The Hollow Land (11 page)

“It's maybe ghosts,” said Harry. “Or magic. We can't get to them, like the Hand of Glory. We might be meant to throw milk over or something.” He sat down and crawled under the van, putting the icicle bouquet at a distance right under the van wheels.

“
Yell
,
 
will yer,” said Bell, “and don't talk so fancy.”

They yelled again and from above them at last there was a slow bumping and thumping noise and a groaning, grumbling sort of voice. They were human words, though they didn't sound very welcoming. They rose to a shout and the dogs were quieter for a moment. Then steps could be heard by Harry above his head and a fumbling and scraping at the door beside Bell's ear. “Yell again!” cried Bell—and the barks and snarls and grunts from inside mingled with their own high shouts.

And other shouts.

And toots.

And furious noises.

Through the snow, coming down across the Wateryat behind them, there was a dark cluster moving, with a light. With several torches. “Hi!” the cluster was calling. “Bell there? Harry? Are you there?”

In a swirl there was Mr. Teesdale and Mr. Bateman and James Bateman and another man, and in ten shakes Bell and Harry were scooped away and trudged off with and dumped down in the back of the Teesdales' Land-Rover. Then with huge revvings and roarings and performances, the Land-Rover turned on what it hoped was the road. Mr. Teesdale stuck his head out and shouted at the other man, who was the farmer who had seen them setting off in his van full of lost sheep. “Are you right then, Sedge?” asked Teesdale. “Are you going to risk going on?”

“Aye, I'm right. I'll risk it.”

“Thanks then. Goodnight.”

The farmer went on up Castledale into the snow and the Teesdale Land-Rover turned back towards Nateby and Teesdales' and Light Trees. At Bell's farm, Bell was hustled out and his mother's voice could be heard as the back door opened, uplifted like the gypsy dogs.

“We'll have a go getting up Quarry Hill,” said Mr. Teesdale. “They'll both be best in their own beds. If the snow goes forward you're like to be all cut off, the lot of you, up there, so you may as well all be together.”

“I'm afraid” said Mr. Bateman “we're nothing but a nuisance to you. We should have stayed at home for Christmas—in London where we belong.”

“It's not you I blame,” said Mr. Teesdale. “You could know no better. It's that lad of mine. Off down Castledale with hard frost and snow and ice, and on bikes. My Lord, wait till I get hold of that Bell. Let's hope no harm's come to your Harry.”

But funnily enough it was Bell who took cold and Harry who was right as ninepence after the icicle ride. The telephone held up between the two houses even though the snow was so deep over the next week that there wasn't a wall to be seen between Birket and the Lake District. News therefore came through about Bell's bronchitis every day, and much tutting and exclaiming.

Five days later, when everyone had calmed down a bit and got used to the lie of the land, the Light Trees people managed to walk down to see how Bell was—and once they had all exploded into the Teesdale kitchen the noise of tongues would have put Bedlam to shame.

Harry made his way up to where Bell was still propped up in bed wrapped in blankets and trying to get interested in a pack of cards. He looked glum. “I should of left you droning on at them cards that day instead of us goin' off,” he said in a voice that sounded like Jamie the old horse-rake when you tried to move the gears. “I'se to write a letter of thanks to that owd Sedge who tellt 'em where they'd find us.”

“I've had to write one, too,” said Harry.

“Feel proper soft.”

“I don't.”

“You don't?”

“I'm glad we went. We saw the icicles.”

“You can't tell them about icicles. Icicles just got melted and gone. We never even got 'em home. I never showed 'em Grandad.”

“What's thou never showed Grandad?” said Old Hewitson lumping in.

“Icicles.”

“You seed them icicles again did you? So that's what it was all about.”

“Lot o' good it did,” said grumbling Bell, “no more'n fairies smearing butter on gateposts ever did.”

“Watch thyself now,” said Old Hewitson. “There's words we use and words we don't use to this day. There's roundabout ways of mentioning those people. It's possible to be too direct. Remember that, young Harry. Those people don't like to be called by their name.”

