Scar Hill

by Alan Temperley

  He scanned the moor for sign of any shepherd or dogs. There was none, the sheep grazed peacefully. That far out, certainly on a bleak day in December, they rarely saw another figure, and never anyone to speak to.

  The tea did him good but Peter was far from well. He felt dizzy and when he coughed his lungs smelled dirty like bad breath. The sooner he got home to a warm fireside or his bed, as Mrs Harle had told him, the better.

  He packed away the unopened sandwiches and returned to his dad. Taking the spade, he tested the ground for the best place to start digging. There was unlimited choice. He selected a spot close-by where, in his imagination, the earth looked kinder. Exerting his strength, he tore up as many stalks of heather as he could, then took the spade and started to dig.

  It was work of the hardest sort. From the first pitch of the spade he was sweating. The peat itself was soft, but before he could get into it he had to chop through a mat of tough and tangled roots. He used the spade like an axe, jabbing it down vertically, jumping on the blade and ripping up the roots with his hands. They were hard to break. Even a strand as thick as string resisted his tug. It was a nightmare.

  Once the roots were cleared it was plain digging, but every spadeful of the waterlogged peat had to be thrown up to the ground above. The deeper he went, the higher grew the mounds on three sides.

  Peter was coughing constantly. His head throbbed. The clothes clung to his back. He threw off his woollen hat. At once the cold wind struck through his hair. He wiped his brow with a filthy, frozen hand.

  Near the surface the peat, the rotted moss and heather of centuries, was earth-brown. As he dug deeper it turned darker. Black gobbets fell from the spade, hit his legs and dropped back into the hole. It was wetter than in June when the peats were cut for fuel. In the trampled ooze his boots were scarcely visible.

  Peter scrubbed his hands on a patch of fresh green moss, so different from what lay below, and pulled off his jacket. The wind cut through his jersey. He had a choice, to freeze or sweat like a horse. For the moment he needed to freeze.

  The grave had become a ragged hole roughly two metres long and a bit less than a metre wide. Every few spadefuls he stopped to straighten his back. He had thrown down the clumsy gloves. With black fingernails he scratched off the dirt to examine his blisters. One had burst. He spat on it and scrubbed it clean against his jeans.

  Slowly the hole deepened. At last Peter judged it was deep enough. If it wasn’t – well, it would just have to be. He could do no more. The surrounding moor was level with his hips. The wind had strengthened, flapping his wet hair. He scraped the bottom of the hole until it was roughly flat and heaved himself up to the heather. The warmth of his jacket and hat were welcome.

  He had brought with him with two pieces of wood, a hammer and nails, a small Bible, and a jam jar with a tight lid containing a piece of paper on which he had written his dad’s name and address, and a brief account of what had happened. Peter had taken great care with this, writing it in rough then copying it out in his best handwriting and signing it.

  For ten minutes he rested in the shelter of the rock. Now came the worst part of all, the part he had been dreading. The hole was about four metres from Jim’s body. ‘Sorry, Dad.’ He grasped the bottom of Jim’s trousers and swung his legs towards the grave. They were very heavy. He took hold of his jacket. For a minute he couldn’t move the rigid body at all. It clung to the ground. He shifted his grip and lifted again. The body moved a few centimetres.

  At last his dad lay on the brink of the hole, the near side that was not piled high with peat. Peter turned him on his front so that when he fell it would not be face-down. He had brought a sheet from home. Trying not to look, he unwrapped his jersey and bound Jim’s head in the clean white cotton. Then, gritting his teeth, he rolled him into the grave.

  He landed with a thud that made Peter wince. To his relief his dad had fallen as he hoped, on his back with his head straight and one arm at his side. When the hole was filled, he saw, the outflung arm would be well covered. He clambered down, standing astride, and straightened his dad’s jacket. Carefully he placed the jam jar by his shoulder and climbed out again.

  A hidden stream tumbled down the hillside. The splash of a small waterfall reached his ears. He rinsed his hands in the icy water and dried them on his trousers. It did not occur to him to rinse his face which was also filthy. He took the black Bible from his schoolbag. With no minister in attendance, Peter had planned what he would read and had written a prayer on a sheet of lined writing paper. The prayer marked the page.

