After Brock (19 page)

‘Some day I must look into these guys of yours more fully 'cause you don't seem too clued up about them yourself. Are they Freudians? Jungians? Adlerians? Kleinians? (Quite likely Kleinians since you were tested when you were only an ickle child.) But then they might be disciples of Wilhelm Reich, one of the greatest men to have walked this earth. But I doubt it. They're more likely to be common-or-garden arse-lickers of H. J. Eysenck, a man I utterly reject…'

Pete felt inadequate before this coolly delivered onslaught. Psychologists were clearly something Sam really knew about. He remembered the Jungian mandalas Sam had drawn, and the correspondence between his UFO encounter and Carl-Gustav Jung's of two decades before. About this last Pete didn't want to question him. A Sam Price mockingly quizzical was preferable to a Sam Price annoyed, and probably as capable of retaliation as swans similarly cornered. Anyway, before long, the heather-covered, snow-powdered west flank of the Mynd was forming one side of the narrow country road they'd taken, while on the other a breathtaking vista opened out. There, displayed against the sky, The Stiperstones stood, westernmost of South Shropshire's four great parallel ridges, five miles long, and unforgettable because of the long irregular line of huge quartzite tors cresting it, each different from its fellows in shape, each with scree at its feet, like shakings from a mason's apron.

Pete couldn't resist telling Sam the facts with which years later he was to impress Nat, ‘The Stiperstones is 1,759 feet high and the rocks you can see on the top are 500,000,000 years old.' But Sam didn't snub him, as he'd half-feared, and after Pete had informed him that the biggest and most distinctive tor was called The Devil's Chair, his interest even seemed to quicken. ‘And when you can't see the Chair from below – because of rain or fog or something – it's a bad omen; you should start to worry. But if you can't make it out from nearer to, then
real
disaster's on the way, so get serious. It might be World War Three. Or the end of the world itself.'

‘You don't say,' said Sam, ‘well, that shouldn't bother us too much.'

‘What shouldn't?'

‘The end of this world. It's not such great shakes as it is. I thought I'd made my views on that clear enough already.'

When Sam spoke like this, was it out of affectation or real deep-down dissatisfaction? Pete countered his companion breezily: ‘Well, this day's the clearest we've had for ages. I can see The Devil's Chair standing out as sharply above the patches of snow as if some giant race left it there for us to find.'

He was to use almost identical words to these last when he went out here from Lydcastle on trips with his son, Nat. Whatever the merits of the conceit itself, it changed Sam's mood suddenly and entirely. Even during the best moments of their communion after
The Mikado
Pete had never seen him in such good humour. This presently developed into high spirits of a boyish kind Pete wouldn't have suspected.

Maybe it was the day's nipping cold or maybe, it being Friday, likely tourists were back in the workplace, but the beauty spot was devoid of visitors, and so swathed in silence. Neither sheep nor birds disturbed it – nor the red grouse, nor the two ravens in slow movement above the first significant tor in the long hilltop line, Cranberry Rocks. The boys did not impact on it either, walking uphill from the deserted car park. But when they reached, after the exhilaration of a short steep climb, that part of the main path which runs the length of the hill's spine-like crest, Sam surprised Pete by pointing ahead and asking in a stage yokel's voice: ‘That there be The Devil's Chair, bain't it?' And by then sprinting off.
Really
sprinting too, though his feet, unlike Pete's own, had no knowledge from previous experience of all the pathway's treacherous little twists which skeins of black ice now compounded. Pete decided to let Sam have the freedom he so clearly wanted, therefore didn't take off after him. Soon, Sam was on top of the enormous quartzite pile which has fascinated so many over such a vast period, was standing against the deepening blue of the afternoon sky, in a black-leather bomber-jacket worn over red-and-blue Icelandic sweater and with a tasselled red woollen cap pulled over the ears but leaving long strands of jet-black hair still exposed.

Should Pete, now having gained its base, join Sam on the Chair? He'd have scaled it in next to no time had he been up here with Mum and Dad and the Brats (whom, especially Julian, he would have done his best to keep away from this tor). But what if today, for the first time ever, he were to miss his footing, slip, fall, something daft of that sort? How humiliated he would be! Also Pete sensed that Sam was positively relishing his own apartness against the great canopy of the winter sky, wouldn't want even those two ravens circling Cranberry Rocks to be given any indication that he and Pete were mates.

