Ockmoor For Ever!

What radical stories does our land hold, waiting for us to remember & retrieve them? A grandfather & granddaughter take a walk of discovery.

Thomas Merry, a free man, cycled out one warm afternoon in April. He left the house where he lived, in one of our most venerable university towns, and came out onto the cycle lane that ran alongside the ring road. He was free because he had retired, aged 65, in the last week, and because the divorce (his wife's idea, not his) had just come through. She kept the house and car - he'd found he couldn't be bothered with all that, and rented a bedsit north of the city centre.

He'd allowed himself the luxury of a new bicycle; he hadn't cycled for ages, and although he felt a bit stiff at first, he was alive to the sheer pleasure of the warm spring air buffeting his face, and of being in the open under the blue sky.

The third fact presently affecting his life was that his daughter had moved just recently to Brockley, a village lying just a few miles outside the city. She had phoned Tom early this morning - she was out at work until late, the au pair had left them, Tom's ex-wife was away on a girls' holiday, her husband was on a work trip abroad, could he come and meet his granddaughter after school? So now Tom, the final resort, was cycling that way.

It was Tuesday and he was free: he hadn't got used to this yet, this free time stretching on to the end of his days.

"I could have twenty years left," he thought. "My father was 84 when he died, and his father 91."

This thought forcibly struck him as he cycled on. What was he going to do with all this time? Would it be liberating, or would it become his burden unto death? He felt as he cycled that the very air rushing past his ears was the resistance this time made to his passing on. He was cycling against the flow of traffic, cars, vans, lorries pounding the tarmac of the ring road. Very few of the drivers glanced his way. There was not a smile on any face; only that set, bored expression of the solitary motorist. Set on their only purpose, for which they drove: work. And each push of the pedals drove Tom ever further away from the fact that there was no more work for him, not ever.

He'd noticed others, older colleagues, who'd not been prepared. The leisure which came after retirement, the years and years of leisure, fell on them like the silence after a bomb explodes (only the rush of emergency services came years not minutes later). You'd never think nothing could hit you so full in the face, but many of his mates had their sense knocked out by it. By nothing. They sat and watched telly, they sat and drank their beer in the club, they sat.

He hated sitting. He'd stood most of his working life at the bench with his tools and mates, men who took one blow reeling from Father Time and sat down from shock and never got up again except to lay down.

But now he smiled - his smile against all the set, grim faces of the motorists. He would work out his life, starting now, starting with this cycle ride, going towards the place where he had spent his childhood. That was curious - his daughter choosing to move to Brockley, when the next village was Hareton, where he had been born.

A bridge curved over the ring road and onto a narrow road towards the village of Fairfield. Tom hadn't cycled this way in years. A familiar feeling of relief came over him, as quiet descended after the busy A-road, and the pleasant sight rose before him of the green hill, dotted white with blackthorn blossom, and Fairfield church just visible above the trees. It was a steep hill, good for the heart he thought as he pedalled his way up slowly. He used to zoom up here years ago, on a rusty 3-speed bike - now he had a light, aluminium frame, and 21 speeds, but he couldn't push his body too much, these days there'd be a price to pay. He felt a slight arthritic twinge in his left knee as he reached the top. Once upon a time there was never a price to pay.

In the trees above, hidden now the leaves came, and perched on the telephone wires, the little birds sang out their spring joy. The warm afternoon sun stimulated them so. On a day like this, with all the promise of the warm seasons to come hanging in the air with the birdsong, even an old man like him (not that he was so old! he got up that hill) could feel the sap of spring flow strongly in his veins again - on a day like this he felt his question would be answered. Time - that of course was another luxury now in his possession. But time without any purpose, was that any good? Work of some sort or another defines us and keeps the life in our souls - otherwise, wouldn't retirement become a sort of half-life? Decaying all the time, dwindling down.

At the crossroads after Fairfield he turned onto the Common Road which rose gently, then ran along the ridge towards Brockley. Here he got his first view of Ockmoor, stretching below to his left. He stopped and took a deep breath as if only the air of this spot could bring him vigour.

