Breaking and Entering (29 page)

The exterior silence was spooky enough. When he lay awake in Wandsworth, there would always be a symphony of sounds – the drone of distant traffic, a plane rumbling overhead, the overgrown forsythia next door which rustled against the windowpane whenever it was windy; Mrs Mason's tomcat on its prowls. And although such noises often annoyed him, at least they proved the presence of humanity; reinforced the sense of a solid street around him, its tall brick walls enclosing him, keeping out the void. But here the night was gagged, and he felt alone with alien nature; the only sound the rushing of the stream. Its relentless babble seemed threatening and intrusive, as if he had become a helpless pebble tossed headlong in its current; swept inexorably along to some dark and dangerous sea.

Never, since he'd quit smoking, had he felt so intense a craving for a cigarette. Lighting up would provide a tiny ritual, a source of instant comfort. So many comforts had gone – light, heat, hot water, his wife's body next to his, his cigarettes, his music, his normal routines and boundaries. He searched his trouser pockets for a sweet; found only fluff and a few odd coins. Money had no value here. However much he had, it wouldn't buy the things he needed.

He stamped his feet and pummelled his hands in an effort to keep warm. The cold had seeped into his bones, made him stiff and sluggish. He was tempted to creep back down the hill and join Penny in the tent, but that would mean disturbing Pippa who was sleeping with her mother. There was nothing for it but to crawl into his sleeping-bag, pile the two spare rugs on top, and sit the rest of the night out. The minute it was light he would wake his wife and daughter and insist they left immediately. Maybe they could drive on to the sea, which couldn't be that far away, and find a guest-house with comfortable sprung mattresses, a plug-in fire, and proper windows with glass and even curtains. Meanwhile, he'd have to imagine such luxuries; convince himself he wasn't cold and that he couldn't feel the stones and shale digging into his back beneath the groundsheet. He wormed into his sleeping-bag, plumped the one thin pillow, then closed his eyes in order to withdraw from his surroundings.

Once he'd shut out the rough walls and the claustrophobic tarpaulin lowering over his head, his mother leapt into his mind again – the mother who had stroked his hair – now very clear and solid against the black velvet of his eyelids. She must have slipped back into his room and sat down on the bed. It was extraordinary, unheard of. She never spoiled him in that way; would have been tight-lipped and steel-voiced if he'd dared to disturb her twice in the same night. But she was smiling unconcernedly and her new un-busy hands were stroking not just his hair but continuing right down his back; easing his stiff spine, soothing all the pain away. He could even feel her own hair tickling on his neck; smell her smell of flannelette and talcum powder. She was rubbing peace into his skin, and the peace was pink and silky like the calamine lotion she used when he had sunburn. But he wasn't burnt, nor freezing any more, just luxuriously warm; her indulgent hands radiating heat. He was becoming irresistibly drowsy; sinking down and down into some feather-bedded world where everything was hushed, and where his mother was a fire, a hearth, a roof. He was so relaxed and heavy-eyed, it was an effort to speak at all, but there was just one question he had to ask. He forced his lips to move. ‘You won't go away and leave me on my own again?'

‘Oh, no,' the deep, male, mother's voice assured him. ‘I'll be here with you all night.'

Daniel opened his eyes to the sun, which was flooding through the window-frame, gilding the bare walls. He sat up slowly, fumbling for his watch; remembered it wasn't there. He threw off the tangled covers, wriggled out of the sleeping-bag, then picked his way to the door across a carpeting of rubble. The hillside reared above him, dotted with white sheep; the sky was benignly blue, a light breeze ruffling his hair. Even without his watch, it was obvious he had overslept. The sun was well up in the sky and everything around him was wide awake and busy: birds swooping overhead, crows cawing at each other, two wild ponies cantering down an incline, the exuberant stream gushing over stones – no longer sounding menacing, merely energetic. He was amazed he hadn't woken before, but his cocoon of sleep had cut him off from the morning's lively stir.

