How the Heather Looks Read online

  I am certain that if the fence had not intervened Ian and Lucy would have tried their best to make friends, but I also have an idea that the old grandmother might have bustled her own brood into the wagon. It struck me that she had a decidedly low opinion of us gorgios.

  During World War II the British government exhibited great imagination in putting everyone to work, and even the gypsies’ peculiar skills and arts were woven into the scheme of things. A man who can walk up on a rabbit, seize it and wring its neck, then make a quick getaway is admirably suited for detonation work, where nerve and deftness count. Former tinkers were set to making small airplane parts and their wives and daughters went to work in factories where they were renowned for their dexterity. The New Forest gypsies set up their own factory under the dappled shade of the King’s Oaks and subcontracted to make small parts for munitions and airplanes. Even Petulengro, king of the British Romany tribes, offered his royal services. He possessed extraordinary knowledge of every flower and herb in England and he gave a series of talks over the BBC on the uses of herbs and foods from the wayside.

  When one considers that in totalitarian countries the “gypsy problem” has been solved by simple extermination, it is heartwarming to know that the Briton’s exasperation is rarely more than just that. There is something in the Englishman’s heart that quickens to true eccentricity, and if the gypsy’s right to be himself is threatened, then every Englishman hears the tolling of the bell. Someone, somewhere, is bound to Ask Questions.

  Months later, when we were home in the United States, John ran across such a someone in Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates while perusing some research of his own. Knowing that I would be interested, he jotted down a few notes to bring home to me. It would seem that on June 20, 1956, a certain Mr. Dodd (Erith and Crayford, Lab.) informed the Minister of Housing and Local Government that a serious position had arisen because of the enforcement of laws which made no allowance for the protection of traditional gypsy sites. The problem could not be adequately dealt with by local authorities, but only by the government….

  Mr. Godfrey Nicholson (Farnham, C.) argued that it would be a great tragedy if “this historic and picturesque community were squeezed out by the growing pressure of industrialization and the bureaucratic system….”

  Mr. Powell (H. and L. G.): “I am too great an admirer of George Borrow not to agree with that.” (Cheers.)

  But Mr. Dodd was not to be put off so easily: “In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the Answer I beg to give notice that I shall raise the matter … after I have raised the matter of white bread.” And sure enough, a few days later Mr. Dodd is at it again: “Is the Minister of Education aware that gypsy children are not being taught to read and write? … that they are being placed in separate class rooms?”

  To this Sir D. Eccles seems only able to respond: “As long as gypsies are gypsies their children’s education will be a problem.”

  But do not think for one moment that Parliament had heard the last of this. The gypsy is not without allies, for according to Hansard the hearing would be resumed when new evidence would be introduced on behalf of the Commons, Open Spaces and Footpaths Preservation Society. Surely the gypsy has nothing to fear as long as the C.O.S. & F. P. Society (or its equivalent) exists in Britain!

  We stopped that night at a farmhouse just outside Taunton. It had been a busy day, the car was misbehaving, and John was tired. We had had enough of hotels, so the Bed and Breakfast sign in the window of a clean and comfortable old house was more than we could resist. Our instinct proved right, for we were shown to a pleasant room with a double bed for ourselves and two smaller beds tucked back under the eaves for the children. The bathroom was down the hall and the maid would bring hot water for shaving in the morning. It was very like the tourist homes one used to stay in before the advent of the motel, the only difference being that the owners included a hearty breakfast in the price for a room. We could have supper, too, but it would be a few shillings extra.

