On the Black Hill

by Bruce Chatwin

  ‘I do wish they’d come,’ he fretted, wondering what on earth was detaining the Bickertons.

  To occupy himself, he darted about, blew his whistle, escorted the pensioners and made a show of pushing the Bombardier’s wheel-chair into the place of honour.

  At last, the gate swung open and the luncheon party emerged through a gap in the topiary like a parade of prize beasts at a show.

  The crowd parted for Mrs Bickerton, who walked ahead of the others in her Red Cross uniform. On seeing the Jones twins, she stopped: ‘Do give your mother my love. I wish she’d come and see me.’

  Her husband limped along on the arm of Lady Vernon-Murray, an ample woman from whose hat a bird-of-paradise plume curled downwards and tickled the corner of her mouth. A frock of fog-blue voile framed her ankles, and she looked extremely cross. The Brigadier, an immense purple-faced presence, appeared to be trapped in a web of polished brown leather straps. Members of the local gentry followed; and, lastly, in magenta, came the Bickerton war-widow, Mrs Nancy. A young man from London was with her.

  She was halfway to the podium when she paused and frowned: ‘Re-ggie! Re-ggie!’ she called with a stammer. ‘N-now whe-ere’s he gone? He was here a se-econd ago.’

  ‘Coming!’ a voice called back from behind the topiary peacocks, and a youngish man, in a blazer and whites, appeared in the open, on crutches. His left leg was off at the knee.

  At his side, conspicuous as a magpie against the evergreens, was a girl in a maid’s uniform, with white flounces on her shoulders.

  It was Rosie Fifield.

  ‘I told you,’ Benjamin said, and Lewis began to tremble.

  The twins moved towards the podium where Mr Arkwright, as Master of Ceremonies, had the privilege of escorting the guests-of-honour to their seats.

  ‘I hope we shall be amused,’ said Lady Vernon-Murray, as he slid a cane-seated chair beneath her haunches.

  ‘Surely yes, my lady!’ he replied. ‘We have a pot-pourri of entertainment on the programme.’

  ‘Well, it’s dashed cold,’ she said, sourly.

  Reggie had chosen a chair on the far left of the platform, and Rosie was standing beneath him. He tickled her vertebrae with the toe of his shoe.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Mr Arkwright succeeded in silencing the crowd. ‘Permit me to introduce our illustrious guests – the Hero of Vimy Ridge, and his lady …’

  ‘Gosh, it’s perishing,’ said her ladyship, as the Brigadier acknowledged the cheers.

  He was preparing to open his mouth when two stable-lads rushed forward carrying effigies of the Kaiser and Prince Ruprecht, gagged and bound to a pair of kitchen chairs. On top of the Kaiser’s helmet was a stuffed canary, smeared with gold paint.

  The Brigadier glared, with mock ferocity, at the foe.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he began, ‘soldiers of the King, and you two miserable specimens of humanity, whom we shall soon have the pleasure of consigning to the bonfire …’

  Another round of cheers went up.

  ‘Now sewiously sewiously …’ The Brigadier raised a hand as if passing to serious matters. ‘This is a memowable day. A day that will go down in the annals of our history …’

  ‘I thought we said we weren’t having speeches.’ Mrs Bickerton turned coldly to the solicitor.

  ‘Unfortunately, there are people here today who may think they can’t wejoice with us because they’ve lost a dear one. Well, my message to them is this. Wejoice with the west of us now the whole thing’s over. And wemember that your husbands or fathers, bwothers or sweethearts have all died in a good cause …’

  This time the applause was fainter. Mrs Bickerton bit her lip and stared at the mountain. Her face was white as her nurse’s cap.

  ‘I … I …’ The Brigadier was warming to his theme. ‘I can count myself one of the lucky ones. I was at Vimmy. I was at Wipers. And I was at Passiondale. I witnessed appalling gas-shelling …’

  All eyes turned to the five gas victims, who sat lined up on a bench, coughing and wheezing like an exhibition for the horrors of war.

  ‘Our conditions were absolutely filthy. One went for days without a change of clothes, nay, weeks without so much as a bath. Our casualties, especially among the gunners, were quite dweadful …’

  ‘I can’t bear it,’ murmured Mrs Bickerton, and shielded her face with her hand.

