The Secret History of Here

by Alistair Moffat

  21 September

  Ten thousand September suns have shone in all their splendour on the people of this place. When the hunter-gatherers by the lochside shivered in the morning mist, blowing the embers of their fire into flame, they waited for its rays to rise over the trees of the Wildwood. High in the western hills, the legionaries on the walls of Oakwood Fort saw the sun’s rim creep over the far horizon before it dipped behind Eildon Hill North and the depot below it. Travellers on the Long Track watched it rise and dapple through the autumn leaves. The sun glinted off the armour of squadrons of knights on their destriers as they rode off with Edward I to war with the rebel Scots. It has lit our history and, on mornings like these, its splendour seems eternal.

  22 September

  Yesterday was a day for the generations. One of my great fears is that having made this place come alive out of ruins – rebuilt the farmhouse, fenced the fields and made them productive – it will be broken up and sold when we die. My daughters have stayed in the cities, working hard, and while my son lives here with his family, his interests may lie elsewhere. But yesterday my perceptions shifted, at first a little and then more radically.

  With her bombproof, endlessly patient little pony, Grace went for a riding lesson at the local equestrian centre. It was the first time she had ridden in company and at three years old she was the youngest of the group of six children. With the pony led by her grannie and shadowed by her father (I have encouraged Grace to call him her groom), she blossomed, her face a mixture of concentration and pleasure, a country child at home with horses in the hills and with others like her.

  At the side of the arena, I stood with one of the dads. A plumber to trade, he had taken a couple of hours off to bring his daughter for a lesson. We talked of horses, rugby and not pushing children too hard to follow one’s own interests, or what we thought might be good for them. Something to be firmly borne in mind. Grace’s enthusiasms will wax and wane. She is only three. In the Borders many children, from all backgrounds and both genders, learn to ride. A powerful incentive is the annual common ridings that are held in each of the towns, hugely popular summer festivals dominated by mounted cavalcades. Many children take part and most run gymkhanas.

  I took what the young plumber said to heart. It is indeed important not to push, much better to encourage. And it is an outrageous stretch at the beginning of a life that could turn in any direction, but I hope that, as a child of this place, Grace comes to love it and, in her turn, make it her home. Horses are a central part of that and the wider community. We shall see, and I shall be told to keep quiet.

  23 September

  Piou-piou came the distinctive call of the buzzards who nest in the Deer Park. A young one, its wingspread no wider than a large crow’s, flew high over the wrack of the Top Wood, wheeling, its head tilted, searching the ground for prey. To keep the multiplying rabbits in the cover and safety of the woods rather than coming out into the open to graze the margins of the tracks and the fields, we need more buzzards to be out hunting. But the crows mob them, especially the young ones, and drive them off. Without doubt, there is plenty of food for both species, but the crows’ aggression seems a primal atavism, a need to dominate, little to do with ecological balance. The Empire of the Corvids seems to be expanding. As we sat out in yesterday evening’s late sunshine, the stillness was shattered by the raucous cackle of a dense flock of crows wheeling over the stables.

  On the surface of the Haining Loch, I saw a strange disturbance, something I could not at first make sense of. A bird, perhaps a duck – I was too far away to be sure – was flapping its wings frantically but not lifting into the air. Instead it was moving very quickly in a straight line across the waters of the loch, an arrow-shaped wake fanning out behind it. And then, suddenly the bird disappeared.

  It was then that I understood this inexplicable drama. An ancient, prehistoric predator swims in the Haining Loch. In ferrous, cloudy water where few other species can survive, huge pike thrive, sometimes growing to three or four feet long. One of these monsters had snapped its crocodile jaws on the feet of a swimming duck and dragged it through the water. After a desperate struggle to escape, the frantic bird had been pulled down into the darkness of the loch and devoured.

  Sometimes the pike themselves became prey. In 1811, a young French naval officer was taken prisoner during the Napoleonic Wars and eventually found himself and other POWs sent to Selkirk, presumably because it lay so far inland. Adelbert Doisy kept an entertaining diary:

  Some of us were passionately fond of fishing and excelled in it; the Ettrick and Tweed abounded with trout and eels of excellent quality; a lake in the neighbourhood an abundance of very delicate pike. No one ever thought of depriving us of this agreeable pastime which proved a valuable asset for us in the culinary sphere.

  24 September

  In front of me in the queue at Selkirk’s post office was a man who had suffered a stroke, badly impairing his speech, frustrating him until he was red in the face. Behind the counter, the young postmistress’ patience seemed endless as she slowly extracted a sense of his problem (something to do with his rent book, nothing to do with the post office, I would have thought) and helped him solve it. The long exchange concluded with smiles and vigorous nodding instead of verbal thanks from the much-relieved man.

  That episode was warming, moving. Perhaps because some of them knew this poor man and his struggles, no one in the long queue behind grew restive or complained. When I reached the counter, I made a comment to the postmistress about doing social work. ‘Every day,’ she smiled. Small communities have their curtain-twitching, knowing-everybody’s-business drawbacks, but their support for the weak, infirm and even eccentric is magnificent and has long been so.

