3. Autumn
The young woman stood and reached to pull a raincoat from the metal rack above her head. The guard had made his announcement and the train had begun to slow. Soon the train would be gliding through the darkness of the tunnel to the station waiting on the other side.
Outside the carriage windows, leaves were in the air at the end of a blustery autumn day. They swirled by the railway track as the wind caught them. The sun sweeping across the landscape in vivid patches through gaps in the clouds gave a sudden highlight to the browns, reds and golds of the trees, colours that would soon give way to bare naked branches. Already the trees were looking sparser as the wind caught and blew their branches this way and that; a wind doing its job of detaching and whirling the leaves away across the land. Overhead despite the occasional shafts of sunlight the sky had the look of rain. Umbrellas would not be proof against it when it came: the wind would turn them inside out.
Slowly the woman began to do up the buttons of her buff coloured raincoat and fasten the cloth covered buckle of the matching belt with its big brass eyelets.
Harris had been pleased to see the woman dressed sensibly for the day. A warm jumper, vee necked in a vivid rust autumnal colour almost hiding the green shirt beneath; below a green/brown mix tweed skirt hanging a little below her knees and on her feet sensible brogues—a shoe for the weather. Perhaps the woman had a walk to make from the train back to her flat or house. He watched from his seat as the girl's fingers worked the buttons.
From her pocket a green woollen hat which she carefully smoothed over her hair before turning to walk down the carriage.
Harris, further down the carriage whispered "excuse me" to the man sitting next to him, exited his seat and walked down the carriage in the direction of the woman.
Something made her pause in her step; she turned and looked back down the carriage and saw Harris. Her face betrayed recognition—she had not noticed him tucked in beside a window but she knew him now. She did not turn back. Harris smiled his thin smile in acknowledgement. She did not smile.
The train entered the tunnel.
She was not sure if it was the train's lighting dimming and failing or, instead, her own eyesight. She could hear the movement of the train's wheels, the echo from the walls of the tunnel fading. It seemed as if the train was slowing. Light, sound and movement all seemed to be going away from her as she drifted into an all enclosing blackness. It was strangely quiet.
"Where am I going?" The woman spoke but was there anyone to hear?
Inside the carriage the air had been still, not even the air conditioning really causing any movement but now she could feel a breeze as if she was no longer in the carriage but already out on the platform in the autumn weather.
The woman moved, the sound of dried leaves crackling under foot and with the sound came a brightening of light. The woman found herself not on the platform of the station, not in the town but at the edge of a small copse looking out across stone walls and fields down to a valley and mountains beyond. She could hear the wind above her and feel a little wind in her face despite the protection of the trees.
Behind her Harris, leaning on a stout walking stick; Harris immaculately dressed for the country in tweed; indeed a plus four Keepers Tweed suit with matching cap. His rust red socks adding a touch of colour to the brown of the suit and on his feet, like the woman, rubber soled brogues. A sensible shoe for walking.
The woman turned knowing Harris would be there.
"How?" she asked.
Harris smiled but did not answer.
"Another walk?"
Harris spoke. "The mountains beckon."
Beyond the copse a track could be discerned, leading both to and from the valley—both up and down the hill. The woman walked forward a few yards and stepped onto the track; she looked uphill where the path skirted along and around the copse of trees and then made its way across the field to a dry stoned wall. It was the limit of the intake, beyond it the field changed to moor and mountain. The mountain rose up stark above them, a break in the cloud racing across the field passed over Harris and the woman and carried on up the mountain showing its full glory for a moment or two.
"This way?"
Harris smiled.
The woman looked the other way down into the valley for a moment and then set off uphill with Harris following, the wind catching at her raincoat.
"I'm not interested you know."
They had reached the stone wall.
"Not interested in sex, not today, not one little bit. It's been a rotten day and I am tired and was looking forward to going home, a cup of tea and just sitting down. And now here—wherever here is—I am." There was a pause, " I'm not thirsty either."
The allusion was not lost on Harris.
"Come, the walk will refresh you, raise your spirits. The higher we climb, well, the better it'll be."
The woman raised her right leg and put the brogue on the stone step of the stile. A neat ankle in a brown cotton sock showed above the well polished tan of the full brogue. She lifted herself up before raising her leg again to get over to the other side of the stile.
There is nothing at all wrong with a skirt for walking if it is loose enough. Better perhaps than trousers in many ways. It allows more freedom of movement to the lower limbs jsut when you need to stretch. The woman's tweed skirt was sensible and proof against the wind. What her climb upon the stile did reveal, the act of raising her leg causing the skirt material to slide a little up her leg, was her shapely knee poking out from under skirt and raincoat. A bare knee moreover and start of thigh above. She was not, as clearly evidenced, wearing tights but long brown socks reaching just below her knee, neatly turned on down on themselves. leaving her upper leg bare.
Perhaps she did not have to look to know Harris would be looking at her leg—her leg above the sock. It was inevitable, it was what men did. An explanation came. "I didn't bother with tights today, not in this skirt."
The tap of the metal ferrule of the walking stick on stone as Harris came over the stile. He followed her as she strode onwards along the clear path between the heather, a twisting path rising steadily towards the mountain.
Over the wall the wind seemed to fall away, the flank of the mountain at that point sheltering. In the distance another wall with gate or stile—it was too far to discern. As the woman walked she unbuckled and then undid her raincoat. Half way to the wall she took it off.
"Warm work despite the weather." The sun was shining through the clouds at that moment and, being out of the wind, it was pleasant even quite warm. It was obvious it would not last. There was still a light breeze
"May I carry?"
"Why not. You brought me here." The woman looked around her and handed her raincoat to Harris.
"I do feel better, you know; I think I do, after all, have the energy to climb your mountain!"
A first smile from the woman.
She strode off. By the time Harris reached the wall she was already up on the stile, brogues planted firmly, standing astride the stone and looking back towards the distant copse and then up towards the mountain.
"Magnificent scenery. Where are we? The Lakes?"
Harris smiled, said nothing but looked at the woman. She looked fine standing there, her chin well up, her eyes scanning the horizon, her chestnut hair captured in her hat but still visible and being moved by the light breeze, her trim body standing with poise, her breasts pushing at the rust coloured jumper giving it a fine womanly swell, the roundness of her hips within her tweed skirt both pleasing and suggesting fecundity, below that her brown cotton clad calves and shiny tan brogues planted on the stone. A vision of healthy, young, country womanhood. It was not that she was unfashionable in her clothes but it could so equally have been a picture of walking in the 1930s, an advertisement for the country air, perhaps by a railway company. Her hair, though, was a little long for the time—an anachronism.
"Right then, on?" And she was off again. Another stretch of moorland but rising. A dip down and a beck to be crossed. In the dip of the land the movement of air was completely stilled, it was actually quite hot. The woman paused looking at the gill and on to where, a little way below, it dropped into a small pool.
"In the summer you could bathe in that and sit on the rocks in the sunshine and dry."
