me, spot
me, hold your hands out to catch me. She meant Break my fall.

  Leigh woke up, sweating, on the wrong side of the bed. She stared up at her painting of Stanage, its beige and grey lines. The millstones watched her with cool, unblinking eyes.

  Stanage

  I’m strewn with beads, cast-offs from a giant, stone bracelet, dropped and forgotten in the heather. In the right light, I’m decorative and the tourists like to pose beside me – sometimes couples perch on the stones, one either side, grinning for the camera. Sometimes teenagers come out from Sheffield and Manchester and leave crumpled cans of Strongbow in the empty centres, scrawl on them with spray paint and make them into smiley faces. I stay silent in the face of this indignity, because I know what I was, how my body was turned. I remember being hefted and lifted when the valley was a hub. I cannot forget my usefulness. When the work ran out, they left me here, stones angled on the hillside, sheltered by bracken. Over the centuries, foxes nosed me, sheep shat on me, dogs cocked their legs, and I kept motionless while the patient weather did its work, flattening parts and sharpening others. I hardly recognise myself. If a climber were to fall and roll down the bank, I might catch and hold, startle back to life, as if I’ve only been sleeping all this time, waiting for someone to touch me with their weight.

  Alexa

  ‘We need to talk about Page Hall,’ said Inspector Apsley.

  It was an emergency meeting. Or an everyday meeting, Alexa couldn’t remember. She was watching the orange and gold tree outside, bending backwards and forwards in the wind, trying to break itself. Inside the room, Inspector Apsley had his hands steepled on the Formica table. He was a brisk man with gelled black hair, combed over in a kind of quiff. Alexa saw him in Fagan’s one night, dressed in a red checked shirt and skinny braces. He looked as if he’d walked straight out of 1950s America. It was hard to imagine the man at the table ever taking off his uniform and holding a pint of Abbeydale’s Deception.