“There seems a lot of things it's best to be quiet about,” said Harry. “I suppose it's in case you don't get believed.”

“Oh
believed
is nothing,” said Old Hewitson, producing chocolate cornflakes from somewhere. “Getting believed's the least part of it. It's going about and seeing after things as matters. I'se seed them icicles once, you's seed them once. Our Bell's seed them twice. I reckon we're all lucky. It's all that matters seeing them. In fact, maybe if you hadn't set out to see 'em, they wouldn't have been there. We'll never know.”

“What's that mean when it's at home?” said Bell.

“Tea's ready,” came a shout from downstairs.

“It means as it means. Think of sounds. Does it ever occur to thee, Bell Teesdale, Harry Bateman, that none of the sounds floating about the world wouldn't stand chance, stand
chance
, without ears out ready for 'em? James was talking of it. Sounds need sounding boards of ears. Just think, before there was ears to reverberate off, there was not a sound int' world—not even from oceans; not as I think a great deal of oceans, twice at Morecambe being very much a disappointment to me. And why not? Because sounds go floating about silent until there's an ear for 'em to come up against. Same thing with eyes for all I know. Icicles may need eyes to look at 'em.”

“There's no icicles for eyes to see now,” said Harry, watching the big splashing raindrops that had started to turn the yard below Bell's bedroom window to a sloppy black and white pudding. “They're all gone.”

“Who's to say they're gone? Think it out. Just think it out. And Harry, come to thy tea. Bell's to look at the playing cards and have a sleep again—but he'll be up for Christmas and you'll be both away on them poor old bikes again.”

“Maybe there won't be any bikes. If any eyes fell on them. I'd not be surprised if they weren't there when we go looking for them and nothing to do with magic.”

“Eyes did fall on 'em. A gypsy feller come round with them yesterday wanting reward, which your father gave him and a dozen eggs for luck. He'd had a hard walk through.”

“However did he know they were ours?” said Harry.

“I thowt gypsies were nowt but thieves,” said Bell.

“He knew,” said Old Hewitson, “he knew, and thief or no thief, he fetched 'em back. There's ways and means, and some folks' minds catches on in different ways than others. And there's many a thing you can't explain.”

I
f you follow the road on from Light Trees you get to the beck that sometimes runs on top of the ground and sometimes below it. Then you go on up the hill and turn right before the fell gate and away down the deep rough lane to the low water meadows where the herons stand. Then you come to Dukerdale, and standing at its head the farm called Dark Trees where Tatton and Hannah live. They have lived there a long time, often snowed in for up to six weeks in winter, with milk from the one cow tending to freeze in the pail, a fridge full of food if Hannah remembers to fill it, and a television set which quite often works beautifully and which they find a great blessing and wonder however their parents and grandparents did without.

But then at last two or three things brought all to an end. Tatton's rent went sky-high to nearly double and so did the price of feed and hay. Hannah's back began to give trouble and Tatton couldn't dip sheep without her, nor in hay-time could he bale and lift. The terrible winter of '78 froze the pipes for the first time in memory and they had to break ice on the beck. The new lambs froze, too, and the television aerial. The winter went on so long that the deep freeze emptied, so that they came to within a packet of fish of being helicoptered—which would have been a disgrace.

So they decided to move back to Dentdale where Tatton had been born—“into a railway family” so he said. That winter—though he'd known bad ones before—set him thinking how silly he was ever to have tried farming at all thirty years ago. It was railways he had in his blood, he said, not sheep. His family had been to do with the main line over Shap since the first wild men from Ireland and Timbuctoo with their coloured hats and their own laws and marriage ceremonies had arrived there, with muscles of steel, to build the great fell cut and viaduct a hundred and more years ago.

The more he thought about it, the more sure he was that he had been in the wrong job, and the more he said so, the more depressed he became. He found an old signal box with cottage attached on the single track line over Smardale, with a level-crossing beside it. The signalman was still living in it but as there hadn't been a train past in fifteen years he was getting mournful. So one mournful man sold to another mournful man and they both cheered up.

