by Paul Burman
Fly, birdie, fly.
Morning glory. I follow the rhythm of Elin’s breathing, and then slide out of bed, drag on some clothes and step into the day.
It’s Sunday morning and, except for the newsagent and milkman, the world’s deserted. It’s too early for church bells to be tugged awake, thank God, and the chapel doors remain bible-bolted against the carnal delights of Saturday night. In Main Street, I step over a limp condom, discarded in the gutter, pass empty beer cans and greasy fish and chip wrappings that litter shop porches and municipal flower beds, and imagine living some place with fewer people, fewer tensions, a slower pace.
Our Sunday morning ritual involves buying a newspaper and returning to bed for breakfast, to browse or read and, sometimes, to play a while, but today’s different. Pausing to sit on the low wall that surrounds the locked public gardens, I flick through the headlines: UDA CLAIMS BELFAST KILLINGS, THATCHER CONDEMNS WET TORIES, UNIONS VOW TO FIGHT CAR PLANT CLOSURE, NUCLEAR FAIL-SAFE FAILS SAFETY TEST, KIKI THE PANDA SEEKS MATE. It’s all too depressing and too familiar, so I head back to our flat above the toyshop.
Pausing at the bedroom door, a floorboard yawns and Elin stirs.
“What time is it?” she drawls, eyes screwed tight.
I lean against the door jamb. “Seven o’clock, just gone.”
“It’s too early. Where’ve you been?”
“For a walk. To get the newspaper.”
“Already?”
“There’s hardly anyone about. It’s very peaceful.”
Elin turns and pulls the pillow against her eyes. “The sane ones are still in bed.”
“It’s a beautiful morning.”
“Come back to bed, Tom. I don’t want to wake up yet.”
Sunlight sets the whole room aglow, but, in discovering a gap between the curtains, it paints a slice of the bed and the wall above with a sharper brilliance. It illuminates the corn dolly I’ve hung there – above where I sleep – and, above where Elin sleeps, the framed icon of a Madonna and child that she bought in Greece a couple of years before meeting me. She knows the history of the Whitby corn dolly and, perhaps, why I keep it, but seems content to let it hang there.
The polished timber of the bed-head is a honey russet in this light, although the ribbon of dust along the topmost edge is obvious too, and Elin’s hair is blonder and finer than I know it to be.
Two hours later, she stands at an open window breathing the morning in. “It’s now or never, I think. What d’ya reckon?”
“It’s perfect. Idyllic.”
It’s twelve months since we completed our degrees and left London behind, and we’ve both got jobs. Our one-bedroom flat in the Wiltshire market town of Great Shentonbury is small and often makes us impatient to be outside, but is paradise compared to any bedsit we’d pay three times the rent for in the capital. We’ve decked the place with the greenery of pot plants, seedlings and cuttings: spider plants, poinsettias, geraniums, herbs of every description, African violets, primroses, succulents, the first shoots from several Norway spruce seeds – anything that’ll grow. They stand in saucers, margarine containers, old chamber pots we’ve bought from jumble sales, along the window ledges, on the toilet cistern, on book shelves, on the fridge – anywhere there’s space and light. But we need space and light too, so for several weeks we’ve talked about a three-day walk along the ancient Ridgeway.
It’s a day purring with heat, the intermittent silence of crickets, the three-dimensional dancing of dragonflies. We’ll walk about eighteen miles all told, setting a pace that finds its rhythm in the lazy sighing of the grasses.
“Burderop Down,” announces Elin, waving her left hand vaguely at the countryside about us, as if she’s a tour guide. “There’s a field system over there, according to the map. Doesn’t say whether it’s Middle Age, Iron Age, or what. And then, beyond, there’s Smeathe’s Ridge and another track leading to Ogbourne St George. We could’ve started from there, I suppose.”
“I like this well enough.”
“Me too. The downs are riddled with tracks.”
