He had obviously made a mistake. Some people were immune to his allure because of an innate lack of imagination. It was pointless to bother with individuals like that; too much work. He’d simply made an error of judgement. He looked around the bar. Perhaps someone else? What he saw did not inspire him. Tomorrow, then, he would be moving on. A pity. His pique was destined to last no more than a few minutes.
‘Don’t you?’ Mrs Eager said.
The traveller shook himself into the present. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I said how much I love this time of year, the smells, the feelings, don’t you?’ She waved dangerous, lacquered claws in the air. She smelled of heavy, Oriental scent, which failed to conceal the clinging aroma of flesh past its prime.
The traveller nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. Mrs Eager, he was sure, would also be an amateur poet, and perhaps ran a small writing circle in the village. She would have been easy prey, if he’d been interested. ‘Could I ask you something?’
She puffed up with pleasure. ‘Of course!’
‘The young couple out there; a girl with red hair and a shawl, the pale boy: do you know them?’
The question was obviously not the one Mrs Eager had anticipated. Her face had fallen a little. ‘Oh, you mean the Winter twins?’
‘Twins? I don’t think so.’ Even as he said it, he realised he was wrong. Of course they were twins.
‘Well, they’re the only people who fit that description,’ said Mrs Eager. ‘Why?’
‘I met the girl - Lily? - earlier today.’
‘Mmm.’ Mrs Eager leaned conspiratorially over the bar. ‘They...’
He wouldn’t let her say what she wanted to say. ‘What are they drinking?’
Mrs Eager jumped back abruptly. Later, she might wonder, with her poet’s mind, why his softly spoken words had made her feel as if she’d been slapped across the face. ‘They usually drink cider,’ she said. ‘Are you buying for them?’
He nodded. Mrs Eager worked the pump with a pursed mouth. ‘What’s that scent you’re wearing?’ he asked her, smiling.
He wasn’t normally so obvious in his manoeuvres, but realised there was little point in trying to deny how deeply Lily Winter had aroused his interest. Her resistance called for dramatic measures. Carrying the drinks on a metal tray, the traveller went back out into the garden. He would not have been surprised if the twins had already left, but they were still sitting together at the table. Lily was leaning down to fuss a mongrel dog with a madly wagging tail that had come to sniff around her ankles.
‘Mind if I join you?’ he asked, sitting down. The twins looked at him with some surprise and the dog slunk away. He put the drinks down in front of them. ‘I hope you don’t mind. I feel like a bit of company and I’m afraid you ‘ - he wagged a finger at the girl - ‘are the only person I’ve met around here.’
She laughed without reserve, a reaction he hadn’t expected. ‘Hardly met!’ she said. Perhaps she felt safer with her brother there. The evening light suited her. How could he have thought her plain?
The traveller shrugged and grinned sheepishly. ‘I know, but everyone else in this place is...’ He pulled a face.
‘We call it a pre-graveyard,’ Lily said, nodding. ‘I know what you mean.’
‘You’re Lily Winter, right?’ So far, he hadn’t yet looked at the boy.
She didn’t seem too pleased he’d found that much out about her; perhaps because there were other things to discover, which she feared he’d also picked up. ‘And you are...?’ she asked, a little coldly.
He told her.
‘Are you foreign?’ she asked. ‘No, of course not. Are you a Gypsy, then, or something? What an unusual name.’
He shrugged again, offering no further explanation.
‘This is my brother, Owen,’ she said, gesturing to her companion, ‘or did you know that too?’
The traveller shook his head. ‘No. Pleased to meet you.’ He met the boy’s eyes for the first time, expecting territorial surliness, and found, to his relief, he was merely looking at Lily’s eyes again. Uncanny: a mixture of caution, amusement, and a certain cynical awareness of his purpose. He realised, half unpleasantly, that these two somehow knew him. Was this a disadvantage or not? The boy was more presentable than he’d first thought as well. How fortunate to find these creatures here; their acquaintance might provide more experience than he could have hoped for.
‘He lurked outside the post office for me,’ Lily said to her brother, flapping a hand at the traveller. She did not deceive him. She and Owen had undoubtedly discussed the matter already.
