Awakening

by William Horwood

  Her appearance did not help.

  To say, as Margaret and Katherine did, that she did not care about it simply was not true. Not that she preened herself in front of any mirror; in fact she had removed the mirror from her room and propped it on the floor of the corridor outside.

  ‘I prefer to be my own reflection,’ she said.

  Now, after her brief and sweet experiment with ribbons at Paley’s Creek, her approach to clothes was strictly utilitarian. Arthur liked it, but then he liked to shamble through life looking dishevelled.

  Her growth had been so rapid that almost within days of her birth Katherine had given up on new clothes for her. Charity shops were cheaper and more practical.

  Since coming to Byrness she had relied on clothes and shoes borrowed from those in the cottage and on others bought with Arthur’s help from a charity shop in nearby Otterburn. This was like no such place Arthur had ever seen. It was full of camouflage trousers and jackets, old military compasses, ancient studded boots, equipment that looked like it had come from a 1960s American war film, pickaxes, collapsible shovels and lengths of brand-new rope.

  Judith browsed for two hours, got him to buy her old camouflage trousers, a combat jacket and a few other things.

  ‘Absolutely brilliant!’ she said afterwards.

  She insisted he stopped the car near one of the forestry plantations so she could go in among the close-growing trees and change. She came out looking like a member of the Special Forces on patrol, which apparently was her intent.

  She had no weapon but for a stick she had cut off a tree, thick and strong. To Arthur it looked like a stave.

  ‘Thanks, Arthur,’ she said, climbing back into the car beside him, ‘now I can disappear in the forest entirely and no one will know I’m there.’

  ‘What do you do up there?’

  ‘Watch the men.’

  ‘Which men?’ wondered Arthur nervously.

  ‘The soldiers. Otterburn’s the biggest training camp in Britain. They go in as boys, come out as men, I’m told. Anyway, I watch them.’

  ‘What are they doing?’

  ‘Trying to learn not to be seen.’

  ‘Hyddening,’ said Arthur.

  ‘If you say so. I listen to them.’

  ‘What do they talk about?’

  ‘Focking this and focking that.’

  ‘Judith . . .’

  ‘Sorr-ee.’

  So Arthur knew the full truth about where her swearing came from, but he had promised not to let on so he didn’t. But the silent man with dogs had something to do with it as well.

  He should not have been surprised that when Judith reappeared soon after storming out about the fire she was carrying a sledgehammer.

  ‘Help me move the sofa back.’

  ‘What . . . ?’ began Katherine.

  ‘I told you I was going to deal with the fire. Make it work better. I know what to do. No need to even leave the room. Might need a dustpan and brush as the bits will be too big for the Dyson.’

  Arthur herded them into the kitchen, from where Margaret looked doubtful and Katherine amused.

  ‘Make some tea,’ ordered Arthur, closing the kitchen door on them while he stayed to watch.

  Judith was shovelling the pathetic fire – smouldering logs, spitting coals, unburnt newspaper – into a galvanized bucket. She took it outside.

  When she came back in she produced a lump hammer and cold chisel from the voluminous pockets of her flak jacket.

  Tap, tap; bang bang bang!

  Bits of mortar and rock fell into the grate. She put on some workman’s gloves, which he had seen before, and knelt down to take a closer look.

  TAP TAP BANG!

  More debris.

  She stood up, grasped the sledgehammer, got herself comfortable, looked around to make sure he wasn’t too near, and Arthur said, ‘You should wear eye protection.’

  She held the hammer poised for a moment and then put it carefully back down.

  ‘That’s what he said. Forgot.’

  She pulled plastic goggles from another pocket and put them on, picked up the hammer and positioned herself again.

  Arthur backed away to the kitchen door just as Katherine was beginning to open it. He kept his back firmly to it and gave Judith a thumbs-up.

  She didn’t mess around. Three big blows, which shook the whole house, and then a fourth followed by a final kick at one of the sides and the last of the surround crashed down.

