‘Do we dare go straight in?’ asked Margo.
‘We’re clean and dry and we have nothing to fear but fear itself – and Mrs Marsh,’ said Heather. She took her backpack and headed firmly for the front door. It opened before she got to it and Mrs Marsh, all five foot two inches of her below a frizzy halo of white hair, came out, preceded by her bosom, with a broad smile of welcome on her face.
‘Miss Weston, welcome back, and Miss Cowley. How very nice to see you again. Your rooms are all ready.’ Heather didn’t miss the surreptitious glance she shot at their feet. ‘And that must be Mr Kennedy. Have you all come together?’
‘No,’ said Heather, looking round. The man in the flying jacket was a few yards away putting the hood up on his sports car. He fastened the clips, took off his sun glasses and smiled at all of them. It was a nice smile, Heather thought to herself, impish perhaps. It made her think that if he had sisters they would certainly be beautiful. He took a bag out of the boot and strolled over.
‘Hello,’ he said to Mrs Marsh, ‘I’m Johnny Kennedy. I booked a room for tonight?’
‘You did indeed, and this is Miss Weston and Miss Cowley. Do come in and I’ll show you to your rooms.’ She looked somewhat more obviously at his feet but they passed the test because she led the way to the front door. They reached the door almost together and the man stood aside and bowed Heather and Margo through. How old fashioned, Heather thought. Inside it was just as she remembered, an over-upholstered fluffy fantasy, frills and cushions everywhere and the cats… not real cats of course, they would rapidly have disrupted the fragile equilibrium of Mrs Marsh’s little heaven. These were porcelain, plaster, wood, stone, plastic, anything that could be carved into a cat shape and painted. They were in the form of teapots, biscuit boxes, pin cushions, on every flat surface, on special shelf units and display cabinets, on the floor as doorstops – everywhere you looked.
Heather saw the expression on the man’s face for just a second as he took it in. This was clearly someone who would have been much more at ease staying in the local pub. He caught her looking at him and got his expression back under control.
‘I’ve put you two in the same rooms as last time, Tabitha for you Miss Weston and Duchess for Miss Cowley.’ She handed them keys and then turned to the man.
‘It’s Macavity for you, Mr Kennedy. I hope you don’t mind being up another flight. It’s a very cosy room with a dormer.’
‘That’s no problem, Mrs Marsh,’ he said. ‘Tell me, will it be all right to leave the car out there until Sunday? I’m walking, you see.’
‘I’ve three more coming tomorrow but if you move it right over by the hedge there should be space. That’s what Miss Weston and Miss Cowley are doing too. What time would you all like your breakfast?’
The man paused and looked questioningly at Heather for her to answer first.
‘Eight o’clock?’ she suggested and Margo nodded.
‘Could I have mine around seven thirty?’ he asked.
Heather and Margo had half an hour to shower, stretch and take temporary possession of their rooms by laying out a few of the markers of occupancy: tomorrow’s clothes, hairbrushes, books. After that they strolled together down through the village to the pub where they bought shandies at the bar and studied the menu on the blackboard. Margo caught Heather scanning the crowded room.
‘Looking for Mr Kennedy?’ she enquired mischievously.
Heather snorted. ‘Well, I suppose I was, if you must know. Only because I can’t see him spending an evening at Mrs Marsh’s.’
‘He looked so funny, didn’t he? Really out of place. Sort of the wrong size. I could see Mrs Marsh worrying in case he swept one of her precious cats to the floor.’
‘I know. I supposed he just picked it at random. It’s not the sort of place you expect to find beautiful single men. No sign of a woolly hat or an anorak either. He just doesn’t seem the type to be out for a weekend by himself.’
‘OK, let’s guess,’ suggested Margo. ‘I think he’s a male model who’s on the rebound from discovering his partner has run off with a top politician.’
‘What sex is the partner?’
‘What party is the politician?’
‘No, anyway I think you’re wrong. I think he’s a top Olympic bob-sleigh rider who crashed terribly badly last time out and now he’s come to the hills to wrestle with his overwhelming fear of downhill slopes.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Margo, ‘and Mrs Marsh has gone and put him in the top room. Do you think we’d better ask her to move him in with one of us in case he has nightmares?
‘He’s all yours if you want him,’ said Heather. ‘You’re right, though, he’s very good looking, but he’s still not my type.’
‘Don’t be cruel. He’s the sort who would leap up and offer me his chair because I’m old enough to be his mother’s younger sister.’
They didn’t see him in the morning. Mrs Marsh said he’d gone off straight after his breakfast but he’d remembered to park his car very neatly out of the way first and wasn’t he a nice young man? They swung up the lane northwards out of the village, the Pennines beckoning through clear refreshing air that was full of birdsong. The footpath branched right beside a stream into woodland. Malham Cove came into sudden view through the trees, a curved rampart of limestone one hundred yards high, the skeleton below the long departed foaming skin of a giant waterfall.
They climbed up and around the edge of the cliff and paused at the top, standing on the petrified river bed, eroded into blocks with waving edges. Deep in the damp cracks between the blocks, green ferns softened the darkness. They gazed past the wooded valley at their feet to the wide stretch of open ground to the south. Margo looked round and pointed suddenly. Away to their left on the shoulder of the hill, a far-off figure sat in the sunlight.
‘There’s your bob-sleigh champion,’ she said, ‘facing up to his fear.’
‘He’s off course if he’s trying to follow the Way,’ Heather observed, studying him in the distance. ‘Do you think he knows?’
‘I think he’s old enough to look after himself,’ said Margo, and they set off again.
They were hot and thirsty by the time they came to the great still lake at Malham Tarn and they went down to the water’s edge to drink from their bottles and splash the peaty lake water on their faces.
‘I could live somewhere like this,’ said Heather, ‘find me a farmer or something and stop worrying about the world.’
‘You wouldn’t though, would you?’ said Margo calmly. ‘You couldn’t take your eye off it all, not with what you know. That’s the trouble. It’s too late for you.’
‘Do you wish you hadn’t started?’
She pulled off her boots and socks and splashed her feet in the water. ‘What’s the point of wishing? I suppose everyone starts off trusting the State. Then maybe a few scandals crop up or they hear a few things that make them sit up and think. Most people go on thinking: well, OK, maybe the State sometimes cocks it up, maybe it has to do something a bit murky every now and then, but its heart’s in the right place. I mean, the State is us, right? It’s only when you realize the state isn’t us, that somehow, somewhere along the way our great-grandfathers passed over control of all the important things to a bunch of faceless, nameless custodians who think we can’t be trusted with them. That’s when you just have to get stuck in and say you’re not going to take it.’