On The Black Hill (Vintage Classics)

by Chatwin, Bruce

  ‘But, Uncle, it’s safer than driving a car …’

  ‘Aye! With your driving, maybe! No, No … I’d never go in a plane.’

  The car had scarcely stopped moving before Lewis had hopped out and was standing on the tarmac, stupefied.

  Ranked on the grass were about thirty light aircraft – Cessnas mostly, belonging to members of the West Midlands Flying Club. Some were white. Some were brightly coloured. Some had stripes, and all of their wingtips quivered as if they were itching to be airborne.

  The wind was freshening. Patches of shadow and sunlight raced one another down the runway. On the control tower, an anemometer whirled its little black cups. On the far side of the airfield was a line of swaying poplars.

  ‘Breezy,’ said Kevin, his hair blowing over his eyes.

  A young man in jeans and a green bomber jacket shouted, ‘Hi, Kev!’ and strolled over, dragging his boot-heels across the asphalt.

  ‘I’m your pilot.’ He grasped Lewis by the hand. ‘Alex Pitt.’

  ‘Thank you very much.’

  ‘Happy birthday!’ he said, turning to Benjamin. ‘Never too late to take up flying, eh?’ Then, pointing to the Nissen huts, he asked them to follow. ‘One or two formalities,’ he said, ‘and we’re off!’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir!’ said Lewis, thinking that was what you said to a pilot.

  The first room was a cafeteria. Above the bar was a wooden propeller from the First World War: the walls were hung with coloured prints of the Battle of Britain. The airfield had once been a parachute-training centre – and still, in a sense, it was.

  A party of young men, dressed for a ‘drop’, were drinking coffee. And on seeing Kevin, a beefy fellow got to his feet, slapped his hand on his friend’s leather jacket, and asked if he was coming too.

  ‘Not today,’ Kevin said. ‘I’m flying with my uncles.’

  The pilot ushered them into the Briefing Room, where Lewis greedily examined the notice-board, the maps marked with airlanes, and a blackboard covered with an instructor’s scribbles.

  A black labrador then bounded out of the air-controller’s office, and rested its paws on Benjamin’s trousers. In the animal’s appealing stare, he seemed to see a warning not to go. He felt dizzy, and had to sit down.

  The pilot put three printed forms on the blue formica table – one … two … three … and asked the passengers to sign.

  ‘Insurance!’ he said. ‘In case we land in a field and kill some old farmer’s cow!’

  Benjamin gave a start, and almost dropped the ball point pen.

  ‘Don’t you scare my uncles,’ Kevin bantered.

  ‘Nothing could scare your uncles,’ said the pilot, and Benjamin was aware that he had signed.

  Eileen and the terrier waved at the flying party as they walked across the grass towards the Cessna. There was a broad brown stripe down the length of the fuselage, and a much thinner stripe along the wheel-spats. The plane’s registration number was G-BCTK.

  ‘TK stands for Tango Kilo,’ Alex said. ‘That’s its name.’

  ‘Funny name,’ said Lewis.

  Alex then began the external checks, explaining each one in turn. Benjamin stood forlornly by the wingtip, and thought of all the crashes in Lewis’s scrapbook.

  But Lewis seemed to think he was Mr Lindbergh.

  He crouched down. He stood on tiptoe. His eyes were glued to the young man’s every movement. He watched how to check the landing gear, to make sure of the flaps and ailerons, and how to test the warning horn that beeped if the plane was about to stall.

  He noticed a slight dent in the tail-fin.

  ‘Probably a bird,’ said Alex.

  ‘Oh!’ said Benjamin.

  His face fell even further when the time came to board. He sat in the back seat and, when Kevin fastened his safety-belt, he felt more trapped and miserable than ever.

  Lewis sat on the pilot’s right, trying to make sense of all the dials and gauges.

  ‘And this one?’ he ventured. ‘Joystick, I suppose?’

  The plane was a trainer and had dual controls.

  Alex corrected him: ‘We call it the control column nowadays. One for me and one for you if I faint.’

  There was a hiccough from the back seat but Benjamin’s voice was drowned by the rattle of the propeller. He closed his eyes as the plane taxied out to the holding-point.

  ‘Tango Kilo checks completed,’ the pilot radioed. Then, with a touch of throttle, the plane was on the runway.