  Dust and soot settled, but she hadn’t quite finished.

  She knelt down again, applied the lump hammer and cold chisel to the fireback, chopped at it and removed it in two parts.

  ‘Right,’ she muttered, ‘right . . .’

  She worked fast but methodically, carrying the dusty, dirty material outside and piling it by the gate onto the road.

  ‘He’ll take it away tomorrow,’ she said, ‘and build the fire like it should have been in the first place.’

  She brought in some bricks, found a rusted griddle from an old barbecue that had been dumped in the garden, and built them in a moment into a makeshift grate to hold coal in the bigger space she had now created.

  She took some firelighters, lit them, put kindling on top and carefully put back the half-burnt coals and logs onto the flames.

  Arthur had let the kitchen door open again.

  The other two were watching.

  ‘Like father, like daughter,’ said Arthur. ‘Jack loved a fire.’

  The fire roared and for the first time in the cottage’s miserable existence the faces of the people in the room were made bright and red and happy with warm, radiant, burgeoning flames.

  ‘Fire . . .’ said Judith, her mood transformed.

  ‘. . . of the Universe,’ added Katherine.

  Mother and daughter had rarely been happier.

  The only sadness, and it was a deep one, was that Jack was not there to share the moment.

  Later she repeated, ‘The man down the road’ll come tomorrow and fix the surround and things. No charge . . .’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘The man with the dogs. The big one’s called Morten. Don’t stroke him, he bites. He was unhappy when young.’

  Margaret shook her head, Katherine laughed.

  ‘And don’t light a fire in the morning or he’ll not be able to do the work. I’ll clear the rest of the mess before I go.’

  ‘Judith, where—?’ began Katherine.

  ‘Arthur,’ she said, cutting across Katherine with unnecessary brusqueness, the moment of sharing gone as rapidly as the shifting weather of her moods, ‘will you come with me tomorrow? I want to look at something. Don’t want to be alone.’

  Katherine’s normal equanimity gave way to a look of hurt.

  Arthur glanced at her apologetically and said, ‘Of course.’

  ‘We might be gone a couple of days.’

  ‘Er, fine.’

  ‘I’ve got the gear. It’s all planned. It’s outside under the lean-to.’

  Having Judith was like having a wild and errant son and it was, he suddenly realized, painful but a privilege. He was, he knew, and Katherine knew it too, a surrogate in Jack’s absence.

  ‘What time?’

  ‘With the dawn.’

  Her eyes were sparkling but nervous.

  When morning came she led, he followed.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Kielderhead Moor via Chattlehope, but after that, well . . . we’ll see.’

  The names meant nothing to him.

  She set off up-valley towards the Catcleugh Reservoir, its wall looming up before them.

  ‘Ugly thing,’ he said.

  ‘Focking dangerous,’ she said, her grin only a partial one, her eyes very serious.

  It was Summer, he supposed, but up there it felt like a time without a season.

  The midges cleared once they got into the wind.

  He knew how fast she could walk and how unremittingly, but she went more slowly th
an usual, at his pace he realized, looking round frequently to make sure he was all right and able to keep up. She was looking after him, caring for him, and Arthur felt enormously protected, as if in the arms of a warrior angel.

  Their conversation was sporadic, brief, elliptical, yet extraordinarily precise.

  ‘Margaret’s not happy here,’ he said impulsively.

  ‘Don’t blame her. But soon I’ll be gone, so it’ll soon be over. When I go you can go too.’

  ‘Judith . . .’ he began.

  She turned back and looked at him and he saw that she was already a long way away from him, from them all. She was young and she was racing on ahead.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘A storm doesn’t mind being a storm; it’s just that it sometimes wishes it wasn’t the only one.’

  ‘There are other storms,’ he said.

  ‘It’s not a storm I want but not to be alone, but there’s no one who . . .’

  She was going to say ‘who understands’.

  But she knew she would be wrong.

  Her Dad did, sort of.

  Stort understood best of all.

