No Way Of Telling (20 page)

Until now the path had traversed the broad open flank of the hill, so broad and flat and high and open that almost as much snow as fell was swept up again by the wind and taken on. But from here the ground fell more and more steeply, and the path fell steeply with it, dropping down towards the verge of Billy Dodd’s Dingle, the deep cleft or gorge—so gently named, so savage in fact—that every year claimed its toll of unwary sheep. At the bottom of the gorge, sunk between nearly vertical cliffs of scree, there trickled in sunnier weather a thread of bright spring water, the same small stream that lower down passed close to Tyler’s Place and accounted for its real name, Cilnant.

The head of the Dingle was formed by a ridge, high and narrow, that ran between two great neighbouring hills and joined them together in a sort of everlasting partnership. This natural causeway carried the path over from one hill to the next, and on the further slopes of the further hill, Cader Ddu, lay Dintirion, the Protheroes’ farm which had once belonged to Amy’s father and before him to her grandfather, and to Bowens before him for as long as and longer than anyone could remember.

Sitting there astride her toboggan Amy was not really considering what lay ahead of her. She knew well enough what lay ahead of her; she was trying to nerve herself to face it. If she could only get to Cader Ddu then endurance, she believed, would take her the rest of the way—just simply endurance—but what she needed now was courage. From where she sat to where it crossed the head of the Dingle the path became increasingly dangerous, drawing ever closer and closer to the cliff’s edge until, for the last twenty-five yards, it skirted along the extreme brink, a distance Amy had already resolved she would cover on foot. Now she decided that it would be prudent to negotiate the few yards immediately in front of her on foot as well. Here the path fell away with the abrupt steepness of a ladder to a lower level where it made another right-angled turn and then resumed its more gradual descent.

Step by step, down she went, letting the toboggan slither in front and holding on to its string. With every passing minute the sky grew lighter. She looked over her shoulder: nobody there. But with every passing minute the likelihood of someone appearing increased, and step by step was a terribly slow way to escape in daylight in broad view. Trying to hasten she slipped and nearly let go of the string. She must be more careful. It was awkward just here, with no landmarks to show her the way; she had to rely on her memory and blamed herself for not having thought of bringing a stick—with a stick she could have probed the snow and found out where the ground was stony and safe and where bilberry-bushes and heather lay hidden beneath the smooth surface.

All at once her Wellington boot went in too deeply. She lost her balance and fell sprawling, snow in her mouth, inside the neck of her coat, up her sleeves, everywhere. In a panic she strove to recover her footing. How easy it was after all to go wrong, for the path itself was her only guide and her only guide was one she could not see.

Suddenly Amy was very frightened. She wanted to cry. She wanted someone to be with her, to take her hand and tell her what to do, someone to help her. There was no one. The great stillness surrounding her seemed to say: you are quite alone. And even as she stood up, swaying to keep her foothold, perplexed and afraid, her teeth chattering, her breath coming in sobs, day drew on. The sky had paled to grey and now, raising her head, she saw the grey was laced with pink. She should have been on the other side of the further mountain when the sun rose and instead she was here, not even half-way to the end of her journey, with the worst still to come. Desperation brought calmness. As a flurry of wind subsides, her fear fell. She must get on—that was all there was to it:
must!

The path had gone down short and sharp, like a ladder, and then turned away at right angles. Amy, having reached the bottom of the ladder, had descended one step further: this was her mistake. She realised it now and flung herself forward, attempting to scramble back to the higher ground. But it was slippery and there was no branch or root for her to catch hold of. Try as she might she could not haul herself up until she had the idea of turning her toboggan over and thumping it down hard enough for the curved end of the tin to sink into the snow like an anchor. With something to grip she managed then to wriggle herself, inch by inch, on to the level above.

At once, not pausing for so much as a sigh of relief, she stood the toboggan on end and banged it all over with the flat of her hand to make the snow fall off. Then she wrapped the ironing-blanket round her shoulders; the light was strengthening every moment and she felt the need of some kind of protective colouring. Also she was shivering. The snow that had got down inside the neck of her coat had melted, and so had the snow up her sleeves and in her boots. Still, it was no use minding about being wet. Amy glanced ahead once briefly to note the course she must take and then resolutely sat herself down on the corrugated tin, stuck both her heels well out ready for braking or steering, and again set off.

