On The Black Hill (Vintage Classics)

by Chatwin, Bruce

  ‘Can I help?’ the girl called after him.

  ‘No,’ he called back, and raced down the platform.

  It was after four by the time he reached The Vision and Rebecca was alone in the kitchen, distractedly darning a sock.

  ‘Them’ve gone out looking for Benjamin,’ she said.

  ‘And I know where him do be,’ Lewis said.

  He went to the porch and changed his wet cape for a dry one. He pulled a sou’wester over his face and walked out into the snow.

  Around eleven that morning, Amos had looked towards the west and said, ‘I don’t like the look of them clouds. Better get the ewes off the hill.’

  It was late in the lambing season and the ewes and early lambs were on the mountain. For ten days the weather had been lovely. The thrushes were nesting, and the birches in the dingle were dusted with green. No one had expected any more snow.

  ‘No,’ Amos repeated. ‘I don’t like the look of it.’

  He had a chill on his chest, and his legs and back were stiff. Mary fetched his boots and gaiters and noticed, all of a sudden, that he was old. He bent down to tie his laces. Something cricked in his spine, and he sank back into the chair.

  ‘I’ll go,’ said Benjamin.

  ‘Quickly now!’ his father said. ‘Before it comes to snow.’

  Benjamin whistled for the dog and walked over the fields to Cock-a-loftie. From there he took the steeper path up the escarpment. He reached the rim, and a raven flew off a thornbush, croaking.

  Then the cloud came down and the sheep, when he could see them, were like little packs of vapour – and then it began to snow.

  The snow fell in thick woolly flakes. The wind got up and blew drifts across the track. He saw something dark close by: it was the dog shaking the snow off his back. Icy trickles ran down his neck, and he realized his cap was gone. His hands were in his pockets but he could not feel them. His feet felt so heavy it was hardly worth bothering to take the next step – and, just then, the snow changed colour.

  The snow was not white any more, but a creamy golden rose. It was not cold any more. The tussocks of reed were not sharp, but soft and downy. And all he wanted now was to lie down in this nice, warm comfortable snow, and sleep.

  His knees began to weaken, and he heard his brother bellowing in his ear:

  ‘You’ve got to go on. You mustn’t stop. I’ll die if you go to sleep.’

  So he went on, dragging one foot after the other, back to the rocks along the cliff edge. And that really was the place to curl up, out of the wind, with the dog, and sleep.

  It was white when he woke, and it took him some time to realize that the whiteness was not snow, but bed-linen. Lewis was by the bedside, and the sharp spring sunlight streamed through the window.

  ‘How do you feel?’ he said.

  ‘You left me,’ said Benjamin.

  22

  BENJAMIN’S RIGHT HAND was frostbitten. For a while, he seemed likely to lose a finger or two; and until he recovered, Lewis stayed at his side. He was a week away from work. Then, when he did go back to Rhydspence, the bailiff lost his temper, said his farm was not some institution for shirkers, and sacked him.

  Ashamed and footsore, Lewis reached home at suppertime, took his place at table, and rested his head in his hands.

  ‘I am sorry, Father,’ he said, after coming to the end of his story.

  ‘Hm!’ Amos replaced the cover of the cheese-dish.

  Twenty minutes went by, silent but for the chink of cutlery and the ticking of the grandfather clock.

  ‘You’re not to blame,’ he said, and reached for his tobacco-pouch. He rose from the table, put his hand on the boy’s shoulder, and then went to sit by the fire.

  For the whole of the following week he fretted about the Tribunal, blaming himself, blaming Lewis, and wondering what to do next. Finally, he decided to confide in Mr Arkwright.

  The solicitor was very reticent about his origins but was known to have lived in Chester before buying the Rhulen practice in 1912. His manner was unbending towards the ‘lower orders’, although he blossomed in the presence of a squire. He lived with his ailing wife in a mock-Tudor villa called ‘The Cedars’ and prided himself on a lawn free of dandelions. There were those who said there was ‘something fishy about the fellow’.

  A brass plaque, engraved with his name in Roman capitals, gleamed outside his office at Number 14, Broad Street.

  The articled clerk showed Amos upstairs into a room of knobbly beige wallpaper, where there were stacks of black tin deed boxes and a bookcase crammed with Law Society Annuals. The carpet had a pattern of blue flowers, and on the grey slate mantelpiece sat a carriage clock.

