A Time of Birds

by Helen Moat

  Now it made sense.

  ‘I’ve got an old American jeep there in the garage. I’m taking it on parade with invited veterans from Britain, Canada and the US this evening. Go and have a look.’

  As I peered into the garage, I tried to imagine what occupation felt like, or the exuberance of liberation. My own grandparents and parents had also lived under the threat of occupation – but it remained just that. More pertinent to my grandmother was the threat of conscription. Her greatest fear was that her son would be called up, so she persuaded my father to volunteer as an ambulance driver in Belfast. Whether she feared for his life or whether she felt he was needed in his father’s greengrocer’s shop was never clear – nor how he felt about the experience. He never spoke about his time as a volunteer, and I could only guess he’d witnessed horrific injuries, even death. The silence around the subject was palpable. Could his experiences have contributed to the deep depression that settled like dust towards the end of his life – the suppressed anger that at times threatened to surface? The futility of my grandmother’s endeavours was not lost on me: conscription never came to Northern Ireland.

  At home, in one of our albums containing photographs stuck in with browning Sellotape, there’s a rare black-and-white picture of my father from 1939. He’s gazing clear-eyed and solemn into the camera, his mouth slightly open in an expression of both uncertainty and anticipation. To one side, there’s a purple ink mark that made me wonder if this picture was his wartime ID. My father is wearing a suit and tie – the uniform of his life – but also a Fair Isle jumper. It must have been winter. Europe, to be followed by much of the world, was just starting out on a path of devastation and no one had any idea where it would all end.

  There’s another photograph of my parents, not dated, but probably taken just after the war. My parents look happy: the world is at peace; their life is full of promise and they are in love. My mother is standing close beside my father, wearing a smart dress, a pearl necklace and a gaudy brooch. Her hair’s tied up and her eyes cast down to one side, looking demure and rather pleased with the world at the same time. My father’s wearing goofy, Lennon-round sunglasses with what looks like white frames, and has a chequered tank-top on, his tie flopping outside of it. He’s grinning at the camera, looking pleased with the world too. They have a look of survivors. Later, their love will be challenged, but they will cling to the flotsam of their marriage – and I will feel that I am being swept along with their wreckage – until the storms subside. War takes its toll long after a peace agreement has been reached.

  As the Dutchman started to go back inside his house, I asked him where I could find a café.

  ‘You won’t get anywhere open around here today as it’s Sunday – and a holiday as well.’

  He hesitated, then spoke to his wife who’d just appeared. Turning back to me, he said, ‘Look, we have to go to my nephew’s birthday celebrations now, but my wife is going to make some coffee for you. Leave the cups on the wall. No one will steal them here.’

  His wife arrived with a tray of hot coffee and brownies and the pair climbed into their car, waving cheerfully as they drove off. I had not counted on this – this random act of kindness from strangers. My depression, I realised, had distorted my world. I had focused on the negatives throughout my youth and adulthood. I needed to rewrite my own narrative with all its light and shade. There was light, wasn’t there? Dappled and shadowy, warm and fiery in the fields where I played, and in my own home.

  And so, warmed by the coffee and the generosity of the jeep owner and his wife, we mounted our bikes again and headed on into the next village, along ‘Route 66’. We passed makeshift Burger King and McDonald’s signs; ‘Sunset Boulevard’ with its plastic palm trees; a plywood cut-out of Mount Rushmore (the heads of local politicians rather than the presidents of the United States ‘chiselled’ into the rock); and a miniature White House with its neoclassical columns. I was learning that journeys were never what you expected.

  4. Vaarwel Nederland, Hallo Deutschland

  The Netherlands looked as if it had been pressed out by a rolling pin, the flattened land a thin strip beneath the wheel. It was the sky that filled our vision – shifting firmament rather than solid land, more water than grass and clod. Our colour palette was dominated by blues and greys and bursts of luminous light, not the solid greens and yellows and browns of earth. And the traffic that filled our eyeline was not of car, van, lorry or even bicycle, but bird. Geese flew above us, an orderly dart, while waders and small, indiscernible brown birds flittered in and out of the grey-blue. I wished I had paid more attention to my father. Which of these birds were overwintering? Which were flying in from the Mediterranean, West or North Africa for the breeding season? Which were heading northwards to Iceland or Scandanavia? And which were merely stopping off to fuel up before continuing on the long journey? I was almost as ignorant about this traffic of the sky as my ancestors who believed migratory birds hibernated, disappearing into holes and crevices for the winter.