What happened to the signalman goodness knows, but Tatton and Hannah were delighted. Arrangements were made for selling the deep freeze—for the signal box was hardly a step from shops. The cow Tatton gave to Bell Teesdale for his own. Such furniture as wouldn't fit—the old oak settles, the meal chest and the big grandfather clock—Hannah said was so cumbersome that whoever came to Dark Trees next was welcome to it.

So when the London family walked across for eggs to Dark Trees one day, they found a great difference in the air. Tatton was singing a Methodist hymn to the cow and Hannah was writing her will.

“But you're not dying, Hannah, just moving house.”

“I'm far from dying,” she said. “But I can't move everything from here to yonder and so I'm giving my bequests in advance. That way some people will be in time for 'em as maybe wouldn't be, and what's more, I'll be here to be thanked, which makes people feel square. I know I've times over been shamed when I've been left a keepsake and had no one to write to over it. Now then, these are for you, Mrs. Bateman, and this is for young Harry.”

“I couldn't, I couldn't,” said Mrs. Bateman.

“Oh thank you,” said Harry.

“Just look,” they both said when they got back, “there was simply no way of saying no. We've known them such a short time compared to others. Oh, they are kind!”

Everyone gazed at the red and white patchwork quilts and Harry's golden lustre teapot.

“We'll put the quilts on the guests' beds this weekend,” said Mrs. Bateman. “They don't smoke, do they?”

“I don't know. They might.”

“Well, we'll put them on the beds and then if they start smoking downstairs we'll go quickly up and take them off again. What about the teapot, Harry? Could I put flowers in it in one of the rooms? Will the guests be the sort to notice, I wonder?”

“Who are they?” asked Harry.

“Television people coming to talk to your father about work. The lady's famous. Everybody sees her once or twice a week. She's a household word. To do with the news.”

“Oh, politics,” said Harry. “They'll not notice quilts and teapots.”

“Then maybe it's time they had their attention drawn that way,” said Mrs. Bateman, sounding for a minute—it was happening more and more these days—like a countrywoman.

“There's somebody famous coming,” said Harry to Eileen, Bell's sister, down in Teesdales' kitchen. He drew his finger round Eileen's mixing bowl and licked uncooked gingerbread. “She's on telly. She's a household word.”

“Give over,” said Eileen, “eating slather!” and hit him with the wooden spoon.

“Give over hitting Harry,” said Bell. “You did it yourself times. When you were young. I mind.”

“She's on all the big programmes,” said Harry. “She's beautiful and clever and she catches them out with questions.”

“Oh
her
,” said Eileen.

“What—
her
?” said Mr. Teesdale coming in from sheep. “Well now.” He began to wash himself at the sink, all over his face and his arms and his hair and his hands, rubbing the whole mass of him afterwards with a scrap of hard towel. “Coming up to Light Trees is she? Well, we'll all be out to see. It'll be red carpets on Quarry Hill and flags afloat. You'd better tell the village.”

“They seem to know,” said Harry. “And Mother only told the chip shop.”

“That'd be ample,” said Mr. Teesdale.

“Coming with her husband I suppose?”

“No, with her daughter, it turns out,” said James Bateman appearing at the back door, too, also hot and in wellingtons and with black hands from fighting sheep with a bottle of cough mixture. He wasn't back at college yet and would be helping the Teesdales till

October. He washed himself exactly like Mr. Teesdale and then put his finger round the gingerbread bowl and got a wallop like his brother. The wallop was part of the recipe.

“She's coming,” said James, “really just for a talk with Father. Not an interview. He says it's ‘planning'. She's on her way south from Scotland so she's looking in and staying two nights.”

“Daughter has she?” said Mr. Teesdale. “Don't look more'n a bairn herself.”

“Who's this?” said Mrs. Teesdale coming in from chickens.

“A household word's coming to Light Trees,” said Mr. Teesdale, and explained.

“Oh,
that one
,” said Mrs. Teesdale. “Is she a friend then, Harry?”