Not that Ockmoor looked like much from up here. A stranger, passing by, would never stop here and stare at a remarkable feature of the landscape - like anyone would be struck by a canyon or mountain. Some few thousand acres of flat farmland, across which no road ran other than an overgrown Roman Way: this was Ockmoor. A name which had gained its place in the history books not as a battlefield or birthplace of genius, but because some 200 years ago Ockmoor was common land, land coveted by landowners to plough into profit and rent. The law was passed, the enclosure began - as in so many other cases - but in this case, the people famously resisted, for many years. Tom's ancestors were among these resisters.

He could see from here most of the seven villages that had once enjoyed the common rights of Ockmoor. Down there on the plain was Nash, the nearest, then the churches and houses of Eventon, Earlton, and further away, in the haze, Pencott and Walcott; these hamlets and villages, linked by a road, formed a semi-circle which enclosed Ockmoor to the west, north and east, leaving the southern part roughly bounded by the ridge on which Brockley was situated. Hareton, his birthplace, was beyond Brockley and could not be seen. A few miles from the ancient city bustling with its academic and market affairs, within sight of the motorway to the North - but seemingly untouched by it all), a peaceful rural enclave. Not so peaceful once.

Tom put his left foot into the pedal straps, pushed off, and swung his right leg over the crossbar as the bike set off down the hill - he was getting back his skill. Past the farm where new calves stood on wobbly knock-kneed legs, a few cottages, a hedge to the right that had just been cut, leaving the wood hacked and jagged, the splintered branches discarded on the road - just likely to get a puncture. These machines that drive along and hack off the tops... there was no care in it at all. People don't know half the time what they're doing, he thought, they tear at the land, they try to make living hedges by cutting the blackthorn a little and bending it over so it'll sprout upright, but cut too much and the wood dies and is useless, they plough greedily right to the river's edge so the earth cracks and falls into the water... Tom had never been particularly keen on farmers, in fact now he can't help grinning, to recall how often he got up their noses as a boy.

He wheeled left, down into the centre of Brockley, past the church. It was almost 3.30 so he stopped in front of the school to wait for Vicky. From there he could see down the road to the very last cottage of the village, which was his daughter's new home. In fact, this was Tom's first visit since their move. Caroline had rather taken her mother's side during the divorce, he didn't particularly know why, not having been bitter, on his side at least. It was a marriage that had just fizzled out. And he'd not been part of Caroline and her husband's decision to move to Brockley. Last time he had visited them they were still in Wycombe.

He noticed then a thorn sticking out of his front tyre and when he pulled it out, heard a sharp hiss of air - that wretched hedge had given him a puncture.

The children in their blue uniforms burst out of the school building and down the steps. Vicky ran towards him, telling her little friends rather loudly, "That's my grandfather." The boys made admiring eyes at his new bike and stared at its surprising rider with his shock of grey hair and patched and darned cycling trousers (they'd still fitted, after all these years). Tom grinned at them, they grinned back, then trudged off reluctantly to their waiting Mums - Tom was the only man there - clutching their bags and drawings.

"Hallo, Vicky!" said Tom. There was a moment's awkwardness on his side, not having seen her for a few months, but none at all on hers.

Vicky was eight years old and wore thick glasses, having inherited her father's weak eyes. She had that slightly disconcerting look of the spectacled child. She'd not inherited the sharp sight of Tom's family, but certainly had their stubborn spirit, a spirit that, once set on its way, would not waver until the destination was reached, the consequences fully played out.

"Come on, grandfather." Her formality, picked up from reading some old children's stories, he remembered from last time, and found amusing. Her serious voice was slightly betrayed by its squeaky little girl pitch.

Tom followed her down the street, wheeling his bike which bumped flatly on the punctured tyre, to her new home. It was a small cottage with a thatched roof, rough white-washed walls and flowers in front. They put the bike at the back of the house and he unhooked the panniers.

"Nice day at school?" he asked.

"Ok," she shrugged, unlocking the back door. She was used to looking after herself.

"D'you like your new house?" Tom glanced around the small, low living room and followed her into the kitchen, which had a view of the hillside descending to Ockmoor.

Vicky shrugged again. Tom made himself a cup of tea while she drank some juice and nibbled a biscuit.

