In The Tent

by David Rees

  ‘All right! That’s all you ever say, all right, all right, all right!’ Ray exclaimed, suddenly heated. ‘What do you do with each other? What do you say to each other?’

  ‘Mind your own business, Franco.’ But he smiled his wide farm labourer’s smile, no malice.

  ‘Let’s get home,’ Aaron said, picking up his bag. The other two followed him to the door.

  Words in Tim’s mind: Aaron, I love you. You’re beautiful. Blue eyes, long blond hair (too long for teachers’ comfort). All of a happy uncomplicated piece. And I’m not. No no no no no! Wrong. Wicked. I’d go to Hell; I’d be in mortal sin. Jesus, Mary, Joseph, help! I believe in the infinite mercy and goodness of God and yet there is also His most terrible anger, which justly punishes sinners. Kiss Aaron. No no no! What else with him, what else would I have him do to me? NO NO!! Jesus, Mary, Joseph, HELP!!

  But they didn’t. His heart beating so fast and his hands so trembling that he could hardly make himself speak, Tim said ‘I’ll come with you.’ Why not? He had been to the Lakes before, more than once; he didn’t exactly know it like the back of his hand, but he had stood on the summit of Gable, of Helvellyn, of Scafell Pike. He and his parents had been there these last three summers, to a guest-house in Wasdale under the enormous shadow of Ling Mell. And he was used to cooking too; with both his father and mother at work, he, the lone sibling, had always been a latchkey-child, letting himself into an empty house after school, making his own tea.

  The three boys stopped in the doorway and turned. They didn’t jeer or look condescending, just puzzled.

  ‘Why?’ Ray asked, frowning.

  ‘Who is it?’ Aaron was already out in the corridor.

  ‘You don’t live my way,’ John said.

  ‘I don’t mean home. I mean ... to the Lakes.’

  ‘What for?’ Aaron came back into the room. ‘Why do you want to? You’re hardly . . . well. . . Besides, we don’t need anybody else.’

  John stared; Ray contemplated the blackboard.

  Wishing the earth would swallow him up, Tim explained about the cooking and knowing the mountains; his father would lend him any equipment they might lack. Would he? It might be a hard job persuading his parents, and how did he propose to get to Mass on Sunday, his mother would ask; it wouldn’t be like the summer, with the car but his father, he remembered, often grumbled at him, despised him even, for not being out of doors and physical. Dad would, perhaps, allow it, after the usual nagging session. He could be useful, he said, to the expedition; he w as sure of it, and he promised not to get in their way or be a burden.

  There was a lengthy argument, most of the objections coming, surprisingly, from Ray. Aaron’s contributions were feeble, and eventually he was silent; looked just a little relieved in fact. The sungod’s weakness. Tim, delighted and astonished, knew they would accept him.

  ‘Oh let him come for Christ’s sake!’ said John, at last. ‘What a fuss you cause, Ray! What harm can he possibly do us?’

  Ray protested, but without force now, and he shut up altogether when Aaron said he couldn’t care one way or the other. And so it was settled.

  They dispersed to their homes. The Suñers’ flat was on the tenth floor of a tower block near the station; John lived in one of the few houses in Balaclava Street that wasn’t West Indian or bed-sit, Tim in a district of pre-war semis: discreet laurel hedges, established gardens (laburnums, flowering cherries), and ladies like his mother with decided opinions and hats. Such, he reflected as he picked privet leaves and inhaled their sweet scent, was the nature of a class at Oozedam Comprehensive.

  Ray walked along with Aaron. Keegan was a weakling, a weed, a wet, a swot, he said, a pouff.

  ‘You mean he’s queer?’ Aaron asked. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘He is. He’ll spoil everything.’

  ‘We did that, once upon a time.’

  ‘That was different.’ Ray was embarrassed. They were fourteen then; Saturday mornings in Ray’s bedroom, listening to pop, looking at nudie magazines. It was only because of the naked women and Aaron didn’t quite know then how to go out with girls; it had finished when he did.

  ‘I’m not ashamed it happened,’ Aaron said. ‘Even though I usually started it.’ He was speaking the truth; his lack of guilt had meant their friendship wasn’t spoiled.

