Echoes of the past

They have a simple philosophy. When they’re selling anything it’s scarce, best quality or fetching top money. When they’re buying it’s always too dear.

Now there was one thing I had that they needed, at least every haytiming. My two strong arms. The first year I did it was an economic disaster. Full of zip I’d been, but what did I get out of it? A full stomach, loads of brews and the odd bottle of beer. Reflecting on it, I hadn’t gained much.

As I opened the gate to Lingwood House Farm I wondered what old farmer Lister would think to my idea for this year’s haytiming. It had the hallmark of genius. I’d work harder than anybody, I’d get something money couldn’t buy, I’d be a landowner of sorts – and it’d cost him nothing. He’d like that.

“Price of land’s dear, Mr Lister,” I said, as he straightened his cowclapped gaiters in the yard.

“Aye, lad,” he said reflecting, “they’ve stopped making it!”

I tightened up my act. Farmers can be unbelievably disarming: “I’d like some land, Mr Lister,” I said. At that he went stone deaf. “Rabbits,” I persisted, “somewhere to shoot rabbits. Bet they eat lots of your grass?”

I came at him from two sides. It’d cost him nowt and I’d help get his hay in – and, what’s more, there’d be more of it with less rabbits.

His eyes twitched. He looked up from his gaiters. “Stick thee hand out,” he chortled, “it’s a deal. Thar can shoot Lingwood for a year.” He cracked my hand like at auction. I’d got my first 40 acres!

The formula worked well. Within two years I had one thousand eight hundred and six acres on farms all over the place. But of all those places, Lingwood House, where it had all started, was my favourite.

The Foss – I rarely go there now, just sometimes in a hard winter to see the frozen waterfall or in the autumn to watch the golden leaves drift down on to the water.

Those are the best times when no-one else is about. It brings back memories and above all respect. It’s the perfect picture postcard. The river flows under the old horse bridge at Stainforth and down three waterfalls. The bottom one is the Foss. If you look on a map it’s called Stainforth Force but you aren’t going to convince locals of that.

It’s deep, black and bottomless; a hole with sheer cliffs on two sides and trees going up through the sky. The sun never warms it, not even in summer.

It’s a siren, it lures people and that’s always been the problem. If you were in trouble, as men have been over the years, that’s where you’d go on a cold January night and we’d never see you again. After a few days they’d drag the Foss. It happened so many times.

Ducky Wildman’s dad used to ride an old bike out of the wood, just managing to get off before it hit the water. He was the attraction all that summer. So was the rope dangling temptingly from the tree over the Foss. Many’s the Tarzan who tangled his toes. Their yells echoed around the walls.

A summer sun would see a young man fluttering, to his new love on the banks of the Foss in his first posh cossie, the first sprouts of hair on his chest.

He’d jump from the wood down into the Foss, bubbles and bubbles came up, then at last he’d surface – a warrior. The girl would turn away, chatter to other girls, pretend not to notice. But you knew they’d be going together now.

It didn’t always happen just like that. Sometimes blood came up from a belly ripped open on the Foss’s hidden teeth.

Nowadays, some of the tourists take an hour to put on their black rubber suits, sloshed in talc and watched by the crowd. They haven’t all returned. Anyway none of them are as good as Ducky’s dad.

Within two years of joining the fishing club I won the president’s annual prize for best brown trout. My prize was a Hardy’s fly rod, the finest money could buy.

Other parts of the river miles downstream now beckoned to me; Moley’s Hole, Rathmell Bottoms, The Deeps. The mysterious names conjured up monsters. Few people went there but I’d heard stories.

It was a long walk. The low lingering mist clung to the river as I made my way along. Eventually the gurgling currents gave way to stillness as if the river had come to an end.

Dewy cobwebs hung from reeds. A wild mink sat devouring its catch, glaring at the intrusion. And the rising sun dazzled back from the water and hid the secrets of The Deeps.

The river bank was higher here, potted with the holes of sand martins. A lone figure crouched, peering over the top, and beckoned me to come along the field side of the banking. He was stocky, older than me and wore dark glasses.

He took them off and motioned for me to put them on and the glare of the sunlit surface instantly disappeared.

There she lay in eight feet of water, motionless by the swaying reed bed, camouflaged to perfection.

There was a thumping in the ground. A bunch of frisky bullocks clattered down to the water’s edge. The monster slipped into the deep blackness and was gone.

He never did catch that pike, nor did I. Yet we saw her one last time. She’d been cast aside on the banking by a salmon fisherman. We slipped her body back into the pool.

Terry Wilson was born in Settle in 1945. He started writing at nine years old when he won a Bournville Chocolate competition about a chocolate bean, but it has been the Yorkshire Dales and its people which has provided most of his material.

• Extracts from A Boy’s Own Dale by Terry Wilson. Ebury Press, £6.99 Paperback. To order your copy, ring our order line 01748 821122 Mon-Sat 9am-5pm. Or by post, please send a cheque or postal order, plus £2.75 postage, to Yorkshire Books Ltd, 1 Castle Hill, Richmond, DL10 4QP. Order online, www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/shop.