The Long Walk Home

by Will North

  “I hadn’t noticed that you’d tried.”

  “Be that as it may,” she said, grinning.

  “I noticed you set three places in the dining room; have I been banished from the kitchen?”

  “Of course not; I just thought you might enjoy the Llewellyns, especially the husband. A bit of a character, he is. And, I admit, I thought I should at least pretend I’m not running a house of ill repute.”

  They heard footsteps descending the front stairs. She stretched up and kissed him quickly.

  “Go be charming,” she said, handing him a teapot.

  He entered the breakfast room just as the Llewellyns did. They were an older couple—in their early seventies, he guessed. They seemed to him to have become mirror images of each other: he was compact, ruddy; she round and rosy-faced. Her hair was short and silvery; he had an equally silvery bristle-brush mustache. His own hair was so close-cropped he was nearly bald. Alec took him for ex-military. They were dressed for walking—at least the way English people of a certain age dressed for walking, which was to say that Mrs. Llewellyn had on a long floral wool skirt and sturdy shoes, topped by a sweater in a clashing pattern. Her husband wore brown twill trousers, a countryman’s tattersall shirt, an olive-green tie, and a tweed jacket.

  “Ah, Mr. Edwards,” the husband proclaimed to the dining room and the world at large, “how very kind of you! Tea, piping hot, on the spot!”

  Alec smiled. “Actually, the name’s Hudson, Alec Hudson. I’m a guest here, too. But you’re right about the tea. Shall I pour?”

  “Goodness,” the gentleman blustered, “frightfully sorry ... just assumed ... well, there it is ... wrong.” He grimaced and quickly sat.

  “Thank you, Mr. Hudson,” the man’s wife said. “Tea would be very nice indeed, wouldn’t it, Richard?”

  “Capital,” he said. “Splendid!”

  Alec filled their cups and then his own and sat at his place.

  There was an awkward silence. Then Alec ventured, “I understand from Mrs. Edwards that you’re walkers!”

  At this they came alive again. Mrs. Llewellyn said, “We are, and we hear you’ve had quite a walk yourself.”

  “Yes, well, I suppose I have,” Alec answered. “From Heathrow to here. But it was just terrific; I love this country.”

  “You’re American, I gather,” Llewellyn asserted rather than asked.

  “I confess I am.”

  “Knew a lot of them back in the Middle East.”

  “Now, Richard,” his wife cautioned.

  “Served there after the war, you know,” he continued, ignoring her. “MI6. Intelligence. In the Saudi. Iraq, too. Bloody tribal barbarians is what I say. Take Iraq now: utter cock-up on our part after the first war to try to make ’em into a nation, Shias, Sunnis, Kurds. Impossible. Never happen. Didn’t, actually. Not till this Hussein fellow came along and got ’em sorted.”

  “Well, yes, I suppose murdering your opponents is a very effective way of getting things sorted.”

  “Quite right. Don’t agree with his methods, of course, or his allies, come to that. Still, there you are.”

  Alec wasn’t sure where that was and was about to ask when Fiona breezed in.

  “Are you two talking politics already?” she chided. She set plates down before the Llewellyns. Richard peered at his.

  “What’s this then?” he asked.

  “Eggs Florentine, grilled mushrooms, and local sausage. Would you care for white toast or brown?”

  Mrs. Llewellyn took over. “White for us both, thank you,” she said, “and not too dark.”

  “Of course. And you, Mr. Hudson?” she asked, giving him the slightest wink.

  “Brown please, Mrs. Edwards.”

  “Brown it is, and I’ll be right in with your own breakfast.”

  “No hurry,” he called after her as she left.

  Richard Llewellyn leaned across the table toward Alec and grumbled, “Not a proper fry-up is all I can say; how’s a man to keep going till lunchtime, eh?”

  “Lots of vitamins in the spinach,” Alec suggested.

  “Spinach! That’s what’s in it? Humph.”

  Mrs. Llewellyn was studying her plate as if it were a crossword puzzle.

  “Please,” Alec said with a sweeping gesture, “go right ahead; don’t wait for me or it will get cold.” He watched with delight as the couple poked tentatively at the eggs.

  Fiona swept in again with his plate and the toast.

  “This looks splendid, Mrs. Edwards,” he said a bit more loudly than was necessary. He could see Fiona stifling a giggle.

