It's the kind of day you might come across a corpse, we agree, as we walk out on Dartmoor. It's the kind of day someone might come across our corpses.
God's watching us, W. says, can you see? But I can see nothing but the overcast sky.
W. tells me of his long walks on the moors with his walking friend – a proper walker, not like me – and of the great conversations they would have, on every topic. They would speak of the decline of Dartmoor tin-mining and quarrying, and of the abandoned long houses of the high moor. They speculated on the origin of the standing stones left by neolithic moor-dwellers, and of the hut circles they left behind.
They wondered about the patterns of climate change, which once saw the moor covered in forest and then peat bogs. They talked of De Valera imprisoned after the Uprising at Dartmoor Prison, from which no one has ever escaped. They considered the relationship of the Dartmoor Pony to the Exmoor Pony, and of the origins of the wild cat, the Beast of Dartmoor, which attacks the ponies, leaving their remains steaming in the morning sun.
He misses his friend, who's busy with a family now, W. says. – 'He was a man of conversational range, not like you'. Why have I never learned to talk?, W. wonders. Why is it left to him, when in company, to speak for both of us?
There are times, it is true, when inspiration seizes me; when I speak for several minutes, as in a revery. W. treasures these times and likes to remind me of what I said, long after. Did you really say —? What did you mean by —? But for long periods, I'm mute, thinking of who knows what, W. says.
Sometimes he likes that about me, too, he says. Sometimes he imagines my silences to be a kind of integrity, a way of guarding something, some secret. He knows something, W. says to himself, looking across at me. Or, better: something knows itself in him. And what knows itself in me today, in our Dartmoor afternoon? Nothing whatsoever!, W. says.
The rain clears. The open sky. – 'It's come to this', W. says. 'The final reckoning'. And then, 'You can't hide on Dartmoor. You can't keep secrets'. It's just us and our God … 'The God of twats', says W.
They'll find us lying prone, with our eyes pecked out. They'll find our bodies half eaten by the Beast of Dartmoor. Yes, that will be our judgement.
We've gone missing, W. says. Well, he has. They should send out search parties. There should be men with loudhailers calling his name. He's lost on the moor, W. says – my moor. He's lost in the wilderness, W. says – my wilderness. And who will come to rescue him?
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