Turtle Diary (16 page)

The sky was clearing, a full moon appeared in a ragged opening in the clouds. There’d be a spring tide then, would it be in or out? I felt as if I knew about tides, felt as if I remembered them.

‘I’ve never told you that Polperro is the place where I was born,’ I said to Neaera.

‘Good God,’ she said. ‘But when you were a child surely it wasn’t how it is now?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘We left when I was a year old and I’ve never been back since. My mother never talked about it much. Why’d you choose it?’

‘It was real once but it isn’t any more,’ said Neaera. ‘It’s souvenirs and cream teas and a box with a slot for money to preserve the character of the old Cornish fishing village. The turtles may be headed for extinction but they’re real, they work. When we put them in the sea they’ll do real turtle work.’

‘We can’t magic the whole world with three turtles,’ I said.

‘We’d need more?’ said Neaera. ‘Would a dozen do it?’ We both laughed.

My mother never had said much about Polperro. She had no stories of the pilchard fishery, the huers signalling from the shore to the seine boats and that sort of thing. She was born in Calstock where her father worked at an arsenic factory until he died of it. In those days the only protection they had was lint to cover the nostrils and a handkerchief over that. My mother remembered the trees all grey and blighted near the works and
the way it smelled on foggy days. She was living at home and teaching in a school but when her father died she left Calstock. Her two younger brothers were working by then, her mother had died earlier. She came to Polperro because she liked the sound of the name and she wanted to be near the sea. She used to remember the jackdaws walking on the quay among the gulls and the fishermen, how they looked as if they might speak.

She became a waitress at a tea-shop. She used to say that was the year she gave up school-teaching, Methodism and arsenic all at once. She met my father soon after and in two years she was a widow living in London with a year-old son. She bought a tobacconist-newsagent business in Fulham and then she used to get books out of the library and read about Cornwall. She liked legends and folklore. I remember her telling me about the spirit of Tregeagle who howled when the hounds of the Devil were after him and was finally sent away to weave ropes of sand by the edge of the sea. I remember how she used to say that part: ‘Forever weaving ropes of sand that crumbled in his hands and the wind blew them away.’

When I think of her seeing the jackdaws walking on the quay I seem to see them with her eyes and I can see the rest of the scene as well, the grey sky over the sea and the headlands, the white-and-black-and-grey gulls with yellow beaks and yellow staring eyes, the fisherman solid and heavy in the grey light with scales and barrows, the boats rocking at their moorings or standing on their legs. I never see it sunny, always grey. I’ve never told anyone about my mother’s jackdaws. My three uncles are dead, I have cousins in Cornwall I’ve never looked up. The house in Fulham where we lived over the shop until my mother died was close to where I live now but it’s been pulled down, there’s a block of flats there now. The road where my father went over the cliff was on the other side of Polperro, we’d not be seeing it this trip.

Near Glastonbury there was a self-service petrol station open. I put a pound note into the machine and the tank took 96p worth. 4p worth of petrol left for whoever might come along next.

The van hummed along swallowing up the little crab-shaped reflectors with their little crab eyes. The moon disappeared, reappeared as broken clouds hurried past. Oh yes, I thought, feeling something good just round the corner of my mind: just be all the way in it and you’re all right. Just let go of everything like a falling star. The far-away ones, when you see their light it’s already happened millions of years ago. This too, my brief light, maybe it had flashed across the darkness long long ago. Not
my
light, just a light. Now I was the one to be it, to flash across the darkness with it. Somebody else’s turn next. Nothing to be selfish about, be it while it’s you and then let go. The van rushed ahead but I let my mind be where it was.

At two o’clock in the morning near Exeter William topped up the tank again. I was glad there weren’t more petrol stations open. He seemed to want to arrive at Polperro with a full tank, as if he had information that all the petrol stations on the road back would disappear by morning.

