A Donkey in the Meadow (13 page)

The object of this particular campaign was to persuade the authorities to build an ocean-type lighthouse a short distance away from Minack in the area Jeannie and I called the Pentewan cliffs. These cliffs and meadows belonged to one of the few remaining unspoilt stretches of the Cornish coast. You could see it best from the Carn with the rocks like an ancient castle, and people would stand there and marvel that they could look upon a scene that had been the same since the beginning of time. No man-made ugliness, no breeze-block buildings to offend them.

‘Every day of our lives,’ I wrote in
A Drake At The Door
, ‘was spent in unison with this coast, the rage of the gales, salt smearing our faces as we walked, east winds, south winds, calm summer early mornings, the first cubs, a badger in the moonlight, wild violets, the glory of the first daffodil, the blustering madness of making a living on land that faced the roar of the ages.

‘The cliffs fall to rocks black and grey where the sea ceaselessly churns, splashing its foam, clutching a rock then releasing it, smothering it suddenly in bad temper, caressing it, slapping it as if in play, sometimes kind with the sun shining on the white ribbon of a wave, a laughing sea throwing spray like confetti, sometimes grey and sullen, then suddenly a sea of ungovernable fury lashing the cliffs; enraged that for ever and for ever the cliffs look down.

‘And among the rocks are the pools; some that tempt yet are vicious, beckoning innocently then in a flash a cauldron of currents, pools that are shallow so that the minnow fish ripple the surface as they dash from view, pools so deep that the seaweed looks like a forest far below, inaccessible pools, pools which hide from everyone except those who belong to them.

‘High above, the little meadows dodge the boulders, and where the land is too rough for cultivation the bracken, the hawthorn, the brambles, the gorse which sparks its yellow the year round, reign supreme. This is no place for interlopers. The walkers tamed by pavements, faced by the struggling undergrowth, turn back or become angry, their standardised minds piqued that they have to trace a way through; and it is left to the few, the odd man or woman, to marvel that there is a corner of England still free from the dead hand of the busybody.

‘Here, on our stretch of the coast, man has not yet brought his conceit.’

For some years there had been murmurs about erecting a small, harbour-type light and fog signal near Lamorna Cove to act like a street lamp for the benefit of local fishermen on their way to and fro from Mousehole or Newlyn; and this indeed was a reasonable proposition. But the wreck of the
Juan Ferrer
gave a new twist to this idea, and the cry went up for an ocean-type lighthouse, as powerful as that on the Wolf Rock and the Lizard; and the cries became louder after a television film was compiled called Cornish Wrecks. It was a stirring production and somehow succeeded in giving the impression that there had been twenty-three wrecks in twelve years on this southern coast of the Lands End peninsula which the new lighthouse would serve. Almost two wrecks a year within a distance of ten miles! The film caused a furore.

This was wonderful material for the campaigners and I watched with fascination how they reacted. Women’s organisations were roped in. A petition was organised and signatures were collected by door-to-door canvassers. A letter was sent to Sir Winston Churchill. A question was asked in the House of Commons. A special programme of the TV film was shown to Mr Marples as the man finally responsible for instructing Trinity House to build the lighthouse. Veiled accusations were made that Trinity House should have acted before. The Minister must act! Gradually, with the persistence of a steamroller, the illusion was fostered and believed that a new lighthouse would banish wrecks from the Cornish coast for ever.

The snag of the illusion lay in the facts which the campaigners seemed to avoid. There had not been twenty-three wrecks in twelve years; there had been four wrecks in over fifteen years. And there were other facts which the campaigners ignored with aplomb as they hurried on their emotional way. Another four wrecks, in as many years, had occurred within a few hundred yards of lighthouses; two off the Longships near Lands End, two at Pendeen near Cape Cornwall. Seventeen had died in one of them the year before.

