I turn to the advertisements in the newspapers. ‘Double Your Sunshine and Come to Lovely Looe.’ Looe is a few miles along the coast, and that foremost cloud, vast as a witch’s trailing cloak, will be upon it in exactly four minutes. There are, however, further blandishments westward across the bay. ‘Visit Mevagissey, the Fishing Village with the Continental Touch.’ Mevagissey is already blotted out with rain, but doubtless some winter visitor, lured by summer memories of the Côte d’Azur, is now scurrying from the quayside in search of a casino with an affable croupier in charge bidding him ‘Faites vos jeux.’ There may be one or two slot machines still in action, but I doubt it.
The hotels along the coast offer more tempting vistas still. ‘A gleaming jewel on a sun-drenched bay. Balconies to every bedroom…’ But enough. Being myself no visitor to these shores, but an inhabitant, on and off, for over forty years, and having recently moved from a sheltered house in woodlands to my present home on ‘higher ground’ threatened by that same hail and thunder announced over the radio, I am anxious to prove my mettle. There is, perhaps, an ‘Award Scheme for Courage Displayed by the Over-Sixties’ brewing in the minds of princes, and I could qualify. Besides, the dog needs exercise.
Dressed like Tolstoy in his declining years, fur cap with ear flaps, padded jerkin and rubber boots to the knee, I venture forth. Moray, my West Highland terrier, taking one look at the sky, backs swiftly into the porch, but brutally I urge him on, and we cross the garden to the fields beyond. Where I lived before, at Menabilly, there was a shaded path known as the Palm Walk, and on rainy or windy days, flanked by tall trees, I could amble along it peacefully, snipping at the drooping heads of blue hydrangeas still in bloom. Here, at Kilmarth, I know no such lassitude. The sloping field I am bound to traverse, if I walk at all, is under plough, and the herd of South Devon cattle who tramp daily across the as yet unsown soil, having first satiated themselves with roots a little further down, have turned the field into another Passchendaele. ‘This,’ I tell myself, ‘is what Tommy endured as a subaltern in the First World War,’ and, inspired by the thought, I sink into craters made by the South Devons, wondering if Mr Mitchell the farmer could have crossbred his prize herd with yaks from Tibet. The cattle, less courageous than myself, did not linger long on the ‘higher ground’ but have already sought shelter in the farmyard out of sight, having advanced milking time by at least two hours.
Shaking my feet clear of Passchendaele, and avoiding the electric fence that guards the roots, I climb over the stile that leads to the grazing land above the cliffs, thinking how closely I must resemble a veteran at the Battle of Ypres. Moray, flicking his ears, runs like a greyhound to a favourite molehill, which he is wont to anoint as a matter of routine. This ritual, if nothing else, will make his day. Mr Mitchell’s flock of sheep, taking him for a marauder and mistaking the action, begin to scatter. Heavy with lamb, some of them strangely decorated about the head with brambles, they have the bizarre crowned appearance of beasts bound for some sacrificial slaughter. Remembering the doomed flock plunging over the cliffs to destruction in the film of Far from the Madding Crowd, I hold my breath; but after a brief and hesitating pause they labour up the hill in a northwesterly direction, making for home, and I breathe again. It is Moray and I who turn seaward to brave the full force of the gale.
It is a stupendous sight that meets my eyes. Thirteen ships are anchored in the bay, rolling their guts out in a cauldron sea. I can make out a couple of Dutchmen, a Dane, a German, and I think a Norwegian flag amongst them, but the shelter of Par Harbour will not be theirs this night, for it is already high water, and the docks are full. What if their cables drag, a mile distant, off this lee shore? The only hope up-steam and out of it, rounding the Gribben head to the Fowey estuary.