  ‘Tango Kilo leaving circuit to the west. Estimate return forty-five minutes. Repeat, forty-five minutes.’

  ‘Roger, Tango Kilo,’ a voice came back over the intercom.

  ‘We take off at sixty!’ Alex bawled into Lewis’s ear – and the rattle rose to a roar.

  By the time Benjamin opened his eyes again, the plane had climbed to 1,500 feet.

  Down below there was a field of mustard in flower. A greenhouse flashed in the sun. The stream of white dust was a farmer fertilizing a field. Woods went by, a pond coated with duckweed, and a quarry with a team of yellow bulldozers. He thought a black car looked a bit like a beetle.

  He still felt a little nauseous, but his fists were no longer clenched. On ahead was the Black Hill and clouds streaming low over the summit. Alex climbed the plane another thousand feet, and warned them to expect a bump or two.

  ‘Turbulence,’ he said.

  The pines on Cefn Hill were blue-green and black-green in the varied light. The heather was purple. The sheep were the size and shape of maggots, and there were inky pools with rings of reed around them. The plane’s shadow moved upon a herd of grazing ponies, which scattered in all directions.

  For one terrible moment, the cliffs above Craig-y-Fedw came rushing up to meet them. But Alex veered off and eased down into the valley.

  ‘Look!’ cried Lewis. ‘It’s The Rock!’

  And there it was – the rusty stockade, the pool, the broken roof, and Meg’s white geese in a panic!

  And there, on the left, was The Vision! And there was Theo!

  ‘Aye! It’s Theo all right!’ Now it was Benjamin’s turn to be excited. He pressed his nose against the window and peered down at the tiny brown figure, waving its hat in the orchard, as the plane flew low on its second circuit, and dipped its wings.

  Five minutes later, they were out of the hills and Benjamin was definitely enjoying himself.

  Alex then glanced over his shoulder at Kevin, who winked. He leaned across to Lewis and shouted, ‘It’s your turn.’

  ‘My turn?’ He frowned.

  ‘To fly.’

  Gingerly, Lewis laid his hands on the control column and strained, with his good ear, to catch each word of the instructor. He pulled towards him, and the nose lifted. He pushed, and it fell away. He pressed to the left, and the horizon tilted. Then he straightened up and pressed to the right.

  ‘You’re on your own now,’ said Alex, calmly, and Lewis made the same manoeuvres, on his own.

  And suddenly he felt – even if the engine failed, even if the plane took a nosedive and their souls flew up to Heaven – that all the frustrations of his cramped and frugal life now counted for nothing, because, for ten magnificent minutes, he had done what he wanted to do.

  ‘Try a figure-of-eight,’ Alex suggested. ‘Down on the left! … That’s enough! … Now straighten up! … Now down on the right! … Easy does it! … Good! … Now another big loop and we’ll call it a day.’

  Not until he had handed back the controls did Lewis realize that he had written the figures eight and zero in the sky.

  They were coming in to land. They saw the runway approaching, first as a rectangle, then a trapeze, then as a sawn-off pyramid, as the pilot radioed his ‘finals’ and the plane touched down.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ said Lewis, shyly smiling.

  ‘It was my great pleasure,’ Alex said, and helped the twins step down.

  He was a professional photographer; and it was only ten days since Kevin had comm
issioned an aerial photograph of The Vision, in colour.

  Mounted and framed, this was the second half of the twins’ birthday present. They unwrapped it in the car park, and gave the young couple each a kiss.

  The big question was where to hang it.

  Plainly, it belonged on the wall of photographs in the kitchen. But nothing had been added since Amos’s death, and the wallpaper, though faded in between the frames, was as fresh as new behind them.

  For a whole week, the twins bickered and juggled and lifted uncles and cousins off hooks that had been theirs for sixty years. And finally, just as Lewis had given up and decided to hang it above the piano, with ‘The Broad and Narrow Path’, it was Benjamin who lit on the solution: that by shifting Uncle Eddie and the grizzly up one, and by shifting Hannah and Old Sam along one, there was just enough space for it to fit beside their parents’ wedding-group.

  49

  THE DAYS WERE drawing in. Swallows chattered on the electric cables, all set for the long journey south. A gale blew in the night and they were gone. Around the time of the first frost, the twins had a call from Mr Isaac Lewis, the minister.

