Dorothy Wordsworth
Through the village, over a stone bridge, along the river path, the air misty and muffled as if the valley had not quite woken either. She was aware of the sound of her own breathing, unfamiliar birdsong, water dripping and spattering, everything reeking of petrichor, and when nature’s symphony got boring, she put in her earbuds and listened to a podcast. It felt sacrilegious, listening to cynical urban voices among all this beauty but there was no one here to judge or make her twist her head to look at some side-blown tree or unusual rock, and she felt a sense of self-containment, contentment even.
The plan had formed in the night, writhing and fidgeting in an unfamiliar bed at the thought of the day ahead. The taxi back to St Bees would feel like surrender, and then there was the long drive to York, the demands from Cleo that she change her life. Hardly a holiday, and surely there was a better way to spend the day. Online maps were plentiful and she’d screen-grabbed these and emailed them to her phone. Overcast but brighter later, a 20 per cent chance of rain. Seventeen miles seemed a lot even on flat ground, three thumbs at least, but wouldn’t it be funny to beat Michael to it, to be waiting in the hotel bar in Patterdale? Yes, yes, tricky ground coming down into Easedale but fine views over Eagle’s Crag, or whatever it was these people said to each other. She’d showered, pulled on stiff clothes, stashed the free shortbread in case of emergency. In the dim breakfast room, she’d eaten a large bowl of tinned grapefruit segments, a sachet of crispbread, pale strawberries as hard as apples, typing a text one-handed to Cleo.
Am walking, go without me! Talk soon and thank you x
At Reception she’d laced her boots excessively tightly as if preparing for amputation, settled the red beanie on her head and hung her compass around her neck like a St Christopher.
Inevitably the self-satisfaction couldn’t last. Hopping over streams began to lose its Christopher Robin charm as they became more treacherous, and she was aware of small dramas starting inside her boots, toes rubbing in new ways, the beginning of a blister, a toenail digging into flesh. The battery on her phone was draining and she imagined explaining to Mountain Rescue that she’d lost her way because of podcasts. Gasping, cursing at the top of the ascent, she checked her map. Half a thumb. Resentfully, she looked back at the view, recognised the solitary figure and found herself unexpectedly pleased. Choosing a comfortable boulder, she braced her feet across the path, removed the hat and adjusted her hair. There was plenty of time to come up with a witty greeting but …
‘Fancy meeting you here!’ she said.
Through gasps, he managed, ‘Quite a coincidence.’
‘I was going to jump out on you, like a dandy highwayman. Steal your Thermos and your granola bars.’
‘Your wine gums or your life!’
‘Hang on, you’ve got wine gums?’
He looked to the sky. ‘Not necessarily,’ he said, mock-innocent, and they stood for a moment, just smiling until ‘I thought you were going home.’
‘Yes, couldn’t face it. And it’s against my religion to let a hotel room go to waste. But I don’t want to disturb you, if you’re communing with nature.’
‘No, no, I’ll commune with you.’
‘We could walk a small distance apart, like we’ve had a row.’
‘No need. Unless you’re still angry with me.’
‘No, no. I’ve forgiven you.’
‘Okay. Let’s see how we get on.’
There was a momentary scuffle as they arranged themselves on the narrow path. ‘Is it the same as the Underground? Should I stand on the right?’ and then they were walking side by side.
‘I like this,’ he said, indicating the large compass that dangled uselessly around her neck.
‘This? That’s for getting the lid off beer bottles,’ she said, miming it, then holding the compass up to her ear like a mobile phone. ‘Hello? Hello? No reception!’ and that, she thought, was quite enough mime for now.
‘How are you navigating?’
‘Sun, moon, stars. No, I sent the map to my phone. I thought I might beat you there,’ she said. ‘But no chance.’
‘How was it, walking by yourself?’
‘Takes some getting used to. I mean, if I walk alone in London I usually have my keys bunched in my hand but here, well, you’re still a little nervy but at least you’d hear them coming. Except I was listening to podcasts. Is that allowed? Or do the National Trust hurl you off Helvellyn?’
‘I think you should do whatever you want.’
‘I mean, I like nature, but there’s a lot of it. I bet even William Wordsworth, every now and then, thought it was all a bit much. I bet there were times when he and Dorothy must have been like, well, we’ve seen the chaffinches and the beavers and the shady bower, now tell me your top five favourite pageants.’
He laughed again and she realised how much she enjoyed making him laugh. ‘Top five satirical engravings,’ he said.
‘Yeah, top five Odes about Revolutionary France. Dorothy, tell me your top five symptoms of syphilis.’
‘Or gout.’
‘Pray, William, tell me your most embarrassing experience on laudanum.’
‘I’m sceptical Wordsworth ever wrote about beavers, though.’
‘I’m sure he did. It’s an easy rhyme for one thing.’
‘Their house is in Grasmere if you want to pop in.’
‘No, I’m okay. I love reading. I’ll read anything but I’ve never really got poetry. Fiction’s just there, but poetry you have to seek out and there’s always this voice in my head saying, Oh, look at you, with your little slim volume. I understand the words individually but it doesn’t go in, just sits on the top. I remember reading that one about Tintern Abbey at school but it went over my head, all that stuff about ecstasy.’