  When we headed out of Nijmegen, near the border with Germany, the next morning, the rise ahead took us by surprise. I expected the ascent to be short, but the road out of town continued to climb with no sign of a summit. On reaching Berg en Dal, I had to smile. The suburb of Nijmegen was hardly a berg – a mountain – but after the flatness of South Holland and Gelderland, I could hardly blame the Dutch for a little hyperbole.

  Then our first free-wheel down into Beek – a one-in-ten gradient. We flew past lycra-clad cyclists grinding upwards through the woodland in the opposite direction. There was something else that was different, something that had been missing the entire way across the Netherlands: the road that dropped to Beek was thick with undergrowth and trees.

  We plunged into inky darkness.

  And lost the sky.

  *

  At Beek, we stopped for coffee and cake, the border town lined with elegant hotels and cafés, clearly popular with the incline-starved Dutch. We sat in the window of a Victorian hotel full of dark wood and shiny surfaces, and savoured our last Dutch apple cake. The crumble of the pastry, the crunch of tart apple, the sticky sweetness of sultana and the delicate spice of cinnamon had sustained Jamie and I across the lowlands, along with dark, aromatic Dutch coffee.

  It wasn’t only the appeltaart I would miss about the Netherlands. There was the friendly, straight-talking Dutch; the tall, thin buildings, with their ‘out-of-proportion’ windows; the geometric line of dyke, canal and road; the manicured countryside; the scrubbed homes; the unexpected quirkiness and the sharp Dutch humour. They made me think of my mother’s family – the Poots. These Northern Irish farmers claimed their Dutch ancestors were granted land in County Down by William of Orange, who’d arrived in Ireland to protect it against Catholicism in the 1690 Battle of the Boyne, an ancient battle that Unionists still commemorate every year on 12 July. It was a romantic story that my Protestant relatives had latched on to, and I wondered if it was more wish than reality.

  Later, I discovered there were indeed a few hundred Poots living in the Netherlands, particularly around Rotterdam. I knew there had been a strong linen industry in County Down, and that the Dutch and British had always exchanged trade and skills – perhaps the Poots had come from the Netherlands to rural Ulster to sew flax and to build weaving machines and linen factories. My mother’s family had become farmers and business people, with a Protestant work ethic akin to the Dutch. It would explain why I felt at ease in this foreign land of waterway and polder. Everywhere I cycled in the Netherlands, I saw my grandfather and my aunts and uncles in determined jawlines and square faces; in sharp, shrewd eyes, straw-blond hair, weathered skin and high brows. There was an intent of gait and a toughness of demeanour that was familiar to me, perhaps imagined, perhaps not.

  I thought of the Dutchman with his American jeep, celebrating the liberation of the Netherlands. Then the hardship, wars and persecutions that forced individuals and families to travel hundreds and thousands of
miles for a better life or for survival: the Jewish Dutch escaping death to seek out a promised land; Asher making the return journey to Europe, to the Netherlands for a promise of something better; my Dutch ancestors seeking out a far-flung island of drumlin and bog where flax thrived. There were those other ancestors of mine who had crossed to Scotland from Ireland, only to return again during the Plantation (or colonisation) of Ulster in the seventeenth century. I was also of Ulster-Scots descent, with family names such as Wilson and McCullough. Who else was in my mix? Normans? Vikings? Saxons? Something even more exotic? I thought about the restlessness of the human race, criss-crossing the planet, undeterred by seas or walls or borders; the Syrian and North African refugees and migrants who were crossing the Mediterranean as I wobbled off across the Netherlands to Istanbul. Each day I saw fresh pictures of them on my newsfeed, sea-salted men and women and children rescued from boats that looked as flimsy as a child’s bath-time tug. Others had been less fortunate, but still they came. Many of them felt they had no choice: to stay was to die; in leaving they had a chance.

