He felt her arms close round him, cried louder in relief, shuddering and gasping, as if once they’d started, the tears refused to turn off. His chest hurt from the sobs, which were exploding through his body like bubbles in a can of Tizer, popping in his throat. A hand began to stroke his hair, rhythmically and slowly, feathering down from his forehead to the back of his neck. She had never stroked his hair before, never let him press so close. Usually she told him to be brave and dry his eyes; that big boys didn’t cry and that he mustn’t wake his father. Then she would tiptoe back to her own room and leave pieces of the nightmare still twitching in the folds of the sheets. She never stayed for long. Both his parents were Busy – always Busy, even in the middle of the night.
But tonight she didn’t go. She hadn’t even ticked him off, or used her dark blue voice, which meant that she was cross with him and would have to tell his father. Perhaps she’d let him stay with her, and he could persuade her not to pack that loathsome trunk; not to send him back to school at all. The trunk was locked and roped, and he often wished they’d rope his mouth as well. Then he wouldn’t let them down by crying when it was time to say goodbye. ‘Goodbye’ was worse than ‘beato’, a word which throbbed and stung.
‘No!’ he panicked, hammering with his fists against her shoulder. ‘I’m not going back. I hate it there. I tried to run away.’
‘You can never run away, Daniel, not from your own pain.’
He jumped. The voice was wrong – a kindly and soft-timbred voice, but a man’s voice, not a woman’s. He hardly dared to open his eyes, and when he did he jerked away in horror. He had been clinging to another man: arms around his neck, head against his chest, fingers twisted through his long brown wavy hair. He was so mortified, so embarrassed by his outburst, he could only stare down at the ground, still confused as to where he was. The bare floorboards of the dormitory had changed into stones and rubble; a pile of bedding lay jumbled in the corner, his sleeping-bag still tangled round his ankles where he had tried to kick it off. His eyes moved slowly upwards, taking in the details of his prison. Not the bleak school billet with its metal beds, barred windows, but a ruin on the hillside, with crumbling rough-stone walls and a makeshift tarpaulin roof. The wavering pencil of torchlight seemed to emphasize the vastness of the night. Through the empty window-frame he could see only a small square of darkness, but he knew it stretched to infinity. He could hear its heavy breathing as it pressed down on the hills; could still taste its bitter blackness in his mouth.
He shivered. He was wearing two thick jerseys over his pyjamas, as well as woolly socks and a scarf, but there was no warmth in his body. He cast his eye over the other man’s clothes – that ridiculously impractical robe which did look like a nightdress (and concealed God knew what beneath it); the long untidy hair – none too clean, and unnerving on a male.
‘Look here,’ he stormed, turning on him furiously as a way of defusing his embarrassment. ‘It was an insane idea – making me sleep here.’
‘Yes.’ The voice was soft. ‘Madness is sometimes very powerful. It can show us things we’d be blind to otherwise.’
Daniel ignored the cant. ‘Christ knows why I agreed,’ he snapped. ‘I must have been mad myself.’ He was enraged at his spineless submission; hardly able to believe that he had let himself be talked into spending this night alone – maybe several nights alone – away from all the others, even segregated from Penny, who was sleeping in the tent. It was to be his ‘initiation’ period, but initiation into what, he wondered with a shudder of distaste?
‘You are mad, Darnel. You’re angry. Angry with me, and still more angry with your parents.’
‘My parents? What the hell d’you mean? You’ve never met my parents. You know nothing whatsoever about me, and you’re not likely to find out. We’re leaving the moment it’s light.’
‘That’s a pity, Daniel, when it cost you so much to get here – so much indecision, so many sleepless nights.’
Daniel slumped down on the ground, startled once again by the man’s uncanny insights. Now he remembered why he had agreed to be imprisoned here: he’d had no defence against such power. He had also been beguiled by his first night’s remarkable sleep – a longer, deeper sleep than he’d had literally in years; lying in a tepee with a smoky wood-fire belching in the centre, and sharing the cramped space not just with Penny and Pippa, but with several other campers – the old and sick and halt – who were too frail to withstand the rigours of an ordinary tent. It was a miracle he had slept at all, let alone so well, and it had seemed further proof of the healer’s mysterious skills.
