by Jane Gardam
“Eclipse of the sun today,” I say to Harry. I am up at Light Trees washing up his breakfast things and making his bed and seeing to the flowers I flung in a jug quick yesterday before he threw me out, wanting to be alone. “Today’s Arrangements—Total Eclipse of the Sun.”
“What’s that?”
“What you told me about last time. How it said in The Times newspaper, ‘Today’s Arrangements—a total eclipse of the sun’. It must have been good to get a newspaper every day. And feel we were in charge of arrangements.”
He said nothing.
“Eclipse, Harry,” I said. “It’s the eclipse. When do we start up?”
“Up?”
“Start up the Nine Standards. They’ll all be there. The whole village and more. It’ll be good. We’re taking picnics I think.”
“All be going?”
“Well, of course all. All the village, like for the Jubilee. Hannah’s getting over from Cautley Spout. And they’re pushing up the old Egg-witch. And there’s to be Eileen’s lot and our lot and Gran and Grandad—not Great-grandad of course—but almost everyone. That old farmer from Castledale that rescued you from the gypsies, and the South American. And Kipper the dog. Not the cats though. Cats can get fuddled at an eclipse, Great-grandad says.”
“I can get fuddled,” said Harry. He went out into the yard to see the old horse-rake he’s doing up bit by bit, for it’s quite a treasure now.
But when I look, he’s just standing there beside it with a frown on his face. Such a sad look as you never saw. He’s lost all the grand ferocity of yesterday now. He’s just standing like an orphan.
And I think, however in all the world could Dad and Grandad and Great-grandad do it? Just because this Hewitson’s a Hewitson. And just because of a scant bit of paper not even a legal document, says my mother, Poppet (I heard her last night going for Dad like a serpent eating up the moon), just a sloppy bit of sentimental paper. And because there’s money in it. Because this South American’s offered shares to all of us in all he digs out, because times are hard and farmers cannot in the end resist money. “Harry can have a share, too,” says my dad. “He’ll need compensation—there being no other houses now to rent, all being bought up when the war scare was on in ’84. This chap thinks there’s a fair-sized seam up above the bouse.”
“Well, we know there’s a fair-sized seam,” said my mum. “We played as kids like Kendal showed us. We took the bronze rods or even just the blackthorn twigs until they twitched. And they did twitch, didn’t they? Until what? Until when? Until we put a nugget of ore in our pockets and then they stopped because of the same ore underfoot.”
My dad clattered about—I was listening up in my bed, through the floor.
“Aye,” says Mum, “and where did the seam come thickest? Where did Kendal say the real stuff lay? Underneath—right underneath—Light Trees’ long room, didn’t he? It’ll mean taking Light Trees right down to the ground.”
Watching Harry now I wonder if he’s thought of this, too. If he remembers playing looking for the seam. And I pray he doesn’t. He comes up the yard, back into the porch.
I say, “Look, Harry, Great-grandad owns Light Trees. It can’t pass from him till he’s dead. Nothing’s going to happen just yet anyway. Oh Harry!”
He glares.
“I know he’s old—well, very, very old. But nothing’s changed yet, has it? Can you see Great-grandad letting them dig up the Home Field? Putting great machines over Hartley Birket? Wheels and trucks and that? Neither would Dad—I know he wouldn’t. Mum wouldn’t let him.”
“And pull down Light Trees house itself,” says Harry. (So he knew.) “We always said when we were kids, Anne, that the best of the seam runs just about where your feet stand now.”
I look down at my feet and think of the miserable old chunks of lead or silver, maybe even the thick gummy pools of oil right deeper in the dark, under the stone floor and the earth and the limestone below.
“They’d never,” I say.
“Times are bad,” says Harry. “The money’s needed. This house isn’t needed. After all, I’ve got a roof of sorts over my head in London. Where I was born. I’ve more than most. We’ve been more than lucky, our family, having Light Trees to come to for all these years. We always knew we didn’t own it. Maybe it’s time to start siding all by now. Maybe people should stay where they were first put.”
“You great daft thing,” say I, “Harry Bateman! What sort of a world would this be if people had stayed where they was born? What sort of a country this? There’d have been no Vikings bringing bees and honey and no Christians bringing Jesus Christ and no Celts with bronze and jewels and no Romans fixing up roads and laws and no Saxons with books and painting and lovely clothes and no new ideas from nowhere. No gypsies for excitement, all the way from India. No Italian prisoners Grandad talks about in the last war bringing songs and that and no Chinese like over in Appleby cooking new food. This is what you’ve always told me, Harry Bateman. I wouldn’t be here if my mum hadn’t settled on marrying Bell first time she came up here at eleven.”
“Some bad things wouldn’t have got here neither,” Harry said, but he came over and pulled my hair. “Sorry, old Anne. It’ll all sort out, likely.”
