Gentle reader, I have a confession to make. On this particular day of our walk we didn’t manage to make contact with Offa’s Dyke at all.
The fog had a lot to do with it, and all the rest of the blame lies squarely on the shoulders of King Offa. Henry said that if he could only find out what the hell he’d done with his maps he could have solved the problem for us in a matter of minutes, but we told him not to blame himself too much. We said that maps and guidebooks had a habit of disappearing just when they were most needed. They were famous for it, and most experienced travellers left them behind as a matter of principle. We said we were quite happy to rely on his sense of direction to pull us through. We said we couldn’t imagine an eight-hour day going by without Henry leading us to a comfortable bed and a four-course meal at the end of it.
In the event we achieved the distinction of walking in an enormous half-circle around the town of Welshpool without having the least idea that it was there at all. The fog did lift for an hour in the early afternoon, but by that time we were on the other side of the hills and so far from habitation that we couldn’t even see a road. But - and this bears out our faith in Henry’s built-in survival instinct - we did find that bed and that meal more or less as we had imagined them.
Offa’s Dyke was shallow enough where we had pitched camp. Two hundred yards further on we couldn’t find it at all. There is a very good reason for this - it just isn’t there. What on earth the good king thought he was doing dotting bits of dyke here and there along the Welsh border and then not joining them up with other bits of dyke I haven’t the least idea. On the face of it, you can’t get much dafter than that. As the ship’s captain said when they forgot to weld on the plates beneath the water-line, it’s all right as far as it goes-which is mostly in a downward direction.
Henry said it was probably absent-mindedness on Offa’s part. I said No. For my money it was the same problem you get with all these state-run enterprises - lack of communication. ‘You’ve done that twenty-mile stretch from Llanyardnooslyp to Glanty-seidbach?’ asks the Royal Seneschal of the Bedchamber. ‘Yes we have, bach,’ replies the Grand Artificer, vaguely wondering why they have started calling each other ‘bach’. And then when the Welsh are pouring through the following summer, perpetrating here a rape, there a pillage, he says, ‘Oh, that stretch! I thought you meant that one.’ Then they peer at the plan by the light of the burning villages and try to work out where it was they went wrong.
Henry said, as we blundered along, that Offa is a very popular king among present-day history students. It seems that he is virtually unique among the great men of history inasmuch as only six things are known about him at all. One is a coin of some kind, one is Offa’s Dyke, one is the fact that he died in either 749 or 750 AD - although how a man can be so vague as to forget which year he actually died in mystifies me. I don’t know what the other three things are, but the point is that whatever essay the examiners try to set about King Offa everybody knows that the answer is going to have to be stitched together out of the six facts in one way or another. That’s what makes it so easy. Of course, everyone is very clever at dressing those facts up to make them sound scholarly and high-falutin’. So you don’t just say that somebody staggered into a field and picked up a coin which turned out to have Offa’s name on it. You say that Offa had grasped the principle of monetary policy - it sounds better that way. And when you come to Offa’s Dyke you say that he had grasped the principle of a negotiated frontier. In fact, apart from being vaguely born between 689 and 694 and vaguely dying some sixty years later, Offa seems to have spent most of the rest of his time in a state of almost permanent torpor, waking up every ten years or so to grasp another principle before dropping back into exhausted slumber. All a result of the mead, I imagine.
Now you might think that a day spent walking around in an indeterminate semi-circle was a day wasted - but you would be wrong. On the contrary it was a day studded with interest. In the first place there was the question of Henry’s feet. You know how it is. When things are going well and the sun is shining and you seem to be actively getting to where you set out to go to, nobody notices their feet at all. Then when you get lost and the wind turns cold and somebody points out to you that you’re not six miles from journey’s end but sixteen miles - (what a laughable mistake - how could anyone be so foolish, aha-ha!) - when all that happens you suddenly get attacked by a whole squadron of aches and pains you never noticed before. Well, Henry is particularly susceptible to these sorts of ailments.
