The Hollow Land by Jane Gardam Page B

quiet days like this one. There’s those say if you listen you can hear the old hammers going, the picks of the miners long ago, and the trucks running over the wooden rails. Now and then you can just about catch old voices with old words in them. Then there’s the woman that’s often seen walking. She walks just up yonder.”
    He pointed. Bell and Harry’s heads bobbed down again. James’s spine prickled right up to the back of his neck and then round to his cheeks.
    â€œA ghost?”
    â€œAye. Likely. She goes walking in a white apron over the bouse. She walks to the top and shades her eyes and looks in all directions. Then she’s gone. Just disappears. Into the sunshine. Nothing left but the air and the fell and the birds. Like a creature walking through water she is, Mrs. Meccer used to say.”
    â€œHave you seen her?”
    â€œMaybe once. That sweep, Kendal, makes out he’s always seeing her—quite a friend of his. Our Eileen seed her once, too—the day the tractor rolled on Henry Cleesby. I seed her when I was about Harry’s age, the day I got my leg flattened in the shift. Mrs. Meccer seed her twice, but that’s not surprising since it’s her own grandmother.”
    â€œWhat—the woman is? The ghost is?”
    â€œAye. She was Mrs. Meccer’s gran out looking for her son. That’s to say Mrs. Meccer’s uncle. He came on up here when he was a lad of sixteen or so. There was this family row and he goes storming out, like lads do that age, leaves his dinner half-eaten, grinds back his chair from the table. ‘If that’s how it is, I’se leaving home.’ You know the sort of thing.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWell, he goes storming up the fell. They never seed him more.”
    â€œWhat—he
disappeared
?”
    â€œAye. Long since. She never got over it. Walked the fells looking for him for days and nights. Then she died. But she goes on looking for him. You see her before there’s some disaster. Walking quiet. Shading her eyes. In a white apron.”
    â€œI think I’ll go in now. Can you give me a hand up?”
    â€œHave I sobered you, young James? Well, I’se sorry. Dear me.”
    â€œNo. Well—no. It’s just coming over rather thundery. I think I’ll go back up to Light Trees. It
is
rather a depressing sort of story.”
    â€œOh don’t worry about it. I’d say the lad took off somewhere and made his fortune. The old woman was a right misery by all accounts.”
    â€œBut still . . . ” James looked up at the wide watchfulness of the fell.
    â€œOh, come on lad. We’ll both get off. Why don’t you come off over Stainmer with me and that Kendal this afternoon? We’re jaunting. There’s no harm can come to you up here you know if you don’t do owt daft and slipshod.”
    As the two of them turned away (both limping), Bell and Harry slid forward. Bell eased a huge slab of limestone from a slight dip in the ground, laying bare a hole that might have been a narrow fox-hole lying beneath a shelf of earth and quartz. Then he slid inside it and dropped into the dark, turning to catch Harry, who slid into the dark beside him.
    â€œAre we down?”
    â€œAye—but wait till I get—”
    â€œIt’s not deep.”
    â€œNot yet. Wait. Where’s the torch?”
    â€œIt’s a queer smell.”
    â€œIt gets worse. Nearer the trucks. Like dead bodies. Mind, we’re not going far. We take a quick look at them trucks and we go straight back. To get back you get onto my shoulders and I jump you up again. Then you lean down in and pull me out after. See? Look.” He turned his torch up to the faint light from the blazing day outside, then along the tunnel they stood in. They had dropped through its roof. Stones and rubble lay underfoot. The tunnel went in two directions, each into deep darkness. The torch, when Bell