  He looked behind him. The dogs lay in the heather. ‘Ben,’ he called. ‘Meg. Come here. No, round this side. Good girl. Sit.’

  Obediently, though puzzled and not entirely happy, they did as they were told. Meg looked up and whined. He stroked her black and white head.

  Standing beside the grave, Peter read Psalm 121 aloud. They were words that Jim had liked and sometimes quoted:

  I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills

  From whence cometh my help;

  My help cometh from the Lord

  Which made heaven and earth …

  Before he had finished, the writing grew blurred and he had to blink away his tears.

  Then he said the Lord’s Prayer and read his own prayer, saying what a good man his dad had been and asking God to look after him.

  Not knowing what to do next, he stood for a long time with his eyes sometimes shut and sometimes open. Where was his dad, he wondered for the hundredth time. Had he just gone, like the rabbits he killed ferreting? Was that it? Or was he really up there somewhere? He raised his eyes to the slate-grey clouds. They had not been great churchgoers but he hoped so. Would he be pleased with what he was doing? Peter thought he would.

  The dogs moved away and at last he began to fill in the grave, it couldn’t be put off forever. As the black peat thudded down, Peter felt each blow as if it struck his own body. Worst was his dad’s face, bound in the white sheet. But little by little the hole filled up, covering his legs, his stomach, his chest, until nothing was left but a hand-sized glimpse of olive-green jacket. He threw down a last spadeful.

  His dad was gone.

  Peter’s head swam. He retreated to his seat by the rocks. Although the body was covered, the grave was only half filled, there was over half a metre to go. He thought he could never finish the job. His stomach heaved and he brought up his tea. It made him feel briefly better and after a short rest, planning to do just a little more, he returned to the spade. And somehow, with repeated breaks, he kept going until at last, well into the afternoon, the grave was filled to the level of the surrounding moor. He would have liked it to be a mound like new graves in the cemetery, but the last of the peat was scattered among the heather and it was not possible. He could do no more.

  Then Peter took the two pieces of wood he had brought and nailed them together in the form of a rough, untreated cross. Using the flat of the spade, he battered it into the moor behind his dad’s head. On the crosspiece, using paint that would merge into the background, he had written his dad’s name, James Allan Irwin, and the years of his birth and death. Less than a metre high, the cross was almost hidden by the surrounding heather. In an attempt to camouflage the grave and trampled black peat that surrounded it, he scattered the ground with the stalks he had pulled earlier.

  Peter had finished what he set out to do. Clearing up did not take long. Wearily he tipped out the dregs of his thermos, ate a mouthful of his sandwiches and gave the rest to the dogs. Before he started digging he had put Jim’s possessions into a plastic bag and tucked it away in his schoolbag. The sheet of plastic went in too. The rest could stay. He never wanted to see his jersey again and threw it into a dhu bog, using the spade to push it beneath the surface, then hid the spade and his dad’s rucksack under a whin bush.

  His emotions were all used up. With a last, ‘Bye, Dad. It won’t be for long, just a few days,’ he turned away and began the long trek across the hills
ide.

  He was so tired his legs would scarcely go where he wanted them. As he reached the crest he looked back and saw the black scar among the greens and reds and golds and browns of the moor. The scattered stems of heather did not conceal it very well. If anyone chanced upon it during the next few days, which was unlikely – well, it couldn’t be helped. A good downpour would start the healing process by rinsing the leaves and washing the loose peat down into the roots.

  Right on cue the rain, which had held off all day, flung a scatter of drops into his face. Dark cloud, so low you’d think you could hit it with a stone, hid the summit of Blae Fell. The way ahead was shrouded by a heavy squall. Peter coughed and spat. Summoning the last of his strength, he tugged his hat to his eyebrows and resumed walking.

  Ben and Meg, blinking as the rain grew heavier, followed at his heels. Behind them the grave of his dad was lost in the advancing dusk.

