Silent Wandering: Chapter 1/1
by Sam Barnes
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The Campsite
The mountains loomed wild and majestic over Glen Dessary, a remote valley situated deep in the Scottish highlands. At the head of the valley was a tall peak known as Sgurr Na Ciche. It towered over the surrounding landscape like a once glorious pyramid that had been ravaged by time. Below this peak, nestled in the slopes leading to its foothills was a small cluster of tents, arranged randomly by their owners. The tents were well spaced out across a flat stretch of moor, that served as a base for hikers and tourists holidaying in the area.From one of these tents a lady emerged, stepping out into the crisp morning sunshine. She took a deep breath of heather scented air into her lungs, and stretched out the sleep from her arms.
Patricia Miller was nearing the end of her two week vacation, and wanted to savour every last minute of it. It had been a holiday badly needed; a break from the stresses of work, and rare chance to spend time alone with her two children. Her job and home now seemed a distant dream, made all the more remote by the natural landscape that she was immersed in. But that was why she had chosen the location: She wanted to escape—at least for a while.
Patricia walked over to her metallic green Daihatsu Feroza, passed her kids who were absorbed in a game of ‘spin until you get dizzy’ near the car. She unlocked the vehicle, climbed in, and pulled her camera from the bag on the passenger seat. The memory was nearly full, but there was enough space left for a few more shots. She flicked through the pictures she’d already taken: Her son Will standing on an arched stone bridge in slightly oversized waterproofs; Her daughter Rosie leaning against the stout trunk of an oak tree, tilting her head down and squinting to avoid the sun in her face as she tried to look into the camera; The three of them posing together in front of a slide, at the last village they had passed through before heading for the mountains. (A kind old lady had offered to take the photo for them. She had been sitting on the park bench when they came, and returned to it when they left. Pat thought that maybe she enjoyed waiting for strangers to come along, so she could have a chat with them. She promised herself to do the same when she reached her senior years.
Nestled among the normal pictures, were a batch of joke ones that Will had taken upon himself to engineer. One of Rosie pushing her lips together to form a goldfish mouth. A close up of Will’s nose, shot from below so the inside of his nostrils were visible. Finally, there was her son pulling a moony—a picture which she had been meaning to wipe, but actually found rather funny.
“Morning Mum!” Rosie stood panting in the open car door. Her chubby cheeks were flushed scarlet from the game. “Can we have breakfast now, I’m starving.”
“Just a minute chick, I’m still getting things ready. Want to help me?”
“OK.”
Will came over and together they got bread, jam and butter out from the storage box in the porch of the tent. Patricia heated some milk over a small gas stove, which the children drank sweetened with a little sugar—she added coffee granules to hers.
They sat and ate their breakfast on a blanket in front of the tent, listening to birdsong and the faint bustle of people nearby preparing for a day out. These other campers had risen early, and were already stocking their vehicles and heading out to nearby climbing or parasailing sights. Patricia wished she could do likewise, but Will and Rosie were both too young for extreme sports, which meant she would have to settle for something a little gentler in nature.
Will bit off three chunks of sandwich of in succession. “Where are we going to today?” he garbled through a mouthful of bread. He was a small boy for his nine years, despite the amount he ate.
“Sweetie, try to eat before you talk, OK? I don’t want to see you choking; the hospital is a long way from here.” She waited patiently until he swallowed his food and took a gulp of milk, then continued. “That’s better. I thought we could go swimming today, in a river nearby, what do you reckon?”
“Cool!”
“I take that as a yes then.”
Rosie lowered her plastic cup from her mouth, revealing a milk moustache on her top lip. “Can we have a picnic as well?” Her young eyes twinkled with excitement.
Pat smiled at her daughter and said: “Yes we can. But you’ll have to help me make it.”
“Yeah!” Rosie said, sloshing some of her milk over the brim of her cup.
“Well that settles it then, swimming it is.”
Will smirked at his younger sister. “We shouldn’t forget the armbands either, so you can go paddling,” he teased.
She shot him an angry look, “Shut up Will,” she said, her pride dented. But it was true, unlike her brother, she hadn’t properly learnt to swim yet. The most she could manage was a few minutes of vigorous doggy paddling before her developing coordination gave out, and she sunk like a stone.
Patricia looked at him sternly. “That’s enough Will. Your darling sister is doing very well. Aren’t you hun?” She reached over and prodded Rosie’s sulking belly, causing her to laugh against her will. “Won’t be long before you’re racing us both, then the Olympics…”
Rosie squirmed and giggled as her mother tickled her. Will put his plate down and climbed onto Patricia’s back. They were all soon rolling about in hysterics.
