Sentence The Onehundredandfiftythird
Where had they come from – those memories of her Mother, when she was a Tableau Vivant Star at The Windmill Theatre during the War – oh my, she had the longest legs Bernie (as she was then) had ever seen, strong and shapely and they carried her elegance when she moved, like a ballerina and was renowned for her ability to stand, still as a statue in some Attic scene sculpted by Phidias – it must be the shock, all of the many shocks which had beleaguered her since waking in the cavern: and she was still trying to piece together the puzzle; but the view from the hillside had really thrown her mind into
a turmoil; is this cognitive dissonance, she wondered when you know how something is but the information your senses provide – in this case, her eyes – is at odds with what you already know; and she looked at the detail: the trees were different - though no botanist, she couldn't really tell if the species were the same or not, they just looked different; she could see the sweep of the river, and the lie of the land on either side, without the three bridges at Leaderfoot; and the whole panorama – there's Black Hill over there, to the right, and Gala Hill to the left, and she looked up towards the top of the hill she stood on, but it was difficult to be absolutely sure, so – followed closely by Emm (who seemed to have taken on the role of Bear's Minder) who held her right hand and kept in step with her – she made her way to the left, and gradually traversed the hill until, yes, confirmation: the Middle
Eildon stood high and mighty, the largest of the three hills which the Romans would later name Trimontium and build their huge Camp to the North, between the hills and the River Tweed – as it would be named at some future time; why here, and how was it possible, Bear racked her brains and looked down towards the sparkling water, just glimpsed between trees, with no town and Abbey of Melrose on the nearer South bank, no village of Gattonside on the North, no Suspension Bridge yet, to link the two; and to the North West, no white houses at Langlee to mark the start of Galashiels; the same, only different – was she in some kind of pseudo pre-historic version of The Truman Show, was that possible – how else could such a people and place exist, so real, so perfect, so impossible; she had come here first as a child, a family outing with the O'Hooligans and Ogilvys, when the adults and the smaller children made a sweeping ascent by the path, to the shoulder between the two larger hills, while the bigger kids, Bernie (as she was then, and until today), Bunty, Dixie, Angus and the others, took the direct route from the town centre: out to the west by the Cemetery, then straight up the North Hill, which after the initially gentle slope, steepened and, though they were only climbing a mixture of grass and broom, yellow with flowers already, and trying to avoid nettles and thistles which the sheep who grazed here then hadn't reached yet, becoming almost vertical, was mostly a job for both feet and hands, climbing and pulling till they all emerged on the flattened top which had once been
(or was yet to be) a fort of the Votadini (is that who I'm with, she wondered, or do they come later, why did I never pay attention to the stories and tales and legends when I was a kid, why did I think it was just a load of old stuff and nothing to do with me, what a fool) and later a Roman Signal Station, part of the relay system which had ploughed straight ahead from The Wall, over what would become The Cheviots, and like an arrow from there to here and then beyond to the Forth; Bear sat down and put her head in her hands, with Emm sitting beside her and still clasping her right; she could feel the heat of the Sun beating down on her head and shoulders, uncovered as they were; she could feel the Westerly breeze bringing with it a smattering of fluffy white clouds which presaged a change in the weather – there, see, on the farthest Western horizon, the dark smudge, barely a murmur in the distance, but it would come sweeping towards them, bringing stormy weather, and her chest tightened
already, for he astraphobia always overcame her, smiting her down with migraine and a need to curl into a ball in the darkest place she could find; her mind reeled in the now-turbid air, while her senses kept up a constant barrage of information, all to the effect that this was, is, REAL and not a dream or an hallucination and she'd better get used to it – forget any help from her missing mobile, from her family and friends, if they even missed her yet, or the police, for none of them would know where to start looking, she couldn't even remember herself what she had been doing before she woke in the cave with her neck stitched and had no idea whatsoever about how long ago that was; certainly days rather than hours and maybe even a couple of weeks; she touched the scar and stitches with her fingertips – healing nicely, she'd soon be able to take them out – but that must mean she'd been in a hospital, in August of 2015 after something bad happening to her, something her subconscious had either built a wall around for her own safety, or the memory part of her brain had taken such a thumping, but either way, it was lost just as much as she herself was lost: there would be no Seventh Cavalry to the rescue, no Blues and Twos coming flashing through the valley, all Bernie had were her own wits and wiles, strength and stamina and if it meant submitting to Ugg's carnal pleasures well, worse things have happened at sea and it might not be what she'd choose for herself (a quick glance at Emm confirmed that she would be Bernie's choice of preference) but no worse than spending time with that creepy Martin Elginbrod – WOW – she'd forgotten all about him, or suppressed all the incidents of that slimy night, which she now saw in sharp focus; okay, my memory's fine on that, now I just have to work my way forward from there, one day at a time, and she grinned at Emm and tapped her own head: “it's all in here, Lovely, I've just got to re-connect a few links and we'll know where we stand,” and as she gazed Westward, over the Peeblesshire ranges, she didn't catch the strange look Emm gave her!