  “Mr. Llewellyn, speaking of politics, did you know that Mr. Hudson here once worked for President Carter?” Fiona announced.

  “Carter!” the man sputtered. “Bloody hash he made of it in Iran with those hostages! You weren’t military, I suppose?”

  “No, I wasn’t,” Alec answered without elaborating.

  “Should have bombed Tehran is what he should have done; that’d teach them.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, sir. To hell with the hostages,” Alec replied without the slightest hint of irony.

  “Damn right! Matter of principle.”

  They ate quietly for a while, then Alec said, “Pity you don’t have any ex–prime ministers as active at trying to help the world as former president Carter.”

  “Don’t need to,” Llewellyn said through a mouth full of sausage. “Got the Queen!”

  “Ah, the Queen. Forgot all about her. Sorry. Very active in international humanitarian causes she is, I’m sure.”

  Llewellyn didn’t seem to know how to react to that and simply snorted.

  Alec finished his breakfast and stood. “Well, I’m off; see you on the mountain later?”

  Both Llewellyns looked up as if he were daft. “Good heavens, no,” Mrs. Llewellyn piped. “We’re bird-watching on the estuary!”

  “Well, perhaps this evening then,” Alec continued. “Think I’ll take my plate in and fetch my boots. Lovely day for birding.”

  Llewellyn waved him off, mouth full again; his roly-poly wife smiled vacantly.

  In the kitchen, Fiona was leaning up against the counter facing him, her hand over her mouth and her eyes dancing with mirth.

  “When are they leaving?!” Alec hissed under his breath.

  Dropping her hand, she whispered, “Not till tomorrow, I’m afraid; aren’t they a pair? Might ask them to stay on just for the entertainment!”

  Alec wrapped Fiona in his arms and gave her rear a lascivious squeeze. She stifled a giggle. He pulled away and gave her a quick kiss.

  “I’m off, Fi. For goodness’ sake don’t worry about me.”

  “How will you go?”

  “Up by way of the Fox’s Path, then down the long way, on the old Pony Track. Easier on the knees that way.”

  “Mind that Fox’s Path, now,” she cautioned. “It’s nothing but steep scree near the top. Hard going. Do you have a compass this time?”

  “Yes, thanks. Stupid of me not to carry one the other day. I’ll be more careful this time.”

  She went to hand him his day pack, groaning when she tried to lift it. “Lord, that’s heavy!”

  “It’s Gwynne’s ashes; she was a big girl.”

  “Take good care, Alec.”

  “I promise.”

  He hesitated a moment. “Brenin Llwyd didn’t get me but I’m afraid Fiona Edwards has. I’m very interested in coming down again safely.”

  Fiona heard the emotion in his voice. Her heart swelled and she could feel her eyes brimming. She reached up and gave him a fierce kiss.

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  In the back room he laced up his boots, grabbed his walking stick, then stepped out into the yard. She was right; it was cold. The sun had cleared the summit, but frost lay on the ground in the shadow of the barn and crunched under his boots. He walked down the lane a hundred yards or so to the spot where the footpath sign pointed east, away from the farmyard, and looked back.
Fiona was at the kitchen window, watching him. He waved, then went through a stock gate, closing and latching it behind him.

  For reasons she couldn’t pin down, Fiona felt apprehensive as Alec disappeared into the oak wood beside the lane. She knew he was an experienced climber. He knew the mountain. He was fit. But fit people died on Cadair Idris all the time. She heard the footsteps of her other guests in the front hall and turned away from the window to see them off.

  Alec broke out of the wood, climbed a ladder stile built over a lichen-encrusted stone wall, and found himself in a lush green pasture filled with ewes and lambs. Owen, who was leaning against a wall on the other side drinking from a thermos, gave him a wave. To his surprise, Jack was there, too, herding sheep. The dog raced around the perimeter of the chaotically milling ewes, gradually drawing them together. From time to time he’d crouch, haunches high, muzzle on the ground, staring down the sheep. Then, in an instant, he’d adjust his place and drop again, his ever-vigilant eyes never leaving the flock. The closer the sheep bunched, the edgier they became, watching the dog’s every movement with rheumy red eyes and crashing into one another. From time to time Owen whistled softly and the dog reacted in an instant, herding the skittish flock toward an open gate in the stone wall. The dog’s concentration was mesmerizing, his movements low to the ground, his body rigid. Alec reached Owen just as he was closing the gate to the new pasture.