  Without attempting to stir from his desk, the solicitor leaned back in his leather chair, tugging at his pipe, while Amos, red in the face and flustered, explained how his sons were not two persons, but one.

  ‘Quite so!’ Mr Arkwright stroked his chin. After hearing the story of the snowstorm, he started to his feet and slapped his visitor across the back.

  ‘Don’t give it another thought!’ he said. ‘A simple matter! I’ll arrange it with my colleagues.

  ‘We’re not ogres, you know,’ he went on, extending a cold dry hand to Amos, and ushered him on to the street.

  It was glorious summery weather on the day of the Tribunal; and four of its five members were in a rip-roaring mood. The morning papers carried news of the Allied ‘breakthrough’ in France. Major Gattie, the Military Representative, called for a ‘dashed good luncheon to celebrate’. Mr Evenjobb, an agricultural merchant, agreed. The vicar agreed; and Mr Arkwright confessed to feeling ‘pretty peckish’ himself.

  So the members treated themselves to a tip-top luncheon at the Red Dragon, downed three bottles of claret, drowsily took their places in the Committee Room of the Town Hall, and waited for their Chairman, Colonel Bickerton.

  The room reeked of Jeyes Fluid and was so hot and airless that even the flies stopped droning round the skylight. Mr Evenjobb nodded off The Reverend Pile felt exhilarated by notions of youth and sacrifice, while the conscripts who hoped for exemption sat outside in a gloomy green corridor on benches, with a police constable guarding them.

  The Colonel arrived a little late from his own luncheon party at Lurkenhope. Flushed in the face, and with a rosebud in his buttonhole, he was in no mood to grant any further exemptions, having, at the previous session, exempted two of his hunt servants, and his valet.

  ‘This Tribunal must be fair,’ he opened the proceedings. ‘The agricultural needs of the community must be taken into account. Yet there is a great and barbarous enemy which must be destroyed. And to destroy it, the Army needs men!’

  ‘Seconded,’ said Major Gattie, scrutinizing his fingernails. The first to be called was Tom Philips, a shepherd lad from Mousecastle, who mumbled about his sick mother and no one to look after the sheep.

  ‘Speak up, my boy,’ the Colonel interrupted. ‘Can’t hear one word of what you’re saying.’

  But Tom still couldn’t make himself understood and the Colonel lost his patience. ‘Report to Hereford Barracks within five days.’

  ‘Yessir!’ he said.

  The panel next heard the case of a pallid youth who loudly affirmed he was a Socialist and a Quaker. Nothing, he said, could force him to reconcile military discipline with his conscience.

  ‘In which case,’ said the Colonel, ‘I strongly advise you to go to bed early and get up early and your conscience will soon cease to trouble you. Case dismissed. Report to Hereford Barracks within five days.’

  The twins had hoped the Colonel would smile: he had known them, after all, since they were three. His face was a blank when they appeared in the doorway.

  ‘One at a time, gentlemen! One at a time! You, on the left, kindly step forward, please. The other gentleman should retire!’

  The floorboards creaked as Lewis approached the panel. He had hardly opened his mouth when Mr Arkwright rose and whispered in the Colonel’s ear. The Co
lonel nodded, ‘Ah!’ and with an air of benediction, said, ‘Exemption granted! Next please!’

  But when Benjamin edged into the room, Major Gattie eyed him up and down and drawled, ‘We need that man!’

  Later, Benjamin recalled only the drift of what followed. But he did remember the vicar leaning forward to ask whether, or not, he believed in the sanctity of the Allied Cause. And he remembered hearing his own voice reply, ‘Do you believe in God?’

  The vicar’s head shot up like a startled hen.

  ‘What gross impertinence! Do you realize I’m a clergyman?’

  ‘Then do you believe in the Sixth Commandment?’

  ‘The Sixth Commandment?’

  ‘“Thou shalt not kill!”’

  ‘Damned cheek, what?’ Major Gattie lifted an eyebrow.

  ‘Damnable cheek!’ echoed Mr Arkwright. And even Mr Evenjobb stirred from his torpor, as the Colonel pronounced the standard formula:

  ‘This Tribunal, having carefully considered your case, finds itself unable to grant exemption from service in His Majesty’s Armed Forces. Report to Hereford Barracks within five days!’