And were they? Pete couldn't, even now, decide. What he did know was that Sam Price was fiercely anti-sentimental, would never dream of expressing any admiration of his attributes or pleasure in his company… Oh well, that's how he was!

‘Whoo-hoo! Here I come, earthlings!' And he did, bounding down towards Pete, arms stretched out straight like an animated scarecrow to preserve his balance in his precipitous descent of the huge, slippery pile of rocks, displaying an agility at least equal to (but not surpassing!), Pete's own on previous visits.

‘Christ, view's fucking brilliant!' Sam exclaimed, ‘All Wales lies on the other side, I know, Land of My Fathers, or at least of Trevor Price's,' and he gestured to behind the gaunt shape of the Chair he had just mounted, ‘but what am I seeing from here?

The Wellerman-Kreutz wizard can surely tell me.'

The ridges looked more like great beached whales than ever today, whales with their backs caught out of water by snow showers. ‘Well, that's the Long Mynd directly ahead,' said Pete, ‘and over there's Wenlock Edge, and the Clees. Brown Clee is in fact higher than The Stiperstones, though it may not look it from here.'

‘I can't believe, friend, you're not going to supply me with its altitude down to the last fucking foot,' said Sam.

Ignoring any irony, Pete supplied, ‘Brown Clee is 1,772 feet high. And if you try to look behind the Long Mynd, Sam, you can see the Stretton Hills, which are even more ancient than here: pre-Cambrian or Uriconian Volcanic,' he couldn't help his pride in knowing such things, ‘well over 600,000,000 years old. And I'll tell you something else: The Stiperstones, all this extensive quartzite terrain about us, survived the Ice Age. So, had we been around then, we'd have seen only the very tops of the other hills peeping up out of the swirling seas.'

‘Well, even now they look a bit like a school of whales half out of water,' agreed Sam, pleasing Pete with his quick analogy. Even though so many had made the comparison before.

But the very thought of the antiquity of the Shropshire hills spurred Sam into speaking again of the matter so dear to him.

‘I suppose other planets – and obviously I don't mean just the planets in our own solar system – have histories as long and complex as Earth's and must have gone through just as many face-changes. So how can it be not just possible but
probable
that some of them (even if it's only two or three) have developed sophisticated forms of life – intelligences, if you like – which are curious enough about Earth to want to help it or to frighten it into averting further disasters? It's not a very happy place, our planet, is it?'

Pete winced, but he didn't want to disrupt this present, unprecedented, marvellous harmony between them. The right time would come later. ‘Not happy?' he echoed, ‘well, it looks terrific this afternoon, wouldn't you say?' and he swivelled his gaze slowly all the way from Shrewsbury, past the Wrekin and the rises of the Severn gorge right the way round to where loomed first the Black Hills, and then to their south, the Black Mountains, that familiar landmark on Leominster's own allotted sky.

‘Yes, it looks okay enough on a day like this. It would fool anybody,' said Sam. He moved his head to look in the opposite direction from that Pete was surveying. ‘When I asked you, before we set off, where you wanted to go today, you said “North and west”. And that was fine by me. It's turned out well. So what's north-and-west of here?'

For a horrible moment Pete's mind was empty of an answer. And as he turned his head to the compass-point Sam had just mentioned, he didn't feel the usual smooth rolling of information from the well-oiled grooves of his mental chambers. Way beyond Shrewsbury the atmosphere was considerably thicker than elsewhere, with infiltrations of mistiness. If the West is the last direction to retain a day's light, it's invariably the first to manifest coming changes in the weather. A greyness piled on its distant and indistinct northernmost heights suggested showers, most likely of snow, soon to sweep eastwards over England – maybe even before midnight… then the wanted name slid, albeit bumpily, into Pete's head. ‘The Berwyns,' he announced, ‘over the Welsh border.'

‘And?' Sam's face had gone a bit swan-like, a bit fierce again. ‘What might they be like?'

