On Walking Carne Brae       


               Abi Wyatt

The year is 1998 and she is utterly, unthinkingly in love. They are going out for a walk.
This is not something he would do normally so she knows he is making a concession. As they
progress in silence along the narrow lane that snakes up to the summit of Carne Brae, his
long legs stride ahead. His gaze is fixed where the grey column of the Monument dominates
the skyline.  She trots beside him; tense, a little breathless but pretending to be neither.  She
does not want to have to ask him if he can please slow down.  

It is the bright but blustery Sunday afternoon of the weekend before Easter.  On the far edge
of the Carne, someone has erected the solemn white cross that every year beckons her to
guilt and to prayer. This year, though, she is happy. She wants only to give thanks.  She is
here in Cornwall in the open air and alive again, at last. She is wrapped up warm against the
onslaught of this vicious wind. Her hand, child-like in its hand-knitted mitten, rests in the grip
of his and both are  thrust into the cosy depths of his fur-lined pocket. Yes, she is happy – but
there is something else.  In some secret place in her heart, she feels almost blessed. She
pauses. There is something about this that sits uneasily with her. It shifts and stirs and
scuffles in her head, like a rat in a dusty attic.  On this bright afternoon, though, she has no
wish to locate or examine it. She puts it away and turns her mind to the steepness of the
ascent.  Her legs are beginning to ache but the trick is not to think about it.  Nearly there, she
tells herself, onward and upward. At the very edge of her field of vision, she is aware of the
arms of the cross.


The world has turned.  The year is 2005.  It is mid-December, the run-up to Christmas.  
Against her better judgement, she is making her way to a kind of outdoor carol concert.  
People are assembling in the gathering gloom below the Carne’s craggy peak. There will be
musical instruments – melodeons, fiddles, guitars, perhaps the odd mandolin; sheet music
and excited children, thermos flasks, and lanterns.  The atmosphere, she has no doubt, will be
fiercely, self-consciously festive.  People will laugh and make a great show of stamping their
feet against the cold.  She will laugh too but she will also wonder how many of them truly
want to be there.  Given the chance, would they all turn tail and disappear and flee back to
their fires?

As she makes her way along the narrowing lane, she curses her lack of foresight in not
bringing the car.  She could have driven it at least this far, parking it on the scrubland to her
left.  Had she thought to do so, she would now be warm and dry and in tolerably good
spirits.  She might, after all, have carried the whole thing off.  As things are, she feels disaster
is imminent: above her head, the sky weighs heavy and there seems to be no end to the rain.  
She remembers how often she has walked this path – in all seasons and all weather – with
Blackjack, her long, long dead Collie, with Sasha, the Alsatian that succeeded him; then with
Miranda, still in a buggy and, later, toddling beside it.  And, of course, that once with him. Can
it really be so far off?  As he slips under the wire, soft-eyed and smiling, to take her unawares,
she wants only to take her sad heart home and bury it in her bed.

But she knows this is not possible.  She has arranged to meet people.  Foolishly, she gave her
word.  They are people who, if she is not there, may come to seek her out.  We were worried,
they will say.  You haven’t been well.  And you know, at this time of year…  Their voices will
trail away. They are frightened of what she might do. .  Why, she wonders, has no-one the
courage to speak their thoughts clearly?

Now she has reached the edge of the crowd.  She cannot see her friends. The musicians are
gathered by a nearby rock, playing in random bursts.  A heavy-jawed woman in a rainbow-
coloured shawl is trying to tune her fiddle, beside her a jumble of coats and scarves and
empty instruments cases.  A small black dog leaps from the ground to a rock and then into
the arms of his owner who pets the animal and then lets blast with the opening bars of
‘Lamorna’.  The dog is wearing a tartan coat.  He cocks his head on one side.  The dog, she
thinks, has an enviable sense of its own belonging in that moment.  Soon they will play ‘Silent
Night’ and she will want to die.


© Abi Wyatt

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We like this story because:
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that moves a person to make such
pilgrimage for love.
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