Finding Camlann (15 page)

Must wane, and fade, ’tis gone at last.

Something of John Ansell’s mournful valediction stays with Donald as he heads back through the lych-gate and on down a long grassy slope towards the top of Glebe Cliff. There he sits for a while on a rock near the cliff’s edge, close-cropped turf beneath his feet, wind and sea enclosing him in walls of rushing sound. The sky has cleared from the west, bringing to the foam-flecked sea a dark steely hue that calls to mind the grim depths of the cold ocean. Feeling suddenly nervous, he looks at his watch. It is much later than he thought. He gets to his feet, makes his way back along the clifftop into the teeth of the rising gale.

It is only a short drive from Tintagel village to a place called Rocky Valley where a rough driveway descends steeply from the road towards a narrow, heavily wooded ravine still showing a long sweep of autumn leaves in shades of red and yellow and russet-brown. At the end of the track is a solid grey stone building next to a stream running vigorously down through the trees. Once a functioning water-mill, the building has long since been converted into a substantial guest-house. Mrs. Ennor Carwyn, the owner of this establishment, comes to meet him at the door. She is an unsmiling woman with dark watchful eyes, grey hair drawn back from her face and tied in a narrow braid at the back.

‘We’re glad to have you back, Dr. Gladstone.’ She speaks guardedly, as if he should be careful not to make [ no="justify"too much of her familiarity.

Having stayed at Trevethey Mill on two previous visits to Cornwall, Donald knows a little of its history. The oldest parts of the building date back to 1472, and the mill has been in the Carwyn family for at least four hundred years. There is something here of Cold Comfort Farm, an eccentric edge to the place that he finds obscurely pleasing, never a trace of sycophancy or misplaced courtesy. He also has hopes of avoiding the symposium attendees, who are more likely to put up at the conference hotel down in Tintagel village.

‘Dinner is at seven,’ Mrs. Carwyn says. ‘Will it be just yourself?’

‘I’m expecting a colleague, Julia Llewellyn. Has she checked in yet, by any chance?’

Now there is a fleeting curious look in the landlady’s eye. ‘No, she has not. I’ll be glad to let you know when she does.’

Donald writes Julia a note, proposing a short walk along the Rocky Valley to the sea, then goes to his room and lies down for just a moment on the bed. He closes his eyes, falls into a fitful sleep in which he is tumbling in slow motion from a precipice, watching curiously as the tumultuous, wave-torn seashore rises to meet him.

When the knock comes at the door, he is saved from a certain death on the sharp-edged rocks. ‘Dr. Gladstone? Your colleague is downstairs.’ It is Mrs. Carwyn’s voice. ‘She said you had suggested going for a walk. Shall I ask her to wait for you?’

He looks at his watch, forces his brain to comprehend the orientation of the hands. Quarter-past six. Half-past three. Half an hour late. He jumps to his feet, calls back through the door. ‘Yes, please ask her to wait. I’ll need just a couple of minutes.’

There is a wash-basin in the corner with two thin towels and a small mirror hanging on the wall above. Donald splashes water on his face, hurriedly brushes his teeth, throws more water on to his bed-spiked hair. He digs clean clothes out of his bag, tossing aside books, a crumpled newspaper, assorted Ordnance Survey maps. When he looks in the mirror, he sees dark rings beneath his eyes, the beginnings of a reddish stubble on his chin. The frown-lines between his eyebrows seem more than usually pronounced. He takes a deep breath, lets it out again, more slowly; then picks up his jacket from the bed and makes his way downstairs.

Julia is sitting next to the reception desk in an upright wooden chair, radiant and smiling, as if some secret is about to be shared. ‘I almost went without you,’ she says.

‘Sorry about that. I was dreaming of falling off a cliff.’

They head out of the back door of the mill to a bridge across the stream that hurries noisily down the narrow wooded valley towards the sea. Once they are in the trees, the sound of the wind in the branches seems to merge with the rushing of the water, the late-afternoon sunlight dappling the woodland floor in a bright shifting pattern of light and shade. Donald has an almost surreal sense of having stepped outside the ordinary world, of sharing this space with Julia alone. As he leads the way down the narrow winding path, he feels a strong urge to reach out and take her by the hand.

