Turtle Diary

by Russell Hoban

  Sometimes I think it must help to have a conviction in one’s birthplace, to feel a significance in having been born in one place rather than another. Perhaps if more of my childhood had been spent in Polperro I’d feel stronger about it. My father retired there to paint, met my mother in the teashop where she worked, married her and died two years later. I was one year old when Mother and I came to London and I still can’t see the point of my having been born in Polperro. I’ve never been back there.

  For some time now on bad days I’ve been falling back on a news item I read last month. An important witness in the current American government scandal was said to be desperately afraid of going to prison because he’s so good-looking that all the homosexuals will be after him. I have many problems but not that one.

  16

  Neaera H.

  The one beach pebble I have from my childhood is the one I call my Caister two-stone. It’s an amalgam of two different kinds of material, half grey and half brown.

  My father took me to the Caister Lifeboat Station once. There was no boathouse like the one that’s there now, the boat, the Charles Burton, was on skeets on the sand. It had saved seven lives that year. One of the vessels the Caister men had helped was the Corn Rig of Buckie. ‘Rendered assistance’ was the expression used. ‘We rendered assistance to the Corn Rig of Buckie,’ said the brown-faced man my father was talking to. It had a gallant sound like a line in a narrative poem. My father said to me afterwards that Caister men never turn back. ‘They may die, they may drown, but they never turn back,’ he said wonderingly and shook his head. His words and the words of the other man have stayed together in my mind:

  We rendered assistance to the Corn Rig of Buckie,

  We may die, we may drown, but we never turn back.

  As if to reprove the Caister men for their obstinate courage the Royal National Lifeboat Institution took away their boat and shut down the station several years ago, economizing the service. The Caister men of course got themselves another boat and carry on unofficially. The stone is on my desk and I handle it often.

  This preoccupation with the turtles, this project that insists on forming itself in my mind, wants to be seen in its proper light. I have got to try to understand it a little better. Not perhaps entirely, I’m not given to examining too closely the actions that really matter. I can deliberate long over a dinner-party invitation, considering carefully every aspect of the occasion and what it will cost me in time and equilibrium but when the venture is crucial I simply trust to luck and plunge into the dark. And even now at the age of forty-three I still can’t say whether I’ve been lucky or unlucky. Sometimes it looks one way and sometimes the other.

  On reflection I really don’t want to understand it better. It may be silly and wrong and useless, it may be anything at all but it seems to be a thing that I have to do before I can do whatever comes after it. That it seems to involve other people is inevitable, everything does in one way or another.

  I went to the bookshop. The man and I said hello to each other and I went to the Natural History section where I turned the pages of books without looking at them. My heart was pounding somewhat and I found myself mentally rehearsing what I would say. I always do that, I can’t help it. Even when I go to the Post Office I say in my mind before I reach the window, ‘Twenty stamps at 3p, please.’ Then I say it aloud at the window. ‘I wonder if you too are thinking about the turtles?’ I would say. Or ‘Perhaps we had better discuss the turtles?’ I cursed him for not being man enough to speak up and broach the subject when it loomed so large and visible between us.

  I became aware that he was standing near me emanating silence and in my mind I cursed him again. ‘The turtles …’ I blurted out.

  ‘The turtles …’ he mumbled at the same time. We both laughed.

  ‘It’s almost lunch-time,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we could talk about it then. Can you wait a few minutes?’

  I nodded and went to the Poetry section, opened A. E. Housman at random and read:

  The world is round, so travellers tell,

  And straight though reach the track,

  Trudge on, trudge on, ‘twill all be well,

  The way will guide one back.

  But ere the circle homeward hies

  Far, far must it remove:

  White in the moon the long road lies

  That leads me from my love.