‘The sublime.’
‘Exactly, the sublime. Is it the same as “outdoorsy”?’
‘I think it’s more than that. Do you get the sublime in London?’
‘You do but only in certain postcodes. It’s like school catchment areas, pushes prices up. I’m still not sure what it is, though.’
‘Well, I’m a geography teacher so not my brief. But we did learn “Daffodils” at school and I remember the ending. Something-something the bliss of solitude, something “heart with pleasure fills and dances with the daffodils”. And I think that’s the sublime. A heart filled with pleasure.’
‘There’s a man who definitely wouldn’t listen to a podcast.’
‘Maybe it changes when you get older. You put a kid in the most exquisite place, clear sky, mountains, wild seas, and they still can’t wrench their mind off the phone or the spot that’s coming up on their chin or the boy they fancy. But you get to a certain age …’
‘And you think about what?’
‘I don’t know. Time passing, mortality, your place in things, how insignificant you are.’
‘Me? Specifically me?’
‘Yes, just you.’
‘It does sound a bit depressing.’
‘Or the antidote to depression. At least, that’s the theory.’
‘Does it work?’
He thought for a moment. ‘We’ll find out,’ and she thought she might pursue this, but it didn’t seem the time. Instead they took in the view. The last of the mist had gone now and they could see the Easedale valley opening before them, a long, gentle ascent, the route following the gill to a patchwork of baize-green fields, the edges of a town. Above them the sky still hung heavy and low but there was a suggestion of the sun, like a torch shone through a blanket.
‘See, that’s my problem. I’m still thinking about the spot on my chin.’
‘And the boy you fancy?’
‘Not any more,’ and she thought he might pursue this too, but they began to walk again.
‘How old are you, Marnie? If you don’t mind me …’
‘I’m thirty-eight.’
‘Really?’
‘Because I’m such a young gazelle? I actually don’t mind looking the age I am.’
‘Perhaps I’m not a very good judge. Unless it’s deep time. If you were a mountain range …’
‘Ninety billion years, you say?’
‘Because you don’t look a day over seventy-five billion.’
‘Well, that’s the special creams,’ she said, and thought, Listen to us, sparking away. ‘How old are you?’
‘Forty-two,’ he said.
‘Can I just say you absolutely do look at least forty-two.’
‘Thank you!’
‘That’s all right. We both look like what we are.’ It was true, he did look a little careworn, though it was galling that men could get away with that stuff. No one would ever say, ‘Wow, she lookedcareworn last night.’ Perhaps this was what he was going for, pleasingly unkempt, though it was hard to imagine him going for anything deliberately. Beards, for instance, were meant to be metropolitan, and Michael looked like someone who’d spent a year filming puffins in the Hebrides.
‘Well, maybe it will all kick in when you’re forty,’ he said.
‘The depression?’
‘A love of nature. And gardening.’
‘I don’t have a garden. I’ve had a little cactus for years but I honestly can’t tell if it’s dead or not. And I’ve got two window boxes but they’re like little dioramas of no man’s land.’
‘No thoughts of moving to a small farm, then?’
‘Absolutely not. I’d top myself, first wet afternoon. Neighbour would come around with a hotpot or some wild garlic and I’d be gone.’
‘You’re a city girl.’
‘Oh, I don’t particularly like the city either.’
‘But this isn’t so terrible, is it?’
They paused a moment. The path was firmer and wider now, the lake visible between the trees, the end of the morning’s walk in sight. If it had been a finer day, this would have been spectacular but even so … ‘Is this,’ she said, ‘is this the sublime?’
‘Does your heart with pleasure fill?’
‘It’s very pretty,’ she said, and took a photo with her phone.
From the fells to their right they heard the sound of a horn, a rising note, corny and absurd, like something from Robin Hood. ‘What’s that?’ and as they stopped to look, three figures in flat caps strode over the crest, walking sticks in hand. ‘Sheep farmers? Are they herding sheep?’ The horn sounded once again and then the most extraordinary sight.
Dogs, a pack of dogs, fifty or sixty began to pour over the crest of the hill. Instinctively, she felt the city-dwellers’ fear of trespass, as if she was being hunted down, and she held on to Michael’s arm as the hounds rushed towards them. Sixty, seventy dogs of all shapes and sizes, joining the path then pouring in a torrent until they were upon them, then moving on, indifferent, followed down the hill by figures with whistles and sticks, a neat little brass horn, almost a toy, in the woman’s hand. The valley was alive with dogs, as if pouring out from secret tunnels, and she couldn’t help but laugh, there were so many, hounds and terriers and lurchers, some shaggy and scrappy, some sleek, all unnervingly silent as they streamed around their legs, urged on by the farmers, who also passed them now, sure-footed and imperious in leather boots and tweed. Marnie stood still until the last of a hundred dogs had passed and then they looked at each other and began to laugh. ‘Honestly,’ she said, ‘the countryside, it’s fucking mad.’