On The Black Hill (Vintage Classics) (31 page)

One sweltering day in early September, she scandalized him by driving her car in a bikini, and blowing him a kiss as she passed. In December, on purpose or otherwise, she mistimed the pill.

Benjamin stayed away from the wedding, which, at Sarah’s insistence, was held in an Anglican church. Lewis went alone, and came back from the reception tiddly, saying that even if it had been a ‘shotgun wedding’ – an expression he’d picked up from a fellow-guest – it was, all the same, a very nice wedding and the bride had looked lovely in white.

The couple went on honeymoon to the Canaries and, when they came back, brown and beautiful, Benjamin relented. She failed to charm him: he was immune to her kind of charm. What did impress him was her common sense, her grasp of money matters, and her promise to calm Kevin down.

The twins agreed to build a bungalow for the youngsters at Lower Brechfa.

In the meantime, Kevin moved in with his parents-in-law – who proceeded to run him off his feet. Either Frank’s truck needed a spare part from Hereford, or Sarah’s show-jumper had a sprain, or Eileen would have a sudden craving for kippers and send her husband off to the fishmonger.

As a result, in the last weeks of Eileen’s pregnancy, Kevin hardly had a moment for The Vision; missed the sheep-drive, the shearing and the hay harvest; and because they were so short-handed, the twins employed Theo to help.

Theo was a magnificent worker, but because he was a strict vegetarian he made a scene whenever they sent an animal for slaughter. He refused to drive a tractor or operate the simplest piece of machinery, and his opinion of the twentieth century made Benjamin feel quite modern.

One day, Lewis questioned the wisdom of living in a tent – whereupon the South African got extremely nettled and said that the God of Israel had lived in a tent; and if a tent was good enough for God, it was good enough for him.

‘I expect,’ Lewis nodded, doubtfully. ‘Israel’s a warm climate, isn’t it?’

For all their differences, Theo and the twins were devoted to one another and on the first Sunday in August, he asked them over to lunch.

‘Thank you very much,’ Lewis said.

Coming up to the skyline above Craig-y-Fedw, the two old gentlemen paused to catch their breath and mop their foreheads.

A warm westerly breeze was combing through the grass-stems, skylarks hovered over their heads, and creamy clouds came floating out of Wales. Along the horizon, the hills were layered in lines of hazy blue; and they reflected how little had changed since they walked this way with their grandfather, over seventy years before.

A pair of jet fighters screamed low over the Wye, reminding them of a destructive world beyond. Yet as their weak eyes wandered over the network of fields, plotted and painted red or yellow or green, and the whitewashed farmhouses where
their
Welsh forbears had lived and died, they found it hard – if not impossible – to believe what Kevin said: that it would all go, any day, in a great big bang.

The gate into Theo’s paddock was a mishmash of sticks and wire and string. He was waiting to greet them, in his homespun jerkin and leggings. His hat was crowned with honeysuckle, and he looked like Ancient Man.

Lewis had crammed his pockets with sugar-lumps to give to the mule and donkey.

Theo led the way downhill, past his vegetable patch, to the entrance of the yurt.

‘And you live in that?’ The twins had spoken in one breath.

‘Yes.’

‘Fancy!’

They had never seen so strange a structure.

Two tarpaulins, a green one over a black, were lashed over a circular frame of birch branches, and weighted down with stones. A metal chimney poked from the centre: the fire was out.

Out of the wind, Theo’s friend, a poet, was boiling water for rice, and some vegetables were sizzling in a pot.

‘Come on in,’ said Theo.

Squatting down, the twins crept through the entrance hole and were soon sitting, propped up on cushions, on a ragged blue carpet covered with Chinese characters. Pencils of sunlight filtered through the holes in the tarpaulin. A fly droned. It was all very tranquil, and there was a place for everything.

A yurt, Theo tried to explain, was an image of the Universe. On its south side, you kept the ‘things of the body’ – food, water, tools, clothing; on the north, the ‘things of the mind’.

He showed them his celestial globe, his astronomical tables, a sand-glass, some reed pens and a bamboo flute. On a red-painted box sat a gilded statuette. This, he said, was Avalokitesvara, the bodhisattva of Infinite Mercy.

‘Funny name,’ said Benjamin.

On the sides of the box were some lines of poetry, stencilled on in white.

‘What does it say now?’ asked Lewis, ‘I canna see a thing without my proper specs.’

