Scar Hill

by Alan Temperley

  Peter had had enough. None too gently he tugged the rug from the back of the settee, collected the torch from the top of the deep freeze and went out into the yard. The bitter wind cut through his party shirt. It had started snowing again. To escape the crush, a few people were sitting in cars, drinking, kissing, talking. Engines were running to operate the heaters. Clouds of exhaust, illuminated by the outside lamp, rose into the night.

  Ben and Meg had been locked in the shed. Peter joined them and shut the door behind him. After the hubbub of the house it was a haven of peace. The dogs had never known such an invasion and pressed close to be reassured.

  ‘That’s all right,’ Peter told them softly. ‘Good boy! Good girl! Yes, it’s much nicer in here.’

  Buster came to the door of his run to see what was going on. Peter stroked him through the wire mesh.

  The shed was used as a store: tins and sacks, timber, wire, tools, small pieces of machinery. A kind of shallow box was built into the corner, filled with straw and a couple of blankets to make a warm bed for the dogs. There was nothing to make a bed for Peter.

  ‘Come on then,’ he said. ‘Let’s go to the byre.’

  They crossed between the cars and went into the old stone building. He pulled the twisted door shut behind them. A couple of wall lights strapped with iron provided illumination. One end of the byre was filled to the rafters with bales. Broken bales and loose hay were heaped in the back of the crumbling cattle stalls. Peter chose the second stall from the end, not the one where his dad used to sleep but the one adjoining. He pulled down some armfuls of hay and kicked it around to make a bed, then switched off the light and wrapped himself in the warm rug. The dogs settled nearby, Ben so close that Peter could reach out in the darkness and touch him. He shone his torch about the ancient walls, picking out the cobwebbed harness that hung from nails, finding patterns in the twisted timbers, winkling the beam into black corners.

  Throbbing music came from the house, mingled with the clamour of a party in full swing. Peter tucked an arm beneath his head. The comfortable darkness closed about him. After a while, like his two companions, he fell asleep.

  He might have slept the whole night through but was disturbed a while later by the sound of revving engines and raised voices in the yard. Momentarily he was confused; where was he? What was happening? What was this prickly stuff under his hands? Abruptly he remembered.

  ‘You’ll be fine, it’s not that deep yet.’ Valerie was calling to friends. ‘Wouldn’t waste any time though.’

  ‘Bad for drifts?’

  ‘Can be. Dad has to put a snowplough on the tractor sometimes, dig us out.’

  ‘Thanks for the party, Val.’

  ‘Yeah, it was great.’

  ‘Sorry it had to end so soon.’

  ‘Happy Christmas.’

  ‘God, I can hardly see straight. Geoff, you’ll have to drive.’

  ‘Me? You’ve got to be kidding.’

  More engines starting up. The noise of over-revving. A crash of metal and a loud swear.

  Laughter.

  Voices.

  Gradually the sounds faded. The last car drew away. No sound but the moan of the wind. The door of the house banged shut. Peter lay in the darkness, nothing to see but streaks of light around the byre door. They disappeared as the yard lamp was switched off.

  He lay still, warm and comfortable. Had everyone gone home or were some of them staying the night? He hoped not. Minutes passed. Meg gave a little whine in her sleep. Peter felt himself drifting.

  Abruptly the peace was shattered. ‘Pete?’ Valerie was shouting. ‘Pete! Are you out there somewhere?’

  The light reappeared.

  ‘Where the hell are you?’

  He waited to be found.

  ‘Pete!’ There was a sound of footsteps in the snow. The byre door was flung wide. Valerie stood silhouetted in the entrance. She peered into the darkness. ‘Are you in there?’

  The dogs were on their feet. She groped for the switch and turned on the lights. Peter shaded his eyes against the glare. His sister stood staring.

  ‘My God!’ she said at length. ‘It’s bloody dad all over again.’

  He sat up, the air icy against his warm neck.

  ‘What are you doing out here?’ She was cross, concerned. ‘It wasn’t that bad, surely? It was a party, for heaven’s sake. You know half the people who were there. Tony, Marina, Brendan, you know them. You didn’t have to run away out here.’

