Ross Raisin - Gods Own Country

He’s chasing us, look, she said, the muscles in her neck tightening as she looked behind. He was clodding after, his jowls bouncing saggily under the chin, he’d only gone ten yards, but he was spent. We turned through an open gateway at the end the platform, and down a snickleway between a house and the back the station, past a fat ginger cat licking its paws on a doorstep. He wasn’t going to catch us now, but we kept running, no matter, still holding the other’s hand, coming out on to a bigger road thronged with bodies. Goggle-eyed tourists tottering about the place with mighty great cameras dangled off their necks. Searching for Greengrass. We were clattering along the road through Goathland now, cars, minibuses, coaches strung down the one side, and tourists gawking through the windows of the post office and the empty police station. I was laughing by then. He’d be proud, himself, at the trick we’d just pulled, old Greengrass. He’d be filling his boots at that one.

We barged down the road, arms swinging, scattering the tourists, I started imagining it wasn’t the waiter chasing after us, it was the southern copper off Heartbeat , holding on to his policeman’s hat bumping into all the goggle-eyes. Greengrass! I shouted. Greengrass! The tourists were staring at me, but that just made me say it louder. Greengrass! Get back here, you old nazzart. She was laughing so hard she near undid the stitching, the whole affair was that daft, the crowds parting to look at us — bugger me, they were thinking, get the camera out, he’s here, it’s Greengrass.

We were nearing the end the line of coaches and we slowed up, our Heartbeat Pullmans slopping and slapping inside us stomachs. We rested up against a wall on a quiet stretch past the mass of tourists, laughing like ale-partners.

Greengrass! She said it the same way I had, drating graaass all slow and drawn out. Sam, you’re a mentalist — what was all that about? Greengrass! I just laughed, and we carried on out of Goathland, walking slow as the crowd thinned and our breathing steadied to normal. There was a souvenir shop on the side the road, all manner of trunklements in the window — model police cars, records, tea towel displays of Greengrass and the policeman, even one of James Herriot, sat in a field with two hundred dogs on his lap. Tourists weren’t fussed this wasn’t Herriot country. They’d buy anything. Then I saw, at the bottom of the window, lined up on the sill, the mug I’d got for Father. Exact same mug, it was, Greengrass grinning away with his red neckerchief tied aslew. Probably this was the same shop me and Mum had come in that time, I wasn’t sure, it was so long back, all I remembered was we’d searched through every article in the place for something to give him.

We trod on, past a row of houses with viewsome gardens, flowers bouncing out of hanging baskets and chimney pots. What did he care if I’d run off over the Moors and wasn’t coming back? He couldn’t care a shite, was what, except there’d be more work for him. He didn’t think I was any use anyhow. He was probably up on the tops now, burning the dead ewe, if he’d not seen to it earlier. Wheeling it up the path, mawnging each time the barrow jammed in a rut, until he got to the charred patch of ground we used for the burnings, where he’d soak the wool with fertiliser and set it ablaze. He likely thought it was my fault. Not paid heed early enough when it took bad and now he’d lost a decent two-shear, fuckin’ boy’s even done a band-end jacketing on t’ lamb, that’ll need doing again.

The houses were spreading apart now as we made for the Moors, and there weren’t hardly any tourists about. There was only one left, coming otherways down the street, a man with a babby perched behind him on a rucksack seat. He gave me a queer look as he came past. Probably thought I was going to steal the babby. He had a gleg round once we’d crossed, checking it was still there. I just laughed, the tosspot, and I looked round at her, she was smiling away, lost with herself. He could give me all the queer looks in the world, for all I cared, I felt so bruff my innards were near bursting their pipes. He was a mentalist if he thought I was bothered about him.

♦

We walked another hour or two, until it was getting late and we were powfagged after our adventures. The sky had dimmed to dusk and a giant shadow spread over the Moors, turning them russet to dark brown, like a mighty beer stain soaking through a carpet. The train had took us east and it was more populated these parts, with small villages and hamlets hidden in gullies winding through the moorland. The sea was closer now. It was clear visible, bearing down on the coastline five or six miles off, craggy islands of rock specking black in the far ocean. Then, when the light got too weak, all you could see was a great black band brooding under the sky. She wanted to doss down anyplace, she was that tired, but I kept us walking, because it was fain important we searched out the right spot. It wasn’t too dark when we found one — a small wood, set apart on a plain of barren, quiet moor, no people or farms or villages around. I found us a dry plot between two trees and we settled for the night.

Islept a fair time, not waking until the sun was high above, bawling at us to get risen. I stood up and paced crammocky circles around her, getting my legs working as she slept on, balled up, her elbows tucked behind her knees and what seemed like the mention of a smile on her lips. Greengrass! Greengrass, get back here you nazzart! I had a little smile myself, watching her from above, then I strode off into the deep of the wood for a piss.

She was still asleep when I got back. She was like a whelp, gathering her energy with a mighty deep slumber to get herself full recharged, ready for more adventures. I stepped soft toward her, and lowered myself next her body. She didn’t stir, so I inched up closer until we were lying aside each other, snug as chicks in the nest, and I could feel her breath touching against my face. I stayed like that a time, watching her. What was queer — it wasn’t the times she was away from me, like before the lambing when I hadn’t seen her for weeks, it was these times, cosied up, or laughing together like barmpots, that my insides frammled knots from wanting to be closer still. Course, there was time yet, we had a whole future of day trips ahead, once we’d done with being convicts. All we needed was to think how to steal Sal again, then we’d be set. I looked at her a moment longer, then I edged away and sat a yard off, perched on my rucksack, until a few minutes later she stretched out with a yawn and opened her eyes.

What time is it?

Past eleven.

Is it? She sat up, rubbing the side of her face. I’m hungry.

I smiled. Come with me.

I waited for her to get up and follow, and I tried to take her hand but she wasn’t fussed for any of that yet, she was still half asleep, and I led her into the wood.

Where are we going?

Breakfast.

I brought us to a small clearing where the sun poked slats of light through a gap in the trees. She stood observing as I stooped into an old, dead tree stump that a bunch of tall nettles were growing inside. With my jacket sleeve pulled over my hand, I pinched hold a nettle leaf, and with my other hand I teased off the flowers underside of it. When I’d collected a palmful of the tiny, white petals, I held them up to show her. She thought I’d lost my brain, the face she had on her.

Suck one, I said.

She took a nettle flower, unsure, and held it up to her mouth, tightening her lips as she sucked on it.

Mmm, that’s sweet. She took another. Thanks, Nature Boy.

I shared out the rest the flowers between us.