  The next morning, after a wonderful country breakfast, John took the car into Taunton for repairs, and the children and I explored through a gate in the wall of the garden. We found ourselves on the towpath for the old Taunton-Bridgewater Canal. Bridges arched at regular intervals, geese and ducks paddled in the osiers, cows stood knee-deep in dew-wet grass. Ian gathered stones and skipped them over the surface of the canal, while Lucy and I wandered along behind, stopping to talk to a cow, a tethered goat, and a family of young pigs. It was the first time that our suburban-reared Lucy had ever been so close to real live farm animals, and to her it was a most important event. I was a little ashamed of myself for having neglected her education. The morning was so sparkling that we walked a good mile or so without even realizing it – and then it began to rain. The heavens simply opened, and we were drenched through in a minute. I called to the children to creep in under one of the arched bridges, and while I took a firm grip on Lucy we huddled together and listened to the rain drumming above us and saw the canal rise perceptibly higher at our feet. We finally decided that we must return to the farmhouse. Of course, no sooner did we get back to our room than the sun shone out more gloriously than ever. John had been caught in the rain, too, so we had to take time for hot baths and a change of clothes all around. We had learned another lesson: when in England, never venture anywhere without rain gear.

  We were late getting started again and although the car had spent the morning in a garage its temper did not seem one whit improved. We still had almost one hundred miles to go, and although in America such a run would mean only two or three hours, in England it seemed to take forever. Before leaving home in the United States we had been pleased to realize how short the distances must be from one landmark to another in England, but now that we were actually scuttling along the narrow roads in our tiny car it seemed as though we ourselves had been reduced to scale. It must have been a state of mind, but we felt as though we were making a transcontinental journey or that we had wandered out of Bartholomew’s England into Tolkien’s Hobbit country.

  Hour after hour we drove through mist or rain under lowering skies. The children were too tired even for crankiness. I remember the green hills giving way to great brown sweeps of moor and long stretches of roadside, where we saw almost no evidence of human habitation and only a few sheep, as wild as mountain goats. Once in a while, when the rain lifted, I would see a high crag or tor in the distance, and sometimes, in the hollows, the gray glint of a tarn. We were pleased to discover how easily a lifetime of reading enables one to fit the right words to the landscape. We had climbed to what must have been almost the highest point on the road when I saw an inn, a large, low, rambling building with beetling roof and a board that creaked in the wind. Glancing back, my heart missed a beat when I read the sign: Jamaica Inn. The day before we might have stopped, but now we flew past as though a pack of smugglers were at our heels. At least, I thought, we could not be too far from the sea.

  Tired, cold, hungry, we crept into St. Agnes in the late afternoon. The address we had been given was Beacon Cottage which, I had assumed, indicated a lighthouse nearby. We stopped in the village to inquire the whereabouts of such a landmark, only to learn that the entire hill, on whose inland flank the village was perched, was known as The Beacon.

  We started out again, skirting the hill and following the line of the coast. We stopped at a lonely farmhouse where a weather-beaten sign advertised cream and I made my way to the door, quite a distance from the road. A tall woman with crinkly red hair and a long narrow face answered to my knock. She looked like pictures of the first Queen Elizabeth. She recognized the name of our landlady and directed us farther down the road to “the next house.”

  “The lane’s to the left. You can’t miss it,” she said, but we passed it several times before we realized we must open a farm gate first. The way led through a tunnel of wind-flattened pines, then we were in a circular drive, a gaggle of protesting geese running ahead of our car, and a huge, chai
ned watchdog setting up a raucous bark. For a long moment we sat in the car, too numb with cold and fatigue to make a move. Then the door of the house opened and a bar of yellow light fell across the stone doorstep. A cheerful voice called out, “Why, it must be the Bodgers!” And then, “Come along inside, gypsies. We’ve been waiting for you.”

  CHAPTER 3

  A Peak in Narnia

  It was dark under the trees in the farmyard and the light from the door had temporarily blinded us so that we could not quite make out who had called out. Now a woman moved toward us, dressed in old trousers, a velvet jacket, heavy brogues. For all this, our landlady was incontrovertibly feminine, her hair wrapped in shining silver coils around her head, her complexion soft and rosy as a young girl’s. How heartwarming to be greeted at the end of a long journey! Although we had been in England for several days, I don’t think we had spiritually arrived until we heard that cheery welcome and saw the accompanying smile.