Where had they come from – those memories of her Mother, when she was a Tableau Vivant Star at The Windmill Theatre during the War – oh my, she had the longest legs Bernie (as she was then) had ever seen, strong and shapely and they carried her elegance when she moved, like a ballerina and was renowned for her ability to stand, still as a statue in some Attic scene sculpted by Phidias – it must be the shock, all of the many shocks which had beleaguered her since waking in the cavern: and she was still trying to piece together the puzzle; but the view from the hillside had really thrown her mind into
a turmoil; is this cognitive dissonance, she wondered when you know how something is but the information your senses provide – in this case, her eyes – is at odds with what you already know; and she looked at the detail: the trees were different - though no botanist, she couldn't really tell if the species were the same or not, they just looked different; she could see the sweep of the river, and the lie of the land on either side, without the three bridges at Leaderfoot; and the whole panorama – there's Black Hill over there, to the right, and Gala Hill to the left, and she looked up towards the top of the hill she stood on, but it was difficult to be absolutely sure, so – followed closely by Emm (who seemed to have taken on the role of Bear's Minder) who held her right hand and kept in step with her – she made her way to the left, and gradually traversed the hill until, yes, confirmation: the Middle
Eildon stood high and mighty, the largest of the three hills which the Romans would later name Trimontium and build their huge Camp to the North, between the hills and the River Tweed – as it would be named at some future time; why here, and how was it possible, Bear racked her brains and looked down towards the sparkling water, just glimpsed between trees, with no town and Abbey of Melrose on the nearer South bank, no village of Gattonside on the North, no Suspension Bridge yet, to link the two; and to the North West, no white houses at Langlee to mark the start of Galashiels; the same, only different – was she in some kind of pseudo pre-historic version of The Truman Show, was that possible – how else could such a people and place exist, so real, so perfect, so impossible; she had come here first as a child, a family outing with the O'Hooligans and Ogilvys, when the adults and the smaller children made a sweeping ascent by the path, to the shoulder between the two larger hills, while the bigger kids, Bernie (as she was then, and until today), Bunty, Dixie, Angus and the others, took the direct route from the town centre: out to the west by the Cemetery, then straight up the North Hill, which after the initially gentle slope, steepened and, though they were only climbing a mixture of grass and broom, yellow with flowers already, and trying to avoid nettles and thistles which the sheep who grazed here then hadn't reached yet, becoming almost vertical, was mostly a job for both feet and hands, climbing and pulling till they all emerged on the flattened top which had once been
(or was yet to be) a fort of the Votadini (is that who I'm with, she wondered, or do they come later, why did I never pay attention to the stories and tales and legends when I was a kid, why did I think it was just a load of old stuff and nothing to do with me, what a fool) and later a Roman Signal Station, part of the relay system which had ploughed straight ahead from The Wall, over what would become The Cheviots, and like an arrow from there to here and then beyond to the Forth; Bear sat down and put her head in her hands, with Emm sitting beside her and still clasping her right; she could feel the heat of the Sun beating down on her head and shoulders, uncovered as they were; she could feel the Westerly breeze bringing with it a smattering of fluffy white clouds which presaged a change in the weather – there, see, on the farthest Western horizon, the dark smudge, barely a murmur in the distance, but it would come sweeping towards them, bringing stormy weather, and her chest tightened
already, for he astraphobia always overcame her, smiting her down with migraine and a need to curl into a ball in the darkest place she could find; her mind reeled in the now-turbid air, while her senses kept up a constant barrage of information, all to the effect that this was, is, REAL and not a dream or an hallucination and she'd better get used to it – forget any help from her missing mobile, from her family and friends, if they even missed her yet, or the police, for none of them would know where to start looking, she couldn't even remember herself what she had been doing before she woke in the cave with her neck stitched and had no idea whatsoever about how long ago that was; certainly days rather than hours and maybe even a couple of weeks; she touched the scar and stitches with her fingertips – healing nicely, she'd soon be able to take them out – but that must mean she'd been in a hospital, in August of 2015 after something bad happening to her, something her subconscious had either built a wall around for her own safety, or the memory part of her brain had taken such a thumping, but either way, it was lost just as much as she herself was lost: there would be no Seventh Cavalry to the rescue, no Blues and Twos coming flashing through the valley, all Bernie had were her own wits and wiles, strength and stamina and if it meant submitting to Ugg's carnal pleasures well, worse things have happened at sea and it might not be what she'd choose for herself (a quick glance at Emm confirmed that she would be Bernie's choice of preference) but no worse than spending time with that creepy Martin Elginbrod – WOW – she'd forgotten all about him, or suppressed all the incidents of that slimy night, which she now saw in sharp focus; okay, my memory's fine on that, now I just have to work my way forward from there, one day at a time, and she grinned at Emm and tapped her own head: “it's all in here, Lovely, I've just got to re-connect a few links and we'll know where we stand,” and as she gazed Westward, over the Peeblesshire ranges, she didn't catch the strange look Emm gave her!
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