  She missed him with an ache inside her very being.

  ‘Arthur?’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘Have you ever been in love?’

  ‘I am in love.’

  ‘What’s it like when they’re not there?’

  ‘It feels like something’s missing at first, but then as time goes by and you love someone more and more, when they’re not there you look at the world and smile because you know they are.’

  ‘Is that what it’s like for you and Margaret?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Does it ache at the beginning?’

  ‘If I remember right it does, but that’s not love exactly; it’s need. That’s different. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Reasons.’

  A long silence then, just the tramp of feet on the boggy, stony path until they reached a bleak granite building and stopped.

  ‘Chattlehope,’ she said, pausing to stare at the black water of the reservoir below to their right. A skirl of light moved across its surface, a reflection of the sky as wind disturbed the water. Bleak as lonely tears.

  ‘Sixty-one men died building that,’ she said. ‘She will have her retribution, Arthur. But I think there’s worse to come.’

  What that meant he didn’t ask. But he guessed that ‘She’ was the Earth.

  The going was getting tougher and Judith the Shield Maiden, in her army fatigues, was in no mood to talk any more or stop.

  ‘I need a pee,’ he said as they broke through the sterile forest trees onto Girdle Fell.

  He turned his back to her.

  How long does it take a man to relieve himself?

  A minute when young?

  It took Arthur three, no more than that, with a bit of huffing and puffing and shaking about. Maybe only two and a half.

  But when he turned back she was as good as halfway across Kielder Moor, almost out of sight. But she sensed he was wondering because she turned back towards him, holding up her hand to show she would wait.

  He couldn’t understand how she had got so far in so short a time. In fact she couldn’t have done and yet – she had.

  ‘Time shifts,’ muttered Arthur. ‘She’s a mistress of time.’

  He eventually caught up with her and then, having turned off the path before Kielder Head, she said, ‘We’ll take a break, Arthur, to let them see us.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The army boys. They’re up there in East Kielder Forest, playing about like they do. They put stuff on their faces and stick branches in their hair and in their backpacks so you think you’re looking at nature when you’re not. It’s men pretending.’

  They reached a small area of flatter, disturbed ground in the open, and little streams they could hear but not see ran through the peat all about them.

  ‘We’re on an old settlement,’ said Judith. ‘Prehistoric people lived here. Once. Where did they go? What lives did they lead? Eat, you’re hungry.’ He was.

  She gave him rye bread, a chunk of cheese and tomatoes.

  ‘Chocolate to follow. But first . . .’

  She offered him soup.

  ‘You’ll need it, it’s going to get cold once we’re through the trees above and out onto Emblehope Moor. After that, when the Summer’s done . . .’ She stood up. ‘. . . and Autumn falls . . .’ The wind caught her hair. ‘. . . and we cross into the Winter that is Kielder Forest and all its works . . .’

  They had left their lunch break behind them on the moor and she was racing and he beside her, the heath rough on his old legs, the wind cold on his face. Then he was flying. And he wanted to tell her she was loved before she upped and left them all, so she’d always know.

  ‘When we get to Winter, or I do, it’ll be bleaker than we’ve ever known,’ she continued.

  Judith was holding Arthur’s arm so he didn’t peel away into the landscape below and get lost in its shade.

  ‘And that’s when I don’t want to be alone.’

  They saw the soldiers crouched and low, covered in white cagoules to camouflage them in the drifts of snow.

  Arthur said, ‘But it’s June.’

  ‘It was June,’ she replied. ‘They can’t see us, Arthur, that’s the thing. They don’t know we’re here so it’s as well we’re not armed except for this.’

  It was the stave she had cut, no more than a stick then, now a stout and sturdy weapon as tall as she was.

  Arthur frowned, looked at his hand, looked across the moor for something to give him a sense of scale, but found nothing. Had she taken them into the Hyddenworld? Was that what she could already do, even without a henge to help her?

  ‘They’re the enemy, not us,’ she said, pointing towards the soldiers.