The claim, therefore, that lighthouses provided immunity to those who sailed in their neighbourhood was unfortunately untrue; twentieth-century methods of safeguarding shipping were required, not those of the seventeenth. Moreover, in the case of the new lighthouse, it was to be situated at a position which many experienced sailors found incomprehensible. Tater-du, as the position is called, is five miles from the headland called Gwennap Head marking the southernmost point of the Lands End pensinsula; five miles, in fact, inside Mount’s Bay. ‘If they want one at all’, said an old fisherman to me who had sailed this coast all his life, ‘put it on Gwennap Head or close to it. There it might help shipping coming up the Channel or across from the Lizard. But it’s crazy to put it so far inside the Bay as Tater-du for a score of reasons.’

The campaigners swept forward, irresistible, vociferous, unreal in their arguments, thriving on the unproven slogan they were saving lives; and there is today a lighthouse at Tater-du. In this age of electronics, of radio direction-finding and radar, a lighthouse of hideous utility design with huge electricity pylons marching across the skyline towards it, the first to be built in this country since the last century, costing many thousands of pounds, now climbs into the sky, a phalanx of concrete blocks, on this lovely once-lonely coast.

A monument to what happens when emotionalism goes into action.

Fred met his first winter and viewed it with apprehension. No one to visit him. No flavour in the grass. Hedgerows bare. Long nights with nothing to do. Driving rain to flatten his fluffy coat. And gales.

How he hated gales. Rain, however heavy, was only an inconvenience in comparison. He would stand in the rain hour after hour, spurning the welcoming open door of the stables, looking miserable nevertheless, taking apparently some kind of masochistic pleasure out of his discomfort. I was sorry for him in the rain but I did not feel I was under any obligation to take steps to protect him from it. A really persistent long day’s rain would put him in a stupor, and if I called him he would pause a moment or two before lifting his head dazedly to look at me. He seldom showed any wish to come to me; he and Penny, heads down, the rain dripping off their noses, bottoms towards the weather, would stand stoically content in what I would have thought were intolerable conditions.

But in gales he needed protection. He became restless as soon as the first breeze, the scout of the gale, began hurrying across the field; and he would begin to hee-haw, lifting his head to the scurrying clouds so that a mournful bellow joined the swish of the wind in the trees. He would not stand still, racing round in small circles, then dashing off to another part of the field; and instead of following Penny dutifully about as was his usual custom. Penny would be hastening after him. He was the leader. It was as if he believed that something tangible was chasing him, not a gale but an enemy with plans to capture him. A foolish fantasy of the very young, faced by the unknown.

Penny herself, with private memories of the Connemara mountains, was unperturbed. She felt, no doubt, that Fred’s fears were part of his education, and that repetition would dull them. She plodded after him as he ran hither and thither like an old nanny after a child, and when he grew tired she nudged him along to the shelter of a hedge. Penny was very weather-wise. She had mapped each meadow with a number of tactical positions to suit every variation of the wind; a series of well-worn patches on the ground disclosed them. Thus, if a westerly moved a few points to the east, resulting in her current position being exposed, she cunningly led the way to the next patch.

But there were times when the gales roared like a squadron of supersonic hedgehopping aircraft, deafening us in the cottage so that when the news came on I had to switch the radio to full strength if we were to hear the announcer. Lama would be curled up comfortably in a chair, Boris in his house in the wood would be sitting on his perch; the gulls, Knocker and Squeaker or the lonely, friendly Peter, would be safe beneath some leeward cliff until many hours later the gale died down and they set off to fly to the roof again.

It was at a time like this that I indulged in protecting Fred. At first I used to lead the two of them to the shelter of the wood, and they would stand around the outside of Boris’s house among the ivy-covered trunks of the elms, the wind slapping the tops, swaying, branches cracking and falling, an invisible angry hate hissing its fury, mad with rage that its omnipotent, conquering, horizon-leaping triumph over the sea was being checked by hands held high; trees and hills and houses and sudden valleys, old buildings and church spires, hedges acting as ramparts. Penny and Fred would stand there with the roar of the gale above them and the roar of the sea behind them. They did not like it.

And so in due course, whenever a gale blew, I took them to the stable meadow where the security of the stable awaited them. In a severe gale you would find both of them within. In any kind of wind you would always find Fred.