After breakfast they set about preparing for the outing. They packed food, bathing costumes and towels, then zipped up the door of the tent—although the likely hood that anything would be stolen was next-to-nothing. Still, Patricia felt it necessary to take every measure she could to prevent unfortunate things happening. Since she had left her husband three years ago, she had been forced into the double role of protector as well as mother. Locking away their possessions was force of habit more than anything. The fact that any willing thief could simply slit open the tent with a knife and help themselves, was insignificant. Ritual security gave her peace of mind.
Aside from being a protector, Patricia had also become skilled in many things traditionally done by men. She was now semi-proficient at car maintenance, and was fitter than plenty of her male friends, partly due to her interest in team sports and gym exercise. Her shoulders were big and well muscled, bronzed in the summer by exposure from the tank tops she wore. Despite this she managed to retain a feminine touch, mostly because of her long chestnut hair, which always took so long to groom in the mornings. She wore a stone bead necklace which she had picked up in Thailand years ago, and which reminded her fondly of her backpacking days. The cheaply purchased accessory had lasted all that time.
There were other things which she had taken to doing, that were normally the domain of dads. Although Will was now too big, she still gave Rosie rides on her shoulders; that was one of the many things she refused to let herself deny her children as they grew. She had to be strong because there was no other option. It was that or fold under the pressure of rearing, providing, and entertaining. It was a heavy load, one she had at first struggled to bear, then learned to carry.
Her life back in Cambridge was not perfect, but there was also a lot to be thankful for. She received a reasonable amount of money each month from her ex. (Unlike some fathers who refused to pay, or simply didn’t earn enough to keep up support). She had a small close circle of friends, who kept her sane when life got tough. And she had an old but spacious flat, in a pretty decent part of town. They had moved there when Will was six and Rosie was three, after they sold the family home. At first it had seemed an unfriendly and sombre space, but over the years it had been redecorated in bright clean colours, and postered with crayon drawings Will had done at school. Most importantly of all, it was a place now filled with memories, and that is what really made it a home.
Quite soon—just a couple of days in fact—Patricia would be going back to all this, and the images on her camera would be printed, and held to the front of the fridge with colourful fruit shaped magnets. The memories of today and the rest of the holiday would add to their home; would eventually find their way into well fingered albums that would help to form images of places and events that happened long ago. These pictures would document episodes that had all but dissolved in time, leaving only a faint residue behind, embodied in discoloured photographs.
Patricia was determined to give them the best in everything. Yet her striving for perfection was constantly hampered by the realities of living: A planned outing to the London science museum ruined because of a late train; Her help with Rosie’s reading was often cut short by her own fatigue, after an energy-zapping early shift. Because of these things she worried that she wasn’t doing enough to start them off in life on the right tracks. That was after all her job, and she sometimes reflectively thought, her highest priority, coming above even her own well being.
“Right, have we got everything we need?” she asked, as they climbed up into the cool interior of the Daihatsu, doors slamming. As usual there had been a rush for the front seat which Rosie had surprisingly won, and which she bravely guarded. Will reluctantly sat in the back leaning forwards into the gap between the two front seats.
“Belt up Will.”
“But it’s not even a proper road…”
“That’s all the more reason why you need your belt.”
“Dad wouldn’t have minded,” he bitterly pointed out.
“Well I’m not Dad am I? And I do mind.”
“OK. I suppose.”
What he said was true. Ewan would have let their son have his own way, and would probably have driven erratically to give them all a bit of a ‘ride’. This was one of the ways he used to win them over from her, one of his sly little tricks played underhand. ‘It’s no big deal, is it kids?’ he would have said, gaining their instant and overwhelming support. She would be left fuming; forced to accept his sheer irresponsibility, but hiding it, so the day wouldn’t be spoiled.
Over the years small actions like these had built up an anger inside her that had been impossible to extinguish. What right had he to take them from her like that, to wrench them from under her wing, with a single fell swoop? What right had he, when she had dedicated years of her existence, to nurturing and caring, feeding and cleaning; all while he had been tucked away in his cosy little study, working on his plans, emerging only for meals and ritual bedtime kisses. No right—that was what he had. And she had set about expelling the man from her very vicinity, so she could raise them as she saw fit. This meant she had to be firm with Will, and that sometimes meant being resented for a while.
Pat started up the engine and looked in her rear view mirror, not to check for traffic, (for there was none), but to scope her son. As she had expected he was sulking, looking down at his chest, fingering at the tight fabric belt which restrained him.
“Everything all right?”
He steadfastly refused to speak or look at her.
Rosie turned around and said: “Will. Mum’s talking to you.”
“I know!” He replied crossly. He looked up with water glazed eyeballs, that had not yet reached the stage of actually shedding tears, but were well on the way.
“When are we going home?,” he said.
