telephone wires to do poor, cracked imitations of other birds; after each effort, sneers, whistles and a kind of rhythmical creaking or scraping noise broke out. Later every afternoon as the days grew longer, the sodium lights came on on the other side of the valley, grouped in twos and threes near farms, following the line of a road. In the fading light the wooded cloughs struck diagonally across the hillside, very black and immobile. The next time he looked up it had all gone quite black, and only the orange lights were left.
FIVE
March, in the End
In the end March was useless.
We weren’t getting the weather, Bob Almanac said. Without that the year was in abeyance, its whole business untransactable. We raced into the dazzling sun of the cold mornings, looking for signs that the door was swinging open for us. But a grey light lay on the beech trees, and the walls and farmhouses had the bleached look sunlight gives them deep in the winter. One day I saw a warm tobacco-brown haze on the moors to the south of Buxton.
‘It looks nice.’
‘Wait till you get out of the car. It’ll freeze your bollocks off. What’s the capital of Louisiana?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I thought you were educated.’
The sun had always gone in by the time we got where we were going. The rock was bitter. Down in Staffordshire knuckles of it break out of the tops of the ridges in the mist, like the rocks in a Hammer film. The wind sweeps up from the Potteries over isolated farms where they are committing incest or parricide or staring into an empty cup listening to the abandoned machinery and banging gates outside.
‘What’s it like up there?’
‘Piss wet through.’
‘I mean, what’s the climbing like?’
‘All right if you’re a duck.’
Bits of hail bounced along the slanting ledges like bone dice. After half an hour it settled in. It melted on the holds and from each one a little dribble of cold water started down the dry lichenous rock like a tear. Another Saturday fucked.
Smashed black blocks of rock balanced on one another like the remains of some civilisation whose observances grew so monolithic that in the end there was nothing to do but fall back into error, decline, barbarism. Easy enough to say what sends you away from here feeling so defeated. The weather, the moor, the greenish lichen on everything. Everything turns to paste when you touch it, says Bob Almanac, disgustedly scratching his head. Even the bones are green here, dead sheep scattered empty-socketed at the bottom of a stony gully. The climbs seem wilful. You ebb away into the valley.
‘Clocks change soon then.’
‘Why?’
‘What do you mean: why? You great wazzock, the
clocks
change soon. It’ll be British Summer Time in a week!’
‘Oh. I thought you said, “Pog’s changed his tune.” ’
‘Who’s Pog?’
I ran over Black Hill every morning to keep fit. For three days the valleys were full of freezing fog. From above you could see it lying pure white and motionless in the sun. Going down into it you found it grey, without comfort. A tree stood on the interface, bare and thorny. Inside, frost covered everything: before you had run a mile it had formed in your hair and beard, on the fibres of your clothes. Distances were shortened, sounds muffled. You went on in silence and the sheep lifted their heads to stare.
I was still at the indoor wall once or twice a week. I always went on Tuesday or Wednesday, in the afternoon when I would be unlikely to find other climbers there. The problems seemed as hard as they had done in January, but I thought I was getting stronger. I wasn’t panicking so much, either, when things went wrong. After half an hour or so I would sit on the floor flexing my fingers and listening to the weightlifters who worked in an area near the wall. (Climbers had been forbidden this area because they had sneaked into it so often without paying.) They groaned like invalids. They
FIVE
March, in the End
In the end March was useless.
We weren’t getting the weather, Bob Almanac said. Without that the year was in abeyance, its whole business untransactable. We raced into the dazzling sun of the cold mornings, looking for signs that the door was swinging open for us. But a grey light lay on the beech trees, and the walls and farmhouses had the bleached look sunlight gives them deep in the winter. One day I saw a warm tobacco-brown haze on the moors to the south of Buxton.
‘It looks nice.’
‘Wait till you get out of the car. It’ll freeze your bollocks off. What’s the capital of Louisiana?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I thought you were educated.’
The sun had always gone in by the time we got where we were going. The rock was bitter. Down in Staffordshire knuckles of it break out of the tops of the ridges in the mist, like the rocks in a Hammer film. The wind sweeps up from the Potteries over isolated farms where they are committing incest or parricide or staring into an empty cup listening to the abandoned machinery and banging gates outside.
‘What’s it like up there?’
‘Piss wet through.’
‘I mean, what’s the climbing like?’
‘All right if you’re a duck.’
Bits of hail bounced along the slanting ledges like bone dice. After half an hour it settled in. It melted on the holds and from each one a little dribble of cold water started down the dry lichenous rock like a tear. Another Saturday fucked.
Smashed black blocks of rock balanced on one another like the remains of some civilisation whose observances grew so monolithic that in the end there was nothing to do but fall back into error, decline, barbarism. Easy enough to say what sends you away from here feeling so defeated. The weather, the moor, the greenish lichen on everything. Everything turns to paste when you touch it, says Bob Almanac, disgustedly scratching his head. Even the bones are green here, dead sheep scattered empty-socketed at the bottom of a stony gully. The climbs seem wilful. You ebb away into the valley.
‘Clocks change soon then.’
‘Why?’
‘What do you mean: why? You great wazzock, the
clocks
change soon. It’ll be British Summer Time in a week!’
‘Oh. I thought you said, “Pog’s changed his tune.” ’
‘Who’s Pog?’
I ran over Black Hill every morning to keep fit. For three days the valleys were full of freezing fog. From above you could see it lying pure white and motionless in the sun. Going down into it you found it grey, without comfort. A tree stood on the interface, bare and thorny. Inside, frost covered everything: before you had run a mile it had formed in your hair and beard, on the fibres of your clothes. Distances were shortened, sounds muffled. You went on in silence and the sheep lifted their heads to stare.
I was still at the indoor wall once or twice a week. I always went on Tuesday or Wednesday, in the afternoon when I would be unlikely to find other climbers there. The problems seemed as hard as they had done in January, but I thought I was getting stronger. I wasn’t panicking so much, either, when things went wrong. After half an hour or so I would sit on the floor flexing my fingers and listening to the weightlifters who worked in an area near the wall. (Climbers had been forbidden this area because they had sneaked into it so often without paying.) They groaned like invalids. They
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