The Loner, page 15
Pablo had straight short jet-black hair; he was clean-shaven with a square chin, long nose, and a penetrating gaze. His complexion was dark, and his limbs had an agile and wiry look, the image of a character of a youth whose life could be dedicated to extreme physical effort and harsh conditions.
Mark shyly muttered a polite, “Glad to know you,” and then, as he could think of nothing else to say, he asked the other why he was called Pablo.
“That’s easy,” chuckled Pablo, with a broad Northern accent. “Y’see, my name’s Paul really, but, as there’s another Paul in the club, there couldn’t be two Pauls. So, as I was darker, and he was lilly white, they thought a name from sunny Spain would suit me. So Pablo’s my name, and that’s what you’ll call me, lad.”
“Now tell me,” Pablo continued: “What are you doing here, Mark? Are you looking for owt?”
Mark was overawed and found it difficult to reply. He started to stutter.
“I think he wants to do some potholing.” Dave pronounced the last word in such a disparaging manner, that he gave the impression that potholing was the very last activity that would appeal to him or anyone else in the club.
Pablo examined Mark inquisitively with a disdainful stare. “Oh!” he cried, raising his voice as if in the greatest surprise. “So he wants to go caving! Well I expect we can arrange that. After all, we do occasionally go underground, don’t we?”
Dave paused reflectively. “Oh yes!” he exclaimed, as if he could hardly remember the last occasion. “When we go to Yorkshire, we have to do something when we get there!”
“In that case, I can think of much better things to do than caving!” the youth called Pablo exclaimed with a laugh.
“Are you a student too?” Pablo asked, addressing Mark, and drawing up a stool.
Mark nodded shyly.
“Jesus!” Pablo exclaimed, patting his head with an imaginary sponge. “This club’s really going soft, lad: soon we’ll all be students!”
“Now, come off it, Pablo,” Dave cried. “There’s nothing wrong with students. Just because you’re an apprentice with loads of cash doesn’t make you any better than the rest of us, you know!”
Pablo ignored this remark. “What are you studying, lad?” he asked.
“I-I-I’m reading law.” Mark’s unconcealed use of educated language and his learned academic subject impressed nobody.
“Oh aye, you’re going to be one of those parasites, are you? Charge us conveyancing fees for nowt!”
The conversation came temporarily to an end, as Bob picked up his guitar and strummed another song:
“One day as I was sat wi’ ‘im, there came a loud rat-tat;
there came a loud rat-tat on Jack’s front door.
I saw him go to open it, and there to his surprise
A hungry tattered beggar stood outside.
He asked Jack fer a crust of bread;
Jack looked him through and through,
And then said:"Bless thee heart lad, come inside”
And he went and hung his hat up just behind the old front door,
And to the tramp’s surprise, he heard Jack say.”4
Mark watched him with admiration and waited for the chorus. It was one he knew. The musician looked at Mark full in the eyes, and strummed the chorus louder than ever. There was a lot of meaning in that look. The others, whose spirits had been elevated as much by his inspiration as by the ale, all but raised the roof with the rousing chorus:
“Ee, I’m always glad to see a mon like thee;
That’s as welcome, lad, as welcome as can be
Fetch thee chair up to table;
stop as long as thou’rt able.
I’m always glad to see a mon like thee!”
“Mark, me old friend!” Mark heard this remark and felt a hearty slap across his shoulders. He shuddered slightly and wondered if he was being assaulted. The man must have made a mistake. Did the fellow not know he had no friends? He turned round shyly to face his assailant, cringing somewhat. Then his eyes brightened: it was the guitarist – with guitar in hand.
“F-friend? y-you’ve made a mistake,” he muttered nervously.
“Mistake, Mark? How can that be, when you helped me find Sue. That’s the best thing anybody has ever done for me. Don’t let me forget it!”
Mark shook his head.
