‘That’s deep,’ said Matt.
‘Mmm ... deep,’ replied Jenna before calling for help to screen off the hole as it became our indoor toilet.
It got cold, then it got colder, then it got much colder. For several days the cold kept us in the cave. Wind and chill rain blew in through our flimsy covering. I went with Matt to find more branches to cover the opening. We returned blue and shivering.
‘We’re using wood very fast. We’ll need a lot more,’ Jack said looking at the pile. ‘How long do we think this will go on?’
‘From the marks on the cave wall I think we’ve been here for about six months – that makes it November. If it’s a normal winter then it will be three months at least,’ Mary replied. She had taken over the daily wall scratching.
‘Nothing’s normal here,’ said Ivy with a moan that sounded like the return of her miserable ways.
‘Could be the Ice Age,’ Jack said.
‘How long does an Ice Age last?’ asked Emma.
‘About a thousand years I think,’ said Jack.
Demelza became more distressed. She had nothing left to pound and she sat rocking backwards and forwards, moaning. It got on everyone’s nerves. Perhaps Zoe felt guilty about the things that had happened when she had been part of Demelza’s group and she tried to keep Demelza quiet. It didn’t work and in the end Zoe got blamed.
‘Can’t you shut her up?’ Ivy said loudly from her rush bed, unable to sleep because of the noise.
‘Hit her over the head,’ added Matt.
Zoe tried to hug Demelza, but wrinkled her nose because Demelza continued to smell like a rotten chuckern. The moaning didn’t stop.
Some days were bright and cold and some just cold. On bright days, Jenna sent us off to get more wood. If the fire burnt down the cave became very cold, so the wood soon disappeared. All the chuckerns had died, but in the cold they didn’t rot so quickly and eating them still seemed safe. I thought we might have eaten them even if they were rotten, although no one had forgotten Other-Sara and that terrible night.
It snowed. Not a lot of snow on the first night, but on the second it came half way up the cave entrance and on the third night, covered it completely. We woke up coughing in the smoke.
I tried to clear the snow. ‘Matt, Jack, help!’ I called, too weak from hunger to be able to do it on my own. The three of us dug at the snow with our hands and made a gap to let out the smoke before returning to the cave, cold and exhausted by the effort.
‘Here, drink this.’ Jenna gave us bowls of hot thin liquid from the stew. At least the melted snow provided water to drink.
Jenna kept everyone doing things, everything had to be done close to the fire. Mary and Jack still had some clay and still made bowls and jars and mugs. Jenna persuaded others to try to make things from the deer antlers. ‘Spoons – maybe?’ Jenna said. ‘To eat the stew.’ Because stew was all we had and it became thinner each day as we tried to save food.
Huddling by the fire, arguments started and scuffles became more frequent. The hours seemed to go by very slowly. Would anything change? Was this how it was going to be forever?
Stevie and Emma became ill and coughed a lot. Their coughs annoyed everyone. They developed a fever.
‘Am I going to die – like Other-Sara?’ Stevie’s weak voice came from under the deer skin.
‘Of course not.’ Jenna gave him a bowl of liquid from the stew – her answer to any problem – her only answer.
Lisa tried to keep Zog away from them in case she caught their coughs.
‘Can I help?’ Matt had asked, but Lisa just raised her eyebrows at him. Matt was still trying to hang around her.
Because we had to leave a gap for the smoke, wind blew snow into the cave each night. Each day we tried to clear it out. The snow was winning. We were cold during the day and the night. Our stores of food would soon run out. Jenna made sure that no one took more than their share. Mary still ticked off the days.
One day Mary looked up from the marks. ‘I think it’s Christmas.’
There were tears as people thought about Christmas and families and home. Only Jenna and I weren’t too upset.
Jenna told me that she had spent the last Christmas in casualty. Her mother told her that she had fallen down the stairs. ‘It wasn’t true,’ Jenna added. ‘Mum’s boyfriend at the time liked to drink at Christmas, or pretty much any time actually.’
I thought there would never be another Christmas for me with any family.
‘We need a Christmas meal,’ Mary said, and she searched the cave and found very little food left.
‘It’s all rotten.’ Ivy poked at the remains of the roots she’d collected.
‘Chuckerns are as well.’ Sam almost sat in the fire trying to keep warm. ‘There’s still some smoked meat.’
‘Oh good.’ I rubbed my hands together. ‘Nothing better than charred meat for Christmas lunch.’
‘I want turkey,’ yelled Stevie and that started everyone off: ‘Christmas pudding ...’ ‘Mince pies ...’ ‘Brussels sprouts – yuck ...’
‘Have you got my present?’ Jenna gave up searching for food and gave me a weak poke in the ribs.
I put my hand to my mouth. ‘So sorry – I left it in the shop.’
‘What was it?’
‘Air freshener,’ I replied. The indoor toilet might be a deep hole, but it still smelt.
So Christmas day passed in the same way as other hungry days. Two days later the snow stopped and wrapping a deer skin around myself I went with Matt and Sam to collect more wood. Outside the cave it was white everywhere, white as far as we could see.
I pulled the deer cloak tighter and pointed. ‘The river has frozen. Even the waterfall has frozen.’