  It was James Haylett of Caister who first said that Caister men never turn back. He was a lifeboatman for fifty-nine years, and at the age of seventy-eight he went into the surf and pulled out his son-in-law and one of his grandsons from under the lifeboat Beauchamp the night it capsized in November, 1901. At the inquiry it was suggested that the Beauchamp, which had gone to the rescue of a Lowestoft fishing-smack on the Barber Sands, might have turned back because of the force of the gale and the heavy seas. That was when James Haylett said, ‘Caister men never turn back.’ Nine of the lifeboat crew were lost including two sons and a grandson of James Haylett. The fishing-smack had got herself off the sands, anchored safely in deep water, and knew nothing of the disaster until later. Rescuers and those to be rescued don’t always come back together.

  Lunch-time came. We went to a little place near by where the take-away queue waited partly in the street and partly at the counter. There were no empty booths so we shared one with two fresh-faced young executives eating eggs and sausages and grease.

  ‘The brief is really quite clear,’ said the one next to me.

  ‘We’ve put in the think time,’ said the one next to the bookshop man. ‘We’re ready to move on it.’

  ‘And we’d jolly well better do it soon,’ said mine. ‘Those chaps in the City can’t be kept dangling indefinitely. Once we’ve separated the sheep from the goats we’ve got to make our bid.’

  ‘Precisely what I said in my report,’ said the other as he wiped up some grease with a bit of Mother’s Pride sliced bread. ‘When they get back from Stuttgart I want to see some action.’

  Their faces were pink, their eyes were clear and bright, their shirts and ties what the adverts call coordinated I believe. Mine had dirty fingernails and his handkerchief was tucked into his jacket sleeve. The other had clean fingernails. Their voices were loud, they were eager to impart the dash and colour of their lives to the drabness about them.

  I had a salad. If I were to say that today’s tomatoes are an index of the decline of Western man I should be thought a crank but nations do not, I think, ascend on such tomatoes. The bookshop man had fried eggs with sausages, chips, grease and Mother’s Pride sliced bread and butter. He put ketchup on the chips. No wonder he looks hopeless I thought.

  ‘I always bring a sandwich for lunch,’ he said. ‘But I can have it for tea.’

  ‘If the bananas aren’t unloaded soon they’ll spoil,’ I said. I felt like talking like a spy.

  ‘I’m waiting to hear from our friend at the docks,’ said the bookshop man, rising in my estimation. ‘I can’t arrange the haulage until he gives me a date.’

  The two young executives raised their eyebrows at each other.

  ‘Have you booked them right the way through?’ I said. The waitress reached across us with sweets for the executives. Mine had trifle, the other fruit salad with cream.

  ‘Only tentatively,’ said the bookshop man. ‘Brighton’s close.’

  ‘I was thinking of Polperro,’ I said.

  The bookshop man went very red in the face. ‘Polperro!’ he said. ‘Why in God’s name Polperro?’

  I indicated the two executives with my eyes and busied myself with my salad. They were both having white coffee with a lot of sugar. Life mayn’t always be that sweet for you I thought.

  There was a long silence during which the executives smoked a kingsize filter-tip cigarette and a little thin cheap cigar without asking me if I minded. The bookshop man took something from his pocket and began to play with it. It was a round beach pebble, a grey one.

  ‘Where’s it from?’ I said. />
  ‘Antibes,’ he said. ‘I haven’t smoked all morning.’

  The executives excused themselves. We had coffee, no sweets. On the wall two booths away from us was a circular blue fluorescent tube in a rectangular wire cage. It was probably some kind of air purifier but it looked like a Tantric moon or some other contemplation object. I contemplated it. The bookshop man looked into his coffee as if viewing the abyss.

  ‘Did I say anything wrong?’ I said. ‘About Polperro?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘It just took me by surprise. Why Polperro?’

  ‘If I said that Polperro and the turtles together add up to something, would that mean anything to you?’ I said.

  He looked at me strangely. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  On the way out I went over to the Tantric moon and read the nameplate on it. INSECT-O-CUTOR, it said.

  ‘I’ll ring you up when I hear from George Fairbairn,’ said the bookshop man.

