by Garner, Alan
She held his arms, looked hard at him.
“I’ve done it again, haven’t I?”
He did not answer.
“Yes. I have. I have. But what?”
“Let’s go back.”
“Ian.”
“Come on.”
“No. I mustn’t hide. Mustn’t dodge. I can’t pretend. I must fight this thing. Tell me.”
“We parked, and walked from Pym Chair,” he said. “Remember?”
“Pym Chair?”
“Where they were flying their model planes.”
“We did?”
“We walked along the ridge.”
“And I don’t like crowds.”
He nodded.
“All those people.”
“Yes.”
“A rock.”
“Yes.”
“There was a rock.”
“Yes.”
“Hollow. We sat. It was good.”
“Yes.”
“And that’s it.”
“Yes.”
“Oh, Jesus Christ.”
“We can go somewhere else.”
“No. Here. There’s something here. For me.”
She huddled on a remnant of wall, her back against the big stone, and looked inwardly along the valley. He sat next to her, holding each hand in his.
The air was only far sounds.
She slammed her head on the stone and howled, thrashing from side to side; then slumped forward, her face in their hands. He felt the heat of her tears and the water from her mouth run on his palms. He held, gentle, and did not speak as she retched. Then she was quiet, and he was still.
She lifted her head and looked again. Her face was put together. Her breathing grew calm. Soon she gave him a quick little smile.
“What’s that house?”
“It’s a farm. A ruin. Thursbitch.”
“Thursbitch. Have we been there?”
“Yes.”
“Thursbitch. Yes. All right.”
The path dipped and rose as they crossed gullies running off Cats Tor and the ridge. Nearer the ruin the path cut deep through banks of purple shale.
“Is this coal?” he said.
“Almost. Aha. Just what you’d expect.”
She picked something out of the shale and gave it to him.
“It’s an ammonite,” he said.
“No. Reticulosus bilingue.”
“Which two?”
“Which two what?”
“Languages?”
She laughed. He watched her.
“Oaf. It’s one of the main horizon indicators. Different species are used to identify individual series. So hereabouts we’re in R-Two Marsdenian country. It’s only bloody jargon.”
“Wait.” He opened his bag and took out a notebook. “Marsdenian R-Two. That’s what you said on the outcrop.”
“Which goes to show how clever I am.”
They were at the ruin.
“If you’re lucky, I may find you some R. superbilingue in the brook. And don’t you dare ask if it’s polyglot!”
She walked around the ford, turning stones over and picking up shale in the bed.
“Here we are. Another present.” She put the fossil into his hand.
“I can’t see any difference,” he said.
“And that, my lad, is why I’m me and you’re you. Give or take. More or less.”
He helped her up the bank. They sat on a fallen post, and he opened a Thermos flask and poured for them both.
“Cold?”
“No. Fine. Good coffee.”
She looked around at the valley.
“Penny for them.”
“Mm.” She turned her head.
“More coffee?”
“Thanks. Oh, buggeration.”
The cup slipped and rolled down the grass. He went to pick it up, filled it again, and she took it in both hands.
“What was the mm?” he said.
“Just an mm.”
“No it wasn’t. Tell me.”
“If you don’t see, you probably can’t be told.”
“Try me.”
“You really haven’t sussed?”
“Sussed what?”
She looked at him, smiled and put her mouth down to the coffee.
“You get places,” she said. “Usually it’s no big deal. This is.”
“I’m not with you.”
“It knows we’re here.”
“Sorry?”
“And we are being watched.”
“Where?”
“In that outcrop.”
He lifted his binoculars. “No one. Look.”
“Pointless,” she said. “I’m fingers and thumbs. But it does know.”
“You’re a scientist.”
“Precisely.”
8
HE CAME IN, carrying two pails of water on a yoke. He set them down on the brewis floor and went into the houseplace and lifted a bag from above the mantle beam.
“Has a man got to do everything himself?”
“I’ll help,” said Nan Sarah.
