Alan Garner - Thursbitch

“It’s classic.”

“More Gothic. It’s not on the map.”

“Textbook Namurian. Chatsworth Grit.”

“We’re nowhere near Chatsworth.”

“You’re being stupid.” She moved around the rock. Her hands read every layer and fissure, caressed the ripples on the outside of the top and the smooth floor within. “My God, my God, I know this. Marsdenian R-Two.”

“Go on.”

“It’s a dream,” she said. “The recessed eroded scarp face and the dip slope.”

He followed her.

“And the sides. Freeze-thaw joints opening up on the bedding planes, and some cross bedding. The base of the trough. Am I gabbling?”

She looked at him, her hand stilled on the rock.

“No. No. Go on.”

She smiled, excited, nervous. Her hand moved.

“The freeze-thaw doesn’t penetrate through, nor does the sub-vertical master joint. Which suggests. Wait. Wait. I know. The master joint can’t be tectonic. So the horizontal layered joints have developed weaknesses in the bedding and the cross bedding by freeze-thaw processes. Which means. Am I still making sense?”

“Of course.”

“Really?”

“Keep going.”

“Right. Which means the weaknesses are stress phenomena. So the sediments would have been about three kilometres below the sea floor at the time. There’s forestepping here. And here’s a trace of the palæoslope.”

“Stop now.”

They had worked around to the top of the rock.

“What’s wrong?” she said.

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. You were terrific.”

“Was I?”

“Promise.”

“Did I get it right?”

“You began to rev, that’s all.”

He looked out over the valley, the one ruin of house below, Andrew’s Edge beyond.

“Give me your hand, fair maiden,” he said. “Come and be Cinderella.”

She took his hand and stepped up to the ledge.

“This mark. Put your foot in. There. A perfect fit. So you shall go to the ball.”

“That, you idiot, is a transient artefact of weathering in the laminate.”

“Well, it fits your foot, en passant , as it were.”

They laughed, and went to the cave. They sat on the smooth floor, which made a canopied chair for them, holding them.

“Are you sure it’s natural?”

“Positive.”

They were silent. The wind. Distant sheep.

“There’s a front moving in,” he said. “Shall we be getting on?”

“Not yet. I want it all.”

Silent.

“You can see for ever from here,” he said.

“It depends which way you see it.”

“A womb with a view.”

“Don’t even think of starting that one,” she said.

“Sorry. Freudian lisp.”

“Ian!”

“Ah well. Another damp squid. Cheer up.”

“I’m not down. There’s so much. If you know how to look.”

“Show me,” he said.

“Well. For instance. How far is it to that next ridge?”

He took the map and measured. “About one point two five kilometres.”

She spread her hands on her knees. “Got a calculator?”

“Somewhere.”

“One point two five kilometres,” she said. “Watch this. Divide a million by eleven point two five and multiply by one point two five.”

“Good Lord. It’s exactly one hundred and eleven thousand one hundred and eleven point one recurring.”

“Neat.”

“You knew!”

“Of course I didn’t know. But I like it. Apt.”

“So what does that tell us?” he said.

She moved her gaze from her hands to Andrew’s Edge. “We both look, but we see differently.”

“Meaning?”

“You call it a view. But it’s a song. Such a dance. If I sat and didn’t move for one hundred and eleven thousand one hundred and eleven years, according to you, these fingernails would grow as far as that ridge. Everything’s moving. When here was under the water, it was south of the Equator. And ever since, all of it’s been travelling at about eleven point two five kilometres every million years. It’s still doing it. Here is just where it happens to have got to now. That’s the song. Pangæa. Gondwanaland. The song and the dance.”

“What’s that about your fingernails?”

“It’s another part of the song. Our nails grow at the same rate as continental drift.”

He smiled, but she did not.

“There’s the beauty. If we could only dance more, for longer.” She stood up. “Instead of games. Just word games.” Her eyes were bright. “But that would be selfish. Wouldn’t it?”

“Oh, perispomenon!”

He had been tracing the line of the vertical crack at the back of the cave while she spoke.

“I’ve been stung!”

“Don’t move. The bee’s all right. It’s still attached.”

“I know it’s attached!”

“Keep still. Don’t hurt it.”

She held the bee so that it could not fly. Then slowly, gently, she turned it on his skin until the sting was free. She looked at the bee to check. “There. Off you go. No harm done.”

“I’m harmed!”

“Spray it with some of that anti-histamine from your bag of tricks,” she said. “And let’s walk.”

A track cut down across the steep of the valley, brown on green, more than a path. It had been made, though rough; too mean and rushy to walk, but the bank thrown up to the side was firm enough to wobble on.

She put her arm through his.

“It still hurts.”

“You’ll live.”

“This track isn’t marked, either.”

“But it’s here. So you can put the map away and watch the real thing. Then you won’t sprain your ankle. How’s the hand?”

“Anaphylactic shock can be fatal. Do you think it’s swelling?”

“You tell me. I know you will.”

The track turned back on itself off the rough onto a more lush pasture sliced by gullies, reed lined and wet. Water gurgled all around and they splashed over stones towards a ruin higher up the brook, and the track merged with another, more broken, nearer the house.

“There’s a way out, up to the watershed, along that line of wall,” he said. “It’s nothing but benchmarks.”

They clambered about the ruin: two gable ends of stone, stone wall footings, rotten spars and beams, holes of windows, some still spanned by lintels of twisted, weathered, silver oak, as if a part of something else. Fallen masonry and rubble masked the flagstones. There were gateposts and traces of outbuilding. A silted-up tank, made from four slabs, collected the brown water that ran off the surface above and seeped towards the brook.

He checked on the map. “Thursbitch.”

They crossed the brook at a ford. The main flow came from the head of the valley, and a feeder had cut through the shale to join it. At the point where they met, the bank was higher, and on it a stone.

“This one’s odd,” she said. She ran her hands over it and looked closely. “The sedimentary structures are quite different. And it’s too big for a post; the wrong shape. That top feature has some strong stylisation.”

“Doctor Malley,” he said, “is there anything at all that you do not know?”

She looked at him.

“Let’s find those benchmarks of yours.”

She set off across the reed bog. He plunged after her, to her. They both fell together in the mire, on their knees, black splashing to their faces, hands under the water.

“Sal. I’m sorry. I am so sorry.”

She pulled a face, and banged her forehead against his in the green reed light and the cotton grass. “Just get me up, somehow; or we’ll be here all night.”

He pulled a hand out, and slipped sideways. She caught hold of his sleeve and hauled herself over him, laughing. “People pay good money to watch this sort of thing.” They wrestled each other till they stood. “Shit and Derision. Trees. The trees. Over there.”