A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman

by Margaret Drabble

  The school is in Northam, in South Yorkshire, on the industrial non-Wordsworthian side of the Pennines. I am Yorkshire born, and I like the Yorkshire Dales, the North Yorkshire moors, the Peak District. But this year I had promised myself a half-term midsummer treat, an excursion to the West Country, in the footsteps of Wordsworth and Coleridge. I have been teaching the Lyrical Ballads and I longed to see again those landscapes of the West. I had not been there for many years, but I remembered from my youth the Quantock Hills, the combe behind Holford, the Somerset and Devon Coast Path, the Valley of the Rocks, the steep woods below and above Culbone church, the Bell Inn at Watchet, the brook at Nether Stowey, the muddy source of the River Tone high on the Brendons. One whole summer I spent there, with college friends, when I was twenty.

  I cannot paint what then I was and how glorious that faraway world then seemed to me. To my Northern eye the woods and valleys of Somerset were as luxuriant and extravagant as the riches of Guiana had seemed to the astonished eyes of Sir Walter Raleigh and his crew. Ferns sprouted like orchids from the trunks of vast oaks overhanging the rapid rivers, ivy with berries like grapes rampaged up ash and beech in tropical splendour, and hollies soared towards the sky. Primeval lichens of grey and sage green and dazzling orange encrusted bark and twig and stone, and the red earth broke into bubbles of scarlet and purple and bright spongy yellow. The lush profusion and the variety of nature had far surpassed our Northern austerities, and, faithlessly perhaps, I fell in love with the profligacy, that excess. I was utterly seduced.

  I fell in love, too, with one of my travelling companions, which was a misfortune, for although at first there seemed to be a mutual sympathy, I soon discovered that he was more attracted to another of our party. Indeed, he later married her, and not, I heard, very happily, though that is not, I think, part of this story. So, to me, as you will readily imagine, that summer was one of intense emotion, and one that I have lived through in memory many times. And I never returned to Somerset, choosing instead to walk in Scotland, in the Lake District, in France, in Germany, in Northern Italy. I too have crossed the Alps. Did I associate his loss with the places where I knew myself to be in the same season, both finding him and losing him? Did I feel that nature had betrayed the heart that loved her? I cannot say. All I can say is that until this year, I did not step westward.

  But this year, I returned. I was prompted partly – and I know this is ridiculous, but my mentor Wordsworth has taught me never to be afraid of bathos – by the National Curriculum. It is commonly acknowledged that many if not most schoolteachers have been suffering from stress and demoralization over the past decade or so. I have fared better than some, but I too have felt constraints. I am getting older, and I do not understand the young as once I did. Teaching literature was once my pleasure: I felt I could at times awaken interest, catch the imagination, change lives for the better. Of late I have not felt this. A sense of defeat has been creeping over me. Literature is no longer valued, in the classroom or out of it. Literature has been relabelled Heritage – safely dead, and dressed in period costume. You can imagine my feelings when I discovered that the only poem by Wordsworth included in that government-sponsored anthology – since prudently dropped – was – you have guessed it – those ‘Daffodils’. That poem has done immeasurable harm to Wordsworth with the young. It is not a poem for children. I have had innumerable disputes with students about that poem. It stands like a tombstone on the grave of his reputation. Most of the young just shut their ears and switch off when they see it. A few of the cleverer ones, like Shakira Jagan, tell me it is politically incorrect, because daffodils are a symbol of colonial domination in India and the West Indies (she is Guyanese) – and when I try to get her to read about Toussaint L’Ouverture instead, she just laughs at me. Heritage! None of the people who go on about Heritage have ever read a poem in their lives – or not since they yawned their way through the ‘Daffodils’ at school. I know there’s nothing new in complaints about English teaching being sterile – remember that Victorian Punch cartoon of the two elderly gentlemen in frock coats walking through a wood, with the caption

  ‘O cuckoo, shall I call thee bird

  Or but a wandering voice?’

  ‘State the alternatives preferred

  With reasons for your choice.’