The path which now veered along the side of the hill was normally about six or eight feet wide but the angle had been so filled in by snow that only a narrow strip of it was left, a just visible ledge in an otherwise smooth white surface. The outside edge of the strip was uncertain. Amy went very carefully, riding whenever she could and occasionally walking when she had to, so absorbed in her task of navigation that she presently forgot her wet and cold condition and almost, but never quite, the dangers of pursuit. The further she went the more care was needed for as she drew nearer to the head of the Dingle so was she also drawing nearer to the cliff-edge that marked the side of it. Soon she meant to get off the toboggan altogether and depend on her legs. Not yet, though: the path rounded a bluff and swooped ahead of her, gently down and gently up again, in a switchback that was irresistible. Amy pulled in her heels and let the toboggan go.

Almost at the bottom of the downward swoop it hit a bump, a concealed rock, which, like a spirited pony meeting with the challenge of an unexpected fence, it leapt clean over. It leapt the rock successfully, but the sudden jolt had wrenched it round. Still at the same hectic speed it shot off the path, and the spirited pony had become a runaway, out of control, plunging straight down the side of the hill towards the Dingle.

Amy had only a few seconds in which to brake, or to turn the toboggan, or to throw herself off it: something—anything! But she had been taken completely by surprise. She tried to put out her heels and they were tangled in the tow-rope. The ironing-blanket swaddled her limbs, encumbered her. And then it was too late. At the very edge of the gully, as it might be at the edge of life, she screamed, or cried out, some sound of anguished terror escaping her before there was another more violent concussion, followed by an extraordinary bodiless sensation of tumbling, sliding, falling, down and down.

Everything stopped. Everything was still. Amy thought that if she were to stay quite still as well and keep her eyes closed nothing else would happen. All she wanted was for nothing to happen, ever again. And so she remained, unmoving; and nothing did happen.

It was the persistence of a sweet thin chirping that eventually made her open her eyes. There in a bush close by a small brown bird was busily hopping to and fro amongst the maze of brown twigs. Amy, seeing it, felt a pang of intense pleasure: so she did have company after all. The little creature seemed to be quite at home in its bush. It sprang about, cocking its head and darting its beak and behaving as unconcernedly as though she were not there. Amy lay passive and watched it. Then almost reluctantly she allowed her gaze to go past the bird and to travel up, up, following a trail of broken snow that led from herself to the lip of the gorge above. And there she saw, silhouetted on the skyline, a shape that puzzled her, a sort of triangle. No—it was a rectangle, only it was leaning over sideways with one sharp corner at the top. All at once she realised that it was her toboggan, and that it must have struck an even larger boulder at the very edge of the Dingle and she been catapulted forward with the toboggan remaining erect like a flag for all to see.

Amy wondered hazily how long she had been here. It might have been hours, or not more than a few minutes. She knew she could never climb up the way she had come down. Besides being almost as steep as a wall there was no foothold underneath the snow, nothing to grasp, only a loose sliding shale, impossible to ascend even in summer. And yet she ought to try. She ought to move; some voice inside her told her so. And another voice answered it drowsily: later on—soon—not just yet. And so she lay there and might have continued to lie, like a sheep that had fallen into a drift or a cranny, never to be recovered, only that presently she heard the sounds of someone approaching.

Someone was approaching in haste down the Dingle, sliding, boots scraping on rock. Amy was not afraid: she knew who it was. And when Bartolomeo came round a corner and found her lying in the snow propped on an elbow, just as she had found him propped in the murky shades of Tyler’s Place, she smiled at him gladly but quite without surprise, still so dazed that she had an impression their meeting had been arranged—only she had forgotten; but here he was!

Bartolomeo was panting when he reached her. He wasted no time on any attempt at a greeting, but instantly lifted Amy up and set her on her feet as though she had been a doll that had toppled over. Then he took hold of each of her legs in turn and bent them at the knee and ankle; he bent her arms at the elbow; he took off her gloves and rubbed her shoulders; he put his huge hand on top of her head and turned it like a knob from side to side, all the while muttering to himself in his own strange language. Finally, having made sure that she was in full working order he spread his hand in the small of her back and pushed her ahead of him up the Dingle.