Exhilarated, he ventured out himself, only pausing to find his shoes and discard his woolly scarf. He went striding along a sheep-track which zigzagged up the hill; bounding across the springy turf as if he were wearing seven-league boots. He knew he should be going in the other direction – downhill to the camp, where he would be expected to join in the morning chores or ceremonies, or perhaps some healing session. And he ought really to see Penny, to decide if they should leave or not. Yet his body seemed to want to climb, and his mind recoiled from arguments, decisions. His simple instinct was to enjoy the golden morning and his new sense of well-being, to pursue the sun to the crest of the hill and look down at the landscape spread below. So far, he'd hardly moved beyond the confines of the camp. He'd been too busy getting organized; trying to come to terms with the strangeness of the situation, to sort out names and faces. But now he was curious to explore, especially since he'd heard that this bleak and lonely moorland had once been the site of a lead and silver mine – a whole prosperous community battening on its riches. He found it hard to believe. True, the hill was strewn with the wrecks of miners' cottages, like the one he'd been sleeping in himself, but they had long since become part of the landscape, overgrown with grass and moss; less an eyesore than a type of outdoor sculpture, erected here by some eccentric minimalist artist, and gradually softened by the hands of time.

Little remained of the mine save the odd rusting pipe or rail and a couple of stone-arched tunnel openings, flooded inside with pools of stagnant water. Yet once there must have been huge water-wheels, lines of mule-drawn trucks clattering back and forth along the rails, sweaty workmen toiling in the heat and grime. Now a spindly rowan tree sprouted in the winch-house, and placid sheep munched rhythmically among the crumbling stones.

He stopped to get his breath, gazing up at the mountain peak which put the whole thing in perspective. These husks and dregs of man's past wealth were little more than scratches on the hillside; odd remnants which had been absorbed back into nature and hardly counted in the vast scale of things. And as he climbed still higher and left the site behind, he could see only folds and curves of hills, rising one beyond the other; their foreheads barred with shadows, their scalps wreathed in blue mist.

He peeled off his two sweaters and tied them round his waist. He was wearing far too many clothes for a strenuous summer walk, but he had set out on an impulse, without any thought for his normal morning ritual of razor, comb and soap. Actually, it had given him a sense of liberation to step straight from bed to hillside, like an impetuous child absolved from the constraints of boring things like washing or searching for clean socks. He finger-combed his hair, used his sleeve to mop the perspiration off his face, then continued across the brow of the hill. There was something wonderfully elating about looking down on everything, as if he had reached the lower rung of heaven and could pity the poor mortals still scurrying around on earth. He stretched his arms like wings, almost expecting to lift off, like the sparrow-hawk above him, soaring in the playground of the sky. He shouted, just to hear his voice; was answered by a plaintive ‘ba-aaa' – a sheep watching him inquisitively as he clambered up on a boulder and surveyed the sweep of countryside below.

He was as high as he could go now, and the path plunged down again, following a dip between the hills. It was so steep in places he had to use his hands to steady himself; palms soon grazed and muddy, feet sliding on loose stones. All at once, he slithered to a halt, grabbing at a clump of rough-leaved ferns. Only now had he seen the lake below him – a stretch of silent water shimmering in the sun; the hills huddled closely round it, as if to protect it from intruders. He felt a trespasser himself in this remote and secret spot, yet he also had the eerie feeling that he was not in fact alone. His consciousness of some other presence was so palpable, convincing, that he actually glanced round to check on who was there. Nobody and nothing. Even the sheep were keeping their distance, and the darting swallows crisscrossing the sky had dwindled into tiny specks, leaving only the unruffled clouds.

Furtively, he stole down to the lake's edge, as if scared of being apprehended if he disturbed that awesome silence, which made even his own heartbeat seem insensitively loud. His feet scrunched from flinty stones to softer sand as he approached the rippling water; his shadow trembling in its polished blue-black mirror. It seemed devoid of any fish – indeed devoid of any life at all – a lake in some dark myth, mysterious and unfathomable. Again, he looked surreptitiously behind him, certain he was being watched, but again he could see nothing save sun and shadow, hill and sky. He searched for a flat pebble and sent it skimming across the surface; listened to its final plop, wondering how far it had to fall before it reached the bottom. The sides of the lake shelved steeply, suggesting it was very deep.