I sometimes think that in the nineteenth century a whole lot of lives might have been saved if instead of putting canaries down coalmines to see whether there was an escape of gas they had put Henry down instead. He’d pick up the vibrations long before any canary started getting the tweety-weeties. Of course you may say that they’d never be able to fit Henry into a coalmine in the first place - but it’s surprising what you can do with a spot of inventiveness. Slide him in headfirst would be the best method. Then you could support his feet on a trolley and roll him out again as soon as he got a whiff of danger.
Henry said his feet hurt and he wanted to do some bird-watching as soon as the fog lifted. Fraser said he believed both ends of the remark, but he didn’t see why they should have to go together. ‘You might as well say,’ he said, ‘I have two fags left in this packet and I want to move to Tunbridge Wells.’
This was provocative, and if Henry hadn’t been concentrating on a slice of lemon meringue pie from his survival rations at the time he could well have taken it further. As it was, by the time he had finished his lunch we had been granted our short mid-afternoon break from the fog. Henry walked off to a low divan-shaped mound and lay with the binoculars to his eyes trying to look wise. Fraser and I sat at a respectful distance and philosophised about the theory and practice of birdwatching.
Fraser said there was nothing wrong with the practice of bird-watching. It was the theory that was all up the pole. It was a moot point, he said, whether Sigmund Freud or Charles Darwin had made the more disastrous contribution to modern science, but on the whole he tended to think that Darwin had managed to squeeze in by a short head. He said the whole idea of finches changing their beak-size to fit in with their environment was complete nonsense, together with all the rubbish about birds generally being descended from pterodactyls. If Darwin had bothered to ask anybody who knew about birds he could have found it out at first hand.
Fraser said he knew quite a lot about birds himself. His aunt had once kept one, and apart from that he quite often met them tearing up worms and mating and so forth when he came up the drive in his car.
Fraser said that all birds could be classified into three types: medium-sized brown, large black, and small coloured. Inside these three basic divisions nature had decreed that there should be a number of subsections. These didn’t go around adapting themselves to their environment and developing alarm calls to ward off approaching bicycles. They just got on with the business of trying to scratch a decent living from the soil with the apparatus they had inherited.
‘Take those birds you see wandering around in flocks on the seashore looking slightly silly,’ Fraser said. ‘In my book that is quite simply a medium-sized brown with webbed feet and a bobble on top. When you think about it nothing could be less adapted to walking about on a beach. Their bodies are so far away from their feet that they keep stubbing their toes on the rocks, and they haven’t the first idea where the end of their beak is going because their eyes are in the side of their head. They are on that beach because that is where they have been put down and they just have to get on with it.
‘Now so far as bird watching is concerned, it is a harmless enough activi -’
Fraser stopped abruptly because he saw he wasn’t holding my attention. It was impolite of me I suppose to let my eyes wander like that, but I had just caught sight of something. I can’t pretend to know much about bird-watching myself. Nothing at all in fact, but I think - or at least I had thought until I saw Henry - that one could reconstruct the basic elements simply enough. I mean to say, one expects to see a man at one end of the picture, and a bird at the other end, and (have I got it right?) the binoculars in the middle. What one doesn’t often come across is a man lying down with his binoculars clapped to his eyes, and a thrush or medium-sized brown bird sitting on the crossbar of the binoculars whistling a happy tune as though it isn’t sure whether it’s Wednesday afternoon or Saturday morning. A picture like that suggests to me that the man in the tableau must be lying unnaturally still.
Fraser thought the same.
We crept up on the silent form of Henry from behind and carefully unwound his fingers from his field-glasses. His eyes were tight shut. We let him sleep on for about thirty seconds or so and then we thwacked him over the backside with a new lightweight camper’s frying-pan of Scandinavian design.
Henry said afterwards that he had been awake all the time. He had merely closed his eyes so that he could memorise the markings of a particularly fine sparrow-hawk which he had been tracking for the last five minutes. But we heard no more moaning about sore feet from him for the rest of the day.
