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millennia. Was that the reason he had started drawing—to make himself more permanent? He could see those sketches, reprinted on the landscape, distorted copies, but still witness to his power. There were more as he got older, sent secretly to Matthew, or slipped between his floorboards, or hidden in the cellar. They would be faded rubbish now.
    Jennifer had followed him and was plucking at his sleeve. ‘What is it?’ she repeated.
    Couldn’t she see what he was seeing, the power and passion of this landscape which had moulded his whole vision, stunned and overwhelmed him? He longed to share it with her, swap her eyes for his. He was a child again, standing on the topmost rung of England, head in the sky, feet planted on a million million years of rock, watching the hills collide with the horizon, the clouds hurtle on to God. He had tried to explain before to her, cursed himself because the things he felt didn’t fit the language, sounded simply fatuous. Safer to keep quiet—lock away the feelings as he had done as a child, bury them with his art. Jennifer hadn’t seen that either—or very little of it. He’d had to renounce it before she came along. Matthew had produced her as the consolation prize.
    He forced his gaze away from the grandeur of the hills, stared down at the river.
    â€˜See that.’
    â€˜What?’ She looked where he was pointing. A dead lamb was floating in the water, jammed against the bank, its fleece still white and woolly, but bloated, waterlogged—its tiny ears twitching with the pull and motion of the current as if it were still alive, its eyes only empty sockets.
    â€˜The crows always peck their eyes out. They do it sometimes when the lambs are still alive but stuck in snowdrifts. The farmers have to kill them. That’s Matthew’s prime roast lamb.’ Cruel again, sadistic. Why point out carrion when he had meant to paint her splendour? Yet the two were always linked. One spring he had gone out with the ranger in the forest—a boy of nine awe-struck by the trees—stumbled upon a rotting pile of corpses, eleven roe deer perished from starvation after a fighting winter, their flesh half-gnawed by desperate crows and foxes. The ranger had been his only friend, taught him to sleuth shy and secret creatures, like shrews and slow-worms, otters and goosanders, pointed out badgers and birds’ eggs. But after that time, he refused to go out with him again. The ranger dealt in death, carried a gun, shot the deer the snow had spared. He preferred to stay inside and draw.
    Except drawing was disapproved of—especially as he grew older. All those brawny foresters and farmers regarded art as child’s play or as a harmless little hobby for their womenfolk once they’d finished all the chores. Real men worked the land with sweat and tractor, turned stone and soil into flock or food or cash. Only poufs and sissies played with paints.
    Lyn stared at his reflection in the rippling distorting stream. Did he look a pansy? He had always been too slight. Tallish, yes, but not broad or tough enough. Jennifer said nice things about his looks, but that might be love, or even pity. At least he had good features—full mouth, straight nose. He flung a stone in the water, shattered nose and mouth. Jennifer’s reflection approached his in the water.
    â€˜We really ought to hurry, darling. Hester may be worse.’
    He followed her back to the car. Not worse, he prayed, not angry, not reproachful. ‘Don’t worry, we’re not far now.’ He knew, because his palms were sweaty on the steering-wheel, his throat gritty and bad-tempered like the road. He drove doggedly round the twisting narrowing bends. Everything was harsher, the hills so steep, the stunted thorn trees clung to their sides almost horizontally. Bare rock grinned through scrubby yellowed grass. Even the sheep were different—Cheviot and Blackface—hardier