‘Well, metaphorically. Cormack and his wife have struggled to bring up seven children who’ve all left without a thankyou and now he’s lucky if he can scratch a living from a patch of stony soil and a leaky fishing boat. In a few months, I’ll be back with all mod cons. They won’t. Anyway, my work isn’t governed by the weather like theirs is. Farming’s a constant battle here. The north end’s less barren, but even so, the soil’s either so shallow you can hardly use a plough on it, or else completely waterlogged. And the wind can drive you mad. It never seems to drop. Everything you do is against that wind or in spite of it. It’s fine for me, calling it exhilarating while I sit inside sipping my mug of tea and listen to it holler down the chimney, but Cormack’s out in that gale watching it batter down his miserable potatoes, or tear the roof off his byre.’ David was beating long-life milk with flour, making batter. It seemed too tame an occupation for his wind-torn words.
‘He’s getting on, in any case, hasn’t got the strength now. They’re all old, the handful who still live here, eking out their pensions with a few hens and sheep and a cabbage patch. Most of the crofts have just been left to rot. The soil’s worked out, or the sheep have ruined it, or they’ve simply given up. You need incredible endurance on an island, not just guts and stamina to accept the weather, work along with it, but psychological strength. There’s no escape from anything, including yourself. You can’t just pop out to see a film or a friend or buy half a pint at the local or …’
Morna tensed. Was that a subtle dig at her? No escape from a woman who inflicted herself upon you, even woke you up? David was still talking. At least he had an audience, something he had lacked in the last four months.
‘Everything takes forever on an island. If you need a loaf of bread, you have to make it yourself, or take a long and dangerous trip to the mainland and then maybe find you can’t get back again until your precious loaf’s gone stale. If you want a bath, that’s several hours of boiling kettles and collecting wood just to plunge your bottom half in an old tin tub while your top half freezes. Actually, Cormack’s got a generator, but it’s always going wrong. He’s never had a bath in his life. He boasts about it—says baths are bad for you, weaken the blood. I doubt if his wife bathes, either. She wears so many layers of clothes it would take her half a day to get them off. She’s not a bad old thing. In fact, she was the one who told me about the fritters. She’s got a book of recipes dating from the last war—eggless this and meatless that. It adapts quite well to the island. Right, eggless fritters going in!’ There was a splutter of fat as he coated each shaped and floured seaweed-cake with batter, transferred them to the frying pan.
Morna watched, admiring. It seemed strange to sit useless in a kitchen while someone else got on with preparing the meal. She couldn’t even make the tea. The kettle was still nowhere near the boil. She yanked at David’s jerseys which felt itchy and uncomfortable. It was an effort not to scratch. Or was it just the jerseys? Perhaps she had caught fleas from that unconventional bedding. You couldn’t mention fleas, though—not to David—or only Neolithic ones. He had found a flea-comb once on an archeological dig.
‘Is there nothing I can do?’ she asked.
‘You could lay the table. Hold on a minute. I’ll just remove those books.’
The table was piled with books, strewn with notes and papers. So that was David’s desk. Morna suspected he never ate there normally, never laid it up—just grabbed a snack or sandwich, ate it while he worked. She helped him stack the books one end, cleared a space the other.
‘Cutlery in here.’ David jerked open a warped and sticking drawer. Cutlery sounded too grand for what she found—two rusting forks, a penknife, a kitchen knife, a handleless potato peeler and four stained plastic spoons. She searched in vain for mats, side plates, or a salt and pepper set.
‘You won’t need salt,’ he told her twenty minutes later, as he dished up his fritters at the head of the rickety table. ‘It’s built in, so to speak. Actually, they’re nicer with eggs and bacon, but I couldn’t get bacon, either. In a couple of months, I’ll be able to collect gulls’ eggs from the cliffs.’
‘Isn’t that cruel?’
‘Gulls are pretty damn cruel themselves, so you could say it’s a mercy to their prey. They gulp down young chicks whole—even their own species. The parents have to stand guard or they could lose a whole nestful to what could well be an aunt or uncle. And I’ve seen them grab young puffin, devour the carcass and leave the skin completely whole and clean like a glove turned inside out. They’re also fond of seaweed, by the way. The males bring fronds of it to the female when they’re courting, like a sort of engagement present—a brown shiny necklace or a boa.’
