The Carhullan Army

rucksacks with them, some old fertiliser bags, and a wooden shoulder hod. They fitted as much peat in as would go and between us we carried it round the side of the ridge, to a lower knoll, then up and over it.
    On the other side was a grassy plain. It was flanked by bracken and gorse. We walked for about forty-five minutes, and as we began to drop down into another valley to the south I heard the sharp call of a bird of prey. I looked up and saw a single hawk turning broad circles in the air above us. It was a haunted stretch of land, windswept and barren, the bracken was dark red and dying on the slopes of the hills on either side, but the slender path we followed was trodden down, and clearly used often. Through the cut of the pass I could see another mountain range, in the heart of what had been the national park. Several rocky needles stood out against the horizon and behind this was a jutting mass of pikes. Once my father had probably told me their names, but now I could not remember. It was hard and rugged country. I wondered who was left out there, which abandoned souls might also be trying to survive away from the tight restrictions of the safety zones, lost from sight like us, in the mountainous territory of the North.
    Calum walked beside me on the path for a while and asked a few questions about Rith, about oil supplies, and whether conscription had been introduced yet for the civilian men. He had left for Carhullan when it looked likely it would be implemented. He’d not been down towards the town for seven years. ‘I’m a lover, not a soldier,’ he said. He laughed when he told me this and his gums looked red and inflamed. I was careful with my answers, more guarded perhaps than was necessary, but I felt a little on edge around him, suddenly uncertain how to behave, and his grey eyes seemed too keenly fixed on mine.
    He smelled strongly of sweat and tobacco. There was little to smoke at Carhullan. Now and then a carton of cigarettes turned up and was quickly divided. Jackie had a supply of Golden Leaf, though I rarely saw her rolling any, just now and again when she returned from a training drill, or when she had a glass of whisky to accompany it, and I wondered if perhaps he traded with her. His hair was brown and collar length and the tendons in his neck were raised and knotted, faintly purple under his skin. I could tell he was underweight, that his diet was poor. Even so, he looked healthier than the silverflex addicts in Rith.
    Martyn had fallen in to step with Chloe. Between them they held a heavy sack, and from time to time they leaned into each other and kissed.
    The path dropped down and became broader, volcanic looking, a riverbed of dark glassy rock. Then the ground flattened off. To the right were three small stone crofts with turf roofs. A faint wraith of blue smoke curled from a chimney stack. Standing outside was another man – older, white haired – two boys and a dog. The youths came forward when they saw us, embraced the women in the group, and then, after a moment, turned and embraced me. I was startled by the gesture and almost pulled away when the first boy put his arms round me. I had never met them before but they seemed to accept me as one of their familiars. They had something of Megan’s candour about them, her blunt affection. They were small and wiry; one might have passed as barely ten years old, but already around his eyes there was mottling and signs of aging.

    We unloaded the peat bricks, stacked them in a lean-to, and went inside the largest of the cottages. The boys and the old man remained outside and I heard the dog barking from a distance, as if they were leaving the settlement.
    It was more basic inside than the farmhouse: a single room, with a table and chairs, a small sooty fireplace under a hood, and two ladders on opposite walls leading up to alcoves where there were flat beds. There was no electricity and only two slit windows. The low structure was full of elongated shadows. Red cinders glowed in the fire’s cradle. The place smelled of clay, charcoal, and animal fat, and there was a musky odour too that I couldn’t place, something mushroomy and decayed, like a forest’s interior. Underfoot it was soft. There were no boards. The women at the farm often decorated rustically, with flowers and green cuttings, bowls of fruit, or they made spirals with pebbles on the mantels and window seats in the parlour. But here there was little in the way of