That was the first incident of note that happened that afternoon. The second occurred about an hour and a half later, although whether it was north, south, east or west of our lunchtime position I couldn’t attempt to say. I couldn’t say what sort of land we were on either because the fog had come down again so thick that Fraser had taken to beating it out of the way with his tweed hat to see if he could make anything out beyond. But gradually it began to dawn on us that we were not alone in this desolate place. Far in the distance, and from more than one direction at the same time, the quiet rumble of many engines seemed to be approaching us.
‘Tanks,’ said Henry wisely.
And he was right. And not just tanks. Soon we began to hear cries and the squelching of feet, and then one dim figure and then another in boots and combat dress ran straight across our noses without even bothering to look round. There’s discipline for you. It’s not every day that the fighting soldier has to carry out his manoeuvres around a trio of amateur antiquarians who are looking for Gallo-Saxon remains; yet these men took about as much notice of us as a pack of foxhounds would of a well-meaning spaniel that barked at them over a garden gate. I suppose when you’ve got thousands of men on the move you can’t afford to hang around chatting to bystanders. Otherwise everybody starts getting themselves in the wrong place.
Eventually we found our way barred, head on, by a tank. The muzzle of it was quite visible - pointing nonchalantly at our heads, as a matter of fact. Then we could dimly make out the front of the tracks. The hole in the top where the voice came from, however, we couldn’t see at all. Of course we could tell that the voice belonged to an officer, because they’re the only ones allowed to use swear-words, and we had the distinct impression - though no very concrete evidence - that the face behind the voice was a bright purple colour.
He said: ‘Where the bloody hell do you think you’re going?’
We congratulated him on the question. We said it was just what we’d been asking ourselves since breakfast time. But this only seemed to make him crosser.
Fraser said that although we were completely lost we didn’t want him to feel sorry for us because we were quite cheerful about it.
Henry asked him politely if he was lost too. Henry said that in spite of our predicament we were confident that we would somehow finish up with a bed and a hot meal, and we could probably manage to take him along as well provided he could slip away unobtrusively without telling the others.
Henry said, ‘I don’t think you’ve met my friend T. He’s the one you can probably just make out if you squint down the gun barrel.’
Politeness pays off. You wouldn’t believe how quickly those soldiers came clambering around us. They helped us into the tank and in next to no time they were whizzing and roaring us off through the fog. It must have been three or four miles that they carried us - more than an hour’s walking when you think about it. Then they put us down on a pleasant little road and told us to be nice sensible people and not go wandering off in their direction again. And the officer very obligingly gave us a map reference like 39772443 - or it may have been 15605188 - which would have been terrifically helpful if only we had had a map. Then he saluted and about-turned and Fraser waved his hat in the air once more, and off they drove leaving us wondering which way to go next.
We had only walked on a matter of a hundred yards or so when we met a man standing by the roadside with a large knobbly stick. He was dripping with mist, and he wore Wellington boots, and his face was small and pessimistic. He was in fact a farmer.
What a command of English that Welsh farmer had! It is rather humiliating when you think about it, but here was a man who wasn’t even speaking his first language - at least I’m sure he wouldn’t admit that English was his first language - yet there he stood mixing metaphors with zeugma and intertwining paradox with transference of epithet as though some of the great orators like Burke or Gladstone could take his correspondence course. And all on the subject of dead sheep.
You can imagine what a conversation of grunts and whistles you’d have with an English farmer about dead sheep.
‘Arrm bin losin sheep.’
‘Sleep?’
‘Nar.’
‘Nar what?’
‘Nar. Sheep.’
‘I see. You are losing sheep. Ye ... s?’
‘Ar.’
‘Um ... Why now have you been losing sheep - can it be foot - rot? The Common Agricultural Policy? Sheer neglect?’
‘Nar.’
‘Nar what?’
‘Nar. Summat bin wurrinum.’
‘Wurrinum, eh? Hold on now, let me guess. What can you mean?’
And so on.
