Scar Hill

by Alan Temperley

Ben lay on his rug in the corner, chin on his paws, watching beneath whiskery eyebrows. Peter fetched a couple of doggy bones from the kitchen. He didn’t like his best pal to feel out of it. Ben heard the rattle of the packet and sat up, watching the door expectantly. Gently he took the biscuit from Peter’s fingers. Peter gave the second one to Meg.

  The Shangri La was a new restaurant in Clashbay. Peter wore his favourite jeans and OK, PUNK sweatshirt which Jim had washed and ironed. He liked Chinese – and enjoyed sipping lager from his dad’s glass. Jim bought him an as-much-as-you-can-eat-for-twelve-pounds birthday dinner. Having a competition who could burp louder, they walked through town to The Bay Cinema to watch Screaming Calypso, the new comic blockbuster that everyone was talking about.

  And finally, just three and a bit weeks before Christmas, there was the St Andrew’s Day ceilidh in the school hall. It was a popular event. People travelled miles to enjoy the Gaelic songs, jokes, pipes and accordions, dancers, choir, storyteller, young pop group, twenty minute play – and take tea in the dining hall afterwards.

  The play, produced by Miss Berry and performed by one of her English classes, was a highlight. This year Peter’s was the chosen class and he had been looking forward to it for weeks. He was playing Israel Hands, Long John Silver’s second-in-command, in a scene from Treasure Island. It was a good part. Though normally a quiet boy, he played it dramatically with scarves tied round his head, blackened teeth, a scar on his cheek, a real-looking sword and rags that fluttered as he strode across the stage. He had practised his words at home, rehearsed it on stage, and couldn’t wait to perform it before an audience.

  But the good times could not last forever.

  13

  A Heavy Cold

  IT WAS A long time, nearly two months, since Jim had last been assailed by depression, since the black snakes had come sliding from drains and cracks beneath the skirting boards to hang their heavy coils about his shoulders. Since that grim weekend of drunkenness and pains in his chest, he had felt fitter and more positive than for years. He and Peter were happy, the house and fences were in good repair, the flock had been dipped and served by the rams. It was as if some blockage had been cleared, like dirt in the fuel line of an engine, and he was free to move forward. But all at once, in the course of a late evening and wretched night, the sickness was back, the chasm reopened at his feet, his spirit was crushed. Whichever way he looked, everything seemed hopeless.

  On the morning of the ceilidh, which was a Saturday, Peter slept late – late for him. At nine-fifteen, in crumpled pyjamas and rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he trailed downstairs for breakfast. The house was cold. No smell of toast or coffee greeted him as he went through to the living room. He was feeling cheerful, at least he would be feeling cheerful when he woke up properly. A good day lay ahead.

  His heart sank at the scene that greeted him. The fire was dead. The remains of last night’s supper lay on the table. Yesterday’s Guardian was strewn on the carpet. Jim, in vest and work trousers, not even zipped up, sat on the edge of the settee. His feet were bare. He had pulled a rug round his shoulders for the cold.

  ‘Dad?’

  With difficulty Jim raised his eyes to his son and moistened dry lips. ‘Sorry, Pete.’

  Peter moved the whisky bottle and crouched by his knee. Both were silent then Peter said, ‘Is there anything I can do?’

  ‘Not really, son.’

  ‘Have you taken your pills?’

  Jim didn’t answer.

  Peter went to the drawer in the kitchen. He had a rough idea what his dad had to take. Carefully he read the prescriptions and dropped them, white pills, purple pills, red-and-yellow capsules, into the egg cup his dad used regularly and carried them with a glass of water into the living room.

  ‘I don’t want the bloody things.’ Jim pushed his arm away.

  Peter stood waiting.

  ‘Got cloth ears?’

  ‘Dad, come on.’

  ‘They do no bloody good.’

  ‘Don’t be so stupid. If it wasn’t for these you could be dead by this time.’

  ‘I should be so lucky.’

  ‘Oh, that’s nice. Thanks.’

  ‘I don’t mean you, son. I don’t mean you.’

  ‘I know you don’t. But you didn’t feel like this yesterday. You didn’t feel like this when we were out in the boat. It’ll pass, it always does. So come on.’ He thrust the egg cup towards him. ‘Just swallow them.’