Soon enough, they are out of the trees again and climbing on to a craggy outcrop that offers a view down the valley to the place where the stream battles out to meet the ocean. They stand there for a while looking out at the Atlantic now in the full flood of high tide with the breakers crashing against the seaward rocks.

‘How’s the book coming along [ co br?’ Julia says, raising her voice above the booming of the surf.

‘Slowly, as usual.’ Donald smiles in an offhanded way. Significant phrases from Felicity’s letter are etched into his memory. ‘I went to see Caradoc Bowen, by the way.’

Something in Julia’s expression makes him regret having raised this subject. ‘I didn’t think you would go,’ she says. ‘What did you make of him?’

‘He’s quite a character, very clever and a little eccentric. More or less as I expected, really.’

‘It sounds as if you took a liking to him.’

‘Yes, in a way I suppose I did.’

Julia turns away, scuffs at the loose rock with the toe of her boot. She bends down to pick up a tiny white cockle shell, turns it over in the palm of her hand. ‘What did he have to say about Devil’s Barrow?’

‘I’m afraid he didn’t think much of the idea that there might be a connection to the Song of Lailoken. He thought the parallels were no more than coincidental. But you said you had a new idea about the poem?’

‘I’ll tell you about it later, OK?’

They walk back mostly in silence to Trevethey Mill, Julia apparently lost deep in thought, Donald meanwhile trying to decipher the conversation they have just had. She stops at the bridge over the stream, within sight of the mill, turns to him with not a hint that anything is amiss.

‘What will you do tonight?’ she says.

‘There’s a group reception down at the conference hotel in Tintagel, but I wasn’t planning to go to it.’ Donald would rather be struck dead by a thunderbolt than be forced to endure Lucy this evening, least of all in Julia’s company. He recites a silent prayer. ‘I was thinking we could have dinner here instead?’

THE OLD WOODEN
stairs creak unpredictably beneath Julia’s heels as she makes her way down from the top floor. She has dressed with particular care, well enough to feel good about herself but without going too far. Persistent, awkward questions keep whispering themselves to her, but she leaves them unanswered as she comes expectantly down the last flight to the reception. Donald is waiting for her there, freshly scrubbed and very good-looking, it seems to her, in a shirt with a fraying collar and a well-worn pair of jeans.

‘I have something for you,’ she says, handing him a faded old foolscap envelope she has brought down with her. ‘I found it in a box of old things my mother sent, and it made me think of you.’

Donald opens the envelope, takes out a finely rendered pencil sketch of a dramatic tilted cliff-face set in a rugged Welsh landscape.
Craig-y-Ddinas
, the caption reads. ‘For me to keep?’

‘Yes, I’d like you to have it,’ Julia says. ‘Arthur and his knights are sleeping in a cave underneath that cliff. That’s what my father told me, anyway.’

He seems surprised, but genuinely pleased. ‘I’ll hang it above my desk, for inspiration.’

Mrs. Carwyn has meanwhile reappeared at the reception desk. ‘It’s French beef casserole, if that will suit?’ She ushers them into a broad [ inas me open space with chipped old flagstones underfoot, the original working heart of the mill. Except for a young couple in the far corner speaking together in hushed, self-absorbed tones, they have the place to themselves. They sit down at a wooden trestle table next to a row of old millstones standing propped up against the wall.

‘The main course will be fifteen minutes,’ the landlady says. ‘I’ll bring you some wine to start with.’ She soon returns with a modest bottle of Côtes du Rhône, pours about half of it into two large glasses. ‘There’s bread here too, if you like,’ she says, leaving them with an entire loaf on a board at the end of the table.

‘Well, cheers,’ Donald says, lifting his glass.

‘Here’s to Cornish hospitality.’ Julia takes a long sip of wine. ‘I’m sorry about this afternoon, by the way. I was a little grumpy with you.’

