by Raynor Winn
‘I’ve been doing some research, but now I’m thinking of writing.’
‘Oh wow. Gill …’ Her voice was raised now. ‘Gill, you didn’t tell me Ray was a writer.’
All the heads in the room turned towards my dark corner by the curtain. Oh fuck. Oh fuck, fuck, fuck.
Away from the village and the party and the people, on a path between high hedgerows of hawthorn, heavy with clusters of ripe red berries, I leant against the bank of grass and ferns beginning to curl into autumn. Only the sides of the hedge had been trimmed that year, leaving the top growth stretching upward and nearly meeting over the track, forming a green tunnel of branches leading towards the road. I felt small in there, safe and hidden. The same small child who had found her way into the drainage ditch in the middle of the wet meadow, a dark, secret place.
It was early afternoon in the half-term holidays. Mum was asleep in the chair and Dad was talking to a salesman in the farmyard, looking at bottles and cans in the back of his van. I wanted to get in and look too. I hadn’t seen all those brightly coloured containers before, with their skull-and-crossbone pictures; they were new. But Dad sent me away and I wandered into the meadow. Below the farmhouse and the barns, past the pigsties where the Large White sows stood on hind legs and hung their front legs over the walls waiting to be fed, like rows of old ladies chatting over the garden fence. To the stream, hung over with willows, and below that, the wet meadow. A field that spent much of the winter under water, when heavy rains made the stream burst its banks and flood the lower land. The sheep were only occasionally let in here; it was too wet for them and caused their feet to rot: a kind of stinking, slimy, sheep version of trench foot. Mainly it was empty and full of tall grasses and wild flowers. Carpets of meadowsweet, knapweed and plantain, the hedgerows billowing with lady’s bedstraw. And running down the centre, the drainage ditch.
I climbed in, down a rocky patch that formed steps in the almost vertical sides. The bottom of the ditch was wide enough to walk along, but the sides were well above my head. As an adult I came to realize that the ditch was little more than six feet deep, but as a child it was a dark tunnel. On summer days the water in the bottom only just covered my ankles, but in the winter it was brimful and overflowing. Small holes scattered the sides of the banks and I stood and waited until I spotted a brown tubular body plop out of a hole and into the water. The round head and short tail of a water vole was visible in the water for a moment, before it disappeared into the vegetation on the bank. I’d taken a pocketful of barley from the sacks by the grain mill, where the corn was ground into dust to feed the pigs; now I pinched some out and put a small pile in the mouth of each tiny tunnel and waited for the voles to come back. I’d done this many times but, afraid of being rebuked for being in the ditch, I’d never mentioned the voles to anyone. That day, instead of just the usual one vole, five came back. Swimming through the water, climbing up the banks and suspiciously looking around before snatching a mouthful of grain and vanishing into their holes. I was ecstatic. Five voles.
‘Mum, Dad, you’ll never guess what I’ve seen. Five water voles, and they’re so fat and they’ve got these little short black tails.’
‘They were probably rats.’
‘No, I know they’re voles, they’re in my book of British wildlife. They look like tiny beavers.’
‘Where are these rats?’
‘In the drainage ditch.’ I’d said it without thought, but immediately knew it was a mistake.
‘What, you’ve been in that ditch? You know you shouldn’t be in there. Go to your room and stay there.’ As I went upstairs I could still hear Mum. ‘Get rid of them. I bet that’s where all these filthy rats are coming from, out of the water.’
I watched Dad from the bedroom window walking across the farmyard with one of the cans from the back of the salesman’s van; then I sat on the bed with the British wildlife book, tracing my finger over the picture of a water vole. They weren’t rats. But I didn’t see the water voles again.