At a quarter to three we had more sandwiches and coffee about twenty miles from Plymouth. We’d done two hundred miles by then, only about fifty to go. I wondered if he’d stop for petrol between here and Polperro. The road was quiet, there were long intervals between cars, I listened to the turtles breathing. Ahead of us in the lay-by a big articulated lorry was resting like a tired monster. The crabs in the road marched on inscrutably towards London. What would they say when they got there?

We went on through Plymouth, wakeful through the sleeping streets. We crossed the Tamar Bridge at half past three under bluish lights that seemed quite outside of time, like the yellow ones earlier. Lear’s words about the silent-roaring ocean had got into my head and I felt myself filled with silent roaring. It may in fact have been snoring although if it was, William was too tactful to say so. I dozed off and woke up as we came down the hill into Polperro. The sky had cleared completely and there was bright moonlight over everything.

BEYOND THIS POINT ONLY EXEMPTED VEHICLES PERMITTED 9 A.M.-6 P.M., said the sign. We went beyond this point down the main street, past the model village in its model sleep, past
the dark and silent cream teas and souvenirs, turned into the street that led to Jonathan Couch’s house and parked on the little bridge in front of it. We could have turned into the very narrow street that went the remaining two hundred yards or so to the outer harbour but William drew the line at that, he didn’t want to risk scratching the van or waking anybody up with the noise of our manoeuvres. As it was we kept expecting lights to go on, windows to fly up and policemen to appear.

We’d neither of us bothered to find out about the tide in advance. Whether it was in or out we’d launch the turtles. But I think we both felt the same: if the tide was in the ocean was with us and our venture would prosper, if it was out it meant that things were no different from the way they always were, just a lot of damned bother and aggravation. Then I stopped caring about signs and omens and whether it would go well or badly. Our part in the rhythm of things was to put the turtles in the sea and however it went would be the way it went. Getting stuck in the mud or drowning or breaking a leg or being had up by the police might or might not be part of it. I stopped caring about people waking up, I felt relaxed and invulnerable.

We rounded the corner, went down the street. The boats in the inner harbour were all afloat. ‘It’s in,’ we both said at the same time. The wind hit us in the face, we heard the crashing of the waves as we half ran round the next corner and up the incline to the outer harbour. The low-tide beach was gone, under the full moon the tide was surging wildly against the breakwater, spray was flying and the sea was breaking halfway up the steps. And the wind, the wind, the full-moon spring-tide turtle wind.

Back to the van we went without a word. William dragged out the first crate, tipped it on to the trolley and wheeled it away with an amount of noise that would have waked the dead. I followed with the rope. I thought it would take both of us to get the trolley up the incline but William did it by himself. At the breakwater we wrestled the crate off the trolley, laid it on the steps as on a slipway and lowered it with the rope through the ringbolts. ‘Don’t be alarmed, ladies and gentlemen,’ I said,
‘those chains are made of chrome steel.’ William must have seen the film, he was laughing whilst standing on the steps with the tide breaking over his feet.

I gave him slack as he up-ended the crate on the edge of a step, he tilted it forward and with a great splash the turtle hit the water and dived. We hugged and kissed each other, ran back for the next turtle, launched it, then the next. Each one dived under the wild water and was gone. It was done, it had actually happened. Three empty crates and the turtles safely off.

‘The champagne!’ said William. He rushed off, came back with the bottle and the two cups from the Thermos flask. He popped the cork into the wind, the champagne foamed up in the moonlight. ‘Here’s wishing them luck,’ we said, and drank to the turtles. The waves were silver under the moon, the spray flew up from the rocks on either side of the harbour entrance, there was a beacon on the headland. The champagne tasted like clear and bubbling bright new mornings without end. We gulped it greedily and threw the empty bottle into the ocean. The ocean was rough and real, always real, only real. It wasn’t Polperro’s fault that the place had to go begging with souvenirs and money-boxes and a model village. I forgave Polperro, loved it for what it had been and what it now was, for its happiness and sorrow by the sea. I forgave myself for not loving it before, loved myself for loving it now. I forgave everybody everything, felt the Caister two-stone in the pocket of my mac, flung it out into the moonlit ocean.

