The Breaking Point (39 page)

I woke, and lit the candle. Stephen was sleeping still. I went to the door of the hut, and saw that the fire had died; not even the ashes glowed.The moon, past its quarter-mark and swelling, was hanging like a half-cheese in the sky. The dogs, the goats, the goatherd had all gone. Silhouetted on the skyline beyond the blasted pine stood a chamois buck, his sharp horns curving backward, his listening head uptilted to the moon, and grazing beneath him, silently, delicately, were the does and the yearling kids.

It was a curious thing, I considered, as I brewed our breakfast tea on the Primus and spread cheese over slices of pork-ham, but danger shared had brought Stephen and myself together. Or else I had turned compassionate. He was human after all, weak like the rest of us. He must have sensed my sympathy, because he talked at breakfast, telling me of adventures in the past, of near escapes.

‘I remember once,’ he said, ‘falling some fifteen feet, but I only sprained an ankle.’

He laughed in high good humour, and I thought that if he could joke at fear his battle was half won.

‘I’ll come with you today,’ I told him, ‘when you look for your rifle.’

‘Will you?’ he said. ‘Splendid. It’s going to be fine, after that sharp frost. No mist about, the bugbear of all stalkers.’

The zest, the keenness had returned. And what was more, I shared it. I wanted to stalk with him. This was a new emotion, something I could not explain.We ate our breakfast and straightened our sleeping bags, and going out into the sunlight I kicked at the ashes of last night’s fire. There was no sign of the goatherd or his dogs, or of his flock either. He must have taken them to graze elsewhere. I hardly thought of him: I was anxious to be off. Stephen led the way down the forested mountain-side, for he knew by instinct where he wished to go, and we scrambled over scrub and slag, and stunted bushes, part box, part thorn, away from the overhanging crags above.

High in the blue sky soared the eagle of yesterday, or perhaps his fellow, and as the sun rose and warmed us, so that we took off our jerseys and tied them round our waists, life seemed suddenly very good, very full. There was none of the strain that had been with us yesterday. I put it down to sleeping well, to the new bond shared, and to the absence of the goatherd Jesus.

When we had scrambled thus for half an hour or more Stephen said, ‘There it is - look, the sun’s caught the barrel.’

He smiled and ran ahead, and indeed I could see the shining metal, caught sideways between a thorn and a lump of rock. He seized his gun, and waved it above his head in triumph.

‘I could never have gone home if I’d lost this,’ he said.

He handled the rifle with care, still smiling - it was almost a caress the way he stroked it. I watched him, indulgent for the first time in my life. He took a cloth from his pouch and began to polish it. I let my eyes roam above him to the rugged heights above, to the lips and ledges where we had climbed yesterday. It was sparse and naked, bare of vegetation. A black speck like a humped rock caught my eye that I had not remembered the previous day. The black speck moved. I touched Stephen’s elbow. ‘There . . .’ I murmured, and put my pocket spy-glass into his hand. Cautiously he lifted it to his eye.

‘He’s there,’ he whispered, ‘he’s there, my buck of yesterday.’

I had not thought Stephen could move so stealthily or so fast. He was away from me in a moment, crawling upward through the scrub, and seized with a curious enchantment I crawled after him. He motioned me back, and I lay still and looked through my glass again. Now the picture was indistinct: one second it looked like the chamois, and the next like our goatherd, yes, our goatherd. I called to Stephen.

‘It isn’t chamois,’ I said, ‘it’s your saviour, Zus.’

He glanced back at me over his shoulder, impatient, angry.

‘What the hell are you shouting for?’ he said. ‘He’ll get away from us.’

Once again I thrust my glass into his hand, crawling close to him to do so. ‘Look there,’ I said, ‘it isn’t chamois.’

He seized the glass, and after adjusting it to his eye gave it back with an exclamation of disgust.

‘Are you mad?’ he said. ‘Of course it’s chamois. I can see the horns.’

Then, shrill, unmistakable, came the whistle of warning, the mocking chamois call.

‘Do you still think it isn’t chamois?’ said Stephen, and he put his rifle to his shoulder and fired.The explosion was like an echo to the whistle. It ricocheted away from the rocks above us, and carried to the depths below. The black speck leapt and vanished. Loose stones fell upon our heads.