  They went so seldom now to Chapel, but the Chapel was on their conscience, and their visitor made them nervous.

  He had walked all the way from Rhulen, over Cefn Hill. His trouser bottoms were coated in mud and, though he scraped his soles on the boot scraper, he left a trail on the kitchen floor. A long forelock hung down between his eyebrows. His bulging brown eyes, though glittering with the light of faith, were none the less watering from the wind. He commented on the unseasonable weather: ‘Harsh for September, isn’t it?’

  ‘Harsh!’ agreed Benjamin. ‘Like as it’s the first day of winter.’

  ‘And the Lord’s House deserted,’ the minister went on sombrely. ‘And the People far from Him … Not counting the cost …!’

  He was a Welsh nationalist of extreme views. But he expressed these views in so allusive a language that few of his listeners had the least idea what he was talking about. It took the twins twenty minutes to realize he was asking them for money.

  The finances of Maesyfelin Chapel were in disarray. In June, while repairing some tiles, the roofer had uncovered a patch of dry rot. The pre-war wiring had proved to be a fire hazard, and the interior had been repainted, blue.

  The minister was very red in the face, as much from embarrassment as the heat of the fire. He sucked the air in through his teeth, as if his whole life consisted of embarrassing interviews. He spoke of materialism, and of an ungodly age. Gradually, he hinted that Mr Tranter, the contractor, was pressing him for payment.

  ‘And have I not paid fifty pounds from my own pocket? But what is the good of fifty pounds today, I ask you?’

  ‘How much was the bill then?’ Benjamin interrupted.

  ‘Five hundred and eighty-six pounds,’ he sighed, as if exhausted by prayer.

  ‘And will I make the payment to Mr Tranter directly?’

  ‘To him,’ said the minister, too surprised to say anything else.

  His eyes followed Benjamin’s pen as it wrote out the cheque. This he folded meticulously and slipped into his wallet.

  The wind was tossing the larches when he came to leave. He paused by the porch and reminded the twins of the Harvest Festival, at three o’clock on Friday.

  ‘Indeed, a time for thanksgiving!’ he said, and turned up the collar of his coat.

  Early on Friday morning, Lewis drove his tractor to The Tump and asked Rosie Fifield to join them.

  ‘To thank who for what?’ she snapped and banged the door. At half past two Kevin came to collect the twins by car. He was smartly turned out in a new grey suit. Eileen was expecting at any minute, and so stayed at home. Benjamin was limping with a touch of sciatica.

  Outside the Chapel, farmers with fresh weatherbeaten faces were quietly moaning about Mrs Thatcher’s government. Inside, children in white ankle-socks were playing hide-and-seek among the pews. Young Tom Griffiths was distributing the Harvest Hymn Sheet, and women were arranging their dahlias and chrysanthemums.

  Betty Griffiths Cwm Cringlyn – the one they all call ‘Fattie’ – had baked a loaf in the shape of a wheatsheaf. Heaped on the communion table were apples and pears; pots of honey and chutney; ripe tomatoes and green tomatoes; green grapes and purple grapes; marrows, onions, cabbages and potatoes, and runner beans that were the size of sawblades.

  Daisy Prothero brought in a basket labelled ‘Fruits of the Field’. There were corn-dollies pinned to the pillars of the aisle, and the pulpit had been wreathed with old man’s beard.

  The ‘other’ Joneses came, Miss Sarah showing off as usual in her musquash coat and hat of parma violets. The Evan Bevans had come, Jack Williams the Vron, Sam the Bugle, all the remaining Morgans; and when Jack Haines Red Daren hobbled in on a stick, Lewis got up and shook his hand: it was the first time they had spoken since the murder of Mrs Musker.

  There was a sudden silence when Theo came in with Meg.

  Aside from her spell in hospital, she had never left Craig-y-Fedw in over thirty years: so her appearance in the world was an event. Shyly, in an overcoat down to her ankles, she took her place beside the giant South African. Shyly, she raised her eyes and, when she saw the rows of smiling faces, she screwed her own face into a smile.

  Mr Isaac Lewis, in a suit of goose-shit green, was standing by the door to greet his flock. He had the odd habit of cupping his hands in front of his mouth, and gave the impression of wanting to catch his previous statement and cram it back between his teeth.

