Everyman's England (15 page)

CHAPTER 16

I was turning out an old cupboard when I came across the map. Turning out cupboards is a leisurely, fascinating occupation. I always carefully lock the room door before I begin, as I cannot bear to be interrupted in my pleasure. I never cease to be surprised at the odd collection which accumulates. Tattered exercise books come to light, containing cryptic notes which I puzzle over and have to give up. When the notes are in shorthand I am likely to become bad-tempered, for my style is not Pitman's so much as Canning's and is more an exercise in mnemonics than systematic shorthand. The map came to light from the heart of a bundle of old bills, a photograph of a litter of bull terrier pups and a catalogue of a past motor car show at Olympia whose pages were being used for the pressing of flowers. A stem of dried bugle, brown and crisp, fell from the catalogue and as I bent to retrieve it I saw the map. I forgot the bugle and took up the map.

It was an ordinary Ordnance Survey sheet. The covers were frayed and bent and the picture which had once graced the front cover had lost all its colour to a dark brown stain. I remembered that stain at once, and with the memory came a hundred others of a springtime when I had been able to forget work and all the cares which sit so heavily upon a young man who persists in taking himself seriously.

I stretched myself on the floor and smoothed the map out before me. Are there any colours in the world more vivid than the blue, green and browns of an Ordnance Survey map? The tortuous accuracy of contours, the black huddles which are towns and the grey markings that may mean anything from a gravel pit to a sand dune, the red and yellow wriggling of roads and the blue tracery of rivers… here is a language which goes right to the heart. It took me away from the room to the bar of an inn at Porlock on a hot, sunny morning. Flies were buzzing against the window-panes and through the open doorway came the dry smell of dust and the noise of passing traffic. A fat man leaned against the bar with a giant tankard of beer before him, a tankard so large that it made me feel ashamed of my modest glass.

‘Going walking?' he asked, seeing the pack by my side. I nodded. ‘Proper craze for that kind of thing these days. I had a couple of young fellows come to me the other night and ask if they could put up their tent in one of my fields. I told 'un that they were welcome to sleep in the barn if they liked. T'would have been more comfortable on the hay in there; but blame me if they didn't say they preferred to sleep in their tent. Some folks is funny.'

I gathered that he included me in this last category, but I did not mind. I was at peace with the world.

I took up my pack and with a nod to the farmer left the inn. Outside the air was full of life and colour. The fruit trees were in blossom and there was a heavy scent of may coming from some tree hidden in a garden. A cottage garden I passed was smothered by a glorious blaze of wallflowers, their rich, heavy scent burdening the air.

I left the town by a small footpath that ran alongside the church and struck away up a rutted lane towards Horner water. The hedges were thick with ivy and young leaf, and into the tiny runnel of water at the side of the road the stitch-wort was dropping its white petals. Going up Horner water I disturbed a hen from the bank and found a nest with two eggs in it. I wondered if the cottager knew of his hen's truancy and then took the eggs and left fourpence in the nest. If the money did not console the hen it would compensate the cottager if he were watching the nest. That was not the only nest I found in Horner. There was a wren's nest tucked away at the base of an oak tree. The bird sat determinedly on her eggs until I could have stroked her head. When she did fly off and let me see the eggs she kept up a constant scolding from the branches of the oak. I left the wren to her eggs and went on up the valley. The steep slopes were covered with oaks and the litter of dead bracken. Here and there were new fronds of bracken breaking through the brown earth, their tops curled over like the tips of shepherds' crooks.

On the map a footpath was shown leading up from the left of the valley, across Cloutsham Ball and on to Dunkery. I found the footpath and very quickly lost it. I did not care. All the day was mine and I could see the great dome of Dunkery hanging high in the sky before me.