‘You’ve missed him,’ I said.

‘No,’ said Stephen, ‘I’m going after him.’

There was a gully immediately above us. He climbed to the left of it, I to the right, and as we made towards the jutting ledge where we had seen the black speck leap, neck and neck on opposite sides of the gully, I knew, with sudden certainty, that we were after different quarry. Stephen was after chamois. I was after Man. Both were symbolic of something abhorrent to our natures, and so held fascination and great fear.We wanted to destroy the thing that shamed us most.

My heart was singing as I climbed, and pounding too. It was worth having been born, having lived my span of years for this alone. There had been no other experience. Nothing else compared with the stalk, and I had my goatherd on the run. It was he who fled from me, not I from him.

I could see him now, jumping from rock to rock. How Stephen could mistake him for a chamois, God alone could tell. He had thrown off his burnous, and his shaggy head was like a wave-crest, thick and black. It was glorious. I had no fear of the jutting rocks, and climbed them steadily and surely, with never a slip and never a moment’s pause. Silence no longer mattered, for he knew I was after him.

‘I’ll get you,’ I called, ‘you can’t escape. You know very well I’ve hunted you all my life.’

Such savagery and power - I, who hated violence; intoxication, too, and wild delight. Once more the hiss, the whistle. Fear and warning and mockery in one. The rattle of stones, the scampering of hoofs.

‘Lie down,’ shouted Stephen, ‘lie down. I’m going to shoot.’

I remember laughing as the shot rang out. This time Stephen did not miss. The black form crumpled to its knees and fell. As I hauled myself to the ledge I saw the honey-coloured eyes glaze in death. They would never stare at me again. My husband had destroyed the thing that frightened me.

‘He’s smaller than I thought,’ said Stephen, turning the dead buck over with his feet, ‘and younger too. Not more than five years old.’

He lit a cigarette. I took it from him. Sweat was pouring from both of us. The eagle was still soaring against the sun.

‘I shan’t carry him back,’ said my husband. ‘I don’t even want his head.That’s my last chamois. Don’t ask me why - I just know it, that’s all. We’ll leave him out here in grandeur, where he belongs. Nature has her own way of disposing of the dead.’ He glanced up at the eagle.

We left the chamois on the ledge of rock under the sky and climbed down again, through the scrub and stones, back to the hut and our belongings. The rucksacks and the sleeping-bags seemed part of another life.

‘No sign of our host,’ said Stephen, ‘and we’ve finished all the rations. Let’s pack and spend tonight down at the store. We can catch the morning bus in the other direction. Go to Métsovon, and Ioánnina, and down the west coast to Missolonghi and across to Delphi. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’

I did not answer, but I put out my hand to him for no reason. It was very peaceful, very still, on the quiet mountain. Suddenly Stephen kissed me. Then he put his hand in his pocket, and, bending down, placed two small metal objects in the white ash of the fire.

‘We’ll leave the empty cartridges for Jesus,’ Stephen said.

The Lordly Ones

B
en was thought to be backward. He could not speak. When he tried to form words sounds came, harsh and ugly, and he did not know what to do with his tongue. He pointed when he wanted something, or fetched it for himself. They said he was tongue-tied, and that in a few years’ time he would be taken to hospital and something could be done. His mother said he was sharp enough, he took in what you told him all right, and knew good from bad, but he was stubborn, he did not take kindly to ‘no’. Because of his silence they forgot to explain things to him, arrivals and departures and changes of plan, and his world was made up of whims, the whims of older people. He would be told to dress for no reason, or to go out into the street to play; or some toy was denied him that had been given him an hour before.

When the stress became too great to bear he opened his mouth, and the sound that came out of it alarmed him even more than it alarmed his parents. Why did it rise? How did it come? Then someone, usually his mother, picked him up and shut him away in the cupboard under the stairs, amongst the mackintoshes and the shopping baskets, and he could hear her calling through the keyhole, ‘You’ll stop there until you’re quiet!’ The noise would not be quelled. It did not belong to him. The anger was a force that had to have its way.

