Everything I Have Always Forgotten (28 page)

Oh, the magic of holding such a tiny creature, a sentient living thing, so complete with brain, heart, lungs, liver and all the rest, in the palm of my hand. Already, I found the workings of a tiny wristwatch both fascinating and magical, but this was truly miraculous – and we were surrounded by millions of these miracles.

On the wall of the barn was a detailed map of the island, with land clearly marked that was “out-of-bounds” to us because the farmers didn't trust us to close the gates and so on – besides a huge world map with hundreds of coloured pins denoting where ‘our' birds had been observed, dead or alive. All of this information (on some 8,000 birds ringed here a year) was being compiled to increase our knowledge of migration, the state of the bird kingdom and how they may be protected. There were many choughs (a kind of crow, pitch black but with bright orange legs and beak, it is related to the jackdaw), wheateaters, sedge warblers, whitethroats and spotted fly catchers.

During daylight, we might be sent off to observe waders on the beach, armed with a notebook, pencil and binoculars. We were strictly told never to take a bird book with us, lest we imagine traits that we could not see, but fitted a bird on a page. We were told to make detailed notes of what we actually saw and come back to have it identified in a scientific, unbiased situation.

Alan was usually sent to the northern escarpment of the hill, where it dropped so suddenly into the sea. There, he studied and noted the nesting shearwaters. I, on the other hand, was usually sent to the beach to study waders. The beach had no bluff above it, so it involved wriggling flatter than an infantryman – memories of the air-gun battles on Hampstead Heath, came back to me though now knowing that there was no one out there to take a pot shot at me! I would stop in the very last of the beach grass, just before it became pure sand, and lie motionless for what seemed like hours. Either the oystercatchers and curlews hadn't seen me or perhaps they considered that I was no threat. But the seals always became inquisitive and would come flumping up the beach towards me, on their flippers, to study me with their quizzical little eyes and lively nostrils, their long whiskers twitching. I often wondered if they went home to study our own species in seaweed tomes below the waves.

While the whole island was honeycombed with rabbit warrens (this was before myxomatosis) many of the burrows had been taken over by Manx sheerwaters. On dark, moonless nights, there was a sinister cackling all around from these 7,000 nesting sheerwaters, along with razorbills, guillemots, fulmars and kittiwakes. One great advantage to nesting on this island is that there are no predators, such as rats or foxes, so they may raise their families in relative peace.

Sheerwaters regularly fly across the Atlantic to South America. They lay one egg a year but only sit on that at night for fear that animals will find their precious egg if they are seen going to it by day. An experiment was conducted on their navigation systems: at migration time they were taken to New York by ship and their ‘clocks' readjusted by turning on lights and playing recordings of sheerwaters feeding at calculated, incorrect times. Released at their destination, they all spiralled up high in the sky and set off in exactly the ‘right' wrong direction to reach Brazil. Alas, at that time, transmitters were not made small enough for them to be tagged with one, so no one knows if they ever made it, or how long it took to understand their error and redirect their flight. They are known to live for 55 years and more, so the one egg a year rhythm does not endanger their species. They are very different from their cousins of the same genus, the puffin. While sheerwaters do a great deal of quite leisurely gliding and swooping to cover their 10,000 kilometres a year, puffins' wings beat at 400 times a minute. Their wings are so small that they are unable to take off from calm water. They need waves to jump off and become airlifted. So they do not go far afield.

I still say ‘we', but somewhere along the line, on that tiny island, Alan and I had drifted apart and we rarely did anything together any more. Being trapped on an island has the effect of a pressure cooker: however delightful the island and the circumstances, the very idea that you cannot leave, even if you don't want to at that time, is enough to serve as the grain of sand in the oyster, an irritant that gets in the way of complete enjoyment and certainly in the way of friendship. Many years later, my first wife and I flew from Venezuela to San Andreas with the hope of flying on from there to Costa Rica, where we had left our decrepit car (bought in New York for $200). San Andreas is one of the most idyllic little coral atoll islands in the Caribbean – that limpid blue sea, so transparent you can see the bigger fish by the coral reefs as you fly in. There were no grand hotels there at the time. We spent the night in our hammock between two coconut trees on the beach. We longed to snorkel the reefs. Yet on arrival, we had been told there were no empty seats out for three weeks – and we had a rendezvous in Guatemala City in a few days. We were not to know that our friend would show up 24 hours late – because he had found “a memorable whore house” in town! So instead of relaxing and enjoying this fabulous island, next morning we went at once to the airfield and sat on our packs, waiting for standby seats. As it turned out, we got on the very first flight out. That was almost forty years ago. I have never been back. I am afraid of what change will have come by now: luxury hotels, crowds, drugs and crime. I have already seen enough of that elsewhere.