I climbed out of the valley and into the dead bracken and heather. From the valley behind me a cuckoo called incessantly, and I met no one all the way to Dunkery except a schoolboy carrying a specimen-tin, who asked me the time. I told him, noted the faintly-concealed surprise on his face, and long afterwards, as I sat sucking my eggs on Dunkery and watching the silver glitter of the sea where the Bristol Channel lost itself in the haze about the Welsh coast, I discovered that my watch had stopped early that morning. For the rest of the walk it remained silent and still.

I do not know what there is about Exmoor that is more satisfying than Dartmoor. Perhaps it is that Exmoor is richer and has more life. The hills are gently rounded until they fall to the deep valleys and then the slopes are almost precipitous. Nowhere is the eye brought to rest with a jerk and everywhere it is pleased by a succession of royal and soothing colours, the brown sweep of dead bracken, the growing purple of the heather, the sheen of the sea beyond the hills and the yellow-green oak masses in the valleys.

Beneath the heather was the bright green of the whortleberries. Whortleberries are the walker's greatest enemy. In the autumn it is impossible, for me at least, to walk far; the temptation to lie down in a patch and laze away the hours looking at the sky while a hand moves over the shrubs picking off the berries and carrying them to a never-satisfied mouth is too strong. In Devon this sin can be indulged, though more rarely, when the wild strawberries are in fruit.

I was reluctant to leave Dunkery. I did not want to lose my feeling of exultancy, to pass from the region of the winds that came straight in from the sea, so that I could smell the salt in the air, and to give up my view… but I had to move on.

I found an old cart track and began the long dip down into Exford. On the way I put up a stag and two hinds. They were not very startled and bounded away for a time and then circled to windward of me and stood, their heads in the air, sniffing the wind and eyeing me curiously. Dartmoor has no wild life to compare with the red deer of Exmoor. That is Exmoor's glory, though some might consider it her shame, since the deer are preserved to be hunted. Whatever one's opinion of the ethics of hunting, it is useless to deny that the hunting of deer has so far prevented them from complete extermination in England. Yet I feel that the deer might equally well have been preserved by more humane methods. From a humanitarian point of view, hunting is a barbarous sport which can give enjoyment only to those people who wish to exercise those primitive instincts which were only excusable in our dim forefathers, since they had need to hunt in order to eat. Such desires should be repressed in a nation which likes to call itself civilised and has no need to hunt for food. It is logical, however, to assume that a certain amount of cruelty must always exist in the world to give force to virtue, and whatever one may say about civilised man, there is no denying the spiritual exhilaration which is roused in mankind by the moving pageantry of the hunt and the wild clamour of hounds. You may hate all blood sports, yet the sight of a pack in full cry across open country touches something too deep within one to be analysed, in the same way as the blare of trumpets and the steady rhythm of a marching regiment has surprised more than one pacifist into cheers. Until mankind has learned to be critically aware of its early social history and has gained the ability to control the predatory atavism which lies so near the surface of its stream of desires, we shall always have hunting and fighting.

Exford is a sleepy little village; it is not big enough to be called a town. Its whitewashed houses and hotels stand in the valley about the river. I had tea at the White Horse. The room was hung with Cecil Aldin drawings of hunting scenes and there was a smell of horses and riding boots to remind me that I was in the heart of the hunting country. The waiter who served me looked very sorry in his dress suit and was probably, I thought, longing to take it off and get out into the sun.

From Exford I took the road along the skirt of the moor to Simonsbath. Halfway along the road the map marked the Red Deer Hotel, and I planned to make a stop there and refresh myself before going on to Simonsbath. It was still hot and the road was uphill for a good way. I walked, thinking of the long cooling drink which should be mine at the Red Deer Hotel. The tantalising vision danced before me in the sun-motes and spurred me on. I was due for a disappointment. When I got to the hotel, I found only a dark-looking farmhouse, surrounded by a few beech and fir trees. There was no drink for me there of the kind I had imagined. I decided that a glass of water would be welcome, and knocked at the door. But it was a house of the dead. The sound of my knocking echoed hollowly through the house and suddenly, in the bright sunshine, I was afraid and my mind rioted with thoughts of plague and sunstroke, of farmers running amok and killing their children and wives. I left the house and got back on to the road again, telling myself that the family had probably gone into Taunton for the day.