I sat on a rock that jutted out of the hedgerow, among the grass and ferns. Why had those words come out of my mouth? I’d learnt from the loss of the water voles that some things are better left unsaid. But I’d carelessly spoken the words of a barely formulated thought. I’m thinking of writing: how could I have said those words out loud? Said them to people I hardly knew or was likely to know? Words I’d hardly dared to say to myself, or formulate to Moth. I walked back to the village across the cliffs as a cargo ship left the river mouth, heavy in the water. A lesson learnt. I wouldn’t mention writing again. I couldn’t tarnish the thought by letting it be anything more than a dream, a secret to keep for myself.
11. Electromagnetic
I ran my hands over the brown plastic cover of the old guidebook, idly tracing the ripple of pages with my finger. I couldn’t let him lose what was held within those covers; if those memories began to slip then everything else would come tumbling after. His life, everything he’d done, and us, all the memories of our life, would slip from him, lost in the sludge of vagueness. I had to stop it, to find a way to plug the holes in his thoughts. I couldn’t stand quietly by and watch the steady, dripping loss of everything that made him who he was.
I opened the book again at the very start of the path. Minehead. The faded pencil notes in the margin were barely legible after the rain damage. ‘Day 1 – if the rest of the path is like this we don’t stand a chance.’ ‘Ants, everywhere.’ Oh, the ants, the flying ants, mounding on the dry path, millions of them in our hair, everywhere. I traced a line on the OS map that ran through the book. The ants were on the flat bit after the really steep start, where the path flattened to moorland. After the ponies. My finger followed the orange line, through the undulations of contour lines and a film of memory began to unroll in my head. The light had been fading when we reached the headland beneath my finger, some cloud starting to blow in: I felt a breath of sea wind touch my face and there in the air I smelt hot dust and dry heather. I was on the path; it was so real that I put my hand up to brush ants from my face. I closed the book and sat back. I had been there: that book could put me back on the path as if I’d just laced my boots and lifted my rucksack on to my back.
If the guidebook could put me on the path, could it do so for Moth too? Not for much longer: the pencil marks were fading away. Maybe I could find a way to capture them, to keep the notes before they were lost. A way to hold on to the power of what we did so that every time he tried to let go of life, to sit back and let the tide roll in, I could say no. No, no, don’t lie down, read this, remember this, remember what we did, how we didn’t give in, get up. Keep trying. Please keep trying.
I opened the Word programme on the laptop and headed a page: ‘The South West Coast Path, Day 1’, diligently copying out the notes in diary form. Hours later I sat back and read through what I’d typed. The words were there, but not the path. I could hear what the notes said, but without the guidebook I couldn’t feel them; they had no strength. This was pointless; it wouldn’t help him at all. I closed the laptop, frustrated with the waste of a day. But a thought was growing, the germ of a possibility.
The ivy was beginning to dance in the first spots of autumn rain. The season was changing, the darkness returning. I could have hesitated, held back, talked myself out of it. But winter would be here soon; there were hardly any jobs around now: all the employers were reducing staff for the low season. I’d had no success in the summer, so I was hardly going to find anything now. If I didn’t do it now I never would. I put the kettle on. Could I do it? I had no idea – but I could try. I could take the notes and put them into a narrative form, pull in everything we’d seen and felt and heard, breathe some life into the pencilled words. I could write myself on to the Coast Path and in doing so put Moth right there next to me, so when he read it he wouldn’t just hear the wind, he’d feel it.
I opened the laptop on a clean page. But where to begin? If it was going to mean anything to him, then he would need t
o know why he’d walked. I would have to start at the beginning. I began to type: ‘I was under the stairs when I decided to walk.’
‘How was uni?’
‘Okay – I made it through the day. Really interesting session on LED lighting this morning. What about you – been for a walk?’
‘No, it was too wet. I’ve been writing.’
‘Really? What, a letter?’
‘No.’ The wild enthusiasm of the afternoon vanished the moment I had to explain myself. ‘Do you remember when we first met I talked about how, as a child, I wanted to write, but that I never did? Well, I might give it a go – just see if I can do it. It’s something I want to write for you, not for anyone else to read, just something for you.’
