Over the Black Hill

 

The wind lashed cruel as abusive stepdad. It mashed bilberry blood against boulders, tore white hair from bog cotton and singed the fluttering rowan leaves as it spun and whirled down the narrow valley to the sea.

            He jeered at its snarls as he jogged upwards against the blast.

            ‘Don’t go out in this,’ she’d begged even as he and the wind slammed the door in her grey face.

            ‘Then don’t grow old,’ he’d muttered into his upturned jacket collar as he wrenched open the yard gate.  ‘You’ve no right to be old. Don’t cry. Pity? I don’t do that. It’s your fault. Your fault.’ But whose fault it was he didn’t know. Only that he hated the world that was turning her into a wraith, a nonentity whose name on the chapel cemetery’s slate would mean nothing at all, ever, to passers by.

            The black hill rose up against him, its head mailed with bronze and purple cloud.  It aimed hurricane gusts at him.

He stumbled. Swore as he lost balance on the slippery grass, landing on one knee.

            The storm rejoiced, singing in his ears, tugging at his cap. He pulled his collar higher, wrenched the cap down over his large ears, staggered upright. Bending against the squalls, he fisted at the hill and it retaliated with slashing rain. Horizontal, piercing rough cheeks, cold nails in bare hands.

            He laughed.  Ignored the flapping of sodden trousers and the wetness seeping through his proofed jacket, a jacket too sad and careworn to hold back rain. From the windward side of a groaning stand of birch and oak, he mocked their obeisance to the gale. He was stronger than the storm, more furious and more destructive. He was a young giant in his rage.

            Stepdad had told him with customary sneer.

When he’d protested ignorance stepdad shouted, ‘Bloody stupid bastard. Thirteen aren’t you? Can’t you count, you idiot? Don’t you know anything?’

Stepdad hated him because he was tall and strong for his age. He could run the hills and the sheepdog bitch knew him as master, transferring her allegiance from the old fellow. At dosing time he could wrestle sheep better than stepdad. He was skilled with tractor and plough, almost stepdad’s equal at repairing the quad bike.

Stepdad had snarled, ‘This isn’t your home. Go where you belong.’

‘Mug! Birdbrain!’ he shouted at the brawling trees below him.  ‘Yeh mate, that’s me.’  Branches clashed scornful reply. ‘Jeer as much as you like. I didn’t know, did I?   Never thought about it. She’s my mother.’ And then he said honestly and hopelessly, ‘Was.’

            He topped the hill and before him stretched moorland for ever and ever fading into the darkness of hurrying storm cloud.  The wind was even stronger. He leaned on it. He shouted, ‘The wind my mother.  The hill my father. Get lost all of you.  I don’t need you.’  Then, whimpering, ‘Most of all I don’t need non-sister.’

            Did his friends know? He banged his fist into his other hand.  Of course they did. Tomos’ mother knew everyone right back to grandparents of grandparents. Who had to marry and whose children weren’t her husband’s and who had left the district because. . . and she’d wink her large cow-eyes and give a meaningful shrug. Gwilym’s mum was different. She called at the farm with sponge cakes she baked specially, because his own mum wouldn’t cook when she was in her down mood.  Gwilym’s mum was always ready for a chat with him, always kind. Too kind. He saw it now. She was sorry for him and no one, no one in the world had the right to pity him. He was good as them.

            No, he wasn’t.

Tomos and Gwilym, were they friendly because they were sorry for him?  He’d thump them.  He’d show them. He flexed arms and shoulders, punched fists against the buffeting wind.

What about Kate from Trewylan village?  In his class at the comp. Making eyes. Walking with him.  Because he was tall and tough for his age? Or because she knew and wanted to brag she was partner of someone like him?

Liars and pretenders. He hated them all. He spat towards the heather and bilberry bushes and the wind blew it back into his face.  He laughed, let the rain wash it away.

Then he wrapped his arms tight round his thin body, tight, tight so he could barely breathe. He thrust his thoughts out of his mind and into the outer darkness of the storm. But one snarled round the corner of his defences, the visual memory of his mother’s face as the door slammed. His comforter and his concern.  His non-mum.

The other fears slithered over the top of his barricaded mind, sidled into consciousness. He collapsed onto the track, struggling for breath, unable to cry for wretchedness.