  Jim belched and rested a hand on his arm. He had cut a knuckle and neglected it. The skin was inflamed. ‘All right, give ’em here.’ He tossed the pills into his mouth and washed them down.

  ‘Good.’ Peter stood back. ‘What about breakfast? You’ll not be wanting any, I suppose.’

  ‘Who wants food when you can have pills?’

  ‘OK.’ Peter went back to the kitchen. The black frying pan stood on the stove. He smelled the savoury fat. ‘I fancy a bacon sandwich. Sure I can’t tempt you?’

  ‘Trying to make me throw up?’ Jim rose unsteadily. ‘You be OK? Think I’ll just go out to the byre for a bit.’

  ‘Right, but leave the whisky. You know what Dr Bryson said.’ He returned to the living room. ‘Look, Dad, what if I – ’

  The front door shut. Tea towel in hand, Peter watched his father cross the yard. A scatter of rain hit the window. Jim’s shoulders and arms were bare. He had pulled a jacket from the pegs in the hall; a corner of rug trailed on the wet ground. In one hand he clutched the sloshing bottle of Grant’s, the cheapest whisky in the shop. From long experience he kept a bottle in case of emergencies. A glass wasn’t essential.

  The dogs were barking. They hadn’t been let out. Jim unfastened the shed door. Ben rushed past and relieved himself endlessly against a stone corner. Meg squatted then followed her master into the byre.

  The familiar pattern was established. For three days despair and drunkenness held Jim in a grip that he was powerless to break.

  That first evening, the day of the ceilidh, Peter drove himself to the end of the track and was picked up by the parents of a friend who was also in the play. He threw himself into his pirate rôle with all the spirit he could muster. The audience applauded. Mrs Harle, the head teacher, rested a hand on his shoulder and told him that he had the makings of a real actor. But without his dad there, Peter’s heart was sad.

  At home he tidied the house, lit the fire, made his own meals. The ewes, in lamb now, had been brought down from the high moors to a pasture up the track where they could be looked after during the winter. Each morning, before it was light, he drove there with the trailer to fill the troughs with sheep nuts and the rack with hay. And when he came back from school he fed the dogs, gave Buster a run round the kitchen while he made dinner, did his homework and watched television.

  Jim, meanwhile, moved like a tramp between the house and the byre. Sometimes he slept in the straw, sometimes on the settee, sometimes in his bed. His whiskers grew, his clothes started to smell. Risking the attention of the police, he drove to the Cod and Kipper and sat in the remotest corner, rejecting company, a beer and chaser on the ring-stained table before him. Visiting the shop he bought one, then a second bottle of Grant’s, and some ready-cooked meals for Peter to put in the microwave.

  Customers shook their heads: ‘Dreadful … let himself get into that state … good-looking man if it wasn’t for the drink … clever too … used to be a soldier, you know, in the desert … it’s that son of his I’m sorry for, such a nice lad … the Social want to get themselves out there and see what the house is like … must be a pig-sty.’

  But Billy Josh, the trawler skipper, knew Jim better: ‘Gossiping old women,’ he said angrily. ‘How do you know what he’s been through? Poor man’s not well. He’s doing the best he can. Managing a lot better than I would in his circumstances, I’m telling you. All your churchgoing – hasn’t taught you much about charity. Tearing a man to shreds behind his back. You make me sick!’

  Whatever the talk
in the village, no one mentioned it to Peter. He went to school as normal, worked at his lessons, played with his friends at lunchtime and protected his dad by keeping silent. Only the men who drank at the Cod and Kipper, as far as he was aware, had any reason to think his dad was going through a bad patch.

  But what he did not know, what no one knew, was that twice Jim was hit by that savage pain in the chest that left him gasping and all but helpless. The first time it struck as he was lying in the straw; the second time as he was driving home from the pub, weaving from side to side of the narrow road. The attacks were, if anything, even worse than those he had experienced back in October. The little white pills he took everywhere with him worked their magic, though not quite as quickly and he was left shaken. A dozen times he recalled Dr Bryson’s warnings, but his mind was so befuddled by whisky and despair there was no way he could do as the doctor advised.

  Yet on Tuesday afternoon, as Peter rattled into the yard on the tractor, Jim was sufficiently recovered to greet him in the doorway with a wan smile. Light shone at the windows. A bitter easterly wind tore the smoke from the chimney. It was not yet four o’clock but already, in those first days of winter, darkness was settling over the moors. As they went indoors the house was, if not cosy, at least warmer than outside and the kettle was boiling.