  ‘I often think back to the time I was wounded and in hospital. We’d been thwough an absolute bloodbath near Weemes. But we happened to have a chap in the wegiment … turned out to be something of a poet. Well, he jotted down a few lines, and I’d like to wepeat them to you. At the time, anyway, they were a gweat comfort to me:

  ‘If I should die, think only this of me:

  That there’s some corner of a foweign field

  That is fowever England.’

  ‘Poor Rupert,’ Mrs Bickerton leaned across to her husband. ‘He’d turn in his grave.’

  ‘Christ, this man’s a bore!’

  ‘How can we shut him up?’

  ‘And what of the future for our belovèd country?’ The Brigadier had changed tack. ‘Or should I say our belovèd county? Our cwying need is not just to feed the people of these islands, but to export bloodstock to our partners overseas. Now I have seen Heweford cattle in evewy part of the globe. Indeed, whewever you will find the white man, there you will find the white-faced bweed. I know you must all feel twemendously pwoud of the Lurkenhope Hewefords …’

  ‘Be damned if they are,’ said the Colonel, reddening.

  ‘But it’s always been a mystewy to me, why, when one looks wound the countwyside, one sees so many infewior animals. … half-bweeds … diseased … deformed …’

  The war-wounded, already in agony from the hard benches, began to look frayed and fidgety.

  ‘The only way forward is to eliminate second-wate animals for good and all. Now in the Argentine and Austwalia …’

  Mrs Bickerton glanced about helplessly; and, in the end, it was Mr Arkwright who saved the day. It was time for the Carnival Procession. Another storm, the colour of black grapes, was brewing over the mountain.

  Plucking up courage, he whispered in Lady Vernon-Murray’s ear. She nodded, tugged her husband by the coat-tails and said, ‘Henry! Time’s up!’

  ‘What, m’dear?’

  ‘Time’s up!’

  So he hurriedly bid his audience adieu, hoped to meet them all ‘’ere long on the hunting field’, and sat down.

  The next item on the agenda was the presentation, by her ladyship, of a silver cigarette-case to ‘each and every man returned from these wars’. Loud acclamations greeted her as she descended the steps. She held out the Bombardier’s, and a clawlike hand shot out from the basket-chair, and grabbed it.

  ‘Hrrh! Hrrh!’ came the same spongy rattle.

  ‘Oh, it’s too cruel,’ breathed Mrs Bickerton.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Mr Arkwright called through the megaphone. ‘We now come to the principal attraction of the afternoon: the judging of the Carnival floats. I give you Number One …’ He consulted his programme. ‘The Lurkenhope Stable Boys, who have chosen as their theme … “The Battle of Om-dur-man”!’

  A team of white-fronted shires came into view hauling a hay-waggon, on which was a tableau-vivant with Lord Kitchener surrounded by potted palms and half a dozen lads, some with leopard-skins round their tummies, some in underpants, and all smeared head to toe with soot, waving spears or assegais, yelling, or beating a tom-tom.

  The spectators yelled back, chucked paper darts, and the Survivor of Rorke’s Drift shook his crutch: ‘Lemme get me mits on ’em Sambos,’ he shrieked, as the cart drew off.

  Cart Number Two arrived with ‘Robin Hood and his Merrie Men’. Next came ‘The Dominions’ with Miss Bessel of Frogend as Britannia and, fourthly, ‘The Working Boys’ Pierrot Troupe’.

  The boys sang to the accompaniment of a ragtime piano, and when they rhymed the words ‘German sausage’ with ‘abdominal passage’, ther
e was a hushed and horrified silence – except for the cackles of Reggie Bickerton, who laughed and laughed and hardly seemed able to stop. Rosie hid her own sniggers by burying her face in her apron.

  Meanwhile, Lewis Jones was edging towards her. He whistled to attract her attention and she stared straight through him, smiling.

  The last float but one, showing ‘The Death of Prince Llewellyn’, roused a clique of Welsh Nationalists to song.

  ‘Enough, gentlemen!’ shouted Mr Arkwright. ‘Enough is enough. Thank you!’ Then a burst of hurrah-ing brought everyone to their feet.

  The men whistled. Women craned their necks and offered tender-hearted comments: ‘Isn’t she lovely? … Lovely! … Oh! And do look at the little angels! … The little darlings! … Aren’t they sweet? … Oh, it’s Cis … Do look! It’s our Cissie … Oh! Oh! Isn’t she bee-yewtiful?’