  Mrs. S. led us through the dairy-kitchen and into a parlor. After days of ocean-liner and hotel life, nothing could have been more homelike. We sat around the heavy round table and relaxed in the luxury of not having to watch the children’s manners while we talked to our hostess. We were fascinated by her vast accumulation of West Country lore. She seemed interested that we had stopped down the road to ask directions and was glad that I had had a chance to see “a true Cornish woman.” The crinkly red hair, white skin, and long head were truly characteristic. Alas, her own family was not Cornish, although most of her ancestors were Celtic. This last was absolutely prerequisite to understanding Cornwall and the Cornish. She patted Lucy’s red hair approvingly and inquired gravely into our own ancestry. She was relieved to find we both had Welsh blood in us. From our mothers? That was even better. The Welsh were an interesting people, too, and, of course, the Highlanders. All of them, like the Cornish, had been pushed back into the mountains and the deepest pockets of the island. Her own family, she said, had come originally from England. It was as though she spoke of another country, and I gathered that although her family had been on the farm for several generations she and the neighbors regarded her family as newcomers. She would show me the house later, she said. Part of it had been built in the 1100s … she would show me the beams … but of course it had been added to … modernized. We were in the new part now. Looking about me I surmised that the modernization had taken place in the eighteenth century.

  We went out again, into the dooryard. The dog strained at his chain and barked at us. Mrs. S. apologized for having such a brute, but both the local police and her husband had strongly advised it. Cornwall was the last refuge of kings and scoundrels, and a large camp of “incorrigibles” had been established just a mile or so away – “people who never adjusted after the war, you know.” As for the kings and nobility, they had run away to Cornwall all through history – and long before.

  We went through a door in a wall and came out into a large meadow. Set in a ring about the grassy center was a score or so of prosaic metal “trailers.” Our hearts sank. Was one of these to be our gypsy caravan? Ian looked as though he were about to cry, and I gave him a warning glance, although I felt much the same way myself.

  I have wanted to live in a caravan ever since I was ten years old and read a book called The Slow Coach, by E. V. Lucas. It is about a family of English children who receive a caravan delivered to their door by mistake, and who set out along the dusty roads on a series of delightfully pastoral adventures. The book has that same Robinson Crusoe quality that the Arthur Ransome books have, although it was written a generation earlier and is long out of print. I had not been able to find a copy to read to Ian, but I think I managed to communicate some of its charm by telling him about it and by finding substitutes. We read Doctor Dolittle’s Caravan by Hugh Lofting and The Fairy Caravan by Beatrix Potter. We almost knew The Wind in the Willows by heart.

  It was with some trepidation that we followed Mrs. S. as she escorted us past the campsite. Then she started up a path that led out of the meadow and up toward the hill (or Beacon) that reared up behind the farm. “Come along, gypsies. It’s time to see your caravan.” Hope sprang up again in our breasts and we hastened to keep up with her. Above the furze bushes we could see the top of what surely must be our new living quarters. We pushed on and came into a wedge-shaped clearing hedged all about with tough, twisted gorse and furze. A heavy, straight-sided wagon stood there, the wooden body painted green and perched high on silver-aluminum wheels. There was a flight of wooden steps leading up to the door in its side.

  It was obvious that much thought had been given to the interior of the wagon. The sleeping quarters were divided from the “drawing room” by a partition which would be of great help in allowing people to have naps. There were three windows: one in the rear between the two tiers of bunks, and one on each side giving us lovely views of moor and sea. Inland we looked out upon our little clearing and then straight upward toward the Beacon which seemed to spring up as suddenly as Childe Rowland’s Dark Tower. Seaward we had a breathtaking view of the gray Atlantic and we could see the winking lights of St. Ives curving to the southwest.

  There was a writing table under the west window and a kerosene lamp with glass chimney. The front (or north) end of the wagon was fitted out with cupboards and a dresserful of colorful pottery dishes which our hostess gravely informed us were “for aesthetic purposes only” and not to be used in any circumstances. As a concession to the fact that we were American she had placed a small kerosene stove to the right of the door, although it was not part of the usual furnishings.