Now he wondered if it had been a fluke, simply exhaustion after the drive. No, there was more to it than that: an overwhelming sense of peace, which had touched them all, even Pippa; a sense of genuine welcome and unquestioning acceptance into the family.
He had met more of the so-called family next day, but recoiled in dismay from the prospect of community living. He had assumed all along that he and Penny could pitch their tent at a distance; avoid living cheek by jowl with a bunch of total strangers and being sucked into the maelstrom of the camp. Yet the healer was a magnet, drawing everyone towards him, issuing his orders, deciding who slept where and who did what – a tyrant who could mind-read. Wasn’t it peculiar, to say the least, that he should have materialized at the very moment he was screaming for his mother? The fellow couldn’t possibly have heard him – not from four hundred yards away. He slept in his own tepee at the bottom of the hill, alongside the other campers, whilst this ruined house was halfway up the slope. So what had brought him dead on cue?
There was a sudden shift and clink of stones outside as an intruder or an animal disturbed them. Daniel squinted through the blank hole of the window, but could see nothing except darkness. The place was beginning to get to him, and the man’s continued presence made him more and more uneasy. He was still overcome with shame that he had blubbed in his arms like that; utterly aghast that he could have mistaken a living man for the long-dead mother of his childhood.
‘Look, if it’s all the same to you,’ he said, wincing as he recalled his near-hysteria, ‘I’d rather you pushed off, okay? I want to get back to sleep.’
‘Yes,’ said the healer, ‘you need to sleep soundly like a child – that child you weren’t allowed to be. Goodnight.’
Daniel watched him go, the puny torch-beam swallowed up in blackness; the soft footsteps fading into nothing. He felt irrationally annoyed that the fellow should keep making such percipient remarks, but at least he was wrong in one respect – no way would he sleep soundly, not after what he’d been through. Never, since the age of eighteen, had he come so close to Greystone Court, not just geographically but in memory and emotion. And there were other, darker memories he dared not even confront, but which might erupt in his nightmares, waking him in panic again. Best not to sleep at all. He had no idea what time it was. One of the idiotic rules here was a ban on clocks and watches; a reliance on so-called ‘natural time’. It made him feel totally disoriented, as if he had lost the basic structure of his life. And what use was ‘natural time’ when it was pitch dark outside and there was no way of telling if dawn was mercifully close or still endless hours away? He didn’t even have a book to read. No wonder he had dreamed of school when his possessions were being confiscated with as much tyrannical relish as they had been thirty years ago – first his watch, then his books and radio. The healer called such things an obstacle; an escape from pain and therefore an impediment to healing; an interruption of ‘interior silence’, whatever that was supposed to be.
The exterior silence was spooky enough. When he lay awake in Wandsworth, there would always be a symphony of sounds – the drone of distant traffic, a plane rumbling overhead, the overgrown forsythia next door which rustled against the windowpane whenever it was windy; Mrs Mason’s tomcat on its prowls. And although such noises often annoyed him, at least they proved the presence of humanity; reinforced the sense of a solid street around h
im, its tall brick walls enclosing him, keeping out the void. But here the night was gagged, and he felt alone with alien nature; the only sound the rushing of the stream. Its relentless babble seemed threatening and intrusive, as if he had become a helpless pebble tossed headlong in its current; swept inexorably along to some dark and dangerous sea.
Never, since he’d quit smoking, had he felt so intense a craving for a cigarette. Lighting up would provide a tiny ritual, a source of instant comfort. So many comforts had gone – light, heat, hot water, his wife’s body next to his, his cigarettes, his music, his normal routines and boundaries. He searched his trouser pockets for a sweet; found only fluff and a few odd coins. Money had no value here. However much he had, it wouldn’t buy the things he needed.
