22.

The next day, their mountain hike soon eased Biddy’s anxiety, the fresh, fragrant breeze blowing off the fog of a sleepless night. As they climbed higher and higher up the winding stony path, the smells and colours and sounds of the mountain increasingly enthralled her. She often dawdled behind to examine a wild flower or inhale the sharp scent of a mountain herb, and was frequently yelled at by their group leaders Mrs Abbott and Mr Price, one of the resident instructors at Brook House, to get a move on – despite the fact that she never once complained about the trek, unlike most of the others, who moaned and groaned throughout the day.

‘How much further, Miss?’

‘Can we sit down for a minute?’

‘I’m knackered, Sir.’

Whenever Mr Price pointed out a rook or a fox’s lair or a rare wild flower, the majority of pupils would roll their eyes at each other, or mutter ‘big deal’ under their breath. But Biddy quietly hung on his every word. The maze of stone walls zig-zagging across the landscape particularly fascinated her, and she wished she was brave enough to ask Mr Price about them. But Mr Price must have read her thoughts.

‘You’ll have noticed all the stone walls on the mountain,’ he said, when they stopped beside one for a snack and water break. ‘There are hundreds of them. Literally. In fact, Innis boasts some of the finest examples of dry stone walling in the world.’

Mr Price encouraged the pupils to examine the structure of the walls, which some approached with more enthusiasm than others. ‘People used to come from all over the world to see these walls,’ he continued, ‘and sometimes to help to build them. From geologists to poets and students to walking groups. They don’t come as often now, not since the Troubles started, even though you don’t get any trouble on a mountain; not of that kind, anyway. But they’ll come again one day, when it all settles.’

Biddy was intrigued by the notion of people from foreign countries visiting this mountain just to see a wall. When she looked more closely, however, she understood why. The silver-grey stones were piled together in seemingly random yet precisely positioned rows, with no cement to bind them together.

‘This particular one is known as “Paddy’s Wall”,’ Mr Price said, patting the wall. ‘It starts on the far side of the stream down below, and runs for about half a mile up towards the heart of the mountain until just over there.’ He nodded towards a mound of unused stones a few feet away from where they stood, where the wall came to an abrupt end.

‘What’s that, Sir?’ Ben Creegan asked, pointing to a small wooden cross which was lodged into the earth, just beside the pile of stones.

‘Well, Ben, why don’t you go and take a look. Tell us what it says,’ Mr Price smiled.

Ben wandered over and knelt down beside the cross. ‘Paddy Joyce 1886–1951: a man of the mountains, a mountain of a man. RIP,’ he called back to the group.

‘Paddy Joyce was a well-known local waller who spent his entire life on the mountain,’ Mr Price explained, as the rest of the group gathered around the stone mound. ‘He lived in a little stone cottage at the foot of Innis. It’s still there, but it’s basically a ruin now. You’ll have passed it on your way through the village. Anyway, it’s said that Paddy’s mother brought him to the mountain the very day he was born in a sling across her chest, and that he came back here every single day of his life for the next sixty-five years. In fact,’ Mr Price paused and looked around the mountain, ‘he single-handedly built many of the walls dotted across Innis. He died right here, on this spot, in April 1951 while building this wall. The locals didn’t want Paddy to miss his daily fix of the mountain while waiting for a funeral to be arranged, so they carried him down, sorted him out a coffin, and between them managed to carry it back to this spot, where they buried him the very next day.’

‘What, here, Sir?’ Rory interrupted. ‘Right here?’

‘Yes, Rory, right here. Right underneath these very stones.’

Most of the group were horrified.

‘Aw, no way, Sir,’ said Paul.

‘You mean, there’s a dead body under there?’ gasped Nicola.

‘I feel all shivery,’ shivered Clare.

Ben Creegan actually said, ‘Shit.’

‘Ben,’ warned Mrs Abbott.

‘Is that not, like, illegal, Sir?’ asked Rory. ‘I mean, do you not have to be buried in a proper graveyard? Or else get cremated like my grandma was?’

‘Well, Rory, the mountain has its own laws,’ smiled Mr Price. ‘And I guess it was happy enough to keep the body of Patrick Joyce. After all, he truly was a man of the mountain. He knew it like the back of his hand. If a lone climber lost his way or got into a spot of bother, it was always Paddy who got him – or her – down. He could sniff out trouble on the mountain like the scent of burning turf floating on the breeze, and in his time he saved more lives than the mountain rescue service ever did.’ He paused, and raised his eyebrows. ‘Some people claim they still see Paddy wandering the hills at twilight, especially around Clundaff Point. Which, as it happens, is where we’ll be stopping for lunch.’

‘Aw, no way, Sir. I’m not going anywhere haunted,’ gasped Rory.

‘Don’t worry, guys, he doesn’t appear until twilight,’ Mr Price winked. ‘We’ll be long gone by then. Now, I guess we’d better get a move on, as my tummy is already rumbling.’

Biddy was immediately fascinated by Paddy Joyce and his wall. She lingered for a moment, looking at the cross. Imagine living your whole life on a mountain and never having to go anywhere else, she thought. Or on a beach. I could do that.

‘Come on you lot. Move it!’ Mrs Abbott called from further on up the hill, and Biddy reluctantly left the stone, following slightly behind Rory, Paul and Ben.

‘Are you saying you believe in ghosts?’ she heard Paul laugh as he nudged Ben.

‘Yeah, ya big sissy,’ teased Ben.

‘’Course not,’ scoffed Rory. ‘Don’t be soft.’

‘Whooooo! Whooaaa!!’ Paul made mock ghostly movements with his arms in front of Rory’s face. ‘Rory’s scared of the ghost of Paddy Joyce.’

Rory pushed him off: ‘Piss off. Why the fuck would I be scared of a bloody weirdo like that?’

Biddy stopped in her tracks. Another one, she thought, and smiled. She liked Paddy Joyce even more now.

By the time they reached the heather-covered plateau dotted with huge grey boulders where they stopped for lunch, Biddy was already in love with the mountain, but the appearance of two peregrine falcons swooping and sweeping over a turret high above them triggered a sense of elation she had never experienced before.

She knew they were falcons immediately, recognising them from her big encyclopaedia of birds, and Mr Price confirmed it. ‘They’re common to Innis,’ he said. She hadn’t known that. The boys, excited at the sight of real live birds of prey, were hoping to see a kill. Maybe the birds would swoop down and grab a fox or a rabbit or a mountain hare. They quickly lost interest, however, when Mr Price told them that peregrines mostly only ate other birds, and that as there were no other birds around, a gory display was unlikely. But Biddy was entranced by the falcons’ grace and beauty and their silent, elegant dance of flight. She wished she had her sketchbook with her. She wished she could fly like they could. To her, the mountain was like a magical paradise, a haven, a whole new world, where anything was possible. And when the time came to head back to the house, she didn’t want to leave. She wanted to stay there forever, on her own, with the butterflies and the swooping falcons.