Non-sister. The greatest most evil betrayer of all. His confidant. Who, more than even non-mum had held him close when he fell and bruised his knees, who’d taken him to his first school, helped him read and learn his tables, played with him, guarded him against stepdad’s rages – oh, they were for ever arguing those two, sometimes to blows -, supported him through non-mum’s depressions. On days off work she’d meet him at the gate of the village primary and buy sweets on the way home. ‘Proper little mother,’ said the postmistress, and the other women in the shop sniggered.

He knew now why they laughed and he hated them.

            He stood up, inconsolable in the rain. Clenched his teeth, tensed muscles, turned off his thoughts. He started to jog along the track, running wherever his legs would take him.  Running into exhaustion until he would never care about anything ever again.

His legs took him across the moorland with the wind now at his back. They sprang him over spiteful tussocks of rush and concealed boulders; they jumped tractor ruts whose depths snatched at unwary feet. They squelched him through mud and over peat hags, across slimy stones hidden under mountain streams.  They ran him safely to the mountain gate where the track winds down to the next valley and they stopped him at the tumbled farmhouse his grandfather had owned.  His not-grandad, greyer than slate, more weather scarred than granite.  A quiet man, now permanently silent in the grave he inhabited down in Llanasa chapel, waiting for his daughter to lie at his side like a baby in the marriage bed, between him and his cold wife.  Hard bitter woman they said who’d always miscalled him, dead long before him. Did they rest in peace now? Surely grandad turned and muttered in a storm like this, longing to be back tending his little ewes and their sweet fleshed lambs?

Nothing left of all those years, the daily walk eight miles over the moor to work in the granite quarry, six days a week come rain or shine, storm or snow and the granny lonely, tending sheep, milking the one cow, caring for increasing numbers of kids.

Not a whisper, not a ghost. Only rain pat, pat, splat on a few slates still clinging to rotten beams and on the rusting black lead stove in the once living room.  Wind troubling the leaves of the rowan growing in the cowshed. Nettles among fallen stones and broken window frames. So quickly decayed, so soon forgotten.

He knew. He must have known. 

He cursed his non-grandad for his silence, his compassionate reticence.

Then he was crying, a little child again, wanting the world to be safe once more. He leant on the sheep pen wall, grieving for past kindness.  He beat his hands on the stones till they hurt. 

But even in his misery he noted the sheep pens were in use, their walls strong and the wooden gates intact.  The scent of sheep droppings was nectar to him. It was life, a continuity of grandfather’s work, a memorial. The sheep still range the hills. The men and women still protect them from cold, hunger and disease, support the ewes through birthing.  Year in, year out.  Everything changes but the land remains. It was a comfort he had never thought about before. Nothing lost. Everything held in the memory of the dreaming land as close and dear as in the memory of god.

He wandered down the track, mind calmed and heart at rest. The hills encircled him in love.  Down, down following the storm-engendered stream flowing smooth among grass and mosses until track became road with bents and rushes growing down the centre of two tarmac strips.

            Now he knew where his traitor legs were taking him. His heart started to thump again.  Sweat mingled with rain on his face. Not this house.  Never again.

            He tried to turn back, but his body disobeyed. He forced his feet into snail walk. He said, ‘If the gate’s shut I’ll go back home.’

            Iago’s car was in the drive and the gate was shut behind it.

            ‘I haven’t got a home,’ he said. He rested his hand on the top bar of the gate. The wet paint was peeling back.  He scratched at it and the flakes blew away.

He was cold through to aching bones, too old inside to feel anger. Old like grandfather in hospital all white and pale among white sheets. Older than bitch mother. Better the bitch dog than a lying mother.

            Soft light in the windows.  Iago’s wife, making his dinner. Laughing with him. How she laughed when Iago kissed her in the chapel while everyone sang the wedding hymns.

            ‘She never laughed like that with me,’ he said.  ‘Iago’s special. I’m her disgrace. That’s why she went away to marry Iago.  When the baby comes she’ll forget me altogether.’

            The outside light went on.

            The door opened.

            Iago wasn’t smiling.  He wasn’t that sort of person. Merely holding the door wide saying quietly, kindly, ‘Your grandmother mobiled to say you were on your way.’

            Then non-sister, belly thrust forward, waddling on slippered feet. Warm light behind her like a benediction.

            She said, ‘Welcome home, son.’