  ‘It was horrible. Everybody drunk and snogging. Dropping stuff all over the floor.’ He pulled the rug round his shoulders. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘I don’t know. Half eleven, bit after.’

  His eyes felt full of sand.

  ‘Dear God, Pete, you didn’t have to come out into the byre.’

  ‘It’s nice out here,’ he said. ‘Better than all that … in there.’

  ‘It was a party,’ she said again. ‘That’s what people do at parties, let their hair down.’

  ‘And be disgusting in other people’s houses,’ he said. ‘And take drugs.’

  ‘Who was taking drugs?’

  ‘That skinny girl, Julie something. She tried to get me to do it. And there was a guy fiddling with a wee cardboard box went into the bathroom.’

  ‘Mark?’

  ‘Don’t ask me. A blond guy with tattoos on his neck.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s Mark, he’s going back into rehab.’

  ‘Oh, well, that makes it OK,’ Peter said drily. He fished a stalk of hay from his collar. ‘Neat, though, Dad just dead an’ you filling the house with drunks and drug addicts.’

  She didn’t reply.

  ‘Everybody gone home?’ he said after a while.

  ‘Yeah. Before the drifts start building up.’

  ‘No one staying the night?’

  ‘Just you and me.’

  ‘Good.’

  She stood aside. ‘You’re a right miserable sod sometimes aren’t you.’

  He squeezed past her into the yard. Two inches of snow had fallen and it was still snowing hard. The ground and roofs of the outbuildings were bright as day in the lamplight. The van was covered. Rectangles where the cars had stood were already whitened over. As Peter looked around the familiar scene, so suddenly transformed, his spirits rose. The snowflakes tickled his cheeks, the swirling wind nipped his ears. This, he felt with a sudden keenness, was his home, this was where he wanted to be. Always. Perhaps, the thought returned, Scar Hill even belonged to him now. Within the bright living room, windows banked with snow, he saw the Christmas decorations. The intruders were gone. In a few hours all trace of them would be washed and swept away. He turned to his sister, blinking the flakes from his eyelashes, and smiled. ‘I love the snow.’

  Meg and Ben emerged from the byre. He kicked the snow in their faces, making them bark and dance in excitement.

  Valerie bent with difficulty. A snowball burst on Peter’s shoulder. Instantly he retaliated. The snow was crumbly. She screamed as one after another they exploded on her anorak.

  ‘No! Pete! Stop it! It’s bad for the baby.’

  He let her go and she fled back to the house. But when his back was turned she made a second snowball and flung it with deadly accuracy. It hit him smack on the side of the head. With a shriek of triumph she vanished into the hall and slammed the door shut.

  Peter saw her grinning through the window and threw the snowball in his hand. Her face was obliterated. Hooking the snow from his ear and clutching the rug close, he walked to the end of the byre. Sheltered from the wind, he watched the grey blizzard sweeping across the moor.

  24

  Christmas is Coming

  VALERIE SURVEYED THE aftermath of the party. ‘Oh, I can’t look at this tonight, we’ll do it in the morning. Fancy a cup of tea?’

  ‘Yeah, thanks.’ Peter wondered why ‘we’ should do the clearing up. It wasn’t his party; they weren’t his friends. Would Valerie even be out of her bed before midday?

&nbs
p; The house smelled bad and looked worse: food and fag ash trodden into the carpets, spills of beer, empty cans, furniture pulled askew, cigarette burn on the mantelpiece, frying pan burn on the worktop, spilled grease, hearth full of debris, the stink of smoke and blackened burgers. When Peter went to the bathroom there was a smell of sick, though the basin and lavatory were clean. He opened the window, preferring snowflakes to the smell. And when he went into his bedroom the duvet was crumpled. Who had been in there, he wondered, and hoped it wasn’t Malcolm and Deirdre. Whoever it had been, he put on fresh covers and stuffed the others into the washing machine.

  ‘Bit of a mess.’ Valerie handed him his tea and took some salted biscuits from a plate. ‘I’m off anyway. Don’t worry, tomorrow we’ll have the place looking like new. Night-night.’

  She was gone, labouring up the stairs. Peter looked around, hating it, and thought about making a start. Then he said aloud, Why should I? and took the dogs out to the shed. Eagerly they scoffed some half-eaten burgers.