Theo flicked his feet into the lotus position, half-crossed his eyes, and recited the verse in full:

Who doth ambition shun
,

And loves to live i’ the sun
,

Seeking the food he eats
,

And pleas’d with what he gets
,

Come hither, come hither, come hither:

Here shall he see

No enemy

But winter and rough weather
.

‘Very nice,’ Lewis said.

‘
As You Like It
,’ said Theo.

‘I wouldn’t like it for winter, either.’

Theo then reached for his bookstand and read his favourite poem. The poet, he said, was a Chinaman who also liked to roam around the mountains. His name was Li Po.

‘Li Po,’ they repeated, slowly. ‘That’s all?’

‘All.’

Theo said the poem was about two friends who rarely saw one another and, whenever he read it, he remembered a friend in South Africa. There were lots more funny names in the poem and the twins made neither head nor tail of it till he came to the last few lines:

What is the use of talking, and there is no end of talking,

There is no end of things in the heart.

I call in the boy,

Have him sit on his knees here

To seal this,

And send it a thousand miles, thinking.

And when Theo sighed, they sighed, as if they too were separated from somebody by thousands and thousands of miles.

They said the lunch was ‘very tasty, thank you!’ and, at three o’clock, Theo offered to walk them back to Cock-a-loftie. All three walked, in single file, along the sheep
tracks
. No one exchanged a word.

At the stile, Benjamin looked at the South African and anxiously bit his lip: ‘He won’t forget Friday, will he?’

‘Kevin?’

Friday was their eightieth birthday.

‘No,’ Theo smiled from under his hat-brim. ‘I know he hasn’t forgotten.’

ON FRIDAY THE
8th of August, the twins awoke to the sound of music.

Coming to the window in their nightshirts, they parted the lace curtains and peered at the people in the yard. The sun was up. Kevin was strumming at his guitar. Theo played the flute. Eileen, in maternity clothes, was clinging to her Jack Russell terrier, and the mule munched a rose-bush in the garden. Parked outside the barn was a red car.

Over breakfast, Theo gave the twins their present – a pair of Welsh love-spoons, linked with a wooden chain and carved by himself from a single piece of yew. The card read, ‘Birthday Greetings from Theo the Tent! May you live three hundred years!’

‘Thank you very much,’ said Lewis.

Kevin’s present had not yet arrived. It would be ready, he said, at ten, and it was an hour’s drive away.

Benjamin blinked. ‘And where would that be?’

‘A surprise,’ Kevin grinned at Theo. ‘It’s a mystery tour.’

‘We canna go till we fed the animals.’

‘The animals are fed,’ he said; and Theo was staying behind to keep an eye of the place.

‘Mystery tour’ suggested a visit to a stately home; so the twins went upstairs and came down in starched white collars and their best brown suits. They checked their watches with Big Ben, and said they were ready to go.

‘Whose is the car?’ asked Benjamin, suspiciously.

‘Borrowed,’ said Kevin.

When Lewis got into the back seat, Eileen’s terrier took a nip at his sleeve.

He said, ‘Angry little tiddler, ain’t he?’ – and the car lurched off down the track.

They drove through Rhulen and then up among some stumpy hills where Benjamin pointed out the sign to Bryn-Draenog. He winced every time Kevin came to a corner. Then the hills were less rocky; the oak trees were larger, and there were half-timbered manors painted black and white. In Kington High Street, they got stuck behind a delivery van, but soon they were out among fields of red Hereford cattle; and, every mile or so, they passed the gates of a big red-brick country house.

‘Is it Croft Castle we’re going?’ Benjamin asked.

‘Perhaps,’ said Kevin.

‘Quite a distance, then?’

‘Miles and miles,’ he said and, half a mile further, turned off the main road. The car bounced down a stretch of bumpy tarmac. The first thing Lewis saw was an orange wind-sock: ‘Oh my! It’s an aerodrome!’

A black hangar came into view, then some Nissen huts, and then the runway.

Benjamin seemed to shrivel at the sight of it. He looked frail and old, and his lower lip was trembling: ‘No. No. I’d not go in a plane.’

‘But, Uncle, it’s safer than driving a car …’

‘Aye! With your driving, maybe! No, No … I’d never go in a plane.’

The car had scarcely stopped moving before Lewis had hopped out and was standing on the tarmac, stupefied.

