No Way Of Telling (5 page)

She said much the same words when she had been out with Amy into the shed and studied the chopping-block and the footsteps.

“Oh, Amy—all night out here! He must have been about starved,” she exclaimed; by which she meant that he must have been near freezing. “Only to think of it! We were warm in bed at least.”

But to Amy, even as the chopping-block had seemed to have been moved by magic, so did the footprints going up the hill have a supernatural quality about them.

“How is it he managed to keep on the path, Granny? There’s not a sign of it this morning. With all this snow on top there’s no way of telling what’s underneath. How did he know there
was
a path, even?”

“Well, I suppose he must have seen Tom Protheroe’s tracks, and the tracks of that old mob of sheep, when he first got here—though mind, it was snowing so hard there couldn’t have been much left of all their trampling and mess; but I daresay there was just enough to tell him there’d been a flock driven that way not long before, and he reckoned wherever it was they were going, he could go too. I believe he set out directly he went from here last night, Amy,” said Mrs Bowen, “hoping to come on a road or a farm while there were still tracks enough to follow—you remember what a hurry he was in? But it must have struck him so rough when he got to the top of the hill, he was obliged to give up and come back down here to our shed, and wait for morning.”

“It’s lucky for him he did wait—he’d have gone straight over the edge of Billy Dodd’s Dingle in the dark,” said Amy.

Gradually during breakfast their disturbed feelings settled down, rather as the spluttering fire had settled down into a comfortable glowing furnace. With every spoonful of porridge the man who had caused them such terror came to seem more and more remote, like the storm itself, a memory, something extraordinary to discuss and to wonder at, but past. He had appeared out of the night as though he had been a part of its blackness, and when the night was gone so was he. Now it was morning and the sun shone and presently all that remained of him, his footsteps, would melt and be gone as well.

Mrs Bowen fetched out a pot of her cherry jam, a rare treat. They sat on, drinking cup after cup of weakening tea. There was nothing to hurry for today.

“Where do you think he’s got to now, Granny?”

“Well, I don’t know how far he’s got, but it seems likely he’ll finish up in the Protheroes’ back-yard—providing he gets by Billy Dodd’s Dingle. A real nasty old track it is over the top in bad weather, and bound to be a lot worse today than it was for Tom Protheroe yesterday afternoon—
he
wasn’t anxious to linger and he was on a pony. Still, I daresay it might be passable yet, though I shouldn’t care to try it myself.”

“I wonder what Mrs Protheroe will think if she sees him.”

“Think?—she won’t pause to think. If I know Molly Protheroe she’ll have him inside the house and those dirty old clothes off him and be scrubbing him down in the bath before he’s got the chance to turn himself around and make a run for it—and I wouldn’t be surprised she didn’t shave that beard off him too,” said Mrs Bowen, beginning to laugh and then finding herself unable to stop.

“She’d do it, too!” declared Amy enthusiastically. “I believe she’d do anything, once she’d set her mind to it. She doesn’t care a bit what she does, or what she says. And she never gets cross either—not properly cross. Of course she scolds the boys now and then, but that’s nothing. I like Mrs Protheroe a lot,” said Amy, her eyes wide and sparkling with admiration.

“Why, naturally you do—how can anyone help but like her? There’s not a kinder soul in the world than Molly—and she’s clever as well—and full of fun. I’d have told Tom Protheroe a hundred times how lucky he is, only he knows it well enough without being told,” said Mrs Bowen, wiping away her tears of laughter and speaking warmly of the woman who lived in what had once been her own home long ago during the short time that she was married, and later the home of her son and his wife, Amy’s parents, during the time—even shorter—when they were married; for Mrs Bowen’s husband had died after only six years, and her daughter-in-law while Amy was still a baby. Other children and grandchildren, not hers, had grown up at Dintirion.

“A better mother than Molly Protheroe I can’t imagine—nor a nicer lot of boys than those three of hers and Tom’s,” said Mrs Bowen, her thoughts beginning to wander a little.

But Amy was more in the mood for jokes than reminiscences. “Fancy if that leg of mutton Mrs Protheroe sent us should happen to turn up on her doorstep again—what a surprise she’ll get!”

“She’ll most likely think it’s the postman coming with a parcel,” said Mrs Bowen, pretending to be serious.

