The Students of Barrenmoor Ridge Read online

  It wasn’t until they skirted the outcrop and the climb once again became more like a stroll across moorland, that they stopped for more water, and the conversation restarted.

  Liam sat on a rock gazing down the mountainside. From that height, it looked like they had walked miles, though it was hard to judge exactly how far they had come. The ground rose and fell, the cottage and farm were lost in the folds of the hill, and in the distance, he could barely make out the village. The east face of Fellborough blocked the view to the west, and above it, the sky remained white and cloud-free, but the wind was sharper up here. Noting the time, he was surprised to find it was afternoon, and they had been walking for a good couple of hours. The king-sized breakfast no longer rested heavily on his stomach, but he wasn’t hungry.

  ‘What do you reckon?’ he asked as Casper came to sit beside him and share his bottle. ‘Get to the top and camp on this side, away from the wind? Eat later?’

  ‘Got the map?’

  Liam found it and fumbled with it through his gloves. The wind snapped it back and forth, but he fought hard and managed to fold it to the appropriate section. Casper leant closer, acting as a windbreak, and their jackets squeaked as their arms rubbed together, and Casper pressed his leg closer to Liam’s. The touch sent a thrill through his chest and brought back memories of Jason doing the same thing.

  They were sitting in the school hall waiting for their turn to get on stage and going over their lines. At the time, Liam had thought Jason had done it simply because they had to whisper so as not to disturb the others, but later, he realised it had been a signal, a too-subtle indication of what Jason was offering.

  It was doubtful Casper was so close for the same reason, and Liam concentrated on the map.

  ‘Looks like there’s a natural shelter,’ he said, pointing to a cluster of contour lines. ‘What do you think?’

  Casper, the scientist, was a decent map reader.

  ‘Hm,’ he grunted. ‘That’s an indent in the hill, a fold if you like. I’d say it was a result of tectonic activity and erosion caused by runoff from the summit. Best not be right in the channel in case it rains, but there…’ His finger moved an inch to one side. ‘That looks like a natural plateau. Small, but sheltered from the prevailing winds, above the potential water run and relatively flat. If we can get the pegs in the rock, I’d be happy to set up there, and we should do it within the next couple of hours before dusk.’

  ‘Blimey, Cass, a simple yes would have done.’

  ‘Okay, Mozart. Yes. Let’s see the view from the top, drop down again, set up camp and stay there tonight.’

  ‘Perfect. Want to eat yet?’

  Casper turned to look up at the summit towering a few hundred feet above.

  ‘Better wait until we’ve put up the tent,’ he said. ‘Can you hold on that long?’

  ‘Yeah. I’m not hungry.’

  They fell into silence, both taking in the wide vista to the east. There was nothing between them and the horizon apart from undulating fields of earthy green interspersed with chunks of grey, rocky outcrops. The sun was behind Fellborough, and the mountain cast its shadow over them, while beyond it in the light, the ground was a random patchwork of deep brown, reddish in places and barren. Across it, like a silver thread running through a crumpled quilt, a stream reflected the last of the sun’s rays. There was no warmth in the scene, and yet it was beautiful.

  ‘Can I ask you something now, Cass?’

  ‘Can’t stop you.’

  ‘Tell me to mind my own business,’ Liam said, aware that what he wanted to know was possibly not something Casper wanted to discuss. ‘Yesterday you mentioned coming away because you wanted to leave something behind. Or you wanted to get away from something?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘Oh, that,’ Casper said, pulling his hat over his ears as if he didn’t want to hear another probing question. ‘I’ll tell you all about it later. Promise. Now, though, we need to get on.’ He slipped from the rock, slung his rucksack onto his back, and waited while Liam did the same.

  ‘Fair enough,’ Liam conceded. ‘Ready for the final push?’