He stamped his feet and pummelled his hands in an effort to keep warm. The cold had seeped into his bones, made him stiff and sluggish. He was tempted to creep back down the hill and join Penny in the tent, but that would mean disturbing Pippa who was sleeping with her mother. There was nothing for it but to crawl into his sleeping-bag, pile the two spare rugs on top, and sit the rest of the night out. The minute it was light he would wake his wife and daughter and insist they left immediately. Maybe they could drive on to the sea, which couldn’t be that far away, and find a guest-house with comfortable sprung mattresses, a plug-in fire, and proper windows with glass and even curtains. Meanwhile, he’d have to imagine such luxuries; convince himself he wasn’t cold and that he couldn’t feel the stones and shale digging into his back beneath the groundsheet. He wormed into his sleeping-bag, plumped the one thin pillow, then closed his eyes in order to withdraw from his surroundings.
Once he’d shut out the rough walls and the claustrophobic tarpaulin lowering over his head, his mother leapt into his mind again – the mother who had stroked his hair – now very clear and solid against the black velvet of his eyelids. She must have slipped back into his room and sat down on the bed. It was extraordinary, unheard of. She never spoiled him in that way; would have been tight-lipped and steel-voiced if he’d dared to disturb her twice in the same night. But she was smiling unconcernedly and her new un-busy hands were stroking not just his hair but continuing right down his back; easing his stiff spine, soothing all the pain away. He could even feel her own hair tickling on his neck; smell her smell of flannelette and talcum powder. She was rubbing peace into his skin, and the peace was pink and silky like the calamine lotion she used when he had sunburn. But he wasn’t burnt, nor freezing any more, just luxuriously warm; her indulgent hands radiating heat. He was becoming irresistibly drowsy; sinking down and down into some feather-bedded world where everything was hushed, and where his mother was a fire, a hearth, a roof. He was so relaxed and heavy-eyed, it was an effort to speak at all, but there was just one question he had to ask. He forced his lips to move. ‘You won’t go away and leave me on my own again?’
‘Oh, no,’ the deep, male, mother’s voice assured him. ‘I’ll be here with you all night.’
Chapter Sixteen
Daniel opened his eyes to the sun, which was flooding through the window-frame, gilding the bare walls. He sat up slowly, fumbling for his watch; remembered it wasn’t there. He threw off the tangled covers, wriggled out of the sleeping-bag, then picked his way to the door across a carpeting of rubble. The hillside reared above him, dotted with white sheep; the sky was benignly blue, a light breeze ruffling his hair. Even without his watch, it was obvious he had overslept. The sun was well up in the sky and everything around him was wide awake and busy: birds swooping overhead, crows cawing at each other, two wild ponies cantering down an incline, the exuberant stream gushing over stones – no longer sounding menacing, merely energetic. He was amazed he hadn’t woken before, but his cocoon of sleep had cut him off from the morning’s lively stir.
Exhilarated, he ventured out himself, only pausing to find his shoes and discard his woolly scarf. He went striding along a sheep-track which zigzagged up the hill; bounding across the springy turf as if he were wearing seven-league boots. He knew he should be going in the other direction – downhill to the camp, where he would be expected to join in the morning chores or ceremonies, or perhaps some healing session. And he ought really to see Penny, to decide if they should leave or not. Yet his body seemed to want to climb, and his mind recoiled from arguments, decisions. His simple instinct was to enjoy the golden morning and his new sense of well-being, to pursue the sun to the crest of the hill and look down at the landscape spread below. So far, he’d hardly moved beyond the confines of the camp. He’d been too busy getting organized; trying to come to terms with the strangeness of the situation, to sort out names and faces. But now he was curious to explore, especially since he’d heard that this bleak and lonely moorland had once been the site of a lead and silver mine – a whole prosperous community battening on its riches. He found it hard to believe. True, the hill was strewn with the wrecks of miners’ cottages, like the one he’d been sleeping in himself, but they had long since become part of the landscape, overgrown with grass and moss; less an eyesore than a type of outdoor sculpture, erected here by some eccentric minimalist artist, and gradually softened by the hands of time.
Little remained of the mine save the odd rusting pipe or rail and a couple of stone-arched tunnel openings, flooded inside with pools of stagnant water. Yet once there must have been huge water-wheels, lines of mule-drawn trucks clattering back and forth along the rails, sweaty workmen toiling in the heat and grime. Now a spindly rowan tree sprouted in the winch-house, and placid sheep munched rhythmically among the crumbling stones.