Dave, who had been chatting to Pablo, turned to the guitarist. “What are you doing here?” he asked with a grin. “You should be playing your guitar. We don’t want no musicians here!”
“I got tired of singing. So I came to welcome an old friend. He won’t speak to me though!”
“So you know Mark!” said Dave. “Small world, Bob!”
“So ’tis. We met in New Brighton; shared a hotel, while I was looking for a new flat with Paul,” Bob replied, as if disowning all responsibility for inviting Mark there
“You mean – after you’d been thrown out of your old one, Bob!”
“No...” Bob retorted with a grin. “We weren’t thrown out – we just walked out on landlord, when we found what lousy neighbours we had!”
“I believe you, Bob: thousands wouldn’t!”
Bob turned to Mark who was enjoying their repartee. “And how do you come to know my good friend, Dave?” he asked.
Mark started to stammer nervously. So Dave answered the question. “We don’t,” he explained. “We’ve just met.” Then Dave declared with a laugh: “There’s something the matter with Mark, Bob. I think he wants to see a cave!”
Bob made a theatrical gesture at Mark, as if he was examining Mark with a stethoscope, and asked him in a clinical way: “You want to go potholing, do you? Now, why ever would you want to do that? I thought you were interested in horses – not caves!”
“I-I-I w-was, Bob,” Mark confessed slowly. “But n-no-one w-wanted to know me.”
“Ah, I see now,” Bob teased. He smiled knowingly, as if he had just received inspiration from a crystal ball, and then declared: “There was more to riding than just the horses then!”
Mark blushed and nodded.
“So you decided to take my advice and come caving at last,” Bob continued with a smile. “You’ve made the right decision, lad. Now tell us, why do you want to go underground?”
Mark remained silent for a moment, as if dumb. Then, at last, he burst out: “I w-want to s-see a real cave – w-with stalactites, and big chambers.”
Bob paused. “Mm...” he mumbled, “I suppose we might be able to arrange that. It’s a show cave you want to see then?!”
Mark looked confused. He could see the others were amused, but did not quite know why. “I-I’ve never ever s-seen any cave, and I w-want to see a cave,” he said in a mournful tone. “I don’t want to see a s-show cave. I w-want to see a real natural cave, with...with passages, w-with s-streams and r-real s-stalactites.”
Bob considered Mark’s naive enthusiasm slowly and asked him if he had any idea what caves were like.
“I-I’ve never been in one,” Mark confessed.
“We go down Yorkshire caves,” Dave said.
Pablo made an expansive gesture and explained: “They’re huge. There are real caverns, hundreds of feet wide.” Mark’s eyes brightened at the idea.
“Some are so big that, if you stand in the middle, you can’t see the walls or the roof.” Bob raised his eyes with an awe inspired expression.
“There are real big holes that go down hundreds of feet.” Pablo was enjoying the exaggeration. “And you have to climb down an’ up ‘em on real wire ladders.”
Mark shuddered at the thought of climbing wire ladders to such a depth and then asked: “B-but w-what about the s-stalactites?”
“There are real natural formations everywhere,” Dave said, with a broad grin, which anyone else would have taken as proof that the words did not quite reveal the whole truth.
“Yes, you have to see them to believe it!” Bob added, thoroughly enjoying the deception.
“S-stalactites are the ones on the ground, aren’t they?” Mark asked.
“Ah no!” Bob replied, while tightening the strings on his guitar. “Stalactites are what you bang your head on, and stalagmites are the ones you fall over!”
Everyone seemed to laugh – except Mark.
“But aren’t they pretty?” Mark asked.
“Yes Mark, they are pretty.” Dave nodded his head sagely. “The best ones are translucent – you can see right through them.”
Mark reflected and tried to imagine a fairy land of icycle-like stalactites, glittering in the cavities under the Yorkshire Dales. There was something in Dave’s words which defied belief!