  The bad spell had lasted nearly four days.

  ‘Sorry, Pete.’ Jim rubbed his black stubble. ‘I give you a bloody rough time sometimes, don’t I? You OK?’

  The drive had chilled Peter to the marrow. He nodded and blew on his fingers.

  ‘I’ll get a bath and have a shave later,’ Jim said. ‘Here, give us your jacket and sit down there by the fire. I’ll make us a cup of tea.’ He hung the jacket in the hall and went through to the kitchen.

  Peter saw him massaging his arm and shoulder. ‘What’s up?’ he called. ‘Give yourself a knock?’

  ‘God knows.’ Jim eased his neck. ‘Must have fallen or something. I can’t remember.’ He rummaged in the sink. ‘Touch of rheumatics, maybe, lying out there in the byre. I’ll have a look when I go upstairs.’

  Working as hard as he did, Jim was always getting strains and bruises. Peter sneezed and shivered, crouching to the fire.

  It was the start of a nasty cold which had been going about the village. Several girls and boys in Peter’s class had caught it and been kept at home. On Wednesday, although he was slightly feverish, Jim allowed Peter to attend, driving him to school in the warm van and picking him up again in the afternoon. On Thursday, however, Peter was perspiring and had a hacking cough. His throat felt raw. When Jim went to his bedroom, he looked up with bleary eyes and croaked that he didn’t want any breakfast.

  ‘I’m afraid he’s got that fluey cold that’s going the rounds,’ Jim told the head teacher over the phone. ‘No, he’ll not be in tomorrow, no chance. Maybe Monday, see how he gets on over the weekend … What’s that? ... Yes, he keeps pretty fit. I think it’s the first time he’s been off all year … Pardon? ... Well, that’s very kind of you. I think he’s a fine boy myself, but then I’m biased.’

  For most of that day Peter stayed in bed but on Friday he got up mid-morning and sat reading by a big fire, eating biscuits and drinking endless mugs of tea, coffee, hot orange and chocolate. Jim went down to the harbour to scrape and paint the Audrey, leaving him watching a video of Space Rangers, a sort of cowboy film set among the galaxies. When he came home at half past three, Peter had fallen asleep in his chair and the fire had burned low.

  On Saturday he felt better. The coughing no longer made him sweat and when Jim produced bacon and scrambled eggs for a late breakfast, he polished off his plateful.

  ‘Got to go up on the hill today,’ his dad said, teacup in hand. ‘What about you?’

  Peter looked out of the window. A night of frost had turned the grass and fences white. The sun shone, low and dazzling, across the moor. ‘Stay in for a bit. Might take the two-two out later. See if I can get a couple of rabbits.’

  ‘Why not take your ferret? He’s not seen the inside of a burrow for months.’

  ‘Yeah, I could. Bit cold standing around.’ Peter gave a racking cough, spat into a sheet of toilet paper and threw it into the fire.

  ‘Wrap up warm anyway,’ Jim said. ‘And don’t stay out too long. Don’t want a relapse, specially with Christmas just round the corner.’

  Jim pulled on his parka and hat and slung his small rucksack over one shoulder. ‘Come on then, Meg. Back about three.’ He rubbed his arm and grimaced. ‘Bloody thing, don’t know what’s wrong with it. Anyway, plenty in the fridge for your lunch. I went to the shop yes’day, got some of that Cumberland sausage you like. We’ll have that for tea.’

  Peter stood at the window as his dad scraped ice from the van windscreen. After the cold night it was reluctant to start. At last, with a cloud of smoke, it stuttered into life. Jim grinned and gave a thumbs-up. Peter raised his hand and watched as he made a three-point turn and drove off towards the hills. Toot-toot. The end of the byre hid him from view. The sound of the engine faded.

  14

  Ferreting

  PETER WASHED THE breakfast dishes then sat by the fire toasting his legs and looking through a book called Weapons of the World, an illustrated history he had borrowed from the travelling library. The low sun melted the frost, though in hollows and behind banks it remained white all day. Shortly before eleven, wearing his warmest jacket and pyjama trousers under his jeans, he went out to the shed and put Buster into his carrying box. The best rabbit warrens were at the Four Crowns, a cluster of small hills – remnants of the last ice age, Jim had told him – which stood midway between the house and the road. The track wound between them. Accompanied by Ben, he set off on the tractor.

