The Night Following

All at once Evelyn’s eyes began to run with sore, gluey tears and the baby heaved inside her stomach with a kick that she felt almost in her throat. She would have cried out but the kick startled her, and then suddenly she started to shake uncontrollably. She went on staring and staring down the hillside but now it was like gazing through a dirty window and she couldn’t see anything. It began to rain, in hard, spitting drops that felt like hail or grit, and Evelyn went on gazing. She tipped her face up to the sky wishing it would pull her up into itself until she disappeared, or that it would rain down hard enough for her to be dissolved. She was so breathless she felt faint. The world seemed to be turning dark, as if the rainstorm were blowing her before it, sweeping her westward to the very end of this bright day on the hillside and straight down into the night, where she would be left alone and lost in complete darkness, with the wind howling and the rain pouring down. She squeezed her eyes tight shut and sobbed, and it seemed her crying would never, ever stop. She was frightened of looking again at the sheep gate for fear of seeing them kissing once more, their colours entwining and blending, but when she opened her eyes there was nothing to see at all.

It was much later when they led her off the hillside. They found her quite some way from their picnic spot, huddled and shaking and soaked through. Paul and Daphne each took one of her arms and there were other people around, all trying to help, though Evelyn was so dazed she could not take in very much or answer all the questions she was being asked. She was chilled to the bone. They led her down slowly, their voices gentle and with none of their usual bantering and teasing, so that she could sense their deep, unspoken concern. Daphne and Paul got her to the pub, where the landlord and his wife could not have been kinder. They were found a quiet room and blankets were fetched, as well as a cup of tea to go with the glass of brandy that the landlord said would be very warming. After a while a doctor arrived and announced that she was suffering from shock and mild exposure. He wasn’t qualified to comment on the sightless eyes but shock could do strange things especially to pregnant women, he said, and they would probably be as right as rain after a good night’s sleep. The baby would come to no harm, babies were tough little creatures, and that was the main thing, wasn’t it?

Months later Evelyn heard from Daphne, who got it from Paul, that everybody was saying the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass had gone down as a great day by all accounts, even a historic one. And I was there, she thought to herself. I was there, but really, I missed it. The violent confrontation between the walkers and the keepers had occurred further away, past Kinder Downfall and deeper into William Clough, and all up along the top of Ashop Head. People had been swarming all over the place, charging around and knocking one another about with sticks and what have you. And all, Evelyn thought privately, all for a few acres of heathland.

For her the day had drawn to a confusing and unhappy close with the bus ride home. She sat shivering and exhausted in blankets while excited singing and shouting went on around her. Daphne sat next to her and patted her hand from time to time and asked if she was all right. She nodded and kept her eyes shut. No looking out the window this time. Instead she let her mind’s eye wander over the images of the day. She tried to memorize its details, knowing they were now no more than things she had seen once but never would again, except as mementos in an album, memories of a day on Kinder Scout etched deep on her heart, that would devour the rest of her life. All she had left now was what she brought with her down from the hillside: the cold and the beauty and the dark, one present, one vanished, and one waiting up ahead for her.

Dear Ruth

Re: legs.

Nurse whats-her-name and the other one came together today, ominous in itself and that was before I saw their faces. One came to the front door, the other was prying round the back. It doesn’t do anybody any good getting woken up like that, all in a fright. I’d nodded off in conservatory. They startled me, and that floor’s more slippery now. What are you using on it, they demanded to know. One of them was sliding her foot along it. You must be using something on it.

Told them to ask you, cleaning products being your department, and got the pursed lips. One wanted to go into the soft talk but I wasn’t having any. Treating me as if I was demented, I won’t have it. Mutterings about Community Psychiatric Services again, which I ignored as per.

The other one sits down and starts making notes. Home care review, she says. Goals, paperwork, drives them all mad. The first one gets me back in my chair and pinned down and does the legs. She launches into a lecture. Polishing the floor may be “unadvisable” as combo of wax and ceramic tiles can be extremely slippery. And there is such a thing as overdoing housework and would I please heed earlier advice about resting with legs up, and bear in mind risk of breaking skin on shins and infecting the ulcers if I’m charging around the place. Obviously a waste of breath on my part to try and explain again about you and the housework, they just don’t want to hear the facts.

Pigheaded young woman, actually-she didn’t take kindly to being corrected. The word is INadvisable not UNadvisable, I took some pleasure in pointing out, and she gave me one of those “who’s a naughty boy” looks and said there was no need to shout. I wasn’t shouting, which I also pointed out.

Actually the IN not UN business is more your kind of remark than mine, though you generally saved that kind of thing for later instead of coming out with it at the time. But it felt like it was you in my brain, and you talking. Don’t recall you ever tripping anyone up on this particular example, but it was you, all right.

I’m glad you’re speaking to them. I suppose you have to do it through me, at least for now. I wish you’d speak to them more. I wish you’d speak to them about my legs. Wouldn’t you think in this day and age they’d be able to do something? Other than squeezing them into elastic bandages, I mean, and that gunk they smear on.

You could get them to understand. You could get them to see I can’t be doing with the discomfort 24 hours a day and if I take the bandages off it’s only because I need a respite. They should try it for themselves, they’d soon see what I’m talking about. And if I forget to put the bandages back on I can’t see that affects anyone but me so why the bullying. I don’t care for the tone they’re taking. Oh yes they’ve got a job to do but I’m more than twice their age.

They’ve no right using words like uncooperative and threatening me with hospital.

Arthur

OK-trying to obey orders of Bossyboots and Co. went to sleep at some point once they’d gone and after I woke I just lay there, still resting. Keeping legs up. Thinking and thinking thoughts of Overdale. I tried talking to you but I don’t think you were in the vicinity, quite. It was on the early side for you. Still light.

So instead I read some more of your story about Overdale. You take me right back there. I had some pictures fished out over the floor already, hadn’t looked at them in years.

And I found this, your poem with the photograph.

Overdale

I remember the white waterfall,

a liquid horsetail spilling over white rocks,

wires of spray silvering the white air,

making rainbows and wetting our faces.

I suppose you meant to finish it someday. Was that all you remembered, the waterfall?

I’ve taken the liberty and come up with a second verse. Here goes:

We ate lunch out of flapping paper bags.

We tried to open cheese triangles with gloves on

and the girls’ hair stuck to their noses.

One boy’s juice carton waltzed off with the wind

And you gave him hell about the environment.

Does that scan or whatever it’s meant to do? Della says poems don’t have to rhyme, just as well, I haven’t the talent, don’t claim to. In fact if it’s a poem at all, I don’t see why.

But A for effort?

Here’s the photograph. Taken by that lad mad about cameras, came two years running. Forget his name, was it Lee, he got us the prints, wouldn’t take the money, it was to say thank you, he said.