Despite the cold we struggled through the snow to look at the frozen river. The waterfall had become a sheet of icicles gleaming in the cold winter sun. We walked out onto the ice. Below us we saw frozen fish and tried to dig them out but gave up, unable to dig through the thick ice, and returned with the little wood we could find.
‘We’re not going to survive unless the weather gets better soon. We have to find some more food, but you can’t find anything out in the snow.’ I shared my fears with Jenna.
We weren’t the only ones struggling in the cold of winter. Everywhere, life struggled to survive. I suppose animals were just moving around by instinct. Maybe some didn’t get to their winter homes on time. That wouldn’t have been a problem for us until ...
‘Alvin ... Alvin.’ Ryan shook me and whispered in a frightened voice.
‘What?’ I had been heavily asleep, exhausted and bad tempered with hunger.
‘Sniffing – can’t you hear it?’
I saw the terror in Ryan’s eyes and sat up. Now everyone woke.
The sniffing had turned to scuffling and scuffling to growling. Sounds from an angry animal. Was our cave his winter home or was he just after food? He smashed through the flimsy covering with his front paws and stuck his head through the opening and growled – a deep growl that echoed in the shadows. Swiping away more branches the massive bear entered our cave.
I leapt to my feet, grabbed one of the sharpened stakes and ran at the bear. The bear swatted me away like a fly and I crashed to the side of the cave hitting my head and falling on top of Lisa. I lay dazed. Emma and Stevie screamed. The bear became wilder at the screams and reared up on its hind legs, ready to fall onto me and Lisa.
‘NOT LISA!’ Matt roared and snatching a second stake, he charged.
The bear, on its back legs, stood more than twice Matt’s height and probably heavier than the rest of us put together; it turned to meet his charge. Matt stabbed the sharp stake towards the animal’s belly. The bear smashed him across the cave with a single stroke of its giant paw.
I sho
ok my head. Was this going to be the end, after all we had survived? I grabbed another stake and tried to attack. I was too weak; my feeble efforts only scratched the thick furry coat. The bear lunged forward and fell on top of me. I could smell its warm breath and see its eyes looking into mine as it snarled. I waited to die. But as the bear lunged forward, its own body weight must have driven the stake into its stomach, then upwards – piercing its heart. When I looked again, through half closed eyelids, the bear’s eyes were dead eyes.
The cave remained silent as the others watched to see if the bear might come back to life. Jenna ran to me and made the rest drag the animal off to save me from being crushed. Lisa had rolled away and looked for Zog who had scampered to the back of the cave.
Then Jenna stood up with her hands on her hips. ‘Right! Cut it up!’ And we did, attacking the dead bear with flint knives, we soon had it skinned.
Sam made sure we removed all the guts. That was lucky because it didn’t get cooked very well before our starving group ripped away the flesh and stuffed it into our mouths as fast as we could. There was still a lot of meat left even after we’d eaten as much as we could.
Mary saved some of the fat for more candles. ‘Cleaner than the deer fat,’ she said, as though, after butchering a bear, making candles from the fat had become quite a normal thing to spend the day doing.
‘We’ve got to do more,’ Jenna spoke to me after the bear feast. Nearly everyone else was asleep even though it was still early in the day – the food had made us all drowsy.
‘Do what?’ I was near the fire, full and sleepy as well.
‘The bear won’t last long. Eating it has given us a bit more strength. If we don’t do something now then in a few days we’ll be too weak again.’
That made sort of sense. I stood up and bellowed, ‘RIGHT.’ I had no idea what to do next but I was sure Jenna could sort it out and she did. She had us all working away – collecting wood, searching the caves for any chuckerns we’d missed.
‘And Jack. Alvin saw frozen fish in the river. We need a way to get at them,’ she said.
Jack soon found a way – putting burning wood on to the ice. The ice melted into pools full of fish that couldn’t escape. He and Sam found it easy to catch them after that.
Then Ivy came back having been searching for herbs and roots. ‘We missed one of the caves. It’s full of food. Most of it was to feed the chuckerns, but we can eat it. Some chuckerns as well – they’re frozen stiff. We’ll have to eat them.’
And so it went on, finding enough to survive – provided Jen made sure we shared it fairly, which she did. The weather started to warm again. It wasn’t an ice age.
The bear didn’t survive the winter, but as a dead animal it was enough to help us until the snow started to melt, the sun warmed us again and the animals returned.
Spring
-19-
In the warmer weather we returned to the same routine as before. Food, wood and water. There was no change and no other options.
One day I watched Jack just outside the cave. Mary was with him. Neither of them moved for several minutes. They’d been watching the others finding things to do and Jack was staring at something he held in his hands. His face gave away his feelings.
‘Jack?’ Mary said gently. ‘What’s up?’ She moved closer to him. I think they thought they were alone and I kept quiet. Jenna had found tasks for everyone else.
‘I can’t take this ... what do we have to do?’ I could hear the tears in Jack’s voice and he didn’t bother to wipe them away. ‘I’m sitting here with a lump of stinking bear – can’t even remember what bit – trying to make a bow string.’
‘And?’ Mary took his hand.
