Granite
“We need to stop now,” I said. Dad’s leg was playing up.
“It’s a twelve mile hike,” he said.
“You’re not seriously going to limp across the Lake District in the dark?”
“Shut up, Tom,” he said. So I did.
An hour later we stopped. Dad was breathing heavily. He ran the Combined Services Cross Country in 1953, but the days when he could do a four-minute mile were long gone. He had difficulty climbing stairs now.
“We’re lost, aren’t we?” I said.
“Give us the bloody rucksack, Tom.”
“Aren’t we, Dad?”
“Just pass it here.”
He put down his metal walking stick. I passed the rucksack containing the tent, the sleeping bags, the Primus stove, the cooking tins, the baked beans, the Kendal Mint Cake. He took out a torch from a side compartment.
“Give me the compass,” he said.
“What compass?”
“The one in your pocket.”
“You mean the one in my pocket that isn’t in my pocket?”
“The one I gave you.”
“You didn’t give me a sodding compass.”
“Well I meant to.”
Alzheimer’s as well as a dodgy leg.
“So no compass, no natural light, no idea - what’s the plan Stan?”
Dad wasn’t called Stan; he was called Peter. I was winding him up.
“Don’t be facetious,” he said.
“I’m not,” I said. It was starting to rain.
“I suggest we keep going,” he said.
He put up his hood, tied the string so his glasses poked through like a periscope, and shone the torch.
“You carry the rucksack then,” I said.
“I can’t.”
“You can.”
“I can’t, we agreed. ”
He dug his stick into the terrain, and forged ahead. I overtook, turned to face him.
“If we’re going on you’re carrying it, my back’s knackered,” I said.
“Don’t swear,” he said, stepping up the hill to pass me.
“And your leg’s buggered,” I said, sidestepping to block him.
He stopped, waited for me to give way, and when I didn’t, shone the torch in my face and said: “Give it here.”
Two grown men squaring up in a national park: If I thought we’d see other hikers I’d have let it go, but no one in their right mind would have been halfway up a mountain, after dark, on a wet Saturday in June. They were all tucked up in bed, probably, or wrapped in their summer jumpers, legs entwined on the sofa.
Dad struggled with the rucksack. I was certain he’d give up so we could pitch the tent, but he tightened the straps and set off. About two steps. Maybe one and a half. He fell hard on the granite. Cracked his head. Adrenalin leaked through my body. There was blood on his face. Was it a nosebleed, a cut head, where was the blood coming from? I cradled him. His glasses were skewed. I was frightened he’d fall apart if I let go. “There’s first aid in the left compartment,” he whispered. I fumbled with the green tin. “This from your National Service?” I asked. He didn’t answer. I untied the hood, dabbed at his forehead with cotton wool, and found a one-inch gash. It needed stitches. For now I applied antiseptic and a plaster, while his body shivered in my arms. I sat him next to his stick, put the tent up, and rolled out the sleeping bags. He insisted on setting up the Primus to boil water for tea, said he felt better. We drank it inside the tent, the torch resting on ‘My Father the Hero,’ a birthday book I’d bought him from Amazon. Rain spotted the canvas.
‘Nice tea,’ I said. It tasted like wet sugar.
‘It ‘s not bad, is it?’ He sat on a groundsheet, nursing the enamel mug, dried blood stuck to stray bits of werewolf hair above his beard line, the pock-marked, bulbous nose belying his teetotal disposition. After tea the rain stopped and we climbed into our sleeping bags. Dad started to snore. I dreamt of shoving my sleeping bag right down his throat, dumping his body in Coniston Water, running away to a life of luxury.
The next morning I woke to the smell of gas, unzipped the tent, and there he was minding the Primus like a war invalid, green anorak, khaki trousers, bandaged head. He handed me a mug of baked beans.
“I made a tourniquet, should do the trick, and I’ve checked the Map. I reckon we’re nine miles short of the summit,” he said.
“We’re not going Dad, we need to get you to hospital.”
“Don’t be dramatic Tom, it’s just a scratch”
“Seriously Dad, it could be infected”
“This hike is my treat and I intend to honour it,” he said.
“And you need to test for concussion,” I persisted.
“Rubbish”, he said, packing the Primus. I put down the beans and unpegged the guy ropes. “I’ll finish those if you’re done with them,” he said, pulling a spoon from his three-in-one cutlery set. I passed him the cold beans.
“Remember when I took you to Grasmere? You were ten I think,” he said.
“I don’t remember,” I said.