  He locked the front door and took his tea up to bed.

  During the night the blizzard ceased and the clouds rolled back. When Peter woke at nine it was to dazzling sunshine and a world made new.

  In contrast to the fairyland outside, the house was a slum. He was disgusted by it, especially because his dad had always kept the place respectable, if not a hundred percent dust-free. Angrily he cleared a space to make tea and toast for breakfast. Afterwards he washed the dishes he had used and left a note for Valerie:

  Gone to feed the sheep and see their OK.

  Leave you to clear up here. It was your party.

  Pete

  It was great to be out of the house. Every day since Jim died and Peter had recovered from his illness, he had loaded the trailer and driven up the track to feed the sheep in the lower pasture. On school days there was little time. This morning, since the grass and swedes were covered by ten centimetres of snow, he planned to scrape out the feeding troughs, fill them with sheep nuts and fill the wooden hay racks to the top.

  The hard-packed bales of hay were too heavy for him to hoist into the trailer. So were the sacks of sheep nuts. He had worked out a way to deal with this. When he cut the twine the bales broke apart into compressed slabs. These he could load with no difficulty. And each time he opened a new sack of sheep nuts he tipped half into an empty sack. These, too, he could handle easily. To prevent the hay blowing to the four winds as he drove to the feeding place, he laid a ladder on top.

  If the blizzard had continued for two more hours, he might have needed to attach the snowplough. As it was, the worst drift was only sixty or seventy centimetres deep and the tractor forced a way through.

  The sheep were hungry and huddled for warmth in the lee of a dyke, their breath clouding in the frosty air. As Peter approached they baaed and jostled towards the empty feeders. They knew the tractor and recognised the dogs as they leaped from the trailer. He lugged the first sack of nuts through the gate. The eager ewes pressed about his legs, desperate to be first at the trough. He pushed them aside and tipped the heavy trough on its face, banged it on the ground and kicked it to get rid of the snow. Some had frozen and he scraped it out with a small spade. Then he trailed the sack of nuts from end to end. The moment they rattled down the sheep were feeding, closing in at his heels like the Red Sea behind Moses.

  There were four troughs. When he had filled them all, Peter turned to the wooden hay racks. What fodder remained was blanketed in snow. He brushed it off and filled the racks from the trailer, shredding the hay to make it more palatable.

  When all was done he counted the sheep, and counted them again because they kept moving. Ninety-six, as far as he could tell. He hoped so anyway.

  A tributary stream, overhung with grasses and rimmed with ice, ran down through the pasture. Peter leaned on the gate and took in the wintry scene. The saw-toothed mountains to the west were hidden but the white summit of Blae Fell rose above the surrounding slopes. He thought of his dad out there in his grave beneath the pure snow.

  On the way home he lingered to let Valerie finish cleaning the house. The red deer stags, a herd of twenty or more this time, were back by the stand of pines. He crossed half a mile of moor to test the ice on a loch where he went fishing. A deep gully was fringed with icicles, some longer than himself. As he tramped back to the tractor a pair of golden eagles soared high overhead against the blue. His eyes ached with the dazzle of the sun on snow.

  Peter drove into the yard ready for a stand-up row but the van had gone, leaving a dark rectangle and tracks through a drift. Valerie had straightened the house after a fashion and done the washing-up. She had left two messages. The first, which was scribbled out, read:

  Thanks a bunch!

  Val

  Beneath she had written:

  House is driving me bloody nuts.

  Gone to pub. V.

  Thirty-two Christmas cards stood about the room. Half were Peter’s from school, some were Jim’s, the rest Valerie’s. Idly he read a few and went into the kitchen. The vinyl, which Valerie had not washed properly, was sticky beneath his boots. As he lifted his feet they made a tiny tik sound.

  Peter switched on the immersion and set to with cloths and soapy water. He opened the windows, letting the icy breeze carry away the smells of fags and booze and squashed food. For an hour he laboured, tipping the dirty water down the drain in the yard, sponging the chairs, wiping the tops, repairing the Christmas decorations with Sellotape and drawing pins.