‘Intrigued! Well, tell me more, what is it?’
All the confidence of the day disappeared.
‘I can’t tell you yet. I need to do it first.’
Days came and went, early mornings, wet afternoons, silent days at the back of the chapel as the rain fell. Word on word, page on page. Every painful day as we lost our home, as I lay under the beech trees engulfed in loss when our last remaining sheep died, as we stepped over the threshold of our home for one last time. Feeling again the void of emptiness that came with knowing I would never go back. Then I was away from the cause and released into the consequence, set free on the coastal path and walking.
I took the rucksack from under the bed and unpacked it, holding the familiar worn items, the battered pan and cranky gas stove, the not-waterproof coat that let the rain pour through. Then I repacked it realizing that each item found its way back in almost instinctively.
There was no stopping: words falling on words, words running free on the cliff tops. Rain, wind, gulls piling into turbulent skies on ozone thermals, sun, burning heat and the dry sweet smell of the earth. I was walking again, feeling the bite of the rucksack on my shoulders, the tightness of the hip-strap, the soreness of blistered thumbs where I’d held the shoulder straps away from raw patches of skin. The burning, leathering of bodies exposed to weather without shelter or protection and the soothing sense of rain rolling down hot arms.
I drank tea, ate toast, watched the rat as he became braver and sat on the wall on dry afternoons, looking in at me as I looked out at him. Each of us becoming a little more confident in our world, a little more able to take another step forward.
The leaves fell from the magnolia tree, the horizon of the sun lowered and I stopped seeing it, just a faint light that came and went by midday. It didn’t matter, I was sitting at the table but I wasn’t in the chapel, I was sweating in searing heat, dehydrated and longing for rain, treating blisters in the early morning and swimming in syrup-calm seas. The kitchen filled with ladybirds as they hatched into flight from dewy grass in the early mornings, and rang with seal calls in the afternoons, while badgers nosed at the doorway. I stood in the dim evening light, faced the wall and spread my arms wide and the rain came stinging on gale-force winds, pounding my face, battering the rucksack. Winds roaring through granite-block cliffs, hurling crows through wild grey skies.
And always Moth was there, keeping me on the path, face to the sun, heading west. His pencilled notes taking me from cove to headland, through woods and dark night skies. I followed his heels as the dust rose around his boots and the rain poured from his rucksack. We were there between Paddy’s descriptions of the path, reliving every painful step, sharing every victory. Words on words on words, all-consuming memories falling on to the page.
Christmas trees, darkness, six people squeezed into the chapel, cooking a small chicken in a slow cooker, potatoes on the camping gas ring. One day we’d be able to afford a proper cooker, but without it there was still laughter, wine and bodies sleeping on the kitchen floor. Then the children and their partners were gone and Moth and I were back on the cliff catching a sunset in the middle of the afternoon. Dying light painting the sky, the sea, the land in one exuberant brushstroke of colour. Fireworks and assignments unfinished. The start of term and silence. Steam rising from a tea mug. The return of rat in the afternoons.
And the words returned. No holding back now. Through every cracker pulled and mince pie eaten, part of me had been waiting to go back to the tent, to the cliff. Rat settled in among the dead fern leaves and I sat at the laptop and let the words in. And the path called me on, through fossils and landslides, white cliffs and red, to a calmer place, a softer place. I stood in the wind, no longer a battering Atlantic gale, now a quieter wind from the south. No longer chivvying and forcing me forward, now a gentle arm, a quiet guide. Moth was on the path next to me, stronger, fitter, lifting his rucksack without help, able to look forward not back. We held hands and walked into Polruan. ‘We were lightly salted blackberries hanging in the last of the summer sun, and this perfect moment was the only one we needed.’ I pressed save and closed the laptop.
Through the chapel window the magnolia was forming flower buds and snowdrops had pushed through the cold ground. Rat stretched in the afternoon sun, turned and disappeared into the ivy.