The stable was dilapidated but solid. It was an ancient building with arm-length-thick walls made of stone in all shapes and sizes and bound together by clay. The clay in many places outside had cracked and fallen away over the years, and sparrows and bluetits made use of the holes in the spring; one wall was so popular with the sparrows that their nests resembled a series of flats, each one above the other. Huge beams stretched across the battered ceiling inside, rusty hooks where once hung harness stared from the walls, cobblestones like knuckles of a hand lined the floor, and in the corner there was the broken frame of a manger.

On Christmas Eve we took mince pies to the donkeys in the stable. A lighthearted gesture, a game for ourselves, an original diet for them.

‘Donkeys! Donkeys!’ Jeannie called into the darkness of the meadow, ‘come into the stables. We’ve got something for you.’ And after a minute or two, their shadows loomed, heralded by enquiring whimpers.

‘Fred,’ I said, ‘you’re about to have your first mince pie.’

Inside we lit a candle in an old-fashioned candlestick and put it on the window sill. The light flickered softly. It flickered on their white noses, their eager faces, their giant rabbit-like ears. They pushed their heads forward, nuzzling us in expectation.

‘Patience, patience!’ said Jeannie, holding the mince pies high in her hand, ‘don’t be in such a hurry!’ And then with a quick movement she gave one to each of them.

As I stood there watching I began to feel the magic of the occasion. Our intention had been to have a joke, to enjoy the merry spirit of Christmas and now, unexpectedly, something else was taking place.

‘Look at their crosses,’ I said to Jeannie. The cross of Penny was black merging into black, but that of Fred was easy to see; the dark line tracing up the backbone beneath his fluffy brown coat until it reached his shoulders, then stopping abruptly when it met the two lines tracing down each foreleg. ‘Here we are,’ I went on, ‘with two biblical creatures eating mince pies.’

‘In a stable.’

‘On Christmas Eve.’

There was the gentle sound as they shifted their feet on the cobblestones, and I was aware too of the musty scent of their coats. Ageless simplicity, laughed at, beaten, obstinately maintaining an individuality; here indeed was a moment when there was a communication with the past. Struggle, self-sacrifice, integrity, loyalty; how was it that the basic virtues, the proven talisman of man’s true happiness, was being lost in the rush of material progress? Why was it that civilisation was allowing its soul to be destroyed by brain power and the vacuous desire it breeds? Why deify the automaton when selflessness has to be won? For a shimmering moment we felt the race halted. No contrived, second-hand emotion. We were not watching, we were part. As it always had been, so it was now.

We had changed since we had first known each other, Jeannie and I. Once we had both fought hard to savour flattery and power, to be part of a glad world of revelry, to be in the fashion, and to rush every day at such speed that we disallowed ourselves any opportunity to ponder where we were going; and now we were in the stable at a customary moment of merriment, perfectly happy, alone with two donkeys. It is easy to remain in a groove, a groove which becomes worn without you realising it, only recognisable by friends who have not seen you for a long time, and it is usually luck which enables you to escape. Jeannie and I had the luck to feel the same at the same time, and so we had been united in forcing ourselves to flee our conventional background. There had never been any argument between us about the pros and cons; gradually the standards we once believed so important appeared sadly ineffectual, only vital until they had been experienced. Moreover the merciless zest required to achieve them became an exhausting effort as soon as the standards, reached at last, had to be maintained; for it became obvious to us that in most cases the banners of success were made of paper, waved by entrepreneurs who were temporarily leeching on the creative efforts of others.

Thus Jeannie and I belonged to the lucky ones who, having seen their personal horizon, had also reached it; and yet in doing so there was no possible reason for self-satisfaction. It was true that contentment was always near us, but there was an edge to our life which stopped us from ever taking it for granted. What had become our strength was the base to which we could retreat. We had a home we loved. Around us was the ambience of permanency. We had roots. And so, when we became involved in sophisticated stresses which touched us with memories of other days, there was a moat behind which we could recharge. We then could quietly observe the enemy; envy, for instance, the most corroding of sins, the game of intrigue which fills so many people’s lives, the use of the lie which in business is considered a justifiable weapon, the hurt that comes from insecurity, the greed which feeds on itself, the worship of headline power without quality to achieve it. We watched, and sometimes we were vexed, sometimes we were frightened. Across the moat we could see the reflection of the past.