The Students of Barrenmoor Ridge Read online

  A bitter wind stung his face the moment he stepped from the carriage, by which time it was too dark to see the thickening skies. Even if he had, he wouldn’t have taken any notice. They had arrived, Casper was with him and better still, was in good humour, as keen as Liam to start their adventure. They were free from parents and college, responsibility and care, and having confirmed their directions at the ticket office, hoisted their backpacks and set off into the gloom.

  ‘Did you hear any of that?’ A thick-set lout asked his companion as he pulled his rucksack from the seat.

  ‘Not only heard it,’ his friend smirked. ‘Saw the way the blond one kept eyeing up the other.’

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘I do. What d’you think?’

  ‘Definitely,’ Mark said. ‘Reminded me of that oik, Taylor, and his bum-buddy up Fellborough way.’

  ‘You still owe them a kicking, don’t you?’

  Mark swung his rucksack onto his back, catching a woman a glancing blow, and ignoring her protests, trudged along the aisle.

  ‘Hamilton and Taylor, yeah,’ Mark said, calling back over his shoulder. ‘Trouble is, you can’t get near them two queers these days. Got the village in their pockets, and I don’t want to piss off the clients, get me?’

  ‘So take it out on someone else,’ the second lout laughed. ‘Fucking queers are all the same, what does it matter? Anyhow, you can sell stuff to anyone.’

  Mark rounded on him, dragged him nose to nose and hissed into his face. ‘Keep your fucking mouth shut, Benny. Someone’s going to hear and grass us up.’

  Mark pushed Benny from the door and sent him stumbling to the platform. He had just righted himself when his friend’s face was in his own again.

  ‘I’ve got a ton of shit on my back, dick-brain,’ Mark spat. ‘We don’t need no attention.’

  ‘Sorry. Weren’t thinking.’

  ‘You don’t have the capability.’ Mark threw him away. ‘Now shut the fuck up and let me think. We got to teach these fucking queers a lesson. Two’s enough in the village, don’t want the rest thinking they can swan in and perv up the kids.’

  ‘What you got in mind?’ Benny called, following at a safe distance.

  ‘I just said, shut up and let me think.’

  ‘They’re staying at the hostel,’ Benny persisted, trying to be helpful. ‘We could get there, do an ambush, sort them out…’

  He was going to suggest several other ways they could make the couple’s camping trip a nightmare when a heavy hand stung his face and sent him swirling.

  ‘Keep your voice down, and find a fucking taxi,’ Mark growled. ‘I’ll think of something.’

  Two

  The walk to Inglestone started on lit paths, passing landmarks Liam remembered from the map; a pub, a church and then a straight line out from the stone houses and into the countryside where streetlamps became fewer as the houses dropped away. So did the traffic until there was nothing to see apart from the torch beam on the tarmac road and the verge they stepped onto when a car approached. Vehicles coming from behind were easy to hear and left behind the tang of exhaust fumes that, once cleared, somehow made the air more brittle. When it was safe, they walked side by side in the road, the rustle of jackets and the regular tread of their boots masking any sounds that might have come from the hedgerows, behind which lay patches of black, fields resting silently in the night.

  ‘Straight on,’ Liam said when they came to a deserted junction and crossed it with no need to listen for traffic.

  Further on, they bore right and headed into the blacker shadows of a wood where the cold stung their faces as the temperature dropped, and the torch shone more powerfully.

  ‘You’re quiet,’ Casper said when the trees gave way, and the seemingly endless road wound through desolate countryside.

  ‘Just listening to the silence,’ Liam said. ‘Being out here makes you feel so small, don’t you think?’

  ‘Makes me feel hungry.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re okay being here, Cass?’

  ‘A bit late if I’m not.’

  It wasn’t quite a complaint, but it wasn’t said with the same enthusiasm Liam had heard at the start of the walk. Deciding not to push the matter, he let his mind wander.