  Bible in hand, he went up to Theo and asked him to read the Second Lesson – Chapter 21 of the Book of Revelation: ‘I suggest you leave out verses 19 and 20. You might have some difficulty with the words.’

  ‘No,’ Theo stroked his beard. ‘I know the stones of New Jerusalem.’

  The first hymn – ‘For the Beauty of the Earth’ – got off to a shaky start with the singers and harmonium player at variance as to both tempo and tune. Only a few valiant voices struggled on to the end. Then the preacher read a chapter of Ecclesiastes:

  ‘“A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted …”’

  Lewis felt the heat of the radiator burning through his trousers. He smelled a whiff of singeing wool, and nudged his brother to move down the bench.

  Benjamin stared at the black curls curling over the back of Kevin’s collar.

  ‘“A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away …”’

  He glanced down at the Harvest Hymn Sheet, on which were printed pictures of the Holy Land – women with sickles, men sowing grain, fishermen by Galilee, and a herd of camels round a well.

  He thought of his mother, Mary, remembering that she too had been in Galilee. And of how, next year, when the farm belonged to Kevin, it would be so much easier to slip through the needle’s eye, and join her.

  ‘“A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace …”’

  On the back page was a caption reading ‘All is Safely Gathered In’ and, below it, a photo of some smiling crop-haired boys, with tin mugs in their hands and tents behind.

  He read that these were the Palestinian Refugees, and thought how nice it would be to send them a Christmas present – not that they had Christmases over there, but they’d get their present all the same!

  Outside, the sky was darkening. A clap of thunder sounded over the hill. Gusts shook the windows, and raindrops pecked against the leaded panes.

  ‘Hymn Number Two,’ said the preacher. ‘“We plough the fields and scatter the good seed on the land …”’

  The congregation rose and opened its mouth, but all the thin voices were silenced by one strident voice from the back.

  The room was alive with the noise of Meg’s singing and, when she came to the line, ‘By Him the birds are fed,’ a tear fell from Lewis’s eyelid, and trickled down the crease of his cheek.

&nb
sp; Then it was Theo’s turn to hold the audience spellbound:

  ‘“And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And I John saw the holy city …”’

  Theo moved through the text, listing the jasper and jacinth, the chrysoprase and chalcedony, without misplacing a syllable. The people facing the windows saw a rainbow arched over the valley, and a flock of black rooks beneath it.

  When it was time for the sermon, the preacher got to his feet and thanked his ‘brother in Christ’ for so memorable a reading Never in his experience had the Holy City seemed so real, so palpable. He, for one, had felt that he could reach out and touch it.

  But this was not a city you could touch! It was not a city of brick or stone. Not a city like Rome or London or Babylon! Not a city of Canaan, for there was falsity in Canaan! This was the city that Abraham saw from afar, a mirage on the horizon, when he went to dwell in the wilderness, in tents and tabernacles …

  At the word ‘tent’ Benjamin thought of Theo. Meanwhile, Mr Lewis had lost all trace of his ineloquence. His arms reached out to the roofbeams.

  ‘Nor’, he thundered, ‘is it a city for the wealthy! Remember Abraham! Remember how Abraham returned his wealth to the King of Sodom! Remember! Not one thread, not one shoe-latchet would he take from the Kingdom of Sodom …!’

  He paused for breath, and continued in a less emotional tone:

  They had gathered in this humble chapel to thank the Lord for a sufficiency. The Lord had fed them, clothed them, and given the necessities of life. He was not a hard taskmaster. The message of Ecclesiastes was not a hard message. There was a time and a place for everything – a time to have fun, to laugh, to dance, to enjoy the beauty of the earth, these beautiful flowers in their season …

  Yet they should also remember that wealth was a burden, that worldly goods would stop them travelling to the City of the Lamb …

  ‘For the City we seek is an Abiding City, a place in another country where we must find rest, or be restless for ever. Our life is a bubble. We are born. We float upwards. We are carried hither and thither by the breezes. We glitter in the sunshine. Then, all of a sudden, the bubble bursts and we fall to the earth as specks of moisture. We are as these dahlias, cut down by the first frosts of autumn …’