‘I didn’t notice,’ Donald says, and she finds herself liking the look on his face, the irony perfectly outbalancing the earnestness. ‘Did I say something wrong, though?’

‘No, it wasn’t your fault. When you mentioned your meeting with Bowen, it brought back some bad memories, that’s all.’ Julia has an urge to tell Donald everything, to explain to him the corrosive effect that Caradoc Bowen is still having on her marriage, fourteen years after she last set eyes on him. But this is not a conversation she is ready to have with him. ‘Why don’t you tell me what to expect at the symposium tomorrow?’

Donald leans back in his chair, wine glass in hand. ‘Honestly,’ he says, ‘I’m worried you might find it very boring. You’ll witness a roomful of scruffy archaeologists debating over dislocated skeletons. Maybe a few arguments about the colour and consistency of certain kinds of mud.’

‘It sounds perfect,’ she says. Listening to Donald talk in his wry, self-deprecating way, Julia feels a surge of affection for him. She tries to imagine how she would paint his picture, something solid and strong but full of a subtle kind of light, deeply rooted to the earth, like a spreading oak tree in a forest clearing.

‘By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask you, how does someone get to work for the OED?’

‘By answering an advertisement in the
Oxford Mail
.’

‘Lexicographers wanted?’

‘Something like that. They happened to be looking for someone who could speak Welsh, and I was the only applicant with a master’s degree in the Brythonic languages.’

‘How did your father feel about your new job?’

It is a curious thing for him to say, but it seems to Julia that this is just the right question to ask. ‘The true Welsh patriot whose daughter runs off to the heart of the Saxon kingdom to make a perfect record of the English language? He didn’t much like the idea at first, in fact he didn’t like me going away at all. But he’s come around since then, I think.’

She remembers well the day she announced boldly to her father that she had turned down good offers from the Welsh university colleges, that she planned to go to Oxford instead. He explained to her in his ironic, lilting way that the inflated, bombastic old boys’ club of Oxford and Cambridge was nothing more than a kindergarten for the inflated, bombastic, rapacious British government. The English government, [h gons. May he would have called it, nothing British about it at all. She smiles at the memory of his smoke-hoarsened tones attacking the Anglo-Saxon establishment, extolling the virtues of Welsh independence and fresh mountain air.

‘Do you get back there much, to visit your parents?’ Donald says.

‘Yes, as often as I can.’ Julia drinks more of her wine, feels the mellowness flowing through her. ‘There’s not much there except for hills and grass and old stone walls, but it’s still home for me. I love waking up on a spring morning and hearing nothing but the bleating of lambs and the breeze along the valley. I need to get back up there soon.’

‘You seem a little bit sad about it.’

‘Yes, I suppose that’s true.’ This simple statement disguises the complexity of what she feels, her guilt at not having spoken to her father, her resentment at Hugh for all the time he spends at Ty Faenor, just along the valley from Dyffryn Farm. With the flexibility of his property work in Oxford, he has made a habit of taking himself off to his Welsh refuge as often as he likes, usually at some erratic time during the week rather than waiting for a weekend when they might go together. There is always a vague but reasonable explanation, a new farm-hand to interview, an important project to manage on the estate.

‘Do you want to tell me your idea?’ Donald says. ‘About the poem?’

‘Yes, if you like.’ Julia breaks off a small piece of bread but does not eat it, leaves it on the edge of her plate. She is nervous now, the words coming out in an anxious rush. ‘I think Caradoc Bowen made a mistake when he translated the Song of Lailoken. Where he has
the crooked vale where the three rivers fall
, I think it should read
the crooked vale with three waterfalls
. It’s a more lyrical and archaic translation of the Middle Welsh
llifeiriant
, which would be appropriate to the overall construction of the poem. He was looking for rivers, when he should have been looking for waterfalls.’

Donald adds half an inch of wine to both their glasses. ‘I hate to mention this, but do you think it’s likely Bowen would have made a mistake like that?’