"Mum told me you aren't living with grandmother anymore."

''No, that's true."

"Why?"

He copied her shrug. "I guess she thought I'd got boring." Vicky seemed content with this explanation.

"l better mend the puncture," said Tom, and they both went into the garden. She watched him take off the tyre from the wheel frame and repair the tiny hole in the inner tube with a patch and glue. He gave her the black cap of the valve to hold for safe keeping. She held it carefully in her hand until he needed it again.

"It's nice and sunny, do you want to go for a ride?" he asked her, when he had finished.

"I haven't got a bike," she said, "my old one was too small and we left it behind."

"We can walk. There's a nice path just there," and he pointed over the garden fence. He put on his walking boots, while she changed quickly out of her school uniform which she disliked anyway, it was scratchy and uncomfortable.

"So what d'you think of Brockley?" asked Tom as they set off on the footpath, which led downhill towards Ockmoor.

"I don't know..."

It turned out that Vicky had at first been very unhappy about leaving Wycombe where she was born, leaving her friends and the only house she had ever known. She had hated her first moments in Brockley, in fact, hated its unfamiliarity, its smallness. There wasn't even a shop. It was in the middle of nowhere.

"Nowhere's a good place to be," said Tom. "I was born near here, you know." She looked at him with more interest.

"I like it better now," she said, smiling, "because I made some friends at the school."

They came to a rusty half-open gate on which Tom leant to take a look at the view while Vicky climbed up and held onto the top bar, swinging her feet. Just below was Nash Wood, still brown with winter, and Nash hamlet visible behind the trees.

"That's Ockmoor," said Tom, waving his hand to the view beyond.

"What's that?"

"All the area you can see, right up to those far villages."

"It's a funny name," she said, peering into the distance.

"ls it? I suppose so, it's not really a moor. Oc means water, in some old language."

"What water?"

He smiled at her unwittingly pertinent question. "Once upon a time there was lots of water. The river was always flooding its banks."

"When you were a boy?"

"Long before that. The land is drained now, the water stays in the ditches." It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her the story and explain why there was no water and that this had some real connection to her, but he hesitated, for such a long and complicated story might bore her. Instead he continued, "I roamed all over Ockmoor when I was a boy. Like this path, I've walked down it loads of times."

"Can we go down there too?"

"Of course," he answered, glad to see she was taking some interest.

They continued down the path. On the grassy pasture beside them black birds hopped for food. The earth of the path was dry, cracked and grey. Horses had used it and their hoof prints had dried into hard pits, difficult to walk over without stumbling as it got steeper going down the hill. Tom had never seen the earth so dry in spring - he remembered that ten, twenty years ago any country walk was a muddy one. Now he hardly used his wellies all winter. And this year the talk of drought was serious, so little rain having fallen in March and April.

Vicky stopped to pick at a broken shard of blue-patterned china embedded in the dried mud.

"I can't get it," she said, as he turned to see why she dawdled.

"What is it?"

She pointed. He took out his pocket knife and picked away the earth. "Do you really want that?"

"Oh yes, I like little things, I collect them..." she said, staring at the piece of china on her palm. "Look there's half a boat painted on it, and a tree, maybe it's hundreds of years old... But how did it get here? D'you know, grandfather?"

He shook his head. "I don't. Perhaps a bird dropped it here, just for you."

''That's silly!"' but she took his hand as they slowly made their way down the worst of the pitted ground, so slowly that in the end he lifted her up and took giant steps, her upon his shoulders and her laughter falling about his ears. She was light. Her laughter pleased him, he could have listened to that clear sound for ever, like bird song. He had missed Vicky, these last few months, he had.

Towards the bottom of the hill the earth became more level and she got down, now finding fossil shells - "The sea was here millions of years ago," Tom said - and there were dandelions big round and golden as the sun. The path went between two fields, and was lined now by trees - hazel, blackthorn, and the taller ash and oak whose spring leaves had yet to come, and Vicky pointed to them and asked, "Are they dead?" She looked up to the sky now and then but her attention was more for the ground.

"Look! Those lovely flowers!" and she crouched to touch a clump of yellow primroses lightly with her finger.