Ranked on the grass were about thirty light aircraft – Cessnas mostly, belonging to members of the West Midlands Flying Club. Some were white. Some were brightly coloured. Some had stripes, and all of their wingtips quivered as if they were itching to be airborne.

The wind was freshening. Patches of shadow and sunlight raced one another down the runway. On the control tower, an anemometer whirled its little black cups. On the far side of the airfield was a line of swaying poplars.

‘Breezy,’ said Kevin, his hair blowing over his eyes.

A young man in jeans and a green bomber jacket shouted,
‘Hi
, Kev!’ and strolled over, dragging his boot-heels across the asphalt.

‘I’m your pilot.’ He grasped Lewis by the hand. ‘Alex Pitt.’

‘Thank you very much.’

‘Happy birthday!’ he said, turning to Benjamin. ‘Never too late to take up flying, eh?’ Then, pointing to the Nissen huts, he asked them to follow. ‘One or two formalities,’ he said, ‘and we’re off!’

‘Aye, aye, sir!’ said Lewis, thinking that was what you said to a pilot.

The first room was a cafeteria. Above the bar was a wooden propeller from the First World War: the walls were hung with coloured prints of the Battle of Britain. The airfield had once been a parachute-training centre – and still, in a sense, it was.

A party of young men, dressed for a ‘drop’, were drinking coffee. And on seeing Kevin, a beefy fellow got to his feet, slapped his hand on his friend’s leather jacket, and asked if he was coming too.

‘Not today,’ Kevin said. ‘I’m flying with my uncles.’

The pilot ushered them into the Briefing Room, where Lewis greedily examined the notice-board, the maps marked with airlanes, and a blackboard covered with an instructor’s scribbles.

A black labrador then bounded out of the air-controller’s office, and rested its paws on Benjamin’s trousers. In the animal’s appealing stare, he seemed to see a warning not to go. He felt dizzy, and had to sit down.

The pilot put three printed forms on the blue formica table – one … two … three … and asked the passengers to sign.

‘Insurance!’ he said. ‘In case we land in a field and kill some old farmer’s cow!’

Benjamin gave a start, and almost dropped the ball point pen.

‘Don’t you scare my uncles,’ Kevin bantered.

‘Nothing could scare your uncles,’ said the pilot, and Benjamin was aware that he had signed.

Eileen and the terrier waved at the flying party as they walked across the grass towards the Cessna. There was a
broad
brown stripe down the length of the fuselage, and a much thinner stripe along the wheel-spats. The plane’s registration number was G-BCTK.

‘TK stands for Tango Kilo,’ Alex said. ‘That’s its name.’

‘Funny name,’ said Lewis.

Alex then began the external checks, explaining each one in turn. Benjamin stood forlornly by the wingtip, and thought of all the crashes in Lewis’s scrapbook.

But Lewis seemed to think he was Mr Lindbergh.

He crouched down. He stood on tiptoe. His eyes were glued to the young man’s every movement. He watched how to check the landing gear, to make sure of the flaps and ailerons, and how to test the warning horn that beeped if the plane was about to stall.

He noticed a slight dent in the tail-fin.

‘Probably a bird,’ said Alex.

‘Oh!’ said Benjamin.

His face fell even further when the time came to board. He sat in the back seat and, when Kevin fastened his safety-belt, he felt more trapped and miserable than ever.

Lewis sat on the pilot’s right, trying to make sense of all the dials and gauges.

‘And this one?’ he ventured. ‘Joystick, I suppose?’

The plane was a trainer and had dual controls.

Alex corrected him: ‘We call it the control column nowadays. One for me and one for you if I faint.’

There was a hiccough from the back seat but Benjamin’s voice was drowned by the rattle of the propeller. He closed his eyes as the plane taxied out to the holding-point.

‘Tango Kilo checks completed,’ the pilot radioed. Then, with a touch of throttle, the plane was on the runway.

‘Tango Kilo leaving circuit to the west. Estimate return forty-five minutes. Repeat, forty-five minutes.’

‘Roger, Tango Kilo,’ a voice came back over the intercom.

‘We take off at sixty!’ Alex bawled into Lewis’s ear – and the rattle rose to a roar.

By the time Benjamin opened his eyes again, the plane had climbed to 1,500 feet.

Down below there was a field of mustard in flower. A
greenhouse
flashed in the sun. The stream of white dust was a farmer fertilizing a field. Woods went by, a pond coated with duckweed, and a quarry with a team of yellow bulldozers. He thought a black car looked a bit like a beetle.