It takes an hour or so to reach Barbary Castle and, after walking the embankments of this Iron Age fort, we unplug a flask of water and drink to the day. If it’s possible to find it anywhere in modern Britain, with the soul-destroying stink of its motorways and ring-roads and housing estates and nuclear reactors, and to claim any sense of aboriginality, here’s the pulse of that primordial past and here’s the link. Only in places like this can we recognise our connection with a past rooted in the land, the elements, the seasons: birth, life, death, decay, birth. The roots are stretched thin, but this is where they’re tapped into; this and the occasional discovery of a point or scraper at the bottom of your garden or a builder’s trench.
The flask keeps the water cold.
“Cheers,” I say.
“Here’s to us,” and she holds the flask up and laughs.
We follow the track above Uffcott Down until reaching the White Horse figure carved across Hackpen Hill. But it’s early evening by the time we stroke the raw cut of chalk and wipe our hands on the grass, so we backtrack a few hundred yards and pitch our tent in the lee of a spinney.
After eating and sitting a while, we zip our sleeping bags together and stare at the night through the insect gauze of the tent. A crescent moon cuts an arc across the sky and, in the middle distance, a vixen’s scream rips a small hole in the stillness; it’s more the sound of an animal being torn apart than a mating call. Elin unzips the tent and sits our enamel mugs outside: the clink of metal on metal, the drone of a car a mile or two distant, the whine of a trapped insect. It’s enough to wallow in the stillness of night, soaking it up. And we’re silent so long I think she’s fallen asleep, and begin moving my arm from across her, but she sighs at that.
“You’re awake,” I say.
“Mmm.”
“What are you thinking about? A penny for your thoughts.”
“Kids.” And she turns to face me. “About having a family, being parents – you know.”
I say nothing.
“It’s not something I want to leave too long.”
“I know. You keep saying.” Brian’s revelation of why Dad took his life is uncomfortably new, even though a year’s passed. “Doesn’t seem fair to bring kids into this world,” I say. “Britain’s over-crowded and too much has been fucked up.”
“Then we’ll never have kids by that reckoning, and nothing’ll ever change. Or we can bring up our kids to care enough to make things different. Besides, I don’t want to be one of those older mothers; I want to still feel young for our kids. It’s important to me.”
“I’m not sure I’ve got patience enough to be a parent. I’ve learnt nothing from Mum or Brian I’d want to repeat, and even less from my dad, except how to vanish when the shit hits the fan.”
“You’d make a good dad,” she says.
“You reckon? Based on what?”
“Based on the fact that you worry whether you’d make a good dad or not. I don’t suppose everyone worries. They just have kids and sort it out as they go along – or not.”
“I don’t know.”
“If we keep talking about it, it’ll never be the right time. Sometimes you’ve just gotta live life, Tom.”
“Grab it by the short and curlies?”
“These things shouldn’t be too coldly planned.”
She sits up and pulls off her T-shirt, slides out of her knickers. The sleeping bag rustles, the zip comes undone a little. It’s hot in the tent and I suck a breath of cool air through the insect gauze.
“As long as we can give them what they need,” I say. There’s so many things to consider, like where we’ll live, whether we’ll ever save enough for a deposit on a house, whether the mortgage rates will sky-rocket or drop, whether we’ll get by on one wage… the economic rationale.
“I don’t want my kids – our kids – to be second to a career, Tom. I can always go back to teaching later.” She pla
ces a hand on my chest. “Come on. You’ll enjoy it.”
I begin dragging off my t-shirt and pants, willing the uncertainties to vanish. I lean closer to her, draw my hand across her stomach to stroke one of her breasts, bite the soft lobe of her ear.
“And if at first we don’t succeed…” she whispers.
The morning light wakes us, but by the time we’re on our way the sun’s climbed bright and hot in a sky that’s a high, cerulean blue, and the downs stretch into an ocean of too many greens to name. The dew underfoot dries rapidly and each sea of grasses we wade through has a rich, sweet scent. Mushrooms and toadstools have sprung into existence overnight and the number of darting dragonflies has multiplied.
