On the Black Hill

by Bruce Chatwin

  ‘Psst! For Heaven’s sake,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t let your father see you!’ She had heard the sound of hobnails on the kitchen floor. ‘Take them off! Quickly now!’ – and with a sponge and water, she washed off the smell of cologne.

  ‘Promise you’ll never do that again.’

  ‘I promise,’ he said, and asked if he could bake a cake for Lewis’s tea.

  He creamed the butter, beat the eggs, sifted the flour, and watched the brown crust rise. Then, after filling the two layers with raspberry jam, he dusted the top with icing sugar and, when Lewis came back ravenous from school, he carried it, proudly, to the table.

  He held his breath as Lewis took the first mouthful. ‘It’s good,’ said Lewis. ‘It’s a very good cake.’

  Mary saw in Benjamin’s illness the chance of giving him a better education, and decided to tutor him herself. They read Shakespeare and Dickens; and since she had a little Latin, she borrowed a grammar and dictionary from the vicar and a few of the easier texts – Caesar and Tacitus, Cicero and Virgil – although the Odes of Horace were beyond them.

  When Amos tried to object she cut him short: ‘Come now: surely you can allow one bookworm in the family?’ But he shrugged and said, ‘No good’ll come of it.’ Education as such, he did not mind. What annoyed him was the thought of his sons growing up with educated accents, and wanting to leave the farm.

  To keep the peace, Mary often scolded her pupil: ‘Benjamin, go at once and help your father!’ Secretly, she swelled with pride when, without looking up, he’d say, ‘Mama, please! Can’t you see I’m reading?’ It came as a wonderful surprise when the vicar tested his knowledge and said, ‘I do believe we have a scholar on our hands.’

  None of them, however, had bargained for Lewis’s reaction. He sulked, skimped his jobs; and once, in the small hours of the morning, Mary heard a noise in the kitchen and found him, red-eyed by candlelight, trying to extract the sense from one of his brother’s books. Worse, the twins began to bicker over money.

  They kept their savings in a pottery pig. And though there was no question but that the coins in its belly belonged to both of them, when Lewis wanted to break the pig open, Benjamin shook his head.

  A few months earlier, at the start of a football match, Lewis had confided his pocket-money into his brother’s safekeeping – the game was too rough for the invalid – and from then on, it was Benjamin who controlled his money; Benjamin who refused to let him buy a water-pistol; who seldom let him spend so much as a farthing.

  Then, unexpectedly, Lewis found a interest in aviation.

  To her science class, Miss Clifton had explained the flight of Monsieur Blériot across the English Channel, but from her drawing on the blackboard the twins pictured his monoplane as a kind of mechanical dragonfly.

  One Monday, in June of 1910, a boy called Alfie Bufton came back from the weekend with a sensational piece of news: on the Saturday, his parents had taken him to an air-display at the Worcester and Hereford Agricultural Show, where not only has he seen a Blériot monoplane, he had seen one crash.

  All week, Lewis waited impatiently for the next issue of the Hereford Times, but was forbidden to open its pages until his father had read them first. This Amos did, aloud, after supper: it seemed an age before he came to the crash.

  The aviator’s first attempt had been a fiasco. The machine rose a few feet, and sank to the ground. The crowds scoffed and clamoured for their money back – whereupon the aviator, a Captain Diabolo, harangued the police to clear the course and took off a second time. Again the machine rose, higher this time; then it veered to the right and crash-landed not far from the Flower Tent.

  ‘The propeller,’ Amos continued, with dramatic pauses, ‘capable of 2,700 revolutions per minute, dealt blows to the right and left.’ Several spectators had been wounded, and a Mrs Pitt of Hindlip had died of her injuries in the Worcester Infirmary.

  ‘Remarkable to state’ – he pitched his voice an octave lower – ‘about three-quarters of an hour after the disaster, a swan flew low across the showground. His graceful flight seemed to reduce the aviator’s unfortunate attempts to mockery.’

  Another week had to pass before Lewis was allowed to snip out the article – with its spindly line engraving – and paste it in his scrapbook, a scrapbook that would, eventually, be devoted to air disasters; that went on growing, volume by volume, until the months before his death; and if anyone mentioned the Comet crashes of the Fifties, or the Jumbo collision in the Canaries, he would shake his head and murmur, darkly, ‘But I remember the Worcester Catastrophe.’