  Casper had given up his half term to come away with Liam, and when the idea was first suggested, had been all for it. Now that the realisation they were away from home and on their own had started to penetrate, perhaps he was regretting his decision. When he thought about it, Liam wondered if didn’t know Casper as well as he imagined. They spent time together in the music room, on Wednesday afternoons and whenever they were out of college. They were only separated by the pressure of A-Levels, piles of homework and their instrument lessons, but after all that, there was little time left for hanging out. When they could, they planned time together at weekends and spent evenings in each other’s houses playing duets or watching films. They were known as a pair like the infamous Nathan and Jack, but those two each had a girlfriend and hunted in a pack, double-dated and had a stream of hangers-on. Liam and Casper were bonded by something beyond their interest in climbing and music, and it was simply friendship. They accepted each other without question from the time they first met and treated each other as equals without any of that ‘cleverer than you’ or ‘tougher than you’ machismo that emanated from the two Steves, another infamous pair.

  Perhaps it was their differences that glued them together like a two-part epoxy resin. Separately, they were pointless, but once mixed, they formed a bond that was virtually impossible to break. Liam was a Dover boy, a Man of Kent, born and brought up in the county. Casper was an immigrant and treated as such by the more ignorant kids at the school even though his parents brought him to England when he was less than two years old. Where Liam was pale, turned pink beneath the sun and did all he could to stay out of it, Casper tanned to deep brown as soon as there was a break in the cloud. Liam only spoke English with a polite accent that had been drummed into him at prep school, whereas Casper was bilingual and could roll his Rs while spouting sentences in fluent Greek that sounded like one long word. He was also taller, fussed about his appearance, attended the Orthodox church in Folkestone, and celebrated St George’s Day as if it was his birthday, while Liam declared proudly that he was a humanist, even though he wasn’t totally sure what it meant.

  The one thing that they shared since their first meeting, however, was an understanding that despite the differences, they accepted and liked each other in a quiet, understated way.

  Currently, they were sharing silence, and it wasn’t until the lights of Inglestone came into view that the conversation restarted.

  ‘Nearly there,’ Liam said, hoping the news would encourage the aching from his feet and brighten Casper’s mood. ‘Through the village towards the hills.’

  ‘I was wondering when we’d find hills,’ Casper said. ‘Softer underfoot.’

  ‘Your legs aching too?’

  ‘A bit, but it’s all part of the great adventure.’

  ‘Nice to hear you call it that.’ Liam detected a spark of good humour behind the words.

  ‘Ah, I’m alright, Lee,’ Casper said. ‘Sorry to be dull. I’ve got something on my mind.’

  ‘Yeah? Nothing bad, I hope?’

  ‘Don’t think so.’

  They crossed a deserted main road.

  ‘Don’t think so?’

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing. Something I’ve left behind.’ Casper turned off the torch and put it away. Street lighting lit the path ahead and picked out the turning into the village’s main street.

  ‘You didn’t forget your sleeping bag, did you?’

  Casper laughed a short, deep-throated chuckle. ‘No, mate. Why, were you hoping we’d have to share?’

  Liam was sud
denly a couple of degrees colder. What did he mean by that? Was he fishing for an ulterior motive?

  Casper was good looking, fit, and by nature, tactile as many Greeks were, but Liam had never allowed the physical to get in the way of their friendship. As far as he knew, he hadn’t betrayed himself and given any signals that he might be interested in that way. He’d never thought of Casper sexually, not for long at any rate. Cass simply wasn’t like that and would be upset if he thought Liam liked him for anything more than his personality, complex though it could be. Most of the girls at school cooed and batted eyelids at Casper, and saw him as a classic tall, dark and handsome trophy to be won and bedded. Liam just liked him as a mate. End of.

  ‘We wouldn’t both fit in mine anyway,’ Liam said, and immediately wondered why he’d said “anyway” as if he had given the idea some thought. He covered it by asking, ‘What have you forgotten?’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten anything,’ Casper said. ‘It’s what I am trying to forget.’

  ‘You’re not making sense.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. Hey! There’s a pub. Have we got time to stop?’

