As I stepped out through the back door into my garden, I was greeted by an unseasonal flurry of white.
“You might want to check your border there” my neighbour Lynne called over the garden wall. “A bird’s just been taken”.
The neighbour’s privet overhangs the wall, and thrums throughout the summer with the fuss and chatter of sparrows, warblers and whitethroats, especially on our side, which I often leave in a slightly unruly state purely to attract the little birds and their evening music. Tonight, the chorus would be one voice lighter.
I never saw the killer, but the sparrow hawk suddenly burst back into my mind, resurrected by Lynne’s words to shred that fine line between memory and actuality with renewed purpose, as I pictured it swooping low and clamping onto its victim. Only a week previously, those piercing gold eyes had fixed upon me, running me through over and over. I stumbled on it by fluke, ambling through the back door with a cup of tea. My clumsy, surprised gawp followed its own unmoving, awkward line while the sparrow hawk never stopped moving, fending my gaze with constant small, sharp adjustments of its head, much like an experienced fencer flicking the wrist almost imperceptibly to throw their opponent off balance and score a hit time and time again.
Aside from its head, everything else remained stock still, the inverted V of the shed roof inert like a downed thrush beneath its talons, the garden neatly halving itself along the raptor’s razor-line of sight. Then, with casual disdain it tore itself loose, took to the air and shook of the earth, leaving me static in its slipstream. In no time it was just a speck moving away over the hills from which it had likely come.
There were a few tiny spots of blood spattered across the leaves of the fuchsia, but no more. I started a quick search, scrabbling with my fingertips, riffling through the lavender and rooting about beneath the roses, but too late. All the fuss had attracted the attentions of Elle.
“What are you looking for, Daddy?” she asked, as I searched. What could I say? Here I was, desperately trying to make sure that there was no evidence of the attack, trying, in my own fumbling way, to protect her by making sure that she didn’t stumble across some tiny ball of wreckage.
“Er…just checking for something, love” I replied, not convincing her in the slightest. Still I kept looking, wondering whether all this was actually for her benefit or for mine, and all the while those downy fathers kept
falling
falling
falling.
Come on, love. Let’s go and finish packing. Looking back over my shoulder, I guided her back inside as the last of the feathers settled to the ground.
Three hours and a few re-packed cases later, we were ready to go.
“Got everything? Phone? Wallet? Keys?”
“Yes, yes. Don’t fuss! I’ve got everything!” We bustled and chinked and thudded our way around the car, ensuring everything was packed away. After months of waiting, at the end of a long and very tiresome academic year, the summer break had finally arrived, yet even now, with our holiday within our grasp, leaving for Tenby was so typical of life – getting in the way, unwilling to release us into something simpler.
“Right. All ready? Let’s g…”
“Have you packed your fishing gear?”
“I…” quite clearly hadn’t packed the fishing gear, and quite clearly should have listened to my wife earlier, or so her look told me. Five minutes later, the rucksack, travel rod and collapsible sand spike were packed in the boot and we were finally ready.
Because my wife had been working until nine, we would be making the journey as the evening wore down. We hit the motorway as the gloaming began to envelop us, but despite the early advances of night there was an overwhelming sense of release in the car. The further west we travelled the less influence our daily lives seemed to exert. Everything began to thin out, from lights to buildings to people; the world was decluttering itself around us as we watched, driving further into, yet farther from, existence as we knew it.
Above the industrial skyline of my home town the sunsets are always fiery, decked out in their reds and oranges and yellows as though burning back at their setting, raging in response. But on our westward tack, there was none of this. We had cleared the established industrial borders of Port Talbot, Neath and Swansea and were greeted with a day ending in far more contemplative hues – blues, jades, greens, gently washing out like an ebbing tide retreating gently from tidal sand channels.
Driving west, moving away from the deeper influences of industry, the agricultural expanses of west Wales began to open up before us, the patchwork of rural villages dotting the landscape. Many of them were small, barely glimpsed in the distance or flashing here and there between trees and service stations, the presence of some of them given away only by a spire standing proud, as though marking where some great peg had been driven into the earth to prevent these little communities from flapping away.
*
Already, the day had become hot. Having arrived in a fluster of bags and bits and bobs, we had simply unloaded everything into my uncle’s caravan, grabbed a bite to eat and crashed out to sleep. Waking in a fug the morning after, we decided that the clothes could be taken care of at another point in the day, and so, after breakfast, decided to go in search of something a little more serene.
Come to a different world
said the placard on the harbour-side ticket booth,
An Island of Peace, Tranquillity and Unspoilt Natural Beauty.
The boat trip to the monastic island of Caldey seemed exactly what we were looking for, so we decided to set off in search of our own small portion. Following the minor stampede for the ticket queue, all those ready to take the boat over to the island were already on the beach. The next boat puttered up alongside the rickety wooden pontoon as we arrived and immediately we, a handful of the estimated sixty thousand tourists received by the island per year, began to clamber aboard.
“Ladies and Gentlemen…” blared the small speaker mounted at the rear of the cabin, “…the journey to the island should take around twenty minutes. We are fully equipped with lifebelts and maintain a constant link with the shore at all times.” It seemed that even now, the mainland was reluctant to let us go. Finally, the engine revved with more strength and the little boat tugged free, ploughing its tiny furrow out into the bay.