  At last the house was presentable. With relief he shut the windows, banked up the fire and flopped on the settee. Ben and Meg retired to their day beds while Buster explored the unfamiliar smells and clawed his way up beside Peter to amble across his chest and face. Peter lifted him away, dangling heavily from his fingers, and looked into his wild, unafraid eyes.

  ‘See you,’ he said. ‘You’re wicked, so you are. What are you? Wicked. Yes, wicked!’

  He shook the ferret teasingly and set him back on the settee. Buster shook his fur comfortable and resumed his circuit of the room.

  Peter sighed contentedly and wondered what was on TV.

  That was Sunday.

  On Monday the frost held.

  On Tuesday, Christmas Eve, there was a thaw – temporary according to the weather forecast – and the track turned to mud. That afternoon Peter and Valerie put presents beneath the tree. At teatime they sat with plates on their laps and watched the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s College, Cambridge. In the evening they watched more TV and opened the Christmas nuts and chocolates. And at quarter to eleven Valerie drove through floods and puddles to the Watch Night service at St Andrew’s, where Jim had taken Peter every year for as long as he could remember.

  Like cutting the tree, the Watch Night service was one of their Christmas rituals. First there was tea and mince pies in the church hall, then they moved into the candle-lit church for carols, prayers and Christmas readings with the huge tree shimmering beside the organ. Peter knew a lot of the congregation and spotted two of his classmates sitting with their parents. At midnight, as the church bell rang out over the village, the minister proclaimed: ‘Christmas Day is upon us. The Christ Child is born. Peace be with you all.’ Then came the moment Peter found embarrassing as he was forced to turn this way and that, shaking hands and wishing everyone ‘Happy Christmas’. One was Bunny Mason. Another was his class teacher, Miss Berry. A third was a whiskery old lady from the village who to his horror clutched his shoulders and kissed him on the cheek. Finally, after a prayer which Peter spent with his eyes tight shut and his thoughts with his dad, they sang ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’ and filed out through the porch.

  The minister greeted him cheerfully at the door. ‘Dad not with you this year, Peter?’

  ‘No.’ Peter had prepared his lie. ‘He had to go down to Newcastle and see his brother.’

  ‘Not home for Christmas?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ He amended the lie quickly. ‘But he
got a bad chest down there. Didn’t want to come out.’

  ‘Not a nice night. I hope he’s better soon. Anyway, Happy Christmas. God be with you.’

  ‘You too,’ Peter mumbled, his blushes hidden by the darkness.

  Valerie, who was right behind Peter, introduced herself as his sister.

  The minister welcomed her, his eyes slipping to her belly and then her hand, looking for a wedding ring. Valerie smiled and looked him in the eye.

  Then they were walking through a sea drizzle to the van. Valerie heaved herself into the driver’s seat and squeezed behind the wheel. ‘Well, that’s Jesus born,’ she panted, meaning no offence. ‘One down, one to go. I’ll be glad when this baby’s born an’ all, I can tell you that.’ She reached for the seat belt.

  ‘Two weeks to go,’ Peter said.

  Valerie did the sum in her head. ‘Two weeks and two days. God, I’m going to burst! I hope it’s bloody on time.’ She followed the line of cars into the road.

  ‘It’ll be nice,’ he said.

  ‘Nice!’ Valerie swerved with shock. ‘What are you talking about? It’s going to be hell on earth. I hate babies.’

  ‘A bit late to think of that now,’ Peter said.

  ‘Tell me about it. I’ve got friends down in Bristol driven half off their nuts. Bloody babies crying all the time. Wah-wah-wah! Nappies, feeding, bathing, shopping, walking up and down half the night. Lost their figures. Boyfriends walking out. It’s going to be a nightmare.’

  Peter refrained from saying that she didn’t have a boyfriend to walk out on her.

  ‘Thirteen years old anyway,’ she said. ‘Living here with dad. What do you know about it?’

  Peter watched the wipers clear the windscreen. ‘Not much,’ he admitted. ‘A baby in the house though. I just think it’ll be nice, that’s all.’

  25

  The Snowplough

  FOR AS LONG as he could remember Christmas Day had followed the same pattern: a roaring fire, playing with his new toys, mouth-watering smells from the kitchen, a huge turkey and trifle dinner, cuddling up beside his dad to watch TV. It was a magical day.