I put up my arm in salutation, not to the courage of the seamen on board but in a vain attempt to keep the hail out of my eyes. Below me the sea thunders on Bûly beach, so called because of the white stones—bûly—that lie upon it. Rounded, flat, scattered here and there upon the sand, these stones make excellent targets on a summer’s day for the anointing Moray while I swim. Now, as the incoming rollers break upon them and lash the cliffs, only to withdraw with an ominous sucking sound, the white stones have a ghastly resemblance to drowning ewes, and for a moment I fear that my vision of the scene from Far from the Madding Crowd has in part come true. The stones do not loll, though, in the surf but remain submerged, and I am spared winning an award for gallantry and plunging to the rescue of mangled carcasses; indeed I could not have done so, for the descent to the beach itself is swept by a sea at least six feet high. This is disappointing. There is a cave on Bûly beach into which the hail would not have penetrated, and, although it is damp and eerie and smells of old bones, had it been half tide I could have stood there like Prospero, watching the storm, the faithful Moray Ariel at my side.
Which reminds me, where is Moray? I look about me, shouting in vain against the wind. Seized with sudden panic, I climb up the stony track, away from the beach, to the cliffs above. I can just see his white rump disappearing along the muddied path in the direction of the only shelter known to his dog instinct, a hedge of thorn about a hundred yards distant that overhangs a drop known locally as Little Hell. The place is aptly named. God only knows what drowning seafarer in centuries past caught a glimpse of it from an upturned boat and cursed it as he sank. Or, perchance, an irate farmer, predecessor of Mr Mitchell from Trill Farm, driven to frenzy by a scolding wife, hurled himself and her to merciful oblivion. Either, or all three, dubbed the spot thus. The ravine is cut out of the cliff face, and the potential suicide is only spared from the goal he seeks by a strand of barbed wire, and what appears to be the single bar of an old bedstead—doubtless forming part of the frenzied farmer’s connubial couch—with three straggling thornbushes beyond. He cannot see the depths below, so steep is the incline, and a torn sack masks the final sickening drop, but at high tide, as it is today, an evil hiss surges some two hundred feet beneath him, fair warning of the fate awaiting trespass.
Moray has sense, all the same. The thornbushes, bent backwards over the muddied path, make an effective arbour in a space about three feet square; it is, in fact, our only haven in a world gone temporarily mad. He awaits me, hunched and disapproving.
We crouch side by side above Little Hell, enduring some of that same discomfort which political prisoners experienced in the torture chamber of the Tower of London known as Little Ease, but at least the hail is no longer in my face and the rain is driving slantways above my head, missing my humped knees by a few inches. It is some comfort to think of all the things I would rather not be doing. Ringing the front doorbell of people I don’t know well, but whose invitation to drinks has been reluctantly accepted, and as the door opens being met by the conversational roar of those guests already arrived… Standing in the model gown department of a smart London store, endeavouring to squeeze myself into an outfit designed for someone half my age, and, as I grapple with a zip fastener that will not meet, becoming aware of the bored and pitying eye of the saleswoman in charge… Circling any airport in a fog, or worse still, waiting for the fog to lift and sitting in the airport lounge hemmed in by bores, all of them bent on exchanging their life history…
Meditation, after twenty minutes or so, is cut short by the realisation that a stream from the field above, which disappeared mysteriously under the muddied path on which I crouch, is pouring its tumbling waters into a miniature Niagara behind my back, before descending to Little Hell. It is time to move. Struggling to my feet and glancing upward, I perceive that, miraculously, the hail has ceased, the black pall of the sky has parted into jagged shades of blue, and the sun itself is breaking through, gold, all-powerful, like the face of God. The scene is utterly transformed. The rollers in the bay are milky white, boisterous, lovely, even wilder than before, and graced now with the sun’s touch, all malevolence gone. The vessels plunging at their cables dance as if to a fairground’s tune, and one of the
m, the Dutchman, lets forth a siren blast of triumph and begins to move slowly, majestically, towards Par Harbour.
The port is jammed with shipping. Every berth seems full. Derricks appear to intertwine, crisscrossed at every angle, and now that the wind has shifted a few points west it brings the welcome sound of industry, power plants at work, engines whining, men hammering, chimneys pouring out great plumes of smoke, white and curling like the sea. Pollution? Nonsense, the sight is glorious! Later the remaining ships at anchor will dock in turn, load up with china clay, and plough back across the Channel to their home-port destination. The white waste from the clay, regretted by some, scatters a filmy dust upon the working sheds, and the bay itself has all the froth and dazzle of a milk churn spilt into a turbulent pool. Tourists may seek the golden sands of holiday brochures if they like, but to swim in such a sea is ecstasy—I have tried it, and I know!
