It was half-term and we were in limbo. Vague time. Annoying days when even getting up seemed a waste of time, cleaning your teeth too much of an effort and doing just about anything else felt impossible. I was waiting; we were waiting for decisions to be made. Whether my mum drove her car into the front of a lorry on purpose or not was going to be decided by a group of people I’d never meet in a room I would never see. Dad’s suitability to look after Jon was also being considered and although we knew Mr McGrath was involved, it still felt like we were waiting for a verdict from way up on high. All things out of our control.
All week I’d felt stuffy somehow. All my clothes felt too tight and I was hot and scratchy. It was like someone had rubbed dust into my eyes and pinned a duvet to my back and I shuffled round the house under the extra weight like an irritable old man. I tried not to be grumpy with Dad and Jon but I wasn’t doing too good a job of it. And of course they had their own reasons to be grumpy and tense themselves. But I wasn’t seeing too much of Jon anyway. He was way across the other side of town at the Theobalds’ and spent most of his free time visiting his grandparents. They’d both been moved to Greenside Home for the Elderly. Jon said that one day he went to visit and couldn’t find his granddad and the place was almost empty. He nearly fell over when a carer said it was always like this on a Tuesday morning: Tuesday was market day and a minibus turned up and took all those willing and able down to Duerdale market for an hour. Jon couldn’t believe that his granddad had got on the bus and was currently browsing cheese and meat stalls. He said he was sure his granddad hadn’t been into town for more than five years.
So it was mainly me and Dad and our irritation and anxiety. One afternoon he must have got fed up with my fixed face of misery and he told me to run to the other side of the fell or something. And although I don’t think he actually meant it, I did run to the other side of the fell. And then down to the bottom. And then I got lost.
I’m not supposed to like sport. I’m a painter, an artist, and the two shouldn’t really mix. And I don’t like it much really; I can’t stand games like football where someone on your own team shouts at you if you don’t tackle hard enough. Or they get moody if you don’t score when it’s an easy chance. I’m exactly the kind of person who won’t tackle hard enough or score when it’s an easy chance. Running though is different. Unlike my dad I can’t claim to be any good; I’m as bad at it as I am at every other sport, but I didn’t mind the two times a year when we didn’t play football and got sent on a cross-country run. Everyone else hated it, grumbled and moaned and pleaded with Mr Chisholm. I didn’t care. At least nobody was going to kick me or shout at me.
I saw that it was pouring but I wasn’t too bothered. I thought that might help with the stuffiness, it might help wash it away. I hunted down my sports kit and found it in the corner of my school bag. It hadn’t been washed since the last time we’d had games and the green top and black shorts were melded together with dry mud that turned to dust when I tore them apart. I pulled them on anyway. They felt itchy and damp but it didn’t matter. I would be as wet as a river in seconds anyway. I know the value in warming up and stretching, we get told every week at school, but I thought that running up and down the fell would warm me up well enough. And I was losing my spark of enthusiasm for the idea, so I did about three and a half star jumps, pushed open the back door and ran head first into the cold rain.
After about five minutes I nearly turned around and ran straight back. The wind was walloping sheets of rain into my face and I could hardly open my eyes to see. It was an icy-cold wind and it whipped blasts at my thighs and face. My face was numb and I couldn’t feel the snot that flooded from my nose and over my lips. My hands were too cold to pull into fists and they were red raw and useless and struggled to open gates. The first part of the climb was too steep to run up properly and for the most part I scrambled up the fell, my hands touching the ground almost as much as my feet – a mountain goat without the sure-footedness. Finally I was on top of the fell and the ground flattened out. I passed the cairn, picked up speed and was actually running for the first time. I almost started to enjoy myself. The wind came in gusts from different directions, sometimes pushing me too fast ahead, my legs windmilling to keep up, sometimes a blast from the side and I wouldn’t be running along the track any more but jumping through the heather and bracken, trying not to twist an ankle, trying to get back on course. I got a stitch just below my left ribcage. Sharp and hard, stabbing, like a needle was stuck inside. I didn’t stop though. I ran at the pain. Head down, legs pumping. It was impossible to get any wetter or dirtier and I was heaving breaths in through my mouth, trying to get as much air as possible into my raw lungs. Snot was running down my face now as fast as I could wipe it away and I must have looked a mess. I wasn’t feeling stuffy any more though. Sick, aching, numb and shattered, but not stuffy. And I discovered something that helped me focus, helped me keep going when I thought I might have to stop. I pictured a black rectangle with a red circle in the centre. And what I did was to concentrate on the red circle and poured all the pain and tiredness and breathlessness into it. Everything thrown at me: the wind, the rain, the almost vertical climbs, the loose rocks and the twisted ankles all went into the red circle. And I kept going. In half an hour I was at the far end of the fell, further than I’d ever been, and looking down onto towns and villages that I could only guess the names of. I allowed myself to stop and tried to grab some deep breaths of air from the wind. Even that wasn’t easy. The wind dangled fresh air in front of my nose for a second before another gust stole it away, leaving me gasping in a vacuum. I rested my hands on my knees, tried to blow my nose clear and tried to recover. If I’d been feeling less frustrated and fed up I would have turned round and started making my way back home; darkness was edging itself into the corners of sky. But after a five-minute rest, I looked down at the sharp descent, let the muscles in my legs loosen, and legged it down the far side of the fell. I was enjoying the struggle.