  “Morning, Owen! I thought Jack was useless with the sheep.”

  “Useless with David,” Owen said, “but fine with me. Good with the sheep and good company in the bargain.”

  Jack’s ears perked and he barked.

  “Speaking of David, I thought he’d be here with you.”

  “Looks like I’m working alone today. Saw him a while back, walking toward the westward pasture. Reckon he’s over there checking on the lambs. Or maybe back at his place by now. Too busy earlier to see if he’d come back down.”

  Owen nodded at Alec’s pack. “Giving it another try?”

  “Yup. Good day for it, I think.”

  “Maybe,” Owen said, scanning the sky to the northwest, which Alec now noticed was turning milky. “Might get some weather later,” Owen added. “You know you’re taking the hard way up? Fox’s Path is brutal near the top.”

  “I know,” Alec said. “I thought I’d tackle it early while I have the energy, and take the easy way down.”

  “Good plan, I suppose. Pony Track’s easy but boring if you have to walk it both ways, like the tourists do. Don’t think there will be many of them up there today, though. Too cold. You’re the only one I’ve seen this morning.”

  “That’s fine with me; I prefer the solitude. Good luck with the lambs today.”

  Alec patted the young man’s shoulder and headed uphill. He’d grown fond of him and thought that if he’d had a son, he’d have liked him to turn out like Owen. Kind. Thoughtful. Responsible.

  The footpath through the scrubby uplands was faintly visible, but it was too early in the year for it to be well worn, so Alec paid attention as he climbed. The track rose through a moderately steep draw and then opened out along a ridge. After only perhaps a mile, he skirted the outlet of a small lake, Llyn Gafr. Beyond it the hillside steepened sharply and he settled into a slow but steady rocking gait taught him by a friend who had climbed Everest. Instead of just powering up a steep incline, this technique had you pause for just a fraction of a second on each step, briefly locking, and thereby resting, the downhill leg. Once you got the rhythm right, you could climb without stopping—slow and steady, like the tortoise in his successful race with the hare.

  The landscape here was rough pasture, grass and bracken combined, broken by ledges and outcrops and spots he could tell were soggy underfoot by the reedy sedges growing there. He heard a skylark trill and saw it fifty feet or so away, hovering over what he guessed was a ground nest. Now that the sun had cleared the summit, the grassy patches sparkled with English daisies. But it wasn’t a warm sun at all, and he was glad he was climbing; it kept his internal furnace burning.

  After a quarter mile of steep slogging, he crested a rise and found before him Llyn y Gadair, a smooth-surfaced glacial tarn clasped in a bowl of steep, scree-scattered cliffs. Beneath the cliffs the lake looked as if it were filled with mercury, quivering silver in the weak light. This was one of Cadair Idris’s often-painted beauty spots, he knew, but he found Llyn Cau, where he’d been at about this time three days earlier, far more dramatic. There was something unfriendly, almost forbidding, about this part of the mountain, he decided. The feeling was instinctive, nothing he could define.

  He put the pack down, pulled out his water bottle, took a deep gulp, and scanned the ascent route. Like Llyn Cau, the path up to the summit plateau from Llyn y Gadair curved up along a viciously steep shoulder of the mountain to the left of the lake. Unlike Llyn Cau, this one was composed of loose rock and gravel, not hard ledges with firm footing. He looked at it and knew it was going to be far harder than the previous ascent. He slugged back more water, put the bottle away, and hoisted the pack back onto his shoulders.

  It was every bit as bad as he’d thought it would be. The higher he climbed, the steeper the trail became, and the worse the footing. He figured the slope was at least thirty degrees. When a slope gets that steep, he knew, your natural tendency is to lean into it. But on a loose surface like this one, that’s not only unwise but potentially deadly. Gravity wants to push you down. If you lean into the slope it pushes you down the slope. But if you stay as upright as possible, as if perpendicular to an imagined flat line, gravity pushes you into the slope and reduces the risk of slipping. It’s counterintuitive, but crucial. Even climbing upright, though, progress was slow; it was two steps forward, one step slipping back, and it was wearing him out. He felt as if he were a ship plowing through heavy seas trailing a wake of scattering stones. The route ahead was even steeper. The English, he knew, charmingly called this a “scramble.” Scrambling is fine for younger folk, he thought to himself, but hell on older guys. He stopped and caught his breath. There was only one thing to do, he decided: charge the slope. He grabbed his stick by the shank and ran, trying to move his feet faster uphill than they could slip downhill. It was working. He was churning up the slope like a machine, arms and legs pumping, head down to watch his footing. After what seemed forever but was probably no more than another ten minutes, he crested the rim at last and flopped down on a block of granite the size of a bed. His chest heaved and his heart pounded. His thighs were on fire, his knees wobbly with exhaustion. Once again he wondered whether he was getting too old for this sort of thing. He thought about the Llewelyns and their bird-watching, laughed, and shouted “No way!” to the sky.