Amy had been numbed, mind and body. With the return of her senses came also the return of fear. Every hasty movement Bartolomeo made, every gasping breath of his, told her they were in danger, they must hurry—faster! And desperately she did her best to obey him. But attempting to cover this ground fast when to cover it at all would have been hard enough, was a kind of a nightmare. Not much snow had penetrated to the bottom of the gully but the bed of the stream was narrow and strewn with rocks and every rock had a coating of what was worse than snow, more slippery: ice. Everything was frozen. Whatever they touched with hand or foot seemed to refuse them help. Each boulder Amy succeeded in scrambling round or over was an enemy conquered, but always there was another in her way, and after that another. She felt Bartolomeo’s hand behind her, steadying her, pressing her on, and sometimes with one sweep of his arm he lifted her clear over an obstacle. Twice she looked round at him wanting to rest for a moment or so, but when she saw with what savage expectancy his gaze was directed upwards at the cold empty skyline above them she did not dare to stop.

Presently she found that the ground was again covered in snow, not ice, and had tilted so that she was mounting on hands and knees. Then she did pause and raising her head saw they had reached the end of the Dingle and were climbing towards the top of the causeway that joined the two hills. A set of footmarks zig-zagged up from bush to boulder, and these they appeared to be following; but Amy also noticed that at a little distance apart from the footmarks the snow had been churned violently in a straight line from top to bottom as though some heavy object had come hurtling down at full speed. She was still confused and the significance of it eluded her then. It was only later she realised that the heavy object had been Bartolomeo and that he must indeed have descended with no consideration whatever for the safest, only for the quickest route.

Surprisingly enough it was less difficult getting out of the Dingle than making their way along the bottom of it. At this end, in contrast to the cliffs of shale on either side, there were roots and stems to cling to and the rocks were kinder now and gave them footholds and handholds. Sometimes Bartolomeo helped her on with a mighty shove from below; sometimes he climbed ahead and yanked her up to him. But he would not let her stop, not for even half a minute. She was winded, sweating, her breath came in sobs, her legs ached, her arms had no strength in them, but still he urged her on, and forced her on, and thrust and dragged her on; and she knew that every yard or so he turned his head to look back at the vacant rim of Billy Dodd’s Dingle with which they were gradually drawing level. And if all of a sudden the edge of the cliff should not be vacant but have on it a figure, she knew what that figure, looking the other way, would see: two flies, a big and a little one, crawling slowly in full view up a white-washed wall.

She stumbled forward: they had reached the top and stood on the rocky ridge that joined the two hills. Here there was no depth of snow, for the wind picked it off as a bird of prey picks flesh from a carcase leaving only bones. With his arm supporting her, almost carrying her, Bartolomeo made her run.

Then they were climbing again. Amy by now was so exhausted she followed Bartolomeo mechanically, plodding in and out of his footsteps while he, with a grip on her wrist, tugged her unremittingly along behind him. They were on the path, that was certain: the ground underfoot was firm as a road, and the snow reached no higher than half-way up her boots. Bartolomeo had found it. Bartolomeo would make sure they kept to it. There was nothing for her to bother about. All she had to do was to follow Bartolomeo; and somehow, head down, doggedly, on and on, Amy followed him.

When at last they stopped she saw it was where the footprints, that had all the while been going ahead and guiding them, stopped as well. Two long poles cut from saplings lay askew on the ground as though tossed there in haste. Amy turned. Below and away to the left, made small by distance, was that mute signal of disaster, her upstanding toboggan—and a whole sequence of events flashed suddenly clear into her mind: Bartolomeo cutting himself these ash-poles and setting off along Billy Dodd’s Dingle in the precarious safety of near-darkness; Bartolomeo scaling the end escarpment, prodding and probing the snow with his two poles to find a pathway up the side of the hill until at this point he must have halted and turned, as she had just done, no doubt meaning to scan the landscape for followers and instead seeing as he turned an extraordinary object shoot into view—for whatever could she have looked like so far off, huddled low and wrapped in the ironing-blanket? Perhaps it was only when her toboggan struck a boulder and she was thrown forward to disappear over the edge of the cliff that he had understood what and who it was. Perhaps her cry of terror had reached him faintly. And he had instantly flung down his poles, flinging away his own desperate advantage with them, so as to come to her aid. She saw it all and was overcome by horror of what she had done to him.