The Way We Were_ A Novel - Marcia Willett [4]
‘More snow coming,’ the attendant remarks cheerfully. ‘Going far?’
‘Down into Cornwall,’ she tells him. ‘Near St Breward.’
He draws down the corners of his mouth, shaking his head doubtfully. ‘You might just make it before it comes on really thick,’ he says. ‘It's already settling on the tops.’
As she leaves the lights of Okehampton behind her and travels around the northern edge of the moor, the sky brightens and, away in the west, long fingers of sunset light probe down between the layers of dense cloud so that the mysterious peaks and uplands of the distant landscape are revealed just as she remembered it earlier when she saw? the sign: ‘TO THE WEST’. A line or two of a hymn hums in her head and she sings it aloud to the Turk, who beats her tail politely upon her rug:
The golden evening lightens in the west,
Soon, soon to weary warriors cometh rest.
Sweet is the calm of Paradise the blest…
The vision and the words hearten her, bringing a much-needed surge of energy, as the brief sunset glow leaks into the gathering clouds. Soon the slopes and tors of Dartmoor drop away and they're through Launceston and into Cornwall at last, approaching Five Lanes and Altarnun. Snow is falling on Hendra Downs as she pulls into the side of the road to look again at Pete's map. It is very clear: ‘Leaving Jamaica Inn on your right, pass through Bolventor and take the next turning right signposted to St Breward. Pass over the cattle grid on to open moor.’
The light is dying now, and the wind is beginning to rise, but Tiggy sees the sign clearly and swings the camper off the A30, rattling across the cattle grid. The snow has already settled across the narrow moorland road and a tiny spasm of fear shakes her heart. The wild sweep of land glimmers ghostly and chill; small scattered clumps of gorse show smudgily black against the faint covering of snow. A larger smudge suddenly detaches itself and moves out into the road. Tiggy gasps with fright and then breathes deeply with relief as the pony trots away. She drives very slowly, leaning forward a little so as to scan the landscape more clearly, noting a signpost pointing away to the left, remembering the next part of her instructions: ‘Follow the signs for St Breward: all right-hand turns.’
The lane is running down off the moor now, between granite walls on either side; the headlights slanting across great boulders and showing up the thick sturdy roots of the thorn trees, and the falling snow whirls and dazzles. Tiggy holds lightly to the wheel, following the twisting lane as it climbs again, and she sees how easily she might lose sight of the track and plunge on to the moor. The lane swings left so abruptly that she's brought up almost against a wall and the high blank side of a house, and she wrenches the wheel violently, feeling the camper skid; and all the while a deeper, almost atavistic kind of tear is growing inside her; a foreboding that something terrible is about to happen. She's noticed the familiar shape of a telephone box a little way back, its lamp glowing in the darkness and snow gathering on its ledges, and wonders whether she should stop and telephone Julia. Yet how can she ask Julia, with three small children, to come to her aid on such a night?
All the while the strength of the wind is increasing, buffeting the sides of the van, driving the snow before it so that it heaps and drifts against the stone walls. With relief she sees the granite post with its sign pointing to the right and she jolts onward, hardly able now to distinguish the road from the rough moorland in the dim snowy twilight and occasionally bumping the two offside wheels up on to the uneven grass. Ahead of her she can just make out the shape of a bridge and remembers that this is mentioned in her instructions as Delford Bridge; she approaches slowly, driving carefully between the iron railings, glancing briefly, fearfully, down into the swirling black water of the De Lank River. The unexpected jolting rumble of the wheels over a cattle grid startles her but at last the