Grief works to its own timetable. Like an assailant in the night, it creeps up behind you to wrap its cold, merciless arms around your chest to crush your heart.
Back home this morning I answered a persistent call.
I’ve carried a niggling injury for weeks. In truth, I could have returned to the downs before today but something has held me back. Now I had to clear my thoughts, put order to chaos. There’s no better therapy than to take to the hills, so it was on with the gear and away before breakfast.
I set off under a clear blue sky, the sun about its beaming business, vowing to run without a break to test the foot, knees and general (lack of) fitness. Bewl’s not so far off and there’s a lot of work to be done to get round the warm, flat fifteen miles. Within ten minutes I was puffing like Billy Bunter trying to make the tuck shop before closing, skin swathed in sweat, burgeoning midriff wobbling. My stride felt forced, restricted, as if I were harnessed atop the giant ball of the Earth, spinning the great orb beneath my feet as the eyes of the sun burned scornful holes into my back.
To distract myself from rising discomfort I turned thoughts to journeys past. To intrepid winter training runs where friends dared one another to go the extra mile. I smiled in spite of the struggle as I recalled the Battle of Steyning –the
2007 Steyning Stinger - when the heavens opened on Rog, Moyleman and I just as we set off in the lea of the West Sussex fells. The race was the full marathon distance, off-road over a desperately tricky course. For us it was a training run, a stepping stone on the rocky road to Cape Town and the mighty Two Oceans. Relentless rain lashed the rock-strewn trails, chalky rivers of filth running off the slopes to greet our sodden, sploshing shoes.
Soaked, freezing, squinting into the horizontal deluge close to halfway I felt the pull of the ‘easy out’ offered by well-meaning marshals.
Should we wish to do the half we could take a left turn ahead. One jink to the side and it could all go away . . .
Just then the mighty Moyle called out. He’d reached the water station minutes ahead, downed a gel and was already starting to shiver.
‘Sorry geezer, need to push on; gotta keep warm’
With that and a wave he was gone, red and black hooped vest thundering through the stair-rods, away into the misty hills.
The tale repeated Sunday after muddy Sunday. We’d meet at the marina, discuss our route, Chris would declare the suggested path insufficiently demanding and find a way to add a limb-sapping mile or two. He knew what it would take to make the grade and never shirked the hard yards. He never let me shirk them either, offering logic and reason for the straining of lung and limb. Like the time we added a six mile 'warm-up’ to the Brighton Half ‘to get the miles in’. He dragged me to an impossible PB that day, albeit unofficial, cackling all the way as we embraced that marvelous through-the-field phenomenon, the Law of Diminishing Arses.
Back at the Stinger, almost two hours after we'd parted, I caught him at the top of the last ‘sting’, using his distinctive loping frame as a magnet to pull me up that gnarly, mud-slaked slope. As I staggered alongside, gasping, desperate, he turned, that wolf's grin wide, eyes sparkling through the foul rain.
‘Thought that was you – what a bloody racket!’
I attempted a rasped reply, all flapping lips and dribbling phlegm. He saved me the bother.
‘Suck it up big fella' the grin spread wider. ‘Not far now’.
That to me is what Chris was all about. Easy affection, brutal honesty, unswerving determination, wicked humour, touching respect and a rich humanity. He cared deeply about the people around him; not in a sloppy, sentimental way, but with a sincerity rarely matched. We shared a lot in our brief friendship; a love of films and music (albeit different tastes), the company of others, appreciation for a well-shaped derrier and a hearty lust for life. When I let hyperbole run riot - as I am wont to do - he would shoot me down with a well-aimed pithy observation, always well-meant, always on the money.
In the last few miles we cavorted wildly down a perilous, twisting drop, leaping over boulders, hurdling felled tree roots and sliding through rivers of silt to hit the hard-top finish side by side.
‘Let’s jog it in’ I offered, content to cruise home over the last few hundred yards, job done.
A disdainful glance, a chuckle, ‘Fuck that!’ and he was gone, leaving me trailing in his indefatigable wake.
All of which makes his not being around anymore so much harder to bear.
Today the minutes slipped by un-noticed as I crested Blackcap alone, stumbling back down the slope lost in an ocean of memories. I reached home bathed in sweat, eyes burning with happy tears, chest threatening implosion, grinning wildly. I knew Chris Moyle for three short years. I miss him.
Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am in a thousand winds that blow,
I am the softly falling snow.
I am the gentle showers of rain,
I am the fields of ripening grain.
I am in the morning hush,
I am in the graceful rush
Of beautiful birds in circling flight,
I am the starshine of the night.
I am in the flowers that bloom,
I am in a quiet room.
I am in the birds that sing,
I am in each lovely thing.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there. I do not die.