Impulsively, he tugged off all his clothes, left them in a jumbled heap, and waded into the water, catching his breath as its icy claws shocked his naked limbs. He struck out briskly, to defeat the numbing cold; threshing with great force, and revelling in the commotion he was making now that he'd dared to break the brooding spell of silence. This place was so unspoilt, he felt like the first living creature who had ever lighted on it, ever left his footprints here – no, more than that, he felt like the first man on earth: a just-created Adam, free to sample his new world; to try out water and declare that it was good. He splashed and ducked and circled, playing childish games with himself – he would reach that patch of shadow in under twenty seconds; he would curl up and turn a somersault, and then try swimming with his eyes shut, as if he'd yet to receive the gift of sight.

Next, he took a deep breath in and dived under the water, using really vigorous strokes to prevent his natural buoyancy from bobbing him back up again. There was no sign of the bottom, just the water growing darker and darker as he spiralled further down, struggling now to hold his breath. He was forced to surface, spluttering and coughing, ears aching from the pressure, heart hammering in complaint. He floated on his back to recover, the huge clouds staring down at him, the sun bedazzling his eyes; then dived again, determined to touch bottom. Fighting his own limitations – mortal lungs and finite breath – he swooped down and down and down; entering an alien world of cavernous black water. He tried to ignore the tightness in his chest, the increasing shock of cold as he ventured even deeper, still encountering no end to the abyss.

Lungs bursting from the strain, he catapulted up again, through water changing rapidly from black to slate to sapphire; then exploded into warmth and light as he broke the silver surface. Gasping in relief, he trod water for a while, too exhausted for more effort, screwing up his smarting eyes, shaking his wet hair.

At length, he swam slowly to the shore, let himself dry off in the velvet-fingered sun, then scrambled back into his clothes. He was still cold, despite the sweaters – cold and starving hungry, his stomach rumbling shamelessly. He careered back up the path and across the brow of the hill, startling the stolid sheep which went skittering away. His seven-league boots seemed still in perfect order as he raced along the track, relishing the glow of warmth returning to his body, the blood pounding in his veins. He was surprised how soon he reached his ‘house', panting to a halt outside it, and only now seeing it as the sturdy serviceable shelter it was, rather than a prison. It was the only one of the cottages with all four walls relatively intact – the others were pathetic heaps of stones. He felt something close to pride in it as he knelt inside to fold the rugs and sleeping-bag, gazing through the window-frame at the stupendous view, which reduced his Wandsworth garden to a diminutive cabbage-patch. It suddenly occurred to him that he had indeed slept soundly like a child, despite all the discomforts and the intensity of his fear. And the sleep had done him a power of good, since he had actually spent the morning living in the present – not anxious, not self-judging, not brooding on his problems or those of the Third World, but enjoying simple pleasures, which for him was quite remarkable. In short, he'd been a child again.

‘The child you weren't allowed to be.'

He stood up so sharply his head grazed the tarpaulin roof. That brief but disturbing phrase had brought his apprehension surging back. He would have to face a man who had seen him sob his eyes out, whom he had clung to in hysteria. And he would have to rejoin the others, overcome his shyness and unease. Automatically he looked at his watch, then cursed his naked wrist. He'd lost all track of time, had no idea how long he'd been out walking, but Penny must be wondering where he was. She and Pippa had probably come up here to look for him; returned mystified or worried.

He pulled off his two sweaters, then emerged into the sun again and trudged dutifully downhill towards the camp. His disquiet increased with the noise – screams and shouts from unruly children playing round the tents, and the yapping of some obstreperous dog shattering his new-found peace. He wrinkled his nose at the stench of the latrines, which were sited on this westward side of the camp – the most primitive of earth-closets and surely a health risk in themselves. He simply couldn't bring himself to use them. They turned his stomach, put him off his food.

The lack of privacy reminded him of school – having to share his most intimate smells and noises with less fastidious boys, perched side by side in a row of chilly cubicles, separated only by the thinnest of partitions. And there was the same distasteful sense of humanity
en masse
: being lumped together with people he hadn't chosen as his companions, and didn't necessarily like, but who had to be put up with since there was no chance of avoiding them.