"Don't you know their name?"

"Yes..." she did. But a little further on were cowslips, and she did not know them.

"Look! A big rabbit!" she cried, pointing into the field beyond the ditch where green wheat grew already a foot high. Tom saw the large ears and the bulging eyes as the animal came jumping towards them.

"He hasn't seen us yet," he whispered, kneeling beside her. "It's a hare, you know. He's big, isn't he?" The huge ears, with a black tip, stood up straight from the head, and turned this way and that like radar searching for a signal. The hare loped ever closer, his long body with its varying shades of brown clearly visible. They remained very still and Tom heard Vicky's excited breathing. Now the hare had seen them. He stopped, alarmed, then turned and ran away and crouched among the green shoots. Vicky laughed to see only his ears poking above the green.

"The wind's northeast," said Tom, "so our smell blew away from him."

"He didn't see us for ages! Wasn't he close!" Vicky was happy. "Maybe he was a she."

The tips of his ears could still be seen, far off, just above the green shoots, turning this way and that. He wouldn't give up his tasty field so easily.

Tom had taken so many walks on his own these last years, that now he enjoyed very much sharing the countryside. There was always something to be seen - a new flower, an animal, a bird - like now that lark rising to the sky and letting fall his bubbling stream of song. Vicky could not see him though she strained to look - her eyesight was not that good. She was disappointed.

"It's only a black speck now," said Tom consolingly. "The song's what counts."

They had come out of the trees and the wind blew straight to them over the open flat field, a fresh wind, tempering the warm sun - the air still had the chill of winter in it, not yet forgotten, however blue the sky, warm the sun, joyful the lark.

Tom decided to go straight on, not take the footpath where it split off to the left, winding around field borders and Nash Wood to Nash itself, although he thought of it for a moment, for in the wood there would be anemones and bluebells to show Vicky. But he was prompted to go on, towards the heart of Ockmoor, for the story of this place grew ever stronger in his mind as they progressed, and he realised that he would tell Vicky the story, that she would like it.

Each feature of the land was a reminder - like the hedges here, which were square, cropped and dense. Once there had been no hedges nor ditches nor the embankments made from the dug-out earth, there had not even been any fields. There was a vast grassy plain, where geese grazed, and cattle and sheep. Most of the winter the land was flooded from the River Rye and so was no good for cultivation. Poor people could just about live off the land, with their few animals grazing, gleaning fuel from the waste and the woods, in those days before the land was drained and enclosed and farmed.

Now the right of way swung sharply to the right, and ran along the side of an embankment.

"I'm hungry," said Vicky.

"Let's climb over there and sit a bit," suggested Tom, fishing a bar of chocolate and an orange out of his pocket. They scrambled over the bank. The ground was quite warm, he pulled out a few thistles to make a place to sit, then spread out his coat. At their feet lay a little water-filled ditch, and the bank at their backs protected them from the wind.

"There's a nice view," he observed, taking out his knife to peel the orange. "We can see your house, I think."

In front of them rose the ridge towards Brockley, its few cottages gathered about the church, and over the hill towered the enormous radio mast which had a perpetually flashing light at the top. Light planes flew regularly overhead, and police helicopters monitoring the motorway on the far side of Ockmoor.

"I'd like to fly!" said Vicky, munching on the chocolate. "Be the pilot of a big plane."

He looked at her curiously. Girls weren't what they used to be! He reckoned she was capable of it too... but then remembered her short-sightedness.

In the soft ditch-mud leading down to the water were hoofmarks where some deer had once come to drink.

"See," he said, "wild animals everywhere."

"Are there bears and wolves?" she asked.

"Oh no! Not anymore. Only foxes and badgers. You don't see them often, but catch a whiff of one sometimes when you go night walking, they're very smelly."

"Do you like walking at night?" Vicky asked him. "Aren't you scared?"

"The town's more scary!" he laughed. "I started to walk at night when I was about 12, I suppose. Not so much older than you! Actually, the first time I was scared. And then I dared myself to go again. It got better then. Especially Ockmoor on moonlit nights. To see what it was like for the men-"

"What men?" she said brightly.