“What a funny sort of parcel—what a funny postman!” exploded Amy.

They let themselves laugh and laugh. After so much anxiety it was like a tonic to be able to. But all at once Amy sprang to her feet.

“Oh, Granny—the ewes! Those five that were missing—I said I’d watch out for them.”

“So you did, and I don’t know how it can have slipped my own mind either. Leave these few crocks where they are—there’ll be plenty of time for them later. We’d best get up to the haystack now before it comes on to snow again—it said on the news it was going to.”

“Are you coming with me? You don’t have to, Granny. It was me that promised Mr Protheroe.”

“A breath of air will do me good,” declared Mrs Bowen.

In spite of the serene and smiling aspect of the morning, in spite of the way they had just been making fun, Amy was secretly glad to be having her grandmother’s company; and Mrs Bowen knew in her heart that she would not have been altogether easy if Amy had gone on her own.

Amy carried the shovel in case they should come on one or more of the sheep stuck in a drift, and Mrs Bowen took a stick for her own benefit, and so they set out to climb the hill behind the Gwyntfa.

But whereas Mr Protheroe, and later on their visitor, had both veered to the right, Mrs Bowen and Amy bore away to the left, for their cottage stood at the junction of two pathways. The one that went off to the right was the oldest, a branch, some people held, of the old drovers’ road; but it had been so little used for so long, except as a mutual convenience by Protheroes and Bowens, that its existence was officially forgotten and it was no longer marked with a dotted line on the ordnance survey maps. Yet for those who knew, it was a way that could be followed over the crest of the hill and down the further side, where it then skirted Billy Dodd’s Dingle, climbed the flank of Cader Ddu—that bleak forbidding mountain—and finally fetched up at Dintirion, the Protheroes’ farm, which stood on the outskirts of Melin-y-Groes, and a little above it, connected to the village by its own short steep stretch of macadamised road.

Dintirion was said to have been a court-house long ago; but Mrs Bowen herself believed it had once, even earlier, been some kind of a fortress, and warnings of invading hosts been carried back to it along that very path centuries before by breathless runners from a look-out post situated on the hill above the Gwyntfa. For this was the Welsh Marches, wild border-country; and why else should a path, otherwise of little importance, have a core of stone, invisible to the eye but apparent to the feet, unyielding, firm, defying time and the seasons? Amy and the Protheroe boys had always supported this theory, largely because it had provided them with good dramatic material for a game that could easily be worked in with the less interesting business of herding sheep. Besides, Mrs Bowen had been a teacher and so they respected her historical opinions.

The other path was not ancient and had no mysterious foundation of stone; it was simply a track of beaten earth, also leading over the ridge behind the Gwyntfa, but in a north-westerly direction, and nowadays it stopped at Mr Protheroe’s haystack. Once it had gone on, down to the small farm-house concealed in a clump of trees at the bottom. This part of the path had long since merged with the rest of the rough slope and disappeared, while the farm-house itself had fallen into ruins.

But when Mrs Bowen first came to the Gwyntfa, a widow with her little boy Dilwyn, there had been a gnarled and taciturn old man living there all alone, like a hermit, and Mrs Bowen had done her best to be neighbourly: every morning she climbed the same track she and Amy were climbing now, so as to look down from the top of the hill and see if old Tyler had spread a rag of white cloth over a thorn-bush, his sign that he was in need of something. That was more than thirty years ago and the walls and roof of the old man’s house had been collapsing then, she said. When he was gone the house stayed empty, no one else caring to live in such an out-of-the-way habitation. People spoke of it still as Tyler’s Place although its proper name, marked on the ordnance survey maps, was Cilnant, and although it now belonged for the sake of the land that went with it to Mr Protheroe, who allowed it year by year to become more derelict, considering that any money spent on it would be money wasted.

This morning, however, it was the present, not the past, that claimed their attention. Each time Amy breathed in she could feel the air go down cold inside her, and each time she breathed out she felt a faint tickle round her nostrils as her warm breath froze. It was hard going. At every step she watched the black Wellington boot she planted ahead of her sink, and heard the crunch it made, and then, as she pushed her weight off it, felt it slip back. She grew damp inside her clothes with effort.