  ‘Miss Cissie Pantall the Beeches,’ Mr Arkwright continued in a tone of rapture, ‘who has deigned to honour us with her presence – as “Peace”. Ladies and gentlemen! I give you … “Peace”!’

  Fluid folds of white calico covered the floor and sides of the cart. Laurel swags hung down over the wheel-hubs and on all four corners there were pots of arum lilies.

  A choir of angels formed a ring around the throne, and on it sat a big blonde girl in a snowy tunic. She held a wicker cage containing a white fantailed pigeon. Her hair fell like a fleece on to her shoulders, and her teeth were chattering with cold.

  The ladies looked up at the chutes of rain already tumbling over the Black Hill, and cast around for the nearest umbrella.

  ‘Let’s be going,’ said Benjamin.

  After a brief conference with Lady Vernon-Murray, Mr Arkwright hastily announced the foregone conclusion: Miss Pantall the Beeches was the winner. Her proud father then led his horse-team round in a circle, so that Cissie could step on to the podium and collect her trophy.

  Frightened by the applause and approach of thunder, the Dove of Peace panicked and shredded its wings against the bars of the cage. Feathers flew, fluttered in the wind, and fell near Rosie Fifield’s feet. She stooped and picked up two of them. Flushed in the face and smiling, she stood provocatively in front of Lewis Jones.

  ‘Fancy you showing up!’ she said. ‘I’ve got a present for you.’ And she handed him one of the feathers.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ he said, with a puzzled smile. He took the feather before his brother could stop him: he had never even heard of ‘white-feathering’.

  ‘Shirkers!’ she jeered. And Reggie Bickerton laughed; and the group of soldiers round her also burst out laughing. The N.C.O. was with them. Lewis dropped the feather, and the rain began to fall.

  ‘The Sports will be postponed,’ the solicitor called through the megaphone as the crowd broke ranks and ran for the trees.

  Lewis and Benjamin crouched under some rhododendrons, and the water ran in trickles down their necks. When the rain let up, they stole away towards the edge of the shrubbery and out onto the carriage drive. Four or five Army louts were blocking their paths. All of them were wet through, and tipsy.

  ‘’Ad it soft in ’Ereford, didn’t ya, mate?’ The N.C.O. swung a fist at Lewis, and he ducked.

  ‘Run!’ he yelled, and the twins ran back to the bushes. But the path was slippery; Lewis tripped on a root, and fell full-length in the mud. The N.C.O. fell on top of him and twisted his arm.

  Another soldier shouted, ‘Wipe their bloody snouts in the muck!’ And Benjamin booted him behind the knees and toppled him. Then all his world was wheeling, and the next thing he heard was a sneering voice, ‘Aw! Leave ’em to stew!’

  Then they were alone again, with swollen eyes and the taste of blood on their lips.

  That night, climbing the crest of Cefn Hill, they saw a bonfire blazing on Croft Ambrey, another on the Clee and far off, faintly, a dull glow over the Malverns – blazing as they had blazed at the time of the Armada.

  The Bombardier did not survive the celebrations. While clearing up the mess in the Park, an estate worker found him in the wheeled basket-chair. No one had remembered him in the rush for shelter. He had ceased to breathe. The man was amazed by the strength of his grip as he prised his fingers from the silver cigarette-case.

  25

  JIM THE ROCK spent the Great Day at a military hospital on Southampton Water.

  Serving as a muleteer with the South Wales Borderers, he had survived the First and Second Battles of Ypres, and then the Somme. He came through the war without a scratch until, in the final week, two lumps of shrapnel caught him behind the kneecaps. Septicaemia set in and, for a time, the doctors considered amputation.

  When at last he came home after the long months of therapy, he was still very shaky on his pins; his face was pitted with black specks, and he was inclined to snap.

  Jim had loved his mules, treated them for ophthalmia and mange, and dragged them from the mud when they fell in up to their fetlocks. He had never shot a wounded mule unless there was no hope of saving him.

  The sight of dead mules had distressed him far more than the sight of dead men. ‘I see’d ’em,’ he’d say in the pub. ‘All along the road and stinkin’ summut ’orrible. Poor ol’ boys what never did no ’arm.’

  He had hated it most when the mules got gassed. In one gas attack, he survived when the whole of his mule-train died – and that made him extremely angry. Marching up to his lieutenant, he saluted sullenly and blurted out, ‘If I can ’ave me gas mask, why can’t me mules?’