  ‘Nor am I.’ But it was more complicated for Ray. He thought for a moment, then said, ‘Tim fancies you.’

  ‘That’s his problem,’ Aaron said, shrugging his shoulders.

  The air was sharp with frost; ice and a few snow-streaks lay on the stones, but the four boys glowed, exulting, from the climb. Light was failing. The huge wide world falling away from the summit of Great Gable was a marvel beyond imagining. Tim could see that the planet Earth curved The galaxies above, growing just visible, emphasised distance, vastness. The turning world; he knew it was spinning, infinitely little, infinitely enormous. At the edges, the sea. Wastwater, a steel mirror, deepest of all lakes, yet a puddle between folds. Cloud, soft cotton wool w raps of it slowly rolling over Steeple and Haycock. The colours: shadows, impossibly purple, of Illgill Head, Great End, Ling Mell; minute strips of green fields in the valleys, the lower slopes of mountains a blaze of copper ferns. Gable, an immensity of scree, grey stone, grey slate: barren, dangerous. The slopes! The depths, the heights! The sky!

  Ray and John were talking geography: cols, occlusions, rifts, glaciation. ‘A sunken dome,’ Ray informed him. ‘Scafell Pike is the centre. They’re the oldest mountains in the world.’ How unpoetic, Tim thought, how insensitive.

  ‘Not a bad view,’ Aaron said, glancing round for a moment, his breath steaming like a horse’s after a gallop. He turned away and kicked stones as he would any time, anywhere.

  ‘The weather won’t change.’ Ray said. ‘That man was talking rubbish.’ The sun burned on the horizon, reassuring. The air was so still you could hear it.

  ‘That’s Jupiter,’ said John, pointing.

  Someone from the Mountain Rescue had stopped them at Wasdale Head. They would be camping at the top of the Honister Pass near the youth hostel, they told him. That seemed satisfactory, but when he asked, and they said they would be climbing the Pikes of Langdale tomorrow, he looked doubtful: rain and low cloud was the forecast. To lose the way was easy. They intended to camp in Langdale? Yes, they replied.

  ‘Not a bad view,’ Aaron repeated, scoring a goal on the cairn. ‘There’s my crags.’

  ‘What do you mean, your crags?’

  ‘Aaron Crags. That’s what they’re called. Look at the map if you don’t believe me.’

  ‘There’s a gully called Aaron Slack as well,’ Ray said. ‘Sounds more appropriate. Slack Alice.’

  Evening in the tent and Tim was happy. His eyes were filled with landscape, the purple shadows. The tent, Japanese, was child’s play to erect; it opened like an umbrella and was almost perfectly round. He had cooked to the others’ liking, or at least there were no adverse comments. As on the train he listened to the conversation more than he contributed, the four of them sprawled on their sleeping-bags. Aaron and John smoked; Ray grumbled that he wanted booze. They worked out tomorrow’s route, Seathwaite, Sprinkling Tam, Esk Hause, Angle Tarn; easy, Tim said, the east-west motorway of the mountains, but then problems: the way to the top of the Langdale Pikes was not well defined; in cloud they might get lost.

  ‘If there’s cloud there’s little point in going up them,’ John said. ‘There’ll be nothing to see.’

  So they would continue down the motorway to the camp site by the Old Dungeon Ghyll Hotel.

  They listened to pop on Ray’s transistor.

  School, girls, football, the top thirty; back and forth the talk went round these topics, Ipswich Town, Mary Miller, Abba, idiot teachers. They played cards. Aaron pulled out a book, lost himself in Confessions of a Window Cleaner.

  ‘Read out the juicy bits,’ Ray suggested. But Aaron didn’t.

  Ray and John went outside, wandered a few yards from th
e tent, and fell into conversation with some boys and girls from the youth hostel. Tim, furtively, took Blake from his rucksack and hoped Aaron wouldn’t ask what it was, this ‘A’ level set text. He was a great comfort, Blake; here were his own longings, so that while he read they lost their shame and were invested with authority.

  Exuberance is Beauty. Energy is Eternal Delight. So it is, Aaron, so you are.

  And Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds, And binding with briars my joys and desires.

  Me, yes, me, Tim.

  He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.

  I want permission to act. Permission? Yes, there must be permission.