When I felt the wind on my face and saw that the tide was in it seemed all at once that I didn’t need any answers to anything. The tide and the moon, the beacon on the headland and the wind were so
here,
so
this,
so
now
that nothing else was required. I felt free of myself, unlumbered. Where the moon ended and I began and which was which was of no consequence. Everything was what it was and the awareness of it was part of it.

The crates came out of the van and on to the trolley easily, went up the incline smoothly, there was no separation between crate and trolley and me and motion. It happened, turtles happened into the ocean, champagne happened in the moonlight.

On the way back to the big car-park we stopped at the public lavatory.
Adamant,
said the urinal. There was a device like the Order of the Garter but with a lion on top. Something that looked like an owl’s face in the middle. Here, now. Coming out I listened to the stream that runs through the village, heard an owl quavering in the dark. Not adamant, nothing adamant.

We pulled into the car-park, I switched off the engine. We got into the back of the van with the eiderdown and the blankets and the pillows. We lay down with our clothes on, side by side with a little space between us. First we lay on our backs then we rolled over on our sides. The space rolled over with us, stayed quietly between us all night, shaped of the front of me and the back of her.

I woke up in the van. Ah yes, I thought, this is where I went to sleep. There was wood near my face smelling salty, oceany. Empty turtle crate. I put my ear to it, listened: silent-roaring ocean. There was rope, I touched it, licked my fingers: salt. I touched the trolley, salty as well. I rolled over, there was William still asleep. It seemed like spying to look at his sleeping face so I got out of the van.

It was afternoon. Vans with curtains in the windows were parked on either side of us and people inside them were being domestic. Refreshment and souvenir stands were open at the car-park entrance. A man with a horse and a bedizened yellow wagon half full of passengers beckoned to me like the coachman who took Pinocchio to the Land of Boobies.

Stupid really, to feel as I did just then: low-spirited and dissatisfied. There was no reason for it. We had come to Polperro to put turtles into the sea and we’d done it.

The sunlight was hot, the sky was blue. I felt all astray. At home the day and I always approached each other by slow degrees: brushing my teeth, washing my face, the first cup of coffee, the first cigarette, opening the post. Here I had nothing, just suddenly some rough beast of a day with vans and curtains and people feeding children.

Scale is a funny thing. Sometimes on hot days everything seems too big and spread out. Not to be grasped by the mind, not to be held in the eye. I thought of winter. Winter grey skies, winter early evenings make London small like a model
town. Lighted windows in shops are like model shop windows, tobacconist, launderette, bakery. I saw the little model streets in my mind, the shops. In the model bakery, a three-tiered wedding-cake, great in its tinyness. Pictures of other wedding-cakes: the ‘Windsor’, the ‘Paradise’, the ‘Wedgwood’. Small, small, astonishing detail in the model memory, all there to be found. The model Polperro here at Polperro was still in my mind, I compared it to the model London. The Polperro one was much bigger, huge and thick, not to be held in the mind or in the eye.

When I woke up and saw the bright sunlight the night before seemed far away and small. I was stiff and sore all over. Neaera wasn’t there. I opened the doors and saw her leaning against the concrete wall of the car-park. I thought about the turtles and I couldn’t believe they’d got out to sea against that heavy tide. Surely they’d been beaten back against the breakwater or swept into the harbour through a gap where the boats go in and out. They were probably in the harbour now, they’d probably been picked up by fishermen.

We slowly made our way through tourists and their children to the public lavatory. I hadn’t brought a toothbrush or shaving things or anything. I brushed my teeth with my finger, washed and let it go at that. Slowly and blinking in the sunlight we went to a teashop where we had sausages and eggs. It was while we were eating that I most felt the awkwardness of this morning after. Afternoon actually, worse than a morning. Sometimes I’ve felt that way after sleeping with the wrong person, and the intimacy of sex is nothing compared with the intimacy of driving two hundred and fifty miles at night and putting turtles into the sea. But it wasn’t that, it wasn’t that she was the wrong person for the turtles. I didn’t know what it was. There seemed to be little for us to say to each other. Nothing in fact.