<ritual

Snow, slush, cold wind biting into flesh. Mist is rolling in on the hill opposite. In front and behind, snaking into the distance, a row of other kids looking miserable. Straps from the rucksack are slicing into me. I forgot gloves. I am wet through. My body, encrusted with eczema is stiff and on fire. Robert is beside me. His red hair hidden underneath a thick black beanie. He’s holding out a Twix. ‘Go on, take it,’ he says. 

     I wish I had a hat. I take the Twix and shove it in. Robert always has snacks. We are walking alongside a tumbledown wall, sheep dotted on the slope opposite, just about visible in the mist. Ahead of us is the leader, a hard man called Martin. A fell runner our Akela says. He runs the mountains. He is as hard as the mountains. I dream of being as hard as he is. He has a funny voice though, and every time he fails to pronounce his th’s Robert and I snicker into our freezing hands. He refers a lot to ‘Funder and lightnin’ and every now and then he will sprint off into the mist, reappearing half an hour later. Where he is going, none of us know and no one will say. The only funder we know is the Funderland amusement park and we like to imagine that that’s where he works for a job and he is paid to say it as many times as possible in a day.

     ‘It’s freezin,’ I say, for about the fiftieth time.

     ‘Aye I know,’ Robert replies, also for about the fiftieth time.

     I stop and look behind again. We are at the top of the column of kids. I feel very calm despite the cold and wet and the discomfort is starting to move beyond me as if it is being felt by someone else. I am only eleven though and this is all beyond me. I don’t know that it will maybe always be beyond me, even if I am aware of it. I do not know that age will not bring wisdom just the same mistakes repeated again and again until they stop, or I stop. I’m only eleven. I am with my best friend and we’re walking over a mountain in the mist. Moving beyond the next hillcrest, a round dark mound more ancient than anything I can even begin to imagine, is a glimpse of the Irish sea, crashing onto black rock.

     ‘What time is it?’ Robert asks. I look at my digital watch, a prized possession. It’s got a timer and ev’ryhin’! 

     ‘It’s two o’clock,’ I answer. Robert rubs his hands together.

     ‘Lunch soon then, hi.’

     He’s always hungry. The other kids call him names. I don’t have any friends, so I am friends with him. We’ve never said we are friends, and we never will. But we are and will be for a long time, until we lose touch somewhere in the wreckage of my twenties and thirties in a deluge of sips. I stare into the mist rolling toward us.

     ‘Do ye think it’s gettin’ a bit thicker?’ 

     Robert looks himself. He hos and hums.

     ‘Aye, aye. Ye’re right. 

     We keep walking in silence, until he says “Did ye see the grand prix?” 

     He’s always been interested in cars and engines, in tractors and ploughs. He probably thinks I am too, but I’m not. I prefer books, reading, I prefer to escape somewhere else. He says it’s because I’m shy and scared of the world. I’m not though, I think I’m just fine, and I think I just don’t like too many people. I don’t like cars, and tractors, and racing, and machines. And I never will but that won’t stop Robert and I being friends. We might have nothing in common, but neither does anyone else.

     ‘Yes, I did.’ I lie and wait for him to expound at length about it. Which he does. None of it particularly goes in but it’s good to hear him talking and to have a friend, even if I don’t understand him most of the time.

     The Mournes hold us in a kind of embrace. I love it up here and have since I was first brought up here by the Scouts. I don’t quite understand why I love them (as I said I’m only eleven) but I know I do. I’m thinking about the shape of them as Robert speaks, how they roll and twist and stagger. They seem to fit me and my body shape. 

     ‘…then thur was a crash on the third bend, like.’

     ‘Oh really?’

     ‘Ah, ye heard of Ayrton Senna? He got kilt on a bend jus’ like this one.’

     I’m thinking about what happened at school this week. We were in home economics class and there was a loud bang that seemed to shake the whole building. The windows rattled and the doors slammed. It was terrifying. The bang is still in there now, still sits in my chest. We all knew what it was of course. As Miss McClaine tried to calm us all down the alarm went off and we were all told to make our way to the assembly point.  Other teachers appeared, to help her and to comfort us. I was frozen, stuck, I couldn’t say or do anything. My mummy’s workin’ in the shap. Where’s my mummy. I just follow the other children outside, a bit like I’m following the children now, up and over these ancient black mountains. Funder. And lightnin. Funder. Lightnin. Funder. 

     I find out a long time later, maybe years later, that one of the mortars went through the roof, through the back of the shop, and through the back office, and through the floor, and it hit the ground, and it missed my mum’s desk by inches, and it never went off. When I eventually got home that night and found my mum sitting on the front doorstep, I grabbed her close and held her tight and cried because I’d been scared. And she patted me on my back and sent me inside for my tea. It was on the table, she said. And as I went in, I saw her light a cigarette, and it was the first time I’d seen that. And as I got to the table, Dad was already there, and he thumped me on the shoulder and laughed at me. I heard ye were cryin’. And then years later I wrote this down in a notebook and I read it out loud to myself and while reading it out loud I realised as the words passed my lips that my dad hadn’t laughed at me and he hadn’t even been there and that the laughter was from the other kids and I’d turned it into a voice that haunted me for years. My mum never smoked.

     ‘Did he get kilt instantly?’ I turn and ask Robert. He nods sagely, with the air of an expert.

     ‘Aye, no one died at the weekend though. But there was a big explosion.’

     The mist is thick around us now. A whistle blows ahead of us, and another behind. We stop and look ahead and behind again. Akela comes out of the mist in front of us.