  I gave him my name and telephone number.

  ‘Neaera,’ he read. ‘Eldest daughter?’

  I nodded.

  ‘My name’s William G.,’ he said.

  We shook hands and parted. Going home on the tube I was astonished at the number of paint- and ink-stains on the shirt I was wearing.

  17

  William G.

  Neaera H. The penny didn’t drop until a few minutes after we’d parted, then I remembered the Gillian Vole books, Delia Swallow, Geoffrey Mouse and all the others I used to read to the girls. Delia Swallow’s Housewarming was Cyndie’s favourite for a long time, she never tired of it. This must be the same Neaera H., she looked too much like a writer-illustrator not to be one.

  Back at the shop I went to Picture Books in the Juvenile section and looked at a copy of Delia Swallow’s Housewarming. No photograph or biographical details on the back flap. All it said was that Delia Swallow, though the stories were written for children, had long been a favourite with readers of all ages, as had Gillian Vole etc. I looked at the first page:

  ‘Just any eaves won’t do,’ said Delia Swallow to her husband John when they were looking for a nest.

  ‘I’d like eaves on the sunny side and with a view.’

  ‘Field or forest?’ said John.

  ‘Field with forest at the edge I think,’ said Delia.

  ‘Riverside or hill?’ said John.

  ‘Riverside with a hill behind,’ said Delia.

  ‘Right,’ said John, and went to sleep.

  He always kipped after lunch.

  Ariadne and Cyndie always liked it that John Swallow kipped after lunch. In the evenings he usually dropped in for a pint or two and a game of darts at the Birds of a Feather, after which:

  He sometimes flew a little wobbly going home.

  Strange. While I was married to Dora and living in Hampstead and working at the agency Neaera H. was writing those books. Now here we are, both of us alone and thinking turtle thoughts. At least I assume she’s alone. She looks as if she’s always been alone. Of course I’m seeing her out of alone eyes, I could well be wrong.

  The turtles share a tank at the Zoo. I share a bath at Mrs Inchcliff’s. Hairy Mr Sandor. I taped a little sign to the bathroom wall:

  PLEASE CLEAN BATH AFTER USING

  Not that it’ll do much good. It’s not too bad really, he only baths a couple of times a week. Miss Neap baths daily and when she’s been before me the bathroom smells very blonde and militantly fragrant, as if mortality could be kept at bay by lavender in the same way that garlic repels vampires. If Dracula and Miss Neap were to have a go I think he’d be the one to come away with teeth marks in his throat.

  When I had a bathroom of my own. I think about that sometimes. When I was an account executive. When I owned a house. When my daughters sat on my lap and I read to them. When they collected pebbles with me on the beach. Ariadne’s twenty now, Cyndie’s eighteen. I haven’t seen them for three years. I don’t know where they are.

  The past isn’t connected to the future any more. When I lived with Dora and the girls the time I lived in, the time of me was still the same piece of time that had unrolled like a forward road under my feet from the day of my birth. That road and all the scenes along it belonged to me, my mind moved freely up and down it. Walking on it I was still connected to my youth and strength, the time of me was of one piece with that time. Not now. I can’t walk on my own time past. It doesn’t belong to me any more.

  There’s no road here. Every step away from Dora and the girls leads only to old age and death whatever I do. No one I sleep with now has known me young with long long time and all the world before me. Rubbish. I remember how it was lying beside Dora in the night. O God, I used to think, this is it and this is all there is and nothing up ahead but death. The girls will grow up and move out and we’ll be left alone together. I remember that very well. It’s the thisness and thisonlyness of it that drives middle-aged men crazy.

