A KIND OF RECONCILIATION.

By Anthony Toole.

Some years ago, the Angler’s Hotel languished by the shore of the lake. It’s ivy-clad windows gazed in tranquility across the water to the eponymous crag that rises from the opposite shore.

Family legend holds that my great grandfather, fortified by a fair quantity of alcohol, won a bet, one New Year’s Eve, by swimming from hotel to crag. His descendents displayed a lesser insanity. We saw the hotel as the perfect place to unwind after a hard day climbing and walking on the mountains that enclose the valley. Glass in hand, we would sit, each in our time, by the lake’s edge, watching shadows lengthen and colours change, and midges dance over the water. And we would plan our next excursion.

Today, the hotel is gone. Where it stood is recorded only in out-of-date postcards that lie hidden in neglected corners of cupboards. And the peace also is gone, for affluence and mobility have brought the lake and its valley into the tourists’ sphere of discovery, and the noisy and garish have arrived.

Peter Maxwell’s bungalow stands just off the narrow, rutted track that winds for half-a-mile down the hillside joining the main road to the site of the hotel. I do not know who owns the bungalow now. Peter died more than fifteen years ago. But he built it, and for the time I knew him, lived in it and lavished all his energies on it. So to me, it will always be Peter Maxwell’s bungalow.

He enjoyed the isolation of his home, and the day-long company of Maggie, his gentle wife. He had chosen the site the year before he retired, and had no desire to spend his remaining days anywhere else. He walked a mile to the village for day-to-day requirements. On the rare occasions he and Maggie wished to go farther, they took a taxi cover the six miles into town. A bus or a train could carry them from there. Peter’s home was the fulfillment of a dream.

I discovered the lake, its valley, its craggy mountains and its beauty in my mid-teens. And through them, I discovered beauty itself. I remember my first gaze at the view. I was fourteen at the time. Though I lived only four miles away, I had never been there before. I recall standing by the side of the track, somewhere near the site of Peter Maxwell’s bungalow, and remarking to myself, with amazement, that the scene was exactly as depicted in an old painting I had looked at in a book at home. I opened that book many times during the succeeding weeks, in the secrecy of my bedroom. Each time, I had a strange feeling in my stomach. I wanted to go there again, for I knew that the mountains held something I was hungry for, though I had no idea what it was.

I began to make bicycle trips to the lake at weekends. And as Summer came in, I visited the valley in the evenings, discovering a whole new aspect of beauty. In stillness. In moving colours. In the sharp light that picked out distant rocks, gullies, ridges that could be seen at no other time of day. I began to feed the passion for wild, lonely places that was rapidly growing in me.

I passed Peter Maxwell’s bungalow many times, alone, with friends, walking and cycling. Sometimes, I saw his grey hair bobbing around in the shrubbery. At other times I might pass him and his wife as I hurried toward the main road, while they strolled peacefully down to the hotel. Beyond a quick

“Lovely evening.”

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

we never spoke.

I was about seventeen when I first entered the house. My companion made the suggestion. I tiptoed along the path, leaving him standing by the gate, and pressed the bell. Peter opened the door.

“Excuse me,” I said, “I’m sorry to bother you, but could I use your telephone, please?’

“Of course. Come in.”

I stepped into the hallway, then hurriedly out again. My boots left a muddy print on the carpet.

“I’d better take these off first,” I said.

“Maybe you’d better. My wife wouldn’t be too pleased.”

I took out a handkerchief and rubbed the carpet.

“Dont bother. I’ll clean it.”

.

“I think it’s going to rain,” I explained. “I’d like to ask my father to pick us up in the car.”

I made the call, then sat on the doorstep to pull on my boots.

“Would you like to come in and wait until your father arrives?”

“Thanks very much, but we’ll walk on and meet him.”

He came to the gate with me. “How far have you been?” he asked.

“About fifteen miles.”

“You’ve had a long day. I saw you going past at around ten this morning.”

“We’ve climbed four peaks.”

“You’ll be tired.”

“Shattered. We’ll sleep well tonight.”

“It’s great to be young.” He tilted his head and winked. “You find pleasure in hardship and get a good night’s sleep.”

We nodded, not fully understanding him. We thanked him and said goodbye.

“Call in next time you come past here.”

I did call. About two or three weeks later. I had not planned doing so, but when I saw Peter in the front garden, I felt, out of politeness, that I could not pass by. He was kneeling on the front lawn, pulling weeds from between the flowers that bordered the grass. He looked up as I greeted him, and waved me into the garden.

“Let’s go round to the back and have a cup of tea,” he said.