The remark was a sharp blow against Patricia’s ego. She was sure that up until this point, they had enjoyed themselves. Even though she guessed Will was just in a sulk; as predictably as a lobster turns pink in boiling water, the words had their effect. Patricia turned of the engine and looked round at her son on the back seat.
“Why do you say that?”
He said: “Because I want to bloody go home. I’m sick of this stupid place.”
Patricia remembered when she was small, she had at times said cruel things to her own parents. Usually when she was feeling really sorry for herself, she would end up spiralling into her own misery, and would start trying to injure feelings. The thing was, although saying those things momentarily vented her anger, they had always made her feel twice as bad about herself afterwards.
“Do you really mean that?” She replied. The comment had struck her deeply. She had spent time planning for this holiday, and wanted it to be special for them all. A wave of hurt swept through her echoing Will’s look of self-pity. If he was unhappy, she was twice as unhappy. It was a homogenic connection between parent and child— exactly the kind that Ewan had never had.
“But what about the picnic, and swimming” Rosie intervened. “I don’t want to go home Mum. I want to go to the river, please. Can we stay?”
“Have you had a good time so far sweety?”
“Yeah.”
“Will?”
Her son, it seemed, couldn’t bring himself to throw another verbal punch. Instead he cried softly to himself, hanging his head down so the tear drops stained the nylon seatbelt that had started the trouble in the first place. Patricia took his silence as a humble form of submission.
“Come on cheer up will you?”
He snuffled back tears and looked at her with red rimmed eyes. He forced himself to say: “Sorry, I didn’t mean it.”
“Good, then we can finally get going,” Pat said, feeling as though a huge weight had just been lifted from her shoulders. Her father once told her that one of her best qualities was that she could forgive, and move on as though nothing had passed.
As they drove through the campsite and turned onto the bumpy track which cut down across the hillside, she thought back to her own family holidays when she was young. She remembered similar arguments taking place, also in the car, when they were all stuck together in a cramped environment. It was remarkable, she thought, the propensity that cars had for creating disagreements, over the smallest of things. Once everyone was outside and able to move freely again, all the tension would dissipate up into the air, like noxious smoke from the exhaust pipe.
She and her sister had lived a happy childhood—until they lost their parents in an accident, that was, and then they both had to grow up very quickly.
Before that they lived an exuberant lifestyle, in a gorgeous old house with a large garden, in which you could get lost and make-believe your own fairytale world. These early years seemed gold tinted, and the perfect model of family bliss, which she had tried unsuccessfully to recreate.
They used to have lots of friends who came over to play in the garden. Her father also, was a man of many connections. Successful, and sometime eccentric entrepreneurs would visit for dinner parties, in which they quaffed vast amounts of fine wines, and told anecdotes which the girls didn’t understand, but seemed to make the adults laugh anyway. These figures always lavished praise on their mother, who was a very beautiful woman, (as Pat liked to remind herself by keeping a small picture of her in her purse.)
It was in this period that she had first travelled up to Scotland, in her Father’s Volvo. After several years and several holidays, she began to fall in love with the wide open spaces and desolate coastline which made you feel very small; the abandoned hilltop forts, that were once thriving centres of defence for warring communities, but now stood with crumbling walls—guarded no longer by people, but birds of prey which circled in the skies above.
Her father would take them for long walks along the rocky beaches of Oban, and they would wander from rock-pool to rock-pool, looking for crabs and small fish, trapped by the slow stealth of the tide.
Once, she and her sister Louise had been taken out to a small island about a mile off shore. Some family friends who had retired in the area owned a small fishing boat, and had volunteered to give them a ride as a special treat.
While they were chugging out to sea, pushed onward by a single outboard motor, Mr Berry threw out some fishing lines threaded through short stout rods. The floor of the boat was soon covered with flipping mackerel, (later to be made into some delicious pate). Mr. Berry explained that he had positioned the boat under a flock of seagulls, as they knew best where the fish were. Pat was very impressed by this.
After they had caught enough, they headed onwards to the island, and tied the boat up to a concrete stairway which was built into the rocks and disappeared into the sea. They walked up the disintegrating steps onto the island, to find several grey shells of houses that were burnt out from within. It turned out that once, the island had been inhabited, but after World War Two began it had been difficult for the inhabitants to survive with rationing, and few supplies: It had been abandoned.
It was that place that embodied everything which intrigued Patricia about the area. There was a sense of history, and of great struggle against war, people and nature. Yet somehow time still kept on ticking, and the past was almost forgotten—that was until you wandered among the ghost houses of Rowan island, and got and an eerie feeling inside your stomach, because you knew they had once been homes. You could almost feel the people who had once lived there, their talk and laughter which was now prominently absent, conquered by the blustering wind which rolled in directly from the sea.
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©2006 By Sam Barnes.
sambarnes24@yahoo.co.uk