Down a hill, the sharp left-hander at the end, these last minutes, each twist and bend so familiar now. The lane off to the islands. The farmhouse selling wood. The little bump of the bridge. I put the window down, the wind’s buffeting now replacing the music. The water suddenly there, on the left, in its inky loveliness. Climbing the narrow road, through the tree tunnel, the final ascent. Turning at the brow of the hill. The white house in front, sweeping right, and the entire bay laid out below. Still there in every detail. The houses deeply slumbering. Third gear, second, not wanting to make a noise, slipping past the pub and then up the narrow track behind the house, turning in, cutting the engine. Six hours, thirty-four minutes from Hackney. Five hours, four minutes driving time. Opening the car door, an owl calling. The sound of the incoming sea. Trilling of a distinct curlew. Strange to hear that sound in the dead of night. Down the dark steps, opening up the house. So chill at this time of year after the winter, despite the neighbours having put the heaters on last night. Takes two or three days to warm up. Back up to the car, with my last energy, unloading bags, food, books, papers, printer in five or six sorties. Then, in coat and scarf, back outside with a beer and a chair. Feet up on the sea wall, feeling the rhythms of the driving fading and the pulsing rhythms of this place taking over. Tides and sky and birds and trees. My companions for the next seven days and nights. And words already beginning to form, not yet recognisable, but somewhere on the very periphery of my consciousness.
*
Two days later.
Several pages into the chapter now, I write until most of the day’s light has gone. Then scan my map for somewhere new to walk. As I leave the house, it’s almost beyond dusk. From the inside looking out, it would now be dark. But eyes – even our not very sharp human ones – can adjust and make things visible on the darkest of nights. The path along the clifftop unfurls in a whitish thread before me. Gusts from the sea batter with increasing frenzy, one blast almost has me over. Eyes try to make out the dark purplish soil but it’s not visible. My pace slows. I allow my boots to feel ahead, giving them fractionally more time than they’d have in the daylight. Keeping to the pale line of the path. But it’s narrow and thousands of other boots have deepened it into a rut which makes it difficult to walk. The entire body utterly focussed on the feet, responsive to each step. A little deeper there, the tiniest muscles reacting. Uphill. Something in the path, a protruding rock. Go round it. Tipping forward, muscles between the balls of my feet and the toes stretched, answering the call. The slope now flattening out, the path widening, I’m able to walk almost normally, not quite striding but with a regular rhythm again. And a guide has joined me, white rump of a wheatear, just back from its Africa wintering, flitting ahead ten feet, waiting companionably, then, when I’ve caught up, taking off again, flashing its tiny rear (its original name ‘white-arse’ toned down for Victorian sensibilities to ‘wheatear’). Together we walk and fly for several minutes. To the left, hundreds of feet below, the continuous roar of the sea. Only the whiteness of the surf visible, hitting the cliffs then melting. Another mile and we dip down towards the bay. The hardest thing at night, downhill. The misjudgements that can tip you forwards. The path curves round to the right. A gate, joining the other path coming up from the bay.
Walking inland. Stone wall on my left. A gap. Two sleeping sheep startled by my presence worry off with that characteristic fussiness, which in turn disturbs other sheep across the hillside in a snowstorm of movement. Ten minutes more and I’ve finally got to the road. The rubber of my boots making a slightly more audible sound. Only two miles or so back. Wildly westwards, at this most westerly point of the country. Walking into the stars. The Plough high to my right. Straight ahead the last traces of silver-grey over the island. Not yet folded into the night completely. The sun, gone for an hour and a half, still staining this last patch with its light. Then my turn to be startled – so absorbed in the night sky, almost under my feet, the sound of an animal approaching. A dog? No, fox! Even in this dim light I can see his outline a few yards away, his back arched, tensed, utterly still, watching me. I freeze, not wanting to scare him. Seconds pass, both of us holding our breath, and then he retreats, back the way he came, pausing at one moment, to glance back and check that I’m not following. From nowhere Speer suddenly in my mind again. Walking in the Spandau garden. Walking round the world in his mind. For a man fatally lacking in imagination an inexplicable thing, something like that. Escaping from a shipwrecked life. Survivor of a disaster. A single farm building. One light on downstairs. Box files on the windowsill. Cavernous blackness of the barn next door. A few months ago I saw them harvesting here in the last of the late-summer light. In fact the combine followed me back, but on the other side of the hedge, its lights illuminating the same road I’m walking now, but in the opposite direction.
Thoughts come at times like these. And memories. They come in multitudes, leaping through the mind like young deer. The yearning not to go to bed as a child, when there was still light in the sky. Day not over. Hearing voices from outside, coming up to our bedroom, deeper my father, laughter my mother. Not yet. Day not over yet. Thinking of that now, it seems like an instinctive, child’s pre-sentiment of death. Putting off death. There’s still some silver-grey in the sky. Not yet. Day not over. This road too. Walking westwards into the night, the last gasp of light. Urge to keep walking, postponing the going back to the inside world, the static staleness of a house at night. Here movement still unfolding, no end. The road now cresting the ridge, the place, always breathtaking, where both seas can be seen.
Wilder to the south, only the lighthouse on the distant island. A curious red glow, I count the seven-and-a-half-second interval between the flashes – one-and two-and three-and four-and five-and six-and seven – and the red comes again. To the north, momentarily I cannot distinguish between the distant lights of the villages fifteen, twenty miles across the bay and the lights of the ships in the sea. Then it becomes clearer: the villages are tiny beads of whitest light; the ships have yellower lights, warmer. This island people. Defended. Yet also the astounding violence of the British through the centuries. Empire violence, now violence of a different kind. More refined, by laptop and algorithm. The impacts felt far away from here. The wind has dropped. My feet are in a trance, carrying me along now. If the sea wasn’t there I’d just keep walking into the west. Shooting star! At the very edge of my vision, but still absurdly miraculous. Not as flamboyant as the August ones, but lovelier in its March loneliness. Behind me now as I turn around, a stream of moon on the black road picking out puddles as silver plates. Pause to look back. The faintest sodium glow of the only town anywhere near here, twenty miles or so to the east. London impossibly far away. My other life away. What was it just then? Something on the very periphery of thought. An idea that connects with … ? No. It’s gone. Maybe it will return with walking. This stretch of road, it was here, that moment listening to Patti Smith in the car. Utterly transported by ‘Wing’ – deep and celestial in the same voice. Feathers and lead together. How Blake would have connected with that. Almost back now. One more curve. Hedge carved so patiently by the work of the wind there. Life’s work. Oh yes, that’s it, I remember now. Books get finished when their authors grow tired of talking about them. Something like that…