They reached the top at last, purring, and turned to survey the wintry landscape, an undulating whiteness that stretched away, silent, without a living creature in sight, broken by nothing but the grey stone walls of the cottage and lower again by the mottled brown of trees marking the course of the stream. Nor was there any movement except for the twist of smoke coming from their own chimney. But the sky had clouded stealthily over; it was a dull grey now, matching the cottage walls, and getting darker every minute.

“We’d better make haste, Amy,” said Mrs Bowen. “That sunshine was too good to be true—I thought it might be. Early and bright at this time of year is never to be trusted. Mick, come here—you stay with us, boy. There’s no rabbit with a grain of sense would be out on such a day, so don’t you go looking for one.”

And taking the shovel from Amy, Mrs Bowen set off at a resolute pace towards the haystack which stood beyond the brow of the hill, a short distance down the further slope.

Every harvest Mr Protheroe built the stack here, hauling the bales from Dintirion by tractor to provide for his hill sheep in winter. By the middle of February there was not much of it left. Underneath a rusty tin roof the remaining bales were sheeted over with black plastic, firmly pegged to the ground. Whenever Mrs Bowen saw the stack she said the same thing as she did today, and in the same tone of exasperation:

“Tom Protheroe ought to build a proper barn. What’s the use of this—a bit of old roof, and on the weather side too! I’ve told him and told him—he just can’t be bothered. Why, Amy,” she exclaimed, her voice changing, “those ewes of his are here after all! So they did find their way—they’re not so silly as they look. Keep back, Mick! Wait there, boy—sit!”

For the sheep were showing signs of uneasiness at the presence of a dog. They had bunched together against the plastic sheeting, while the boldest stood out in front and stamped her foot. Mick sat down.

“There’s only four of them,” said Amy. “There ought to be five—he told us five, didn’t he? I’d better take a look round the other side.”

Lifting and lowering each leg as straight as she could, Amy made her way round to the far side of the stack. Snow had piled up against it so deeply that in spite of her care some got over the top of her wellingtons and slithered icily down inside.

“She’s not here, Granny—and I’ve got snow in my boots.”

Whenever she opened her mouth her teeth ached. Her sweat had dried and felt clammy with the cold. Closing her lips together tightly, Amy ploughed her way back.

“Do you think she’s got herself stuck in a drift somewhere, Granny?”

“She most likely has,” said Mrs Bowen, pityingly.

“Oh, Granny, we must find her—she’ll die if we don’t.”

“Well indeed, if she does die then die she does, Amy, and that’s all about it. We can’t go searching the hills for her. Only to step off the path might easy enough bring us up to our own necks in snow—you know that, Amy, as well as I do.”

They looked at each other uncertainly, and then at the sky, and then again at each other.

“Hadn’t we better fetch these ones home with us, Granny? Suppose we can’t get back up here tomorrow?”

“I was just thinking the very same. If we can manage to carry a bale between us, they’ll follow.”

Together they tugged out a bale from beneath the plastic sheeting.

“We can catch the shovel in under the string, Granny, and then you can take hold of the handle and pull it—see? And I can pull another one, if I only make a line first to pull it with.”

Amy, as she spoke, was picking up discarded lengths of binder-twine, of which there were plenty lying about on the ground under the plastic sheeting; these she knotted together until she had a line long enough to go over her shoulder. As soon as she had tied it to a second bale they set off, and the sheep, magnetised by the hay, followed in short jerky runs, stopping every few feet and turning their heads apprehensively to make sure of the whereabouts of their enemy, the dog. As well as she was able to for panting, Amy called out instructions to Mick:

“Wait, boy—wait! Come on, then—just a little—that’s enough! Wait, boy—sit!”

Against the stark whiteness of snow the sheep looked a dirty yellow. Tempted on by the hay ahead, and driven by fear of the dog behind, they proceeded in hopeful, fearful rushes to the top of the hill. Mrs Bowen and Amy were breathless.

“Oh Mick, you are a clever dog—you know just what to do! No, no—you just stay there. Don’t you frighten them off the path. It won’t be so hard for us going down, Granny. Why don’t we sit on the bales and toboggan?”

“You can try it if you like,” said Mrs Bowen. “I prefer to stay on my own two legs.”