  Sweat trickled rather than clung, though his fingers stung, and his lips were dry. The straps of his rucksack dug beneath his shoulders, and the weight became heavier with every step. Watching for loose rocks and scree, Liam led the way through a field of boulders, all apparently washed down from above at some point in history and left scattered at random. It was easy enough to see where others had walked before, and now and then they passed cairns, small piles of stones left as markers along the route. One minute the wind would drop, and all they heard was the crunch of their boots on gravel and the rustle of clothing, but then they would leave the safety of shelter, and the wind caught them as if it had been waiting around the corner in ambush. It brought with it the smell of grass and cold, the same smell as when Liam’s dad brought the washing in from the clothesline on winter days, when the scent of washing powder had been blown from the material, leaving it smelling of outside.

  Time passed as they trudged a seemingly endless incline, but at least it was clear of debris. The air thinned as the wind speed increased, and Liam was wondering if they shouldn’t cut their losses and camp where they were when Casper’s voice brought his gaze from the ground.

  ‘Fucking hell.’

  As soon as he looked up, he understood the reason for the outburst.

  Their immediate path was an easy if tedious slope, but a couple of hundred yards further, the final summit rose sharply to block the view. Liam’s legs were aching, and his chest was now painful from the exertion.

  ‘I calculate that to be roughly sixty meters at an angle of fifty-five degrees,’ Casper said.

  ‘You sound impressed.’

  ‘I’ll be more impressed if we get up it.’

  ‘I’m bloody stunned you even know what the angle is,’ Liam panted.

  ‘Well, the tangent is equal to the rise divided by the run. Therefore, the inverse tangent of the rise divided by the run gives us the angle.’

  Liam stared at him for a second before bursting into laughter only shattered by gasps as he reclaimed his breath. ‘Who needs bloody revision?’ he laughed. ‘Or did you make that up?’

  ‘Not at all.’ Casper squared his shoulders and poked a lock of stray hair back beneath his hat. ‘The formula is sound, but I’m buggered if I’m going to sit down here and work it out. I read it in a guidebook before we came away, though I might have remembered the angle incorrectly.’ Having glanced behind, he wriggled free of his backpack. ‘What do you say? Dump these here? It’ll make it easier to get to the top, and we can pick them up on the way back.’

  ‘Is that safe?’

  ‘I can’t see anyone else, can you? We could put them by that boulder, but we can’t stay long. Looking at the declination of the sun and the distance to the horizon, I’d say…’

  ‘Oh, shut the fuck up, Einstein.’ Liam shoved him away playfully, and they both laughed their way to the boulder, happy to be free of the weighty backpacks.

  The climb to the top was exhausting, but more so for Liam than Casper who led the way. At times they were on their knees, and Liam had the unnerving feeling that they were no longer on a tried and trusted path. Casper reached the top first, and Liam heard another ‘Fucking hell.’ Looking up from where he was scrambling, he lost his footing and would have slipped had Casper not caught his arm. Crouching at eye-level, he was grinning and had taken off his hat. Black hair waved in Liam’s face like seaweed in a violent undertow, and the wind, now a gale, snatched his breath away, but Casper’s eyes were wide and more dazzling than ever.

  ‘It’s amazing,’ he beamed. ‘Come on.’

  Casper’s hand slid along Liam’s arm to his hand, and gripping it, he tugged
him up the last of the slope and to his feet. From there, they ran onto the plateau and kept running until they reached the trig point, a four-sided column of dark grey among a sea of shale.

  Amazing was one word. Bloody cold, wild and desolate were others, but still, Liam couldn’t help but gasp at the view. The height distorted the distance as their world stopped abruptly at the edge of a cliff, beyond which a faraway land lay spread out in miniature. Tiny patches of vibrant green glowed where the sun’s rays singled them out for special attention, while the towns remained shadowy, grey smudges. The sea, over twenty miles distant, was a barely visible line of pewter.