Out of the window it wasn’t exactly getting dark but the light was growing odd—slightly sombre.
“Hey, Harry,” says I. “Look. It’s starting. The eclipse of the sun. Come on. You’re coming up, aren’t you? Come on quick. You’ll miss it. They’ll be all up there at the Nine Standards ahead of us.”
“All right then. I’m coming.” He gives a sigh, but he looks better.
We set off together away over the fell, up Hartley Birket to the fell gate. We climb it and away over the marshy place that in twenty years Harry says nobody’s remembered to take planks to throw across. We sog and we sough in the mud of the bogs—and we notice the colour of them is turning purplish. Reaching the first rise by the sheepfolds the stones of the walls are turning purplish, too. Away over, all the colours to Helvellyn, west, to Hell Beck, north, to Tailrigg, south, have all gone wrong. It’s like a television when someone’s turned the colour down too far. My inside lurches about. Harry laughs. We look all round and at each other’s face.
“You’ve turned bronzy,” says Harry.
We go on up, and on up. Soon we can see the Standards, leaning forwards like Roman standards on the march, but when you get nearer they’re fat as fir cones, black and huge like gigantic sheep droppings. Queer things at any time, standing there for all the earth and heavens to see and nobody knowing what they are. I wouldn’t camp up here at night, not for silver nor gold nor oil nor even Harry.
Some folks say the Standards move about. You look for them and they’re not there. You look again and they’re about half a mile from where they ought to be—but I don’t believe that, for they’ve always stood still for me.
You can wish for things on the Standards, but you should be careful, old Kendal says. Funny things went on up there once, he says. You have to be very sure you know what you’re asking, wishing on the Standards.
The Standards crown the Rigg and over the gold sprays of the grasses and the peat hags and the scatters of rocks sit people who have come to see the eclipse of the sun. I can make out our family from here. They are busy with their picnics, all littered about—Hewitsons and Teesdales sitting a bit apart. Being the oldest sheep families, they seem always a bit apart and more important.
It’s darkening now and Harry and I sit down near the rest. There’s silly shrieks and giggles here and there from kids, and “OOOH I’m frightened” and “Maybe it’ll be end oft’ world”. Someone says, “We’d look right soft if it didn’t happen.”
“It’ll happen all right,” says someone. “It’s happening. It’s beginning.”
“Hello, Harry,” says Bell, my dad. He gives a stiff nod.
�
�Morning, Bell,” says Harry, not looking at him.
Now all the peaks of Dufton, their tops caught up like tents, have turned black. And it’s queer. It’s as if there’s darkness above and light below. It’s like the light when the Helm Wind is blowing, but it’s not bitter cold like when the Helm blows. The Helm can freeze you so that the old miners had to have their clothes cut off with knives. There’s no wind here. Just the queer light that’s not darkness nor shadow nor twilight.
People start saying that they can see the stars shining. And the birds have stopped singing, says someone. No curlews nor larks. Listen how quiet!
I listen. And I watch. Harry beside me. Even with an eclipse of the sun I can’t forget this awful thing that’s happened to Harry. And as the whole world grows darker and the colours die out of the light I lean back and touch the great rough stone Standard, leaning my back on it. Then I stretch up and press my hands into the sharp hurting edges of the stones. Keep Harry here, I pray, keep him here.
And in the silence and the shadows—everyone has stopped talking, even whispering—there’s the weirdest thing. There’s the sound of a car. It comes from far, far away, then up nearer, up nearer and then it stops.
Then—no sign of lights. It must be over a fold—it starts again, and grows loud for a minute and then fainter and fainter still. And then it’s far away again so that you have to strain to hear it at all.
As the car engine gets fainter the light begins to grow stronger. Soon you can make out true colours again. The tent-like mountains over Dufton are no longer black but purple and then blue. The Saddleback is lavender and the Sedbergh hills are getting back their plushy yellow haze. And so is the fellside, and the grass and stones we sit on, sweeping down to the old turf track, smooth and ancient with a thousand years of sheep. The grass grows honest, ordinary green again.
And standing on the track, all by himself and humped like a goblin and eating a piece of cake is my great-grandad, Old Hewitson.
Everyone rushes at him.
Going on a hundred years old! they all shout. Never been farther than the rhubarb patch in ten years. “Thirteen hundred feet up?” and we’re all shouting and carrying on.
“You’ll get your death!”
“You silly old man.”
“However d’you get here?”
We run down and look him over and we fling clothes over him and he finishes his cake and starts laughing.
“Well, I missed it int’ end,” he says. “I tellt him to get a move on but yon big motors are no good nowadays. I’ll be glad to go back in the digby.”
“Whatever? Whyever?”
“Well, yon poor little white thing from Brazil or wherever, we were having a talk at home and it suddenly took my fancy to come up to the Standards again. Just to give him something to do. To take his mind from his disappointment.”
