How the Heather Looks Page 20

  After our visit to the railroad platform, Uncle Roger took us to a restaurant and treated us to a glorious tea. I suspect that the scones and cream cakes were as much a treat for him as for the children, at least he acted as though they were. But then, he attacked everything in life with such zest that we found ourselves caught up in the same spirit. I do not know when we have laughed so hard. I am convinced that every child should have an English bachelor uncle. Married uncles (American or British) are usually someone else’s father and tend to have a reasonable, responsible, well-adjusted way of looking at life. But a bachelor uncle is like Mr. Wiggs in the Mary Poppins book (remember the laughing scene?), and Captain Flint in Swallows and Amazons, and Great Uncle Matthew in Ballet Shoes. There is a touch of Bertie Wooster and Edward Lear and Professor Dodgson about him. Such uncles are not to be confused with contemporary playmates, but neither are they like parents. They are a breed apart. By very definition, bachelor uncles should be dying out, but let us hope that even unto our children’s children there will be a hard core of ebullient eccentrics who answer to the name.

  We spent the next night at Morpeth. We had chosen a respectable hotel, but there was a circus in town and the Saturday night crowd was unusually large and noisy. We were kept awake by a row in the bar downstairs. The next day, being Sunday, John went to church, Lucy took an extra nap, I baby-sat, and Ian disappeared. When John returned from church we packed the car and then set out to look for Ian. We found him down by the river playing with some of the children from the circus. His trousers were rolled up to the knees, his new shoes were ruined by the river, but he was having a wonderful time. It was the first time he had found anyone his own age who would play with him since we left the New Forest. The circus children had told him that they did not like to play with “townies” but since he was an American they had received him as a fellow outsider. I am sorry that I was cross with Ian for making us get a late start. If I had talked less and listened more I might have heard some interesting echoes of Noel Streatfeild’s Circus Shoes. It is not often that one is accepted by circus people. Ian had been honored.

  We decided not to take the shorter route inland to Edinburgh, but to follow the curve of the coast. We came to Alnwick and saw a castle tower surmounted by great armored warriors silhouetted against the sky. I suppose they had been put there to frighten would-be invaders into believing that the castle was manned by giants. We did not stop to find out, but pressed on in search of a place where we could stop to lunch. We were old travelers now who knew that it was all but impossible to buy an evening meal in Britain on a Sunday. We stopped at a little place near Beal and had a hearty luncheon. Hardly had we rearranged ourselves in the car when we saw a finger post pointing to the Holy Island of Lindisfarne. How could we resist? To anyone with a passion for books and the making of books, the name of Lindisfarne has a special magic.

  Lindisfarne is a mist-shrouded island off the coast of Northumbria, famous for its abbey. When Rome fell and barbarians swept over Europe, scholars and craftsmen from as far away as Byzantium fled to the Holy Island and found refuge there. In that remote and hallowed place the monks labored to keep alive the story of Christianity and the memory of Greco-Roman civilization. They copied out the Christian gospels in their scriptorium and illuminated the vellum pages with unique motifs, blending the traditions of La Tène Celtic ornament with those from the Mediterranean. The result was the famous Lindisfarne Gospel, considered by many bibliophiles as the most beautiful of all illuminated manuscripts, second to not even the Book of Kells.

  The glory of Lindisfarne was short-lived, however. Viking pirates swept over the Holy Island in 793 A.D. and in 875 A.D., forcing those monks who were not killed outright to flee elsewhere.

  To be so close to the Holy Island yet not to see it was unthinkable! John turned the car along a narrow road toward the sea, explaining as he did so that I must not expect to see the famous manuscript in such a remote and unprotected spot. He was quite certain that it was safely deposited in the British Museum in London. As we neared the coast and saw the green island ahead of us we realized that it was separated from the mainland by a tidal spit or causeway. The tide was out; we would have to get over and back within the next few hours or we would be stuck until next low water. Even my enthusiasm was fast running out. There were no tracks to follow, no way to know where we might get bogged down in soft sands or caught in a cove. The island loomed above us, with seemingly no place to seek safety if the tide should change. Then a small panel truck marked Coast Guard came careening past us. We followed it around a headland and came to a low spot on the end of the island where we could see a road, and a village with a little church and the ruins of the monastery.

