The Wild Silence

by Raynor Winn

  I spotted the socks, all of them in a plastic bag under the bed. Why would she do that? I took the socks and went back to the hospital.

  A change of shift had brought another doctor, another face.

  ‘We can get her into surgery for the tube tomorrow morning. Obviously, in her condition, there are risks with the anaesthetic.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘No, she wouldn’t want it. She’d hate to be lying there depending on others for everything. She’d hate this. I know she is hating this.’

  ‘But we need to do it. It’s the next step.’

  ‘No, you don’t need to at all. Just let her be. It’s what she would want.’ Did I know that? Was I sure? Could I possibly make that decision without any cloud to my judgement? If I stuck to it would I always question myself, always doubt the choice? Of course, there was no question of that.

  ‘I’m not sure if we can allow that.’

  ‘The other doctor said it was my choice. It isn’t about me, it’s about Mum, and I’m sure it would be her choice.’ Did I really know that? How could I possibly know? Even as I said it, I could hear the gamekeeper’s whistle, that long monotone whistle from the woods.

  The doctor referred the issue to the consultant, who insisted on a meeting with a Macmillan nurse, so that I ‘fully understand my decision’. So I sat in another corridor and waited for the nurse, but she didn’t come. I didn’t really need the meeting; I already understood so much more than the doctor could imagine. In the years since Moth’s diagnosis thoughts of death and the process of dying rarely left my head for more than a day. Years filled with time spent in hospital corridors learning how to wait and how to be afraid. Time spent on open cliff tops trying to grasp the finality of death, and to accept it as part of life. And yet I could still only see death from the point of view of an observer, not as someone holding on to the last thread of their existence, so how could I make the ultimate decision for her? How could I? I needed her to tell me, to show me something from her trapped world.

  I stopped waiting for the nurse, went back to Mum’s room, held her hand and stroked the lifeless, papery greyness as I fell over the words. Stumbling through the impossibility of explaining how she would end her long life, and how a choice had to be made. How could she possibly tell me anything? I should have protected her from the truth and let her think she would get well, if she was still able to think at all. I gave up and let go, sobbing without control, tears flowing from a well of loss that just kept growing deeper. As I wiped my face, smearing away salt and snot, she opened her eyes, those watery blue-grey eyes. They hesitated for a while at the end of the bed, focused on something out of sight and then turned to me, holding my gaze as her mouth moved, a slight, barely perceptible movement. And a whisper, so faint I had to put my ear to her mouth.

  ‘Ome.’

  ‘What, Mum, what is that, what are you saying?’

  ‘Ome.’

  ‘What are you saying, Mum, are you saying “home”?’

  Her eyes fixed on my face and then they closed and she slipped back into sleep. Home, what did she mean by home?

  The Macmillan nurse came and sat by the bed.

  ‘I was waiting for you in the corridor.’

  ‘I know, I’m sorry, I was delayed.’

  I told her about ‘ome’ and what I thought it meant: that Mum wanted to go home to die, as Dad had when the cancer he’d tried to ignore finally overtook him. So she talked to her and carefully explained the situation, without tears or drama. But there was no response.

  ‘We can’t allow her to go home; her care needs are such that she needs to stay here. Are you sure you heard her say something? It seems very unlikely.’

  ‘I did. I know I did.’

  The consultant came, ticked boxes, signed forms, the antibiotics were removed and she was wheeled from the ward into a side room. A room of quiet, ultimate stillness, completely alone. She was in the dying room.

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Three, four days at the most.’

  I moved into the room with her.

  5. Trust

  I needed Moth to be there, to share the horror of the decision, to just be present in the space next to me. But the word ‘aspirate’ was too close, too real; I couldn’t let him witness it. However Mum died it would be her death. Not his. But if he was there in that dying room I couldn’t keep the two separate in my own mind, and I needed to hide him from it, hide him from the possible horrors to come. Hide him from death. And Mum wouldn’t have wanted him there; in fact she’d have hated him being present.

  Moth had blown into my life on a Wednesday afternoon, his hair hanging in Celtic plaits, his old RAF trench coat flapping behind him. I was eighteen, barely an adult, when he’d ignited my life with a wild electricity that hadn’t faded. His raw, visceral, impassioned spirit joined every fight to protect the environment and he’d lived his days following a dream: that he would be able to make people understand we had one precious land which had to be protected. He’d spent weeks up trees and on encampments blocking the building of new motorways, and weekends outside the railings of Sellafield nuclear power station fighting to stop the outdoor dumping of radioactive waste. But the protests were ignored, the concrete came anyway and the waste continued to be dumped in the pond. I was overwhelmed by the light he seemed to emit; it shone through every dark, dusty, undiscovered corner of my world. Naïvely, I’d believed that my family would feel the same. They didn’t.

