‘I didn’t see him properly.’
‘It could have been a dream you know,’ Colin said. ‘You see things sometimes when you’re dreaming. Things that are real.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well,’ Colin paused. He didn’t know if this was the sort of thing people told each other, but then there wasn’t much he did know, in this strange place. ‘Like, I saw you in a dream. It was before I even met you. And you looked just like you do. You were real. You came to my dream first.’
Beside him Dougal began to shake with laughter.
‘What? What is it? What’s so funny?’
‘You’re soft in the head you are,’ Dougal told him. ‘You’re soft in the head.’
* * *
The next day they woke early and walked hard. For someone who didn’t know where he was going Dougal had a sure sense of direction. At first they took turns wearing the sheepskin, but the day wasn’t as cold as the night, and as the terrain steepened it became a burden. So too the rest of the meat. They ate some for breakfast, and again when they stopped at lunch, but what had tasted divine the night before, warm and with hunger to settle on, now was heavy and hard to chew. They took turns with the rest of the beast, and after much experimenting Colin found it was best carried over the shoulder, like he had seen Gino do once, only it was a girl from the village he was carrying, and she was laughing and screaming, and he was telling her to keep quiet. The sheep didn’t laugh, or scream, or wriggle about. It just smelt of fire and fat, and got heavier with every step. Whenever it was his turn to carry it Colin would slip behind Dougal’s determined pace, his calves protesting the extra load, his breathing not deep enough for the task.
‘Why are we in such a hurry?’ he called ahead, one such time, as Dougal scouted around, looking for the best way up the latest of the steep banks they had encountered.
Dougal looked back and stood his ground as Colin puffed his way towards him.
‘Not very fit are ya?’ he grinned.
‘It’s heavy.’
‘Don’t see me slipping behind, when you’re leading.’
‘Cos I don’t lead as fast.’
‘That’s what I said. You’re not very fit.’
Colin set the charred carcass on the ground, past worrying about the dirt and leaves sticking to it, easily enough brushed off later.
‘I don’t see why we’re hurrying, if we don’t know where we’re going.’
‘I never said that.’
‘So where are we going then?’ Colin asked.
‘To the sea,’ Dougal answered, as if he had known all along, although Colin was sure he’d only just then thought of it.
‘This isn’t the way to the sea.’ The sea was to the south. Colin had seen it, beyond the second lake, from the top slopes where the cows sometimes grazed.
‘You don’t know much either do you?’ It had become Dougal’s favourite way of speaking. In fact, it was almost all he said. Can’t do much, don’t know much, don’t see much, can’t go so fast. But Colin didn’t mind, because Dougal smiled when he said it, and the Sowbys hardly ever smiled. ‘Sea’s everywhere.’
‘So why do we want to go to the sea?’
‘The sheep’ll run out soon. There’s fish in the sea, and shellfish. You can eat seaweed too, if you’re hungry enough.’
‘Do you know how to fish then?’
‘Course I do.’
‘Like you knew how to slit a sheep’s throat.’
‘Still killed it didn’t we?’
Not exactly, Colin thought, but he didn’t correct him. It was Dougal’s other habit, to change a story every time he told it, so the truth never set, but was left to develop. And Colin’s habit was not to say so much in return, and to follow.
‘Come on. I’ll take a turn.’
The afternoon passed more quickly. Without commenting Dougal took more and more time with the sheep on his back, and hardly seemed to slow at all. They soon reached a ridge and turned to follow its southeastern line. The path they cut either rose or fell, this wasn’t a flat land, but at least it wasn’t the relentless climb of the morning. The bush was less thick at the skyline. The cloud overhead had broken up and the segments of blue were reaching out to touch one another. The sun, when it shone through, was surprisingly warm and even this high up there was little wind. Every now and then they would reach a clearing, where they could look out over the dark clotted-green hills ahead of them, and farther out, just as Dougal had predicted, the sparkle of the ocean. Dougal seemed happier and more inclined to joke, now that they were past the point where they could see back to the valley. Colin’s own spirits lifted too. He didn’t know much about the sea, and he had learned not to expect much either, but still it felt good to be heading somewhere.
The ridge turned right and then dropped abruptly, and they were forced to leave it and bash back down through the bush on the other side.
‘It’ll be good to be in a valley for night,’ Dougal said. ‘There’ll be water, and they won’t be able to see our fire.’
They made camp by a stream. With nothing to skin or cook or bury the evening felt empty, but it was an emptiness Colin was glad to find. Empty of pain from the end of a belt. Empty of the smells of a farm, the disappointments of a Welfare Officer, the dread of morning. Empty too of memories of home, which had been buried so deep and deliberate that now he couldn’t find them even if he wanted to. Quiet, relaxed, emptiness. Even Dougal’s eyes seemed happy to settle, gazing silently at the flames, wide with the sting of the heat, later narrowing with the weight of sleep. Whatever demons had followed him, he seemed to be outrunning them.
The night turned cool again, but not freezing like the night before. The boys slept close, pulled together by the singular cover of the sheepskin, and this time Dougal didn’t whimper, and Colin didn’t dream.