“You wet the bed at the youth hostel, couldn’t find the toilet, climbed into the wrong bunk and pissed in it.”
“I can’t have done, “ I said. “I stopped wetting the bed when I was eight.”
“ ‘This bed isn’t even made,’ you shouted, at the top of your voice, woke the whole hostel. I picked you up, wiped you down with a towel, and put you back in the right bunk.”
He must have taken me on at least a dozen hikes before I hit big school. I don’t know why I forgot. All I remember was my heart thumping when he came home from work. The footsteps on the stairs, the cuff when he caught me watching telly instead of doing homework, the night he threw my A-level geography file against the wall and broke the spine because I said he couldn’t cook. That’s when I hit him. His cheek burst like a ripe peach. He told the office he walked into a tree.
Sunday was milder, with a light breeze to take the edge off. The nerves in his leg were better for the rest and, jabbing his stick hard into the ground like a cross-country skier, he kept up a brisk pace. After six miles we sat by a stream. He took off his anorak to sit on, rolled up his shirtsleeves. He’d undone the top button and there were droplets of sweat on his loose neck skin. I handed out the mint cake while he sang ‘Donna Nobis Pacem’ in a shaky baritone. He’d learnt it at the ‘Cambridge University Congregational Society,’ where Mum and he first met, before ‘The Female Eunuch’ took her on a different path. We sang it during car journeys, Mum and Dad sharing the driving, me lying on the back seat.
Mum died at Easter. She was seventy-eight so she’d had a good innings. I didn’t see her die, I saw her dead, mouth open like a Goya painting. I didn’t cope well afterwards, which put a strain on my marriage. When Jane moved in with the head of department, I left my English teaching post and went to stay with Dad, to recuperate.
Cloud drifted over the sun. I wrapped the mint cake and tucked it in the pocket with the first aid. Dad zipped his anorak, put on his leather gloves.
“Give me the rucksack,” he said.
“What for?” I said.
“I want to take it on the last leg,” he said.
“I’m sorry, I won’t allow it,” I said, grabbing the rucksack.
He hooked a stray strap with his stick.
“Let go, Tom,” he said, grabbing the strap with his free hand.
“No, you let go,” I shouted, pulling my strap in the opposite direction. The rucksack swayed between us while we fought a clumsy ‘tug of war.’ Dad was thrown from side to side, feet barely scraping the ground, like a child arm-swung by mummy.
“Let go or you’ll pull the straps off,” he shouted. I dragged him down the hill. He stabbed his stick into the grass to stop the momentum. I held on, determined not to give in, until he let go, propelling me into the stream, rucksack and all.
“That’ll serve you right,” he said.
I pulled out a sweater to dry myself, and helped him on with the damp rucksack. For the next couple of miles we walked in silence. As the sun set behind the valley, we could see the summit in the distance. I began to talk about Mum’s funeral, about fetching extra chairs from the scout hut, about the Mayor in his gold chain, about Dad singing “Let it Be” when they carried the coffin. A little further on he started whistling the tune to himself. I joined in with the words while he harmonized a third above. We finished the chorus on top of Scafell Pike.
“I can’t see anything,” I said.
“I can,” he said.
“You can’t, Dad, you’ve got cataracts,” I said.
“I’m glad we kept going,” he said.
I was trying to see our car in the car park.
“Let’s have a hug, son,” he said, and opened his arms, stick dangling from the wrist strap. He looked awkward, with the Army Surplus rucksack dwarfing his frame. I moved towards him, more out of filial duty than anything else. At that moment his leg buckled, like one of those foldaway bikes commuters bring on the tube. The rucksack pulled his weight forwards, so he fell on me and we ended up scrabbling on the granite.
“We’re like a pair of hippies, having sex on a mountain,” I said.
“Shut up,” he said. I wrapped my arms around him, they met at the elbows. I was surprised how narrow he was inside the anorak. Tears dripped on my face. He wiped them with his leather hands, like a Daddy bear. The glove smell reminded me of Cortina holidays to Wales with Mum and the Greenwoods. We used to play football on top of hay bales until our legs prickled red raw. I lifted him off and we put the tent up together. Too tired, we fell asleep.
I was the first to wake. In silence, apart from the birds. The sun warmed the tent. I didn’t want to turn my head towards his sleeping bag. He should have been outside making tea, or beans, on the Primus. That’s how I knew. I switched on my phone and walked to the valley until I got a reception. They took him away in a helicopter, still in his sleeping bag, hooking him on a stretcher, and lifting him into the sky.