“No licking fingers, mind.”
Jack put the bag on the slopstone and drew up the pig bench for them to sit on. Nan Sarah brought a small knife and Jack took his out and wiped it. He opened the bag and sniffed. Then he broke off a cap and nibbled, tasting, and spat it onto the slopstone.
“They’ll do.”
He emptied the bag and spread the toadstools so that he could turn each piece over.
“You take legs,” he said, “and me heads. Cut ’em longroads, but don’t cut ’em too thin, else they’ll go to nowt.We don’t want crumbs.”
They divided the caps from the stems and Nan Sarah began to cut each dry stem lengthwise into four strips. Jack looked closely at every brown cap and cut them into six segments, missing the white warts where he could.
“Ma Mary?”
“What?”
“Fetch us me resounding Thesprotian kettle. It’s in the stable.”
“Where do you want it?” Mary came back with a three-legged iron pot, carrying it by its handle.
“On the slopstone.”
She banged it down and went out to the yard.
Jack and Nan Sarah worked, dropping each piece into the kettle.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said.
“Eh, then.”
“No. I have. About what you said that time. Was it right?”
“Was what right, Nan Sarah?”
“As how your father found you, up Thoon.”
“It’s what he reckons.”
“How old were you?”
“Me belly button had been tied, but it was still wet, he said.”
“And he saw no one?”
“There’s plenty rocks to hide a man.”
“And you weren’t clemmed nor starved?”
“Ah. Now there’s a thing you don’t ask him, Nan Sarah. He told me; but he won’t speak to nobody else. And even me just the once. Mind you, I suppose he could have told me mother; but she never said. And she’ll not now, will she, from where she’s gone?”
“Shall you tell me?” said Nan Sarah.
“I can’t speak for the truth of it. Richard Turner’s been a father to me, and a good father and all. But this here put summat on him. I don’t know what. He said as how, when he found me, like; he said me mouth was covered in bees. He thought they’d stung me to death. But, he said, they weren’t stinging me. They were feeding me. Bees. Then, when they see him, they all fly away into that big crack aback of Thoon; same as it was a nest. That’s what he said.”
“And do you think it’s right?”
“How can I know? But one thing’s for sure. I’ve never had a sting from a bee in all my life. Wasps, yes. But never bees. It feels as if they know; somehow. But I’ll tell you what. And this is summat I’ve never told no one else. I’ve always had this feeling. It’s always in me head, at the back of me mind, as how there’s two of me. Same as if I had another half. And it�
��s to do wi’ bees.”
They went on with the cutting. Jack brushed the small bits from the slopstone into his hand, even the piece he had tasted, and put them in the kettle and wiped both the knives. He opened the door.
“Ma Mary?”
“What is it now?”
“Last year’s bilberries. Where are they?”
“Hanging in the shippon. Are you too idle to get ’em? Because I can’t reach.”
“Oh, thee hoe thy taters,” said Jack.
He held a linen bag, blotched purple.
“They’ve lasted well,” he said. “Neither wet nor dry.”
He put the mouth of the bag into the pot and tipped the berries in. Then he took one of the pails and poured the water over. The other pail he set aside. “See as yon’s not touched, agen we need a drop more.”
“It’s just water, Jack.”
“You know better, Nan Sarah. That water’s been fetched.”
“Where do you get it?”
“Aback o’ beyond. That’s where. Aback o’ beyond.”
“Why won’t the brook do?”
“Brook water boils. This never will. And that’s what we must have.”
He stirred the pot with a twig, then put it to hang over the fire and went on stirring.
“How is it you as knows all this nominy?” said Nan Sarah.
“Eh dear. Questions. Questions.”
“Jack.”
“Truth is, wife, I was lifted up. Same as at this Jenkin coming. Yet we always seem to thole it, somehow, for the next eighteen year odd. In between, each year’s a recollecting. Recollecting promise. This year it’ll be the whole beggaring cheese.”