‘That’s it – nothing. Things just happen – winter, bears, cavemen. I ... I ... I just want to go home.’ Jack’s chest heaved. ‘I don’t want any more of it.’ Jack threw the soggy mess of bear guts into the cave.
‘Soap,’ Mary said and she did brush the tears from her own eyes.
‘Eh?’
‘How do you make soap?’
‘No idea and I don’t much ...’
‘Ok, you don’t much care,’ Mary interrupted. ‘But you asked me what we have to do and that’s the best I can come up with.’
‘I meant what do we have to do to get out of here.’
‘Of course you did and we all want to know the answer to that but ... when I’m cleaning up fat for candles it sometimes feels soapy. I think fat is only part of it. What do you think?’
‘You must have to add something else and I don’t know what.’ Jack looked up and finally wiped his damp face.
I’m sure both Jack and I knew she was just trying to distract him, stop him thinking about home. Soap wouldn’t have been anyone’s first choice of a problem to solve. Although we were all dirty, we had become used to the smell. Hair remained a problem – Demelza’s hair looked as though it had gone white, but the dirt made it difficult to tell.
The distraction worked for a while, but she didn’t make him forget his thoughts of home for long. We all had thoughts like that. Later that day Jack came to talk to me.
‘I’ve been looking at the tunnel.’ Jack tapped me on the shoulder. ‘Come and see.’
Jack had been doing more than looking. He had used a stone to scrape at the rocks that had filled the tunnel behind us after the earthquake.
‘I think it’s this big rock that’s blocking most of the hole.’ He pointed to the outline of one huge rock. It looked as though the other stones filling the tunnel rested on this boulder.
‘You think we can move it?’ I looked at the enormous piece of stone.
‘I think we ought to try.’ Jack traced his finger round the groove he had made. ‘It’s that or nothing – unless you have any other ideas?’
I didn’t and I walked away in search of Jenna.
‘Jack’s been looking at the tunnel,’ I said finding her slumped on the grass.
She looked up, questions in her eyes.
‘He thinks we should try and dig out one of the rocks.’
‘That doesn’t look possible, does it?’
‘No, but he wants to try.’ I sat down beside her and we stared into the distance, the forest, the mountains.
‘Being here does stop you thinking of stuff,’ Jenna said after we had been sitting in silence.
‘Stuff?’
‘Home, step-dads, Mum, arguments – you know – stuff.’
‘What? Easier than dealing with bears?’ I said, but I didn’t disagree.
‘You know it might be easier – bears don’t shout at you.’
‘Just try to rip you apart. Yeah, much easier.’
‘But at least we sort it out. I can’t sort out anything at home.’ Jenna had stopped with her face screwed up as though trying to make sense of how she felt. Then she continued: ‘Here we have a pile of problems – hunting, finding food, everything. It’s difficult but we do it – there’s no one else to get in the way.’
Jenna knew she was speaking for me as well. No people to throw me out of this cave. She also knew I’d been thinking more and more about Mum, about what really happened. Was there more to find out?
Jack told the others about his idea. No one, apart from him, believed we had any chance of clearing the tunnel. The rocks were huge and crushed together. There was no trace of the hole through which we had come into this world. None of us believed Jack’s plan would work.
‘We need to scrape away at both sides of the big rock, and then see if we can get some creeper ropes around it.’ Jack tried to make it sound possible.
‘Then what?’ Sam sounded as though he thought he might be expected to do most of the scraping.
‘Then we try to haul it out.’ Jack spread his arms out trying to show what would happen.
‘Not if we use lots of them.’
Jack went back to scraping and chipping. It wasn’t going to be quick. He persuaded everyone to take a turn. Sam did his best to stay out of the way.
‘Ash!’ I saw Mary getting up from the fire and walking towards Jack.
He sat in the sun, rubbing his hands – sore after several hours of scraping. Days of scraping and chipping had done nothing except to reveal a little more of the outline of the main rock. It looked even bigger now. Occasionally Jack could get Stevie to help him, but the rest of us thought it a waste of time.
Jack’s miserable state had made everyone, including Mary, fed up with him. Now Mary was looking pleased with herself. I couldn’t see how Jack stayed miserable but he was still doing his best. Worse than Ivy, I thought.
‘What?’ Jack was staring at the ground.
Mary smiled at him, moved closer and brushed his face gently with her hand. I watched him pretend to shy away, but he couldn’t resist and, while trying to look cross, he ended up smiling back at her.
She went on, ‘I heated some candle fat in one of the bowls and it spilled into the ash from the fire. When I scooped it back into the bowl, it felt really soapy. You have to mix the fat with ash to make soap – look.’
In her other hand she held a squidgy mess.
‘I should get back to the digging,’ Jack said a few moments later.
‘Give it a rest for a while. Help me make the soap better.’
Jack helped Mary. Without him, the work on the rock stopped. Everyone went back to making spoons and things from deer antlers or other useful tasks. Shoes had worn out and Ivy made moccasins. Using bone needles to poke through deer skin hurt her hands, but everyone wanted a pair because the thorns and spikes that fell from the trees made walking barefoot too painful.
Tregarthur's Promise Page 17