Owen smiled.
‘I do not deny it,’ said the traveller. ‘As a contrast to the hags in there, you were like a goddess!’
The twins exchanged a secret glance, but it did not altogether exclude him. They were willing to play, he felt. He experienced a delirious moment of weakness, as if the performance was not his, but theirs. It was a strange and unfamiliar sensation, but not unpleasant.
‘Are you on holiday?’ Lily asked him, drinking from the glass he had given her, but keeping it low to the table. Her eyes smiled at him over its rim.
‘A travelling holiday,’ he said. The twins both made noises of interest, so he began to relate some stories about his experiences, a few of which were fabrications and distinctly less interesting than the truth.
‘So, are you lost now?’ asked the boy. ‘This is nowhere. How did you end up here?’
‘I never know how I end up anywhere. I just keep moving. It’s the best way, I find. Sometimes, I discover wonderful things. I don’t look for them, I just make myself receptive. How did you end up here?’
‘We live here,’ Lily said.
‘You don’t seem typical of the natives.’
She made a careless gesture. ‘Well...’
‘Our mother was an outsider. We inherited the house,’ Owen said.
It was perhaps rather an odd way to put it, but at least implied they lived alone and might have spacious accommodation. The traveller had the distinct impression that Owen was thinking the words: ‘wasn’t that what you wanted to know?’ but was aware he might be projecting his own desires onto these people, reading more into their behaviour than was actually there.
‘So, what is there to see around here?’ he asked, taking a drink.
‘Nothing!’ the twins said, in unison. They laughed.
‘There is always something,’ the traveller said, ‘anywhere. Always something.’
‘Don’t count on it,’ Lily said. ‘What sort of thing are you looking for?’
He shrugged. ‘Just places of interest.’
‘Monuments, ruins, that sort of thing?’
‘Yes, that sort of thing. I like history.’
‘Oh, there’s plenty of that here,’ Lily said. ‘History. No present though, and certainly no future. Nothing changes.’
‘Sounds idyllic.’
‘Depends on what you like, I suppose,’ she said. ‘Living here gets very boring.’
‘If you don’t like it, why stay?’ he asked. ‘Couldn’t you sell your house?’
‘We could,’ Owen said, ‘but if we went to a bigger town, we’d have to work. Our income is enough for Lil’moor. We don’t want to work for anyone.’
‘I can’t say I blame you,’ the traveller said. It was a sentiment he shared.
‘You’re staying here, then?’ Lily asked.
‘For the time being. I acted on your recommendation.’
‘It was hardly that!’ she said. ‘What do you think of the Eagers?’
‘I don’t think Mister likes me. She seems all right.’
Lily nodded. ‘They’ve only been here five years. Now, they think they own the place!’
‘They do a lot,’ Owen said, which implied criticism rather than praise.
‘She started all this church business. Fetes and things,’ Lily said. ‘It’s absurd. Lil’moor doesn’t even have a vicar of its own, but this man comes out from Patterham now and
again. More regularly, since Mrs Eager took him in hand, I think. The old dears like it.’
‘I didn’t see a church,’ the traveller said.
‘Oh, it’s a way out of the village,’ Lily told him. ‘Almost as if Lil’moor was bigger at one time, and has just shrunk away from it. You’d like it; it’s very old.’
‘We could show it to you,’ Owen said. Lily looked at him sharply and then smiled.
‘Yes, we could. Do you want us to?’
‘It’s very kind of you.’
‘It’s just something to do!’ she said, and stood up. ‘Well, come on then.’
‘What? Now?’ The traveller was taken aback.
‘Better by moonlight,’ Lily said. ‘Come on.’
There was no moon, but the clear sky lent a ghostly radiance to the land. As they walked together up the middle of the road, the traveller again experienced a feeling of being helplessly overwhelmed. Lily appeared to have undergone a dramatic personality change. Gone was the reticent, innocent reserve of their encounter in the post office. She chattered the entire time they walked, mainly about other people in the village.
‘They don’t think much of us,’ she said.