  We parked our car and made our way over to the ruins. They had been declared an ancient monument and were under the guardianship of the Ministry of Works. We bought a guidebook at the gate and wandered about, reading the guidebook, trying to find the scriptorium, and watching to see that the children did not break their necks on the tumble-down stones. Even now it was oddly impressive to find these immense ruins in such a remote place. What must the original abbey have seemed to the local crofters and fishermen of the seventh century? Now sea gulls perched on the lacelike arches and the blue sky was the only roof overhead. The sound of waves reminded us that our time was limited by the tide. We called the children and made our way back to the gate. We came into the little village just as the church bell began to toll and the church doors opened.

  The next moment we felt that we had been transported back into the Middle Ages. A brown-cowled monk, quite young and at least six feet tall, came out of the church carrying a cross. A rope girdle encircled his waist, his big feet were incongruously shod in Dr. Scholl’s sandals. He walked solemnly toward us, then turned toward the churchyard. Behind him came six pallbearers, staggering under the weight of a coffin. They were all dressed in black trousers and black fishing jerseys and every one of them had a beautiful, strong, medieval face that looked as though it had been carved from stone or wood. Sorrow was engraved on every face, but it was a private sorrow, each man seemingly wrapped in his special thoughts. The other tourists and ourselves did not exist. Priest and people had stepped backward into time: what we saw could have been happening a thousand years ago. As long as I live I will never forget the faces of the men of Lindisfarne.

  But we were bound for Scotland. We scuttled back across the causeway and drove north along the great highway. Hardly had we crossed the Tweed when we spied an enormous sign painted in jagged letters on the side of a stone barn: English Go Home! The paint looked as though it were barely dry. It was enough to give one pause. I think that Ian was rather disappointed that there was no one at the border to back up that challenge – he would have liked to see just a little blood shed – but he was comforted by the knowledge that all about us great battles had been fought. We drove on through the Lammermuir Hills, knowing vaguely that it was “Scott country,” and in the late afternoon came to Dunbar. Although we could have easily made the distance into Edinburgh before nightfall, we found ourselves hesitating. A sign on a large and imposing house informed us that there were rooms to let. John pointed out that we were probably on the very site of the Battle of Dunbar, where Cromwell’s men beat the Scots. That was enough for Ian! He is a true battlefield buff. We could not have budged him another step.

  The next morning (again!) we could not find Ian when we were ready to set out. When we asked our landlady to tell us where we could find the nearest children, she suggested a row of Council houses several fields away. The sound of boyish voices upraised in argument soon led us to our son. He was having a wonderful time, but was perfectly happy to climb into the car with us to continue into Edinburgh. He explained his morning’s activities as we drove along. He had gone out after breakfast to explore the battlefield. He had hoped to find an old pike or a Roundhead helmet – some little trinket overlooked these several centuries. Eventually he had wandered across the fields and found
himself in the back gardens of the Council houses. “It was real neat,” he said. There were slides and swings for the little kids, and the older boys had a tent. They were playing cowboys and Indians and had been hospitable enough to include Ian in the game. Eventually he asked whether they ever played “Battle of Dunbar.” They said they played it every day – after cowboys and Indians. If Ian wanted to play it now he could be Cromwell, the rest of them would be Scots. No one else would join Ian because no one wanted to be on the losing side. In vain Ian explained that Cromwell had won the Battle of Dunbar. When we came upon them, the boys had been arguing the truth of Cromwell’s victory. “Do you know what they said?” Ian asked. “They said that maybe tomorrow they’d play it my way.” Even Ian could see the humor of it. It had been fun “hacking around,” he said. “They sure are good kids….”