Suddenly, out of nowhere, the birds appear. Oyster catchers, with their panic call and rapid wingbeat; curlews, more mysterious, aloof, the whistling cry surely portending sorrow, and then like leaves uptossed in all directions, but swerving, dipping, to their leader’s flight; a flock of starlings, soaring for the sheer joy of motion, their ultimate destination the ploughed fields of Passchendaele above. Which, coward-like, I cannot face. Not for a second time this afternoon those craters and muddied depths. Nor the climb itself, so easy to descend, but seen from Little Hell the peak of Everest itself. So, for Moray and myself, the easier gradient of the cliff path that will finally lead us in roundabout fashion to a little wood of about four and a half acres, which forms part of Kilmarth domain.
My lease made mention of certain ‘sporting rights,’ and for this splendid bonus I pay a shilling a year. I am not sure what I had in mind when the lease was signed. Possibly sons-in-law wearing tweeds, armed with Purdey guns and calling ‘Over’ as pheasants swerved above their heads, the same pheasants gracing the dinner table at a later date. Or, on a less ambitious note, the more doubtful pleasure of lunching on pigeon pie (I read once that pigeon eaten on three consecutive days brought certain death). Be that as it may, the pheasant’s call and the pigeon’s flutter are alike absent this afternoon; the only thing to stir except the trees themselves is a ragged crow, who launches himself from a dead branch at my approach and croaks his way to Passchendaele.
It is not everyone, however, who is sole tenant of sporting rights, and, as Moray plunges into the wood and I pitch after him, I must admit I walk the narrow path with a certain swagger. Possession is short-lived. As I trip over a rhododendron root and round a corner, I come upon an elderly man leaning against a tree, a gun at the ready. Moray barks, and he turns and stares. Is this the moment to stand, as they say, my ground? One of my predecessors at Kilmarth, a formidable lady by all accounts, who held sway some fifty years ago and was said to commune with the spirit world, had for escort when she walked a flock of peacocks, a pack of collie dogs and a donkey wearing a beribboned hat; she would have handled the situation with aplomb. Not so her present-day successor.
I advance timidly, forming appropriate words of welcome. ‘Any luck?’
He shakes his head. I shrug in sympathy. ‘Too bad, it must be the weather. Well, don’t shoot yourself instead of the absent birds.’
I wave a cheerful hand as I pass, and the slow smile that spreads across his features suggests that the impression I have made is poor. Ah, well… He must have walked and shot that wood, man and boy, for nearly fifty years. I am the intruder, not he, and as I shuffle along beneath the dripping trees I no longer swagger. Moray, of course, is disgusted with me. The ankles of all strange men are suspect, and the elderly sportsman promised easy game. He follows me, muttering, and I ‘shush’ him under my breath, relieved when the wood is left behind and I climb through the fence to the plot of garden surrounding the house itself. Here, at least, I am mistress of all I survey, and I can relieve my sporting inclinations by fetching a long pruning implement, during the ten minutes of fine weather that remains, and beheading the grotesque tops of a clump of bamboos which, shaking in the wind and masking the sea view from one of the windows, have the horrible appearance of African witch doctors engaged in some tribal rite. I attack them with ferocity, and then, arms aching, honour satisfied, make my way indoors before the hail strikes. The thought of tea is doubly welcome after these efforts, legs stretched out before flaming logs.
I fling off my Tolstoy outfit, replace the pruning implement, and open the door of my living room.
I am driven back by clouds of evil-smelling smoke. The pile of logs, balanced with such loving care before I set out for the walk, the paper beneath them gently touched with a lighted match, instead of welcoming me with the roaring blaze I had expected has turned jet black. Not even a tongue of flame arises from them. I kneel beside the grate, bellows in hand, but not so much as a spark glints from the stinking ashes. I sit back on my heels in despair, remembering all the remaining logs awaiting transport from the old boiler room in the basement. These were to see me through the winter, and I have no others. Hewn from a giant fir laid low in the autumn by a crosscut saw, they were my pride and joy as much as the sporting rights.
