15

THAT SUNDAY, MALCOLM met Dell quite by chance when he was out walking on the moor.

“How’s the head?” said Dell, grinning and picking up a stone which he threw at a passing seagull.

“Fine,” said Malcolm, feeling, just the same, a certain throbbing.

They walked along, hands in pockets. They saw a lark rise soaring out of its nest and found the nest without great difficulty. It had tanned speckled eggs in it and one chick, its red beak wide open. Dell bent down and touched it. The eggs were warm under their hands. They walked on.

As if by an unspoken compact they did not say anything about the incident the previous night.

Soon they came to a river which ran through a gulley; the bed was stony for the water had dried up. The side they were on was higher than the opposite side and they stood there looking down into the river bed. A column of ants was crawling along on the other side.

“Jump?” said Dell, getting to his feet.

Malcolm looked at the distance which had to be traversed. “Pretty wide, isn’t it?”

“I’ve jumped wider than that,” said Dell, his hair blowing in the breeze. They stood there for a moment in the silence, nothing breaking it, not even the sound of an insect. A sheep wandering along by itself regarded them briefly and then went back to cropping the grass.

Dell walked back, his boots making an imprint in the dewy earth.

“I’m going to try it,” he said stubbornly.

He ran and stopped at the edge. Then he went back again. This time he let himself go, slithered for a moment on the opposite side, digging his boots into the earth, steadied himself, and turned round, grinning and waving.

Malcolm got up, feeling frightened, his mouth dry. If he slid down among all these stones he could injure himself seriously. He looked across the divide to where Dell was grinning back at him, squatting down on the ground, a blade of grass in his mouth. The longer Malcolm looked, the wider the divide became. When he studied the ground it seemed that the land on his own side was greener and smoother whereas on the other side the earth was more trampled and one was more liable to slip. It was also stonier. At that very moment he saw that Dell was removing some of the stones in case Malcolm landed on one of them.

Malcolm had jumped before and he didn’t like the sensation of going through the air, holding on to yourself as if part of you were liable to disappear.

To the south was the village where Janet stayed and he could see smoke rising from the houses as he deliberated. He went back slowly, walked up and had a long look and walked back again. Then he ran and stopped at the edge. He couldn’t do it. It was impossible. Looking down at the other side he felt nausea and giddiness and his imagination frightened him as he saw himself broken among the stones in the river bed.

He went back again, Dell watching him steadily as he chewed the blades of grass.

He ran and jumped blindly into space and knew that something had gone wrong. He was going to slip on the other side. He knew this as well as he knew he shouldn’t have jumped at all. He wasn’t going to gain a foothold. The tackets in his boots weren’t holding. He saw the bank spinning in front of him, he saw the large stones circling below him, and he saw Dell’s face for a moment, the hands unmoving, the expression ambiguous. Then a hand was held out to him. He held on to the hand. The hand was pulling him, two hands were steadying him. It felt as if Dell was going to slide down with him, the two of them together, and then he was safe. He straightened slowly looking up into Dell’s grinning face, and said “Thanks.”

“It was nothing,” said Dell walking away, he following him. They carried on, coming round in a curve which took them past the river bed. The sun was high in the sky: they jumped peat banks in silence.

“Tell you what,” said Dell suddenly, “let’s go down to the school.”

“It won’t be open,” said Malcolm.

“No, but we can have a wander round.”

“All right.”

They walked on, past the standing stones, meeting no one, except that now and then a bird would fly up in front of them. They descended from the crest of the hill to the back of the school, which was made of old stone, scarred and weatherbeaten. They jumped the wall at the back and landed inside, just behind the privies. They went in. The gutters were urine-stained and there was writing on the wall.

“Merry Christmas to all our readers,” said Dell. Pieces of old newspaper were strewn on the floor.

They left the privy and looked in through the window at a classroom. It was much smaller than the ones in the secondary school, dimmer, more cramped. The desks, too, looked small and cramped and old, unlike the yellow ones in the secondary school. A large dim globe stood on a table.

Malcolm had the oddest sensation of returning to a place which he had known but which had at the same time diminished. He remembered writing laboriously on his slate in wintertime with a scratching slate pencil: he could almost feel himself at one of these desks in his woollen shorts. Dell was making faces into the empty room. Strange how small everything had become, as if more suited to dwarfs than to human beings. A lady in a helmet of grey hair like a maenad seemed to move pleadingly towards him. He felt slightly sad thinking of the stained copper taps and his own head inverted below them, the privy with its stained aged stone, the classroom with its faded map of Europe, the seats with the names carved on them, the large lady with the huge bosom, the primary colours that warmed the day.

He didn’t speak much for the rest of their walk.