  Mary was heating beeswax to seal some jars of blackcurrant jam. The smell of boiling fruit filled the kitchen. She heard the clip of hooves in the yard. She gave a start at the sight of Lewis’s blotchy face, and knew what had happened to his brother.

  ‘I shall go, Mama,’ said Benjamin, calmly. ‘The war’s as good as over now.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ she said.

  The evening was muggy and airless. Clouds of midges spiralled around a couple of heifers. They heard the flop of cowpats and the burbling of geese in the orchard. The sheepdog slunk up the path with his tail between his legs. All the flowers in the garden – the gaillardias, the fuchsias, the roses – were purple or yellow or red. It never occurred to Mary that Benjamin would come back alive.

  She believed that Amos had sacrificed their weaker son, her favourite son. She believed Mr Arkwright had offered him a choice. He had chosen Lewis, the twin who would survive on his own.

  Amos hung his cap in the porch. He tried to stammer excuses, but she spun round and screamed, ‘Don’t lie to me, you brute!’

  She wanted to hit him, to spit in his face. He stared across the darkening room, dumbfounded by her fury.

  She took a taper to light the lamp. The wick flared up: then, as she replaced the green glass shade, a band of light fell across the frame of her wedding photograph. She jerked it off its hook, dashed it to the floor, and disappeared upstairs.

  Amos crouched.

  The frame had split, the glass shattered, and the mount was bent, but the photo itself was unharmed. He swept up the slivers of glass into a dustpan. Then he picked up the frame and began to fit the pieces together.

  Without undressing, Mary spent a sleepless night on Old Sam’s palliasse, and the clouds passed over the moon. By breakfast-time, she had shut herself in the dairy – anywhere to avoid another confrontation. Benjamin found her aimlessly cranking the butter-churn.

  ‘Don’t be hard on Papa,’ he said, touching her sleeve. ‘It wasn’t his fault. It was my fault, really.’

  She went on turning the handle and said, ‘You know nothing about it.’

  Lewis offered to substitute himself. No one, he said, would ever know the difference.

  ‘No,’ said Benjamin. ‘I’ll go on my own.’

  He was very brave and packed up his things, methodically, in a canvas bag. On the morning of his departure, he blinked into the rising sun and said, ‘I’ll stay till they come and get me.’

  Amos made plans to hide both sons, in a secret place, high up in the Radnor Forest; but Mary scoffed and said, ‘I suppose you’ve never heard of bloodhounds.’

  On September 2nd, Police Constables Crimp and Bannister drove up to The Vision and made a big show of searching the barn. They hardly hid their disappointment when Benjamin walked from the house, pale, but with the suggestion of a smile, and bared his wrists to the handcuffs.

  After a night in the cells, he appeared before the Rhulen magistrate, who ‘deemed’ him to be a soldier, and fined him £2 for failing to report for duty. A Non-Commissioned Officer then took him by train to Hereford.

  At The Vision, they waited for news, and there was none. A month later, certain warning signals told Lewis that the Army had given up trying to train his brother, and was using force.

  From the ache in his coccyx, Lewis knew when the N.C.O.s were frog-marching Benjamin round the parade-ground; from the pain in his wrists, when they lashed him to the bed-frame; from a patch of eczema on his chest, when they rubbed his nipples with caustic. One morning, Lewis’s nose began to bleed and went on bleeding till sundown: that was the day when they stood Benjamin in a boxing ring and slammed straight-lefts into his face.

  Then, one drizzly November morning, the war was over. The Kaiser and his crew had ‘gone down like ninepins’. The World was Safe for Democracy.

  On the streets of Hereford, Scotsmen played bagpipes, the jam factory sounded its hooter, railway engines whistled, and Welshmen roamed about playing mouth-organs or chanting ‘Land of Our Fathers’. A soldier, deaf and dumb since the Dardanelles, saw the Union Jack floating above the newspaper office and recovered his speech, though not his hearing.

  In the Cathedral, the Bishop, in a cope of cloth-of-gold, read the First Lesson from the altar: ‘“I will sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea …”’

  In faraway London, the King came out on to the balcony of Buckingham Palace, accompanied by Queen Mary in a sable coat.

