Fell of Dark

One spoke to the other in a language I did not recognize. The other grinned and they moved away. I sat down and waited for Peter to fight his way from the bar with the drinks.

‘Where tomorrow, b’wana?’ he asked. ‘I rather fancy a bit of the briny. All these mountains can press rather close.’

‘All right,’ I said equably. ‘We’ll trot along to Seathwaite, scramble up Scafell and drop down into Eskdale. There we’ll catch a train to the seaside.’

‘A train?’ queried Peter. ‘In the middle of nowhere? And what about our walking resolution?’

‘This train is just like walking,’ I said firmly. ‘And you’ll have had enough by the time we reach it. Let’s have another drink.’

This time we managed to catch the eye of one of the barwaiters. He was only a youngster. To my surprise, Peter seemed to know him.

‘Hello, Clive,’ he said. ‘Bring us a couple of Scotches, will you? Harry, this is Clive. He’s reading Modern Languages at Bristol.’

‘And when did you strike up that acquaintance?’ I asked after the boy had left us.

‘I have my methods,’ he said, smiling. But I got the impression he was taking careful note of my reactions.

We sat drinking till midnight. It wasn’t till I stood up that I realized how drunk I was. Peter staggered against me and giggled.

‘Shall we dance?’ he said.

I wasn’t that drunk.

‘Let’s go to bed,’ I answered.

‘Don’t rush me,’ he said.

I pushed him out of the door ahead of me.

‘Can I help?’ asked Clive from the bar, a look of concern on his face.

‘No, thanks. My God! What’s that?’

It was the dinner-gong being struck with unprecedented violence. The air seemed to shake against my ear-drums.

‘J. Arthur Rank presents!’ cried Peter, and brought down the hammer once more.

I forget the exact content of our interview with the manager, a small, fleshy-faced man named Stirling. I remember walking side by side with Peter up towards what looked like a great poppy-field of faces, red with indignation, which peered down from the hotel’s two landings.

I laughed myself to sleep.

I think our fragile state in the morning might have induced us to spend another day in Borrowdale after all, but now it seemed politic to leave. We paid our bill, shouldered our knapsacks, and strode away with great dignity. Once out of sight of the hotel, however, we laughed so much we had to sit by the roadside till we recovered.

Then we set off in real earnest, to cover as much ground as we could while the sun was still relatively low. It was obviously going to be another very hot day. Soon we had removed our jackets and tied them, rolled, to our knapsacks. After only half an hour I had suggested that we should abandon our notion of going up Scafell and should merely admire it from afar. Our plan was to go up Styhead, cut across to Sprinkling Tarn and thence via Esk Hause to drop down into Eskdale.

We stopped for a rest. Ahead towered the immense crags of Great End, above us to the right was the stony sharpness of Great Gable. Welay back and looked behind us down into Borrowdale. Far below I could see the minute figures of half a dozen other walkers. A bird sang violently overhead for a minute, then was silent.

Peter stood up and peered down the slope, shading his eyes with one of his extraordinarily large hands.

‘Can’t you rest?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he said, and moved between me and the sun. For a second he seemed strangely menacing. Then quite close I heard the sound of boot on stone. Peter swung round. Approaching us were the blond-headed boy and his friends. They passed quite close.

‘Hello again,’ I said. ‘Warm enough for you?’

‘Yes indeed,’ he said.

Peter said nothing and watched them out of sight. He obviously wasn’t going to settle, so I stood up and put my knapsack on.

‘Come on,’ I said.

We didn’t stop again till we reached the top of the Hause (the top, as far as we were concerned, being the lowest point at which we could cross!), where we rested again before the descent which I knew could be more strenuous than climbing up. Peter regarded it as a kind of bonus, however, and let out little cries of excitement as he rushed away in front of me, carried on by his own weight and momentum.

I shouted at him to be careful, then laughed at myself for sounding like an old woman.

But when he got out of sight and I hadn’t caught up with him a few minutes later, I began to shout again.

‘Over here,’ came a voice from my left.

There was still no sign of Peter and a faint stirring of worry began in my stomach, and suddenly it churned violently as I caught sight of his knapsack, abandoned on the ground.

I ran up to it. It was near the edge of a deep, narrow, precipitous gully with a dried-up stream bed at the bottom. From about thirty feet down, Peter’s face looked back up at me. For a second I thought he had fallen, but almost immediately realized what he was doing. Just below him, apparently wedged in a crack in the rock-face was a sheep, its trapped legs bent at an angle that made me sick to see. It rolled its head up at Peter and let out a rattling bleat.

‘For God’s sake, Peter!’ I said. ‘Come back up! We’ll tell someone when we get down the valley.’

He looked undecided, then turned as if to start climbing. The sheep, disturbed perhaps by the movement – though I must say it looked horrifyingly like a start of protest against our leaving – twisted sharply, half freed itself and fell outwards, its hideously broken foreleg now revealed plainly, dangling like a broken branch held only by the bark.

I turned away. When I looked back Peter was beside the animal, bending over it with a thick-bladed bowie-knife (the object of much amusement earlier) in his hand.

‘For God’s sake, Peter!’ I called again.

‘I can’t just leave it!’ he snarled and stabbed down. The beast struggled violently, a great spurt of blood jetted out and ran up Peter’s arm, then it went dreadfully slack.

‘Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,’ said Peter, leaning back against the rockface and taking great gulps of air.

‘Now, please, Peter, please come up.’

He turned without demur and began to climb towards me, his face white and set. Most of the strength seemed to have left his limbs and by the time he reached the slight overhang at the top of the gully, I began seriously to doubt whether he could make it without help.

I lay down, leaned forward, took one of his hands in mine and began to pull. He seemed a dead weight.

I was so immersed in what I was doing that when a voice spoke in my ear I almost let go.

‘Hello,’ it said. ‘Want a hand?’

I turned my head and my nose almost brushed against a remarkably fine pair of breasts. Or the nearer one at least. They were covered only by a flimsy bra over which they strained voluptuously.

The girl reached over the edge of the gully and seized Peter’s other hand.