  The sky was a wash of watercolour pink and coral to the east and domed overhead in tones that gradually melted into threatening grey. To the west, the cloud hung heavy, ladened with snow or rain and closer than when they had last seen it. Lit from beneath by the last desperate rays of the sun, it sagged under the weight of bad weather, and both boys knew they had no time to linger.

  ‘We’ll come back this way in the morning,’ Casper shouted against the scream of the wind.

  Liam nodded in agreement, but they remained where they were, transfixed, exhilarated and unaware they were still holding hands.

  Six

  Gary relished the sunset from the back window. It was always a spectacular sight when there were clouds in the west, and from the vantage point of Barrenmoor Ridge, made more so by the way the land fell steeply to the moor before rising towards Whernside and the Lakes beyond. Shafts of light filtered through the low-hanging mass of an incoming storm like torch beams highlighting choice sections of the valley, and singling out specific stone walls as if pointing to pots of gold, or the same thing in that part of the world: the best grazing land for sheep.

  The rising wind drove chilly blasts through the gaps in the wooden frame, and the coffee mug turned cold in his hand. Putting it down, he closed the curtains and turned to John in the kitchen.

  ‘What’s the latest?’ he asked.

  ‘Just about to put the potatoes on.’

  ‘I meant with the MRT?’

  ‘I know.’ John’s smiling face popped up above the worktop where he had been kneeling to clatter around in a cupboard for a suitable pan. ‘Last I heard, they were training over at Northpeak tonight, and it was still going ahead.’

  ‘Despite the weather?’

  ‘Because of it, most likely. It’s only going to rain.’ Searching through overhead cupboards, he added, ‘Not too late if you want to join them. I could drive you down.’

  ‘No, you’re alright,’ Gary said, taking his mug through. ‘We did last weekend and the one before, and Phil mumbled something about giving the others a chance to lead. Besides, it will be good to have a whole evening with just the two of us.’

  ‘As long as the radio doesn’t go off. With the others away, I said we’d be on standby.’

  ‘Okay. Oh!’ An image popped back into Gary’s mind. ‘I meant to tell you. Met a couple yesterday who were planning to hike two peaks this next couple of days.’

  ‘And?’

  It wasn’t exactly spectacular news.

  ‘Just got a feeling. They were from down south.’

  John waved a wooden spoon his way. ‘Excuse me? So am I. What’s your point?’

  ‘Aye, roger that, team leader, but you know what you’re doing. These two seemed a bit…’ Gary wasn’t sure what it was that worried him about the guys, but something hadn’t felt right.

  ‘Bit cute?’ John suggested.

  ‘Aye, they were that alright. One dark with right good looks and a fair frame, the other more like blond and dizzy. Still sexy though, if you’re into twinks.’

  ‘Watch it, matey. You’re pegging into loose scree with this one.’

  ‘Haha. Too young for me. Maybe that was it. They didn’t seem to know what they were doing.’

  ‘You spoke to them?’

  ‘Only about their route,’ Gary reassured him. John wasn’t the jealous type, and Gary wasn’t the sort to play away from home, he rarely even looked at another guy. ‘Don’t get worried.’

  ‘I wasn’t. Did you tell them to leave a route plan?’

  ‘Aye, and I hope they did. The weather’s closing in.’

  ‘Then there’s nothing more to be done. Have we got gravy granules?’

  ‘Second on your left,’ Gary said. Switching from serious climbing talk to banal domesticity was a regular occurrence at the cottage. ‘No, higher. Top shelf.’

  John stretched, and unable to see the back of the cupboard, stood on his toes to reach in further.

  ‘There’s nothing here.’

  ‘I know. ‘I just like to see your jumper ride up, and your shirt come untucked. Great view of the arse too. The Bisto’s by the kettle.’

  John slumped and threw him a grin as he tucked in his shirt.

  ‘You’re incorrigible.’

  ‘Ah, it does the elderly good to get some exercise.’

  ‘You’re fucking cheeky too. You’re not too old to go across my lap, young man.’

  ‘Promises, promises. Come here.’