  They watched as the soldiers fired clinical sniper shots at a target across the valley, each as calculated as the cut of a surgeon’s knife. By their side a spotter, using binoculars, whispered instructions.

  An infinitesimal change in the sights. Another round of shots.

  The shots were a blasphemy that cut through the tree-ruined landscape that was the dark forest of Kielder.

  They landed deep inside the forest’s dry and dark sterility.

  ‘Poor trees,’ she whispered, touching them as she passed.

  She instructed him, ‘Touch them, Arthur, they’re all alone. Imagine ten thousand of us, our feet in concrete and our arms cut off, standing upright so close that even in a gale the wind sweeping across the moors doesn’t reach those inside and you can’t move and turn and see who’s behind. Imagine! That’s Kielder.’

  He saw that she was weeping.

  ‘Our Mother Earth feels their pain and I do too. Sometimes I can’t bear being all alone and ask, “Why me?”’

  They reached the black, black waters of the reservoir.

  ‘Submerged beneath the surface are the huts of the men conscripted to dig this wound into the Earth’s surface,’ she said. ‘Come on, Arthur, let me show you.’

  She pulled him unresisting beneath the surface of the waters to feel its cold sterility.

  ‘People looking at the cold surface above us,’ she said, ‘don’t know we’re here underneath. Do we exist? I don’t think so. Ready to leave? Too soon, Arthur; I want you to get so cold you feel Earth’s pain.’

  She let go his hand and he touched neither the surface nor the bottom, drifting, turning round and round, hands out, flesh watery white, no longer alive to the world above. He felt the Earth’s cold in every joint and muscle right through to his head.

  ‘Judith,’ he wanted to say so he wasn’t alone down there, ‘Judith . . .’

  It took two years for the waters of the moors around to fill that great scar, she whispered, her voice deep and blurry with the water.

  She carried him out, water streaming off him, from his ears and his mouth and his clothes.

  When he looked back the water of the reservoi
r was gone and there was just the original wound, grey-black, a massive gouge in the Earth’s flank.

  ‘See you in two years,’ she said, flying away and leaving him to sit and wait and watch the filling-in, his tears ten thousand little streams, and he shivering throughout.

  Want to go back to the fire, he wished to say, but he was too cold to say anything.

  One night, three nights, two whole years?

  He didn’t know how long he had been up there when he realized they were finally coming off the moor back into the human world, back past Chattlehope, past the hanging waters of Catcleugh.

  When they returned the fire was waiting and ablaze.

  ‘Did you have a nice time?’ asked the women.

  ‘We did.’

  ‘He came then, to fix the fire?’

  ‘He took a shine to Katherine,’ said Margaret, and they laughed at some secret about all that.

  Judith said, ‘One more night, then you must go.’

  ‘I was just beginning to enjoy myself,’ said Margaret, the flames flickering all over her wrinkled face and hands.

  Judith shook her head.

  ‘Got to go,’ she said, ‘because Byrness is under sentence of death. The reservoir’s dam is going to burst. Tomorrow morning . . .’

  They packed the car at dawn, locked up the cottage, said their goodbyes to the place and the time and Katherine began weeping. She suddenly understood. Her baby was no more. Her little girl gone. The teenager matured. They were saying goodbye to the place; Judith was saying goodbye to them.

  ‘But Judith . . .’

  Judith held Katherine like a woman now, not a child.

  Held her like Jack did.

  Held her with love.

  Katherine wept but Judith did not.

  ‘It was going to be sometime, Mum. Well, it’s now. I . . . thank you . . . say thanks . . .’

  ‘I will, I will, I will,’ said Katherine.

  ‘Tell him I love him.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘Am I ugly?’

  Katherine held her tighter still. No question could have made her feel more loved, nor more needed. ‘You are the most beautiful creature on the Earth,’ she said softly, ‘and you make me proud.’

  ‘You’ll make me cry and Shield Maidens don’t cry. Let me go.’