A Pen y ffrwd Love Story Part Three

I come to slowly.  There is noise all around me, clattering, the faint whine of machinery, unfamiliar voices. Strange chemical smells. The air too warm. An annoying clicking. For a second I cannot think where I am, and then like a blow the memory hits me.  I wake up, mumbling, come back, come back.

Jen is sitting in a chair next to my bed, knitting. Some sort of spirit guide come to take you to the other side, was it ? I glare at her, how dare she talk about him like that !  But she carries on blithely.  Near death experiences, people say they’re very realistic.

I slump back into the bed.  I cannot believe I turned him down, out of some cowardly feeling that I wasn’t ready.  Like someone who would rather die in a burning building than take a leap of faith and jump into life. 

They send me back home after a week. I have carers, bottles of tablets, sheets of instructions. No privacy.  No dignity.  I have chosen to be dragged back from the brink of death to eke out a pitiful existence on the brink of life. My niece comes from Yorkshire and says she has found a care home near her.  Staying in my old farmhouse is apparently out of the question.  It will have to be sold to pay the fees. Yorkshire !  How will he ever find me up there ?  There may be other points at which our two worlds intersect, but there is no way of knowing where they are.  If he ever forgives me and comes looking for me again, I know it will be where the magic of Pen y ffrwd brought us together for so many years.  I will need that magic again.

My niece leaves, driving off in her expensive car.  I wave out of the window.  Two hours until the next carer comes.  Time was when I could run there in ten minutes, walk it in twenty, gallop it on Khyber in five.  Now I know it will take me an hour to get to our spot on the hillside.  If I sit there in the swaying grass and think of him, will he come to me ?  It occurs to me that even if I never meet him again, I know I still have to go there.  I want the last thing I see in this world to be the sunlight and the shadows of the clouds chasing each other across the heather and rocky top of Pen y ffrwd.

I put my will on the kitchen table. Everything is left to the animal charity Khyber came from. Then I let myself out, lock up and leave the big old iron key under a stone by the front door. For so many years that key has unlocked this door, longer than my lifetime.  Maybe it will for many lifetimes more, and I will be able to come back and see.  I smile at the thought.

I drag myself up the bridle path.  Luckily it is evening and I see nobody else.  My chest feels like an iron band is around it, pains shooting down my left arm.  My breath makes a strange rasping noise. I frequently stop to lean against a post or a fence to save my strength, touching the tiny gold horse charm at my neck. 

I make the final slight rise with a great effort, and there he sits, his back to me, facing the sun setting over valley.  His hood is pulled up over a head drooping with sadness, his arms clasping his knees.  Although I make no sound he turns round and his face is lit with joy at the sight of me.  I push through the waist high rippling grass which breaks in waves about me, as if I were walking to him out of the sea.  He jumps to his feet, throws back his hood and comes to meet me, smiling and holding out his hands.  I totter towards him, the very last of my strength gone, and he catches me in his arms as the old me crumples to the ground like a suit of discarded clothes.

Down the hillside there is shouting, car doors slam. I can hear them calling my name. A dog is barking excitedly and it echoes round the valley.  He steps back and scans my face anxiously, but I shake my head gently to show him that life has no more hold on me.  I look down at our joined hands and the light is falling through them.  The pain in my chest and my arm has gone.

I feel the faintest shadow of a tickle on my face. It is Benji, Brian and Jen’s collie. He licks the face of the me who now lies on the ground and frantically wags his tail, playing his game of let’s-wake- Cerian-up.  In spite of everything I can’t help laughing at him.  My lover puts his head on one side and looks at me, and I point at Benji and then at my cheek. He seems alarmed.  If the thread is not yet broken … but I squeeze his hand and give him a look that means I have no doubts this time.  I hear a deep, contented, humming sound like a bee inside a flower, and I realize I have never heard his laugh before. 

We drift away, without moving. Poor Benji sits down, throws his head up, and lets out a dismal howl.  

The sounds of the wind rushing through the pines further down the valley, the tall grass rustling around us, the voices coming up the hillside, and the kites keening high overhead as they ride the evening thermals over Pen y ffrwd – it all fades slowly away. And I know we are together and I have broken free.