  Why turtles for God’s sake? Helping them find what they’re looking for won’t bloody help me. And now I’m lumbered with it. I’ll have to find out what it costs to hire a van. I wonder if the two of us can get the turtles on to the trolley. She doesn’t look that strong. We’ll need a board or something for a ramp. Maybe I should build crates for them, they’d be easier to handle that way. I hate details. And now it’s got to be Polperro just to make life more difficult. I know there’ll be some kind of physical problem like having to climb a million steps or lower ourselves by ropes or the tide will be out and we’ll have to drag the turtles across a mile of mud in the dark. What on earth can Polperro mean to her?

  I saw a film years ago, The Swimmer, with Burt Lancaster. In it he was an American advertising man whose mind had slipped out of the present. He thought he still had a wife and children and a house but it was all gone. The film began with a golden late-summer afternoon. He turned up at the swimming pool of some friends who hadn’t seen him for a long time. They looked at him strangely, he wasn’t part of their present time any more. While he was there it occurred to him that there were so many swimming pools in that part of Connecticut that he could almost swim all the way home. So he went from pool to pool, public and private, swimming across Fairfield County meeting people from different bits of his life whilst swimming home as he thought. And wherever he went people became angry and disturbed, he didn’t belong in their present time, they didn’t want him in it. At the end of the film he was huddled in the doorway of the empty locked house that had been his while rain came down and he heard the ball going back and forth on the empty tennis court and the voices of his daughters who were gone. Dora and I saw the film together.

  No swimming pools for me. Just a bath that I have to clean Mr Sandor’s pubic hair out of while Miss Neap’s lavender scent marches up and down the walls like a skeleton in armour. The water is not relaxing. Or indeed it may be relaxing, may be totally relaxed but I’m not. I don’t want to be naked with anybody now, especially myself.

  Haven’t smoked for three days. Busy night and day not smoking. Already I can climb stairs better but that’s not much of a life. With smoking one has a life while dying. How did the Greeks ever run a whole culture without it? Maybe that’s why there was so much homosexuality. The turtles are no substitute for smoking. I’m tired of playing with pebbles and sucking wine gums. Breathing straight air seems an empty exercise. I may kill somebody if I don’t smoke. Mr Sandor’s life is hanging by a thread if he only knew it.

  Shamans in a state of ecstasy fly, travel long distances or think they do, say they do. When 1 was between twelve and thirteen I was lying in bed one night not asleep, not awake, and all at once I was looking down at myself from the ceiling. It wasn’t a dream, I don’t know what it was. I don’t know anything about ecstasy. It happened another time that year too. I was standing by the window looking at myself lying in bed. Twice in my life I’ve been out of myself in that way. I don’t think I’ve been into myself yet. In myself like a prisoner. But not into my self.

  Ocean. When I thi
nk that word I want to be immersed in it and at the same time contain it all. Great green deeps of ocean. A medium of motion and being. And of course the sharks. Walking on the ground is not comparable to that underwater flying, green water touching every part.

  I walk a lot at night now, sit on benches in squares feeling the dark on my face, looking at the street lamps. Most of the other people on the street are young. I don’t want to sit in my room. I don’t want to do anything particularly.

  Actually we’re all swimmers, we’ve all come from the ocean. Some of us are trying to find it again.

  Eliade says in his book on shamanism:

  In the beginning, that is, in mythical times, man lived at peace with the animals and understood their speech. It was not until after a primordial catastrophe, comparable to the ‘Fall’ of Biblical tradition, that man became what he is today – mortal, sexed, obliged to work to feed himself, and at enmity with the animals. While preparing for his ecstasy and during it, the shaman abolishes the present human condition and, for the time being, recovers the situation as it was in the beginning. Friendship with animals, knowledge of their language, transformation into an animal are so many signs that the shaman has re-established the ‘paradisal’ situation lost at the dawn of time.

  That’s the crux of it: abolishing the present human condition. Shamans wear bird costumes and they fly. Somehow they experience flying. They’re gone and they come back with answers. Could I abolish the human condition? Could I swim, experience swimming, finding, navigating, fearlessness, unlostness? Could I come back with an answer? The unlostness itself would be the answer, I shouldn’t need to come back.