Morna smiled down at her fritter. Nice to see it as a courting ritual, except men like David didn’t court. Was he simply bashful, or just not interested? She wished she had a present for him. The provisions she had bought would have disappeared by now—gobbled by those scavenging gulls, and the few trinkets in her suitcase would hardly be appropriate. It was almost a relief to be without her luggage. What use were flimsy dresses, trashy souvenirs? There wasn’t even room for them. The wardrobe in her room was two stout pegs, the chest of drawers a single wobbly shelf.
‘Well, what do you think of it?’ David was watching as she swallowed her first small and wary mouthful.
She could taste oily batter, not quite disguising an undertow of rotting fish, with a strong kickback of salt. She put her fork down. ‘It’s … er … unusual,’ she said.
‘Is that high praise?’
‘Mmm.’ She tried again, swilled the fritter down with watery tea. ‘Quite unique, in fact,’ she added, seeing how intense he looked. She had almost forgotten the high seriousness he brought to everything, including seaweed. He looked tireder than he had done in September, his face almost gaunt in the shadows, with its bones and hollows emphasised, except where the beard concealed them. The light struck one hunched shoulder, wove a pattern into the dark wool of his sweater, then faded into the soft blur of his corduroys.
She dared another mouthful, checked her watch. ‘It’s nice to be having dinner in the early hours. I feel I’ve caught up with Chris at last. I lost her in Disneyland and I’ve felt out-of-sync ever since.’
‘Did she enjoy it?’
‘What?’
‘Disneyland.’
‘Oh yes. I think everyone did except me. You’d hate it, David.’
‘I loved it, actually.’
‘You mean you’ve been there?’ Morna rubbed her itchy back against the chair.
‘Mm.’ He nodded. ‘Though it seems like a hundred years ago. I was invited to give a paper at UCLA by an American professor who was interested in a project I was working on. When we’d finished all the heavy stuff, we took a break at Anaheim. Three whole days of the Magic Kingdom.’
‘Three days and you enjoyed it?’
‘You couldn’t drag me away. I’ve always loved funfairs. I remember once going to a conference at Sussex University—some archeological thing. I was absolutely whacked. We’d been arguing for hours about the interpretation of Silbury Hill—you know, the man-made hill in Wiltshire—why it was built, what it signified …’
Morna mumbled something. She didn’t know. They seemed to have lost the funfairs for the moment.
David cut off a piece of fritter, moved it halfway to his mouth, put it down again. ‘Archeology can be pretty damn frustrating, especially in matters of religion. You can’t excavate beliefs, you see, and even with prominent remains like standing stones or megalithic tombs, you still don’t really understand their meaning. It’s like trying to grasp all the depths and complexities of the human mind from just an empty skull. We try and guess, of course, but half the time I suspect we’re way off beam, even with all our so-called scientific methods. I’m not slamming science, mind you. It can tell us what Neolithic man ate for his dinner three thousand years ago. That’s fascinating. What we don’t know, though, is whether he said grace or
not beforehand.’ David picked up his fork again, but only to gesture with. ‘Anyway, I’d had enough of Silbury Hill, so I sneaked off before the last evening lecture, drove into Brighton instead. It was winter, so the place was half-deserted and a lot of things shut down, but I saw this helter-skelter—two slides for 20p. I took a pound’s-worth. It was marvellous—completely changed my mood. I had the whole thing to myself—king of the castle. After about the fifth time, I got the hang of it, tucked my feet in so they wouldn’t drag, really got a speed up. It was like flying.’
Morna heard the excitement in his voice, saw him again in the Weybridge recreation ground, a boisterous madcap child. She was still sitting with the adult, the solemn high-souled scholar, but at least he had relaxed now, opened up a little.
‘That’s the only thing I missed at Disneyland—a real English-style helter-skelter with those scratchy doormats and the bump on the concrete when you touch down on your bottom.’ David drained his mug. ‘Any tea left?’