“Whatever’s that?”
“Henry Hewitson’s disappointment. About not being able to pull down Light Trees, poor little feller. He’s gone now. He won’t be back. He’s gone back to South America.”
Harry sat down on a rock. We all waited.
“Grandad,” said Bell, “what’s this then?”
“Well, he was talking on about silver and gold and the Crown Jewels and that he says is buried under Light Trees’ flagstones and I said I’d not think there’d ever be much chance to find out.
“He says, ‘When it’s mine. After your day, sir—’
“I says, ‘And why is to be thine after my day?’
“‘Well,’ he says, citing his piece of paper, ‘I’m a Hewitson,’ he says. ‘All your lot has their farms and properties. Light Trees is for me and blood is thicker than water.’
“And I says that I never cared for that expression. Not in the very least. In fact I’ve always had more of a fancy to water—though mind I’m not a vegetarian.”
“Will you get on, Grandad!” roars my dad, Bell. My mother, Poppet, puts both her fists in her mouth and I daren’t—I just daren’t—look at Harry.
“‘Well,’ says I, ‘there’s this Harry. He once went chasing after water when he was a bairn knee-high and he gathered a bundle of it and when he gets it home it’s all gone. And there’s my lad’s lad, Bell, nearly dies of bronchitis chasing water, too. But feeling it was worth it in the end. I’ve never been far from water all my life—though mind you I think nothing of the sea; I wouldn’t thank you for it—there’s seldom been a day I haven’t heard the water running in the hollows of the fell. Yet every day has been different.’”
“Get on, will you!”
“‘Well,’ says I, ‘your bit of paper’s nowt. I’ve had it looked at by the solicitors when you were all up hay-making and pacing fields for treasure last week. There’s a later bit of paper—mine. I wrote it out long since when Harry Bateman were thirteen-year-old and the little lass Anne just born. I left Light Trees to the little lass Anne, but Harry Bateman to be tenant for his life.’ The solicitors said Henry Hewitson’s bit of paper couldn’t touch mine. It wasn’t a patch on it.
“Mind you,” he added, as everyone started humping him into the digby and wrapping him in things, “I’se far from dead yet and I’ll be wanting rent from Batemans until.”
When most had gone on down—Teesdales and Hewitsons and a trail of hangers-on behind—Harry and Bell and I stood watching the procession down the Nine Standards Rigg. It was a good sight—the little coloured cart and all the heads nodding and the talk and the exclamations and the running people in front and behind. Auntie Eileen had her latest new baby asleep on her arm, and there was the old Egg-witch like Boadicea in her pram, and my mother, Poppet, talking her head off, very decisive as usual, and everyone I loved the most. I just wished Kendal was here back from the total eclipse in Cornwall—it couldn’t have been better than here—and a few more Batemans.
But they will all be coming next week, even James from far away. And if we book the call in, we can telephone them. Telephone them to tell them not to worry about anything. Not ever again. For they are safe here for ever in the Hollow Land.
I was last down to the fell gate, feeling quite dizzy and a bit sickish and not that keen to turn and look round at the Standards. I could feel them looking down at me, boring their old magics into my back. So I walked on steady to the fell gate.
Bell and Harry were messing with it, swinging the old thing to and fro.
“When things look up again,” said Bell, “I’m getting an electronic sneck on this fell gate.” They said not one word about Great-grandad Hewitson, or yesterday, or the South American or Light Trees at all.
“Beats me,” says Dad, “how people still can’t shut this fell gate. First one person leaves it open for others behind, then along come the stragglers and think that’s how it’s meant to be—and it’s sheep in the meadows and cows on the fell.”
“Folks don’t change,” says Harry. “Look, they’ve even taken off with the twine.”
“I’ll get some,” shouts I. “There’s John Robert twine in the Light Trees clipping shed. Wait on.”
And I go flying and leaping down Hartley Birket and over the wall into the Home Field. And here’s Light Trees looking at me with its old and smiling face, quiet and untroubled in the green fellside.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jane Gardam is the only author to have twice been awarded Britain’s prestigious Costa (formerly Whitbread) Award for Best Novel. She was also a Booker prize finalist. Her novel The Man in the Wooden Hat was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times book prize and Old Filth was a finalist for the Orange Prize and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. She lives in the south of England near the sea.
In 1999 Jane Gardam was awarded the Heywood Hill Literary Prize in recognition of a distinguished literary career.
MORE FROM JANE GARDAM
OLD FILTH TRILOGY BOXED SET
STORIES OF JAN
E GARDAM
THE MAN IN THE WOODEN HAT
LAST FRIENDS
CRUSOE'S DAUGHTER
THE PEOPLE ON PRIVILEGE HILL
QUEEN OF THE TAMBOURINE
GOD ON THE ROCKS
A LONG WAY FROM VERONA