‘Why drink in the pub, then?’ he asked.
‘Because they hide the fact they don’t think much of us,’ Owen said, ‘but we still know. They might think they don’t want us around, but they’d be disappointed if we weren’t. We’re part of this place.’
‘I don’t care what they think,’ Lily said.
‘You must get lonely sometimes,’ the traveller said. The thought of them living alone together in isolation suddenly made him feel uneasy.
‘Oh no,’ Lily said. ‘Never.’
‘We have a car,’ Owen said. ‘We drive to places, don’t we, Lily.’
‘We drive to places,’ she said. The traveller was beginning to wonder if they were not rather simple in the head.
The church was really quite unremarkable, and not as old as the twins had suggested. Its most significant feature was that it had been built in such a bleak spot. It was surrounded by gravestones that were kept in check by a dilapidated fence. Several tired-looking yew trees provided the traditional vigilance for the dead. It was a place where lone spectres might walk, but there were none in evidence tonight.
‘It’s locked up,’ Lily said. She was wearing her shawl low on her arms, and the traveller could see her skin was pimpled with cold.
The three of them stood against the fence, looking at the graveyard. It seemed they had made rather a pointless journey.
‘Let’s show him the ringstone,’ Owen said to his sister.
‘That’s a good idea.’
It seemed rather staged. The traveller was unsure what to expect, but wondered whether he was about to be on the receiving end of a joke.
They went through a lych-gate that seemed unnecessarily imposing, or part of an older structure. A straight gravel path ran up to the church doors, and appeared to circle the building. The traveller was bemused to see there was a TV aerial sticking out from the church roof.
‘It’s round the back,’ Lily said, running into the shadow of the church.
‘We often come here at night,’ Owen said.
‘I thought you might,’ the traveller replied. They were just children.
The ringstone was nothing more than a listing gravestone, its engraving long weathered into nonsense. ‘This is it,’ Lily said. She was leaning on the stone, her white hands gripping it at the top.
‘And what is it, exactly?’ asked the traveller.
Lily and her brother started laughing. The traveller felt decidedly uncomfortable. ‘We must join hands around it,’ Lily said.
‘How pagan,’ the traveller observed, unimpressed.
‘Oh, probably,’ Lily agreed, ‘but it’s a custom.’ She held out her hands and waggled the fingers. ‘Join hands.’
Reluctantly, the traveller complied. Lily’s fingers were icy cold, Owen’s warm and dry. ‘Do we have to make a wish, or something?’ the traveller asked. He felt absurdly awkward.
‘No, we circle,’ Lily replied. She pulled on his arm.
I can’t believe I’m doing this, the traveller thought, stumbling round the stone. I have no control over these people. They are wild. ‘Whose grave is this?’ he asked.
‘Don’t know,’ Lily said. ‘It’s not important.’
He suspected that circling the ringstone was a custom traditional only to the Winter twins, and strongly hoped no stray dog-walkers from the village would come along to observe this ridiculous ritual. ‘That’s enough,’ he said, after a few minutes, pulling away from their hands. They did not object.
‘Tomorrow, we could take you somewhere else,’ Owen said.
They escorted him back to the White House and cheerily waved goodbye, promising further entertainment the following day. The traveller was not sure of his feelings about Owen and Lily Winter. In some ways, they annoyed him, and Lily was not at all like he had imagined her to be. She should have been a shy virgin whom he could have gently initiated into the ways of the world. He suspected now she was not a virgin at all. How disappointing. There would be no scholar’s bedroom, with bookcases full of slim volumes. There would be no delicate watercolours on the wall, painted by her own untutored hand. The scratches on her arms, which he’d fondly thought she might have incurred playing with a favourite cat in some secluded, scented garden, had probably happened while she’d been fixing her car, or something equally mundane. Still, she and her brother were unusual people, even if not in the direction he’d hoped.
Mrs Eager was still hovering around the bar cleaning glasses; it was not as late as he’d thought. She offered to make him some meat sandwiches, which he gladly accepted and sat down in the guests’ lounge to read a local paper while she made them up. Mr Eager sauntered in, pushing out his belly, and attempted to be sociable. He asked the traveller whether he played golf.
