After Brock by Paul Binding Page B

the steep-sided hills that rise on either side of this town. I could then feel that those other hills of my life, Herne Hill and Tulse Hill, with Mum and Doug, and Josh and Rollo, and teachers and exams and ‘whatever-will-you-be-doing-next year, Nat?’ belong to a quite other dimension of the universe. Except that I have to carry myself through both, a being as unique and inscrutable (to myself that is) as that fox on the wall with the yellow eyes.
    Obviously I know that lads of my age here in the Marches are having to deal with all the problems of courses and qualifications and ‘suitable’ jobs just the same as I am. But the landscape here was sending out the message to me that it’s possible to see life with different priorities. I’d felt this even before my actual arrival, when the train was approaching Shrewsbury and I could see the high jagged green line of the Stretton hills in the distance, some miles beyond the red sandstone buildings of the town’s castle and the grid of old streets that climb up to it.
    I caught sight of Dad at the wheel both before and when he caught sight of me. His expression, a dull, heavy, serious one, didn’t change a flicker. I found that interesting. You might think that the moment he saw his only son after several months, his eyes’d lighten up, that he might even smile. But no, not at all.
    Nor did he apologise for his lateness. (Well, why should he? I wouldn’t really want him to.) It’s Sunday, the shop’s shut, so he hasn’t bothered about shaving, and has quite a crop of dark stubble on his face (which seems a bit fatter and redder than when I saw it last, at Easter).
    â€˜There you are!’ he said in a sleepy voice. As if it was me who’d failed to be there in time for him . I’ve always been glad he isn’t the sort of dad who throws his arms round you or, even worse, kisses you, but I wouldn’t have minded a little more show of enthusiasm on his part. (When Josh came with me, I recalled, Dad was far friendlier in manner right from the beginning, which is why he speaks of him as a sort of mate. With me solo Dad doesn’t feel the obligation to come out of whatever mood he’s in.) 
    â€˜Oh, hi!’ I said, dead casual too, and jumped in. Underneath the front seat and in the compartment above it was any amount of torn crisp packets, sweet wrappings, used-up cans of Sprite, plus things impossible to identify just from looking.
    â€˜We won’t be going home over the Long Mynd today,’ Dad announced with some firmness. Though I’ll be here some time, and will have other opportunities for being on this road, the news disappointed me. It’s become an established tradition in my visits to Dad that we start off my stay with this ride, and it’s one I relish: the long bendy climb up from Stretton, with the V of the Cardingmill Valley more and more precipitately below, then the journey along the heather-and-bracken expanse of the hill’s great plateau, with its grazing sheep (and in some places white horses), and then the wonderful descent when you see Lydcastle on its hillside in the near-distance, and the ridges parallel to the Mynd, like The Stiperstones with its crest of rock piles.
    â€˜Why not?’ And I probably sounded more put out than I really was.
    â€˜Because it takes longer, Nat. And I’ve got that jerk I told you about, remember, interested in that expensive power-kite, actually coming round to the shop “just after lunch”, to use his words. And I literally can’t afford to miss him. Why he couldn’t have come on a normal week day beats me, but there we are.’
    So Dad did have an excellent reason for taking the low road home, which is very nice also with its woods and little river and hill flanks. I’d been a bit hard on him.
    â€˜By the way,’ he continued, ‘I’m sorry but I didn’t get round to getting any food in