We hadn’t hit open water yet and already I was nervous.
“Be careful there, love”
“It’s okay dad, I’m fine!”
Elle carried on twisting and turning and doing her best to take everything in, and it was only with difficulty that I managed to tear my eyes away from her.
“She really will be fine you know,” Rachel mumbled. “Try to relax; you’ll give yourself an aneurism!”
To take my mind off the lingering presence of danger I began people-watching (and listening) to pass the short journey over to the island. At one extreme, the group of young people who clambered aboard in their green tee-shirts, the word CREW emblazoned across the back, staying true to the stereotype of impatient youth hired in as the part-time summer help, combining the tired or hung-over, head-in-hands semi-sleeping pose with text messaging, tales of last night’s antics and bass-heavy dance music thudding through their headphones.
This segued into all the usual touristy chatter about caravans, bed-and-breakfasts and the price of a meal, before faltering and coming to a tremulous slowness on one person. This teenaged youth – quiet, unassuming – sat talking to one of the older members of staff. It seemed that he was considering a monastic vocation and was visiting to stay with the monks in order to make a decision. Such quiet certainty and assuredness flashed across his face that, as we approached the island and I watched the seabirds flap and flail around us, I found myself somewhat envious – twice his age, and feeling as though I had less than half a clue as to how to go about life.
The day approached lunchtime and grew hot. The boats had been steadily disgorging day-trippers for two hours and the village green had become crowded, as had the usual destinations - the chocolate factory, the gift shops and the tearoom. For many, it seemed that the purpose of the island held no significance, so the churches remained quiet, even the Abbey church itself. Looking at the sign outside the door, it appeared that Sext was due to begin in twenty minutes, so we climbed the short staircase to the gallery and took a seat in the burgeoning silence.
Looking down, I was struck by the austerity of the place, although austerity seems to be rather a harsh noun with which to label the building’s simple, effective beauty, the same beauty that is to be found in a machine purely engineered and stripped back to its serious, and very specific, purpose. Every single plain line and quiet corner of the layout, each sparse element of decoration, bore plain testament to a long tradition of introspection. Like a blank page the bare walls and ever circling routines drive its inhabitants deeper and deeper into the experiences and truths of their lives on the island. Day after day the celebrants are greeted with a fresh balance sheet, a zeroed tally in their plain walls, their simple altar, their hardwood stalls, and themselves.
Aside from the signs exhorting THIS IS A SILENT AREA, the nature of the atmosphere itself seems fabricated from that same silence; I felt like I could hang any of my thoughts on upon it for as long as I needed, but what then? If the faith of these men were one vast, silent room, my thoughts would only take up a handful of pegs. I doubted that I would ever have enough faith or prayers to fill even a corner of that room, but with doubt, I might. Maybe, I thought, that’s the point. Maybe they, like me, have the doubt to fill this place, with the only difference being that they were more equipped with the spiritual articulacy to declare, and begin to deal with, that doubt.
Others had started to fill the gallery, the rustling of rucksacks and waterproof jackets crinkling the air’s smooth surface. Despite the signs and the fact that the service was soon to begin, many of them were chatting and peering around, their whispering reverberating from wall to wall in a theatrical manner as they wandered to the edge of the gallery to crane over and get a better look at the monks’ stalls. Having arrived early, I was settled in the front row. In contrast to the noisy newcomers, someone was already praying in the pew next to me.
Then, the pealing of bells. The short service began in a sonorous wave of plainchant:
In the name of the Fa-ther and of the Son and of the Holy Spi-rit
There were those among us who are immediately stilled into silence, yet there were still those who were fidgeting and whispering despite the solemnity of the moment.
The Lord of the Hosts is with us
The prayers continued from the woman on my right as the monks got into full flow
The God of Jacob is my strong-hold.
Wave upon wave of soft vocals rolled on and flowed over us all yet still there were those who left halfway through or continued to chatter, totally segregated from what was happening around them while others were rooted to the spot, totally entranced as the chant began to wind down
As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be…
And the silence began its shadow-slow creeping back in around the edges
World without end…
and the whole room seemed to exhale
Amen.
Their devotions over, the monks began to filter out, again bowing low as they passed the altar before gently swishing out of church. The seats emptied as the small crowd ebbed away, leaving just the three of us to digest what we had seen and heard, to spend time in the company of our own thoughts once more.
Afterward, stepping from the coolness of the church into the midday heat was something of a shock, a fact not helped by the masses of tourists regurgitated onto the jetty by the successive boats that had been endlessly looping back and forth from the mainland. Tired of so much bustle, we headed away from the tourists’ focal point, leaving them to the gift shop, café and small museum, heading back past the Abbey itself which, in the high summer light, had the pure lime-washed shine of an Italian villa or a fortification perched atop a Greek cliff.
Bearing right, leaving the last of the tourists at the chocolate factory, we arrived at the medieval priory buildings, standing quiet, aloof. They had seen it all, from the comings and goings of the Normans, the Dissolution, to the conversion back to Rome in the early 20th century.