SIX
The Grey Man
THEY were woken by the rain. Not heavy enough to soak them through, not light enough to be mist. Looking up at the trees Colin could see the cloud had come low, so even from down by the stream, where the night before the ridges above had been clearly silhouetted against the pin-pricked black of sky, the tops were now invisible. They ate again, more meat, which Colin found sickening now. He chewed with his eyes closed and his breath held against the sights and smells of death. Then, with less to carry, and grateful of the movement to keep him warm, Colin followed Dougal up the next climb. Beneath the covering of leaves the ground was loose with rocks and the going was slow and tiring. By afternoon they had reached another ridge and the weather had cleared.
‘Will you look at that?’
‘What?’ Colin came to the place where Dougal had stopped. The sea was close now, closer than it should have been Colin thought, if they were continuing in yesterday’s direction. The land ahead was different to any he had seen before. They were only a couple of miles short of the bushline, where the dark of trees spilled over onto a plateau of bright green pasture, like a wave frozen in time. Beyond, deep crevasses split the surface, as if the trees were the only things holding it together. The cracks widened as they reached the sea, and the land gave way in a tumble of cliffs and slips. Farther out, beyond the water, where sea faded into sky, rose the confident profile of distant mountains, their tops already white with snow. But that wasn’t where Dougal was looking.
‘Down there. What do you suppose they are?’
‘Trees.’
‘Are you stupid?’
‘You tell me I am, but I think it might be you.’
‘Those, in that gorge, that look like mighty cocks.’
‘Oh, those.’
To their left one of the rips in the land extended farther than most, and they could view the crevasse’s peculiar structure. Rather than tumbling into the stream at its base, the way cliff faces eventually do, random and accidental, this one looked more like the remnants of an ancient fortress. Pillars of stone, maybe twenty or thirty yards high, stood their ground in the face of the land�
�s decline; some half-carved from the remaining buttress, others standing alone in groups of defiance. But more remarkable than their resistance was their apparent brittleness. Although broad at their base, they quickly thinned into spikes, and the erosion of wind and rain had formed irregular patterns of decay. ‘They don’t look like cocks to me.’
‘Close enough,’ Dougal replied.
‘Why are they pointing straight up then?’ Colin argued. ‘Cocks hang down.’
‘Not all the time.’
‘Course they do,’ Colin said.
Dougal gave him one of his special looks then, between amusement and incredulity, and perhaps with a fear he was being tricked.
‘You mean you’ve never had a stiffy?’
‘A what?’
‘You know. When your cock goes hard. You must sometimes. You can’t tell me you don’t play with it?’
But Colin didn’t. He’d heard of it, but only from others, back at school in London, and always talked of as something to be ashamed of, a way of making people feel small. And none of it ever made much sense, and Colin hadn’t wanted to ask.
‘No.’
‘Oh, but you have to.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s great.’ Dougal’s eyes lit up, like he was some child showing off a toy he’d got for Christmas. ‘It’s dead simple.’
As he spoke he undid his trousers and produced, by way of explanation, his own cock. It looked, to Colin’s satisfaction, nothing at all like the pinnacles of rock he could see behind them. It was framed by a shock of red hair, which at first took Colin by surprise. He had some such hair himself, but only the beginnings, and it was alarming to him to think that this was where he was headed.
‘You have to think of something, like some girl who’s really pretty, you know, and you think how they’d look, without their clothes on.’
Dougal’s enthusiasm for the task was such that he didn’t appear to expect anything from Colin, which suited Colin well. Dougal closed his eyes and a smile spread across his face.
‘Mine’s called Amanda, and she’s the most beautiful thing you could ever see. She dated my brother, but he had to go to the war, and I watched them once. And then, see, you touch it and it feels just great, and see, it’s not hanging down at all now is it?’
‘No, it isn’t.’
‘So they do look like cocks, giant cocks, don’t they? You were wrong weren’t you?’
Point proved, Dougal abandoned his demonstration and pointed back to the formations in triumph.
‘Yes, I was wrong.’
Dougal looked at Colin and shook his head.
‘You really don’t know a thing do you?’
‘I know enough,’ Colin said, but not like he believed it.
‘You ought to try it yourself sometime you know. Anyone can. It’s dead simple.
* * *
There was plenty of daylight left, two hours, maybe more, and Dougal decided against walking straight out to the coast from there.
‘It’s farm land. There’ll be too many people. We’ve enough food for another day or two. I’ve heard, further round, it’s trees to the coastline and nothing to bother us.’
‘Heard from who?’ And who are you, and what are you running from, and why have you brought me with you? and a thousand other questions Colin wouldn’t ask.
‘Just people. Locals.’
‘Did you like them?’
‘Who?’
‘Locals.’
‘They’re all sorts. Some of them are all right. Stupid though, lots of them.’
‘Like me?’
‘There’s no one like you Colin. There’s no one like you. Stop talking, it’s slowing you down.’
Dougal’s mood changed again, just as the day was darkening. From light and unpredictable, like a breeze in the treetops, back to as heavy and thick as the mud they now walked through.