By mid-morning, we’re at the sarsen stones on Overton Down. These are the Grey Wethers. We explore a couple of other tracks and try finding a field system on Fyfield Down, before dumping our rucksacks and boiling water for coffee. We sit and sip, and drink in the landscape.
Elin squints at the fine print of the OS map. “According to this, one arm of stones leads towards Fyfield and another points towards Devil’s Den, whatever that might be.”
“You wanna take a look?”
“It’s about four miles, there and back. Might not leave much time for Avebury. Think I’d rather pick a few mushrooms for a fry-up tonight.”
So we stroll back to the track across Avebury Down, which leads us to the gigantic stone circle at Avebury and the accompanying crowds of sightseers.
Each stone is a massive exclamation, and the imposition of their collective pattern on the landscape is an exclamation beyond awesome. And yet, the closer we get to the hordes of camera-wielding album-fillers, posing against each megalithic sarsen – leaning on them, pretending to hold them upright – the more diminished each stone seems to become. As if they can be reduced by such profane inconsequentiality.
Elin and I walk in silence past these chattering people with barely a sideways glance, and look to The Red Lion. Today, we belong to two separate worlds, them and us. While we know they can’t see us, their noise and synthetic colours and frenetic movements are unnervingly amplified. A pub lunch is one thing, but I doubt it’s worth the price.
The Red Lion is at the centre of all activity. Usually, I’d admire its thatch roof and exposed timber-framed walls – seventeenth-century oak, perhaps – but today it seems ill-placed. And the bar’s too dark and crowded.
Elin finds seats out front, but we’re edged against the road and a constant stream of traffic changing gears to negotiate a sharp bend.
“Crazy,” I say, having inched between the packed benches and a crowd of standing bikies without spilling more than the head off our beers. “Couldn’t you find a cleaner table?”
“Where?” she says, and motions at the crowd.
“It’s too packed.”
“Holiday season.”
“This is crazy.” I bite a slab of cheese, scrunch half a pickled onion, gulp a quarter pint of ale. “I’d trade all this crap for a desert island any day,” I say. Buttering a chunk of bread, I stretch my neck and try easing the tightness forming there. “No more swarming people. Why would anyone wanna get rescued?”
“Robinson Crusoe?”
“Yeah.”
“You’d go mad,” she says.
“I don’t mean just me. I mean the two us. Somewhere warm, exotic.”
She shakes her head. “Scavenging for food, shelter; no medicine when you’re sick – no comforts. It might be fun for a couple of days…”
A group of people squeeze by and one knocks Elin’s back. She looks up, but the guy doesn’t notice.
“An island with palm trees,” I say, conjuring the picture for her. “Dates, coconuts. Clear blue skies. There’d be fish in the sea – warm tropical waters to bathe in – beaches without a single footprint except our own.”
“And sharks, mosquitoes, malaria, typhoons. Count me out.”
I slurp my beer and chew on her dismissal. Her words have a ring to them, as if we’ve had this discussion before, and she utters them with a finality that stings.
The silence grows between us. We’re swamped by the din of raucous people at tables that are set too close.
“It’s a great lunch,” she says, mopping chutney off her plate with the last piece of crust.
“It’s alright,” I say. “The bread’s a bit dry.” It isn’t, but I no longer want to agree with her. I’m sitting with an empty plate and pot in front of me, wishing she’d down the last of her beer.
Picking up her glass, she looks at the contents, swirls the liquid round a couple of times, and then sits it back on the table.
“Come on, Robinson Crusoe,” she says, reaching for her rucksack. “I’ve had enough.”
Half-heartedly, we stroke our hands across a few mammoth stones and begin tracing a segment of their pattern across the landscape, but when I see a woman using the edge of a sarsen to scrape sheep shit off her shoe it’s time to get away from the place. Avebury will have to wait for another day. We plod along Stone Avenue among a herd of Friesians, then turn to Silbury Hill, where we sit before heading back through West Kennett towards Overton Hill, eager to find some solitude on the Ridgeway again.