  Between the ages of ten and fifteen, I had a job as a milk boy with the Co-op. Six mornings a week, I woke at 5.30 a.m. to be down at the depot by 6 a.m. Full bottles (blue for creamy and gold for more creamy – no one had ever heard of skimmed milk) were plonked on doorsteps and empties carried away to be washed and refilled for the following day.

  On Saturday mornings I went with the milkman, Tommy Pontin, on the country round. In a four-to five-mile radius of Kelso, we delivered to villages and farms that did not keep cows. Many of our customers were old people and very, very few had cars. And so they gave their pension books and prescriptions to Tommy, who then went to the post office and the chemist in town, and the following Monday morning he handed over the cash and the medicine. Sometimes he would shop for specific items. I remember a set of fire-dogs from the ironmongers being stowed in the back of the milk float.

  All of this was done without comment or, needless to say, any payment. Sometimes Tommy would be given jars of jam or combs of honey and once a huge leg of pork (which he divided amongst his neighbours since no one had a fridge) when a pig had been killed. It was a daily exchange of kindnesses, of inter-locking, unspoken obligation, someone who could do things for those who would have found it very difficult. Having lived to a great age, Tommy died two years ago and, not knowing, I missed his funeral. I was vexed, but apparently many people came.

  Our milk float was electric, silently gliding through the sleeping streets, and all of the milk was delivered in recyclable glass bottles. We were ahead of our time, Tommy and I.

  25 September

  Where the crowns of the birches and geans by the Bottom Track reach over almost to make a canopy, there was a rich caramel smell. After overnight rain, the turning leaves were releasing the odour of autumn; a melancholy moment but inevitable. Further down the Long Track, rotting wood had brought forth an eccentricity. A strainer post had been hollowed out by the penetrating damp of scores of winters and its core had disintegrated so much that a thistle had been able to root, a proud Scottish thistle with purple flower heads lorded it above the rest.

  27 September

  Walter’s eye for the shape of the land and what lies beneath the grass is unerring. Very assiduous in plotting his find-spots, Ro
ry downloaded an aerial photograph of the old, sunken track I walked and the fields around it to the north of our farm, what is now Murison Hill. The Anglo-Saxon brooch fragment and the arrowhead were found close to a rectilinear feature Walter pointed to when we met. At first it looked like the characteristic playing card shape of a Roman camp, but absolutely no Roman finds had come up. Around camps there are always shards of pottery, usually coins and other material that had been lost, broken or discarded by a large force of soldiers. The Romans tended to make a mess and then leave, but there was nothing.

  Walter is convinced that he has spotted the outline of an enclosed Anglian village, the precursor to the town of Selkirk. It seems to have been protected by a palisaded bank and a ditch, and had a corral for overnighting animals attached to it on the south-west side. This analysis makes every sort of sense. In the late sixth and seventh centuries, the Anglian kingdom based at Bamburgh expanded rapidly and dramatically to include the Tweed Valley. Their charismatic warrior-king Aethelfrith swept aside opposition, winning a pivotal battle at Degsastan in 603, now marked on maps as Addinston at the head of the Leader Valley, a tributary of the Tweed. Angles began to settle in a hostile community of native Old Welsh speakers, many of whom they had dispossessed. These aggressive incomers would have had to defend their gains, especially as far west as the hill country around Selkirk. The palisaded village sits on a spectacular site, looking a long way up the Ettrick and Yarrow Valleys, the direction from which trouble would come.

  It seems that close to the edge of our farm more history was being made. Walter and Rory have found an outpost, a place from where cultural and linguistic change radiated.

  28 September

  Tinted orange by falling leaves, the puddles on the tracks are vivid splashes of colour on a grey, wet morning. Grey-bearded and red-faced, a middle-aged man has taken to running up and down the Long Track. When he reaches Windy Gates, he simply turns around and runs its length again. What a terrible way to start the day.

  29 September

  Over the western hills thunderheads were piling up, vast billowing pillows of cumulonimbus clouds darkening and threatening. Directly overhead, the sky was a Mediterranean blue, and there being no wind to speak of, it was difficult to tell which way the storm gathering in the west would break. Then, in a moment, something unique appeared. Over the lee side of the hills, a straight rainbow glowed. The classic colour spectrum was not curved but instead reached vertically for the border between the blue sky and the angry thunderheads. And then it came on to rain heavily.

  But the Met Office forecast was optimistic. By 9 a.m. the rain would clear and the sun would shine. Fine. That was a great relief since my annual winter logging crew had assembled, lumberjacks and lumberjills, my son and daughter and son-in-law. The immense pile of logged beech from the Deer Park needed to be split and brought into the Wood Barn to dry off. Having run long leads from an outside point, the electric log-splitter (made in Canada, where they know about these things) was set up. Essentially a hydraulic ram that drives logs to a V-shaped wedge, it can ping them off like bullets if they are very dry. Two of the crew worked that, another stacked and I used the more traditional tool. My axe was made in Sweden (where they also know about these things), and its heavy head can be easily levered out if it does not go through on the first swing. By the end of the sunny and sweaty morning, we had split about three tons of beech and I reckon we still have about seven left. I will chop them serially through the winter.