  But it is getting worse. What would Wordsworth have thought of a generation of children encouraged to learn his ‘Daffodils’ by rote, because they are part of ‘Our English Heritage’? Wordsworth, who with Dorothy encouraged little Basil Montagu’s insatiable curiosity by directing him towards ‘everything he sees, the sky, the fields, trees, shrubs, corn, the making of tools, carts, etc. etc. He knows his letters, but we have not attempted any further step in the path of book learning. Our grand study has been to make him happy …’

  Well, it is a hobbyhorse of mine, and I get carried away. I apologize for this polemic digression. It is because I grow old and out of date. But at least I still feel something. And these reflections are not unconnected with my excursion, to which I now come.

  I decided that the time had come, after three decades and more, to brave re-entry to that magic land, and I planned to spend three days walking from Nether Stowey to Lynton. I would forget Shakira Jagan and all the rest of them – and frankly, compared with the rest of 5B, Shakira is a genius, though don’t tell anyone I said so. I would revisit old haunts, and see if they were still there. If I was still there. A dangerous enterprise. By chance I found I had chosen the dates on which the Wordsworths themselves were expelled from the grand paradise of Alfoxden, on June 25, 1798, and set off towards Nether Stowey, Shirehampton, the Severn and the Wye. Nearly two hundred years had passed since they moved on from Alfoxden: and nearly forty since I moved on myself.

  When I said I would walk from Nether Stowey to Lynton, I didn’t promise to myself that I would walk all the way. I would cheat a little. I am not as young as I was, and although much given to rambling around the countryside on foot in an unprotected situation, I have never had quite the stamina of the Wordsworths, of Coleridge, of Hazlitt, of Tom Poole. No, I would take my car, and book myself into bed and breakfast places, and spend my days in circular exploration. I would commune with the dead, and maybe with the living. In Northam one does not speak to strangers much these days, but in the countryside one may take greater risks. I am not, I hope, unduly loquacious – in fact I am rather shy – but occasionally, when walking, strange fits of boldness overcome me, and although I do not cross-question each child and beast I meet, I do enter into conversations that I would never embark upon indoors. Even the cheerful greeting of another walker – ‘Good morning!’ – ‘Pleasant evening!’ – ‘Fine day for a walk!’ – can lift the heart. The lonely communion of walkers, this I have valued.

  Yes, you are right. I fear retirement. I shall miss 5B.

  There is no obvious way to get from Northam to Nether Stowey, but I thought it was proper to pass by the gateway of Stonehenge. I had set off early and was driving quite fast along the A303 – it may surprise you to learn that my car is red and sporting – when I began to feel Stonehenge coming upon me through the great militarized and pig-rearing spaces of Wiltshire, and I made a detour. It was not really very pleasant. Somebody should feel a little guilt and sorrow about the state of the bunkerlike ladies lavatories. English Heritage again, I suppose. English this, National that. I love England, rather more, I suspect, than our ex-prime minister loved poetry, however fervently she asserted that she did, but I do sometimes think we set about our patriotism the wrong way. My hobbyhorse again. Shut up, Mogg. I suppose there is no harm in a café selling Megalithic Rock Cakes and Solstice savouries, or offers of free Parker pens, but it is a bit sad that most people seem to spend most of their time in the shop. There were some Japanese children playing tag, and two young men meditating on the grass, but most of my fellow tourists were busy buying dishcloths or taking photographs. And in the car park a car alarum bleaped insistently. People watched it with sus
picion. We are so nervous of one another these days. You can see pickpocket warnings in the most desolate corners of the British Isles, and once I saw a Neighbourhood Watch sign nailed to a tree in a remote field miles from human habitation.

  I made my way westward, tritely pondering the effect of the growth of cities on human trust, and my next stop was no more reassuring. I’d decided not to brave Bristol, as I would be sure to get lost, but thought I’d try Shirehampton, where William and Dorothy stayed with the invalid lawyer James Losh on their way from Alfoxden towards the Wye. This was a mistake. I took the wrong exit off the M5, and was arrested by a policeman who thought I was trying to invade the docks. He redirected me in a friendly enough fashion and I retraced my route, but there was no sign of Losh or Wordsworth in Shirehampton. It was all Boots, Bingo, Spar, and Iceland. I could not bring myself to seek its ancient core. I regained the motorway, and drove on, ignoring Clevedon, and on to the Bridgwater exit. I had resolved to make my evening’s walk to that little-known spot, Shurton Bars, in preparation for a more serious walk the next day. I checked in at my B and B, and set out again. My landlady had never heard of Shurton Bars or of Shurton, but I had my maps.