Later, crouched beside the keyhole, spent and tired, he would hear the noise die away, and peace would come to the cupboard. The fear would then be that his mother would go away and forget to let him out, and he would rattle the handle of the door to remind her. A flash of her skirt through the keyhole meant reassurance, and he would sit down and wait until the grinding of the key in the lock spelt release. Then he would step out into the daylight, blinking, and glance up at his mother to gauge her mood. If she was dusting or sweeping, she ignored him. All would be well until the next moment of anger or frustration, when the performance would be repeated - either the cupboard again, or his bedroom with no tea, his toys taken from him. The way to ensure against their anger was to please his parents, but this could not always be done, for the strain was too great. In the middle of play, absorbed, he forgot their commands.

One day suitcases were packed and he was dressed in his warmest clothes, although it was early spring, and they left the house in Exeter where he had been born and went to the moors. There had been talk about the moors for some weeks past.

‘It’s different up there from what it is down here,’ his parents would say. Somehow cajolery and threats were combined: one day he was to be lucky, another he had better not get out of sight once they moved.The very words ‘the moors’ sounded dark and ominous, a sort of threat.

The bustle of departure added to fear. The rooms of his home, suddenly bare, were unfamiliar, and his mother, impatient, scolded him ceaselessly. She too wore different clothes, and an ugly hat. It clung round her ears, changing the shape of her face. As they left home she seized his hand, dragging it, and bewildered he watched his parents as they sat, anxious themselves, among the boxes and the packing-cases. Could it be that they were uncertain too? That none of them knew where they were going?

The train bore them away, but he could not see out of the windows. He was in the middle seat between his parents, and only the tops of trees told him of country. His mother gave him an orange he did not want. Forgetting caution, he threw it on the floor. She smacked him hard. The smack coincided with a sudden jolt of the train and the darkness of a tunnel, the two combined suggesting the cupboard under the stairs and punishment. He opened his mouth and the cry came from it.

As always, the sound brought panic. His mother shook him and he bit his tongue. The carriage was full of strangers. An old man behind a newspaper frowned. A woman, showing her teeth, offered him a green sweet. No one could be trusted. His cries became louder still and his mother, her face red, picked him up and took him into the rattling corridor. ‘Will you be quiet?’ she shouted. All was confusion. Fatigue seized him, and he crumpled. Rage and fear made him stamp his feet, clad in new brown-laced shoes, adding to the clatter.The sound, coming from his belly, ceased; only the gasp for breath, the stifling sobs, told him that the pain was with him, but for what reason he could not tell.

‘He’s tired,’ somebody said.

They were back again in the carriage, and room was made for him by the window. The world outside went past. Houses clustered. He saw a road with cars upon it, and fields, then high banks swaying up and down. With the gradual slowing of the train his parents stood up and began to reach for their belongings. The fluster of departure was with them once again. The train ground to a standstill. Doors opened and clanged, and a porter shouted. They tumbled out on to the platform.

His mother clutched him by the hand and he peered up at her face, and at his father’s too, to try and discover from their expressions whether what was happening was customary, expected by them, and if they knew what was to happen now.They climbed into a car, the luggage piled about them, and through the gathering dusk he understood that they were not back again in the town from which they had come, but in open country. The air bit sharp, cool-smelling, and his father turned with a laugh to him and said, ‘Can you smell the moors?’

The moors . . . He tried to see from the window of the car, but a suitcase balked his view. His mother and father were talking amongst themselves. ‘She’ll surely have put on a kettle for us, and give us a hand,’ said his mother; and,‘We’ll not unpack everything tonight. It will take days to get straight.’

‘I don’t know,’ said his father. ‘It’s surprising how different it will seem in a small house.’

The road twisted, the car swaying at the corners. Ben felt sick. This would be the final disgrace. The sourness was coming and he shut his mouth. But the urge was too strong, and it came from him in a burst, splaying out over the car.

‘Oh, no, that’s too much,’ cried his mother, and she pushed him from her knee against the sharp end of the suitcase, bruising his cheek. His father tapped the window. ‘Stop . . . the boy’s been sick.’ The shame, the inevitable confusion of sickness, and with it the sudden cold so that he shivered. Everywhere lay the evidence of his shame, and an old cloth, evil-smelling, was produced by the driver to wipe his mouth.