  Meanwhile, Benjamin Jones lay gasping for air in the sick-bay of the Hereford Detention Barracks.

  He had Spanish influenza.

  Outside the gate, Lewis Jones clamoured to be let in. A sentry with a bayonet kept him back.

  23

  FOR THREE MONTHS after his ‘dishonourable discharge’ Benjamin refused to leave the farm. He slept late, stayed indoors, and did a few odd jobs around the house. There were sharp lines across his forehead, and dark rings under his eyes. His face was screwed up with a tic. He seemed to have slipped back into childhood, and only wanted to bake cakes for his brother – or to read.

  Mary heaved a sigh at the sight of him slumped, unshaven, on the settle: ‘Couldn’t you go outside and help them today? It’s a lovely day, and they’re lambing, you know.’

  ‘I know that, Mother.’

  ‘You used to love the lambing.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Please, please, don’t sit there doing nothing.’

  ‘Please, Mother, I’m reading,’ – but he was only reading the advertisements of the Hereford Times.

  Mary blamed herself for his moods. She felt guilty for allowing him to be taken, guiltier by far for the day of his return.

  The morning had been foggy, and the train from Hereford was late. Icicles hung in a frieze from the canopy, and the melting drops smacked on the flagstones. She had been standing beside the station-master, wrapped in a winter coat, her hands in a fur muff. When the train pulled in, the last two carriages were hidden from view, in the fog. Doors opened and slammed shut. The passengers – grey shapes looming up the platform – handed in their tickets and filed out through the gate. Eager and smiling, she pulled her right hand from the muff, ready to fling it around Benjamin’s neck. Then Lewis dashed up to a gaunt, crop-haired man, who was dragging a kitbag by its cord.

  She called out, ‘That’s not Benj——’ It was Benjamin. He had heard her. She threw herself towards him: ‘Oh, my poor darling!’

  He wanted to forget – willed himself to forget – the Detention Barracks: but even the squeak of bed-springs reminded him of the dormitory; even Amos’s hobnails, of the corporal who came to ‘get him’ at reveille.

  To avoid showing his face in public, he stayed behind while the others went to Chapel. Only on Good Friday did Mary persuade him to come: he sat between her and Lewis, neither sin
ging a note nor raising his eyes above the pew in front.

  Fortunately, Mr Gomer Davies had gone back to Bala; and the new minister, a Mr Owen Nantlys Williams, was a far nicer person, who came from the Rhymney Valley, and held pacifist views. As soon as the meeting was over, he took Benjamin by the arm and led him round the back of the building.

  ‘From what they tell me,’ he said, ‘you’re a very brave young man. An example to all of us! But you have to forgive them now. They’d no idea what they were doing.’

  Spring came. The apples were matted with blossom. Benjamin went for walks, and began to look better. Then, one evening, Mary slipped out to pick a sprig of parsley and found him, spreadeagled by some nettles, banging his head against the wall.

  At first, she thought he was having an epileptic fit. She crouched down and saw his eyes and tongue were normal. Crooning softly, she cradled his head in her lap:

  ‘Tell me! Tell me what’s the matter! You can tell your mother everything.’

  He picked himself up, shook the dirt from his clothes and said, ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’ she pleaded, but he turned his back and walked away.

  For some time she had noticed his look of resentment when his brother came in from the fields. After supper, she made Lewis carry a meat-dish to the back-kitchen, and rounded on him, sharply: ‘You’re going to tell me what’s the matter with Benjamin.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he faltered.

  So that’s it, she thought. A girl!

  Amos had rented the grass-keep of two adjoining fields and, after deciding to increase his head of beef cattle, sent Lewis to inspect a Hereford bull, at stud on a farm near Glan Ithon.

  On the way home, Lewis took a short cut through Lurkenhope Park. He skirted the lake and then entered the gorge that leads to the mill. The sky was hazy and the beeches were bursting into leaf. Above the path was the grotto, reeking of bats, where – so the story went – a forbear of the Bickertons paid a hermit to gaze at a skull.

  Below, the river splashed against the boulders in midstream, and big trout lazily flicked their fins in the deep green pools. Pigeons cooed, and he could hear the toc-toc of a woodpecker.