  18

  Asleep at his Desk

  PETER WAS WET to the skin; the cold had got into his bones. Clumsily he opened the van door. Ben shook himself in a whirlwind and scrambled through to the back. Meg followed, taking her privileged seat in the front. Peter fell into the driver’s seat and pulled the door shut behind him.

  Rain blurred the windows and drummed on the roof. For a full minute, hardly knowing where he was, he stared at the windscreen. It was Ben, scratching the back of the seat, who roused him to start the engine and drive home through the near dark.

  For a long time Peter soaked in a hot bath. He was shivering and dizzy when he stepped into the water, he was boiled and dizzy when he stepped out. Dutifully he tended to the animals, made himself a hot water bottle and crawled into bed.

  For two days he hardly stirred. There was some old cough medicine in the bathroom cabinet and half a box of paracetamol. He dosed himself with these, drank endless cups of tea and hot orange, and did his best to keep the house warm. Again he vomited and twice had to change the bedclothes because they were wet with perspiration. It was a testament to his health and strength that he did not develop pneumonia.

  By Thursday the worst of the fever was past and Peter sat listlessly on the settee, picking at a bowl of cornflakes and watching daytime television. His cough had broken. He blew his nose into sheets of toilet paper and threw them into the flames.

  He telephoned school to say he’d been laid up in bed and it would be Monday before he returned. But he saw no solution to the greater problem. It never went away, though now Jim was buried there was less urgency. People rarely called at the house and if anyone did come knocking, Peter thought, he could always tell them his dad was out on the hill. It might even be possible, if he could head off awkward questions and somehow look after the sheep, to live on at Scar Hill for weeks.

  But could he?

  Jim had died on Saturday. He counted on his fingers – five days. It was hard to believe. Wherever he went around the house and outbuildings there was a void, his dad wasn’t there. He wasn’t doing jobs in the yard; he wasn’t lolling in his chair with a can of lager; he wasn’t asleep in the byre; he wasn’t making dinner in the kitchen. His bed, made as always with military precision, had not been slept in. His jacket was missing from its peg in the hall. There was no need to make a second mug of tea. There was no one to talk to.

  The house was on edge with his absence.

  The dogs hung about the yard with their tails down. Were they missing Jim too, or simply responding to his own mood?

  Peter sniffed his cornflakes and decided the milk was going off. The last thing he needed was to upset his stomach with sour milk. He tipped them into the sink and ran the tap, squashing them down the plughole with a finger. Half a litre of milk remained, he had forgotten to put it back in the fridge when he was ill. Reluctantly he tipped it after the cornflakes and found some evaporated in the cupboard. It tasted horrible in tea but was good with cereal. He punched a couple of holes and made himself a fresh bowlful.

  Afterwards he looked for a biscuit. Only two were left in the packet. The bread was stale. The dogs’ food was getting low. He had thrown out the Cumberland sausage and a pack of stewing steak. Even if they’d not gone off, the idea of meat and gravy turned his stomach.

  He needed to go to the shop. There was plenty of money, he had the ten pounds from his dad’s pocket and another forty from his wallet in the bedroom. Jim’s credit cards were also in his wallet. There were two, his Visa and a cash card for which Peter knew the PIN number. Jim hadn’t kept it secret, not from Peter. ‘Hop along and get us fifty quid, Pete,’ he would say, passing him the card when they were out shopping in Clashbay. ‘I’ll see you in the Co-op.’

  And until the Social Security learned about his dad’s death, the money would keep coming – at least he thought so. A hundred and twenty pounds a week, straight into his bank account. Jim was a proud man and had hated it, hated living on hand-outs, but the income from a flock of sheep and a few lobsters was not enough to pay the bills and provide a proper home for his son. Perhaps some day, Peter thought, a form would arrive for his dad to fill in, a letter requesting him to appear at the Social Security Office. He didn’t know. For the time being, however, although there was little food in the house there was no shortage of money.