Just a small campsite, in a flat space up above the stream they were following. Branches freshly cut, leaning together in two lines, with ferns draped over them to form a primitive A-frame shelter. And the black circle of ashes where a fire had recently burnt. The work of a lone person. Colin wouldn’t have even noticed it was there, if Dougal hadn’t stopped to check it. He inspected the ends of the branches, looking to see how new the cuts were, and crouched at the fireplace, where he ran his fingers through the cooled ash.
‘Probably a hunter,’ Colin said.
‘It’s not a hunter.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I just do.’ The look on Dougal’s face was new to Colin, more absence than worry.
‘There’s plenty of them come up here. I used to see them all the time, back at the farm, with their rifles. They would stop and ask if they could cross the Sowbys’ land, and sometimes he would let them, and sometimes…’
‘When have you ever been right about anything?’
‘So who is it then?’ Colin asked.
‘No one. It doesn’t matter. Come on.’
Dougal walked off again, taking the load of the remaining beast and still walking so fast that Colin had to break into a run to keep up. Dougal didn’t speak again, but kept them pressing on for another two hours, until the only light was from the rising moon, and Colin didn’t know how Dougal could be sure they weren’t heading back to the valley accidentally. When they stopped Dougal wouldn’t let him collect wood for a fire.
‘We don’t need it. Not tonight.’
‘I’m cold.’
‘You won’t notice it when you’re asleep.’
‘Maybe I don’t want to sleep.’
‘Don’t then. Come on, I’ll cut some of that fern, if you’re so worried about the cold.’
‘Give me the knife. I’ll do it myself.’
Colin cut an armful of fronds and arranged them on top of the sheepskin on the flattest piece of ground he could find in the dark, then crawled beneath it. After circling the site for another five minutes, checking for things he couldn’t speak of, Dougal joined him.
‘So where you from then?’ Dougal asked, as he arranged his body against Colin’s.
‘You know,’ Colin replied, surprised that a conversation would start now.
‘How do I know?’
‘The Sowbys. You came and got me.’
‘Before that stupid. You’re from a city aren’t you?’
‘Maybe not.’ Colin replied.
‘You can tell. City people are strange.’
‘Not as strange as country people.’
‘Sounds like you’re from London to me.’
‘What about you?’
‘Went there once, with my father. On the train. It was mad. I made him promise never to take me there again.’
‘You probably didn’t see it properly. I’ll show you it one day. You’ll see.’ Colin felt tears well up without warning at the talk of home.
‘Maybe. Did you come over on a ship?’ Dougal asked.
‘Course I did.’
‘My father paid special, so I’d have a cabin of my own, and a special man to look after me. And on the first night I ate dinner with the captain.’
‘What did you have?’
‘I don’t remember. Lamb I think.’
‘Know what I think? I think you’re lying.’
‘Think what you like. I don’t care.’
‘I don’t either.’
‘You’re one of those orphans aren’t you? That got sent over special.’
‘I ain’t no orphan. My dad lives in London. I think you’re the orphan.’
‘Am not.’
‘So where’s your parents then?’
‘Home.’
‘Where’s home?’
‘Can you not tell from my talking?’
‘Not really.’
‘You can’t tell much can you? I’m a McDonald, from the Highlands.’
‘Scottish?’
‘Highlands. You been there?’
‘Went north once, but not that far.’
‘That’s lucky. Once you’re there you don’t go back. It’s too beautiful to leave.’
‘You left.’
‘Only temporary. Same as my father did.’
Colin could tell that Dougal was happy to be talking now, same as he’d been happy to stay quiet before. And although Colin listened quietly, and didn’t try to hurry it along, there was only one part of the story he was interested in hearing.
‘He bought land here, the whole end of the valley almost. Off my great uncle, who came over fifty years ago. It was just after him and Mum got married. They moved over, Dad says because Mum wanted to, but if she was alive she’d probably say it was the other way round. They were here four years, I was born here, back in that bloody awful valley, but it isn’t where I’m from. I’m from the Highlands. I don’t know the whole story because Dad says he’ll tell me properly when I get older.
‘But Mum got sick when I was still little, and it killed her. I’ve seen the place they buried her, beside a little church at the top of the farm, but I wouldn’t think she’s settled there. I’d say her ghost would have travelled back by now, back to the Glen. Cos I don’t care what Dad says, she liked it back home better. I know someone who says he’s seen her there, although he drinks too much and he’s seen a lot of things. And then Dad says he couldn’t bear to be alone in a strange land, so he took us both, me and Andrew, and we got back on the boat and sailed home. I don’t remember any of it.
‘So I got sent here to look over the land, but I’ve had enough, so now I’ve left and when I’ve some money together I’ll go back to Glen Cannich.’
‘You could write your father and get him to send the money,’ Colin suggested, when he realised Dougal had stopped with his telling.
‘It’s more complicated than that,’ was all Dougal would reply.
‘How’s it complicated?’
‘You wouldn’t understand.’
‘Because you won’t tell me. Because you can’t,’ Colin challenged. ‘Because you’re making it up, that’s what I think.’
‘I’m not.
‘If it’s your farm, why did you have to run away, in the middle of the night?’
‘I was helping you.’
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