A Departure

It was still dark when they left the house, and the chill air stung their faces unexpectedly.

The house was high in the mountains, at the end of a long winding track. It hugged the contours of the land on which it was built, the house, so that inside there were quirky steps between one room and another, or half-way along short corridors. Next door was a byre, which in the past would have filled the house with the smells of the herd and a certain borrowed warmth. But the byre had stood empty for years now.

Anthony had packed the car the night before and parked it on the scrubland at the back of the house, facing downhill. He and his son, James, had got up as soon as the alarm had sounded, its corny frenetic beeping appearing to fill the silence of the place; they had washed in cold water, and dressed in the near dark. Anthony locked the door behind him, more out of habit than necessity, and, having thrown a couple of small bags, their coats and their books onto the back seat, the two of them got into the car. Anthony made a point of not looking back. James was rubbing sleep from his eyes.

Anthony paused, nevertheless, and saw the thousands of stars, whose names, after all, he had never learned, and imagined the way they spun around the mountain tops. He remembered those photographs you see of the stars moving, where they’ve become surreal white stripes across a rich blue sky. He remembered a word: sidereal. Then he turned the key. The car started like an explosion. Nothing emphasises silence more than a sudden noise, and briefly, very briefly, Anthony tried to convince himself that he would always remember the silence of this village. But another part of him warned him that he would forget, that he would never want to look back. Not now, not ever.

The car rolled off, and in this deep silence Anthony could hear the rush and rub and scrape of the tyres across the loose gravel of the track. The headlights picked out the farm buildings on the left. As they took the slow right-hander which led away from the village and on to the mountain road proper, the beams of light swept a field where cows stood, munching the grass in companionable silence, as if it were broad daylight, and warm.

Anthony turned on the heater.

He automatically went to push a cassette into the machine, but his hand stopped on its way and returned to the wheel. Anthony wanted to preserve this silence. The slow burr of the engine, the rush and tumble of the tyres. Even the sweeping beam of light was a kind of quietness.

As they descended the mountain, and as other village and farm tracks joined the road, the surface improved. The sound of the tyres changed to a sweeter, smoother rhythm. The headlamps picked out road signs, glowing like art beside the road, and warning Anthony either not to overtake, or to prepare for a sharp right-hand bend, or to show caution at a narrow bridge, or to slow down to a crawl as they went through a village whose houses sprawled briefly on both sides of the road and where there was a light in the bakery.

Anthony allowed himself a quick thought about other people’s lives. He looked at his son, James, who was sitting tensely on the passenger seat. Anthony noticed how he was not leaning back on the seat, but was half hunched forward. He imagined a certain anxiety.

‘All right?’ he asked. These were the first words which either of them had spoken since waking up.

James remained silent.

Anthony kept his eyes on the road. Finally, though the car was new, the brakes squeaked very slightly as they drew up at the main valley road. The signs which burned into the night, lit by the headlamps, told Anthony to ‘Stop’. And he did. But there was no need. Nothing was moving.

Anthony pressed a button and the windows slid open. He turned off the lights, and stopped the engine. James hunched himself into his coat - which was his way of registering that the air still had the chill of the night - and looked at his father at an angle - which was his way of questioning him. Anthony tried to hold this moment. Not a sound. Had any vehicle been moving anywhere on this road between the pass, high up to the right, where in summer the mists began, and the market town, down on the left, he would have heard it. Nothing was moving. The stars slid round in the heavens.

Anthony tried to hold this moment, but in his heart he knew that moments you try to hold are the moments you never find again. His memory was full of things he didn’t want to see again. He had the same problem with video recorders, he remembered. He’d pore over them, preparing them to record the football or a late night film, or maybe a concert, and then, next morning, with his coffee and croissant, he’d settle down and find the second half of a talk-show and the golf. Sometimes he’d record programmes which, according to the newspapers, simply had not been broadcast.

He allowed himself a tiny thought: maybe his memories, too, were of things which had never really been broadcast, which had never really happened. He hoped so.

‘Dad,’ said James. He meant, we have surely sat here long enough, now; what on earth are you doing?

Anthony got the message; the engine exploded again, like an action replay, the lights burned on, and they moved off. Anthony smiled when he realised that he had still looked both ways before pulling off on to the road. Then he consoled himself with the thought that he might not have been able to hear a bicycle. You can never be too careful. Actually, the silence was surely so complete, a bicycle would have sounded like one of those big, noble, inaccurate clocks the farmers kept in their bare living rooms. Tick, tick, tick.

He looked at James who remained hunched on the seat, just a silhouette against the darkness.

‘All right?’ said Anthony.

James gave a quiet grunt.

The car swished downhill, taking the bends in long easy strides. Anthony loved this. Just him and James and this beautiful noise. In one village a man stood, back-lit by the yellow light of a garage. Then there was on old woman in a short black dress, walking beside the road with a bucket. In his mirror, Anthony saw a battered white van pull out behind him, following him down the road before stopping outside a house, an isolated house between villages, and waiting, its lights on. Anthony drove on.

In the town, the street lights shone, and one or two people were walking; some talked, loaves in hand. Someone paused on the pavement and lit a cigarette as Anthony waited for the lights. Anthony thought about driving through the centre one last time, but found he was still considering this as he took the small by-pass which sped round the back of the big warehouses on to the big road to the coast.

Anthony looked at James under the smear of the last street-lights. He was curled up, leaning back, asleep.

Then there were mountains all around. There were one or two small lights, high above, like false stars. Anthony imagined someone waking in a farmhouse up there and looking down. They’d see the car moving, quite slowly it would seem from up there, across the valley floor.

Anthony began the winding descent into the gorge, the headlamps sweeping across the barriers on the tight bends like searchlights. He imagined again that farmer looking down, watching the car take the bends, its headlamps shining out like tangents, like the sparks from a Catherine wheel, sparks which cool and die.