But it was a merry company. The ale had put them all in a happy state. The new companion seemed to be so overwhelmed with enthusiasm, that he didn’t seem to mind their teasing – if that is, he realised they were pulling his leg. So Bob found it difficult to resist plunging, from the realm of half-truths, into a fantastic world of make-believe.
“Some people say there are spirits in caves,” he declared wickedly.
Mark took it all in. He sat up bolt upright, his eyes full of attention. “You mean there are ghosts in caves?” he asked. The idea was so exciting that he lost his stammer for a moment.
“Aye, that’s right. So there are.”
Mark’s ready belief took Bob by surprise and almost made him give the game away.
“There was poor Freddy Blogs who fell down Bar Pot. Ever since he fell, lights have been seen at bottom of Big Pitch! The cave has been searched many times – but no-one has been found!”
“Is that really true?” Mark asked, his eyes sparkling with excitement.
“Oh aye!” Bob nodded his head gravely, with a look of sincerity which was remarkable for someone in his degree of intoxication at that time of night. “I even saw the light myself once.” His voice sank into a low mysterious whisper. “Then I heard a sound – a strange sound – I thought it was dripping of water at first. Then, as it came closer, I realised it was like...a bark of a dog!” His eyes were wide open in an attitude of simulated terror.
“D-did you go and look and see w-what it was?” Mark asked innocently, stammering again.
Bob looked most indignant. “’Course I didn’t,” he exclaimed. “It could have been a weer wolf! I got out as fast as I could!”
“I-I w-would like to see that cave. I-I’ve never seen a ghost before!” They beamed at Mark with an expression of incredulity. Then he asked: “W-what’s a pitch?”
Dave replied: “A pitch is a vertical drop which you have to climb down to get to the bottom of the cave, and climb up, to get out of the cave.”
“You mean rock-climbing?” Mark’s face was a picture of horror. “I-I’ve never done any of that before. Perhaps I’d better not go caving.”
But the caving club were a friendly crowd, and had no wish to lose their new recruit so quickly, however strange his ideas. So Bob hastily corrected Mark’s impression of a group of reckless adventurers doing death-defying feats of mountaineering in a dangerous subterranean environment.
“Don’t worry, Mark,” he said with a reassuring smile. “Climbing in caves is only very easy stuff. If we do a big pitch, we use wire ladders, and you have a lifeline; so you won’t fall off. We’ll take you underground sometime, and then you’ll see. Potholing is easy really.”
Mark was relieved. Bob picked up his guitar and began to strum the chords of a sea song:
“And now the storm is raging,
And we are far from shore.
The good old ship is a-tossing about,
And the rigging is all tore.”5
The club joined to raise the roof with the chorus:
“And the secret of my life, my love,
You’re the girl I do adore.
And still I live in hopes to see
The holy ground once more!”
“You p-play w-well,” Mark observed.
Bob laughed. “Do I?” He clearly thought the compliment was a great joke. “It’s the ale, lad. It doesn’t matter how good music is – if you’ve had enough beer, you’ll sing anything. Who needs good music, when you’ve got a good song to sing?”
“Is – is it the s-singing which makes y-you go underground?”
Bob laughed. “Christ! No. If it was only the singing I liked, I’d stay on surface and let others go underground!”
Mark frowned. He wondered what it was that made nice people go potholing. The subject became suddenly very interesting. He was perplexed, perhaps obsessed with the question. “Is it for the s-stalactites?” he asked. Bob pursed his lips in a thin smile. “No one goes down Yorkshire caves just to see formations,” he explained. “We were pulling your leg just now! There are a few good stals which are really worth seeing. But, to tell truth, you don’t see many in Yorkshire.”
“Then w-why do you go down caves?” Mark decided to quote Sir Edmond Hillary. “I-is it because they’re there?” he asked timidly.
Bob took a sip of his beer and gazed into the distance with a weary stare. He had no particular reverence for Sir Edmond, nor for that matter, for anyone with a title to his name. “Of course not,” he said. “That would be like saying, I’d go down a sewer because it’s there!”