The back garden was in immaculate condition. Hardly a weed showed through the soil. Nor did there appear to be a blade of grass out of place. It stretched for about twenty yards, and strode in two levels down the hillside. A patio of concrete slabs reached for the first few yards. This ended on one side with some sections of interwoven fencing. On the other side was a row of heathers, interspersed with a few dwarf conifers. A set of steps led through these to the lower garden, a lawn, with a rockery at the far end. The whole was surrounded by a thick privet hedge, cut low enough that it obscured nothing of the magnificent view of the lake and mountains beyond.

Peter motioned me to sit on one of the deck chairs that stood on the patio. He made drinking signals to his wife, who was in the kitchen, then joined me.

“Climbing mountains again?” he asked.

“Just one today.”

“An easy day.”

I pointed out the peak that had occupied me for the previous two hours.

“It doesn’t look too easy to me,” he remarked.

“It’s steep and craggy, but it’s one of my favourites.” I pointed to a gully that cut though the dark, brooding crags on the far side of the lake. “That’s another of my favourites.”

Mrs Maxwell brought out a tray with tea and a plate of biscuits. After a few words, she left us. Peter and I talked for an hour or so, mostly about the valley and the mountains. The sun was hot. This was the languid time of the day.

“I’m nearly seventy,” he said.

“My grandfather,” I boasted, “was carrying a bike over these hills in his sixties.”

“He probably did it all his life. I’ve led a sedentary existence. I’ve never been very fit.”

In later years, I abandoned the quiet solitude of my local mountains in favour of excitement and danger, and returned to them only with the approach of middle age, and a maturity in which the true values of beauty have begun to re-establish themselves. My late teens, however, were still a time for discovery, and I was eager to share my amazement with others, young or old.

I took Peter Maxwell with me on a few short walks, calling for him in my father’s car, which I was occasionally able to borrow when I had passed my driving test. We once walked the full six-mile circuit of the lake. It was a sharp, frosty January afternoon. On another occasion, I took him up over the pass between two precipitous peaks to show him Brown Tarn. The first couple of miles were a slow, but not steep, uphill grind to a superb vantage point from which we could see about half the lake, and the full span of the cultivated flatlands that stretched from the valley to the sea. The expression on Peter’s face was childlike in its joy. I knew from it that there was no barrier of age between us. I pointed out his home in the distance. His expression changed to one of quiet pride.

His pride in his home was justified. Not only was it situated in command of a view of, to my mind, unparalleled beauty, it was furnished and decorated with taste and the very best of quality.

“I searched a long time for a site like this,” he said. “You couldn’t spoil this by building a hovel.”

From his living room, we could gaze over the valley through the picture window that occupied more than three-quarters of the wall. In winter, the afternoon sun slanted across the lake, and the hillsides, and tinted pink the thin spattering of snow that lay over the mountain tops.

Peter and Maggie seemed an ideal couple, always attentive of each other. Maggie was forever pottering around the house, baking or cleaning. Though what she found to clean, I could never see. The place was like a small palace.

Peter loved his garden. Even on a winter’s day, he found some corner that needed tending. If the weather were too wet for outside work, he would be doing some small job of decoration or construction indoors, or in the garage. Why he had a garage I do not know. He had given up his car when he retired.

If one of them were ill, the other would coddle and flap like a mother hen. Bringing cups of tea. Asking if the room were warm enough, or cool enough. Ensuring that the medicine had been taken.

They had only each other and the bungalow. I think they would have liked a family, but they never mentioned it. Only once did I catch the barest suggestion that they may have lost a child during the early years of their marriage, but I cannot be sure.

I could not imagine their ever having had an argument. I once asked them.

“About forty years ago,” said Peter, laughing.

“What was that about?”

“He brought me home a bunch of flowers.”

“She thought I’d been seeing another woman.”

“I slapped him on the face.”

“We didn’t speak to each other for three days.”

That seemed to be the sum of their marital discord.

I had just begun my final year at University when Peter had his first stroke. He recovered fairly well and was out of hospital by the time I came home on holiday. I visited him two or three times, and once took him for a trip in my father’s car. His speech was only slightly slurred. With the aid of a walking frame, he could move around the house. And of course with Maggie in perpetual attendance, he wanted for nothing. I assured him that, when Spring came, I would tidy up the garden for him.

I never had the chance to fulfill my promise. In fact I never entered the house or the garden again.

My mother wrote to me early in March. Peter had had a second stroke. This time, the prognosis was not good. He was moved from the hospital to a Catholic nursing home, where he was being looked after by an Order of nuns. Maggie had moved into the home temporarily, to be near him and to help his recovery.

About two weeks before I was due home for Easter, my mother telephoned me to tell me that Maggie had died. It seems that, after enjoying a television programme in the lounge of the nursing home, she stood up to go and make some tea for herself and a friend. Peter was in bed at the time. Without a word of complaint, Maggie collapsed back into the chair. She was dead before the nurse could be summoned. My parents went to the funeral, and sent a wreath on my behalf.

