The Wild Silence

Part One

Always the Land

The shell must break before the bird can fly.

The Promise of May, Alfred, Lord Tennyson

I can hear the voice, but I don't know what it's saying.

          Somewhere deep in my brain,

                    a noise between the rush of blood and electrical charges,

                            a sound, or is it

                                     a feeling?

                                         It's dark and low, a voice like a hum of words

                                      rising from a hundred throats,

                                or the beat of a drum in tune to feet on hard earth,

                            or one bird call

                      long and low at dusk

                              as the light dips below a ridgeline

                                      and the land

                                           becomes blue.

1. Gone to Earth

I should have been in bed, sleeping like the rest of the country, not on an ice-cold rock on a cliff top before the dawn of New Year's Day. But as my eyes opened in the darkness of a winter night, I'd felt the same agitation that had been keeping me awake for months, heard the same sounds whispering in my head, and I'd had to go through the enclosed, narrow streets of Polruan, where curtains were drawn and quietness had settled. All the revelers, fireworks and noise of the night before had disappeared. A dark stillness had returned, broken only by pools of streetlight and the sense of the river moving, wide and deep near its mouth, but heaving inland with the force of the tide, the surface shattering into a thousand reflected lights. Only one boat was moored in the fast-running current, its bows straining on the anchor chain, its stern drifting in a rhythmic fishtail motion. I walked beyond the last of the houses and out on to the open field. I didn't need a torch; I'd come to know this route so well that even in the gloom my feet found their way to a foot-wide strip of worn earth that winds its way through gorse and rock, up steep-hewn steps where the land falls away to the sea, breaking against the deep blackness of the cliff below. Then beneath the arched, wind-shaped hawthorn, bent and contorted as it shadows the shape of the land. Up rough broken ground, my feet barely visible, through the gate to where the land flattens and the wind rises. I couldn't see it but I knew it was there. I could feel the pull of the coast in both directions and as I stretched my arms wide and blended into the unseen, craggy, well-known shapes my exhaled breath became the wind, as did I.

In a field just back from the coast path I found my way to a small rocky outcrop surrounded by an arc of gorse bushes, where the sheep had worn away the grass as they'd pushed themselves in to shelter from the weather. A place to stop and sit. The agitation in my body began to fade and I let go, slipping beneath the wave of exhaustion. The darkness was dense and impenetrable but the air hissed through the gorse above my head, carrying the acidic scent of the needled leaves, as the weight of the sea on the cliff below boomed through the earth in a steady rhythmic vibration. I curled in a ball, the hood of my coat pulled over my hat, gloved hands under my armpits, and my thoughts finally moved outside my head, dissipating in the wild black air. No voice in my head, only silence. I couldn't think anymore, only feel, and I gave in to sleep, a deep, brief, total oblivion.

A slight wash of light broke the darkness, bringing me back into my aching, cramped body, but I didn't move; I stayed curled tight, my body wrapped, hanging on to a small scrap of warmth. A dark form slipped through the grayness overhead, his firm tail and long broad wings tipping only slightly into the wind as he dipped over the cliff edge, disappearing from view. My eyes held the clearing skyline, waiting for his return, not blinking in case I missed him. My head ached from the effort and my attention slipped to the horizon as the slightest slither of golden light began to break, brief and brilliant, before a curtain of squalling rain far out at sea obscured the wonder. Then he came silently back from below, rising into the sky without effort and hanging above the scrub of the headland. His dark back and black-tipped wings almost blended with the low sky; only the flash of white above his tail gave him away as a harrier hoping for breakfast.

Uncurling with a dull pain in my hips, I crawled out from beneath the gorse to see a badger leaving the coast path and climbing up through the field toward some undergrowth at the far fence. His short, stubby legs moved quickly through the patchy tufted grass. Caught out by the light, up too late, stirred from his winter slowness, he'd been driven into the cold night by hunger, but now he needed to be back in his sett, deep underground, safe, warm and hidden from view. He paused at the wide entrance to his tunnel, looking around, checking the air. Then he was gone, slipping into his safe invisible world. He'd gone to earth.