So it was that we both waited, as we worked, for news of the first boat back. The strong winds and heavy seas continued day after day. There was no telephone on the island except the radio in the lighthouse, and that was for emergency use only. Our parents had no news of us, there was no way to get any to them. A few years later, one of the two lighthouse keepers became disturbed and hacked his colleague apart with an axe. Soon after that, one of the bird wardens also went ‘funny' and had to be taken away in a straitjacket. In both cases, I wonder how news was sent to the police. Perhaps such incidents did indeed qualify as ‘emergencies'. I can just see the struggling men, bound in white canvas, being passed from the jagged rocks into the bouncing cork of a little fishing boat…

The lighthouse intrigued us, but it was out of bounds and we were too timid to try and meet the keepers. It was square and had been built in 1821, to guide shipping from the St George's Channel out into the Irish Sea. Apparently, it was only converted to electricity in 1973 – by which time I was far away in South America. So when I was there it was still running on kerosene and needed to be staffed full-time.

We did not go crazy. We were not old enough for that. We just went silent… and silently, perhaps sullenly, went about our tasks.

Eventually, there was little food left on the island. Alan and I were so hungry that once, when no one else was around, we crept into the food store and stole a slice of white bread each, which we covered with marmalade and devoured voraciously. The theft has weighed upon my conscience these fifty-five years and more…

Then Roy, the warden, announced that we had a whole leg of lamb killed by one of the farmers that very morning. We roasted it and ate it, though the grown-ups complained that it tasted strange, being so fresh and not hung. Personally, I was hungry enough to enjoy every morsel. Beggars can't be choosers and when you're hungry, you're hungry… nowadays I don't eat meat any more. Back in that situation, with no food, I would gladly eat meat again.

Our duties did not take up all our time and we often went walking alone, each in his own direction and taken up with his own thoughts. I remember particularly enjoying the view from the top of the bare hill. Though only 548 feet high, the panoramic, windswept scene was wonderful from there. There were very few trees and those that existed were stunted to the size of large bushes. To the northeast, the ground fell away steeply to the rocky coast. Southwest the slope was more gentle and levelled out to the skirt of flat land on which stood the few vestiges of the ruined monastery. It had been built by Saint Cadfan (who was from Brittany) in the year 516. I do not envy his journey all the way to North Wales, no doubt in some form of coracle or other animal skin-covered frame. It is some 300 miles directly by sea, and one can be sure that he was often blown off course and had to seek food and water on land. I have covered such a distance in an open ship's lifeboat, fitted with pre-Homeric rigging – but at least that was a sturdy, unsinkable hull, not a light wicker frame covered with oiled or tarred animal skins!

Down there, twenty thousand saints were said to be buried but the earth is so shallow, before hitting rock, I wondered if the saints had not found their eternal resting place in the waves, rather than in the ground. They say there is deeper earth near the still-standing tower of the monastery and there is a cross, dating from the sixth century. In 584, Saint Deiniol (Bishop of Bangor) was buried there, as was Saint Dyfrig (though he was moved to the Cathedral of Llandaff in 1120). By the year 1212, it had become a regular pilgrimage destination, termed: ‘Canons Regular', and three pilgrimages to Bardsey were considered worth one to Rome, not, as Father thought, to Jerusalem. In 1284, Edward I made a pilgrimage there. The deeper earth could have been an inlet, then a lake at one time, which has since silted up and become soft ground, suitable for burial… or indeed, cultivation. There, the saints could have been buried, one above the other. As for the exact number, I am sure that distant history is full of poetic licence or plain exaggeration. Of course the monastery (like most of the others in Britain) was destroyed on the orders of Henry VIII, with Dissolution and the Reformation.