Mark would not be put off. “I-is it because of the large caverns and big passages?”
“Yorkshire caves are very impressive, but that’s not why I go caving. You don’t go underground to have a look at what’s there, lad.”
“Then w-why do you go?”
“I suppose it’s for sport.”
“The sport!” All kinds of images flashed through Mark’s mind: the runs and other exercise he had hated so much at school; the doctor’s concern that he should do some sport. He tried to reconcile games which were recognised as sport with this strange new pastime. What did football or cricket or rugby have in common with caves? So was he now getting involved in a sport? He had been learning to ride a horse, but that wasn’t really a sport – or was it? What was there to a cave anyway? A walk down an interesting passage decorated with pretty formations? That was more like it, perhaps. Frightening yes, but no, caving could not possibly be a sport!
The lights flashed for last orders. Bob began his last number-:
“Hey, Mr. Tamborine Man, play a song for me;
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m goin’ to.
Hey, Mr. Tamborine Man, play a song for me;
In the jingle jangle mornin’, I’ll come followin’ you.
Then take me disappearin’
Through the smoke rings of my mind,
Down the foggy ruins of time,
Far past the frozen leaves,
The haunted frightened trees,
Out of the windy beach,
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow.
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky,
With one hand hangin’ free,
Silhouetted by the sea,
Circled by the circus sands,
With all memory and fate
Driven deep beneath the waves;
Let me forget about to-day until tomorrow.
Hey, Mr. Tamborine Man, play a song for me”6
Mark listened dreamily. If he had belonged to the intellectuals who analysed the latest fashions, he would have wondered if the purpose of this song was to praise a certain drug or was merely an ode to Dylan’s Muse. But Mark was not an intellectual and understood only those words which had a meaning for himself. It was not more than eighteen months since he had left the school, where Misery had been a way of life. Now he actually did feel far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow...with all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves.
Bob set down his instrument, and there was a hurried conference between him, Dave, and several others. At length Dave turned to Pablo, who was sitting near them, and Mark. Dave told Pablo they were thinking of doing a trip down a cave called Lost John’s that Saturday, and asked him if he would like to come.
Pablo readily agreed, but before Dave could get away, Mark asked him why the cave was called Lost John’s.
Bob laughed."That’s easy,” he said flippantly. “That’s where John lost it.”
“Lost w-what?” asked Mark, as someone let go a peal of laughter.
Mark asked if he could come too. Bob looked at him, and considered the request slowly. He could remember Mark’s old record on the school sports field only too clearly. Mark was one of those people who you could never forget very easily – for all the wrong reasons!
At length he said: “Well, Mark, I’m not sure we can take you. You see, this isn’t really a club meet; only a few of us are going. So there probably won’t be room for you, I’m afraid. Lost John’s is a long trip anyway, and isn’t suitable for novices.”
“But I-I-I’d like to come,” Mark persisted.
Pablo was more sympathetic. He had no idea of Mark’s previous record, and appreciated his enthusiasm. He smiled generously. “It’s as Bob says,” he declared. “There just is no transport for you just now. Let me make a suggestion. There’s a party tomorrow night at Buchanan Street – that’s in Toxteth. Some of us will be there. There may be someone there who’ll give you a lift.”
Poor Mark was completely taken aback. For a moment he forgot about the cave altogether. His face showed a confused display of surprise, pleasure, and sheer bewilderment. “Party?” he asked. “W-what do I do to get into that? W-what – who do I pay?”
Bob blinked and then smiled benevolently. “Have you never been to a party before, Mark?”
Mark nodded: “F-family p-parties – Christmastime!”
“Well, this one’s going to be rather different. Don’t worry, Mark. You’ll be my guest. You won’t have to pay owt, but mind you bring some booze! You won’t pass my front door unless you bring some ale with you! We’ll see you there.”
