And because she had been asleep, she was never able to say with certainty afterward how long she had spent alone there on the hill. They told her it had been the best part of three hours, but if someone else had said it had been no more than ten minutes, she might have believed that just as easily. She would never know how much, in hours and minutes, that patch of her life up there on the hillside had taken out of the whole. She knew only that it marked the difference between Before and After, and changed everything, forever.
She did know, however, that in some drowsy state, she heard the birds again and they seemed to be much louder. She sat up and looked again at the reservoir and had to put a hand up against the flash of the sun coming off it, but she was too late, and she was left with a burning, ripped feeling across her eyes. She lay back again to wait for the stinging to die down, and then the birds began to sound friendly again and she turned her head on the pillow of Paul’s sweater so the wool tickled her face, and her baby lay like a warm, thick stone in her belly. With her eyes closed she felt Stan’s locket between her fingers and ran it along the chain close to the side of her neck next to her ear because she liked the silky,buzzing sound it made. Then she must have fallen asleep again.
She woke to the noise of shouting. She sat up, blinking, and waited for the dazzle to fade. Through the grainy darkness of her vision the reservoir was now a blot of lavender blue and the sky was heavy with clouds that lightened to whiteness where they met the water. Evelyn felt as if she were rocking about on a raft, for the hillside grass was rippling around her under wavy stripes of sunlight and shadow.
Over to her left where the shouting was coming from, where the path from its highest point dipped sharply into William Clough, she caught a movement. Some people were making their way back towards the sheep gate. She saw at once the gash of bright red around the neck and the dark, hunched figure of Stan, walking alone. Then she saw, moving ahead of him, a smaller figure, a bright, drifting smear of colour against the path. It was a girl in a yellow skirt and a blue jacket, with a yellow hat or scarf. Behind them some more figures came along, dark and moving urgently so Evelyn supposed they were men. They were shoving at one another and running and shouting. There was laughter, too, and voices chanting something.
She turned her attention back to the figure that was unmistakably Stan. The girl in blue and yellow was now waiting for him at the sheep gate, watching him walk towards her. She stood with her hands in her pockets. Evelyn could tell she was saving up the look of him to keep for herself. She had done the same thing herself and she knew you only did that when you felt a certain way. But just before he reached her, there was another shout, this time from a way further down in the clough, and Stan stopped and turned to the men coming from behind him. He set one hand into the back of his waist and lifted the other hand and clasped the back of his neck. Then he tipped his head back as if he were letting the weight of it rest in his cupped hand. Evelyn knew it so well, that way he had of gripping his neck, and with a rush of simple tenderness opened her mouth to call out to him. But just then the girl moved forward, skipping along from the sheep gate. She put her arms around him and pressed her face into his back. Stan turned to her. He was much taller than she was. Evelyn saw him dip his head to her, saying something, and then he loosened the red scarf Evelyn had knitted for him and drew it around the girl’s neck and pulled her close. Then he brought his face down to hers and kissed her. Evelyn saw the red scarf around both their necks and the girl’s blue arms up around his shoulders, and the two heads meeting. A couple of whistles came their way from the men down the path and they separated.
All at once Evelyn’s eyes began to run with sore, gluey tears and the baby heaved inside her stomach with a kick that she felt almost in her throat. She would have cried out but the kick startled her, and then suddenly she started to shake uncontrollably. She went on staring and staring down the hillside but now it was like gazing through a dirty window and she couldn’t see anything. It began to rain, in hard, spitting drops that felt like hail or grit, and Evelyn went on gazing. She tipped her face up to the sky wishing it would pull her up into itself until she disappeared, or that it would rain down hard enough for her to be dissolved. She was so breathless she felt faint. The world seemed to be turning dark, as if the rainstorm were blowing her before it, sweeping her westward to the very end of this bright day on the hillside and straight down into the night, where she would be left alone and lost in complete darkness, with the wind howling and the rain pouring down. She squeezed her eyes tight shut and sobbed, and it seemed her crying would never, ever stop. She was frightened of looking again at the sheep gate for fear of seeing them kissing once more, their colours entwining and blending, but when she opened her eyes there was nothing to see at all.
It was much later when they led her off the hillside. They found her quite some way from their picnic spot, huddled and shaking and soaked through. Paul and Daphne each took one of her arms and there were other people around, all trying to help, though Evelyn was so dazed she could not take in very much or answer all the questions she was being asked. She was chilled to the bone. They led her down slowly, their voices gentle and with none of their usual bantering and teasing, so that she could sense their deep, unspoken concern. Daphne and Paul got her to the pub, where the landlord and his wife could not have been kinder. They were found a quiet room and blankets were fetched, as well as a cup of tea to go with the glass of brandy that the landlord said would be very warming. After a while a doctor arrived and announced that she was suffering from shock and mild exposure. He wasn’t qualified to comment on the sightless eyes but shock could do strange things especially to pregnant women, he said, and they would probably be as right as rain after a good night’s sleep. The baby would come to no harm, babies were tough little creatures, and that was the main thing, wasn’t it?
Months later Evelyn heard from Daphne, who got it from Paul, that everybody was saying the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass had gone down as a great day by all accounts, even a historic one. And I was there, she thought to herself. I was there, but really, I missed it. The violent confrontation between the walkers and the keepers had occurred further away, past Kinder Downfall and deeper into William Clough, and all up along the top of Ashop Head. People had been swarming all over the place, charging around and knocking one another about with sticks and what have you. And all, Evelyn thought privately, all for a few acres of heathland.
For her the day had drawn to a confusing and unhappy close with the bus ride home. She sat shivering and exhausted in blankets while excited singing and shouting went on around her. Daphne sat next to her and patted her hand from time to time and asked if she was all right. She nodded and kept her eyes shut. No looking out the window this time. Instead she let her mind’s eye wander over the images of the day. She tried to memorize its details, knowing they were now no more than things she had seen once but never would again, except as mementos in an album, memories of a day on Kinder Scout etched deep on her heart, that would devour the rest of her life. All she had left now was what she brought with her down from the hillside: the cold and the beauty and the dark, one present, one vanished, and one waiting up ahead for her.
Dear Ruth
Re: legs.
Nurse whats-her-name and the other one came together today, ominous in itself and that was before I saw their faces. One came to the front door, the other was prying round the back. It doesn’t do anybody any good getting woken up like that, all in a fright. I’d nodded off in conservatory. They startled me, and that floor’s more slippery now. What are you using on it, they demanded to know. One of them was sliding her foot along it. You must be using something on it.