  ‘Better not. Let’s get checked in, dump our stuff and then come out.’ Liam trembled with sudden nervousness at the double meaning. ‘Come out to eat, I mean.’

  ‘Whatever you say, Mozart. You’re the boss.’

  ‘Er, no, Cass. We’re a partnership. This isn’t my trip, it’s ours.’

  ‘Yeah, but you’re the one in charge. Where you go, I follow.’

  ‘You’re walking right beside me.’

  ‘Pedantic malaka.’ Casper laughed. Throwing an arm around Liam’s shoulder to show the insulting word was a jest, he dragged him closer, making Liam stumble. ‘Jesus! I swear I have no toes. How are we going to do out on the hills?’

  ‘Like you said, don’t worry about it,’ Liam replied, recovering from the treasured display of affection. ‘We’ve had the training, we’ve got the equipment, we’re not going far from anywhere, and…’

  ‘I was joking, mate.’ Casper gave his short, croaky laugh again. ‘I trust you.’

  ‘Enough to tell me what’s on your mind?’

  ‘Of course, but not now.’

  They crossed another empty road and passed shops aglow with yellow lights, their doors closed.

  ‘Weird place,’ Casper said. ‘Too quiet, but that looks hopeful.’

  Across the street, a café sign hung above a bowed window. The café was closed, but Casper was referring to the name.

  ‘The Pot Hole,’ Liam read. ‘I doubt they mean what you mean.’

  ‘Shame.’

  Liam said nothing. Like most of their year, they smoked dope when they could get it, which wasn’t very often, but they weren’t stoners in the American teen-movie sense of the word. One of Liam’s outer circle of friends, an older lad with the unlikely name of Sandy Brassington-Shaw, had a sister who worked on the cross-channel ferries out of Dover and was, to those in the know, a good source of marijuana, but only in return for a good amount of payment. Although Liam’s father was well paid, he wasn’t the kind of man who would knowingly dole out cash for soft drugs. He was, however, generous enough to donate a fair sum to Liam’s eighteenth birthday, money which Liam had used for the train tickets, some equipment and supplies, but nothing else. It was a shame, Casper might need some dope to calm his horror when Liam exploded his bombshell. It would have also numbed Liam’s nerves at the time the confession was to be made.

  ‘Finally!’ Casper said, coming to a halt at a turning. ‘And, there’s a light on. Lead on Macduff.’

  ‘Lay on,’ Liam corrected.

  ‘Pedant. Race you.’

  Casper’s mood had lifted completely, and whatever dark thought was on his mind vanished as he broke away and sprinted towards the welcoming lights of the hostel. Liam’s apprehension cleared at the same time, and although he stood no chance of beating Casper in a footrace, he gave chase.

  Arriving at a forbidding, stone farmhouse, they found the hostel open, warm and fully booked by a school trip.

  ‘You should have phoned,’ the superintendent said. ‘We’ve got every bunk taken bar the outhouse, and that ain’t prepared. You might get a room wi’ Sandra down Lakestone Street, but they’ve been away while a week now, and I’m not sure as they’re back.’

  Her accent was local and strong, and it took Liam a moment to filter through the words and extract the meaning.

  ‘We have a tent,’ he offered. ‘Could we pitch that somewhere?’

  The woman gave them a look up and down that was partly sympathy, but mainly doubt. ‘Aye, you could do that, chuck, but…’ She wagged a chubby finger as a signal to wait and backed into the room behind the counter.

  ‘Eeh, be like Last of the Summer Wine, be it not, bah, ecky thump?’ Casper whispered, imitating her accent and taking the piss.

  Liam gave him a sharp elbow, but turned from the counter to cover his laugh in case the woman saw. The relief of reaching a decent shelter quickly waned as the thumping bass of pop music vibrated from above. The smell of boiled cabbage hung in the air, and although it woke the hunger in his growling stomach, it reminded him of school dinners.

  ‘I should have rung,’ he said. ‘Sorry about that.’ He wasn’t too bothered. He had enough cash for a B&B if needed, but as the whole idea was to camp, putting up the tent in the grounds would do just as well.