In this manner, we walk without saying much through the heat of the afternoon. We pass The Sanctuary, cross the river and amble through East Kennett, but it’s only as we leave the bitumen behind and find a track that takes us past a long barrow that our mood becomes easier to carry once more.
We walk through blue milkwort and yellow horseshoe vetch and there’s the smell of wild chive or onion and, then, what might be the scent of thyme, except it’s too faint to be sure. Along one stretch of track, as we near Grennard Hill, we come across honeysuckle tangling along fence wires, and, round the next bend, quite absurdly (given the lateness of the season and the cultivated nature of the plant) a clump of pæonies.
They’re long past their best and wilting for a drink. One crimson flower is still in bloom – just – but the remaining flowers have dropped their petals.
“This is weird. They don’t grow in the wild,” I say, removing my backpack. “And they’ve usually flowered by now.”
“It was a late spring,” Elin remarks. “Maybe that put them back. Maybe a bird carried them and a vole buried them,” she says.
I laugh.
She lowers her pack and massages her shoulders, then reaches into a side-pocket for her water. “I remember reading an article,” she tells me, “about a woman in India who, whenever she travelled by train, would take packets of seed with her. She’d lean out the window and scatter the seed as they went along. Apparently there are heaps of flowers along some stretches of track now.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“When I was a kid, about eleven-years-old,” I tell her, “I stole two packets of seed and scattered them across a demolition site. Nasturtiums came up for a couple of years until they built the new bus station there.”
“Northampton bus station?”
“Yeah.”
She puts the stopper back in the flask. “You stole them?”
“I didn’t mean to. Some mates went shoplifting and I got caught up in it.”
“You took two packets of seed? Not sweets or toys?”
On Grennard Hill, with evening pulling tight around us, we find another spinney and pitch the tent close by. The sun drops low and becomes a yolk of bright orange in a salmon pink sky, and the day’s shadows lengthen and begin stalking us. It’s set to become an evening of fire and shadows on a day of stones. Stones, trees and earth.
As I push the tent pegs into the ground on one side of the groundsheet, while Elin works the other side, it feels as though we’re not alone in this place and that someone might be standing in the spinney spying on us. I look over my shoulder, but see only shadows.
“What’s the matter?” she says.
“Nothing.” But once we’ve spread the flysheet over the tent and tightened the guy-lines, I say: “I
’m just gonna stroll over to the trees and take a pee.”
“Be my guest. I’ll unroll our sleeping bags. Wouldn’t mind closing my eyes for a few minutes.” She pushes the hair back from her face and she’s squinting with tiredness. “Might have a catnap before we start cooking. Ten minutes’ll do. I’m beat.”
There’s no one in the spinney. Only trees. I look up into the foliage as I splash the ground at my feet, and think I see someone looking down, but it’s just a face of leaves – an optical illusion that reminds me of Kate’s Leafy George. Sculpted from the shadows of leaves, I see a face, a nose, an open mouth and a mane of hair that grows out and out until I’m looking at the crown of the tree, and then the face slips away from me.
If the sense of being watched remains though, even as I return to the tent and find Elin sleeping, there’s nothing malevolent about it, and so I lie down too. For what seems like an age, I dream of open spaces and sunlight and oceans of sky; of stones and shadows and trees and earth, and of yesterday and today and…
Tomorrow we’ll climb Furze Hill and cross Wansdyke. We might follow its route a while, but then we’ll carry on to the White Horse hill figure on Milk Hill, the Neolithic camp on Knap Hill and Adam’s Grave long barrow on Walkers Hill. This’ll bring us to our last mile into Alton Priors, where we’ll reluctantly drive away from the footsteps we’ve followed and return to the uncertainties of our present.
I stir first. My mouth’s dry, my throat rasping. Sleep is the easiest sea to drown in. The lapping of dreams against dreams. I struggle awake against the flow, knowing we have to eat, but drowsy with the warmth of the evening, the whispering of the grasses, the comfort of these waters. We’re in the proximity of long barrows and sacred circles, magic lines and the echoes of long-forgotten truths. Shivering, I try casting it off.
