On the Black Hill

by Bruce Chatwin

  ‘Yes! Yes!’ Again the hands arose with fluid grace and, again, the crowd fell silent:

  ‘The last-mentioned class, I need not add, will be the aristocracy of this country – indeed, the only true aristocracy of this country – who, in the evening of their days, will have the consolation of knowing that they have done what England expects of every man: namely, to do his duty …’

  ‘What about Wales?’ A sing-song voice sounded to the right of Miss Bickerton; but Jim was drowned in the general hullabaloo.

  Volunteers rushed forward to press their names on the Major. There were shouts of ‘Hip! Hip! Hurrah!’ Other voices broke into song, ‘For they are jolly good fellows …’ The woman in the blue hat slapped her son over the face, shrieking, ‘Oh, yes, you will!’ – and a look of childlike serenity had descended on the Colonel.

  He continued, in thrilling tones: ‘Now when Lord Kitchener says he needs you, he means YOU. For each one of you brave young fellows is unique and indispensable. A few moments ago, I heard a voice on my left calling, “What about Wales?”’

  Suddenly, you could hear a pin drop.

  ‘Believe you me, that cry, “What about Wales?” is a cry that goes straight to my heart. For in my veins Welsh blood and English blood course in equal quantities. And that … that is why my daughter and I have brought two automobiles here with us this evening. Those of you who wish to enlist in our beloved Herefordshire Regiment may drive with me … But those of you, loyal Welshmen, who would prefer to join that other, most gallant regiment, the South Wales Borderers, may go with my daughter and Major Llewellyn-Smythe to Brecon …’

  This was how Jim the Rock went to war – for the sake of leaving home, and for a lady with moist red lips and moist hazel-coloured eyes.

  20

  IN INDIA, MARY had once seen the Lancers riding to the Frontier; and a bugle-call sent tingles up her spine. She believed in the Allied Cause. She believed in Victory, and in answer to Mrs Bickerton’s ‘appeal for knitted garments’ she and Rebecca spent their spare time knitting gloves and balaclavas for the boys at the Front.

  Amos hated the war and would have no truck with it.

  He hid his horses from the Remount Officers. He ignored an order from the Ministry to plant wheat on a north-facing slope. It was a matter of pride, both as a man and as a Welshman, to stop his sons from fighting for the English.

  He read into the Bible a confirmation of his views. Surely the war was God’s visitation on the Cities of the Plain? Surely all the things you read in the papers – the shelling, the bombs, the U-boats and mustard gas – were they not the instruments of His Vengeance? Perhaps the Kaiser was another Nebuchadnezzar? Perhaps there’d be a Seventy Year Captivity for Englishmen? And perhaps there’d be a remnant who’d be spared – a remnant such as the Rechabites, who drank no wine, neither lived in cities, nor bowed before false idols, but obeyed the Living God?

  He expounded these opinions to Mr Gomer Davies, who stared at him as if he were mad and accused him of being a traitor. He, in turn, accused the minister of glossing over the Sixth Commandment and discontinued his attendance at Chapel.

  In January of 1916 – after the Conscription Act became law – he learned that a Rechabite Friendly Society held regular meetings in Rhulen, and so came into contact with Conscientious Objectors.

  He took the twins to their sessions in a draughty loft over a cobbler’s shop in South Street.

  Most of the members were artisans or manual labourers, but there was a gentleman among them – a lanky young fellow with a big Adam’s apple, who dressed in shabby tweeds and rewrote the minutes in elevated prose.

  The Rechabites held that tea was a sinful stimulant: so refreshments were limited to a blackcurrant cordial and a plate of thin arrowroot biscuits. One by one, the speakers professed their faith in a peaceable world and pronounced on the fate of their comrades. Many were under sentence of court martial or in jail. And one of their number, a quarryman, had led a hunger strike in the Hereford Detention Barracks, when the sergeants tried to make him handle the regimental rum supply. He had died, from pneumonia, after forcible feeding. A mixture of milk and cocoa, syringed up his nostrils, had filtered down into his lungs.

  ‘Poor Tom!’ the cobbler said, and called for three minutes’ silence.

  The company stood – an arc of bald heads bowed in a pool of lamplight. Then all linked hands and sang a song, the words of which they knew, but not the tune:

  Nation with nation, land with land

  Unarmed shall hue as comrades free

  In every heart and brain shall throb

  The pulse of one fraternity.