Now with our farmer it was different. The angel Gabriel never spoke with greater eloquence than did he on the subject of sheep worrying. Far off in sunlit folds, it appeared, there grazed a race of sheep whose qualities both of mind and physique were so superior to the plodding lowland animals that all who saw them - and hundreds would make the pilgrimage year after year to do precisely that - exclaimed with wonder that such beauty and intelligence could be contained within the frame of a humble ewe, and many would fall down and give praise to the Great Being at whose behest the sheep had been ordained, quoting Goethe or Zechariah 13 : 7-9 in support of their tenet that this was indeed a flock apart from the common breed. Those who did not fall down and give praise, our farmer told us, mostly said eloquent things about the Meat Marketing Board.
There they sat - the sheep, I mean - suckling their young, and bleating to each other in tonic sol-fah. But - stay - what is this that has appeared in the bottom left-hand corner of the picture? No, no, it is not another of those houseflies which has landed on the frame from Mrs Jones’s compost-heap next door. It is the sheep-worrying dog slavering nastily to itself as it works its way up the illustration, creeping from rock to rock with fell purpose, its fangs already red with the blood of rather less outstanding sheep that belong to other farmers in the neighbourhood. And now the hillsides are astir with a nameless unease. Across the sun a great cloud of mourning rolls as though to turn daylight into darkness in preparation for the shameless deed, and from the west a sighing wind cloaks the distracted bleating of the flock with an air of shrill lament.
Flee, flee, unguarded sheep! What use your bleatings now? Yet do not so. Was it not ever thus, that beauty stands defenceless before the envious eye of the marauder, that virtue gleams with a ray so pure that rock nor crag nor cave may hide her light from shining forth amid a world of evil!
He creeps, he crouches, he springs, and from the flock a fair ewe, the joy of her master’s heart with a market value of £37.50, lies stricken. Another falls, and then another. Will the slaughter never end? Yes. Deep in the valley where the waters of the river Idris roll amid flowers, the goodly farmer has seen their plight and already he is across the stream and over the wall of the farthest penfold, a lithe and agile figure, small, but - like the youthful David - remarkably handsome in an odd sort of way and he’s not armed with anything so daft as three small pebbles from the brook either, see. And now he is amongst his loved ones. See how they cluster around him for solace, while the killer turns tail in flight and streaks away across the hillside to its lair. Come ye to me my flock, for ye are my children! Come ye to me that are scattered abroad and ye shall find pasture! And let the hills lament, and let the high hills burst forth in lamentation, for ye that were an hundred-and-four score are now an hundred-and-seventy-and-seven, and of them that be lost there shall not one return, but among them that be saved there shall be joy upon their heads. And he that doeth this deed shall utterly perish.
Yea, I have sworn, and I have chosen my words carefully. He shall not last five minutes if I can only get my hands on him, boy. Yea, he shall die. And unto him that owneth him shall come forth a terrible bill for compensation.
It was a remarkable effort, and we told the farmer so. Henry said he particularly liked the bit about the change in the weather conditions prior to the assault. Of course the farmer was far too much of a professional to express any signs of pleasure at our compliments. Not for him a bowing and a smirking in front of the footlights. He just stood before us motionless, spitting on the ground from time to time and looking out bitterly into the fog as though questioning what atrocities might even now be going on out there.
When our applause had subsided he asked us if we would like to hear him on the topic of foot-and-mouth disease, but we declined. We said the emotional strain would be more than we could bear. But we cautioned him to be wary of letting his anger loose on any small black-and-white terrier that he might find, answering to - or rather not answering to - the name of Che. We said the dog had friends in high places. Given its busy agenda it was most unlikely that it could find time for anything as trivial as sheep-worrying. But it was not an animal to be trifled with, and any signs of hostility could well be answered by a fearful revenge.
This farmer’s conversation had been accompanied by a good deal of gesticulation and hand -waving - the English are unique in not using their hands to talk with - and from this manual side of his discourse we had gained the information that his own farm lay down the valley: that is, away from the way we were going. I must say that this came as some relief, because as we had walked up to him we had been wondering to ourselves whether we might not be spending the night at his house. Now we were spared the need to enquire. So we walked on, and a mile further up the road we came upon a rickety sign and a track leading off to our left. The rickety sign said Pontbedr Farm, and the track was muddy and showed signs of daily use. We turned up it and began to prepare our minds for the awkward task of asking for a night’s lodging - awkward to us and probably more awkward still for our hosts.