  The other memorable event of 1910 was their trip to the seaside.

  14

  ALL SPRING AND summer, Benjamin continued to cough green phlegm and, when he coughed a few streaks of blood, Dr Bulmer recommended a change of air.

  The Reverend Tuke had a sister with a house at St David’s in Pembrokeshire. And since the time had come for his annual sketching holiday, he asked if he could take his two young friends along.

  Amos bridled when Mary broached the subject: ‘I know your kind. All fancy talk and holidays by the seaside!’

  ‘So?’ she said. ‘I suppose you want your son to catch consumption.’

  ‘Hm!’ He scratched the creases of his neck.

  ‘Well then?’

  On August 5th, Mr Fogarty the curate drove the party down to the train at Rhulen. The station had been given a coat of fresh brown paint and between each pillar of the platform hung a wire basket planted with trailing geraniums. The station-master was having a spot of bother with a drunk.

  The man was a Welshman who had not paid his fare on the incoming train. He had taken a swipe at the porter. The porter had socked him on the jaw, and he now lay, face down on the paving, in a torn tweed coat. Blood leaked from his mouth. His watch-glass had shattered; and the jeering spectators ground the splinters under their boot-heels.

  The porter put his mouth to the drunk’s ear and bellowed, ‘Ger up, Taffy!’

  ‘Atcha! A-atch!’ the injured man grunted.

  ‘Mama, why are they hurting him?’ Benjamin piped up, as he peered through the circle of shiny brown gaiters.

  The drunk attempted to stand, only to crumple again at the knees; and this time, two porters grabbed him under the armpits and heaved him to his feet. His face was grey. His pupils rolled back into his skull, and the whites of his eyes were red.

  ‘But what’s he done?’ Benjamin insisted.

  ‘What I done?’ the man croaked. ‘H’ain’t done nought!’ and, opening his maw, he let fly a string of obscenities.

  The crowd recoiled. Someone shouted, ‘Call a constable!’ The porter socked his face again, and a fresh flow gushed down his chin.

  ‘Dirty Saxons,’ Benjamin shrilled. ‘Dirty Sax——’ but Mary clamped her hand over his mouth and hissed, ‘One squeak out of you and you’re going home.’

  She dragged the twins to the end of the platform where they could watch the engine stop. It was a hot day and the sky was a very dark shade of blue. The railway tracks glittered as they rounded the edge of the pine wood. It was the first time they had ridden in a train.

  ‘But I want to know what he done,’ Benjamin jumped up and down.

  ‘Sshh, will you?’ And at that moment, the signal went down – clonk! – and the train came steaming round the bend. The engine had red wheels and the piston moved in and out, slower and slower, till it came to a panting halt.

  Mary and Mr Fogarty helped the clergyman hump the bags into the compartment. The whistle blew, the door slammed and the twins stood at the window, waving. Mary waved a handkerchief, smiling and crying of Benjamin’s bravery.

  The train passed along winding valleys with whitewashed farms on the hills. They watched the telegraph wires dancing up and down the window, crossing and criss-crossing, and then whizzing over the roof. Stations went by, tunnels, bridges, churches, gas-works and aqueducts. The seats in the compartment reminded them of the texture of bullrushes. They s
aw a heron low over a river.

  Because they were running late, they missed the connection at Carmarthen, and missed the last omnibus from Haverfordwest to St David’s. Fortunately, the vicar found a farmer who offered to take them in his waggonette.

  It was dark as they came over the crest of Keeston Hill. One of the traces slipped and, while the driver climbed down to hitch it up, the twins stood and stared at St Bride’s Bay.

  A soft seawind brushed their faces. The full moon scintillated on the black water. A fishing boat glided by, on bat-wings, and vanished. They heard the wash of waves on the beach, and a bell-buoy moaning. Two lighthouses, one on Skomer, the other on Ramsay Island, flashed their beams. The streets of St David’s were deserted as the waggonette rumbled over the cobbles, past the Cathedral, and halted by a big white gate.

  For the first few days, the twins were in awe of the ladies who lived there, and of the ‘artistic’ style of the house.