The second oldest Roman Catholic church used for worship in England and Wales, although it had received a recent facelift, had its wiring spruced up and a lick of paint, it appeared to retain much of its age in the fabric of its construction. The beautiful cobbled floor, worn smooth by years of footfalls, sifted the sounds of our steps into a soft shuffle and the dark, varnished wood of the meagre stalls seemed to suck the light into its grain, leaving the place with the dimness I always imagined harboured by such churches of the Middle Ages.
Moving forward toward the altar, something caught my eye as it fluttered on the surface, lifting then falling. On the altar itself lay numerous thin slips of paper. On closer inspection, I realised that they were small prayers for loved ones now departed, medical problems, family ties, relationships, jobs and dozens of other small petitions left here in the hope that they might rise up and be fulfilled.
We wrote our own prayers; mine, as always, for my family:
Lord, watch over my family, keep my daughter from harm…
and placed them upon the altar. Suddenly, our eyes were drawn again, this time to the eaves, as small, dark shapes flitted in and out of the spaces between beams. As our eyes adjusted to the dark of the roof space, we made out a rag-tag assortment of bundled mud, straw and fluff and the swallows arrowing in and out of them. It appeared that they had come to settle here, attracted perhaps by the spirit of the island’s own version of a St. Kevin or St. Francis. Beautiful and direct, they never seemed to congregate here for long, darting out through the doors as we watched, fluttering then lifting quickly out of sight.
Back on the mainland later that evening, we headed to the beach for a quiet couple of hours, allowing me the chance to break out the fishing gear.
Even here in this holiday destination, surrounded by scenes of relaxation, there were signs of the world’s tendency to move on quickly, not lingering anywhere for too long. As we walked onto the sand, a ring of five disposable barbecues lay carelessly abandoned where they were used at some point late last night; already they looked like some kind of black and grey fossilized remains of summer enjoyment long forgotten. Elle darted around my feet – “I’m going to make a sandcastle, daddy” and “Can I bury you, daddy?” or “I’m really looking forward to swimming, daddy!”
Leaving Rachel and Elle to lay our stuff on the sand at the high tide line, I wandered down to the waterline to get set up, clipping on a simple single-hook rig, baiting up with a strip of mackerel and clipping the whole lot down. There was no question of swinging a lead, so I laid the whole lot back in a straight line behind me and used the length of the rod to ping it safely away in a straight line over my head, landing it seventy yards or so away from where I stood.
The evening began to wind down, the numbers of people around me thinning out a little as they headed back to their holiday lets and caravans, or into town in search of a quiet drink or two. The last of the mackerel boats puttered back in from the bay, ready to drop their final loads of sunburnt, happy holidaymakers with their strings of mackerel. Those few left on the beach began lighting their barbecues as the air continued to cool and lose the sweaty clinginess of the earlier hours of the day.
“Daddy!” Elle flustered down the beach toward me. “Daddy, have you caught anything yet?”
“No.” Although she didn’t show any, I felt the disappointment for her, having hoped all along that a stray dogfish might wander along and impale itself just to add a little excitement to her day. She’s Daddy’s girl alright. I remember myself at her age – elbow deep in muck and crawling with bugs, and yet as I looked down into her eyes, I couldn’t help but feel the pangs of wanting to keep her forever wrapped in cotton wool.
“Can I have a go?”
“Of course you can, love!” I stood her in front of me and fidgeted around her, altering her stance, holding the rod with her, going over the instructions one more time: “Keep your arms apart…careful not to catch you hand on the reel there…”
“Okay, okay, don’t fuss me Daddy!” She was raring to go.
“Okay love, here we go. Look up, bring your left hand down and follow through with your right…” the lead flew away cleanly to thirty yards. Elle looked thunderstruck, an expression of shock slowly giving way to a huge smile that spread gradually across the whole lower half of her face.
“Yaaaay!!!” Rachel cheered from further up the beach. Elle turned to receive the plaudits with a little hop of triumph, starting to raise her arms and, for just a moment I found myself able to take W.H Davies’ lead, to stand and stare while my daughter flapped around me in her excitement, like a little sunbird, ready to take flight.
We slept that night to a cacophony of rain: rain blurring the windows, rain hammering at the roof, rain slashing at our exposed faces whenever we opened the door to glance outside. All night it hammered on, battering as though to be let in until finally, at two in the morning, I got up for a moment. I opened the door for some air and the racket of wind in the trees was almost indistinguishable from the roar of the surf carrying from the nearby south beach as it stung my eyes. I locked up again and headed back to bed. Passing my daughter’s bedroom door, I paused, ready to go in and check on her one more time. Listening to the gentle chirp of her deep breathing, I thought better of it, instead pulling her door closed and going back to my own bed. As I slowly slid into sleep I thought of that small group across the dark waters who, in an hour’s time, would be waking into a new day, lifting their prayers again, calling out to God himself from the pre-dawn shadows.
Serialisation of ‘Waiting for a Hunter’s Moon’ by Simon Smith (with permission). This book is published by and can be purchased from Cambria Books HERE
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