  At first, Mary found it hard to reconcile her husband’s violent temperament with his pacifism: after news of the Somme, she conceded he might be right.

  Twice a week, she walked down to Lurkenhope to cook a meal for Betty Palmer, a poor widow, who had lost her only son in the battle, and lost the will to eat. Then, in May of 1917, she patched up her quarrel with Aggie Watkins.

  She saw a lonely figure in black, dragging her feet round the market booths, drying her tears on her sleeve.

  ‘It must be Jim,’ she cried out loud.

  Aggie’s face was blotchy from crying, and her bonnet was awry. A light rain was falling and the street vendors were covering their wares, and taking shelter under the arches of the Town Hall.

  ‘It be Jim,’ Aggie sobbed. ‘’Im were in France and workin’ with mules. An’ now comes this card as says ’im’s done for.’

  She poked her arthritic fingers into her basket of eggs, pulled out a crumpled card, and passed it to Mary.

  It was one of the Standard Field Service Postcards that front-line soldiers were allowed to send home after a battle.

  Mary frowned as she tried to puzzle it out, and then relaxed into a smile.

  ‘But he’s not dead, Aggie. He’s fine. Look! That’s what the cross means. It says, “I’m quite well.”’

  A spasm shook the old woman’s face. Glowering with disbelief, she grabbed the card. But when she saw Mary’s open arms, and the tears in her eyes, she dropped her basket, and the two women flung their arms round each other’s necks, and kissed.

  ‘Now look what you’ve done,’ Mary said, pointing to the egg-yolks smeared over the shiny wet cobbles.

  ‘Eggs!’ said Mrs Watkins, disdainfully.

  ‘And look!’ said Mary, recovering the card. ‘It’s got an address for parcels. Let’s send him a cake!’

  That afternoon, she baked a big fruitcake, full of raisins and nuts and glacé cherries. She wrote the name ‘JIM THE ROCK’ in blanched almonds on the crust, and left it on the table for Amos to see.

  He shrugged and said, ‘I’d like a cake like that.’ A day or so later, he passed Tom Watkins in the lane. They nodded – and a truce was assumed to exist.

  But the news from the Great War was worse than ever.

  In cottage kitchens, mothers sat helplessly waiting for the postman’s knock. When the letter came from the King, a black-bordered card would appear in one of the windows. In a cottage along the lane to Rhulen, Mary saw two cards fixed in front of the net curtains. After Passchendaele, a third card joined them.

  ‘I can’t bear it,’ she choked, clutching Amos by the sleeve as they drove by. ‘Not all three of them!’ The twins would be eighteen in August, and liable to serve. All winter, she had the same recurring dream – of Benjamin standing under an apple-tree, with a red hole through his forehead, and a reproachful smile.

  On the 21st of February – a date Mary shuddered to remember – Mr Arkwright, the Rhulen solicitor, drove up to The Vision in his motor. He was one of the five members of the local Military Service Tribunal. A dapper little man with arctic eyes and sandy waxed moustachios, he wore a grey Homburg and a grey serge topcoat; and on the passenger seat sat his red setter bitch.

  He began by demanding why, in the name of God, the twins hadn’t registered for their National Identity Cards. Did they, or did they not, realize they
had broken the law? Then, taking great care not to muddy his spats or shoes, he jotted down particulars of the land, the numbers of stock, and the buildings, and wound up by pronouncing, with the solemnity of a judge passing sentence, that The Vision was too small a farm to warrant exemption for more than one son.

  ‘Of course,’ he added, ‘none of us likes taking lads off the land. Food shortages and all that! But the law’s the law!’

  ‘Them be twins,’ stammered Amos.

  ‘I know they’re twins. My dear good man, we can’t start making exceptions …’

  ‘Them’ll die apart …’

  ‘If you please! Healthy boys like them! Never heard such nonsense! … Maudie! … Maudie!’ The red setter was barking at a rabbit-hole in the hedge. She lolloped back to her master, and sat down again in the passenger seat. Mr Arkwright revved the engine and released the handbrake. The tyres cracked the ice-puddles as the car slewed off down the yard.