  That was when he noticed that the sky to the west had changed from milky to dark. He could see an angry squall line moving in fast off the Irish Sea. In what seemed like a matter of seconds, the sea, and then the coastline, vanished behind a curtain of what he assumed was heavy rain.

  “Miss Davis,” he said to himself as much as to the ashes in his pack, “time to move.”

  The good news was that he could see the short, white concrete trig pillar that marked Pen y Gadair, the summit of Cadair Idris. He struck off toward it as fast as the boulder-strewn ground would permit. The squall line reached it before he did, and the marker disappeared. He stopped to fish his rain parka out of the pack and heard a strange hissing sound off in the distance. The air around him went from dead calm to a gale in moments, and the temperature dropped. He yanked up the zipper, pulled up the hood, slung on the pack, and looked up. It wasn’t a rain squall, he suddenly realized. The hissing, the invisibility: it was a hailstorm. A mean one.

  Alec knew where the trig point had been moments ago. He had a pretty good idea how far away it was. The visibility was, thankfully, a little better than it had been on his previous ascent. He headed roughly west, directly into the wind. The size of the hailstones varied from moment to moment; they started small, suddenly grew l
arge as marbles, then became pea-sized. They were blowing almost horizontally, directly at him; he pulled the hood of his jacket close around his eyes to protect his face. After perhaps ten minutes of clambering and slipping over the icy rock field, he found the pillar. His geographical memory was working just fine. He put the pillar at his back and the wind on his left shoulder and stumbled north over the rocky plateau toward the primitive stone shelter he knew was in that direction.

  He found it almost immediately and ducked beneath its rusted corrugated metal roof. It was only a low stone lean-to, but he was out of the elements. Despite the chill of the day, he’d been climbing in the sleeveless shirt he preferred. That had been more than enough protection as he sweated his way up the steep north face of the mountain. The shirt was made of a fabric that wicked moisture away from his body and dried quickly. He took off his parka so the heat of his body could speed the evaporation. He’d feel cold for a few minutes, but not long enough to get chilled through. When the shirt dried, he pulled his expedition shirt out of the pack, put it on over the sleeveless one, then slipped into the parka again. He hunched down to conserve body heat and waited for the storm to pass. He realized he was hungry and ate part of the sandwich Fiona had made: sharp cheddar cheese with Indian chutney on granary bread. It was perfect, and the hot spice of the chutney was welcome.

  Beyond the lean-to opening, the conditions kept changing. The hail lessened, replaced for a while by wet snow. Then the hail began again. While he waited, he packed up his lunch and removed the heavy gray plastic box that held Gwynne’s remains.

  Remains. It had never occurred to him until this moment how wrong that word was. The rubble in the box was not what remained of Gwynne. What remained of Gwynne was the sheer joy she had brought to his life and to the lives of everyone she touched, the incandescence of her smile, the unexpectedly throaty laugh, the childlike enthusiasm, the creative genius.

  But something else, something more important, something everlasting: before their troubles had begun, she’d taught him to love. She made expressing love safe. She also made it acceptable for him to play. She had found and mined a deep seam of silliness in him that brought laughter to everything they did together, no matter how mundane or tedious. None of these things—loving, playing, laughing—had ever come easily to him. What came easily, what was second nature to him, was caretaking, planning ahead, vigilance, protecting and, above all, being responsible. What had driven him away from her in the end was his anger with what he saw as her irresponsibility, her inability to anticipate the consequences of her actions or her inaction, her refusal to take care of herself, and the ever-increasing weight of being all those things for her. It was, he’d come to realize, a very old anger, one from childhood. It had only partly to do with her.