He stopped to get his breath, gazing up at the mountain peak which put the whole thing in perspective. These husks and dregs of man’s past wealth were little more than scratches on the hillside; odd remnants which had been absorbed back into nature and hardly counted in the vast scale of things. And as he climbed still higher and left the site behind, he could see only folds and curves of hills, rising one beyond the other; their foreheads barred with shadows, their scalps wreathed in blue mist.
He peeled off his two sweaters and tied them round his waist. He was wearing far too many clothes for a strenuous summer walk, but he had set out on an impulse, without any thought for his normal morning ritual of razor, comb and soap. Actually, it had given him a sense of liberation to step straight from bed to hillside, like an impetuous child absolved from the constraints of boring things like washing or searching for clean socks. He finger-combed his hair, used his sleeve to mop the perspiration off his face, then continued across the brow of the hill. There was something wonderfully elating about looking down on everything, as if he had reached the lower rung of heaven and could pity the poor mortals still scurrying around on earth. He stretched his arms like wings, almost expecting to lift off, like the sparrow-hawk above him, soaring in the playground of the sky. He shouted, just to hear his voice; was answered by a plaintive ‘ba-aaa’ – a sheep watching him inquisitively as he clambered up on a boulder and surveyed the sweep of countryside below.
He was as high as he could go now, and the path plunged down again, following a dip between the hills. It was so steep in places he had to use his hands to steady himself; palms soon grazed and muddy, feet sliding on loose stones. All at once, he slithered to a halt, grabbing at a clump of rough-leaved ferns. Only now had he seen the lake below him – a stretch of silent water shimmering in the sun; the hills huddled closely round it, as if to protect it from intruders. He felt a trespasser himself in this remote and secret spot, yet he also had the eerie feeling that he was not in fact alone. His consciousness of some other presence was so palpable, convincing, that he actually glanced round to check on who was there. Nobody and nothing. Even the sheep were keeping their distance, and the darting swallows crisscrossing the sky had dwindled into tiny specks, leaving only the unruffled clouds.
Furtively, he stole down to the lake’s edge, as if scared of being apprehended if he disturbed that awesome silence, which made even his own heartbeat se
em insensitively loud. His feet scrunched from flinty stones to softer sand as he approached the rippling water; his shadow trembling in its polished blue-black mirror. It seemed devoid of any fish – indeed devoid of any life at all – a lake in some dark myth, mysterious and unfathomable. Again, he looked surreptitiously behind him, certain he was being watched, but again he could see nothing save sun and shadow, hill and sky. He searched for a flat pebble and sent it skimming across the surface; listened to its final plop, wondering how far it had to fall before it reached the bottom. The sides of the lake shelved steeply, suggesting it was very deep.
Impulsively, he tugged off all his clothes, left them in a jumbled heap, and waded into the water, catching his breath as its icy claws shocked his naked limbs. He struck out briskly, to defeat the numbing cold; threshing with great force, and revelling in the commotion he was making now that he’d dared to break the brooding spell of silence. This place was so unspoilt, he felt like the first living creature who had ever lighted on it, ever left his footprints here – no, more than that, he felt like the first man on earth: a just-created Adam, free to sample his new world; to try out water and declare that it was good. He splashed and ducked and circled, playing childish games with himself – he would reach that patch of shadow in under twenty seconds; he would curl up and turn a somersault, and then try swimming with his eyes shut, as if he’d yet to receive the gift of sight.
Next, he took a deep breath in and dived under the water, using really vigorous strokes to prevent his natural buoyancy from bobbing him back up again. There was no sign of the bottom, just the water growing darker and darker as he spiralled further down, struggling now to hold his breath. He was forced to surface, spluttering and coughing, ears aching from the pressure, heart hammering in complaint. He floated on his back to recover, the huge clouds staring down at him, the sun bedazzling his eyes; then dived again, determined to touch bottom. Fighting his own limitations – mortal lungs and finite breath – he swooped down and down and down; entering an alien world of cavernous black water. He tried to ignore the tightness in his chest, the increasing shock of cold as he ventured even deeper, still encountering no end to the abyss.
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