  Knowing the Rhine was now close at hand, I pushed down hard on the pedals towards the river marshes of the Düffel. These lowlands between Nijmegen and Kleve were once a primeval landscape of marsh and forest: a hostile environment of rubble, gravel banks and tidal pools caught in a tangle of willow, oak and elm, frequently washed over by the flood waters of the Rhine. There were remnants of this watery landscape on the edge of Beek – a world of ponds, wetlands and water channels. In the remaining preserved ponds, sand banks, ditches, reeds and grasses, overwintering geese rested and fed here, along with shore and meadow birds.

  It was an enchanting place that reminded me of trips with my father to the bird hides on Oxford Island at Lough Neagh, where we’d perched on thin wooden posts like the waders out on the water. The countryside around the lough was a place of enchantment too. In the school holidays, my father took me out in his green grocery van along narrow lanes, tooting the horn on every corner. I’d sit on the meal bags at the back. Sometimes, if I pleaded, he’d let me sit on the metal engine cover that rattled and vibrated beneath me, my father, next to me, smelling of Brylcreem, earthy potatoes, meal bags and the leather of his money bag. He dropped off boxes of groceries at farmsteads and cottages and left with armfuls of daffodils, crocuses and garden fruits for jam. Often, he’d pull the van over to listen and watch for birds.

  *

  ‘Kann ich Ihnen hilfen?’

  On the edge of the Düffel village of Zyfflich, a small sign unceremoniously told us we were in Germany. We’d stopped to check one of the Dutch numbered cycle maps that had somehow spilled beyond the Netherlands border.

  I turned to the villager who’d stopped to ask if we were okay. ‘Schon gut, danke.’

  I grinned, pleased to hear a language I could understand; happy that a German had stopped to help us moments into Germany. It boded well. I’d studied German at university and was fascinated by the country’s history and culture – even the darker elements of its recent past – and I was confident I’d feel more at home here, especially as I would be meeting old friends along the way. On a journey full of unknowns, it was comforting to be in a land that I was familiar with in some way.

  On the edge of Zyfflich we found a bench for our packed lunch. Looking across the village, the change in buildings and their surroundings was already marked by a more natural look, a managed scruffiness that was not quite as pristine as the scrubbed Dutch towns and villages. We followed country lanes across the Düffel to the village of Mehr.

  ‘More?’ I joked with Jamie. ‘Villagers of Mehr, don’t be greedy!’

  Jamie wrinkled up his nose at my silly joke. I wondered how long it would be before our relationship would fray, enduring each other’s company virtually twenty-four hours a day.

  Soon we reached the Oraniendeich, flying along the road on top of the dyke that was leading us ever closer to the Rhine. For a moment, the sun came out and warmed my skin. The air was fresh and gentle. I felt my pulse slow and the tightness in my chest loosen. A long-forgotten sense of peace stirred.

  I remembered the Friday I’d walked out of my teaching job, fully intending to go back on the Monday. I never returned. The politics of a broken education system and the cold head teacher had made me sick. The days and months that followed were black. I couldn’t sleep at night and couldn’t stay awake in the day. I had yearned to leave teaching, but now that I was gone I didn’t know what I was or what I could be. I went for long walks with Tom, but the Peak District countryside I loved did nothing for me. The birds’ songs seemed hollow, the dales and moorlands dull. Once, we travelled for six hours to Scotland and I never spoke the whole journey. It was as if I had been pulled down into a blanket of shadows and couldn’t find the way out. But I started to write a guidebook on the Peak District and my passion for my adopted home slowly returned. The depression receded, but would creep up on me when I felt I was getting better. How had I ended up in the same place as my father? And what if I never fully recovered – like him? I’d felt afraid. But here, on this German dyke, I now felt hope.

  We crossed the bridge into Emmerich. The birds were in full throttle on this early May day. The air was filled with the scent of damp leaf and fresh bud. I would follow my newfound and burgeoning hope along the Rhine through Germany to Schaffhausen in Switzerland. And beyond.