  Moth was strangely, almost magnetically drawn to the countryside, to the wilderness. He’d grown up in the town, but even as a child his eyes were turned towards the trees and the hills. His thoughts were always of when he could next pass from the grey to the green. In the months after we met, whenever we could, we went to the Peak District and walked across every hill, moor and valley that we could access for a day trip. I’d spent my life in the countryside, so that wasn’t why I went – for me those walks were about being with him. But for Moth it was something else; he was drawn to nature like an addiction and without that regular shot of green he found the rest of his world unbearable.

  Walking was one thing, but Moth was always looking for something else, for a more intense immersion in the outdoors. On a morning when we should have been in college, we were at his house, T. Rex playing on the wooden record player. As Marc Bolan rode a white swan, Moth stood by his bedroom window, looking hazily blue in the sunlight as it reflected from the mirror. I’d only known him for a few months, but he’d created a whirlpool in my life, a kind of madness where all I thought about was him. He’d pulled on his jeans and was holding his T-shirt in his hand, but hesitated by the window, looking up the street and then waving.

  ‘Who are you waving at? You’re not dressed.’

  ‘Just the old lady over the road. Doesn’t matter – I’ve waved to her all my life. I never close the curtains.’ He seemed restless, as if he was waiting for something to happen. ‘Let’s go rock climbing. Come on, I’ll get the rope.’ He climbed with his friends, but I’d never been. He tucked the T-shirt into his jeans and did up the belt. I briefly skimmed over the scenario in my head. Just time to get to the rocks, then get home without my parents even knowing that I’d skipped the day off college. Of course I was going.

  We parked my tiny battered Fiat car at the foot of the Roaches, a band of gritstone rock rising out of the Staffordshire moorland. We’d walked there many times, crossing the crenelated escarpment from Rockhall Cottage to Lud’s Church and then returning along the road, Moth pointing out climbing routes he’d attempted with his friends. Getting out of the car, he put his faded blue canvas rucksack on his back, with a pair of EB rock-climbing boots dangling from it and an orange rope thrown over his shoulder, and we began the walk up to the rocks. He was explaining how the texture of the sole of the boots had a sticky effect on the rock, allowing for a better grip. I looked down at my cheap plastic trainers and wondered how they would stick.

  ‘Don’t worry
, I’ll lead, so you’ll be following up, and if you slip I’ll have the rope secured so you don’t fall.’

  I put on his spare harness, closing the buckles to their tightest setting. It was still loose – what if I fell out of it?

  ‘It’s just an easy route, so you’ll be fine.’ He explained how the rope ran through a metal belaying device that clipped to my harness. ‘Let it run through your hands while I’m climbing, then secure it off like this when I stop. Then if I slip I won’t crash off; it stops the rope from running and breaks my fall.’ He pulled the rope to one side to imitate me securing him.

  ‘What if I can’t hold it?’

  ‘You will. I trust you.’

  And he was gone, heading up the rock wall with certainty and confidence, while I stood on a rock slab at the foot of the climb. I shuffled my mustard-coloured trainers, looking up at what appeared to be a flat wall of rock rising straight up into a blue sky. Each time he stopped I secured the rope. I’d got this; it was going to be fine. The ground was dry and dusty and as the day heated up and the rocks became warm, the smell of the pine trees below began to fill the air. Moth reached an awkward spot and leant out away from the rock, holding on with one hand so that he could get a better look at the route above, his feet stickily gripping the small indentations in the rock as he said they would. The shape of his lean body arched away from the gritstone caught the light, creating an almost surreal silhouette against the blue sky. I had to take a photo, to capture the moment. As I bent down and picked up the camera, letting go of the rope to take the photo, he leant back an inch too far and without my hand on the rope to stop him, started to fall. Dropping the camera, I snatched at the rope, slowing his fall, but not soon enough to stop him hitting the rocky ground at the base with some force.

  ‘What the …? Why didn’t you stop me?’

  ‘I picked up the camera.’

  ‘You’re kidding me. It better be a bloody good picture.’

  ‘I don’t know if I even pressed the shutter. Are you hurt? Shall we go back?’

  ‘Yeah, it feels weird when I breathe, but you’re climbing this before we go.’ He stood up stiffly and quickly climbed to the top without hesitation, belayed and waited for me to follow. I couldn’t. What if he let me slip just to prove a point? ‘Come on. Trust me – you’ll be fine.’

  I started to climb. Easier than I thought: my fingers found the grips; the footholds felt secure. But as I reached the very spot where Moth had leant out my trainers slipped and I was off the rock. A momentary lurch and then a snatch on the harness and I’d stopped falling and was hanging in the air.

  I could see his face over the rocks at the top of the climb, his hair blowing in the wind beneath the red bandana tied around his head.

  ‘You’re okay, I’ve got you.’

  I hung in the warm air, the moorlands spreading out around me, but all I could focus on was his face framed against the blue sky. I stopped panicking as the wind blew gently against the rope. I knew I wouldn’t fall; he had the rope. I wasn’t going anywhere but up.

  By the time I’d driven back to town Moth was struggling to breathe. I helped him out of the car and watched him walk into A & E. Then I drove home.

  Mum was in the garden when I got there. ‘Did you have a good day?’