  The principal difference between ours and a true gypsy wagon, of course, was that we had no cooking facilities within the wagon. Mrs. S. led us down the steps and across a small clearing recently hacked from the gorse and heather (we could see the twisted white roots, still raw) to what she called the “Bend or Bump.” We all – except Ian and Lucy – bowed our heads and walked into an abandoned chicken coop. It had been hauled up on the hillside, scrubbed clean, whitewashed inside, and converted into a kitchen. The former roost served as a backbreakingly low and narrow counter all along one side, and the dishes and utensils were stacked neatly in the former nesting boxes. A large oilcloth-covered table was shoved under the eaves, surrounded by old omnibus seats. Jars and buckets of clean water had been brought up from the tap in the meadow, and there was – wonder of wonders – a gas stove, served by a large tank outside.

  We were enchanted. This was what we had dreamed of. To think that even for a moment we had had any fears of not being “primitive” enough! The light from the row of windows above the roosts was beginning to fade, so we moved outdoors and over to the caravan again.

  Mrs. S. had supplied us with blankets and sheets, and we made our beds and started to unload the car. We could not bring the car all the way up to the clearing, so it meant a long haul, but since we were to stay in the caravan for two weeks we felt it wise to empty the car completely. Our great concern was our laundry, which had grown to alarming proportions.

  Lucy ran about at our heels, sniffing ecstatically at all the wonderful moor smells. She had taken off her shoes and I decided it was not worth it, in the wet grass, to struggle to put them on again. Ian had run off to explore. No sooner had he disappeared from sight than Mrs. S. arrived with more blankets, a copy of Robert Hunt’s Popular Romances of the West of England, and warnings against letting the children wander down to the cliffs (they were apt to crumble), over to the chimneys (they were part of an old mine – very dangerous), or up on the hill (more mines and a neurotic horse). She was genuinely surprised that we had not known about the Beacon. She opened the old green and gilt cover of the book she had brought us and showed us the frontispiece by Cruikshank: “The Giant Bolster striding from the Beacon to Carn Brea – a distance of six miles.” The hill above us was the second highest pinnacle in all low-lying Cornwall and had been used as a place for signal fires or celebrations since time began. The Phoenicians were guided by
lights on the Beacon when they came in search of tin, the Romans built a sentry post there, and pyres had been made ready to signal the coming of the Armada and an invasion from “Old Boney.”

  We looked up at the peak above us with awe and respect. Our caravan, in its lonely place on the moor, was closer to the top than any other dwelling. All about us the earth was pockmarked and scarred with mines and old ruins, although our untrained eyes saw only gorse and grassy hillside. Perhaps there were other things our eyes could not see – the ghost of a young Roman sentry, for instance, lost on the edge of the world somewhere between midnight and morning….

  I made supper of bread and butter, milk, and scrambled eggs. Ian reappeared in the nick of time to claim his share. His face was glowing, and I could see that the temptation for him to wander and explore was balanced only by my temptation to forbid him to go anywhere by himself. We explained to him the dangers of being caught in the steepsided coves at high tide, and he himself seemed quite sensible about the perils of mines and tunnels.

  In the days to come my resolve sometimes failed me when I thought of the rain-drenched crumbling earth on the edge of a cliff or old shaft, but we let Ian wander over the moors to his heart’s content, up to the Beacon and down to the sea. Who could forbid a child the right to Earth and Sky and Water? I remembered how the young mother in E. Nesbit’s The Railway Children had given in in similar circumstances and let the children walk the rails, although it was against her better judgment. Because she was an “honest and honourable Mother” she had to admit that she, too, had done dangerous things when she was growing up. After she had finally given the permission to wander, the author, in one of her characteristic asides, confides:

  … and I daresay you think that she ought not to have said it. But she remembered about when she was a little girl herself, and she did say it – and neither her own children nor you nor any other children in the world could ever understand what it cost her to do it.