The Hollow Land

by Jane Gardam

  “I didn’t like The Guns of Navarone,” said Harry, “though they didn’t actually leave him. My father didn’t like it either. He said it was daft. War’s daft.”

  “This poem wasn’t daft,” said Bell. “It was ’orrible. All of them leaving her lying there and the baby looking back. All the vultures watching.”

  “There’ll be hospitals now,” said Harry. “I hope the vultures don’t get after my bike.”

  “I’d like to see a vulture out on a day like this.”

  They tramped on, Harry trotting behind the sit-up-and-beg. He enjoyed trotting. It kept his hands warmer than the track-bike. He watched his breath puffing and then began to move his fists like pistons. Soon he began to sing.

  “Give over that,” said Bell, “it’s all we need.”

  On they went—past the chapel, past the dark-windowed, prim-looking old school house long since shut down, past the house where an old woman used to keep goats in her front sitting-room among the furniture, past the little lane that led to the oldest of all the fell cottages in the dale.

  “Used to be vampires up yonder. In one of them cottages,” said Bell. “Leastways I think it was them. It was somewhere. Anyway there’s one buried in Dent churchyard.”

  Puff, puff, puff, wept Harry.

  “Got a stake through his heart and a chain up through the coffin, the end of it sticking out and fastened with a ring into his gravestone. To hold him down.”

  Puff, puff, puff.

  “See he don’t wander and POUNCE on folks.”

  Puff, puff.

  “Ain’t you interested then? Ain’t you flait at all, Harry? You’re a right puzzle.”

  Harry said nothing for a bit and they turned into the great black cave of the railway bridge and out from under it again and past a farm gate with a kennel but no dogs to shout at them. “It’s cold if Eddie Cleesby’s took his dog in,” said Bell.

  “Were they thinking he’d be hungry yet?” said Harry.

  “Whichways?”

  “Yon vampire in Dent churchyard.”

  “You’d best not let your mother hear you saying ‘yon’. Or ‘hungry yet’. You say ‘hungry still’.”

  “Hungry still. I’d see he’d be still if he was dead. But why’d he be hungry?”

  “Never said he’d be hungry.”

  “You said they put a steak in his heart.”

  “A stake. Aye. A great splinter.”

  “Oh I thowt as you meant juicy with onions.”

  “Thowt!” said Bell. “Speak right, can’t yer. You’ll finish up a savage.”

  Under the great shadow of Wild Boar Fell they went and Bell decided he’d leave his bicycle for the vultures, too. “We’ll walk next bit. It’s not owt now. ’Ere—throw yer arms about yerself backwards and forwards. That way yer fingers’ll come back on you. We’ll need ’em shortly.”

  “For icicles?”

  “Wait on and ye’ll see.”

  But though they walked and walked, Harry saw nothing special—nothing more than the lonely road and the sweeping snowy fells and the lowering head of the Wild Boar rock above them. A beck they came on was as deep with snow as any dry land, and only known to be there by a faint musical tinkling like bells.

  “Them’s the fairies,” said Bell. “Folks had to make up something before the telly.”

  “Mr. Hewitson’s seen the fairies,” said Harry, “he tellt’ me.”

  “Told thee. What—our grandad? Old Hewitson? You tek no account of what he says. He’s no better’n Kendal the sweep.

  “Mind,” he added, “I know he says he did. And his gran did too. Smearing butter over gateposts they was. Over Ladthwaite. Wonder whatever sort of good that did a body.”

  “A body?”

  “Any body.”

  “Bell.”

  “Aye?”

  “Bell—where’s the icicle ride?”

  “Not far now.”

  They turned a little off the road, full into the teeth of a piercing wind coming down to meet them off Mallerstang Edge. “Somewhere very close.”

  But he had begun to look serious.

  “Bell?”

  “Aye?”

  “Bell—where is it we’re going? Bell—I’se tired.”

  “I’m tired. I’m tired.”

  “Well, if you’re tired, too—”

  “No I’se not tired. I’se just telling thee to speak right or your mother’ll stop you coming out.”

  “No, she’ll never. Bell . . . Bell!”—for Bell had disappeared now off the road and over a wall. Harry heard his feet go thump, scrunch into a great heap of snow beyond. Then there was quiet.

  “Bell,” roared Harry and felt how his feet had gone away, and looked at his fingers, all blue when he took off his glove, and how his face was sharp and stingy and his ears ached and burned at the same time and the wind blew at him, sharp as stakes in the heart. “Bell, I want to go back.”

  And then three things happened. The wind dropped, Bell’s round face reappeared smiling over the wall, and the sun came suddenly beaming and gleaming from under the lowest and blackest of the dismal clouds to take a last look at the short and bitter day. Long, yellow brilliant rays broke across Castledale, and for miles and miles and miles snow glittered like a million tons of diamonds. The little black snow-posts to mark the fell tracks stuck up like barbed-wire spikes with blue shadows behind them, sharp as arithmetic.

  “Come over this now,” said Bell, “and see if it’s been worth it.”

  And Harry climbed up the steps of stone in the wall and put his miserable blue hands in the sopped gloves on top of it and dropped down into the scrunching snow—and deeper than Bell, being smaller, nearly to his waist.

  And there, round a corner to the left where the beck fell sheer, stood high as the sky a chandelier of icicles. Hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of them down the shale steps of a waterfall. There were long ones and short ones and middling ones and fat ones like arms and thin ones like threads. They hung down from up as high as you could see and down to your very wellingtons. And not only water had turned to spears of glass, but every living thing about—the grasses, the rushes, the spider webs, the tall great fearless thistles. You could pull the tubes of ice off the long wands of the loosestrife. You could lift them off like hollow needles. You could look right down them like crystal test-tubes. You could watch them twist like fairy earrings. And as the sun reached them they all turned at once to every colour ever known—rose and orange and blue and green and lilac—and Harry and Bell watched them until the sun slipped down a little and left them icicles again.

