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Making a Hash
She was planning to make corned beef hash for tea, the meal she’d promised to cook in return for last night’s dinner at the pub. It was years since she had last made it; it was one of the recipes she remembered her mam teaching her in the kitchen of Elder Fell Cottage and she hadn’t even thought about it until she came here again. It seemed like a camping kind of a dish, easy to cook on a portable stove. One night, back then, her mam had made a huge panful to take to the sheep shearers. A gang of them had come for the day and all the hands on the farm, even Mrs. Thompson, were busy either clipping the sheep, herding them or packing the fleeces and so her mam had offered to make them all something to eat at the end of a long day. Beer and corned beef hash, under the harsh light of some temporary electric strip lights in an old stone barn that smelt of sheep, with plenty of banter and laughter. Amy had fallen asleep on a pile of hay bales that night and one of the men — it might even have been the Thompson’s son — had carried her back to the cottage. She remembered waking to find herself in bed, asleep in her T-shirt and shorts, and thinking she heard the gentle sound of voices downstairs. It had been nothing but the sound of the spring water trickling into the trough, her mam had explained the next morning. When she had listened she’d heard it, the gentle babbling of the spring which sounded like soft voices in the distance.
She could hear it right now, the sound of the beck running over the stones as she peeled the potatoes, and then something drowned it out. It sounded like Ariana Grande. Amy put down her peeling knife and tried to look up the campsite, shading her eyes with her hand. A shower had blown across, but it had soon moved on again and now the sun was shining out from behind the clouds. At the top of the campsite a big red tent, which had appeared while they were out for the day, pulsed with music. They had new neighbours.
Matt, also disturbed by the music, came out of the campervan to stand beside her.
‘I could do without that,’ he said.
‘Not your type of music?’ Now they were back at the campsite, away from that isolated valley, things seemed more normal, but she didn’t want to stand too close. Light and friendly conversation was what she needed.
‘I’m more of a jazz and blues kind of man myself. And you?’
‘All kinds of things. But not that!’
Matt looked away across the valley. The clouds were clearing away rapidly now, the ground steaming in places as the sunlight hit the wet stones. ‘It’s going to be a fine evening, by the looks of it. Seeing that deer today, it made me want to get up there on the fells.’ He looked upwards with a thinly disguised longing.
‘You’re thinking about running?’
‘Yes, it’s the right kind of evening. No wind, rain’s stopped, not too hot. God, I miss it.’
‘Have you got any trainers with you?’
‘Yes, I brought them, just in case.’
‘Then go. I’ll look after the boys. Get out there, right now.’ She said it quickly before she had time to reconsider. ‘I can keep an eye on them while I cook the dinner. They’re both happy playing Goat Gunge anyway.’
‘What, right now?’
‘Yes, why not? It isn’t raining, so get your running kit and go!’
‘Do you mean it?’
‘Of course! I’ll get it all ready and then wait for you to come back before I start on the cooking. It won’t take long once I’ve got everything prepared. Get yourself out there.’
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You’ve no idea what this means to me. It’s nearly a year since I’ve been running anywhere but round the streets at home. I’ve missed running over the moors.’
‘I saw the way you looked up at the hills today and I know what that feels like, so don’t hang about!’
‘I’ll find a way to repay this. I could —’
‘You bought me dinner, so you don’t owe me anything. Stop talking and get running!’ she said with a laugh.
Ten minutes later she watched as he disappeared off into the distance, tough muscular legs in tight Lycra. He followed a track up Elder Fell in the warm evening light, and his movements reminded her again of those deer, striding off into their native habitat, at ease, confident, at one with the landscape. It was where he belonged, where he could find himself again.
He turned a corner, and was gone from her sight. At the back of her mind was a fear that once he found his way up into the hills he might never reappear. Suddenly she had a sharp memory of standing in the cold shallows of Loverswater when she was a little girl, shivering in the sunlight, as she watched her mother floating on her back, far away from the shore and safety. She was in the deepest, darkest part of the tarn, where the two lovers had drowned, and Amy had been suddenly terrified her mother didn’t want to come back from the pool, and would be lost in the depths, so she’d called her back.
Her mother had always come back — until the very last time, last year when she’d gone into the water and had not come out. The police divers had pulled her body from the river beyond Saddleton, nearly a mile from where she’d last been seen. Jen had been trying to help a dog which had gone into the river after a stick and couldn’t get out onto the steep bank. Its silly, panic-stricken owner, a middle-aged woman who should’ve known better, had been happy to let her help but Amy’s mother had lost her footing and been swept away, no longer the young woman and the strong swimmer she had once been. The dog had climbed out without help, further down the river.
She realised, now, that she hadn’t been afraid in those days that her mother would get into difficulties and drown but that she wouldn’t want to come back to her because she was in her natural element, and Amy would be left on the edge, excluded and alone, watching her float away forever. She saw that in Matt too. That was his natural element, out there on the mountain, up high in the evening sunlight, and it would be better for both of them if he found a way to heal up there, without her.
When she’d cooked and mashed the potatoes she waited for Matt to return. The boys were still happy playing Goat Gunge so she could sit with a cup of tea and do nothing, looking down the valley towards Elderthwaite in the distance, away from Matt and the fells. The grey Herdwick sheep with their friendly-looking faces grazed contentedly in the field in front of her, the sunshine was on her face, and she had the shelter of the wall to shield her from the summer breeze. This was what she’d wanted all along from this holiday; she felt relaxed and peaceful.
She’d only closed her eyes for a few minutes, she was sure of it. Matt was still running, the boys were still in the campervan gunging goats, but something woke her. It wasn’t a noise, it wasn’t a touch, it was the sudden stinging realisation she wasn’t on her own. She opened her eyes to find a small boy she’d never seen before standing watching her from a few feet away. He wore a muddy pair of tracksuit trousers and a T-shirt. His hair was very short, and he looked at her with an unblinking gaze from his bright blue eyes.
‘You were asleep,’ he said accusingly.
‘Yes. I was. Just for a minute.’
