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Eternity in the Bottom of a Wardrobe
‘Are we there yet?’ Harry asked, for the hundredth time, from the back of the car. He had slept for the last part of the journey but the silence and stillness as Amy parked the car in the old farmyard and turned off the engine had woken him.
‘Yes. We’re here,’ she said, relieved the journey was over.
‘Is this the Lake District?’ He blinked sleepily as he looked out of the window. ‘I can’t see any lakes!’
‘We drove round a big one only about five minutes ago, but you were fast asleep.’
‘I wasn’t really. I just had my eyes closed, that’s all.’
‘Ah! Well, this is Elder Fell Farm.’ Amy looked around with a smile. It was all exactly as she remembered, incredibly unchanged in the twenty-five years since she had last been here.
‘Where are all the caravans?’ Harry asked, puzzled.
‘It’s just tents at this campsite. Tents and maybe little campervans, like that one down there.’ She pointed down the field to a jaunty red-and-white VW.
‘I thought when you said a campsite it would be like the one at Scarborough. The one we go to with Granny Jen. That has lots of caravans, but ours is the best. It’s huge and I like the funny bathroom.’
‘You wouldn’t be able to get caravan as big as that one up the lane!’ Amy said, cheerfully.
Very few people followed the signpost off the main road and took the twisting lane to Elderthwaite village, which had only a handful of houses, an ancient pub and a tiny chapel. Beyond the village was Elder Fell Farm; grey stone walls and a slate roof gleaming in the drizzle, and a wisp of smoke rising from the chimney even though it was July. Even further up the valley was the little cottage where she and her mother had stayed all those years ago, and beyond that, tucked away amongst the hills, was Loverswater, the tarn where she’d played when she wasn’t much older than Harry. She smiled over the back of the driver’s seat to him, but he was looking out of the passenger window and avoiding her gaze.
‘It’s so remote. So far away from everything and everybody else. That’s what makes it so special here.’
‘That’s what makes it so boring, you mean,’ Harry muttered, with the world-weary wisdom of an eight-year-old boy.
To the right of the farmhouse was the campsite. It was smaller than she remembered with room for maybe fifteen or twenty tents at the most, a green field punctuated by smooth grey rocks, gently sloping towards the beck. There were flatter areas at the top and bottom of the field where most of the tents and campervans were pitched, and an old stone outbuilding in the top corner marked showers and toilets. It was basic, as the online campsite finder had suggested, but it was cheap — and it was Elder Fell Farm.
Amy climbed out of the car, stretched, and took a deep breath of the fresh mountain air. Harry scrambled out after her, clambering over the pile of bedding and knocking one of the pillows onto the ground. Amy picked it up, noticing a shadow flit across Harry’s face. It was a shadow she recognised all too well, that of his dad’s disapproval.
‘You’re not going to take a sticker away, are you? It was an accident and it wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t put it in on top of —’
‘Don’t worry, I know it wasn’t on purpose. It’s not even that muddy.’ Amy put the pillow back into the car, brushing the dirt off. She crossed the farmyard to the old, wooden yard gate on which hung a hand-painted notice, white paint on grey slate. For camp-site please inquire at Farmhouse before Pitching.
‘Where are we going to sleep then?’ Harry demanded as they walked across the yard towards the farmhouse. ‘Is one of those tents ours?’
‘No, we’ll sleep in granny’s old tent. It’s in the boot, remember? We’re going to give the people at the farmhouse some money and then we’re going to put our tent up in the field.’ She wondered if the farm still belonged to the Thompson family; she vaguely remembered a son, a young man. Maybe he was the farmer now. Amy used to help old Mrs. Thompson collect the eggs as a special treat, and she remembered the smell of the little old henhouse, and the eggs she used to find, still warm from the chickens. Mr. Thompson had been more elusive — out with his dogs on the fells, her mother used to tell her, looking after the sheep.
‘It’s going to be an adventure. We get to live out in the proper countryside. Look at the hills all around us! Isn’t it amazing?’ The mountains rose all around them; those tiny white dots must be sheep, up on the fellsides. Above the hills a bird of prey wheeled silently over the valley. There was silence except for the stream below them trickling over the stones, the wind in the small shelter-belt of trees beside the farm, and the odd sheep baa-ing from the fells.
Why had she never thought to come back here before? They had loved this place so much.
‘See those hills? That closest one there is called Elder Fell.’ Her mam had known the valley like the back of her hand, and had taught Amy the names of all the fells. ‘That’s Gunner’s Pike over there. The little one is called Shepherd’s Mount, then the big one over there is Scansfell. Perhaps we might climb up it one day.’
‘When can we go to the swimming pool?’
‘There isn’t a swimming pool, sweetheart. It’s not that kind of campsite. We’re out in the wild here!’
‘You said we’d go swimming. You made me put my trunks in.’
‘Yes, there’s a tarn up the valley and we can wild swim in there.’
‘What’s a tarn?’
‘A little lake.’
‘A lake. I suppose … Right. Can I go on the trampoline now?’