  There are several ways to go ferreting. The usual method is to spread nets over nearby holes before putting the ferret down; the fleeing rabbits run headlong into the mesh and are trapped by a drawcord fastened to a peg. A second way, if you are looking for sport, is to shoot them as they run off. A third way, if you have a good dog, is to let it chase the rabbits down.

  Peter had Ben with him and Ben was fast, so he planned to try this method first. Sitting behind a gorse thicket out of the wind, he took Buster from his box. Buster could smell the rabbits and was eager, his black eyes fierce. Holding him round the chest, front legs between his fingers, Peter slipped on a muzzle and buckled it behind his ears to stop him killing and feeding underground. His stink was strong. When all was ready, Peter carried him to a gaping hole in the slope with a landslide of earth beneath it and a litter of rabbit droppings. Buster did not need urging. Without a backward glance he ambled downhill into the darkness.

  Peter was racked by a spasm of coughing. He spat and waited. Ben, who had been ferreting before, was in a fever of excitement, spinning this way and that as he waited for the first rabbit to appear.

  For half a minute all was silent then there was a thudding underground, a terrified squeal, and a big buck rabbit exploded from a burrow half a dozen paces away. At once Ben was on its tail. A second rabbit shot from the same hole, another from a hole at Peter’s heels, and a fourth higher up the slope.

  Ears flattened, Ben raced after his prey. The hillside was not open enough. Before he could reach top speed, the rabbit dived into a thicket of bramble. Ben hunted round the edge. From the corner of his eye he spotted another fleeing shape. He whirled round. Peter shouted and waved his arms. The rabbit jinked in mid-flight, saw that it was running directly towards the big grey dog and jinked again. It was too late. Ben pounced. His huge paws bowled the rabbit over and the next moment he had it in his jaws. A bite, a hard shake, and the rabbit’s neck was broken. Delighted with himself, Ben shook it some more, danced in circles and threw it across the grass.

  ‘Ben! Leave it.’ Peter hurried forward. The rabbit’s eyes were bright brown, its head dangling, warm fur streaked with Ben’s saliva. He examined it for signs of myxomatosis. There were none. Ben circled round him, pushing to s
nuffle the dead rabbit. Some of its bones were broken, Peter felt them scrunch in his hand. It was a pity but Ben had done all that was asked of him, he hadn’t been trained to do differently.

  ‘Good boy.’ Peter rubbed his ears. ‘Good boy!’

  Rabbits have fleas. He jammed it in the fork of a hawthorn tree blown all one way by the wind.

  Buster had not emerged from the warren. Peter knelt beside the big hole. ‘Come on then,’ he called enticingly. ‘Buster!’ There was no response.

  He rubbed perspiration from his brow. He was not as well as he had thought. The wind was biting. He felt in his pocket for a chocolate biscuit and pulled his scarf to his mouth.

  Another rabbit shot away, its feet thudding on the grass. Ben spun round but already the rabbit was gone.

  Five minutes passed. Without warning, Buster appeared from a hole Peter had not seen a dozen metres away. Back humped like a weasel, he ran across the hillside. Peter caught him up. Briefly the ferret resisted, struggling to be free, then gave up and allowed himself to be carried. The tip of his tongue and a glimpse of white killing teeth appeared within the muzzle.

  In the next thirty minutes Ben killed a second rabbit and Peter, having tethered him to a root, trapped three in the purse nets. Three were more than he wanted so he killed just one, that was healthy, and a second that was infected with myxomatosis. The third he let go. Its strong legs kicked against his chest as he untangled the mesh. A claw scratched the back of his hand. He licked away the red beads that instantly appeared, tasting the iron of his blood mixed with the animal scent of the rabbit. By the time it was free it had gone into a state of shock. Peter stroked it briefly and set it on the grass. The rabbit sat as if mesmerised then took a few uncertain hops. He coughed and spat. The rabbit crouched low to the ground then regained its addled senses and fled.

  The rabbit swollen with myxomatosis was crawling with fleas. They swarmed in its ears. Peter wondered what to do with it. Eventually he dropped it into a poly bag, tied the neck tight and piled stones on top. The fleas that carried the horrible disease would die. It might help some poor rabbit to survive.