  This piece of logic so impressed the lieutenant that he sent a report to the general, who, instead of ignoring it, sent back a note of commendation.

  By 1918, most British units had equipped their horses and mules with gas-masks, whereas the Germans went on losing supplies; and though no military historian would credit Jim the Rock with the invention of the equine mask, he persisted in the illusion that it was he who had won the war.

  So whenever it came to another round – at the Red Dragon in Rhulen, the Bannut Tree in Lurkenhope, or the Shepherd’s Rest at Upper Brechfa – he’d stare defiantly at his fellow-drinkers: ‘Aw, stand us another pint. I won the war, I did!’ And when they jeered back, ‘Get ye off, y’old scalliwamp,’ he’d fish in his pocket for the general’s letter, or the photo of himself and a pair of mules – all three of them in their gas-masks.

  Jim’s sister Ethel was immeasurably proud of him and his shining medals, and said he needed a ‘good long rest’.

  She had grown into a strong, big-boned woman who stamped around in an ex-Army greatcoat and stared at the world from under her mossy eyebrows. ‘Never you mind,’ she’d say, if Jim gave up on a job. ‘I’ll a-finish it myself.’ And when he rode off to the pub, a placid smile would spread across her face. ‘That Jim!’ she’d say. ‘He be wonderful fond of scenery.’

  Aggie also doted on Jim and looked on him as one arisen from the grave. But Tom the Coffin – by now a craggy, matt-bearded old man with a luminous stare – had resented the lad for volunteering, and doubly resented his return. At the sight of the war-hero sunning himself, he’d yell in a hoarse and terrible voice: ‘I’ve warned you. I’ve warned you. This is your last chance. Get yourself to work or I’ll clout you. I’ll knobble you, you good-for-nothing lump! I’ll moil your fat face …’

  One evening, he accused Jim of stealing a snaffle-bit and beat his cheeks like a tambourine – whereupon Aggie glowered and said, ‘That’s it. I’ve had enough.’

  At suppertime, her husband found that the bolts had been drawn against him. He hanged and banged, but the door was solid oak, and he went away nursing his knuckles. Around midnight, they heard a terrifying whinny from the beast-house. In the morning he was gone, and Jim’s mare lay dead with a nail through her skull.

  The next news of the old man, he was living in the Ithon Valley with a farmer’s widow, whom he’d gotten with child. People said he’d ‘fixed the devil’s stare’ on her when he went to deliver her husband’s coffin.

  Without th
e money from the coffins, Aggie no longer had enough to keep a ‘nice house’ and, after scouring round for other sources of income, hit on the idea of boarding unwanted children.

  The first of her ‘rescues’ was a baby girl called Sarah, whose mother, the miller’s wife at Brynarian, had been seduced by a seasonal shearer. The miller had refused to rear the child under his own roof, but offered £2 a week for her upkeep.

  This arrangement brought in Aggie a clear profit of £1 and, on the strength of it, she took in two more illegitimates – Brenda and Lizzie – and, in this way, maintained her standards. The tea-caddy was full. They ate pickled lamb once a week. She bought a new white linen table-cloth, and a tin of pineapple chunks sat proudly on the Sunday tea-table.

  As for Jim, he lorded it over his female brood, shirked work, and would sit on the hillside playing his penny-whistle to the whinchats and wheatears.

  He hated to see any creature in pain; and if he found a rabbit in a snare, or a gull with a broken wing, he’d carry it home and bind the wound with a bandage, or the wing with a splint of twigs. Sometimes, there’d be several birds and animals festering in boxes by the fire; and when one of them died, he’d say, ‘Poor ol’ boy! An’ I dug a hole an’ put ’im in the ground.’

  For years he went on harping about the war, and had the habit of slipping down to The Vision to hector the Jones twins.

  They were scything one sunset in their shirtsleeves, when Jim limped up and launched into his usual harangue: ‘An’ them tanks I’m a-tellin’ yer! Baroom! … Baroom!’ The twins went on scything, stooping occasionally to whet their blades and, when a fly blew into Benjamin’s mouth, he spat it out: ‘Aagh! Them pithering flies!’

  Of Jim they took no notice and he ended up losing his temper: ‘An’ you? You’d a-lasted a fraction of a second in that war. An’ you’d a farm to fight for! An’ I … I’d only me own skin to save!’