I hurried on to the security and companionship of the inn at Simonsbath. The village lies right down in a dip of the hills, surrounded by trees and serenaded by the noise of the rushing Barle. All along the inland border of Exmoor the wild moor is fighting with man. In some places the fields reach up into the moor territory, and, more often, long peninsulas of the moor sweep down into the valleys, forbidding agriculture and defying man. At Simonsbath, there is a truce for a while and the woods and river make a peaceful haven where meadows spread their green and houses stand securely with their backs to the moor and their windows looking over the fields.

It was in the hotel bar at Simonsbath that I got the stain on my map. An almost toothless labourer was telling of the destructive, wanton habits of the deer, how they came from the moor at night and trampled down the peas in the gardens, spoiling what they could not eat. The night before I arrived a stag had got into his turnip field and had eaten a few turnips, and then gone systematically along some of the rows, catching the turnips by their long leaves and tossing them from the ground in play. The old man described this tossing motion.

‘Ay, wicked as young boys, they be. A-tossin' and throwin' of the turnups over their 'eads-like this!' His head dipped and his arms flayed the air and my glass of beer was knocked over on to the map. The catastrophe stilled him and he looked at me sorrowfully.

‘What a wicked sight. It doan't do to waste beer,' and he was trying to mop the stuff off the table and my map, but the stain would not be removed.

From Simonsbath I went up the valley of the Bade towards Challacombe. It was late now, the sun had dropped over the far edge of the moor and the sky was a pearl-grey. That valley, to me, seemed the loneliest and loveliest in England. It was wild, open and alive with the movement of birds. I walked on contentedly smoking and entirely alone. The only house I saw was at Hearlake, where a cottage fronted the road, and where a small girl held me to ransom for a penny, which had to be paid before she would open the gate across the road and let me through.

In the meadows by the river grew patches of marsh grass. Now and then a bat would come flittering from the sky to brush close to me and from the moor a corncrake called once and was silent. The mystery of the moor and the river closed in around me and I was filled with that trembling, delightful fear which comes to you when you are alone and far from houses and people. Had I been sensible, I should have turned back to Simonsbath and spent the night there. I kept on towards Challacombe, and before long I knew I should never reach it that night. I had walked a long way, the great gusts of fresh air were making me sleepy, my legs suddenly began to rebel and the pack on my back grew heavier with each step. The map showed no place to bed in before Challacombe, and I decided that I would sleep out.

It was a warm night, there would be no rain, and a tiny slip of a moon was coming up behind me. Once before I had slept out without cover. That had been between Salisbury and Bournemouth when I was cycling and found myself – through the grace of a hole in my pockets – without the money for a night's lodgings. It had been an unpleasant night, surprising me at three o'clock with a sharp frost against which the warmth of my bicycle lamp did not avail.

Now I decided to sleep out because I was tired and did not want to go any farther. I slept that night with my head in Somerset and my body in Devonshire, for the boundary line, I found from the map, ran across the ditch in the lee of the hedge which sheltered me.

I pulled long grasses and dead bracken and filled the ditch with a soft mass to sleep upon. I stuffed my pack with grass to make a pillow, took off my shoes and wrapped my feet in a sweater and then pulled my raincoat over me. I lay as comfortably as I might have done upon a feather bed. Away to the right was the road and between it and me was a small spring that flowed into a stream that meandered through a deep tree-lined cut towards Challacombe. I could hear the noise of the stream and the calling of peewits from the moor behind me. A spider crawled over my face and inspected my eyelids until I blew it away and, as I lay quietly on my bracken, a young rabbit came out into the moonlight and sat up as though it were imitating a Chinese Buddha. I fell asleep looking at the rabbit.