  I looked at her weeding the flower beds and wanted to say yes, absolutely yes. I’m in love with a man whom I can trust with my life, and today I learnt that even if I get things wrong, I can still trust myself to try again and I think I might be good at photography, even though it’s taken Moth possibly cracking a rib to find that out. I desperately wanted to share it all with her. But I didn’t.

  ‘It was okay.’

  I’d tried so hard to make my parents understand Moth, but the more I talked the more their fury grew. They’d rejected him with a venom and ferocity that wiped out every vision I had of what my family was. ‘You’ll regret this, my girl, you’ll regret this ’til the day you die.’ I couldn’t grasp it, couldn’t understand why they didn’t see what I saw. ‘He’s no use to you, he’s useless, pointless.’ I was in agony as I began to try to live between two worlds. Hiding one from the other: my unrestrained happiness as Moth and I grew closer, and maintaining my parents’ belief that I was the daughter they wanted me to be. A tearing, hiding, lying impossibility, yet I couldn’t choose one above the other. I couldn’t face the disapproval and rejection that being honest with my parents had brought. I wanted it all. I wanted to keep all the people I loved in a tight close bubble; I didn’t want to be without any of them.

  Moth didn’t want to just see the natural world, he wanted to envelop himself in it, to feel the elements in their wildest form, as empty of man as he could find. Neither of us earned enough money to travel abroad, but in this country that desire drew him north. So when he began to plan a trip to the Highlands of Scotland I knew I had to find a way to go with him. I couldn’t tell my parents, but looking back over the decades that have passed since then, the idea of not simply saying to them, ‘I’m going on a camping trip with my boyfriend and if you don’t like it, well, tough,’ seems faintly ridiculous. Yet I couldn’t: their views and their hold was so tight, the recrimination so difficult to endure that I simply wasn’t brave enough to face it. But I was going with him anyway.

  Of course I was going with his whole family, of course I had my own room, of course Moth’s parents would be with us all the time. At Moth’s house I emptied my clothes from my suitcase into a rucksack he’d borrowed from a friend. I hoisted the huge, red, hard-framed, rusty lump on my back, the very first time I’d felt the sag of weight on my shoulders and the security of the waist-strap around my hips. Moth tightened the shoulder straps and my eight-stone, twenty-year-old frame was held in a straitjacket. I had no idea how I would be able to move with this thing strapped to me, but all I felt was wild excitement. Moth plaited his hair, put his ragged waistcoat over his collarless shirt and tweed cropped trousers, laced his walking boots and we were ready, we were going, we were actually doing this. His dad gave us a lift to the railway station to catch the night train to Inverness.

  ‘What do I do if your parents phone the house?’ Moth’s dad straightened his flat cap and looked quizzically out of the car window.

  ‘They won’t, you’re supposed to be in the north of Scotland on holiday.’ What if they did? What if they checked it out? I pushed the thought to the back of my mind as we got on the packed night train. There were no seats left so we sat on our rucksacks in the corridor as the country slipped south and we got closer to the big adventure.

  It’s difficult to sleep on the floor of a train; the jolts, bangs and smells are hard to shut out. Yet in fitful snatches of darkness I dreamt of an oddly shaped mountain set against a purple sky, and rain like a solid curtain. As dawn broke we were north of the border, in a strange and foreign land that I’d never seen before. And a young German called Johann was sitting on a rucksack next to me.

  ‘You’re heading for Ullapool? Fantastic place, but you should go north of there and see the mountain Stac Pollaidh. Amazing place, you’ll never forget it.’

  Moth had his OS map out looking for the mountain Johann was suggesting.

  ‘I’d thought of going here.’ I could see Moth’s finger hovering over the area of land he’d been talking about for weeks, a patch of undulating contour lines that stretched away from roads or habitation into an indistinguishable area of green. ‘To Ben Mor Coigach, then along the ridge to Sgurr an Fhidhleir – the Fiddler.’ Even the name had a dark, slightly threatening edge. The details had gone over my head. It was the first time I’d gone away for more than a day without my parents, and I was with him. Even in the dusty coldness of the train carriage I could still picture the way his body moved under the sweaty, slept-in shirt. I could imagine the way his shoulders curved and feel my face against the skin of his back as he cooked mushrooms in a frying pan after afternoons of skipping college, then work, afternoons of losing ourselves in our own world of obsession.<
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  ‘It all sounds good to me. Let’s do Stac Pollaidh as well.’ I was going to be alone with him for a whole week, just us, together. I didn’t care where he took me. I’d have gone anywhere.

  The bus from Inverness was hot and stuffy, but as the doors opened in Ullapool the clear air hit us like chilled champagne. Empty and cold, but white with a glorious, fizzing brightness. We walked around the small town on the western coast of Ross and Cromarty, eating chips, watching the fishing boats in the harbour and looking for a B & B. The following morning we bought some food supplies for the next few days and checked the weather report on the harbour master’s door: clear skies for the next two days, light winds and maybe a little drizzle the day after. We lifted our rucksacks and began the long walk from the town to Stac Pollaidh.