“Last Jenkin,” she said, “I was that little. It was all racket and I couldn’t see.”
“I could,” said Jack.
“What happened?”
“We were lifted up.”
He stirred the blue red liquid.
“Why is it you?”
“I was lifted up. There’s always someone as knows corbel bread and bilberries and piddlejuice; and the rest of that caper. I reckon as how there must be a great ruck of sense we’ll never plunder. It’s no use getting mithered. A man can’t do nowt about it. There. That’s near as ninepence.”
He lifted the kettle from its hook and dropped the twig in the fire.
“Let it stand a seven-night, and we’ll be ready. We shall that. We shall and all. Thesprotian.”
9
“WELL, WELL, WELL; so you’re for off, I see,” said Mary.
“Buckets for wells, Ma Mary,” said Jack. “Ay. The night is the night, if the man is the man. But there’s work to be done first.” He tied a neckcloth, red with white spots. “I’ll be back this after.” He took a stem out of the kettle and swallowed it, washing it down with a mouthful of the liquid. And another. “Time to see if Old Bouchert’s fit.” He picked up his stick and a sack, and left the brewis.
The wind was light from the east, so he went up by Redmoor and along the side of Andrew’s Edge to Sprout-kale Jacob. Nothing was moving in Thursbitch.
He went down the slope to Bully Thrumble, walking quietly. He sat with his back against the pillar, on the other side from the water, and listened. The sound of the brook entered him, and he grew to the stone. He waited. The sun was singing, but not loudly, and the small white clouds rang against each other, soft as Jinney’s bells.
He plucked two wide blades of grass and held them between his thumb joints and blew. They cried out. He blew again. Lying flat, he peered round the base of the stone. Nothing. He wriggled back, and this time blew a harsher note; then looked again.
Downstream and across the ford, a white hare had risen from its form and was listening. It sank down, but he marked where it sat. He pulled back and stood with Bully Thrumble between them and took off his neckcloth. The wind was blowing across his scent. He laid the sack and the hat and the stick on the ground and moved to the front of the stone, letting no light between, holding the cloth in front, and walked slow and steady towards the form.
He crossed the water, making no sound. The land did not fail. There was a thistle stem. He came to it and draped the neckcloth over, and again was still. The hare did not run.
Jack walked backwards, and the land and the water held him, each foot set down in line with the other. Bully Thrumble met him and he turned around it. On the other side, he lay and looked. The neckcloth nodded in the wind.
Jack crawled on his belly through the reeds, away by a hillock and down to a bend in the brook towards Pearly Meg’s. He crossed the brook, and used the cover of a gully to crouch up the other side as far as Biggening Brom.
From Biggening Brom he crawled until the red and white of the neckcloth was in line with Bully Thrumble. He rose in a clean move, and stood. The song of the sun and the chiming clouds covered all noise, and the wind was still cross-scented. He went on down.
The hare sat in its form, watching the sway of the red and white flower on its stem. Jack slid one hand under the body from behind and with the other flattened the ears back; and he was but a part of the hill that took the hare and lifted it against his chest. “Good day to you, Sir. I bless you with my elbow,” he said.
He stroked the ears and spoke softly as he took the neckcloth and walked down to the ford and up to Bully Thrumble. “Old Bouchert. Old Turpin. Old Wimount. Old Goibert.”
At Bully Thrumble he lowered himself and nestled the hare in the crown of his hat, talking and stroking, until he and the hare and the brook and the valley were one, below Thoon. He lifted his hand, and the hare slept.
Now Jack stood with his stick and the sack, and the reeds caressed him and the marsh did not hold him and he took the way to Pearly Meg’s.
He bent under the roof and down the steps.
At the bottom, he listened to what the water told him, and then tapped the stones lightly; and from the cracks between, the snakes came and curled themselves round the twists of his stick, and when they were all counted and quiet he laid the stick below the roof and reached into the hill. With both hands he felt in the dark for the shelf over which the water ran, and took the weight that sat there, holding its wetness to him until he was free to turn and put it into the sack.