We probably only stayed a couple of weeks on Bardsey Island, but to our childish minds, it went on forever without beginning or end. A period of indefinite length, suspended in time. Then, quite suddenly, one day we were back sitting on the bow thwart of the little fishing boat, heading for Aberdaron and ‘civilization' (such as fish and chips). With our friendship chilled and our psyches exhausted, we decided to hightail it home. The bishop would have left by now and we could each have our own bedroom again. We did not even discuss walking all the way. We were wiped out. We hitchhiked instead.

XXIX

HOME AT LAST

S
even miles from home, we were dropped in Maentwrog and I finally went to a public telephone and called home, reversing the charges. Father answered and accepted the call. He expressed no surprise that we were still alive, nor even that we were finally coming home. He just said: “Good. Stay right there. We're going out to dinner with Hamish and his wife. We'll pick you up on the way through.”

Sure enough, half an hour later, the rattling old grey jeep pulled up with my Parents. We climbed into the back with our packs and set off up into the mountains, high up behind Llan Ffestiniog. In its heyday around 1900, it was a flourishing slate-mining town, but by the end of the War the slate business was no longer viable and many houses looked abandoned, with broken window panes and front doors hanging askew – but the truth was that unemployment was as high as 46 per cent and those who had not left, had given up hope. Already, by 1955, there were a few small signs of revival, but it was still a blighted slate town. It would take years before some slate mines would be reopened as tourist attractions. The main road through Ffestiniog was asphalt with just enough width to pass an oncoming bus or truck.

Then we took a single-track asphalt road much higher into the mountains. After a while, there was a rocky track up to the right and at the top of that track stood Hamish's hafod, or highland farm.

The house had once been a retreat for monks and also a place for them to tend their sheep on the summer pastures. It was a low stone farmhouse with a tiny chapel attached. All around were rocks with patches of grass in between. Stone walls had been built to clear rocks from the grass, but it was still a very poor little hill farm. The house and chapel certainly predated the Reformation, so they were over 400 years old.

Hamish and his wife, Daphne, were English (well, he was Scottish, but just as much an outsider) and had two small children. She was fragile and lithe, a dancer, if I remember correctly. He was a short little squat bull of a rugby-playing man who never did anything at a walk – he sprinted from his workbench to the car he was working on, from table to sink with the dirty dishes. He had red hair and a most combative nature, especially after ‘having drink taken'. A mechanical genius, he had driven a 1913 Lagonda motor car from London to Cape Town and now restored other vintage cars. He had converted the tiny chapel into his garage. He put a wide door in the west wall and had enough space for two cars side by side. He used the altar as his workbench, his tools hung neatly on the east wall in place of a crucifix. At that time, he was working on a 1928 supercharged Alfa Romeo (a bright red two-seater) and a 1924 four-seater OM touring car, both Italian marques. In the old cow barns he had a few early Bugattis (some with the pointed ‘boat tail' of the 1920s) that he not only raced, but to the scandal of vintage car collectors, even drove (rather than bringing them on a trailer) all the way to and from the race track: over 200 miles each way to Silverstone, in a one or two-seater priceless antique car with only rear-wheel brakes.

He once took me for a drive in a two-seater 1920 Bugatti Brescia. The seats were of cane work, the passenger sitting a little further back than the driver, so his legs lay beside the driver's seat. My job was to pump up the pressure on the cylindrical petrol tank behind me (this one was earlier and did not sport the boat tail) to maintain fuel supply to the carburettor. The mudguards were of shining copper, the paintwork in bright Bugatti blue and the 1.4 litre four-cylinder, sixteen-valve engine growled and howled. We roared off further up into the mountains on the one-track asphalt road, taking the sharp turns at the speed only a practised racing car driver can pull off successfully. I kept thinking of that photograph Hamish had, framed from a press shot of him racing at Silverstone, taking a corner on two wheels, the other two flying so high you could see the crowd beyond under the tyres. Then suddenly we stopped. Something was severely amiss. Our roaring élan was aborted. We were not on an even keel. One back wheel had fallen off, the centre lock hub had stripped its thread. We trotted back home…