The Human Touch: Chapter Seven

                                    Chapter Seven

Sammy packed his rucksack and then unpacked it, and packed it and unpacked it, and packed it and unpacked it, and Shelly came in to help him break the loop.  She was tired after arguing with John until late because he didn’t want to go. Who could blame him? He was a hardworking man. For the last five mornings he’d been up at five for work and here they were, on Saturday, up at six for a seven start.  Like every other hardworking man in Britain, he should be entitled to a lie in at the weekend, but they had Sammy, and they had ramblers, and they had a gruelling day ahead of them.

            John had tried every trick in the book to get out of it. Sometimes it wasn’t as bad, they’d have a healthy eleven o’clock start and be back by four. Sometimes he even enjoyed those days. This wasn’t one of them and Shelly felt the same trepidation that he did. It was a hard climb by anybody’s standards and John was convinced that at least one of the old biddies would be needing coronarary care by the time they reached the summit.  Shelly laughed and told him that those pensioners were inhuman and would outlast John, any day of the week. On this day of the week, Saturday, precious Saturday, John felt old.

            ‘Come on Shell, let’s give it a swerve. We’ll take Sammy and that damned dog to the beach instead, this afternoon, after a lie in, a long, long lie in and a long long soak in a hot, hot bath.  Are any of these adjectives making a difference? Just think, we can go back to bed, snuggle under the duvet, pretend that we’ve gone deaf when he stands outside screaming your name, and we can just let the world jog on for another couple of hours, what do you say?’ He’d grabbed her around the waist, but Shelly twisted out of his grip with an impatient sigh.

            Taking the hint, his mood dropped, ‘For God’s sake, you go then, if you have to. Be a martyr to him, as usual. Don’t you think that it would do him good to be told, no, now and again. Maybe Shelly, and here’s a radical idea for you to mull over while you’re huffing your arse up a sodding great mountain, just maybe, Sammy wouldn’t be half as bad as he is if his mother didn’t pander to him. A bit of hard discipline might just do the kid good.’

            Shelly continued packing her contribution to the communal picnic. She’d heard it all before, the blame, the recriminations. Before long, he’d be blaming her genes for Sammy being the way he was.

            ‘You told him that you’d go. Look at last week, we had all this before we set off and then, when we got back, you were raving to the neighbours about how good you felt.’

            ‘It’s raining,’

            ‘It’s drizzling,’

            ‘I’m tired.’

            ‘We’re all tired.’

            ‘I’ll mow the garden.’

            ‘You’ll climb a mountain.’

            ‘It’s barbaric. Let me be.’

            ‘You know what the book said.’ Sammy had quoted the same paragraph repeatedly, for days, ‘At the weekends, it is a wonderful activity for the whole family to explore the countryside with your dog. In this day and age, families are often too busy to put time aside for togetherness. There is nothing quite like having a dog, to bind a family together,’

            ‘Or blow it wide apart,’ John had finished on more than one occasion.

            ‘So that’s the best argument that you can come up with, is it? he continued, The gospel according to Barbara Cartland.’

            ‘Woodhouse.’

            ‘Whatever,’

            John struggled into his hiking boots. He knew when he was beaten. Shelly rewarded him with a hearty breakfast of bacon and eggs to keep up his strength, they were going to need it.

            They were ten minutes late. Sammy had gone into meltdown in the car because he’d convinced himself that he’d forgotten his compass. It didn’t matter that John May also had a compass.  Samuel May was convinced that he didn’t, and that worried him. They had to pull the car into a lay-by while Shelly unpacked Sammy’s bag to show him that it was there. He put it around his neck, as Shelly had suggested he do an hour earlier, but he’d been frightened that the cord would snap, and it might get lost.

            The group were assembled in the car park behind the Skiddaw Hotel in Keswick. Everybody welcomed them and made a fuss of Sammy, while Shelly muttered their apologies. There were no recriminations; the group understood what it was like. In the general melee, Carthenage was straining at his lead to greet everybody. He knew that a good walk was coming, and he was full of energy and almost bent himself double in excitement. After greeting the humans, he made a beeline for Ballard, a well behaved gun dog belonging to Ian Spencer, one of the younger men in the group. Carthenage yapped at Ballard and bowed to the floor with his head in between his front legs and his bum up in the air, he was ready to pounce. The older dog gave him a look, as though to say to him, ‘Behave yourself pup,’ and looked up at his master with devotion. Later, Ballard too would forget his manners, when both dogs would be let off their leads to run in the heather. They would chase each other for miles until they came back to the group, tongues lolling and exhausted until the next chase, five minutes later.

            They left the car park and walked the couple of miles along the lakeside to the assent of Ashness Bridge.  From the roadside, the mountain drew away sharply and within seconds they’d stepped from flatland to a steep gradient. After this initial stage of the climb, they stopped at the bridge and shared coffee from flasks and had Kendal mint cake.  Shelly loved Ashness, one of the most painted and photographed bridges in Britain. Underwhelming in its design, being a small bridge made from Lakeland stone, it is picturesque and a favourite spot for hikers and ramblers in the Lakes.