In the faint graying lift of light I climbed on to the last rock and sat with my feet hanging over the edge. At the edge of the land and the start of the sea. In a space between worlds, at a time between years, in a life between lives. I'm lost, but here, at least for a moment, I'm found.

Back through the village and still nothing was stirring. In Fowey, on the opposite side of the river, a few lights were on. People were groggily making coffee, turning up the heating and going back to bed. I followed the path-wide streets to the huge looming bulk of the chapel, through the iron gate and along a concrete-paved corridor between the building and the cliff face. Through the door to the narrow apartment at the back. The cold had crept into my bones and my body ached all over. But I thought IÕd found a sense of understanding that IÕd been searching for since the day we arrived at the chapel, since the day weÕd walked through that door for the first time. The day weÕd put our rucksacks down on the bare floor at the end of a 630-mile walk, unlaced our muddy boots and tried to rediscover how to live under a roof. Finally I thought I knew why I couldnÕt settle, why I was restless, sleepless. I made tea and took it up the stairs to Moth, my husband, lover, friend of over thirty years.

He was lying spreadeagled on the mattress in the bedroom; even the growing light of the day finding its way through a stained-glass window hadn't woken him. Nothing seemed to wake him; he could sleep for twelve hours and still need more. But I shook him and started his day as usual, with tea and two Rich Tea biscuits.

"Moth, wake up, there's something I've got to do."

"What? What are you doing-why are you dressed?"

"I couldn't sleep."

"Again?"

"I know, I'm so tired, but there's something I have to do."

Pushing the foam mattress to the corner of the room next to the cardboard wardrobe where our clothes hung left a large space on the lino-covered floor. We took a green package out of the rucksack that stood in the opposite corner, unzipped the case and shook out the familiar bundle of nylon. Unfurling the tent, I was hit with the smell of damp and sand, wind, rain and ozone-fresh, gull-filled air. I was outside, in the wild, on every shade of red, black and brown soil, in damp mossy woods and deep hidden valleys.

"You do what you need to do but I think I might still use the mattress. I'm actually getting used to the comfort again."

"Okay, but I need to try this. I can't carry on without sleep."

I clicked the duct-tape-bound poles back together with a rising sense of anticipation as they slotted into position and the green dome rose into shape. Crawling into the damp-smelling space it created, I was overcome with a rush of joy. Moth went to make more tea while I dragged in the old battered inflatable mats and sleeping bags and took a pillow off the bed. I was back. This was it. My face sank into the pillow, the world slipped away and sleep washed over me on an incoming tide of relief. I'd gone to earth.

2. Invisible

When the Christmas holiday ends and students miserably return to the classroom, very few are in their mid-fifties and starting to forget as fast as they learn. We stood in the kitchen-living area of the chapel going through Moth's daily checklist before he headed to university for the day. Phone, wallet, glasses, check; van keys, check; notepad with the list of what you're doing today, check.

"See you tonight then."

"Yep, see you later." And he was gone, but I could still hear his footsteps walking unevenly down the side of the chapel into the dull light of a winter morning. Closing the door I was back inside the long narrow corridor-like space of the apartment. I sat at the table with a cup of tea and thought about the day ahead. Waiting for the bread to pop from the toaster, my eyes scanned the bookshelf, searching for something to delay the moment when I had to open the laptop to spend more hours in the soul-destroying hunt for an employer who was on the lookout for an unqualified fifty-something with no employment record. The small bookshelf held just a random selection of books that had come out of a packing box. A few scattered volumes picked up in the last hours before we left our house. Whenever I looked at those books they took me straight back to that last moment before we walked out for the final time. Evicted from the dream that had been our family home, where we ran our holiday rental for visitors to come and stay, where we kept sheep and grew vegetables, the home where our children grew up, our world for twenty years. Before a financial dispute with a lifelong friend ended in a court case that resulted in us being served with an eviction notice. Those few books collected before we closed the door and left our old lives behind, never to return, held the sound of bailiffs as they hammered at the door, the fear of not knowing if we would ever find shelter again, and an overwhelming sadness. But if I'd known this would be the only box of books we'd bring with us into our new life I might have packed a better selection. I ran my hand across them in search of something, anything to take me out beyond the walls, beyond the chapel. A Field Guide to Fungi, maybe, though probably not in January; Outsider II, definitely not; Five Hundred Mile Walkies, that book, the one that had led to the most unexpected adventure. No, there was only one that would do the trick. The South West Coast Path: From Minehead to South Haven Point, Paddy Dillon's beautiful guidebook to the 630-mile path. The book that had guided us all the way to Polruan. The friend in our pocket as we decided not to give in to the chaos of homelessness, but to put our rucksacks on our backs and walk the whole length of the path Paddy describes, living wild, homeless and penniless on its cliffs and beaches.