     ‘Alright you two,’ he says. ‘We’re stoppin’ until this clears. Get out yer bivvy bags.’ 

     And then he disappears into the mist again. It has enveloped us suddenly, this mist. It has taken us over. My heart is beating loud in my chest, and I can hear it so clearly, but it is so quiet everywhere around us. There is no other sound but us. Robert is pulling out his bivvy bag. He has a bright orange one, bought from the tackle and hardware shop, designed to be of use in a situation like this if we get stranded. He places his rucksack against the wall and starts to climb into it.

     ‘This is spooky right?’ he says. 

     I silently agree and pull out my own, embarrassed as I do so. I haven’t got a bright orange, professional bivvy bag. I’ve got an extra thick, durable black bin liner. Robert doesn’t seem to notice or care so I keep pulling it out, climb into it and settle down beside him, our backs against the wall.

     ‘I love it up here,’ I say.

     ‘Even when it’s like this?’

     ‘Aye, even like this. It’s very quiet.’

     ‘Yer a weird one. Another Twix?’

     He passes me more chocolate and I am grateful. I pull out my flask. It is full of milky coffee and I fumble at it with frozen fingers. I fill the cup and proffer it to Robert who takes it eagerly and sips, making a face. We sit in silence. The faint figures of other cub scouts are just about visible to our left and right. Every now and then a distant voice echoes in the quiet. Once, a brief bleat floats up from somewhere below – a sheep picking its way through the heather. Robert sighs. I can feel him looking at me.

     ‘Here,’ he says, 

     I look back over. He is pulling something out of his rucksack, glancing around furtively. It is long, wrapped in a plastic bag, a glass neck sticking out of the top. I gasp and look up and down the wall, my pulse quickening.

     ‘What you got there?’ I gasp, although I know what it is. Robert grins.

     ‘Just a wee treat. I knicked it aff me da. He likes it in his coffee –‘ 

     I put a hand out.

     ‘That’s bad – what if he finds out?’ 

     I know what he’s going to do. In my mind is an image of my brother staggering into my room late at night with a bottle like this one and collapsing in the corner. I know what it does. I’m a bit scared. 

     ‘Don’t be stupid, it’s good for ye my da says. Go on!’

     ‘Uhh I dunno Robert I –‘

     ‘Just a wee bit, hi.’ 

     I look up and down the wall again. The mist is still thick, no one seems to be coming. I gulp and silently nod, the thrill of being naughty or bad coursing through me. 

     ‘You keep watch!’

     I do so, but my eyes keep darting over to watch him carefully pour brown liquid into the flask. I don’t realise I’ve been holding my breath until he is finished and stuffs the bottle quickly and urgently back in his rucksack. 

     ‘Only a wee bit, like,’ he says, gently swirling the flask around in the air. ‘My da says men drink whiskey, women drink white wine.’

     ‘What about beer?’

     ‘That’s fer men.’

     ‘Red wine?’ I ask, thinking of my mum sipping her glass of red wine. 

     Robert thinks for a second. ‘Both I think.’

     I nod and take the cup back from him after he’s had a drink. He’s reluctant to let it go. I’m terrified, but eager. He pours a little more in the plastic cup. I sip. He’s looking at me with a strange sort of grin on his face. 

     ‘Go on ye biy ye! Get it down ye!’

     I choke it down and can’t help but pull a face, my cheeks twisting and my jaw stretching as I try not to gag. Robert laughs and punches me on the arm lightly. 

     ‘The good stuff aye?’

     I have no idea. I am eleven and I have no idea.

     I let the heat slowly wend its way around my chest and into my extremities. This is unpleasant, this is not what I want. Yet at the same time I feel something change imperceptibly. I look to Robert, and he still has a big grin on his face. My numb fingers begin to feel the tingle of something. It is still so quiet but coming out of the mist to our right are two large shapes. It’s hard Martin, it’s Akela. We hear the crunch crunch of their feet on the snowy rock. We look at each other and I quickly go to put the flask back into my rucksack. The two men walk past. 

     ‘You lads alright?’ Martin asks. ‘We’ll get going in a wee minute. Have a bit to eat or somethin’ aye?’

     They disappear to the left.

     In front of us, the mist seems to be thinning, the light seems to be breaking through somehow, slowly revealing a gentle downward slope to a wide bowl of snow thicker than any patches around it. Robert and I both giggle. He looks at my bivvy bag.

     ‘That a bin bag?’ he sniggers.

     ‘Aye. Mum says its works just as well. Real mountaineers sometimes use them ‘parently, she said she saw it in a…’ I tail off.

     ‘Looks a bit crap, like.’

     I giggle. ‘Aye, it does.’

     We sit there for another minute before, as if possessed by something, we both burst into laughter. One glance at each other and a gentle push, and both of us slide away from the low wall and down the gentle bank of snow toward the soft pile at the bottom. Our laughter echoes into the silence and we both let out a quiet whoop of joy as we land softly.

Pete Strong is a writer and performance artist from Bandit Country, Ulster. Now based in Brighton, England, he writes poetry and prose and creates theatrical performances and installations. His debut poetry pamphlet Greenfinch was published by Flight of the Dragonfly Press, and his work has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize.

Of the story featured here, Pete says:

‘With this story I wanted to write about the power of the simple ritual of sharing a drink and how that ritual can be something both joyous as well as the beginning of a journey toward pain and hopefully redemption.’

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