smiled. He had milk all over his beard and was licking his lips. ‘Got him,’ he said and he chuckled until he laughed. The cub still clung to the bottle when it was empty and would not let go.
‘He’ll die out here on his own won’t he?’ said Jo.
‘No he won’t, not if we don’t let him,’ said the man and he tickled the cub under his chin. ‘Someone’s going to have to look after him.’
‘I can’t,’ said Jo. ‘They’d kill him. If I took him home they’d kill him, I know they would.’ He touched the pad of the cub’s paw, it was harder than he’d expected. The man thought for a while nodding slowly.
‘Well then, I’ll have to do it, won’t I?’ he said. ‘Won’t be long, only a month or two at the most I should think and then he’ll be able to cope on his own. I’ve got nothing much else to do with myself, not at the moment.’ For just a moment as he caught his eye Jo thought he recognised the man from somewhere before but he could not think where. Yet he was sure he knew everyone who lived in the valley – not by name necessarily, but by place or by face. ‘You don’t know who I am do you?’ said the man. It was as if he could read Jo’s thoughts. Jo shook his head. ‘Well that makes us even doesn’t it, because I don’t know you either. Maybe it’s better it stays that way. You’ve got to promise me never to say a word, you understand?’ There was a new urgency in his voice. ‘There was no cub, you never met me, you never even saw me. None of this ever happened.’ He reached out and gripped Jo’s arm tightly. ‘You have to promise me. Not a word to anyone – not your father, not your mother, not your best friend, no-one, not ever.’
‘All right,’ said Jo who was becoming alarmed. He felt the grip on his arm relax.
‘Good boy, good boy,’ he said and patted Jo’s arm.
The man looked up. The mist was filtering down through the treetops above them. ‘I’d better get back,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to get caught out in this, I’ll never find my way home.’
Once he was on his feet Jo gave him his hat and his stick. ‘Now you hang on to that dog of yours,’ he said. ‘I don’t want him following me home. Where one goes others can follow, if you understand my meaning.’ Jo wasn’t sure he did. The cub clambered up his shoulder and put an arm around his neck. ‘Seems to like me, doesn’t he?’ said the man. He turned to go and then stopped. ‘And don’t you go blaming yourself for what happened this afternoon. You had your job to do, and that old mother bear she had hers to do and that’s all there is to it. Besides,’ and he smiled broadly as the cub snuffled in his ear, ‘besides, if none of it had happened, we’d never have met would we?’
‘We haven’t met,’ said Jo catching Rouf by the scruff of his neck as he made to follow them. The man laughed.
‘Nor we have,’ he said. ‘Nor we have. And if we haven’t met we can’t say goodbye can we?’ And he turned, waved his stick above his head and walked away into the trees, the cub’s chin resting on his shoulder. The eyes that looked back at Jo were two little moons of milk.
JO STOOD IN THE CLEARING AND LISTENED UNTIL he could no longer hear the man’s footsteps. The whole day had been like a bad dream that had turned suddenly and intensely intriguing – a dream he wanted to cling to. He knew if he walked away now he might never see the man or the bear cub again. He had to find out who he was and where he was going. He knew he shouldn’t but he had to follow him all the same.
Rouf did not have to be asked to follow the scent. He simply walked away into the trees and Jo went after him. From time to time he stopped to listen, but all he heard was Rouf’s purposeful panting ahead of him and the soft whisper of the mist falling through the trees. After a while he began to wonder if Rouf’s nose was failing him because they were following no track through the forest. Jo found himself sometimes climbing steeply and then scrambling downwards again clutching at treetrunks to keep himself upright. They seemed to be going back on themselves, almost round in circles at one point; but Rouf seemed sure enough of himself, plodding on resolutely until they broke out of the trees. Jo found himself looking down on the slate roofs of a farmstead.
He recognised at once where they were although he had never been near the place nor seen it from quite this direction. It was Widow Horcada’s farm. She lived alone up in the hills and kept herself to herself. She seemed to like it that way. She must have had a husband once but Jo had never known him and no one ever spoke of him. So far as anyone could tell she lived off her pigs that wandered everywhere – much to everyone’s annoyance – off one cow and off her honey; you could find her beehives ranged all along the hillside above the village. There was a line of them below him now, just a few metres away, but no bees that Jo could see. Jo had no desire to go any closer, and it wasn’t because he was afraid of bees.
Widow Horcada was not much liked in the village – ‘sinister’ Maman always called her – although Grandpère always defended her stoutly. The children in the village called her ‘The Black Widow’, and not just on account of the long black shawl she always wore over her head. Like every child in the village Jo had been mauled more than once by her sharp tongue. She made no secret of the fact that she did not like children, boys in particular. She was a person to avoid. He would go no further. But before Jo could grab him, Rouf was making his way past the beehives and down towards the buildings. Jo followed, whispering as loud as he dared for Rouf to stop. But Rouf did not stop.
There was a cow grazing in the small paddock below the house, her bell sounded as she pulled at the grass and looked up. The walled farmyard was full of snuffling, snorting pigs and that was clearly too much for Rouf – he did not like pigs, not one bit. He sat down outside the wall and waited for Jo. A light was on in the house and there were dark figures moving about in the downstairs room. There were voices coming from inside, raised voices; but he was too far away to hear what they were saying. One thing was certain though; one of the voices belonged to the man he had been following.
Jo thought of jumping the wall and running low across the yard towards the window but the boar was wandering towards him with menace in his eyes; so Jo went around the back. There was only one window, and to reach it he would have to climb up a stack of wood that was piled high against the wall. He climbed carefully until he could pull himself up and peer over the windowsill.
There were two people in the room. The man was bent over the sink splashing water over his face and Widow Horcada sat in a chair by the stove knitting feverishly. She was shaking her head and muttering something that Jo couldn’t hear. The man was wiping his face with a towel and talking through it at the same time.
‘Don’t you go worrying yourself about the boy,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t know who I am, what I am or where I live. We’ll be all right.’ He dropped the towel over the back of a chair and sat down at the table feeling his beard. ‘Worst thing about a beard,’ he said, ‘it never dries properly.’ And at that moment Jo remembered where he’d seen the man before.
It was the last summer before Papa had gone off to the war and he’d been up in the high mountain pastures with Papa, the first time he’d been allowed to go. Three long months they had spent up there together in the hut, milking the sheep every morning, making the cheese, then milking the sheep again in the evening. It had been a summer of hard work and soaring happiness – a summer alone with Papa, a summer living close to the eagles. Most people walking in the mountains passed by with a ‘Good morning’, or perhaps a request to drink at the spring but only two had ever come into the hut. They had appeared early one morning, a man with a red beard, a little girl clutching his hand. She’d have been five or six years old maybe with red hair like his. They had stayed until noon watching the sheep being milked and the cheese being made. They sat side by side and silent on Papa’s bed and watched fascinated as the rennet was poured in, as they heated and stirred the milk in the cauldrons, as Papa gathered the curd in his hands and squeezed out the whey. Jo remembered their silence and the intense seriousness on the little girl’s face. They asked the way up to the Spanish border and went