  GERMANY AND SWITZERLAND

  1. Storms, Bread and Bombs on the Lower Rhine

  There was a storm coming. The sky hung low, pressing us into our saddles. From Wesel, we crossed the bridge and followed the west bank of the Rhine. The wind snapped at our wheels and the sky began to leak slow, fat drops on our heads; a slow beat, then a sharp drumroll. Largo to vivace. The journey still felt strange and uncertain. It was like trying on a new outfit and working out if it fitted, if it felt comfortable. If it felt right.

  Hunger and rain drove us into a riverside hotel.

  ‘Ruhetag,’ the hotelier said without looking up from brushing the floor. I sighed, wondering why Germany still insisted on random weekday closures.

  Turning our bikes, we dropped down into the village of Winkeling below the Rhine path and found a bakery, warm light radiating from its window. Peering through the glass, I could see the counter stacked high with bread: brown and white, rye and wheat, seeded, herbed and spiced, loaves and rolls. So much choice heaped in front of us. Inside, the aroma and warmth were comforting.

  Bread – the essence of life and memory, woven in and through the passing years. My father supplied my mother with flour, cream of tartar, bicarbonate of soda, butter, eggs and sugar from the shop; the milkman brought buttermilk. I didn’t like my mother’s solid yellow-beige wheaten with its dry, nutty texture, but devoured her soda and potato bread. She’d sieve flour with salt and cream of tartar into a beige mixing bowl, decorated with a raised diamond pattern around its edge, the pattern broken by a chip on the lip. It’s strange the random detail those memories serve up. All my memories of my mother’s bread-making are in summer time, as if she’d never baked in winter; the soporific coo of the neighbour’s homing pigeons drifting through the open kitchen window.

  While my father was a dreamer, his head filled with birdsong, my mother baked and cooked and scrubbed and cleaned, bathing children and washing clothes. She had no time for nature. Her life was rooted in dusters and hoovers, the knitting needle and sewing kit.

  I rushed home from school to scavenge from her baking session – licking out the mixing bowl, stealing a handful of raisins. I sat on the stepped kitchen stool and waited patiently for the soda farls, watching her make a well in the middle of the flour and pour in the buttermilk, inhaling its sour smell as my mother folded it into the soft dough. She’d rub the flour off her face with the back of her hand – year after year, across the decades: the sixties, seventies and eighties. Until I left home. She sprinkled flour onto the old Formica board and kneaded the dough with long thin fingers, shaping the dough into a half-inc
h circle with the palms of her hands before cutting it into four farls, which she placed on the griddle until they started to blacken. When cool enough, she cut one open, smeared it with salted butter and handed it down to me.

  If I close my eyes, I can still hear that crunch of crust in my mouth and taste the melted butter on my tongue. I can still see her face – the landscape of her skin changing over time from smoothness to ridge and furrow.

  My sister started to tell my mother, in her last days, about my plans to cycle to Istanbul. I remember squeezing Audrey’s hand in warning, but my quite deaf mother did not catch what she’d said anyway. I was afraid my mother wouldn’t approve, worried she would fret. No good wife left their husband for over three months. No good mother abandoned one of their sons. And I didn’t bake bread.

  Jamie grinned beside me at the counter of the German bakery and mouthed, ‘Croissants.’ We’d cycled for nearly an hour from Wesel on empty bellies and were now hungry, cold and damp. I mouthed back, ‘Coffee.’ He grinned again and gave me a thumbs up. He and I were doing okay together; I didn’t bake bread, but I made sure our bellies were full and we had somewhere to sleep.

  Jamie’s job was to read the maps. Mostly we rode in silence, one behind the other. Now and again, Jamie would come to a sudden stop to have a quick look at our Rhine guidebook before taking off again without a word. My earlier fears of getting lost had been needless: Jamie seemed to have an innate ability to read maps. He was able to internalise a series of complicated manoeuvres – numerous rights and lefts over several miles – before checking again. His memory was impressive. (I should’ve realised – even as a two-year-old, Jamie could find his way through the complicated maze of Chatsworth House, a nearby stately home, never once failing to take a correct left or right.) When not reading the map, or lost in some inner world, Jamie would listen to podcasts. Sometimes, when he’d finished, he’d pull out his earbuds and tease me – sitting bolt upright on his touring bike to mimic me on Gertrude.