            Two minutes from the bridge is the first viewpoint. The mountain falls away in a sheer drop to the Lakeside and from a gap in the woods, directly above the eves of the Lisdoonie Hotel, Shelly stood on the very edge of the rock and gazed down to Derwent Water below. The view was stunning, and among the best that she had ever seen. Beyond the lake, rising like gatekeepers watching over Keswick, were the big boys of the Lake District. She could see Dodd Wood, nestling in the skirts of Skiddaw, the third largest of the Lakeland Mountains, at the far end of the lake. In the middle ground was Saddleback and from there one mountain led into the next to Hellvellin and Scawfell Pike, the daddy of them all.  This was one of her favourite places. She’d made love there with John once, right here in this very gap in the wood, in the days before Sammy. They were young then, reckless—in love. Making love in the open air was daring and exciting—these days, sex of any kind was a rare occurrence, over and done with quickly, leaving only a leaking mess to be cleaned up and a vague feeling of dissatisfaction to be buried. She smiled to herself, remembering the happy times and then warned John to make sure that Sammy kept Carthenage well away from the edge.

            The next four miles of the walk were merciless, but the reward was sublime.  Sheep grazed the land and despite both Carthenage and Ballard being well trained, they were put on their leads to obey the countryside law. Tinky-boo, the old miniature poodle, belonging to the equally old Esther Faye, was carried half of the time by one of the younger members and posed no problems.  When they first met, Carthenage had tried to play with Tinky-boo but the canine old lady, pulled her lip back to expose rotten teeth and gnarled gums. Carthenage decided that she was no fun. He’d taunt her every so often, just for the sport of seeing her snarl, but other than that, he respected her age and left her alone. 

            They trekked through the fells to the little café that felt as though it was at the very top of the world.  Sammy told everybody the story of Watendleth and the urban myth about how it was named. They already knew, but let Sammy tell them anyway. The story went that William Wordsworth had walked this very trail. Like Shelly, and millions of others, he was blown away by the beauty of the scenery. Apparently, the great Lakeland poet had a lisp and, while having tea in the café, had said to the proprietor, ‘What endleth blith to live in a plath like thith.’ From that day forward the name had stuck and the tiny outcrop of dwellings, built for only two families, had been called Whatendleth, ever since.  

            Sammy went on to tell them that since the sixteen hundreds, the smallholdings and farmlands had been owned by the Tysons and the Richardsons. Shelly had been to school with one boy from each family. There was no public transport, nor taxi’s laid on five miles up a mountain, and summer and winter, the boys either had one of their older family members bring them up and down on the tractor, or they had to walk to the main road. Shelly remembered them being snowed in for weeks on end, and, even on good days, they’d often wander into lessons at ten or half past. They were simple people, who farmed their land and tended their animals; nothing had changed in over five hundred years. Shelly envied them their simplicity.

            They had tea at the café, solely to give the owners their custom. Birds flew down and fed at their tables. Pigs, ducks, chickens, sheep, and geese roamed freely and made up to the visitors for morsels of cake. Carthenage yapped at them, but they barely stopped long enough to give him a baleful look, they’d come up against bigger and better dogs in their time. This baby was no threat to them. One of the geese hissed and spread his wings and the pup went into raptures of delighted barking.

            After taking tea at the café, they wandered to the tarn behind the property. It was there that they laid out their fine spread; everybody had contributed something delicious to the picnic. The rain had long since been beaten down by a forceful sun and the scents of early summer blew over them on a light breeze. The old ladies and gentlemen of the group refused the offer of the picnic table bench, and gamely lowered themselves to the blanket on the grass, along with everybody else.

            Few people progressed from Whatendleth Point, they would make the trek up that far, and then retrace their steps back. One road in, one road out. From here on, the land was inaccessible to cars, but walkers could continue through hard countryside to drop into Borrowdale seven miles further on. It was John who suggested to the group that some of them continue onwards. It wasn’t twelve o’clock yet; they still had ten hours of daylight. He wanted to see the slate caves, one of which, Mulligan’s Cave, was rumoured to be haunted by a giant dog, who roamed the quarries at night looking for humans to feast on. Shelly saw that, despite his surly manner that morning, John was enjoying himself. He liked being with the mixed group of men. He had formed friendships with them over the weeks that they had been rambling, both physically and verbally, together. Shelly was pleased for him and smiled over his tantrum that morning. She knew that when they got home, John would be buzzing about his day almost as much as Sammy. The women tended to group together talking gardening and recipes, while the men philosophised and put right the wrongs of the world, they talked cars and football and politics. They were a sexually divided group, with each gender comfortable with their stereotypical roles.

            Esther, Hilda, and her sister, Rose declined the offer to continue and opted to go back the way that they had come. Henry Grayson, the elderly club secretary, used the excuse of escorting the ladies to safety to take the easy way down. Shelly suspected that he’d had enough, too. She wished that she could join them, but Sammy wanted to go on with his father and the fitter members of the group, so she had little choice but to trudge along. Martha Coulton, a brisk lady in her fifties, said that she had nothing better to do and as it was such a glorious day she’d keep Shelly Company. The men going forward with them were John, Ian Spencer, Gordon Athersmith, Bill Sanderson, and Martin Bott, a young English teacher from the same school that Shelly had attended, years ago. Having filled up on sandwiches and pork pie with egg in the middle, sausage rolls and Victoria sponge, the group were well fed and in excellent spirits. Shelly was glad to see Sammy so happy and decided that there would be time enough to worry about the blisters and aching limbs when she got home. The walk may half kill her, but the scales would make it all worthwhile.

            She was trailing behind with Martha. They were walking at their own pace, leaving the men, boys, and dogs to race ahead. She would have seen Sammy’s distress building had she been at the front with him, she might have avoided the calamity, but she was deep in conversation with Martha about clematis and wisteria when her son wandered off and went missing in the middle of the Lakeland mountains.