Daphne du Maurier - Hungry Hill

Hal looked over his shoulder at the angry man.

"For the Lord's sake, Jim," he said, "go home and get to bed and sleep off your temper. Take him off, some of you fellows, or carry him there, if he can't walk. I'm in no mood to start a quarrel about my uncle or my father or anyone else."

The men stared at him without answer, and Hal moved off down the cinder track. He had walked scarcely half a dozen yards before a stone struck the side of his head. It was a sharp, jagged stone, breaking the skin. Hal turned round to face his assailant, and another stone caught him above the eye.

"You damned fool," he shouted. "What the hell do you think you're doing? If you want to fight, come on, and I'll fight you fair."

He ran up the path towards Jim, his temper thoroughly roused, the blood pouring down his head from the jagged stone. He was met by an avalanche of stones that brought him to his knees, and the moment he was down the men rushed upon him, shouting, excited, one seizing his arm and twisting it behind his back so that he could not hit out at them, one or two of the others throwing themselves upon his body.

"Drag him down to the road and let him lie there, like your cousin," said one, and "Burn him in the fire," shouted Jim, "let him feed the flames."

Someone tied a handkerchief round his eyes, hard and tight, and the blood from the wound in his head began to trickle into his eyes, warm and sickly, and he could see nothing.

The men were shouting and laughing, and now some of them were seizing his arms, and the rest his legs, and bearing him away up the binder track to the fire by the dressing-sheds.

"You bloody idiots," said Hal, weak and faint from the mauling they had given him. "Do you want the whole country down upon you, and twenty years apiece at the Mundy Assizes?"

Someone hit him on the mouth-Jim Donovan no doubt-and then he was thrown face downwards in a heap of rubble, choking, suffocating, while his hands were bound behind him.

"Ah, leave him there to rot," said one of the men, "and come away home, Jim. We've had sport enough for one evening, haven't we?"

The sight of Hal lying in the rubble, dazed and half-conscious, made the men uneasy. Jim had led them into this, and now it was best to get away, and maybe put several miles between them and Doonhaven.

The sound of their voices grew fainter, and lying there in the rubble, Hal could hear the crunch of their boots as they climbed the heap of slack above him and made away across the hill. The blood went on trickling into his eyes behind the bandage, and even found its way to his mouth. He felt faint, and deadly sick.

The bonfire died away beside him, and he could tell by the stillness and the silence that darkness was falling fast.

"Jinny will be worried," he thought. "She'll go round to the Rectory and get hold of Uncle Tom."

What an idiot he had been ever to talk to Jim Donovan and his friends. He should have turned back across the hill as soon as he saw them. A fat lot of use it had been showing sympathy with the silly bastards. Hal rolled over on to his side, and worked loose the piece of rope that bound his wrists together. Then he tore off the handkerchief they had placed across his eyes. He found, to his dismay, that he could not see at all. One eye was closed up entirely, from the cut above it, and the other was gummed with the clotted blood. He would have to find water to bathe his eye before he could make his way home, five miles or more in the gathering darkness. He struggled to his feet, and peered about him, trying to gain a sense of direction. There was water hard by, surely, close to the dressing-sheds, where the tin used to be washed, but with his closed eyes, and the murky evening light, he could not remember whether the sheds had been to the right or to the left of the heap of rubble where the men had thrown him. He moved forward slowly, his arms outstretched, and as he took step by step, faltering, as helpless as a blind man, he thought of his father arriving tomorrow morning in the steamer at Slane.

He would come down to Doonhaven and find his son in bed probably, with his eyes bandaged, and his body black and blue. And he would not believe the story of a fight on Hungry Hill, for twenty-five years of living across the water would have made him forgetful of the strange ways and crazy happenings of his own country, where men drank with one another one moment and fought the next, all because of something that happened before they were born. His father would be shown up to the bedroom by a shy and nervous Jinny, and he would see Hal lying against the pillows with two black eyes, and say to himself "A drunken brawl, of course; the girl is trying to hush it up." The thought of this, so typical and inevitable, made Hal laugh helplessly to himself, and he thought how impossible it was going to be to explain to his father what had happened. It would be simpler to let the matter rest, and for his father to continue thinking him useless, tipsy, and incompetent, staggering home in his cups on a Saturday night, as half the men in Doonhaven had done since the beginning of time.

Hal touched something with his hands, a rough, hard surface, like a brick wall, and he stumbled over a piece of planking at his feet.

God damn it all, he thought wearily. I'm nowhere near the dressing-sheds. This feels like the boiler-house wall-and he went forward, step by step, groping his way in the darkness. He felt himself getting lightheaded, and he was aware suddenly of a feeling of sadness, that somehow he had made a mess of his day on Hungry Hill, that should have brought him peace and quiet, and now it was going to end foolishly, like so many things in his life.

Jinny would worry about him, and so would Uncle Tom; they were going to be unhappy because of him.

Everything was dark, he could see nothing with his damned swollen, bleeding eyes, and surely he was not by the mines at all, not on Hungry Hill, but walking in the shadows of the new wing at Clonmere, a little boy again, trying to find his way to mamma's bedroom?

The door to the boudoir was close at hand, and if he opened it and stepped into the room he would go to the shutters and pull them aside, that had stood rusted so long with the damp, and mamma would be waiting for him on the balcony that she had never used.

The moon rose over the shoulder of Hungry Hill, he could feel the light of it, in his blindness, and he thought it was the lamp she had lit for him, and that she stood waiting for him by the open door. He turned to go to her, and the black shaft yawned at him as he went'.

Jinny dressed her boy with great care, and he did not protest because although he was barely two he understood that sadness had come upon them all, and if he pulled and tugged at his clothes he would make her unhappy. He sat on her lap while she drew on the clean white socks, and the black shoes with the buckles. Then she took out his new suit from its tissue paper. Bottle-green velvet, with lace collar and cuffs. She parted his hair on one side for the first time, brushing away the heavy, dark fringe.

She had a tear at the corner of her eye, and this made him sorrowful. There was nothing he could do. He looked away over her shoulder at the beaver hat that had been bought for him from the shops. He knew that it would be uncomfortable, and he did not want to wear it.

It was black, like his shoes, and like the dress she wore. Her pretty blue dress was hanging in the cupboard. When Jinny had finished dressing him she stood him up on a chair and looked at him, and he had the feeling that she wanted him to be bigger than he was. Then she smiled at him, although the tear was still in the corner of her eye.

"I'm proud of you, dear," she said, "you look very nice. And I want you to be very good, because we are going to see your grandfather."