He went to the light and Bully Thrumble. He lifted his hat and nestled it in his arm, slung the sack over his shoulder, and set off, black stooped, down to Saltersford.
10
THEY WERE GATHERED around Jenkin: Lathams, Adsheads, Potts, Ridges, Lomases, Slacks, Oakeses, Swindells, Turners, Martha Barber; excited, still, and nervous; looking to the sky and where the lane cut a notch in the hill at Pym Chair.
Jack Turner had set the iron kettle on the ground and put the sack against the pillar of Jenkin. He waited for the last to arrive, straggling along the seven ways. The hare was quiet on his elbow, hidden in the red and white neckcloth. Richard Turner stood by him and watched.
“You’ll master him, do you think?”
“Nay, not master, Father,” said Jack. “Thole is best I can hope for.”
“Last time, he took John Pott. And John Pott was three days a-dying.”
“But he wouldn’t be so sharp by then, would he?” said Jack. “He’d done it twice. Not so quick.”
“He was turning sixty; and that with a tail.”
“There you are,” said Jack. “And it had been Potts for a good while, hadn’t it? Maybe it’s not but right to pass it on, so as young uns can learn, and it’s not lost.”
“I don’t know,” said Richard Turner. “But it was you he put it to. His last words to me were, ‘See as Jack’s reared, agen next time’. And you can’t nay a man when he’s dying.”
“I never knew.”
“I never told.”
Jack stroked the hare and looked into its eyes.
“Buckets for wells, Father.”
He stroked the hare and laid the folded neckcloth on the ground. “Right, then,” he said. “Is all here as is coming? Let’s be having you.”
&n
bsp; He opened the mouth of the sack and peeled it down. There were mutterings, and some gasps of love. He took the stone head and raised it for them to see. He stretched, and set it on the top of Jenkin, so that the head and the pillar were one being. Richard Turner handed him a wooden cup and Jack dipped it into the kettle.
“Here’s first to Crom.”
He dribbled the blue red juice over the head. It ran into the staring all-seeing blind eyes and down over white Jenkin.
“Next to his Bester.”
He reached inside the cloth and marked the hare with his finger in a line along the nose and between the ears.
The people formed up and Jack dipped the cup full for each and gave a piece of cap or stem. After they drank, they sat at the lane side, waiting.
“Not you, Nan Sarah.” He spoke under his breath.
“Why not?” she said. “See. I’ve fetched Blue John special.”
“You don’t sup when you’re carrying. You could lose it.”
“A wet of me lips, then.”
He looked at the sky. The sun had set behind Pike Low.
“A taste, and no more.”
He took the Blue John and dampened the rim and gave it back to her. She licked the trace, pretended to drink, smiled and put the Blue John in her shawl, and went to sit with the others.
“Don’t you leave yourself short,” said Richard Turner.
“There’s far and plenty, Father. I’ve thought on that.”
He was the last to drink. He wiped the cup dry with his finger, swallowed what was uneaten, and lifted the kettle and drained it. Then he took up the covered hare and sat on the bank.
They waited.
“Ri-chooral!” sang Tally Ridge.
No one spoke or moved, but watched.
Tally Ridge stood and began to dance.
“Ri-chooral! Ri-addiday!” His step was broken, but he did not stagger, and he moved his arms around with his shoulders, graceful, yet to no rhythm or pattern. “Ri-chooral! Ri-chooral! Ri-chooral! I-day!” He sat. His head was dipping and twisting with the same movement, and his mouth made nearly a grin. Then he fell over, asleep.
They waited.
“Ta-ba-li!” sang Jane Thomas. But she did not move.
Jack watched them and the sky. He smoothed the hare’s ears.
“Ku-kur!”
“Ukush-li-li-gi!”
The cries broke out on every side, and many people began to dance, alone and together, but all moved in the smooth way of snakes.