  Gary interrupted his husband’s journey to the kettle by grabbing his waist and turning him around. Pulling the two of them together, he planted a kiss on John’s lips before burying his head in his shoulder.

  ‘I love you,’ he whispered, hugging hard, and shuddered with pleasure when John kissed his neck and said the same in return.

  It had been over two years since he had first spoken to John, and longer since he had first seen him.

  That day in the Pot Hole, when Gary was sixteen and lost, not long after his mother had vanished from his life and Social Services were trying to run it, he had been in there with a couple of pounds left from money Betty had given him and had been on the verge of running away. There wasn’t much to run away from. The house had been taken back by the landlord, and he was staying with Mark. The social worker advised against the arrangement and was working her hardest to find him a foster home, but the nearest was in Kendal, and Gary was doing well at school in Inglestone despite his circumstances. Not being a sociable youth, he had few friends other than Mark who had, for reasons of his own, stood up for him when Gary was bullied because of his mother’s drinking bouts and suicide attempts.

  Life wasn’t good, and there was little hope it would change, not until he saw an older man at a table on the other side of the café, and something inside snapped. The man was taller than Gary, slimmer and had a face full of dirty-blond beard, ginger in places and hanging below his collar. He was in conversation with an equally skinny woman but kept looking across the room, making Gary glance away for fear of being found out. Even at sixteen, he knew he was gay, but the word wasn’t used in the village, and certainly not around Mark who took pleasure in harassing ‘Gay Jerry’ the only local man known to be out. Mark’s hatred of anyone who wasn’t himself ran to sadistic ways of hurting men like Jerry and any he suspected were gay, and ranged from giving them an inconvenient break-in to beating them up on dark nights in the alleys behind the two-ups at the back of the village.

  It was, he was sure, that first sight of the climber with the inquisitive blue eyes that had cemented his sexuality. Not only did he find the man attractive, even with the beard that gave him a permanent frown, but he knew also that behind the facial hair, and inside the older skin, there was someone who longed to care.

  It was only two years later, after John had rescued him from a blizzard that he discovered the man had lost his lover and his way, and it was only when they began to trust each other that Gary learned John had been admiring him in the Pot Hole at the same time and ever since.

  Gary had looked out for him on every occasion in between, and when he learned that he had moved into the village and taken Barrenmoor Cottage, he spent as much time as h
e could at the climbers’ cafe in the hope that he might find a way to start a conversation. Dislocating a kneecap halfway up a fell in a winter storm wasn’t exactly how he intended to do it, but fate had rolled the dice, and thanks to the unlikely combination of events, here he was, still clinging to the man as though his life depended on it as it did that night, and bursting with love.

  ‘You can let me go now,’ John said. ‘Before things down below get out of hand, and your dinner gets ruined.’

  Gary pulled away and gazed up into soft eyes that had seen everything from the sunrise at Everest to the death of his lover on the same mountain.

  One more kiss and his craving for John settled back to a simmer.

  ‘Just had one of those moments,’ he said. ‘It’s getting colder. I’ll close the shutters.’

  That done, he took up his usual place on the new sofa and browsed through his mobile. The old sofa bed, where he’d spent painful nights recovering from his knee injury, was now in the newly built spare bedroom-cum-office. It needed throwing away, but neither of them was ready to part with it; it was the place they had first made love and held special memories. It also served to provide a night’s uncomfortable sleep for anyone who stayed over, and, John suggested, a place one could go to get away from the other to read or listen to music. A good idea, perhaps, but it had never been used for that purpose.

  With the dinner cooking slowly and the wind making mischief over the roof, John joined him, and they sat in silence as they caught up with the news. Friends on social media for Gary, and for John, information about who was summiting where around the world, and more importantly, who was photographing them. As they read in comfortable silence, the late afternoon dimmed towards a quick, bitter dusk, the same as many other days, and life inside Barrenmoor Cottage could not have been more tranquil.