  Miss Catharine Tuke was the artist – a pretty, brittle woman with a fringe of cloud-grey hair, who drifted from room to room in a flowery kimono, and was rarely seen to smile. Her eyes were the colour of her Russian Blue cat; and in her studio she had made an arrangement of driftwood and sea-holly.

  Miss Catharine spent her winters in the Bay of Naples where she painted a great many views of Vesuvius, and scenes from classical mythology. In summer, she painted seascapes and copied the Old Masters. Sometimes, in the middle of a meal, she’d say, ‘Ah!’ and slip away to work on a picture. The canvas that fascinated Benjamin showed a beautiful young man, naked against a blue sky, pierced through and through with arrows, and smiling.

  Miss Catharine’s companion was called Miss Adela Hart.

  She was a much larger, sorrowful lady, with a very nervous temperament. She spent most of her day in the kitchen, cooking the dishes she had learned in Italy. She always wore the same heliotrope costume that was halfway between a dress and a shawl. She wore a necklace of amber beads and she cried a lot.

  She cried in the kitchen and she cried at mealtimes. She kept snivelling into a lace handkerchief and calling her friend ‘Beloved!’ or ‘My Pussy!’ or ‘Poppens!’ – and Miss Catharine would frown, as if to say, ‘Not in front of visitors!’ But that only made it worse; for then she broke into a real flood: ‘I can’t help it,’ she’d cry. ‘I can’t!’ And Miss Catharine would purse her lips and say, ‘Please go to your room.’

  ‘Why does she call her Pussy?’ Benjamin asked the vicar.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Miss Hart should be called Pussy. She’s got whiskers.’

  ‘Don’t be unkind about Miss Hart.’

  ‘She hates us.’

  ‘She doesn’t hate you. She’s not used to having little boys in the house.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t like anyone to call me Pussy.’

  ‘No one’s going to call you Pussy,’ said Lewis.

  They were walking along a white road to the sea. There were whitecaps in the bay and the golden ears of barley swished this way and that way, in the wind. The clergyman clung to his panama and easel. Benjamin carried the paintbox, and Lewis, dragging the handle of the shrimp-net behind him, left a trail in the dust like a grass-snake’s.

  On reaching the cove, the old man set up the easel and the twins scampered off to play in rock-pools.

  They caught shrimps and blennies, poked their fingers into sea-anemones, and stroked the sea-grass that felt like slimy fleece. One by one, the swells flopped on to the pebbly beach, where some lobstermen were caulking their boat.

  At low tide, oyster-catchers flew in, needling for shellfish with beaks of flame. Stranded by the entrance was the hulk of a clipper-bowed schooner, her timbers festooned with seaweed and encrusted with mussels and barnacles.

  The twins made friends with one of the lobstermen, who lived in a white-roofed cottage, and had once been a member of her crew.

  As a young man, he had sailed on the Cape Horners. He had seen the Giant Patagonians and the girls of Tahiti. Listening to his stories, Lewis’s jaw would drop with wonder, and he would go off alone to daydream.

  He pictured himself on the crow’s-nest of a full-rigged ship, scanning the horizon for a palm-fringed shore. Or he would lie among the sea-pinks, stretching his eye to the skerries where seagulls wandered like patches of sunlight, while green rollers thumped on to the rocks below, and sent up curtains of spray.

  On a calm day, the old sailor took them mackerel-fishing in his lugger. They sailed out beyond the Guillemot Rock; and no sooner had they let down the spinner than they felt a buzz on the line and saw a glint of silver in the wake. The sailor’s fingers were blooded when he came to take the fish off the hook.

  By mid-morning, the bilges were full of fish – flapping, flouncing, iridescent in their death-agony: their scarlet gills reminded the boys of the carnations in Mr Earnshaw’s greenhouse. Miss Hart cooked the mackerel for supper; and from then on, they were all good friends.

  On the day of their departure, the sailor gave them a ship-in-a-bottle with yardarms made of matchsticks and sails from a handkerchief. And when the train drew into Rhulen Station, Benjamin raced down the platform shouting: ‘Look-what-we’ve-got! A ship-in-a-bottle!’