But Pete knew nothing to recite at him. ‘Pretty wild, I believe,' he said.

‘The wilder the better. That's where we should go next.' Pete's heart skipped a beat with pleasure that Sam should be wanting not just a repetition of but a sequel to today, ‘and hey, I've just remembered: I've told you about Don Parry who lives in Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant. Well, that's over in the Berwyns, isn't it? To our north-west now?' Pete nodded assent. ‘Well, there's a date for the two of us to fix: a call on old Don Parry. You'd like him, Pete, he's quite a character, a real card. Has no end of stories about the Welsh past. And the Welsh present too – at least where women are concerned…' The man has made a huge impression on Sam, thought Pete, what he's saying about him now is virtually word for word what he said before. ‘But now we should be making tracks!'

   

Back in the car – and they were glad of its warmth after the sting of the winter air now the sun was in retreat – Sam said, casually enough, and in the drawl with which, Pete was beginning to notice, he protected himself against social awkwardness, ‘I was a bit of a bastard all the journey here, I know. I'm feeling less of one now I've been in touch with my
mineral
self. I guess we all have mineral selves, coming as we do from… from all this rock! And I wasn't telling you the truth earlier either. I do have some dope here; shall we smoke some?'

They did.

Once down in the valley again it was already evening, its thickening shades in such contrast to the light still carpeting the hills to their west. Sam turned on the car lights, for the first time, he said, since his ownership. In terms of the amount of remarks exchanged the homeward ride was proving quieter than the outward one, but what a different atmosphere! Yes, Sam did have qualities Pete couldn't find in any other of his friends. Not one of them would have talked about his ‘mineral self…' Also on this return journey Sam was handling the car rather more confidently.

So it came as a shock when, suddenly, he braked. The abrupt action bounced Pete alarmingly, jarringly in his seat. It needed quite some self-manoeuvring just to stay sitting. ‘Shit!' Sam exclaimed with a loudness that bored through Pete's head, ‘fucking shit! Did I bloody hit it?'

The outrage in Sam's voice was infectious. ‘Hit what? I didn't feel anything.'

‘Hit that badger crossing the road, idiot. Where are your eyes? I swear there was one, but it's hard to see things in this narrow lane. I'd hate to kill a badger.'

He stopped the car engine and jumped out of his driving seat into the dark of the minor country road. Then, ‘Yeah! It's okay!' he called back, ‘Thank God…! Want to come and have a look, Pete?'

He was continuing, reinforcing that easy inclusion of Pete in feelings and actions which had begun in earnest only after he had come down from his solo scramble up the stern irregularities of The Devil's Chair. Pete hadn't associated him with tenderness towards animals. Was that another product of his rock climb? Or had the joint brought it out from under the several layers of his difficult, perturbing self?

Pete stumbled out of his passenger seat, and, without completely straightening himself – his movements must be stealthy lest he frighten the animal – he crept across to where Sam was standing stock still, as if mesmerised. And sure enough he soon made out the large shambling creature, dark-haired, much the colour of the evening itself, but with a broad white stripe on the head and further stretches of whiteness for cheeks and chin. About two and a half feet long and heavy in build it was – surprisingly so to those who didn't often see its kind – and short in the leg. Nevertheless it was now moving purposefully at a slow trot towards a clump of ferns beneath a modest outcrop of rock on the left-hand side of the lane. Pete was closer to it than Sam, but for the next four chilly minutes at least, both of them stood still side by side, so close to one another that Pete's right shoulder leaned against Sam's left. They hadn't enjoyed such proximity since the night of their first meeting. Only after the animal had gained the swiftly enveloping security of the ferns did they relax. They had seen the badger's long strong sensitive snout continuously pointing down to the surface of the road as if it might find something there to snap up, and the highly developed claws on its forefeet. Looked at closer to, the dark of its thick hair coat was not a uniform colour, but charcoal grey on the upper body and black on the throat, underbelly and legs. Its tail was short, efficient, and grizzly grey.

‘Safely on the other side, huh?' said Sam, with a sigh of satisfaction, ‘well, I guess we can bugger off now. It seemed to know where it was going okay, didn't it? So why didn't it wait till my car had passed by?'