‘Yes, course.’ Morna fetched the kettle, refilled the pot. ‘It’ll be weaker still, I’m afraid but …’
‘I like it weak. Anyway it’s quite a treat to have it made for me at all. Thanks.’ He sat warming his hands on the mug, a coil of steam pluming up between them. ‘I wish I’d met Walt Disney. He was one of the world’s great men. Obstinate, maybe, but a real individualist who’d move mountains if he had to. He was like Abban in that respect. In fact, they were alike in several ways. They both worked like stink and made everyone else around them sweat their guts out—but all in a cause. They both refused to compromise or use the word impossible and got quite upset if people thwarted them or tried to cut their ideals down to size. In fact, they both had quite hot tempers and then felt remorse when they let fly. They both …’
Morna interrupted, almost choking on her fritter. ‘I can’t think of two men more different. Walt Disney was a family man with a wife and children, a showman making films in Hollywood, a big tycoon who …’
‘He wasn’t a tycoon—not really. He never put money first. He was surprisingly naive about it, actually, and in horrendous debt for most of his life. Basically, he was quite a homespun man—like Abban. But they both had a vision—that’s what marks them off. They both took a strip of wasteland and transformed it—Disney at Anaheim and …’
‘It was an orange grove, David. Stick to the facts.’
‘Well, metaphorically a wasteland. I mean without him, there would have been nothing but orange juice and marmalade. He used very high-flown language, you know—talked about other worlds and works of love, and Disneyland being a source of joy and inspiration to the world. That’s Abban’s sort of language. They were both Utopians, determined to make a better world—Walt’s on earth, Abban’s in heaven. And even Abban’s set-up here was a struggle against the odds, the result of one man’s vision and sheer bloody-minded persistence. He changed a desert island into a centre of learning, a sort of spiritual Disneyland where miracles happened and people could forget their earthly cares and …’
‘You’re bending the facts, David. It’s nothing like the same. Disneyland is non-stop consumption—eat, buy, spend, indulge. Hell—one of the restaurants we went in looked like a palace inside, with fifty-thousand-dollar chandeliers. St Abban lived in a rough stone cell and ate once every two days, and even then he …’
‘Hold on a minute. Those chandeliers are important, part of the whole ideal. Disney believed you could bring out the best in people if you gave them the best to start with. He and Abban both believed in man’s perfectability. That’s crucial—a lot of people don’t.’
‘But Abban was concerned with the soul, David, not just mindless pleasure or …’
‘It isn’t mindless. Disney was a moralist. He wanted his park to be an education as well as just a playground. He always stressed that aspect—and it is that. I learnt a lot myself. Do you realise Disneyland’s been called the greatest piece of design in the whole of America, and that was praise from the Harvard School of Design, not just some biased press agent? And look at EPCOT—that’s truly visionary. It’s funny, really. Neither Walt nor Abban were intellectuals themselves, yet Abban’s monastery became famous for its scholarship, and people flock to EPCOT now to learn about town planning and conservation and … Walt would be thrilled to see that. He was a pioneer and an innovator—yet also quite old-fashioned in a way. He believed in the importance of the family, even saw himself as a bit of a social worker, holding families together and spreading happiness and … You can scoff at that, Morna, but it went deeper than mere whoopee. He understood fantasy and the need to escape or become as little children. He was a simple man at heart—they both were—and very emotional. Disney often cried in public—even at his own films, however often he’d seen them. And look at Abban! He was always weeping with joy or sorrow and breaking down in his sermons. And yet they both had the same sort of humour—whimsy, if you like, but very appealing. Any sense of humour’s unusual in a Celtic saint. They’re often gloomy souls obsessed with judgment and retribution like …’
‘But Abban was obsessed with hell. I mean you said yourself that …’
‘He also made people laugh. And brought them hope. Remember the last line of his Life?’ David was brandishing his fork, his voice rising as he quoted. ‘‘‘And the fame of his miraculous doings spread far and wide, bringing joy to all God’s people.’’ Well, that’s Disney, isn’t it? I mean, look at the Mickey Mouse Fan Club. It spread like wildfire, with new groups springing up in all the different countries—just like the early Church roping in new converts. Walt even worked the odd miracle. My American friend told me a story about a little boy with terminal cancer who wanted to see Disneyland before he died—a matter of six months or so, the doctors reckoned. Walt not only laid on a VIP visit with himself as personal guide, he was still writing to that boy eight years later, when he was a healthy strapping lad with no trace of a cancerous cell in his body. Maybe that’s apocryphal, but then so are a lot of stories about St Abban. I suppose all I’m really trying to say is that both men had a special sort of power—the sort that gets things done, changes people’s lives. It’s a funny thing, but that sort of power is far more common in evil men—Hitlers and Caesar Borgias. When I was a boy, I was always reading history books and they seemed chock-full of baddies. I used to get frightened I’d turn out like that myself. I had a devilish temper and I was very greedy and …’
‘Greedy?’ Morna stared around at the bare and ill-stocked kitchen. No coffee, butter, booze. Even the strawberry jam had not been opened.
