Alan Garner - Thursbitch

“Blue John,” said Sarah.

“Am I?”

“You boiled turmit. But what’s it for?”

“I never asked.”

“Eh,” said Mary. “You two. There’s men yonder as are at making a right job; when you’ve nowt better.”

Jack went into the brewis and picked up a two-gallon jar in each hand and walked down to The Halls. The team saw him and straightened their backs from the mowing.

“Look ye,” said Sneaper. “Here comes trouble. Here comes a young tragwalleter as never did a hand’s turn in his life.”

Jack laughed, and sat in the shade of the wall. The men sat with him, and he passed the ale jars around. The women went further along, by themselves.

“And what do you call this here effort?” he said. “It’s never mowing. Three fields not done yet? Whenever did you start? After you’d had your dinners?” He took a stalk and chewed the joint of the stem. “By. But it’s sweet. Are you not being previous, Father?”

“I thought we might as good try to get a second bite,” said Richard Turner, “if we took his head off now.”

“Yay,” said Jack. “And I might as good milk ducks. But think on. There’s my hay, too. And it’s to be High Medda stuff. Rye. And I don’t want it in next Monday-come-never-on-a-wheelbarrow. I do not. My beasts pay their pasture. So don’t none of you stop mowing afore you see a star.”

“Best be doing,” said Richard Turner. He lifted his sickle, and from the band of his hat he took a stem of grass and fixed it in Jack’s hat, on the other side from the feather. “And then.”

Jack looked at him; and nodded.

The men went back to their line, and sharpened up.

“What’ve you fetched?” said Tally Ridge.

“Malt,” said Jack.

“Shall you let us have a gallon?”

“We’ll have to see. Most of it’s spoken for at Chester.”

“When shall you be back?” said Tally.

“Time enough,” said Jack. “When have I ever not?”

THE VALLEY LAY in scudding sunshine: browns and greens and browns and greens and browns.

They returned along the wall. The wind was behind them, from the south, and the low cloud caught them before they were aware, and they were in a glittering mist worse than fog. The valley had gone.

“Keep to the wall, Sal. We’ll drop through this.”

It was easy at first. The wall took them to the stone. But the chill had lingered in their clothing and the mist was cold.

“There’s a gap here,” she said. “I can’t see the next bit.”

“It’ll be there. Look. What did I tell you?”

“It’s another of those stones.”

“Same thing.”

“It’s not the same. It’s by itself. There is no wall.”

“There has to be.”

“There doesn’t have to be. And there isn’t,” she said.

“That is no problem.”

“I can see someone.”

It was another tall stone.

“It is no problem,” he said. “The GPS will give us a fix.” He took it out of his bag and put it on the stone. “Leave it a minute or two to scan.”

They waited.

“Is it switched on?” she said.

He looked at the screen.

“Did you put batteries in?”

“It’s not picking up on the satellites. The valley may be too steep. But we can’t be far off the line of the wall.” He took out the compass and the map. “If the worst comes to the worst, we can do it by dead reckoning.”

They moved away from the stone, holding hands; she finding a way, he following the bearing. When they came to reed beds they forced themselves through to keep the line. Everywhere was silence.

“I can hear the brook,” she said.

“Steady.”

They were at running water.

“It’s the main brook,” she said. Water came in from the left. “Here’s where we crossed.” They went over the water.

“And here’s the path,” he said.

“Make sure it’s the right one.”

“It’s that rough stretch we were on after we’d come down from the rock and before we reached the farm.”

“We haven’t passed the well, and we haven’t passed the farm,” she said.

“They could have been three metres away and we’d have missed them.”

“And no trees, either. Ian? I think it’s safe to say. We. Are. Lost.”

“This path’s bearing eleven degrees west of where we should be.”

“So much for your gismos. I’m following what we’ve got. Someone’s used it. It’ll go somewhere.”

“The compass says we should be dropping, and we’re not. We’re climbing.”

They came to another big stone, tall, narrow; but this was a part of a gateway, though there was no gate, and there was a wall to right and to left. The track led through.

“Glucose,” she said, and sat against the stone.

They sucked the tablets.

“The quiet’s different now. Hear it.”

“There’s some chocolate,” he said.

“Shh. Listen.”

“Up there?”

“Higher.”

They were whispering.

“The cloud’s thinning.”

Through the streaks that came and went they could see that they were above the brook. The other side of the valley was close. Small bells tinkled.

“There!”

A rift in the cloud showed a man climbing above them. He wore a black coat that came almost to the ground, and a hat over long hair. He was bearded.

“Hello!”

There was a lurcher at his heels, and he held a rope on which there were four horses, one behind the other, draped with panniers, and on the neck of the lead horse was a frame from which bells hung.

“Hello! Hello!”

The rift closed.

“Hello!”

It opened again for a moment. The man had seen them, but he did not stop. He shouted something and pointed with his stick back to the way he had come, then the cloud joined again. A dog barked.

“On your feet, Doctor Malley.”

The light was blue above, and the hillside cleared. Pockets of mist lifted out of hollows and streamed up the gullies.

“I told you.” They looked back along the valley. “There’s the farm. And the track going up to the rock. I can see the trees near that well or whatever. There aren’t any others. And we are: here.” He checked the map with the compass. “We’ve been on this path all the time. Rum. It was definitely eleven degrees off, back there. You can get pockets of geomagnetic anomaly; but I should not have expected it here.”

“Where’s the man with the horses?” she said.

“He’ll be on the ridge somewhere.”

The path rose to the shoulder of the field and over the brow. The land opened up and they were out. Todd Brook fell to its broad main bed at Saltersford, and their way took them across through the yard of Howlersknowl, dipped and lifted again to the gate to the road from Jenkin Chapel up to Pym Chair. They crossed the cattle grid.

The road was steep and low between wall-topped banks. The model flyers at Pym Chair were still wiggling their remote controls, and the coloured wings were jousting with each other and the air.

“Time to go,” she said. “This place has had enough of us.”

JACK WIPED HIS mouth and beard with his neckcloth and poured himself another mug. “I’m for Thursbitch on a job of me father’s. Are you coming?”

“Who? Me?” said Nan Sarah.

“Well, it’s not me,” said Mary. “I doubt there’s more to Thursbitch in that one’s reckoning.”

“I’ll get me shawl, then,” said Nan Sarah.

“What you want’s in the brewis,” said Mary. “Under the slopstone.”

Nan Sarah left the houseplace and came back with her shawl wrapped loosely about her.

“Are you fit?” she said.

Jack and Nan Sarah walked up the Old Gate and turned off to the right, aslant the Butts. The Butts was the last field. The way went through the corner, and then the valley showed. On one side, from Cats Tor to Shining Tor, the ridge was in sunlight; and on the other was Andrew’s Edge, dark always after the morning. Todd Brook fed from the springs of the peat and came together at the ford.