  “It don’t happen often,” Bell said. “Once before I seed it when Grandad brought me years back—your age. It happens when there’s a temperature change—very quick. Snap-snap. It freezes sudden. Turns them all to ice in mid-flow. All the grasses an’ all—just as they’re standing or bending.”

  “Just like a spell. Like The Snow Queen.”

  They stood on.

  “Can we pick some?”

  They began to pick. Not very bravely at first. It seemed a sin to spoil it. “But it’ll all be gone tomorrow,” said Bell. “Grandad says they don’t often last a day.”

  They took the tips off the rushes and pulled. They broke off the water icicles like peppermint rock or toffee. They took all thicknesses and laid them carefully in the snow. Somewhere they found in a pocket some bits of John Robert twine to bind them and parcelled together a heap of the thickest. Then Harry collected some of the very fine threads into his hands and they slowly climbed over the wall and walked, not feeling the cold at all, back down the road.

  It was growing quite dark now but the road was shiny enough to follow. When they reached Bell’s bike, they fastened his sheaf at the back across his panniers, where it stuck out at either side like glass firewood. Harry walked
in front, carrying his delicate bundle upright like a bouquet. They walked for ages without talking.

  “Here’s mine,” said Harry, looking at the dying Indian track-bike. “But if I push it, what do I do with these? I’d best leave it. My father can fetch it tomorrow. It’s no good without brakes and there’ll be nobody much passing to pinch it. I want to get these home safe. I’d like my mother to see them.”

  “Aye—I want Grandad to get a look at mine,” said Bell, “and we’ll have to look sharp for it’s warmer.

  “Funny to get warmer when the sun’s gone down,” said Bell, “but it’s been a funny day altogether. Magic rather like as if there’s something watching.”

  “It is warmer,” said Bell later. They had passed Wild Boar, the railway bridge and the empty dog kennel, the school and the chapel, all dead and dark. “It must be because it’s snowing a bit.”

  By Outhgill village it was snowing a lot. There was a light here and a light there in the looming dark. Bell knew someone at the shop, which wasn’t that far off if he could find it, he said. But then—the icicles. If they stopped now they wouldn’t get them home. Already they had a more slithery, softer sort of feel—like the road ahead.

  “We’ll press on,” he said.

  “My mother said to ring from Hell Gill phone box. Where’s Hell Gill phone box, Bell?”

  “I think we’ve passed it,” said Bell. “Come on. We’re getting on. We’ve passed the place where she kept her goats and we’re nearly at the chapel.”

  “We’re way past the chapel,” said Harry, “and the school.”

  “Are we? I’m getting muddled.”

  “Well, I seed a building.”

  “Saw—”

  “Saw a—Bell, I think we ought to go back. To the shop at Outhgill. It’s snowing like feathers.”

  They turned to go back, gasping a bit into the snow, and found that the lights of the few cottages at Outhgill had disappeared. The night had fallen and the snow fluttered steadily and softly and determinedly down, silencing the whole world.

  “This dale were cut off for six weeks in 1947,” said Bell. “My dad couldn’t go to school, all that time. Till Easter. They kept putting this place ont’ wireless—aerial photographs in the newspapers and prayers in churches.”

  They rounded a bend, very slowly, and stood completely still—for the road was not there. Instead of it, a great sweeping drift of snow flowed across before them and looped up to the wall. But the wall had gone, too. As they stood, wiping over their faces every minute and peering at the drift, it grew dimmer and dimmer and the feathers flew so fast you could scarcely see between them.

  “Well, they’ll come for us,” said Bell. “They’ll probably be on their way. From Nateby. They’ll have started.”

  “Yes. If they can get through,” said Harry.

  “Aye, if they can get through.”

  A worse sort of cold had started to grow inside Harry and his legs, which had until now been stiff and numb, felt loose and floppy. “What shall we do, Bell?”

  “Do? Well—” He felt very much older than Harry as Harry asked him. At the same time he felt very young indeed. He peered into the dark and his legs, too, began to feel odd. Then he said, “I think I can see a light.”

  “Where?”

  “Over there. Look. A lil’ flicker.”

  “I can’t see it.”

  “I can. Come on. Over off t’ road. Hold to the bike to keep together. Come on now and push. Fetch over here now away from that drift.”

  The bike, with them behind it, careered over a hump and began to slide fast down a smooth snow slope to the level ground. Harry saw a light, too, and in a minute both of them heard the tinkle of a little stream which sometimes was the broad river at Wateryat Bottom.

  The light grew, and all at once they bumped right up against something—against a head and a juddering, shuddering mass, the clink of a metal wall. A black, wet, hairy, miserable old face peered forward at them and then gave a great sobbing scream.

  “It’s a pony,” said Bell in a voice that might have said, It’s God’s own favourite guardian angel. “It’s a pony tied up. It’s the gypsies.”

  Then the dogs began—perhaps half a dozen of them by the racket, turning both vans to sounding boxes. “Shout,” said Bell. “Shout above them or they’ll eat us.”

  They both yelled and beat at the van side. Hysterical barks of dogs answered.

  Nothing happened otherwise.

  “They’re not in,” said Harry beginning to cry. “They’re not answering. We’ll die.”

  “Git yelling,” said Bell, and again they roared and thumped. “They wouldn’t leave lights on for dogs.”

  “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.