  We drove into Edinburgh, turned off Princes Street, and drove along South Bridge. I had a copy of The Lady, an incredibly genteel women’s magazine, in hand. I had saved it because it carried so many “personals” and classified advertisements announcing rooms to let by “impoverished gentlewomen” all over Britain. There were half a dozen Edinburgh addresses, one of them on a pleasant terrace leading off South Bridge. Besides the one advertised, we found several houses with Rooms or Bed and Breakfast signs discreetly placed in parlor windows. One of them – oh joy! – had a walled garden where I could see clotheslines in abundance. This was the place.

  Our main objective in Edinburgh was to go in search of Robert Louis Stevenson – or, rather, Robert Louis Stevenson’s garden. There has always been a special affinity between Ian and the author of A Child’s Garden of Verses. When he was less than a year old I used to read “Windy Nights” to him at bedtime. Of course the most that he got from the poem was the rhythm, but he loved it and would rock his crib at a gallop. When he was six or so, and fascinated by pirates, his father had read him Treasure Island and, later, Kidnapped. He responded so enthusiastically that John brought home several biographies so that we could learn more about Robert Louis Stevenson.

  Ian took especial pleasure in the fact that Louis liked old maps, pirates, knights, toy soldiers, elaborate games of history and make-believe, just as he himself did. Of course, Ian may like all these things because we read Stevenson to him at such an early age. It is hard to tell. Another bond was that Louis, even as Ian, had difficulty in learning to read. Both little boys had been incessant listeners, almost from their births. Both could soak up reams of poetry and folklore, they were both interested in “adult” history and – on some occasions – would listen to newspaper articles or editorials. Both could dictate long, involved, and quite coherent stories of their own. But when it came to actually reading or writing they were the despair of school teachers and far behind their fellows. Ian was just issuing from the dread labyrinth that represented his first few years at school, and it was a comfort to him to know that his hero (his friend, really) had suffered even as he.

  We decided to go first to 8 Howard Place, across the city from us, which our guidebook listed as a memorial museum. Although this was the house where R.L.S. was born, his family left it when he was barely three. We found the place cluttered with memorabilia. There were locks of hair and pictures of ancestors, scenes from motion pictures based on the novels, photographs of Stevenson’s yacht and his house in Tahiti. There were also photographs of the house in Monterey, California, where he had lived for a short time and which we had visited just the year before. When we, in innocent pride, mentioned this to the museum caretaker, he countered: “Aye! Often we have people who say they have visited Stevenson’s house here or there in America. Seems like you Americans think you own him even more than we do.” Well, not more, perhaps – but almost as much. I remember what satisfaction it used to be to me to sit in Portsmouth Square in San Francisco and to reflect that Stevenson had once sat there too.

  The next morning we decided to sally forth and to spend the morning in search of “a child’s garden of verses” and the house where Stevenson had lived when he peered out the window at “Leerie going by.” A little research had revealed that after leaving the house at 8 Howard Place, the Stevenson family had moved to 1 Inverleith Terrace, a house long since torn down. Just as well, evidently, because its exposed position and poor drains had caused the learned doctors to suggest that if little Louis’s health was ever to improve his parents must find better housing. The only pleasant memory of the place was that it was there that “Cummy,” faithful nurse and future dedicatee, first came to live with the Stevenson family.

  Robert Louis Stevenson was six years old when his family moved to Number 17, Heriot Row, within easy walking distance of the shops on Princes Street. He was a strange little boy, frail and thin, with long narrow face, cold hands, cold feet, and an old-fashioned quaintness of manner. He was born cold, and all his life he would seek warmth and sunshine. Number 17 faced upon a southern exposure in almost the very center of a row of houses looking out on Queen Street Garden. The houses were modern (that is, they had been built during the Napoleonic Wars), but they were heated solely by fireplaces. In a latitude the same as Labrador’s a small body wracked by coughs and colds must have struggled mightily to exist. If it had not been for the loving skill of Alison Cunningham the only memory of Louis might have been “upon the whole a family happier for his presence.” There might have been nothing else to mark the fact that he had ever lived.

