Shadows falling and I’d been walking all day. Cold without a jacket and the hours ticking away.
At the Boscastle roundabout, I finally turned off, directed inland by the famous black iron sign. Pausing, I bid goodbye to the silver sliver of Atlantic pinched at the bottleneck of the plunging high street. Budget tourists slid past from out-of-town B&Bs to dine between those harbour lights, while I trudged on.
Last stage of the pilgrimage, if that’s what we’re calling it. A French dad in an air-blue linen jacket paused to frown at the booze bag swinging from my fingers and tightened a grip around his daughter’s shoulders. To complete the season’s look, I was wearing only one shoe. The other was lost a while back, sucked clean off my foot by a roadside bog somewhere near St. Teath.
I switched the Co-Op bag to my right fist, but the plastic handles were cheese-wire taut from the sun and the weight of the wine, although there was considerably less of both by this stage.
On footpath now through long grass into the Valency Valley, the Atlantic dropping to darkness on my left. My left foot sopped with dew, but was at least bathed of muck and grit. I squeezed through a kissing gate, followed the hedge past another sign to St Julieta’s church. That’s funny. Change in spelling from the Boscastle roundabout, Julieta not Juliot. Huh. Quite the difference in connotations. Make your mind up, Cornish Tourist Board. Sexy Latin siren-saint or spotty public-school fag? Must be one and the same. How many churches did the Elders manage to squeeze into this little heathen nook?
An old-fashioned pan-and-scan of my surroundings revealed the answer: thirteen towers through the treetops.
Oh well. There was only one church in the direction I was heading. Except much longer, and there wouldn’t be enough light to read the actual sign. The air was already eighty per cent bat.
I closed a stile, cleaved to the hedge past a gateway to another stile in the far corner of a marshy field – lot of stiles, just saying – by a stream. If you follow the stream, you will get to the sea. A song-line floated into my head but puffed apart on the breeze like a dandelion head. I didn’t want to get to the sea; I’d just come from the damned sea. A little panic rose. Comforting, in a way. To still be able to feel.
Maybe I was lost. Maybe this was where we got lost last time. Except I could still make out St Julieta’s tower with my own eyes (just). Unless it’s Juliot. Over one more stile, bore left up the stone steps towards the jagged wall, stopped and admired the round Celtic wayside cross. In the old days (God, back at the blackboard, must be all that talk of Juliot, not that any of his sort ever got relegated to where I taught), the Ancients put these waysides up in worship to the sun. All the Christians had to do when they arrived was lengthen the vertical bar and, hey presto, instant-crucifix-and-deity-conversion-job, grafting their fairy tales onto Celtic practicalities. But I might just be making that up.
This church was so famous, it evidently didn’t need a sign. Actually, was it even a church? More of a castle really, turrets and a flagpole. No bats in these belfries. Although there were plenty of bats.
Walking round, behind the tower, the building revealed two adjoining barn-like structures – Churches don’t have barns, Mr. Reilly! / So what would you call it, boy? / A chapel, sir / Alright then, have it your way. The building revealed two low chapels behind the tower, or perhaps together they made up one chapel… Now see what’s happened… I’ve lost my train of thought. The point is, the point is, behind the building, there was a tumbling hillock with graves and tombstones and everything, so it was a church after all. Or a chapel.
I found what I was looking for in the plaque by a stained glass window:
THOMAS HARDY
AUTHOR OF MANY WORKS IN VERSE
& PROSE & IN EARLY LFE AN ARCHITECT
MADE DRAWINGS IN MARCH 1870 OF
THIS CHURCH IN ITS ANCIENT STATE &
LATER FOR THE ALTERATIONS &
REPAIRS EXECUTED IN 1871 2 WHICH HE
ASSISTED TO SUPERVISE. HE DIED 1928
& IS BURIED IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.
ERRECTED 1928 AS A RECORD OF HIS ASSOCIATION
WITH THE CHURCH & NEIGHBOURHOOD
I had found it : Thomas Hardy’s Church.
What the plaque didn’t mention was that while walking nearby on 3 March 1870, the young architect-come-writer met the true love of his life, who was living at the nearby rectory with her sister, the vicar’s wife. Hardy and Emma Gifford began courting and married in London four years later. But their relationship soured with Emma’s illness. When Emma died in 1912, a guilt-stricken Hardy wrote several poems in her memory, most famously, The Voice, in which he remembers their first meeting and thinks he hears his sweetheart calling out across the wind.
Not sure what to make of the grammar in the line about ‘repairs executed in 1871 2 which he assisted’ though.
2 which he assisted ?
Church and Neighbourhood Associations of 1928 do a lot of texting while huddled round the wireless?
But let’s not lose sight of the bigger picture: I was here. I had arrived.