The very evening I arrived home, I drove over to see Peter. What can one say to a man who has lost the woman he has loved for nearly fifty years? I said what a wonderful woman she was. I invoked the consolations of religion, knowing them to be, at that time, completely inadequate. Platitudes punctuated by embarrassment. At my age, with a past I had either unconsciously forgotten, or consciously abandoned, and a future I was eager to attack with confidence, what could I understand of the feelings of a man with virtually no future remaining, and a past that had so suddenly lost its focus?

I could not communicate through lack of experience. Peter could communicate only with difficulty, because of his lack of control of his powers of speech. Instead, we simply cried together. It was a frustrating visit. I was glad when I felt able to leave. As I stood up, I saw a photograph of Maggie on the dressing table. Beside it was a small, tidy pile of some of her belongings. I escaped as quickly as I could.

It was a phone call from the nursing home that brought me back the next day. Two of the sisters were outside Peter’s door when I arrived.

“Thank God you’ve come,” said one of them. “We can’t do anything with him.”

“We can’t even get into the room,” said the other. “He’s jammed something against the door.

I knocked. Something solid struck the inside of the door. I called to Peter. A noisy scrape and a muffled sound followed. I opened the door. A chair lay on its side, just behind the door.

By grunts and gesticulations, interspersed with some recognisable words, Peter indicated that he did not wish to set eyes on any

“…bloody women …” as long as he lived.

The room was in chaos. Peter sat on the bed, looking dejected.

“…bitches.”

A flower vase lay broken in a corner, the flowers scattered on the floor.

“Can’t … trust…”

A damp patch stained the carpet.

“...give...everything.”

He swung his crutch hard against the door.

Maggie’s belongings had been swept from the dressing table. The photograph lay on the floor among them, along with some slivers of broken glass. I bent to pick up the photograph, but received a bang of the crutch on the arm.

“Leave it,” Peter said, quite clearly.

The gentle friend I had known had suddenly transformed into a cantankerous, old cripple.

“What happened?” I asked.

“…gone…”

“What’s gone?”

“...house.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Maggie.. .her sister.. .bloody brat of a son...”

“Sorry. Maggie’s sister?”

“...seen...twenty years.”

He picked up some papers that lay beside him on the bed, and handed them to me.

“...lawyer...this morning.

The papers were a copy of Maggie’s will. I read them carefully.

“Was the house Maggie’s?” I asked.

Peter nodded. “…I die first.”

This was more than I could handle. I was less able than on the previous clay to find words to say to him. I said something about contesting the will. Peter shook his head sadly. I knew that there was no malice in Maggie’s action. She could not possibly have meant to leave Peter homeless. She merely made the mistake of thinking that she would outlive her husband. All indications were that she would. I explained this to Peter. I am sure he believed this, but his face registered nothing. I suggested that perhaps I could have a look at the house, or tidy up the garden. Again, he shook his head. What I did not mention was my belief that his sadness was irrelevant, that he would not live to see his home again. I skirted around the subject for several minutes, saying nothing very constructive.

“Maybe I could ask my father for advice,” I concluded.

Peter sighed and shrugged his shoulders.

We sat in silence for what seemed an age. Tentatively, I picked up a couple of the flowers. I glanced, apprehensively at Peter. He did not seem to object. I gathered up the rest, and lay them on the dressing table. Then I started on the pieces of broken vase. One by one, I placed them in the waste basket. Peter made no movement.

I knelt by the untidy heap of Maggie’s belongings, but did not touch them. I looked at Peter, questioningly. He opened his mouth, struggling to force out the words. After several seconds, they came.

“I die here … anyway.”

That was it. He had admitted the inevitable. And it seemed to bring something of the reconciliation he needed. He waved his hand in the direction of the photograph. I picked it up and gave it to him.

There was a slight tap on the door. I glanced at Peter. He nodded slowly. I opened the door.

“Can I come in?” asked the sister, in a whisper. “It seems quiet now.”

She carried a tray with some cups and a pot of tea. I held the door aside for her.

She put the tray on the bedside cabinet. Peter held out his hand to her. She took it. His did not raise his eyes, but gazed down at Maggie’s picture while he tightly gripped the hand of her representative.

I still visit the valley from time to time. Its beauty has not waned, and is now revealing itself to my own children. I tell them of their ancestor, who braved the icy waters of the lake in winter. But between the embellishments of the story, I find flashing into my mind the image of Peter Maxwell, sitting on his bed, his eyes awash with tears, as he slowly picks the pieces of broken glass out of the photograph of his wife.

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