"Oh -:" he realised he had started the story right in the middle and she wouldn't understand anything. "My grandfather told me a story about Ockmoor. Shall I tell you?"

She nodded, and he began, "It's complicated, so I'll begin at the beginning, and in the end you'll understand why I liked to go onto Ockmoor at night." He cleared his throat. "Let's see... They say, one day back in the mists of time, a mysterious and beautiful lady turned up here, and she gave the people who lived all around as much land as she could ride around on her white horse, while a burning oat-sheaf was carried aloft. She gave that land to the people for them to share, as common land. That included your ancestors, Vicky."

"Mine?" she looked disbelieving.

"Yes. My family always lived here."

"So do we own it now? Which bit is ours?"

"We haven't any at all."

"But the lady gave it to us!"

"It was given to everyone to share. But the rich took it away about 200 years ago."

"Stole it? But why didn't you do something?"

"I wasn't alive then ... It was taken legally, sort of. The rich and powerful made the laws.

People protested ..."

"Like road protesters?"

He wondered how on earth she knew about them but perhaps she'd seen it by chance on the news. "Yes ... I suppose, in a way..."

"Did they live in trees and dig tunnels?"

"No... there weren't any trees then, and the ground was too muddy. They did other things. They broke the new fences and dug up the hedges that were newly planted to divide up the land into fields. The law was going to give most of the new fields to the people who had the most land, and less to those who hadn't much."

"That sounds like a stupid law," remarked Vicky.

"Well, yes. And lots of Ockmoor people didn't like it either. They wanted the land to stay common, shared, not to be private. So on moonlit nights big groups of men'd get together, with blackened faces or black scarves to disguise themselves. They had all sorts of tools and when the moon rose and it was night they went onto Ockmoor and did damage. They broke the new bridges. The land had to be drained first, you see, by making ditches like this one in front of us, because there was too much water for it to be farmland. My grandfather told me that his grandfather remembered as a small boy how his father was often disappearing off at night onto Ockmoor. So our family protested too. Anyway, the authorities did nothing so next they had a big gathering in the day, hundreds of local people turned up and they started cutting the fences. The Sheriff came with his men, and though most escaped, some were arrested and taken off to the city by the soldiers. They were taken on carts through the centre of the city towards the prison, and there were big crowds because it was the September fair - it's still on, I'll take you next time. Anyway, the prisoners shouted 'Ockmoor for ever!' and people recognised them."

"Did they know them, then?" she asked.

"Yes, everyone in the city had heard about Ockmoor and most of them were sympathetic, they thought it was wrong to take the land like that. So they started throwing mud and stones at the soldiers, and the prisoners all escaped. They hid in lofts and carts and fields but got found out in the end and had to go to jail for a while. Some of them were our family, one even had my name. But jail didn't stop them. They went back to doing it at night. They'd shout "Ockmoor for ever!" and vanish into the darkness. They kept on for about five years on and off."

"Did they win?" she asked, having listened very attentively.

He sighed "No. It didn't work, in the end. The land was divided up and given to the most important landowners, the richest men and the lords. The villages got some land too but the poorest people had nothing. They weren't allowed to keep their animals here anymore, or to collect fuel from the woods, which was how they had survived for thousands of years. Their rights were by ancient custom not by law, if you can understand that."

"I think so," she said, in her serious voice.

"So they went hungry and cold, and many of them moved away to the towns and cities. Their cottages were pulled down, if they were built on the common. Even the ones who got some land had to sell it if they couldn't pay for the draining and fencing." He stopped.

"Tell me more!" she cried, when she saw that he had finished. She was quite worked up. More than he'd ever been, even though he had often thought about the story and was secretly proud of having such ancestors.

"I don't know any more... I've told you what my granddad told me."

They sat still and silent for a moment. Tom began to think it was time to move, as the sun was getting low and it was no longer so warm. Then before their eyes a small brown animal appeared from nowhere, swimming in a straight line along the ditch. One, two seconds, then it saw them with wide-open eyes and plop! was gone.

"What was that?!" cried Vicky excitedly.

"A water vole, I'm sure."

"He was funny! I wish they weren't so scared. Did he smell us? We never moved."