I said that at least we would be staying with genuine Border people.
Henry said that could be a mixed blessing. He said he didn’t mean it unkindly, but he had had one or two experiences of staying with genuine people, and the trouble about them was that they usually turned out to be a bloody sight more genuine than you’d bargained for.
He said he’d had his initial baptism of fire when he’d just turned eighteen and took himself off to Greece for two months to get to know the people at first hand. Henry’s father, who never travelled anywhere as a matter of principle, said it would be much better if he got to know them at second hand, but Henry insisted and off he went.
For the first ten days apparently Henry had a rapturous time. He walked the hills of Central Greece exulting in the clear Mediterranean air and eating enormous meals of mutton and cheese, which seemed to cost next to nothing in the remoter villages. Then one day as he was sitting down exulting under an olive tree he was joined in the cool of the shade by a statuesque girl who was barefooted and carrying a water bottle on her head. She poured Henry a cup of water and he gave her a piece of bread, and together they sat laughing and joking through the afternoon.(That at least is Henry’s story, and I can imagine from the girl’s point of view that if Henry ever succeeded in cracking any joke in Greek she was bound to find it pretty laughable.) She was shy and twinkling-eyed, and about an hour after she’d walked on Henry realised that she’d taken his wallet. When he turned out his pockets the only thing he had left of any significance was his airline ticket home dated four weeks hence.
Henry said he could always have made his way back to Athens and changed the flight back to an earlier date. But he still didn’t want to leave Greece, and besides he couldn’t bear the thought of his father’s grinning face when he met him off the plane. So he resolved on a different - a more genuine - course.
High up above his head as he lay there on the grass Henry could see the white dome of a monastery perched like a gull’s nest on the edge of a mountain. By nightfall he had made his way to it, and after what must have been a bewildering mimeshow for the abbot and a number of senior monks he managed to get it into their heads that he intended to book in for a long stay. Henry said he got the impression that they thought he was mad, and the idea seemed to go around the table - he didn’t know this, of course, but he sort of sensed it - that anybody who wanted to stay with them must need his head examining, and on that basis they had better take pity on him and let him in.
Henry said that the reason for all this amazement on the part of the inmates only dawned on him late the next afternoon. It seemed that his arrival had more or less coincided with the start of Greek Orthodox Lent. From his first day till the time he had to leave they had three meals per day, each consisting of eighteen dried peas and a glass of water. The monks themselves absolutely loathed it. The abbot loathed it too, and he used secretly to invite Henry into his room and win his peas off him by beating him at some peculiar game of cards which Henry could never understand the rules of. Henry couldn’t complain, of course, because he was afraid he might be thrown out. By the time he got home, Henry said, he was a shadow of his former self.
‘And that,’ said Henry, as the forbidding silhouette of the farmyard surged suddenly into view, ‘that is why the search for genuineness should never be carried to excess.’
‘Still’, said Henry, as we tolled at a rather handsome and well-polished brass bellpull. ‘Any port in a storm.’
A small girl of about eleven answered the door, and we explained our predicament. She asked us to come in. In the hall she stopped suddenly and said that she was at a loss to know what best to do. We were most welcome to stay for the evening, of course - that went without saying. The question was that, since there was nobody to introduce us, she hoped we wouldn’t consider it too much of a gaffe if she simply announced herself. Her name was Armandine Elton-Willis. Her parents were out for the moment at a meeting of the local multi-racial Playgroup Committee, and she herself was rather tied up with homework. However, she was sure she could find us a slice of quiche in the fridge to keep us going till dinner time.
Armandine Elton-Willis said that her brother Traquair normally went to bed early, being only little. If we wouldn’t mind waiting for a moment she’d go up to his cot and see if she could find the Guardian crossword. There was usually quite a hit of the puzzle left to do, and it might just keep us amused for a few minutes until she was free to join us herself. In a way we were very grateful. In another way we were thoroughly dissatisfied.