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Hrrm, hrrrh.’ The landlord was either clearing his throat or playing for time. ‘Sitting with the Winters, were you?’ he said eventually. ‘Rum pair, rum pair.’ Mr Eager shook his head in perplexity. The traveller made no comment. ‘Bit of square-bashing wouldn’t harm the lad...’
‘They seem very young to live alone,’ the traveller said.
‘Tch, yes!’ said Mr Eager. ‘The mother died two years ago, but they keep the old place up. They’re looked out for around here.’ He glanced at the traveller in a knowing, and slightly threatening, manner.
Mrs Eager had come into the room, carrying a tray. She had obviously overheard her husband’s remarks. ‘Mrs Winter was a very private person,’ she said, offering the traveller a plate of sandwiches. ‘She came here when the twins were babies. Had a little money, I think. She always kept herself to herself, and never mentioned what had happened to her husband, but she was a good woman. The twins have run a little wild perhaps, since she died, but grief can do funny things to people, can’t it. You spent the evening with Lily and Owen?’
The traveller nodded. ‘Yes, they’re very quaint, but I enjoyed their company.’
‘We look out for them here in Lil’moor,’ Mrs Eager said. ‘We have a close community.’ Her concern explained why she’d seemed a little frosty with the traveller earlier on, (perhaps she’d imagined he’d had sinister designs on the Winters), but it was certainly at odds with the way the twins thought they were regarded in the village. Poor waifs. They lived in a fantasy world. How would his intrusion affect it? He hoped to find out very soon.
At lunchtime, the following day, the traveller had a visitor. He had been hanging around the White House in the hope that Lily and Owen would turn up and was therefore surprised, and even a little disappointed, when Owen arrived alone. The boy was wearing the same tatty clothes he’d worn the previous evening, but had apparently brushed his hair. His flawless skin looked shockingly clean against the oily wool of his jumper.
‘Lily’s busy,’ he said. ‘
I’ve got the car outside. I’ll show you around.’
The Winter car was a big, rounded vehicle upholstered in aromatic leather, with walnut interior trim. It smelled of age, and Owen was quite dwarfed by it, sitting behind the steering wheel like a child. He drove, however, with the habitual terrifying confidence of the young.
‘Lily’s making a meal,’ he said, as the car bowled along one of the lanes leading from Little Moor. ‘A meal for you. For tonight.’ He grinned at the traveller.
‘That’s nice. Where are you taking me?’
‘A ruin. That’s what you want, isn’t it?’
‘Drive on!’ The traveller poked his hand out of the car window, letting his fingers run through the whipping grass of the steep hedgerows.
‘You could cut yourself,’ said Owen, ‘Lose a finger. Are you afraid of blood?’
The ruin, like the church, lacked the antiquity the traveller enjoyed sensing in old buildings. It was simply a small house on the moors, a crofter’s cottage, set back from the road, gutted and forlorn. He tried to hide his disappointment from Owen who appeared quite proud of the place.
‘Wait till you see it properly,’ he said. ‘It’s quite remarkable.’
The traveller followed the boy from the road, and a few sheep bustled away from the empty house as they approached it.
‘Is this a place you and Lily visit often too?’ the traveller asked.
Owen wrinkled his nose, his hands deep in his trouser pockets. ‘Not really. It doesn’t have the mood for regular visitors. You have to respect the feelings of these places, you know.’
‘I see.’ It was becoming clear to the traveller that these two children, deprived of stimuli, had invested their landscape with a rich personal symbology. He wasn’t sure whether this was endearing or exasperating; he would have to wait and see.
The door to the house was missing, leaving only a black hole. ‘Look at this,’ Owen said. The traveller looked inside. All of the floors had gone, even the ground floor, so that the whole building had become a kind of dark well, littered with rubbish and pale plants. ‘It’s bigger inside than outside, you see,’ Owen said. ‘That’s very unusual. Come round the back. There’s a way in. I’ll show you. You must feel it inside.’