XXIV

THE JOURNEY BLESSED

Father, a notoriously meticulous writer, was never noted for his speed (whether writing, gardening or cooking – it was only the immediate urgency of sailing that got him really moving), but the setting sun still shone in through the big stone-mullioned window over the dining table in the kitchen when we finally sat down to his highly-spiced curry, complete with rice, pappadom, mango and lime chutneys and his favourite: Bombay Duck – dried and somewhat putrid small fish which are normally baked, but which, for want of an oven, we had toasted. They are illegal in the U.S. on grounds of food hygiene, but could also be illegal on the grounds of odour. All these delicacies, he must have brought from London. I never knew him to make a curry when Mother was around, so it was a personal indulgence. We ate everything with enthusiasm and burped rotten fish all night.

While he was still cooking, I recounted the story of saving the ‘Flying Dutchman’ and how I had been paid five whole pounds for it. That was when he told me that I had been robbed, for I was entitled (under the International Laws of Salvage) to one third of the value of the vessel, probably a few hundred pounds. He made me feel stupid and naïve but I am quite sure that in my shoes, he would have accepted nothing at all. I had only accepted the £5 because the owner insisted so forcefully and as Father pointed out, he had every reason to insist: because once I had accepted the £5, I could no longer make further claims of salvage rights! I’ve never had the opportunity to salvage another vessel so that knowledge has not advanced me one whit.

As we sat down to table, he came to sit at the head, bearing an Ordnance Survey 1 inch/mile map and another bottle of wine. Suddenly he was all enthusiasm, saying: “Well, of course you could follow the Path of the Saints: the twenty thousand saints who are buried on Bardsey Island after their pilgrimages there. Even the Great Wizard Merlin is said to be among them, but he’s been ‘buried’ in a dozen places that I know of. Did you know that three pilgrimages to Bardsey used to be worth a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, or was it just to Rome? I forget. Did you know that ‘Bardsey’ (or Ynys Enlli, in Welsh) was also called ‘Island of the Saints’ – besides ‘Island of Birds’ and ‘Island of Currents’?” At this point, he spread out the map, pushing the dinner things to one side. “If you go straight from here north to Clynnog where Saint Beuno is buried, then follow the north coast of the Lleyn Peninsula down here… to Aberdaron – that’s where they might have found passage to Bardsey, so I expect you still can [it was only 1400 years later in history]. There’s nowhere else you could get a boat to take you. Then, when you get there, you will see the remains of the abbey. There’s a lighthouse there too – I forget the timing of its flashes – but it’s an essential light when you’re sailing round the point of the Lleyn up to the Menai Straits between Anglesey and the mainland. The tides run hard further out into the Irish Channel, so you want to keep in close to the coast, but that point there is very rocky, so you won’t want to come in too close.” He became so animated, it was as if suddenly he was back in his sailing boat with bare feet, instead of slippers – his old-fashioned climbing boots still had nails on the soles and jagged incisor teeth on the toes and heels. If you walked on a slate floor in them, you could slip up as if on ice (not to mention scratching up the floor). Now they sat waiting patiently for him by the front door: like old dogs hoping to go for a walk.

With that, we had Father’s blessing – not that it would have occurred to me that anyone might think it a bad idea. I wasn’t brought up to think that doing anything adventurous was a bad idea… short of some suicidal folly.

Alan and I washed the dishes as best we could in cold water, by the light of a guttering candle and staggered off to bed up the stone stairs. The treads were so worn by 400 years of feet that the risers hardly existed in the centre. To the sides, where the risers still stood, bright green moss grew on them year round, even during hot summer spells, such as the present one.

We slept in the bedroom above the kitchen, the one where smoke sometimes seeped up through the floorboards, and could be mistaken for the ‘real’ ghosts that pervaded the house. It was somewhat warmer there than in the master bedroom (where Father slept anyway), whose bed (in my experience) never dried more than to a heavy dankness. The next stage would be outright dampness, its usual state.

The ‘priest holes’, I had been told, were to hide Catholic priests during the Reformation, but I have since learned that, while they may sometimes have been used for such a purpose, they were originally put into large houses as safes in which to hide valued pewter ware and any silver they might own (which was little in the sixteenth century – the vast silver resources of Latin America were not yet fully exploited).

The ghosts came from stories of the violence and shame of past occupants. As a matter of fact, the family that built this house named ‘Parc’, was so wealthy, educated and informed, that the master of the house had a standing order with a bookseller in London, to send him every new play by Mr. Shakespeare, as soon as it was published.

One story told about Parc related to two brothers, tenant farmers, who lived there alone, farming the rough, highland fields around. One was perhaps not strong and certainly lazy. He did the accounts and a spot of cooking, but it was his brother who worked from before dawn to after dusk, trying to eke a living out of the poor soil and hazardous grazing. One night, he came home in the dark to see his brother leaning over the cauldron hanging above the fire. On a table, stood a candle and their account ledger. One glance at the accounts was enough to tell him they were bankrupt. Mad with rage at his lazy brother, he took up the great axe used for splitting wood and cleaved his weak brother in two, as he stirred the stew… then he hanged himself in remorse – from the kettle chain, that one right there, in the fireplace.

There were other stories, of young people disappointed in love and so on, but Mother was told one, when she was alone there one night. It was soon after my Parents’ marriage and she had two wolfhounds with her at the time. Father had announced that he felt he should go and sit with an old neighbour who was dying and alone. He promised he would be back by morning, whether the neighbour died or not.

On the way down the valley to the dying man, he met another neighbour who lived further up the valley. He asked him if he would mind looking in on Mother, who was alone. “Perhaps you could chop a little wood for her?” He suggested. Well, the neighbour promised he would and indeed soon knocked at the door.

Mother invited him in and gladly accepted his company for a while. She accepted his offer to split some wood. But each time he came in with another armful, he would say things like: “So you’re all alone in the Parc, by yourself, indeed. You couldn’t pay me to spend an hour alone at night here.” The wolfhounds were uneasy and kept pacing around (who knows if they had any kind of bedding to sleep on? Wolfhounds are skinny and hate sleeping on hard, cold, stone floors).

Finally, she had made him a cup of tea and he accepted it in front of the crackling fire: “Ever seen the legs of the fellow who chopped his brother in half with an axe? They say he hung himself in shame from this very kettle chain here.” No, Mother said she hadn’t seen the legs yet.

Then he continued: “Mind you, they say there’s a great treasure buried here just below on the terraces where the orchard used to be in my granddaddy’s day. They say that if you strike the lintel of this house with steel, at midnight, if you are the chosen one, a white dog will lead you to the treasure and start digging for you. But there again, they say that if you are not the chosen one, two great black dogs with fire in their eyes will hunt you over the mountains until you fall from a cliff and die. The ravens will find you in the morning…

“Well Missus, I’ll be going. But no, you would never ever get me to stay here by myself alone. Not me. Well good night, Missus…” and he was gone in the dark.

As a teenager, I later regaled a small barbeque party, in this same house, with some of these tales. One guest, brought by neighbouring friends, burned his hand cooking hotdogs and listening to the stories at the same time… It was Mick Jagger – he still had a country accent, but the Stones were already making quite a name for themselves. The stories that we enjoyed so much together were not such fun for my young Mother, all alone and with no one to go to for company.