  Ray came running back; with great excitement said someone staying at the hostel had a minibus. There was room for the four of them; this man and some others were going down to the pub in Borrowdale. So they all piled in (Blake would always be there, later) and Tim, for the half-hour before closing-time, was in a sleepy stuffy room, full of male legs in boots, beards, ropes, pints firmly held, the pretend-man he felt he was ignored and therefore accepted. He was happy. It wasn’t only the beer, he thought. Man among men. Ray chatted up a girl from the youth hostel. Aaron, fancying her perhaps, or jealous of Ray enjoying himself, sulked. John, tongue loosened, talked to Tim; school again, for there was little else in common.

  They slept, four heads to the centre pole of the tent. Aaron’s face inches away, asleep, breathing evenly. Impossible for Tim to sleep. He had seen his love undress and hoped desperately his own eyes had gone unnoticed. Last summer’s suntan on Aaron was still evident, but white where he’d worn his bathing trunks. Almost white hair on the golden legs. There was only one possible answer in the circumstances, he told himself. Aaron, stretch out a hand and touch me, put your hand where mine is! Mortal sin, the Church said. By yourself or with another; it didn’t matter. The Church also said that to sin in thought was as bad as to sin in deed. So, was he in any less danger of going to Hell if he stopped? Those who restrain Desire do so, because theirs is weak enough to be restrained, Blake said. Lord Jesus Christ, help! See His face and then go on? Christ’s face, Christ’s face in my head, not Ron’s. The beauty of him lying beside me, breathing. I am sorry, above all things, that I have offended Thee, because Thou art infinitely good, and sin is infinitely displeasing to Thee. I desire to love Thee with my whole heart, and I firmly purpose, by the help of Thy grace, to serve Thee more faithfully in the time to come.

  There was a queer effeminate boy called Noel Haynes at school. Was he like nancy Noel? He hoped not.

  He stopped. An achievement. Of sorts. Father Sullivan in the confessional next time would approve. He was still wide awake.

  ‘It’s not far,’ said Anthony, leading him down a dark alleyway off South Street.

  ‘Why are we going?’ Tim asked.

  ‘Officially to spy; he is said to be dangerous. Unofficially to do nothing. I doubt if I’ll report anything.’

  Richard Saint-Hill was a dark foreign-looking man about the same age as Anthony. He talked too much; sense drowned in sound. The meeting, of necessity, was totally clandestine, and only five people, apart from Tim and Anthony, were present. Anthony nodded to someone; the sexton of Holy Trinity, he explained when Tim asked, a young man called Jake. Saint-Hill’s words, full of Biblical echoes, were a jumble of ill-digested Utopian ideas, reminiscent of some of the stranger religious beliefs the period had spawned. His theme, when he did not wander from it, was that the city was doomed. The Parliamentarian success was inevitable (and few people in Exeter, from the meanest labourer to Sir John Berkeley himself, would privately have disagreed). The only realistic course of action was to make things so easy for the Puritans that when they entered the city they would harm not a hair of the head of any man, woman or child. To this end he proposed that a small party of respected and influential sympathizers of the Parliament’s cause should steal out of the city (there were many possible ways of doing this) and, in exchange for absolutely firm guarantees concerning the safety of the populace, they should reveal these secret routes to the enemy. Any conflict, any hardship would thus be avoided.

  There was conviction in his voice, but his eyes did not seem to look outward; they were obsessed with some inner vision.

  ‘What do you think of this Saint-Hill. Tim?’ Anthony asked, later, when they were back in their room at the gatehouse. They were playing chess. There were three glasses of white wine on the table, and a bunch of grapes. The third glass was for Jake who had returned with them. ‘A crank? I have your bishop, by the way.’

  ‘If you do I capture your queen. A man like that deserves no respect; he can stand up for no side at the time to count heads, and such a time has come and has been with us these four years. Men like him sell their principles for a quiet life, betray themselves for the softest option. He is, you see, a Royalist. A fanatical supporter of the King. Divine right used to be the subject with which he would drive us all to boredom and drink.’

  ‘What do you intend to do with him?’

  ‘Nothing. Let him and his respected merchants, if he can find any, creep away and seek out Fairfax. Sir Thomas will not, I think, welcome him with open arms. Checkmate!’ Anthony laughed. ‘See! I move my rook and your king is caught behind his row of pawns. Inert, ineffective little pawns! Always beware of an attack in the rear.’

