The Fish Ladder (33 page)

There was a tympanic rumble followed by a bouncing lightning bolt that tore the sky ahead of us into halves. The road was dark, and slick, and shining, although no rain fell. We must have been travelling at the same speed as the storm, because we remained in green light for the whole of our journey, and we counted seven rainbows.

Acknowledgements

I
would like to thank the following people: At Bloomsbury, my brilliant and unruffleable editor Alexa von Hirschberg, and the lovely Alexandra Pringle for choosing me; Sarah Barlow, Laura Brooke, Michael Fishwick, Helen Flood, David Foy, Greg Heinimann and fierce-eyed Mary Tomlinson, for helping to make this such a pleasing book.
Ariel Bruce for her generosity and for finding my birth family; Joanna Comino for her astute notes and her friendship; Clare Conville for being my nurse, and for feeding me; Jane Coward for her constant friendship and excellent company; Mary Doyle and David Austin for looking after our little family when it all looked a bit grim; Tessa Ettedgui for coming to chemotherapy with me; Robin Farquhar Thomson for insisting that I sing; Sr Maria Goretti and Sr Carmel for remembering the story; Dairmid Gunn and the Neil M. Gunn Literary Estate for being consistently supportive of
The Fish Ladder
and for telling me where the well was; Claudia Harding McKean, and her team at the Countess of Chester NHS Trust, for saving my life; Olga Jubany Baucells for reminding me that Minerva is also the goddess of healing; Caradoc King for suggesting I record my wanderings and being my friend, teacher and agent; Robert Macfarlane for mistaking me for a writer, for introducing me to
The Well at the World’s End
, and for his encouragement, advice and friendship; Fiona McNeil, her team, and everyone at the Royal Marsden for getting me through the worst of it; Jean McNeil at UEA for her faith in the project; Calvin Mitchell for his overwhelming generosity, tender concern and concrete support; the Norbury family: Jean, John, Maria, Anna, Connor and Lauren, for everything; Oba Nsugbe for his extraordinary care, generosity, wisdom and counsel; Deborah Orr for keeping me company when we had no hair; the dear memory of Dennis Pinnington for a lifetime of love, friendship and encouragement, and for being my second reader, although he died before he got to the end; Polly Samson, for her infectious laughter and for being my first reader; Sue Swift and David Flusfeder for being such welcoming neighbours; my brother ‘Robert Thomas,’ for being there.

The following people have helped in ways as various as themselves: Louise Allen-Jones; John Bernasconi; Sharon Blackie; Jared Brading and the staff of Sacred Heart Primary School; Harvey Cabaniss; Cynthia and John Carson; Amit Chaudhuri; Simon Chu; Andrew Cowan; Linda Cracknell; Kristin Dean; Amy Elliot; Johnny Flynn; Lucy Geldenhuys; Kirsty Gunn; Judy Herbert; Clare Jolly; Bronwen Jones; Julian Kenyon;
Yuko Komiya; Nigel Langford; Michael Lengsfield; Jackie Lomax; Sara Maitland; Bishop Vincent Malone; Chrissie O’Farrell; Mgr Canon Peter O’Neill; Fr Jordi Padro; Jeremy Page; Gwenna Parry Williams; Georgina and William Petty; Noemi Ranz; Jon Riley; Mary Sackville West, Linda Shaughnessy; Meg Sinclair; Peter Straus; Henry Sutton; Gwydion Thomas; Nancy Verrier; Nicola Waddell; Stuart Webley; Amy Wellesley Wood; Sharon Wilkinson; Peter Womack; Mildred Yuan.

My special thanks go to Evie Thomson, my daughter, for her sparkling companionship and for the brilliant drawings in the book, and to Rupert Thomson – my friend, husband and soul’s companion: where can I begin?

Notes

This book is a work of life writing based on the experiences and recollections of Katharine Norbury. In some cases names of people, places, dates, sequences or the detail of events have been changed solely to protect the privacy of others.

NOTES ON SOURCES

Epigraph to Part I

‘It is no small pity’: Teresa of Avila (translated by E. Allison Peers),
The Interior Castle
, Dover Thrift Edition, New York, 2008. Reproduced by kind permission of Dover Publications Inc. on behalf of the E. Allison Peers Literary Estate.

Font del Mont

‘Places in the heart’:
Leon Bloy’s words, ‘Man has places in his heart which do not yet exist, and into them enters suffering, in order that they may have existence’, have been made famous as the epigraph to Graham Green’s
The End of the Affair
, although no one seems to know when or where Bloy first published them.

Swimming Pool

‘On a huge hill’: John Donne, ‘The Third Satire’ from
The Complete English Poems
, Penguin Classics, London 1976.

‘Whose water is so clear’: Robert Macfarlane, personal correspondence, 2009. Reproduced by kind permission of Robert Macfarlane.

‘And what will you do’: Neil M. Gunn,
Highland River
, Penguin, London, 1975. Reproduced by kind permission of Dairmid Gunn on behalf of the Neil M. Gunn Literary Estate.

Humber

A version of ‘Humber’ first appeared in
A Wilder Vein
, edited by Linda Cracknell, Two Ravens Press, Port of Ness, 2009.

Mersey

‘In a dark leathern bag’:
The Mabinogion
, translated by Lady Charlotte E. Guest,
Dover Thrift Editions, New York, 2000.

Afon Geirch

‘Matthew, Mark, Luke and John’: This is a version of the English language prayer and nursery rhyme also known as the ‘Black Paternoster’, traditionally said by children as they go to bed. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 1704. It may have origins in ancient Babylonian prayers and was being used in a Christian version in late Medieval Germany. The earliest extant version in English can be traced to the mid-sixteenth century.