Back in 2002, Zoe and I ‘enjoyed’ our first holiday together in Cornwall, between Redruth and Roseland, as a test-run to see how we travelled before committing money overseas. We spent an afternoon trying to find this sacred spot – I’m sure I called it St. Juliot’s then, which couldn’t have helped. Back then, pre-smart phone and Satnavs, all we had to guide us was a map, which Zoe agonised over from the passenger seat. Surely she wasn’t too scared of me to point out a St. Julieta if she’d seen one, especially if it was in the same grid reference square. We must have circled the area a dozen times in failing light before giving up. Famished, we next failed to find anywhere decent to eat, eventually settling on fish and chips, since we were by the sea. When in Roseland and all that. Of course every decent gourmet chippie had queues stretching round the block, but we managed to spot a Chinese one, half-empty. After I hot-footed it back with two vinegar and soy sauce soaked parcels (my mistake), Zoe suggested we (I) drive to a nice spot to eat. So, back in the car, parcels unwrapped, we began the day’s third unsuccessful mission. After about ten minutes the fuel gauge dipped into the red zone, so it was all eyes out for an Esso sign. We found one, eventually, and pulled in. With the tank full, my own stomach could wait no longer, and I insisted we ate before the food got any colder. Zoe refused to countenance such a dingy petrol station forecourt (it was actually well lit, as I’m sure I pointed out), but I was delirious and held firm. As I tore open my parcel, Zoe climbed out the passenger door, barrelled up to the paper-towel bin between the pumps, and dumped her entire cod-and-chips inside. We drove back to the chalet in silence. I slept an uneasy night on the pull-out sofa. The next morning we packed up and came back to Brighton early. Two days later, Zoe called to tell me she was pregnant with the zygote that would become better known as our daughter Daisy. End of flashback.
Leaning against the suspiciously anachronistic Hardy plaque (seriously, what did I suspect, some kind of conspiracy to make me believe text-talk existed in the dim days of Downton Abbey?), I grasped the neck of the Co-Op Sauvignon Blanc and let the empty bag flutter to the floor. Except, since it wasn’t empty, it thudded more than fluttered. My own first-generation Nokia shitbrick was inside, still sealed in the little transparent pouch they gave me at Wademouth police station. Snap-Shut or Fast-Tight bag, something like that. I sagged down the wall and fumbled it unexamined into my hip pocket.
In a heap, I unscrewed the bottle, raised the neck to my lips and said ‘Here’s looking at you, kid’ as if chomping on a cigar. Glugged the last fifth down my gullet hole. Tossed the bottle over my shoulder. It broke against the wall. Bits of glass rained down at my side.
‘I hereby christen this budget Barbie camper…’ but I couldn’t remember the rest. How stupid. Zoe’s favourite film.
I wasn’t drunk enough to lapse into unconsciousness against the church wall and piss myself, although the night was still young. Which meant I had to find somewhere else to sleep. Or something else to drink, whichever came first. Since I had no cash and four rejected credit cards to my name, we were basically looking at liberating property from the bourgeoisie.
Heaving myself up, I tottered off towards the small cottage that had materialised Brigadoon-like out of the dusk. It was surrounded by purple bushes and shrubby trees that were suddenly lit up by the headlights of an approaching vehicle. I ducked down beside a post in the hedgerow and watched a Jeep crush gravel as it came to a halt in front of the cottage porch. After an eternity in which I dozed off and snapped awake like a heart attack, a large elderly woman clambered stiffly out from behind the Jeep’s wheel and tucked a small Tuppaware box inside her handbag. (Zip-Lock bag!). An older man emerged from the other door, opened up boot and trundled stoop-shouldered after his wife to the cottage entrance, suitcase in tow. I looked up at the post above the hedgerow, the sign that inevitably announced ‘The Old Rectory, St. Juliot’.
Howzat ! The Schroedinger’s Cat of the Cornwall tourist trail, existing as both Juliot and Julieta in the same space-time continuum. Must have fooled the Japs. Not to mention the Reillys. Of course, Emma Hardy’s sister’s husband’s rectory was now a five-star B&B, serving fully organic local produce. You only put up a sign these days if there’s a silver pound to be had. I decided to leave the cottage-dwellers in peace, no practical in Marxism 101 for them tonight.
I traipsed away downhill towards the distant roar of the waves. Now the sun had almost set, the sky was somehow lighter above the sea, and I waded through wild flowers, reciting poetry to keep other thoughts at bay-
Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness
Travelling across the wet mead to me here,
You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,
Heard no more again far or near?
– but Hardy was the only thing to came to mind, and he really wasn’t helping.
My right foot was now as soaked as the left. When I lifted and looked, it too was bare. Finally the other shoe had dropped, lost to the wildflowers. I swept a wide circumference on my hands and knees, unearthing only a semi-hardened cow pat. So. The pilgrim continued barefoot, as was his want. Or his wont. I remembered one of those The-Financial-Crash-For-The-Dummies-Most-Affected-By-It documentaries a few years back, first hearing the term Barefoot Pilgrim. Someone who’s lost everything, right down to his shoes, because of poor investment choices.
I went back to quoting Hardy, something-something on a slope few see, falling westwardly where the ocean breaks dooby-doo the purple strand. The grass became sparse until I was walking on stone and then I was being buffeted and blown at the top of a seven-hundred foot cliff, the long black Atlantic idling before me. A rock rose from the jagged beach like a leviathan, white foam heaving back down into the waves. In the lull between crashes, I heard a woman’s voice calling out to me, emanating from my own groin. Fingers found the bag in my trouser pocket and pulled it out. Inside the Zip-Lock, the shitbrick screen was glowing green. Still sheathed, I lifted it to my ear.
‘Sir ? Sir ?’
‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Daisy ?’
‘My name is Marie Streep, sir,’ said the woman, and who was I to argue, except her English was heavily accented and I could hear an Indian man shouting in the background.
‘I’m not selling you anything, sir, but instead I would like to give you something worth between £3,000 and £4,000, completely free of charge. Should I continue?’ I said nothing. Marie Streep consulted her script. ‘Do you have central heating, sir? May I ask how old your boiler is? The average UK boiler is 25 years old and not fuel efficient – ’
Rearing back onto my heels, I swung my elbow behind my ear, leant forward, straightened my knee and launched Marie Streep off the cliff top. The shitbrick arced out into salt-edged air, then dropped. I leant forward, waiting for the splash.
Could it still be falling?