The plastic cover on the little brown book was still intact, the pages bound together with a black elastic hair band. As I took it off the stiff pages bulged in ripples that had echoes of a hard sand beach on an outgoing tide. Between the pages, some stuck together in rain-damaged clumps, were postcards, feathers, grasses, scraps of paper and flowers. Memories of a path that falls from cliff top to sea level and back, until the roller coaster of wilderness has followed the whole coastline of the southwest of England and the walker has climbed the equivalent of Everest nearly four times.

I buttered the toast and waited for the phone to ring. Moth's call to say that he had arrived at the university, and wasn't sitting in a cafŽ in Truro or walking on the beach at Watergate Bay because he'd begun to drive to university, then forgotten where he was going and convinced himself that he had some other destination to go to. I thumbed the pages of the small book, almost reluctant to look inside. It held sunlit, windswept memories of months spent on cliff tops in all weathers. But there was something else in there: darker memories of the pain and sadness of the awful week that had driven us to make that walk. We were different people then, desperate, anxious, frightened people, trying to cram twenty years of life into packing boxes with only days left before we had to leave our house, thinking that losing our home was the worst thing that could possibly happen to us. But a routine hospital appointment during that week had changed those thoughts. As the lights of our life were going out, a doctor sat on the corner of his table and switched off the final lamp.

I closed the book. Did I really want to go back to that week, to feel the horror again? Too late: it was already with me. No escaping the memory of Moth's body clenched tight as he was diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disease that had neither treatment or cure. No escaping the sense of fear that returned whenever I remembered being told that the pain in Moth's shoulder, a numbness in his left side and dark fog of mental paralysis slowly taking his thoughts wasn't just old age, but actually corticobasal degeneration, CBD, a creeping unstoppable disease with only a short time left to run its course to the end. And as the doctor painted a picture of Moth's body forgetting how to swallow and pneumonia making him choke on his own saliva, we realized how wrong we'd been: far worse things were waiting for us than becoming homeless.

I put the kettle back on. He should be there by now-why hadn't he called? I turned the pages, carefully peeling apart the clumps of dried paper, Paddy's descriptions of the path leaping out in punctuations of memory. "Drifts a little inland and uphill": I laughed at the thought of us standing at the start of the walk and reading that line as we looked at a steep path following a zigzag up a near-vertical cliff. But as the pages finally began to separate, Moth was there in the margins and I could see his face as he looked up at me in the torchlight of a dark evening, when the last of the light had faded over the horizon and the green dome of the tent enclosed us in the two sheets of our damp, nylon home. Still the same wild, unstoppable man I'd loved for all of my adult life, sitting on his sleeping bag as I lay in mine, heavy-eyed but watching him write. He was there, smiling as he wrote in tiny spidery words in the margins of the guidebook, capturing the days we had just spent on cliff tops and beaches, camping on headlands and rocky ledges. "Camped on Leskey's Ledge, more in the sea than beside it." "I'm so hungry I ate Ray's biscuit, don't think she noticed." "Opened the tent to find we're only a meter from the cliff edge." "Blackberries." "The sea is like syrup, I have become the sea." "Held Ray's hand at the edge of all things." "Today I walked with a tortoise."