  The house was easy enough to find. Just a few squares back from Princes Street the silver-gray houses were steeped in privacy and classical serenity. A plaque affixed to the right of the door of Number 17 informed us that this was, indeed, the former home of Robert Louis Stevenson, but that it was also a private residence and not open to the public. We wandered across the street and peered through the palings into the Queen Street Gardens, trying in vain to picture young Louis at play there. Somehow he did not fit.

  Where was the “dark brown river” wherein to float leaves and chips of wood? There was not even a fountain, much less a brook. Where was a place for a child to “go up in a swing”? No tree in that garden looked as though it had ever been hospitable to a child. And who would dare to dig a hole in the grass, to hide his toy grenadier? No, this was not the garden we sought. I began to wonder if Louis, out of desperate longing, had “made it up.” He was such an imaginative child that perhaps the poems reflected what he would have liked to have had. No! I told myself firmly. The whole genius of A Child’s Garden of Verses lies in its common-sensical reality, the concreteness of its detail. Children would not respond to it as they do if the imagination were not tethered so firmly to the five senses.

  We turned and looked back at the house across the street. There was no doubt that this was the place of the “indoor” poems – the winter nights, the firelit hearth, the counterpane strewn with toys, the wistful face peering from the window, watching for Leerie to come along “with ladder and with light” to spark the gas lamps all down Heriot Row. Almost, we could see the long, pale little face at the window now, half hidden by the curtains.

  And then, almost as though we had willed that it should happen, the sturdy figure of a man came “posting down the street.” He was carrying a ladder. He stopped in front of Number 17, propped his ladder against the lamp post, and began to climb up. We must have looked as though we had seen a ghost. Leerie! We raced across the street and stared up at him, open-mouthed. I suddenly realized that we were being very rude.

  “We … we thought you were Leerie,” Ian said.

  The man’s face crumpled into a smile. “On account of him?” he asked, jerking his thumb at Number 17. “No, laddie. My name’s MacIntyre – Andrew MacIntyre.” He opened a little door in the lamp.

  “Isn’t it too early to light the lamp?” asked Ian.

  “Aye, laddie. I’m just cleaning it and trimming the wick a wee bit.”

  “Do you like your job?”

  Andrew MacIntyre stopped his work and peered down at Ian in astonishment. Like it? H
e had to think about that. He pushed back his cap and scratched his head for a moment. “Aye, laddie,” he said at last. “It’s a wee cushy job except in bad weather.” Then he descended his ladder, hoisted it over his shoulder, and rounded a corner at the end of Heriot Row. We would still be convinced that we had seen a ghost except for the fact that I took a photograph of Andrew MacIntyre while Ian was talking to him. Ian was disappointed when the picture was returned to us, showing a prosaic Scot of flesh and blood. He had hoped that the film would be blank. A snapshot of a ghost would be even more exciting than that of an Edinburgh lamplighter.

  The following day we drove out to Colinton Manse, the house where Stevenson’s maternal grandparents had lived and where he had played with his “dozens of cousins” in the most normal and natural relationship of his childhood. In the winter months little Louis lived an isolated sickroom life at Number 17 Heriot Row, his only companions his lighthouse engineer father, an invalid mother, and the Calvinistic common-sensical Scottish nurse, Cummy. Cummy was not one for fraternizing with her fellow nursemaids and rarely took her charge across the street to play in the fenced formality of Queen Street Gardens. One suspects that Louis would not have enjoyed the atmosphere there, either, or the decorous play on graveled paths, but much preferred Cummy’s astringent company and conversations. She took him for long brisk walks, well bundled against the cold. Down Heriot Row and Moray Place they often went, to browse among the headstones of a little graveyard and to walk along the public footpath that borders the Water of Leith. This was the same river that flows past his grandparents’ house out at Colinton; the very stream where, in summer, he launched green leaves as boats to float “away down the river, a hundred miles or more.” Summertime and Colinton must have seemed very far away.