I shook the ink cartridge and put it back in the printer. Maybe there was enough ink. Taking a deep breath, I pressed print. An hour later a manuscript lay on the table in front of me. The bright black lettering of the title on the first page fading to palest pink by the final full stop. I took a piece of string and tied it with a bow, attaching a piece of brown card cut into a gift tag.
To Moth,
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
don’t let go of our Path.
Ray xx
‘Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you …’ I balanced the tray of tea on the bed as Moth sat up, still drowsy under the bed covers. Rowan, our daughter, followed behind with presents and cards. She was here for a few days, taking a break from her life in London, a world away from the hills and streams of her childhood. Somehow, despite the four of us being scattered by the loss of our home, we’d managed to stay close, still connected, still a team.
‘Wake up, Dad, and open the cards.’
Feeling slightly sick with nerves I rapidly ate the toast we’d made for him and had to go to the kitchen and make some more. By the time I’d returned the presents were open and the cards were standing on the bed. Just one parcel remained on his lap, wrapped in brown paper, waiting.
‘I couldn’t open it without you. What is this? I said don’t bother – we can’t afford presents.’
‘I didn’t buy it, I made it.’
‘Fantastic, home-made presents, they’re the best.’
Fear, nerves, excitement, all of that and more: I could hardly bear to watch. And then it was out of the paper, out into the daylight. The manuscript tied in string lay in his hands not mine. He moved the gift tag aside and the title leapt starkly off the first page: Lightly Salted Blackberries. Not a secret any more, not mine any more.
‘What is this? Is this what you’ve been doing?’
‘Yeah, I’ve been writing it for you.’ I felt shy and nervous, as if it was the first present I’d ever given him.
‘All that time and it was for me.’
‘It’s the path, the book of our path. So you can always keep the memory.’
‘All that time … You idiot, come here.’
My heart rate slowed. Relief beyond measure. I got back in bed and ate more toast.
‘Mum, what is this? You’ve written a book? Wow, this must be a whole pack of printing paper.’ Rowan was flicking through the corners of the pages. ‘And they’ve all got typing on. Dad, are you going to read this straight away?’
‘No, it’s my birthday: we’re going to the beach. But I will, I will read it.’
‘Brilliant. I’ll read it too, before I leave.’ Before I could say no she’d left the room.
‘Don’t worry, she can read it. She might as well while she’s here. But what a thing. What a huge thing to have done.’
‘I did it for you. It wasn’t huge at all.’
Rowan’s bags were packed, another sad goodbye, kno
wing it could be months before we saw her again. I hadn’t dared ask what she thought of the book. I’d skirted around her as she read intently for two days, wanting her to stop reading and enjoy her time with us, not wanting her to stop reading because that might be a sign she didn’t like it. But now it sat on the table, the string retied. Was she going to leave the house and just not say anything about it?
‘I don’t know what to say.’
Oh no, she hated it, too much reality, too many memories of home, and – oh no, I’d forgotten – that scene on the beach.
‘It’s amazing, it’s brilliant. I didn’t even know you could write.’
‘You think it’s okay then?’
‘It’s so much more than okay! You know, you really should do something with it.’
‘What do you mean? Put it in a binder or something?’
‘No, you idiot, get it published.’
I’d been alone through much of the previous year. Both my strong and whole self, the person who had finished the path and was able to face the future, and my lost, confused, fearful self who hid from the world behind the chapel. Matter and antimatter brought together in a vacuum. As I wrote the final words and closed the laptop I was back on the path, the wind in my hair and a sense of hope hanging almost touchable in the air. Undoubtedly there’d been a change of energy in my void, and from that energy a book had appeared. It was there, tangible, real, tied in string on the table. Mass had been created in my vacuum. Something from nothing. But if the particles of that mass were to make their presence felt they would have to interact with something; a light needed to shine so they could be seen.
12. Light