‘Actually, I realised later, saints are greedy, too. Having ideals at all is a sort of greed, I suppose. You’re not content with a mediocre world. You keep grabbing for perfection. Abban was greedy for solitude. The more that people flocked to him, the more he longed to slip away and be a hermit. Well, he did, of course, the last year of his life—moving to that rockstack and living like a bird perched on a reef, with only a patch of nettles and a couple of shrivelled onions to keep him going. He refused to return even when one of his monks fell and broke his leg. You could say the hermit’s life is very selfish—or at least a form of deferred gratification for the greatest lollipop of all.’
‘You mean heaven?’
David nodded.
‘Let’s hope there is one.’ Morna tried to picture it—a sort of nonstop playground to out-Disney Disney’s, with Walt and Abban as joint directors. ‘With an English helter-skelter—just for you.’
‘Yes, please.’ David stretched his legs out under the table, drew them quickly back as they encountered hers. She shifted position too, hooked her feet safely round the chair-rung. Why was he so nervous, scared of half a second’s contact?
‘I often wonder about Abban,’ he said, forking in a mouthful of his now congealing fritter. ‘Where he is now, what he’s doing. And his biographer. Have they met at last? Were they disappointed in each other?’
Morna smiled. ‘Well, they ought to be in heaven—I mean,
one a saint and the other signing off the Life with a plea that all his readers pray for his eternal soul. I love that bit—the way he puts his own name in—‘‘Pray for me, Dubhgall’’ as if to try and make sure no one will get muddled and waste their prayers on the wrong chap.’
‘Biographers often did that. It became a standard form. In fact, Dubhgall seemed to crave a double immortality, to live through his work—Shakespeare-and-his-sonnets-stuff—and then the heaven bit. Perhaps I ought to take that line myself when I come to end my own book. ‘‘Pray for me, David, so that I may win eternal life.’’’ He laughed, took one last mouthful before collecting up the plates; opened the tin of pineapple, dividing the chunks equally, then taking three from his dish and putting them in hers. Chris had done that as a child, but the other way round—first measuring meticulously, then nicking two or three when she thought nobody was looking.
Morna downed hers quickly. They were refreshing after the salty fritters. She wished they had stones like cherries. Tinker, tailor. What could you call David? A rich man in his learning; a poor man in his life? He looked more like a beggarman in his stained and balding corduroys. She hadn’t spotted a mirror in the whole of his house. Just as well, perhaps. She couldn’t see her own tousled hair or borrowed makeshift clothes. They hardly seemed to matter. To David she was Morna first, woman second. Or woman at all, she wondered? It was a relief in a way, afforded her a certain peace and safety, and yet how could they be distant on this island? It was as if the encircling sea was pushing them towards each other, throwing them together like pieces of flotsam tangled on the tide line. Did David feel the pull, or was it only her weaving empty fantasies? Perhaps it was the clothes which put him off. She was hardly at her best, bulked out like the Michelin tyre man, and smelling of salt cod. Yet Neil had been excited if she ever wore his clothes—liked the thought of her breasts beneath his sweaters, his shirts against her flesh. Was David even aware she had a body, as she was aware of his—the strong line of his beard, the dark matching hairs on wrists and hands which disappeared beneath the sleeves of his three jerseys? How far did it spread, that hair—to his chest, his stomach, further? He still hadn’t mentioned any girlfriend. If he did have one, a serious one, then why wasn’t she with him on the island? Couldn’t she simply ask, make it tactful but direct, find out where she stood with him herself?
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