  ‘Tinpot tyrant!’ Amos raised his fist, standing alone in a cloud of blue exhaust.

  21

  NEXT MARKET DAY, Amos approached the bailiff of a big farm near Rhydspence, who was said to be short of hands. The man agreed to take on Lewis as a ploughman, and sponsor him when his case came up before the Tribunal.

  Benjamin almost fainted at the news.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Mary tried to console him. ‘He’ll be back when the war’s over. Besides, it’s only ten miles away, and he’s bound to come and see us on Sundays.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ he said.

  Lewis put on a brave face when the time came to leave. He tied a few clothes in a bundle, kissed his mother and brother, and jumped into the trap beside Amos. The wind ripped at Benjamin’s coat-sleeves as he watched them disappearing down the lane.

  He began to pine.

  Though he ate his food, the thought of Lewis eating different food, off different plates, at a different table, made him sadder and sadder and he soon grew thin and weak. At nights, he would reach out to touch his brother, but his hand came to rest on a cold unrumpled pillow. He gave up washing for fear of reminding himself that – at that same moment – Lewis might be sharing someone else’s towel.

  ‘Do cheer up,’ Mary said. She could see the separation was more than he could bear.

  He revisited the places where they had played as children. Sometimes, he called the sheepdog, ‘Mott! Mott! Come on, let’s find the master! Where’s he? Where’s he?’ And the dog would jump up and wag his tail, and they would clamber up the screes of the Black Hill, until the Wye came into view – all a-glitter in the winter sunshine – and the fresh brown plough around Rhydspence where Lewis might be ploughing.

  At other times, he went alone to the dingle and watched the peaty water sluicing through their old bathing pool. Everywhere, he kept seeing Lewis’s face – in a cattle-trough, in the milk-pail, even in puddles of liquid dung.

  He hated Lewis for leaving and suspected him of stealing his soul. One day, staring into the shaving mirror, he watched his face grow fainter and fainter, as if the glass were eating his reflection until he vanished altogether in a crystalline mist.

  This was the first time he thought of killing himself.

  Lewis used to arrive for Sunday lunch, pink in the face after a ten-mile hike across country, his leggings coated with mud and his breeches with dead burrs.

  He kept them all amused with stories of life on a big farm. He liked his job. He liked to tinker with the new-fangled machinery, and had driven a tractor. He liked looking after the pedigree Herefords. He liked the bailiff, who instructed him in the mysteries of the stud-book; and he had made friends with one of the dairy-maids. He loathed the Irish stock-man, who was a ‘bloody drunken savage.’

  One Wednesday, towards the end of April, the bailiff sent him by train to Hereford, along with some lots of store-cattle, which were due to be sold at auction. Since the lots came up at eleven, the rest of the day was free.

  It was a very gloomy day and the clouds brushed low over the Cathedral tower. Lines of grey sleet smacked on to the pavements and rattled on the oilcloth hoods of the horse-cabs. In High Town, the poor cab-horses stood in line beside the swollen gutter; and under a green-painted canopy, some cabbies were warming their hands over a brazier.

  ‘Come on in, laddie!’ one of them beckoned, and Lewis joined them.

  A military vehicle drove by, and a pair of sergeants strutted past in mackintosh capes.

  ‘Bitter day for a funeral,’ said a man with a cheesy complexion.

  ‘Bitter,’ agreed another.

  ‘And what age are you, laddie?’ the first man went on, rattling a poker in the coals.

  ‘Seventeen,’ said Lewis.

  ‘And your birth-date?’

  ‘August.’

  ‘Watch it, laddie! Watch it, or they’ll have you, for sure.’

  Lewis fidgeted on the bench. When the sleet let up, he sauntered through the maze of lanes behind Watkins’s Brewery. He stood in the entrance of a cooper’s shop and saw the brand-new barrels amid heaps of yellow shavings. From another street, he heard a brass band playing, and walked towards it.

  Outside the Green Dragon Hotel a knot of bystanders had gathered to watch the funeral procession go by.

  The dead man was a Colonel of the Herefords, who had died of war wounds. The Guard of Honour marched with eyes fastened on the tips of their naked sword blades. The drummer wore a leopard skin. The march was the ‘Dead March’ in Saul.