  A little-known spot, and hard to find. This was where Coleridge, in September 1795, wrote ‘Lines written at Shurton Bars’, in the early days of his love for Sara Fricker. In that summer forty years ago we had visited Kilve, which I could see was slightly to the west, but I could also see that the place marked Shurton was inland, with no obvious route to the sea. I drove on, through the maze of little high-hedged country lanes, pausing to admire two rosy pink piglets in a field of blue cabbages, and an immobile heron standing on one leg in a pond, but I could not find Shurton. What I did come upon was the nuclear power station of Hinkley Point, which suddenly rose upon me, its regular hygienic blue and white boxes standing like a giant refrigerator, a palace of ice. It flew a thin flag of clean white smoke. I drove towards it, and was again arrested – the Visitors’ Centre was shut for the day. I was informed I’d have to come back tomorrow if I wanted a guided tour.

  I enquired about Shurton Bars. He looked foxed. He’d never heard of them. He wasn’t local, he said; he thought there was a village called Shurton over towards Stogursey. If I asked those ladies just getting into their car to go home, they might know.

  There were three ladies, attendants at the centre, wearing identical print summer dresses. Two of them shook their heads at my query, but the third smiled and said I was very near. I had to go back to a place called Knighton, not Shurton, and walk down the track to the sea. It wasn’t far.

  And I found Knighton, and parked my car in a farmyard, and with further help of a friendly lecturer from Bristol I found the right track. My spirits rose as they always do when I start to walk. The smell was delicious, of honey and of tansy. The grass-bordered track was wide and empty, and it rose gently through open farmland, waving with ripening wheat, or carved into ploughed blocks of glinting earth. I fell into a happy plodding rhythm, as I thought of Coleridge, and his friend Tom Poole, and of Tom Poole’s brother who had lived at Shurton Court. In those days ferries crossed the River Parrett above Bridgwater, and plied their way along the coast: trading vessels brought coal and lime across the Bristol Channel from Wales to the lime kilns of the Somerset coast. What had the coastline looked like then? And then there was the sea before me, and the far sublime industrial shore of Port Talbot, and the island of Flat Holm to the east, and a little yacht, and a tanker, and the banks of lias and fossil. The turf was short and studded with flowers and flat thistles and the edge of the cliff crumbled, as I walked towards the flatter stretch I knew to be the Bars. It was a beautiful midsummer evening, and the points and promontories stretched on and on to the west in a dim blue-grey hazy hot light. I was all alone – or so I thought until I saw a man approaching. I had not yet cast off my city ways, for I felt a slight frisson of dismay at the prospect of an encounter with a stranger on so remote a spot, but it was only an old man with his dog, who greeted me civilly. And on the way back I met a boy on a bike who shouted ‘Hi!’ at me, in holiday mood, as he charged and bounced along the ruts.

  The shingle had been covered in litter. Old wire, cans, plastic bottles, strands of orange plastic rope. And a flattened, rusted, battered car chassis.

  I will not tell you where I spent the night for it was not much of a success. My landlady was not from the neighbourhood, she assured me many times, she was from Sheffield. This should have endeared her to me, as I like Sheffield, but she was the moaning type of Yorkshire person who speaks in double negatives. An artist in litotes. (Sometimes I think I’m a bit like that myself.) She started to tell me her story as soon as I arrived, and continued when I returned from my pub supper – I had slipped out to the Plough at Holford. It was a sad story and I was not in the mood for it. It was marked by many deaths and illnesses. Her husband had been made redundant in the decline of the steel industry, and they had decided to leave the north and have a go at running this little business, but, perversely, as soon as they had settled in he had spitefully developed a fatal illness and died on her, leaving her alone amongst strangers. She didn’t like the people round her and she didn’t like her guests. They stole soap and towels and sometimes wet the bed. On and on she went as my eyes drooped, for it had been a long day, and I was exhausted, but her story was in many cantos and she had to tell it all. As I fell asleep between the flounced and furry hot pink nylon sheets I wondered if she told this tale to every guest. I bet she told it to one in one, but not one in three. I felt sorry for her, but I am less patient than Wordsworth. Her lament lacked dignity, or so it seemed to me.