  The superintendent returned, and surprisingly, brought bedding.

  ‘Right, lads,’ she said, placing it on the counter. ‘You can have the outhouse, but you’ll have to make it up yoursen. It’s not been heated a while yet, so you’ll need these on top whatever else you got. Can let you have it at five a night each, but I can’t let you use kitchen ’cos of the school party, not that you’d want to start your day with that lot. Now, will that do you?’

  ‘That will do fine, thanks,’ Liam said, nodding to Casper who agreed.

  They completed a form, accepted a key, and were told where to find the outhouse.

  ‘It’s a chalet,’ the woman explained. ‘You’ll be reet. Checkout while ten in morning, leave it clean. You’ll be wanting a good start if you’re hiking, and I’ll point you towards a decent café come morning. Now then…’ She gave them another up and down, this time pausing to examine their faces and looking sceptically from one to the other. ‘They’re single beds, and I won’t take kindly if you don’t use them both. I think you get me drift.’

  At first, Liam didn’t, but when her meaning sunk in, he blushed. By that time, Casper had already cottoned on and said, ‘Nothing to worry about there.’

  ‘Out back, love. It’s got facilities. No smoking. Key back by ten.’

  A telephone call interrupted the list of commands, and she left them with a nod and a finger pointing towards the rear of the building.

  ‘Ve vill not move das furniture and ve vill not enjoy,’ Casper hissed in a faux German accent Liam found humorously distasteful.

  Another elbowing shut him up, but they were both giggling as they left the warmth of the main house and headed across the dew-soaked grass to what looked like a garden shed.

  ‘Chalet, my arse,’ Liam laughed.

  It wasn’t as bad as it looked, although it did smell of creosote and the beds were damp.

  ‘I reckon we make up the bottom bunks with our sleeping bags then go out and get something to eat.’

  ‘And we use separate beds,’ Casper said. ‘Whatever that was supposed to suggest.’

  Liam said nothing. Practically speaking, body heat was the best way of staying warm, and he would have no aversion to snuggling in next to Casper whose larger frame would offer more warmth, but once he’d found the switch for the small, overhead bar-heater, and the temperature began to rise, there was no need to consider such an awkward arrang
ement.

  They had laid out their bags and thrown the blankets on top when the heater clicked off, and they realised it was on a meter.

  ‘Whatever,’ Liam said. ‘I’m starving.’

  Twenty minutes later they stumbled into the public bar of a place called The Lonsdale Arms which was still serving food. Liam was surprised to see it was nearing eight thirty. They’d left the station after five, and the walk had taken longer than he thought. It didn’t matter. They had four days of freedom on the hillsides before their train home, and his plan to see two of the highest peaks was a flexible one. As long as he saw the Ribblehead Viaduct.

  ‘Yes?’

  The girl behind the bar wasn’t much older than Liam, but spoke as if she had the weight of the world on her narrow shoulders, and when the boys ordered two pints of local beer, she sighed as if making a sale was a chore. When they ordered fish and chips from the menu, Liam expected her to break down under the strain of it all, but she wrote the order on a pad, took the money and threw it into the till as if the machine had insulted her. When she announced she would bring it over, she was obviously doing them the greatest favour in the world.

  ‘Like I said, weird place,’ Casper whispered as they sat opposite each other on bench seats at a table that had not been cleared.

  Liam tidied the glasses and plates of leftovers to one end and mopped a spill with a tissue.

  ‘Nice enough place,’ he said, glancing around. ‘Real fire. Very country.’

  ‘At least we’re here.’ Casper lifted his beer. ‘Cheers, mate.’

  Liam clinked glasses. ‘Cheers, and once again, thanks for coming.’

  Casper winked. It was a gesture that took Liam by surprise as he’d never noticed him do it before.

  ‘It’s good to be away from everything and everyone,’ Liam said, and was about to probe further into what Casper had come away to forget when Casper interrupted.