  The wheels of the gun-carriage grated on the macadam and the coffin, draped in a Union Jack, passed across the level-lidded gaze of the ladies. Four black automobiles followed, with the widow, the Lord Mayor and the mourners. Jackdaws spewed from the belfry as the bells began to toll. A woman in a fox-fur grabbed Lewis’s arm and clamoured, shrilly:

  ‘And you, young man, aren’t you ashamed to be seen in civvies?’

  He nipped off down an alley in the direction of the market.

  An aroma of coffee beans caused him to halt before a bow-fronted window. On the shelves sat little wicker baskets heaped with conical mounds of tea: the names on the labels – Darjeeling, Keemun, Lapsang Souchong, Oolong – carried him away to a mysterious east. The coffees were on the lower shelves, and in each warm brown bean he saw the warm brown lips of a negress.

  He was daydreaming of rattan huts and lazy seas, when a butcher’s cart rolled by; the carter yelled, ‘Watch it, mate!’ and chutes of muddy water flew up and dirtied his breeches.

  In Eign Street, he paused to admire a cap of houndstooth tweed displayed in the window of a Messrs Parberry and Williams, Gentlemen’s Hosiers.

  Mr Parberry himself stood in the doorway, a pendulous man with strands of oily black hair coiled around his skull.

  ‘Come on in, my boy!’ he said in a fluty voice. ‘Costs you nothing to look round. And what takes your fancy this fine spring morning?’

  ‘The cap,’ said Lewis.

  The shop smelled of oilskins and kerosene. Mr Parberry removed the cap from the window, fingered the label, priced it at five shillings and sixpence, and added, ‘I’ll knock the sixpence off!’

  Lewis ran his thumbnail over the milled edges of the florins in his pocket. He had just been paid his wages. He had a pound’s-worth of silver.

  Mr Parberry cocked the cap on Lewis’s head and turned him to face the pier-glass. It was the right size. It was a very smart cap.

  ‘I’ll take two of them,’ Lewis said. ‘One for my brother.’

  ‘Good for you!’ said Mr Parberry, and ordered his assistant to fetch down an oval hatbox. He spread the caps on the counter, but no two were identical; and when Lewis insisted, ‘No, I must have two the same,’ the man lost his temper and spluttered, ‘Get out, you young whippersnapper! Get out and stop wasting my time!’

  At one o’clock, Lewis looked in at the City and County Dining-Room to give himself a feed. The waitress said she’d have a table in a jiffy and told him to wait five minutes. From the menu-board, he chose
a steak-and-kidney pudding, and a jam roly-poly for afters.

  Stubble-jowled farmers were gorging great quantities of suet and black pudding; and a gentleman chaffed the waitress for failing to serve him. From time to time, the clatter of plates broke through the hubbub, and a volley of curses was heard through the kitchen hatch. Whiffs of frying-fat and tobacco filled the room. A tabby cat slipped in and out among the customers’ legs and, on the floor, there were patches of beer-sodden sawdust.

  The slatternly waitress came back, grinned, set her hands on her hips, said, ‘Come on, pretty boy!’ – and Lewis took to his heels.

  He purchased a pasty from a street-vendor and, feeling very low, took shelter in the entrance of a ladies’ fashion-house.

  Models in tea-gowns stared with blue glass eyes on to the rainy street, and there was a picture of Clemenceau beside the King and Queen.

  He was about to bite into the pasty when he started to shiver. He watched his fingertips, whitening. He knew his brother was in danger, and ran for the station.

  The train for Rhulen was standing at Platform One.

  It was hot and airless in the compartment, and the windows had misted up. His teeth went on chattering. He could feel the goose-pimples rubbing against his shirt.

  A girl with glowing cheeks stepped in, set down her basket and sat in the far corner. She took off her homespun shawl and hat, and laid them on the seat. The afternoon was very dark. The lights were lit. The train moved off with a whistle and a jerk.

  He wiped his sleeve over the misted window and looked out at the telegraph poles that flashed, one after the other, across the rosy reflection of the girl.

  ‘You’ve got a fever,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ he said. He did not turn round. ‘My brother’s freezing.’

  He wiped the window again. The furrows of a ploughed field went whizzing by, like the spokes of a wheel. He saw the Cefn Hill plantation, and the Black Hill covered with snow. He was waiting with the door open, poised to jump, as the train pulled in to Rhulen.