  The morning cheered me. I planned to walk from Nether Stowey, up Dowsborough, round the Iron Age fort, and on towards Crowcombe Park Gate, where I would hope to find the pool which inspired Wordsworth to write ‘The Thorn’. Then I would walk along the ridge towards Triscombe, and back down through the woods to Nether Stowey. Ambitious, but not impossible, and I could always cut it short if I was tired. As I set off with my map and sandwiches and my battered little Oxford green canvas Lyrical Ballads, I wondered if I would have the courage to stop one in three and ask about Wordsworth. ‘Have you ever read him, have you ever heard of him?’ Such would be my questions.

  But the characters I met were unpromising, and interrogation died on my lips, to be replaced by ‘Lovely day!’ There was a woman walking her Dalmatian dog to Stowey letterbox, and a girl on a pony, and two men on mountain bikes, and then, as the hill steepened, nobody. I got happily lost wandering round and round the twisted oaks and giant hemlock of Dowsborough, before striking off to Crowcombe – which Dorothy called Crookham. I was sure, from the map and from a description given by a Wordsworthian friend of mine (yes, I do have some friends) that the place marked as Wilmot’s Pool must be the ‘little muddy pond of water never dry’ of the poem, and I resolved to eat my sandwiches there. I toiled up Frog Hill, leaving the dense vegetation of wood and combe, to the high ground of the Quantocks and its long views over the Channel. Here grew yellow tormentil, and pale silver yellow straggling cow-wheat, and early ripe bilberries, and wild strawberries. I passed a couple of ponies, which stared at me as the donkey had once stared at Wordsworth.

  And here on the top were two men sitting in a Land-Rover, staring through binoculars at the opposite hillside. They lowered their glasses to greet me, and I asked them if they knew Wilmot’s Pool – more for the sake of conversation than information, you understand. The younger, a ranger type dressed in army camouflage, shook his head, but the older said, ‘Now what you call Wilmot’s Pool is what we call Withyman’s Pool. You’re on the right course. See that hummock? That marks the pool.’

  ‘Why do you call it Withyman’s Pool?’ I enquired. But he did not know. He knew neither Wilmot nor Withyman. I asked him what they looked for, through their binoculars. He said they were looking for deer with calf. It was the season, and if I kept my eyes open I might see them too.

  With further excha
nge of courtesies, I moved on. And there indeed was the pool, hard by the hilltop path. Wordsworth’s measurement seemed on the conservative side, for this pool, as I paced it, was more like three yards long and three yards wide than three feet by two, and this was in a dry season. In wet weather it must have been far larger. Yet muddy indeed it was: he was right there. It was not mantled, or standing: it was just plain muddy. Rushes and tufted reeds grew in its marges (is the word marge an example of poetic diction, I wonder?) and there were little semi-succulent water plants of green and reddish hue growing from the dried whitened trampled mud. And there, too, was a hollow mossy circle of a tumulus that might well have been the grave of a baby – or indeed of a giant. The setting was on a grander scale than I had imagined, but then Wordsworth was not a one for hyperbole. More a meoisis or a litotes man. (We don’t teach figures of speech these days.)

  I sat on the tumulus above the pool and ate my cheese and chutney sandwich, as I reread ‘The Thorn’ for the hundredth time and more. I looked around for a thorn, but the nearest I could see was a good thirty yards away. When I had finished my bottle of water I went over to inspect it. This thorn, like Wordsworth’s, was lichen encrusted, though not as extravagantly as Wordsworth had claimed – you could hardly call this ‘a melancholy crop’.

  Up from the earth these mosses creep

  And this poor thorn they clasp it round

  So close, you’d say that they were bent

  With plain and manifest intent

  To drag it to the ground

  And all had joined in one endeavour

  To bury this poor thorn for ever.