  If he had been four years older with a driving licence and insurance, he could have driven into the village that afternoon. Feeling weak wasn’t a reason to go hungry. As it was, he would have to attend school tomorrow, Friday, and get his messages at lunchtime. Otherwise it would mean waiting until Monday.

  Peter slumped on the settee. He could manage for one day. What he had to do now was rest and get as fit as possible for the next morning so he could tackle his lessons and not get sent home. Sent home? Who could fetch him with his dad buried out there on the moor? Maybe Mrs Harle or one of the teachers would insist on driving him. He tried not to think about it.

  Buster had been shut in his run for days. Peter fetched him into the living room for a run around. The dogs, particularly Ben, didn’t like Buster too much although they worked well out of doors. There was nothing would have pleased Ben better than to pounce on the ferocious little ferret and kill him with a snap and a good shake like the stuffed sock that was his favourite toy. This was absolutely forbidden and Ben knew it but that didn’t take away his longing. Buster understood the situation perfectly but it wasn’t in his nature to be afraid. Careless of the danger, he ambled round the room and it was Ben who watched uneasily and curled his grey paws out of the way.

  Peter watched them and smiled. The fire slumped with a shower of sparks. His eyes closed. The afternoon slipped away.

  At eight-forty next morning the school bus picked him up at the roadside. Peter felt a little better but even driving the van to the end of the track had raised a perspiration. His face was white. There were dark circles like bruise marks beneath his eyes. In his schoolbag he carried a thick wad of toilet paper for use when he coughed.

  The bus was full of noise. ‘Hey, Winnie, how you doing?’

  ‘You don’t look too good.’

  ‘Should you not still be in bed?’

  When they saw how rotten he felt they left him alone.

  He had been absent for eleven days. Now the classroom was decorated with streamers, a Christmas tree, Santas, a crib, tinsel, cards and an Advent calendar.

  ‘My dad wanted me to stay at home,’ he told Miss Berry, who was his class teacher as well as his English teacher. ‘But Mrs Harle said how everyone’s getting ready for Christmas. I didn’t want to miss it.’

  Miss Berry, a tiny old lady, had taught English at Tarridale High School for as long as anyone could remember. She was popular with the children. Half their mothers and fathers had been taught by her.

  ‘Well, if you’re sure, Peter,’ she said. ‘Stay quiet then and don’t do too much.’

  ‘Thanks, Miss.’ He forced a cheerful smile. ‘I’ll be fine.’

  ‘I don’t like to seem uncaring,’ she added, ‘but do try not to give it to the
others. There were eight off on Tuesday. Go on like this, there’ll be no one left.’

  Friday started with double Physics and Geography. At break time he sat in the cloakroom. Then it was double English.

  The bustle of the classroom in the run up to Christmas, which Peter had never noticed before, was exhausting. Miss Berry set them to write a seasonal story to be gathered into a book and passed around the class. A girl raised her hand.

  Miss Berry looked up from her marking.

  The girl pointed silently. Head on his desk, Peter was sound asleep.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Miss Berry. ‘Let him sleep. He’s not well. How’s your story coming along?’

  ‘I’ve finished,’ she mouthed silently. ‘I’m just doing the drawing.’

  ‘I look forward to seeing it,’ the teacher said.

  The girl gave her a smile and pushed back her hair, lowering her head above a scene of reindeer flying above snowy trees.

  Peter had been looking forward to Christmas for ages. He loved everything about it, not just at school but at home where, even though they lived in the heart of the moors and there were just the two of them, they decorated the house with streamers and evergreen. Every year a sparkling tree stood in its blue tub in the corner. Jim bought a cake which Peter covered in marzipan and icing sugar with Santa’s red sleigh, the same one they used every year, dashing across the surface. He hung up his stocking and Santa filled it while he was asleep. On Christmas Day they roasted a turkey, steamed a pudding and pulled crackers, sat by a roaring fire to watch the big Christmas film, filled themselves with nuts and chocolates, and played with Peter’s new games. Before this, around the start of December, Jim gave him twenty pounds to buy presents and cards. Others he made at the living-room table. Those were the ones his dad liked best.