There are many variants of this story: Jan Morris recounts one in her book
Wales
, in which all the revellers but one drown as the waters rise around a castle, but it also shares a family likeness with the story of Odysseus’s revenge on Persephone’s suitors, when the hero enters his besieged home disguised as a beggar, then kills the suitors with the help of his son and a trusty swineherd.

‘Time held me green and dying’: Dylan Thomas, ‘Fern Hill’ from
The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas: The Original Edition
, New Directions, 2010. Copyright 1945 by The Trustees for the Copyrights of Dylan Thomas. Reproduced by kind permission of David Higham Associates and New Directions Publishing Corp.

Ffynnon Fawr

‘They did not divine it’: R.S. Thomas, ‘Ffynnon Fair’ from
Collected Poems
1949–1990
, Phoenix, 2000. Reproduced by kind permission of Gwydion Thomas on behalf of the R. S. Thomas Literary Estate.

‘St. Mary’s cave’: Ieuan Lleyn (1769–1832), also known as Evan Pritchard, was a renowned bard, poet and writer of hymns. This extract is from a letter to his friend Dafydd Ddu Eryri, 1799. Translation reproduced by kind permission of Gwenllian Jones on behalf of Rhiw.com.

Caherdaniel

‘But Hermes did not find’:
The Odyssey of Homer
, translated and with an introduction by Richmond Lattimore, Harper Perennial, New York, 1999. Copyright 1965, 1967 by Richmond Lattimore; Renewed 1995 by Alice B. Lattimore. Reproduced by kind permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

‘That unnameable something’: C.S. Lewis, Foreword to
The Pilgrim’s Regress
, Fount, London, 1998. Copyright C.S. Lewis Pte Ltd 1933. Reproduced by kind permission of The C.S. Lewis Company Ltd.

Skell

‘Hither came on a day’: ‘Every way the woman went’:
Irish Metrical Dindshenchas
, translated by Edward John Gwynn,
CELT, University College, Cork, 2004.

‘That state of highly respectful sulkiness’: Wilkie Collins,
The Woman in White
, Penguin Classics, London, 2007.

‘Should th’ ungenerous world’: Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, letter to Eliza Gray, from
Verses copied by Lady Charlotte Cholmondeley in her common place book
, c. 1816.

Tummell

‘A very fundamental human attribute’: Sara Maitland,
Gossip from the Forest
, Granta, London, 2013. Reproduced by kind permission of Sara Maitland.

‘Over the Rainbow’: Words and Music by Harold Arlen and EY Harburg © 1938. Reproduced by permission of EMI Feist Catalog, London, W1F 9LD.

Spey

A version of ‘Spey’ first appeared in the
UEA Creative Writing Anthology
, foreword by Andrew Motion, Eggbox Publishing, Norwich, 2012.

‘We fulfil the demands of nature’: Cassius Dio,
Roman History
, published in Vol. IX of the Loeb Classical Library edition, Harvard, 1927.

‘A curious mood of fatalism’: Neil M. Gunn,
Highland River
, Penguin, London, 1975. Reproduced by kind permission of Dairmid Gunn on behalf of the Neil M. Gunn Literary Estate.

Dunbeath

‘Who turned her eyes onto’, ‘restraining her feet’, ‘Truly we think the matter’, ‘That which was born in her womb’:
Jocelyn, A monk of Furness: The Life of Kentigern
(Mungo), translated by Cynthia Whiddon Green, as part of an MA Thesis, University of Houston, 1998, from the Internet Mediaeval Sourcebook, a collection of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts edited by Paul Halsall.

‘His dismay was vague’: Neil M. Gunn,
Highland River
, Penguin, London, 1975. Reproduced by kind permission of Dairmid Gunn on behalf of the Neil Gunn Literary Estate.

‘Love, with very young people’: Isak Dinesen, ‘The Old Chevalier’ from
Seven Gothic Tales
, Penguin, 2002.

‘A secret well there was’:
Irish Metrical Dindshenchas
, translated by Edward John Gwynn,
CELT, University College, Cork, 2004.

Epigraphs to Part II

‘Is it possible to pierce’: Neil M. Gunn from a letter to Geoffrey Faber, 1950. Reproduced by kind permission of Dairmid Gunn on behalf of the Neil Gunn Literary Estate.

‘The Water’ by John Patrick Vivian Flynn © Transgressive Publishing Ltd (PRS) (NS). All rights administered by Warner/Chappell Music Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved.

Swimming Pool (2)

‘Looking overhead he saw’: John Cheever, ‘The Swimmer’ from
Collected Stories
, Vintage Classics, 1990. Reproduced by kind permission of Penguin Random House UK on behalf of the John Cheever Literary Estate.

Innominate Stream

‘Skilful, careful and modest’: from
The Scawfell Accident
, Climbers’ Club Journal No 21, 1903.

Severn

‘I am waiting for an old frayed queen’, ‘She who shines’: Alice Oswald,
A Sleepwalk on the Severn
, Faber and Faber, London, 2009. Reproduced by kind permission of United Agents LLP (
www.unitedagents.co.uk
) and Faber and Faber Ltd on behalf of Alice Oswald.

‘The connection between biological mother and child is primal, mystical, mysterious, and everlasting. Far more than merely biological and historical, this primal connection is also cellular, psychological, emotional, and spiritual. So deep runs the connection between a child and its mother that the severing of that bond results in a profound wound for both, a wound from which neither fully recovers. In the case of adoption, the wound cannot be avoided, but it can and must be acknowledged and understood’. Nancy Verrier, ‘Position Statement’,
www.nancyverrier.com/position-statement
. Reproduced by kind permission of Nancy Verrier.