“Goodbye,” I said.
I could not see the table.
Out in the night now, the shippon was steaming. I ran over to the barn and whistled for Tara and she came out wriggling.
“Up,” I said, and she leaped into my arms.
Randy turned and snorted hate at me as I closed the door and dropped the stick. Lonely it was, standing in the shippon with Tara against me, looking up at the blind windows, seeking a hand. Nothing. I turned.
Grandfer was right. My mind went back years. Fifty feet down, spreadeagled in the peat bog on the track to Tarn, head lolling, suspended in mud, I reckon he smiled.
CHAPTER 27
NO STARS that night, not even a moon, thank God. The world was as black as a witch’s gown, the air velvet and warm coming over the estuary. I walked fast at first, eager to get north to cross the barriers of the Tywi and Taf rivers, reckoning for a journey of thirty miles to Saundersfoot though it was twenty as the crow flies. I was heading for Llangain, taking the same route as I had done when we last burned the gates, striking north first, then south-west, keeping to the low ground, trotting at times with Tara running at my heels. Good to have Tara with me. Funny how a little dog can make up for humans; there always with her excited grinning, tongue seeking your fingers, in love with you, her eyes adoring though you are less than muck to your race, unloved by those you love, criticized and rejected. And I knelt at times in the darkness and held her to me. Queer little woman.
With the face of Mari sweeping back. I stopped once before dropping to the Gwendraeth and turned, looking back. Distantly I saw Cae White, hooded and bewitched by night, one chink of light beaming from a curtain Mari had forgotten to pull, its gables and twisted chimneys outlined starkly against white, rolling clouds, and the standing corn beyond sweeping into blackness. Turned my back on it, whistled at Tara and hurried on, keeping to the tracks, seeking the safety of woods and thickets. Midnight was tolling from a blind clock as I reached the Tywi opposite Llangain, and I went down the bank to the water and stripped naked while Tara, squatting, shivered and looked appalled at me. Not fancying to travel soaked, I tied my clothes into a bundle and hung them round my neck, then waded in while Tara whined delighted. Gave her a whistle and struck out. Muzzle sweeping the calm water she swam beside me, one eye cocked at an otter that barked and dived at our approach. Out now, streaming, shivering, and I rolled in the river grass to dry myself, Tara copying, leaping to this new adventure after the years of neglect. Dressing, I started off again at a trot to warm myself, eyes skinned for every rustle of a thicket, going for St Clears and the narrow reaches of the Taf. Treating it likewise at Whitehill Down I reached the high ground above Newton, and lay there in the stubbled grass with Tara in the crook of my arm, shivering at the sky where the first grey streak of dawn was flushing up from the east. I slept, awaking in bright sunlight with Tara licking my face, encircled by rabbits, five all told. A man with a dog can conquer the universe. Kissing and scolding her, I picked up a rabbit and stuffed it into my coat, rose and ran down the hillock, leaping the boulders, alive to the joy of the newfound day of sun and warmth, until I remembered Cae White and Mari. In the shelter of jutting rocks now, a disused quarry, I gutted and skinned the rabbit, rubbed for a flame and hung him from sticks for roasting. God must have a special heaven for rabbits in return for the sacrifice of their bodies to Man. Never smelled the like of this one after a sleep in the open, and between us we put him well down with Tara running in circles sniffing and whining for more.
We stayed in the quarry all that day and crept out at dusk to the evening star. Brilliant this night with the full moon showing me across country to Windleways and Amroth, leading me south to the sea. Deserted country this, a few miles from Saundersfoot and I reached the bay at midnight and lay on the short grass looking at the stars. There, with the sea beneath me, I watched the procession of the worlds; helmeted Mars beaming at the molten Jupiter, Saturn spinning in his rings of white satin, the white-dusted Heavens of worlds beyond worlds. Uranus and his servant moons, I saw, Venus making her crucifix sign; Little Bear, Great Bear, the Plough in all its regal majesty; stars and constellation dripping white light in the obliterated eye of the Mother Sun. I dreamed, eyes half closed to the beauty of night. Strange, I thought in a moment of wakefulness, that this same earth upon which I was lying was the tissue and bones of men long dead; holding the cinders of tongues