  ‘I will try,’ Tim said, smiling. Jake laughed. Tim looked at him; an innocent face, yet not so innocent; wide-apart blue eyes.

  Anthony poured more wine. He picked up his lute, and, sitting cross-legged on the floor, sang sad songs and madrigals:

  ‘Draw on, sweet night, best friend unto those cares That do arise from painful melancholy.’

  ‘April is in my mistress’ face,

  And July in her eyes hath place.

  Within her bosom is September,

  But in her heart is cold December.’

  The voice was as melancholy as the words, the music, the plaintive sob of the lute-strings. Tim watched, fascinated. He sipped the wine, ate more grapes.

  ‘What’s to come is still unsure:

  In delay there lies no plenty;

  Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty, Youth’s a stuff will not endure.’

  Anthony put down his lute. ‘We’ll see more of Saint-Hill before long,’ he said. He stood up, stretching. ‘Bedtime,’ he announced.

  Jake left. ‘He doesn’t say much, does he?’ Tim observed. ‘Who is he?’

  He slept.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The man from the Mountain Rescue had been right. They awoke to low cloud and a thin drizzling rain. Visibility was only a few yards; even the youth hostel, a stone’s throw away from the tent, had vanished. They argued over breakfast (Ray and Aaron, that is; John listened, Tim did the dishes) as to the best course of action. Ray thought they should not move on, but Aaron said this was because of the girl from the youth hostel. Ray, furious, hit him. So it was decided: they would walk down to Seatoller, then up the neighbouring valley, past Sourmilk Gill, the route they had planned last night. Langdale would be far more hospitable in this weather than Honister, Aaron informed them; there were two pubs, a shop at Elterwater, even a bus sometimes to Ambleside. Tim had told him this on the journey up.

  Aaron and John wore shorts. If they were going to get wet there was no point in soaking their jeans right through, they said. Tim walked behind his beloved, staring at his legs, at the blond hair wet and plastered to the skin. Tendon, muscle; bend forward, straighten: the same action thousands and thousands of times. As easy as breathing; what motor inside made such complexity function perfectly, without the need to think? The rain increased. Tim could not remember when he was last so drenched. Jeans, socks, boots had become part of his flesh; the water seemed to act like glue. Rain dripped from hair and eyelashes, noses and chins. Conversation was minimal, less frequent than their nostrils sniffling, just Ray’s repetitive lament that they should have stopped at Honister.

  John, shouldering the burd
en of the tent, and because the way was steeply uphill, said wearily ‘Why don’t you just fuck off, Franco?’ and after that there was silence.

  They rested near Sprinkling Tarn. Tim, looking at the three hunched figures, thought they were as much a part of the landscape as the stones, the mud, the sheet of water; patient and sodden, enduring the weight of the weather, life shrunk down inside them. Colours were brilliant, green grass and copper fern like wet paint on a canvas just finished. A few yards off, all round them the grey fog, a tent of fog, as if the whole world was wrapped in this thick impenetrable wool, and the small circle of ground they could see was the only life left on earth.

  Near Esk Hause, Ray said ‘I’ve lost the compass.’

  They stopped, searched, and told him he was a cretin. They could not find it. ‘Where did you lose it? Exactly?’ Aaron asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I realised just now I no longer had it.’

  ‘When did you last look at it?’

  ‘Sprinkling Tam, I think.’

  They glared at him, annoyed. ‘You can take the tent, Franco,’ John said, and dropped it on the ground. Ray picked it up, humbly.

  ‘I don’t think it matters at the moment,’ Tim ventured. ‘We’re on the motorway. Scafell Pike, last exit, just here. End of motorway, Langdale, three miles. The service station.’

  ‘It’s well marked,’ Aaron agreed. ‘We can’t go wrong. Come on.’

  They continued uphill. ‘Tomorrow, Ray, you can buy a compass,’ John said.

  ‘I will, boss.’

  Half an hour later Tim was worried. Angle Tarn should have been reached; they should have been going downhill before now, but the way was undulating, little ups and downs; it was no wider than a sheep track. He stopped and looked about him, frowning.