  Mary could hardly believe that this smiling sunburned boy was the sick son she had sent away. Neither she nor Amos took much notice of Lewis, who came up with the shrimp-net and said, quietly and emphatically, ‘When I grow up, I’m going to be a sailor.’

  15

  THE AUTUMN WAS cruel. On Guy Fawkes’ Day, Mary gazed at the gloomy yellow light over the hill and said, ‘It looks like snow.’

  ‘Too early for snow yet,’ said Amos; but it was snow.

  The snow fell in the night, and melted, leaving long white smears on the screes. Then it fell again, a heavy fall this time; and though they dug a great many sheep from the drifts, the ravens had a feast when it thawed.

  And Sam was sick.

  At first, there was something the matter with his eyes. He woke with a crust of discharge over his eyelids and Mary had to bathe them open with warm water. His mind began to wander. He kept repeating the same story, about a girl in the cider-house in Rosgoch, and how he had hidden a horn cup in a niche beside the fireplace.

  ‘I’d like that cup,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sure it’s still there,’ she said. ‘And one day we’ll go and find it.’

  It was towards the end of November that they started losing chickens.

  Lewis had a pet pullet that would peck the grains of corn from his hand; but one morning, on opening the hatch of the hen-house, he found that she had vanished. A week later, Mary counted six birds missing. Two more went in the night. She searched for clues and found, neither blood nor feathers, but the imprint of a boy’s boot in the mud.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she sighed, as she wiped the eggs and arranged them in the egg-rack, ‘I’m afraid we’ve got a human fox.’ But she kept her suspicions from Amos until she had proof. He was already in a very ugly mood.

  After the snowfall, he had driven half the flock off the mountain and set them to graze the oat-stubble. A strip of thicket, choked with brambles and riddled with badger sets, ran along the top of the oatfield; and on the far side there was a ragged hedge, which was the boundary between The Vision and The Rock. One afternoon, Mary went to pick sloes and came back with the news that Watkins’s sheep had broken through and were in among their own.

  Infuriated, less by the loss of feed than the risk of scab – for Watkins seldom bothered to dip – Amos sorted out the strays and told young Jim to drive them back along the lane.

  ‘Be a good lad,’ he said. ‘Get your father to keep his beasts in.’

  A week went by, and the sheep broke through again. But this time, when Amos inspected the thicket, he saw from the fresh white cuts that someone had hacked a passage through.

  ‘That settles it,’ he said.

  He took an axe and two billhooks and, calling the twins, set off to pleach the hedge himself.


  The ground was hard. The sky was blue. Strewn over the creamy stubble were heaps of orange mangolds, half-eaten, and the grimy white sheep clustered round them. A smokescreen of old man’s beard stretched away over the brambles. They had hardly felled the first thornbush when Watkins himself came limping down the pasture with a shotgun in his hand.

  Tongue-tied with rage, he stood with his back to the raking sunlight, his forefinger quivering round the trigger-guard.

  ‘Get ye away, Amos Jones.’ He had broken the silence. ‘That land belongs to we’ – and he launched into a tirade of abuse.

  No, Amos answered. The land belonged to the Estate, and he had a map to prove it.

  ‘No. No,’ Watkins shouted. ‘The land belongs to we.’

  They went on shouting but Amos saw the dangers of provoking him further. He calmed him down, and the two men agreed to meet in Rhulen at the Red Dragon on market day.

  In the tap-room of the Red Dragon it was a little too hot. Amos sat away from the fire, peering through dirty net curtains on to the street. The barman swabbed down the counter. A pair of horse-dealers in high spirits were swigging at their tankards, and shooting gobs of spit on to the sawdust-covered floor: from another table came the clack of dominoes and the noise of boozy laughter. Outside, the sky was grey and grainy, and it was freezing hard. The clock showed Watkins twenty minutes late. A hard black hat moved up and down the street, in front of the tap-room window.

  ‘I’ll give him ten more minutes.’ Amos looked again at the clock.

  Seven minutes later, the door swung open and Watkins pushed his way into the room. He nodded with the spiritually uplifted air of a man at a prayer-meeting. He did not take off the hat, or sit down.

  ‘What’s yours?’ asked Amos.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Watkins, folding his arms and sucking in his cheeks so the skin over his cheekbones shone.