"It's probably your red coat that he saw."

"Shall we stay? Won't he come back?" she peered up and down the ditch.

"Well, it's getting late. Time for your supper. I think we've had our luck today with animals..."

She got up reluctantly and climbed after him over the embankment.

"Water voles don't go far," said Tom, "we'll come back and see him another day."

They walked on to where the border of the military shooting range started, though today there was no red danger flag flying, and met the Roman road which crossed over Ockmoor to Eventon and Earlton. Vicky made Tom promise to take her that way soon.

Tom meanwhile wondered about picking nettles for soup, like he used to when he was young and hard-up, they looked so good around here, in high banks, still spring-tender. Telling the story had reminded him of it; in spring his granny had often cooked them.

Vicky watched him curiously as he barehandedly snapped off nettle tips with his knife and put them into a plastic bag found in his commodious pockets. He spoke sharply to her for the very first time as she tried to help with her little hands and squealed when stung. It was a shock to him to realise that she did not know this would happen, but he admired her blinking back tears as he put his arm around her shoulders, for he knew how much it was hurting her. His hands were tough and anyway he believed the stings to be good for arthritis, at least, that's what his granny always said and she knew about these things. He searched about for a dock which he knew would be growing nearby and tore off a leaf.

"Here, rub this on your sore fingers. It'll help a bit."

Vicky forgot her pain soon as a gust of wind sent white blackthorn blossom falling on her like confetti and set her giggling. She peered into the plastic bag at the nettles he'd collected.

"But how can you eat them?"

"They lose their sting when they're cooked."

They walked up the straight Roman road, Ockmoor Lane, on the long hill which led towards Brockley, and Vicky recounted happily all that she had to tell her mother, who hopefully would get back from her London job before Vicky's bedtime.

They returned from the walk to see the answer machine's red light flashing. Vicky pressed the button.

"It's Mum," she said as the message-voice began. Her face fell at the words: "Can't get home tonight. A bomb scare's closed the railway station, the motorway's blocked, and I may as well profit and work late, Dad could you stay on? I'll spend the night with my friend Ann."

Tom observed his granddaughter's disappointed little face. He knew this wasn't the first time. Suddenly he felt fiercely bitter. Children need time, what's the point in having them if you aren't ever with them? But had he, really, been any better with Caroline? Hadn't he always been wrapped up in his work?

He rang the phone number given to say it's okay, he'll stay the night. Father and daughter kept their conversation brief, factual. With Vicky by his elbow, waiting her turn, Tom refrained from saying what he wanted. He walked into the kitchen while Vicky spoke to her mother and began preparing their supper.

Vicky washed the piece of china she'd found and put it in her room with her collection of small stones from beaches, tiny dolls and coloured marbles. She was not very keen on the nettle soup. She preferred her fish fingers and mashed potato.

Tom gazed out of the kitchen window as he washed up - "There's a dishwasher, you know," said Vicky, amused by his funny ways.

"There's not much, I'll do it... See the moon!"

She stood on tiptoe beside him at the sink. The moon was just rising in the east, out of the black-branched trees, streaks of cloud across its large full face, bigger than normal, and tinted a pinky-orange colour.

"It looks like a peach!" she said.

"I never saw it that colour before," admitted Tom.

It was not yet dark, and the spring twilight endured. The moon rose, ever yellower, ever smaller as it left the horizon and the clouds behind.

"On full moon nights like these," said Tom, peeling off the rubber gloves, "the men gathered and went out to rip up the fences."

Vicky said nothing, just stared at the moon, her mouth a small round 'o', dark with wonder or perhaps deep thought.

It was time for her to get ready for bed, somewhat later than normal. She went into her room and Tom switched on the TV news. The election campaign was boring now, as every politician repeated the party line - they couldn't dare let their brains work a bit, thought Tom, and say something original... He must have dozed off, for he awoke with a start, and the news was over, the weather man was on. Tom felt peculiar and could not decide whether that was from awakening suddenly or something else. He switched off the TV and felt how silent and dark the house was.

