The Hollow Land Read Free

won’t be bossed by your father and there’s too much noise. He works writing. He has to be quiet. Six weeks it was to be, our holiday here. All the school holidays.”
    â€œIt’s only once a year,” I say. “We only cut once a year. Then it’s quiet as owt. Except clipping time and dipping time and when lambs get taken from their mothers and there’s a bit bleating, there’s never a sound here. Not so much as a motor except once a day the postman.”
    He says, “My father says he can’t do with fumes and smoke and racket. That’s what he came to get away from.”
    â€œIt’s over till next year.”
    â€œWe’re still going, though,” says Harry and starts to cry again. “My mother wrote a letter to your mother to say she was sorry if we’d given offence, but my father wouldn’t let her send it. I don’t want to go home,” he says. “It’s just streets and streets. Why didn’t your father
say
hay-time was just once?”
    â€œLikely he thought there was nobody in the world didn’t know. He were clashed. Could you not see how my dad were clashed out? And the tractor broke. And expecting rain. Anyway—noise! What about all your radios and stereos and portable tellies?”
    He can’t think what to say to this so he begins to cry again.
    â€œTown yobs,” says I.
    He picks up something heavy—maybe a transistor. Not even our Eileen’s got her own and she’s seventeen, and I say, “Now think on. Hold still. Let’s have a think. Where’s your mother’s letter?”
    â€œThrown away. In the bin under the sink.”
    â€œCrumpled up?”
    â€œNo—just thrown.”
    â€œCan you get it?”
    â€œWell, I could.”
    â€œGet it,” says I. “I’m going for the John Robert in the shed. l’ll come back round this way and you can give it me.”
    When I come back he hands the letter over.
    â€œD’you want to come out?” I say. “You can come up and fasten the fell gate with me if you want. Get some shoes on.”
    He’s over the sill in his shoes and his jersey over his pyjamas in half a minute flat, and we go off doing silent vampires over the Home Field. At the beck we make a change to spacemen and while I’m fixing the fell gate we’re the SAS and have a bit of quiet machine-gunning. I see he gets back in through his window, for there’s rain coming now, great cold plops at first, then armies like running mice, and the moon all suddenly gone. He takes a header in through his window from a standing start. He’s not a bad ’un this Harry.
    Then I’m away. Over the hill and down the road, past the quarry and under the bridge and into the village and dripping wet through our own front door. I left it unlatched (great snores still going on above) and I put the letter from under my shirt down carefully in the middle of the doormat. It’s a pity she hadn’t had time to put it in an envelope. They look a family for envelopes. But we’ll have to see.
    Then I dried myself off a bit and slithered into my bed and I didn’t wake till long past milking.
    Â 
    When I got down they’d finished breakfast and my mum’s been baking. Yawning but baking. Our Eileen’s still in bed and not a sign of Grandad. “Grandad’s seen plenty hay-times,” says my dad, “but he’s slower now forgetting them.”
    My mum’s putting six or seven grand big tea cakes into a paper bag and my father’s carrying eggs and some new milk in a can.
    â€œWhat’s yon?” says I.
    â€œIt’s for them up at Light Trees,” says my mum. “They get little enough in London fit to eat. They may as well get some benefit here.”
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    I met up with the lad, Harry, later beyond the fell gate. He joined up with me behind Dad’s tractor, which was laden up with dead sheep