  My body calendar is moving from one season to the next. About this time each year I get fatter, thicker around the middle, needing to buckle my belt one hole down. Nevertheless I still enjoyed the bacon rolls with my fellow lumberjacks and jills. The annual pattern seems to have been established to compensate for the harder physical work of the winter, wading through the mud, the wet and worse. After the year turns, I gradually shed the flab and by the time spring comes around my belt is tightened again. This up-and-down pattern used to irritate and worry me, but now I realise it is just another means of reckoning time.

  October

  4 October

  On a dripping, damp morning the light was slow to penetrate the grey gloom. Although the temperature was nowhere near freezing, I lit the new woodburning stove for the flicker of its cheering flames. Scandinavian in design, it is a matt-black cylinder with three large glass windows so that the fire can be enjoyed from three sides. The young man who installed it schooled us in a different method of lighting the log fire. Instead of piling kindling on top of newspaper and a smelly paraffin firelighter, two logs (better if they are split logs) are placed on the bed of the firebox. Then two firelighters made from waxed shavings are placed between them and the kindling laid on top of them. The exact opposite of the usual arrangement. When the kindling is ablaze, it then falls down and fires the logs. Despite the scepticism of someone who has been lighting fires for forty years, this Scandinavian method works. Having invented the modern versions, I suspect the Swedes, Danes, Norwegians and Finns know more than we do about wood-burning stoves.

  All did not begin well. For some reason, the firebox at first filled with smoke that stained the glass badly and lit poorly. The other unexpected issue is that this stove seems picky in what it will burn. Only split logs that have been seasoned undercover for a year. The old one burned anything, eventually. However, the fuel consumption of the Scandistove is much less. They recommend only one log at a time and last night it put out a prodigious amount of heat. Which is all that matters.

  5 October

  A gold dawn disappeared during my walk with Maidie, grey clouds from the west covering all that promise. I have seen the sunrise over Lindisfarne and I consoled myself with the memory of the rim of the fiery disc peeping over the flat horizon of the North Sea to light Cuthbert’s island-cathedral. In my mind, I heard the timeless toll of the bell at St Mary’s Parish Church summoning the faithful to morning communion to begin the day by taking the hand of God.

  6 October

  In the pool of light cast by my Anglepoise lamp, defended by a rampart of reference books, my world shrinks to pen and page. Each morning, after chores and a walk with Maidie, I sit down at my desk to write. It is not set by a window with a long, distracting view but in the midst of tables piled high with the debris of research for books published over the last twenty years. The great novelist Hilary Mantel once told me that her winning the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction allowed her to buy a small flat on the coast of the English Channel and a room with a sea view where she could sit down to write. Perhaps it is different for novelists. They have to conjure worlds out of the air. I need the comfort of books around me so that I can check facts, dates, make connections, and somehow be encouraged by the presence of millions of words.

  This morning my pool of yellow light is an oasis in a grey, rainswept landscape. It has been raining heavily for about thirty-six hours and our drainage is struggling to cope with the volume of water. I have already cleared one cross-drain on the Bottom Track and, since the forecast predicts no let-up, there will be more to do. But I am glad that we re-roofed most of the looseboxes last winter with zinc sheets. Unlike the green onduline, they do not look picturesque but they keep our horses dry.

  Out with a reluctant Maidie – even in her wee coatie, she dislikes the rain and carefully skirts puddles and wet long grass – I saw two smart sheep sheltering by the hedge. Head-first under the leaves, they seemed content with the thick fleece of their backs and backsides being exposed to the worst of the weather. The rest of the flock was nibbling eagerly at the lush grass, stoking their systems with calories. My neighbour’s drainage work during the summer has rewarded him and there are no wide ponds disfiguring the Tile Field.

  7 October

  Pringle Home Douglas could have been both a model for Horatio Hornblower and one of J. B. Priestley’s gritty northern industrialists. He joined the Royal Navy in 1794 just as Europe was being remade, when the ferment of the French Revolution was m
orphing into the French Empire under the brilliant leadership of Napoleon Bonaparte. Wounded at the fierce battle of Algeciras, fought for control of the Straits of Gibraltar, Midshipman Home Douglas was promoted to Lieutenant on the night of the action as cannon fire flew around the deck of his ship. A month later, off Minorca, his brig of sixteen guns beat off a Spanish frigate with twenty-two guns. By the time Waterloo settled the Napoleonic Wars in 1814, Pringle Home Douglas had been promoted to Commander.

  Retiring on his lifetime pension of half-pay, he rode up the Long Track to visit John Pringle at the Haining, his relative by marriage. Commander Home Douglas had a business proposition in mind. He wanted to build a factory two hundred yards from our farmhouse. His plan was simple, well thought out and not only would it make him wealthy, it would create many jobs.

  The Tile Field would get its name from Home Douglas’s enterprise. Having been drained, the bed of the old loch was found to have near-bottomless deposits of high quality clay. When Walter Elliot fenced the grass parks on either side of the Long Track in the 1960s, he took a twelve-foot rail and pushed it into the clay. Not only did it almost disappear, Walter could not pull it back up. It must still be there.