"Vicky," he called softly. No answer. Had she been good, then, and gone to bed? He padded towards her bedroom door to peek in and see she was sleeping soundly. But the bed was made, the room dark save for the intrusive, inquisitive moonlight, shining onto her shelf of little objects. A glint from the piece of bone china. He called more loudly and looked in all the rooms. She wasn't in the house, she wasn't hiding.

She had disappeared.

A cold clamp fastened about his heart. She was a clever girl, she'd not do anything stupid, but god knows he like everyone else had been pumped full of media horror stories long enough, about disappearing little girls...

No, there must be another explanation. He could not accept that one.

Had she wandered out, to look at the moon or something? Hadn't he been an old fool for stuffing her head with ideas all afternoon?

Her little red coat was gone from its hook in the hall. He looked for a torch in vain and finally went out to the garden shed. The moon intruded even here, with its white persistent beam. A big torch lay on the work bench next to a line of tools, very neatly propped against the wall: shovel, saw, rake, and a noticeable gap where something was missing. Then he began to have an idea. He pulled on his coat quickly and set off down the footpath which they had taken that afternoon. He was not so afraid now, or at least, his fear was different. Hope had crept in. It had to be, had to...

The sky was clear and cold enough for a frost, thick with stars. High above Ockmoor hung the bright head of the comet, its tail standing straight up; it seemed to be a pointing finger in the sky.

The moon was bright enough that he did not need the torch. He placed his feet carefully as he went down the hill, worrying at each of his own stumbles that she'd twisted her ankle and was lying helpless somewhere. He stopped to listen several times, and there was only the creak of branches in the wind, the cry of a hunting owl. He went right down the hill, beyond the tree-lined part of the path, to where the heavy cropped hedges divided up the fields, before he finally heard a new noise - the crack of a twig. A small black shape moving, and then a sniff.

"Vicky," he said in a low urgent tone. There was no answer.

He turned on the torch and its light shone onto the blade of the axe and a few splinters where she had tried to hack at the fence, without much success. How she had managed to drag the heavy axe all this way he didn't know.

"What are you doing, love'?" he asked more gently.

"It's our land, granddad!" she cried. She was quite distressed, and had lost her glasses too. ''You did it, you walked Ockmoor at night, you did, you did - just because I'm a girl, why can't I? And you left the fences up, how could you?" And she started crying. He found a hanky in his pocket. She pushed him away but then let him blow her nose and wipe her face.

He searched around with the torch and found the glasses lying on the ground near the fence. He came back and gave them to her and stroked her hair as she cried a little bit more.

She had thrown his thoughts into a turmoil. Why'd it wait until Vicky, so many generations down the line, for the spark to be again lit in the blood? He could not understand it. But pride took the place of the anger that had displaced the fear. Pride and love of the little girl, so innocent, inscrutable, with a child's idealism - funny, misplaced, turned straightaway into action. She had lived in a town all her life; he had grown up with the countryside his reliable friend. But she seemed to love it more, care enough to fight for it - he, after all, had always taken it for granted. As a boy, he'd learnt how to walk in the dark, how to sleep rough, making himself a bed out of ferns and leafy branches, how to light a fire. Vicky didn't know any of that, she hadn't a clue what wild food could be eaten and what not. But she'd taught him something.

For he decided in that moment that he would devote his time to helping his granddaughter grow up, until he was too decrepit to be any more use. And Ockmoor's story was important: he would find out more. It meant something to Vicky. The young needed stories like this. Those twenty years that stretched in front of him were no wasteland now - they'd be ploughed and sown and grow a crop any OAP could be proud of - a piece of his land's history. He'd never been studious but he could already see himself poring over documents in the County Record Office, attending local history meetings, and walking or cycling with Vicky into every corner of Ockmoor. But maybe he'd never do those first two things. He laughed.

"What?" she asked. Her sobs had stopped. Her face was pale in the moonlight, which glinted on her spectacles. She had begun to shiver with cold.

"Nothing," he said, picking up the axe. "Come on, let's go home."

And they walked back hand in hand up to the house, and looked as they went now at the comet, now at the stars, and now at the full moon.

"Ockmoor for ever!" they cried up to the skies, their voices sounding tiny in the open spaces.

© Doina Cornell