I hurry to the nether regions to bring up kindling wood, but this has been cut from the same fir, and when laid upon the corpses of the blackened logs it emits one protesting spark, sighs, and is extinguished. Too late to double back to the wood and search for twigs of stouter brand. I should lose yet more face before the sportsman with the gun, and anyway the heavens have burst again; what momentary glory shone from the sky has gone forever.
Pear logs and apple logs
They will scent your room.
Cherry logs across the dogs
Smell like flowers in bloom.
Somewhere, in a desk, I have the whole poem about logs, sent to me by an obliging friend and expert, recommending those that give warmth and scent, and warning against those that do not. Feverishly I search for it amongst a heap of papers, and run my eye down the printed page.
Fir logs it is a crime
For anyone to sell.
I never thought to read the poem before having the fir tree felled…
Holly logs will burn like wax,
You should burn them green.
I can bear no more of it, and go to the kitchen to make tea, but as I drink it in front of the non-existent fire, wearing dark glasses to protect my eyes from the festoons of smoke hanging like Christmas decorations about the panelled room, I think of the many stunted hollies in the shrubbery behind the house, and plan destruction.
Tea passes without further incident, and supper on a tray watching television—a play showing teenagers making love on one channel and a very old film about the American navy in Korea on the other, offering doubtful entertainment to my jaded palate—takes me up to bedtime.
The increasing sound of the gale without and lashing rain against the windows gives warning that there is one remaining hazard to face before I climb the stairs. Moray must be put out, not at the front door where he would be blown over the wall and never seen again, but down to those same nether regions where the logs are harboured, and through the hatch door of the boiler room opening on the ‘patio,’ where he can do his worst in comparative shelter.
The winding stair to the basement does not deter me, nor the memory of those characters dead for centuries who may have walked the basement in days gone by. Fourteenth-century yeomen, sixteenth-century merchants, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century parsons and squires, are shades that I can brave with equanimity. The idea of the Edwardian lady, however, who communed with the spirit world flanked by her peacocks, is more disturbing. It was in the basement kitchen no longer used as such that she used to give her orders for the day to the trembling cook, and I have it on good authority that a parrot, chained to its perch, let fly a torrent of abuse at her approach. I stand shivering at the hatch door, while Moray sniffs the cobbles in disdain, and then, to test both our nerves, I switch out the light. This surely should br
ing an award for stamina.
Nothing happens. No clatter of a cane upon stone flags. No screech from protesting peacocks. No cry of ‘Pieces of eight… pieces of eight…’ from the parrot. A door bangs in the distance, but this is probably the draught. My formidable predecessor of more affluent days may be a silent witness to my challenge, but thank heaven she does not materialise. May she rest in peace.
The door is bolted, Moray scampers ahead of me up the winding stair, and we proceed to our own quarters and the bedroom that was, I am glad to say, built on in later years, after the peacock lady’s day. It faces seaward, and thus receives the full force of the sou’westerly, or indeed of any gale, but the effect of this is stimulating, like being on the enclosed bridge of a ship, without the rocking. I look out of the window and see the riding lights of those vessels that have not yet sought refuge in Par Harbour, and the thought of the seamen possibly battened down below, at the mercy of every lurching sea, makes me turn to my own bed with a sense of well-being, even of complacency. Moray retires to his lair and, leaning back on my pillows with a sigh of satisfaction, I open the unfinished newspaper I was reading after lunch. ‘You too can enjoy the thrills of camping in Cornwall.’ Brushing the advertisement impatiently aside, I turn to matters of greater moment. The thrust and parry of political parties, the feuds and international problems of our time.
Something splashes upon my pillow. An ominous drip. It is followed in a moment by a second, and then a third. A tear from an unseen presence? I look up to the ceiling and perceive, all complacency gone, that a row of beads, like a very large rosary swinging from a nun’s breast, is forming a chain immediately above my head and fast turning into bubbles. Drip… drip… The water torture, practised in the Far East and said to be more swiftly effective than our own mediaeval rack. Hypnotised, I watch the row of beads expand and fall, its place immediately taken by another, meanwhile my pillow taking on the sodden appearance of the sack cast away at Little Hell.
The Rebecca Notebook Page 13