'It is not,' said the old lady. 'And there is a ten-shilling fine for those that do.'
Cicely walked directly out, and the wife followed her.
A minute after, I came out myself, and the sun had suddenly swung away. Well, it was not completely gone. There were floating shadows and patches of light in the trees; then would come a surge of cool wind and rattling leaves. I saw the wife walking through some yellow flowers with her skirt lifted almost to the knee.
'Where's Cicely?' I asked her.
'I don't know. I've looked all about. The way she was spoken to, and it's the second time today -' And here she raised her voice so that it might carry to where we'd just been: 'If that woman was not standing there everyone would be able to walk around the hut properly. Has anybody thought of that?' She was now looking down at the ground. 'All the flowers are labelled with little tickets,' she said, 'it's like a shop.'
'I thought you liked shops,' I said.
'I would rather find out about the flowers by myself.'
'How?'
'I would save up for a book which had pictures and explanations, and I would match those up with the ones I see growing.'
'You'd be walking about all day,' I said.
'I might very well be.'She took off her hat, and, keeping it in her teeth, changed her hair at the back. She asked me if I would pass her the shawl that was in the basket. She pulled it around herself and put both her arms around my waist.
'I'm froz,' she said, practising her Yorkshire again.
Rain came with the next gust of wind, and you could hear the cries from the trees all around as picnics were brought to an end. I picked up the basket and we walked up, away from the stream towards the dining room in the old mill. When we got there, we saw a big sign on the wall saying 'teas and dances', and we knew Cicely would be inside.
She was eating chocolate and drinking tea at one of what seemed like hundreds of tables. Even so, the old mill looked empty. They hadn't put as much back in as they had taken out.
When Cicely saw us, she shouted: 'Oh do come on, or else I shall finish all this chocolate cake!'
'She seems quite herself again,' said the wife.
'The dancing starts shortly,' said Cicely when we reached the table. 'And there's a programme.'
'Do they run to a waltz?' asked the wife.
She passed over a piece of paper. The wife read it and, sitting down, said to Cicely: 'The two of us shall have a waltz, dear.'
The wife was a good dancer.
In short order, the floor was full of people waiting for someone to walk over to the piano. I looked up at the roof. Brackets that had held machinery were still stuck out from the tops of the walls like gibbets, and there were flowers jammed in at odd places. When I looked down again there was a man at the piano.
The waltz began, and, as Cicely and the wife walked hand in hand to the dance floor, I decided to take a turn outside. It was raining more heavily, but the sun was out once again. Two minutes later, I was walking in the woods in the rain and the sun, when I heard a crashing noise that shouldn't have been made by any picnicker. I stood still, and the noise was followed by a crack and a shout.
Down below, the stream was racing on as before. I heard another cry. Walking smartly towards the sound, I struck a rock that had been broken in two by a tree that had been growing up through the middle but was now dead, and itself broken, and, beyond these, making up the complete set, was a broken man.
I knew him, even without his gold coat: it was Martin Lowther, the ticket inspector. He lived in Hebden Bridge. His head was half beard, half blood. He was in shirtsleeves, with cuffs undone and no gold on his clothes to protect him. Without his coat he looked like a tortoise without its shell. And both his legs were in the wrong positions, as if they'd swapped sides. It was the impossible before my own eyes; the sun and the rain together; engine number 1418 half off the tracks.
As I crashed down through the bracken towards Lowther, I saw a long, thin man down at the beck. He was running hard along its banks, leaping the water as clear flat grass for running came up on either side: long feet, big strides, like Little Titch in flight, with legs as wings, and head going backwards and forwards like a pump. It looked as if he was racing the water itself. He was nobody that I knew.
Letting my coat slide off my shoulders, I tumbled down the little mountain and fell in behind him.
The long fellow scarpered up a bank and struck the valley road, Lees Road. But as I went up the bank to follow, a thorn scraped through my bandage and touched my burn. I stopped for a moment to stare as the red line came alive with blood; then, smearing the bandage back round as best I could, I set off again.
There were not many on the road, just a few half-hearted stragglers: tardy sorts, and now they were all in my way. They'd seen one man running, now they saw another. They didn't connect us – at least no one called out any encouragement.
The trees seemed to be rolling in a light wind. This was blowing the rain away, and the sun was coming out with a violent force. It had got a taste for shining that summer, and was out to cause a sensation. I forced myself on like a human hammer, boot segs clattering on the stony road. I could not see the killer but when the road twisted in the right way, I'd see the oncoming crowds part and come together, as if someone was going through them at a lick. Ahead of me, shaking in my line of sight at the bottom of the valley, was Hebden again. A rainbow was over the top of the town, and beyond that was a second rainbow, fainter but bigger – for Mytholm- royd further along the valley.
I came into Hebden, and the sound of my boots changed to a ringing echo in the streets.
The place was full of happy excursionists: the skylarking, drink-taking sort who didn't fancy the hike up to the Crags. They roved between the pubs, or stood crowding pavements near the jug-and-bottle doors. I skidded into half a dozen streets about the main square, seeing nothing, and came to rest in front of the town chapel. But the sound of one desperate fellow's boots clattering continued. The runner, with his jerking head, was five hundred yards off, the only man on Burnley Road, and he was going hard for the right turn that'd take him over the canal and river, and into the railway station.
He was on the bridge as I came onto Burnley Road. As I hit the bridge, the railway station swallowed him up. I shot past the booking office and onto the down platform. The light changed, got brighter and darker all in a moment. Light rain was coming down all around the station, but I was under the canopy. I could see the rain but it was not real to me. I was far too hot for anything, and the platform did not seem to be quite level.
I turned and turned. There was a porter standing next to me on the down. A clerk was coming out of the General Room. There were four passengers on the down, more in the waiting room. All my thoughts were of the down. A train came in, blurring everything. Very short train, three rattlers on. The porter shouted 'Rochdale train!' The four on the platform looked at him and got on, as if they were obeying him. The engine began to blow off steam – bad driving – and as the steam turned to rain there was another noise from beyond and behind. I turned and saw the finger-pointing sign to the footbridge and the 'up'. In my mind the sign was saying, Hurry up to the up! There was another train in – already in and waiting on the up. I was over the bridge, and onto the platform and into the train.
A bloody rattler. No corridor. The last of the doors was slammed and I heard the tail end of the guard's shout of 'Manchester train!' As we moved out of the station and began shaking through fields, I threw off my waistcoat, but the sun soon found my compartment and ran alongside the train, roasting me all the same. I could not cool down in the compartment, which I had to myself. I sat on the seat, and a lot of dust came slowly up, sucking the breath from my lungs. There was no longer any possibility of any more rain ever. I was on the same train as the running killer, and we were going towards Manchester, the London of the North, the city where the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway had sprouted from.