The Salt Path Page 12

  In the pink half-light of dawn, the holes were everywhere. Fresh droppings piled up under the flysheet of the tent and as I undid the zip tens of fat rabbits hopped only feet away. I could have just reached out and taken one to put straight in the pot. Instead we made tea. Moth found a hairy wine gum in his pocket, so we cut that in half.

  Looking back at the Rumps as we headed away, the patch of earth we had camped on hovered above a great gaping cave. Landfalls had exposed the runs of the rabbit warren, coming out of the earth and ending in mid-air. How many rabbits had landed in the sea, and how many more would be washed away? Or would the pounding sea beneath their warren eventually be a loud enough warning for them to move on?

  We rounded the headland past a memorial to ‘The Fallen’. Too tired to get my glasses out and read the whole plaque, I didn’t check if it was for the fallen in war, fallen from the cliff, or to us, fallen from society, fallen from hope, fallen from life.

  Of course the memorial must have been to the men who died in the wars. Dead, gone without chance for self-pity. I tightened the hip belt on my pack, shut the door on the whining voice and kept walking. Life is now, this minute, it’s all we have. It’s all we need.

  The path dropped into the Polzeaths, New and Old. A building site from end to end. New builds, extensions, renewals, building, building, building. A long beach stretched ahead of us, from Daymer Bay to the small ferry at Rock. The tide was way out, thinning the wide River Camel to a two-lane highway for boats and jet-skis. We had no idea how much it would cost to use the ferry. I was certain the few coins in the palm of my hand wouldn’t be enough, but prayed they would be, unable to face the long detour inland to the bridge at Wadebridge. Moth dropped his rucksack and sat on the sand.

  ‘Feel really lightheaded. When do we get some more money?’

  ‘Tomorrow, maybe, I’m not sure. We can make it if we keep drinking.’

  ‘Don’t know, I’m feeling a bit weird.’ Thin or not, his six-foot-two frame couldn’t keep moving on nothing. I looked again at the coins in my purse and headed through the dunes to the snack hut.

  The hut was full to bursting with buckets, nets, parents and children. I scoured the shelves for the most economical way to buy some food. Only confectionery, but it looked like a five-star menu and needed as much consideration. I settled on six fudge bars, at twenty-five pence each, which could be spread through the day. The cold fridge air wafted over me while I held a bottle of Coke to the side of my head, wet with condensation and beautifully cold. I put it back and stood in the queue. The long queue. I was near the door. The girl behind the counter was focused on the till. Children ran around, noisily distracting. The queue didn’t go down. I was near the door. The coins burnt in my palm. And I walked away.

  I crossed the sand to Moth, briskly, calmly, inconspicuous, but with a neon sign on my head flashing thief, thief, thief.

  ‘Come on, let’s get to the ferry, see what it costs.’ Helping Moth to his feet, anxious that we should move on quickly.

  ‘Don’t you want to just eat something now?’

  ‘No, there might be some shade down there and we can probably get water while we wait.’ Moth, just move quickly. Thief, thief, thief. This was it, the barrier crossed. A homeless stereotype. Dirty, hungry, and now thief. A social pariah.

  ‘Eat one as we go, it might help us walk faster.’

  There was no water, but the ferry cost less than two pounds each. I had just enough to go back and pay for the fudge, but held on tightly to the coins and put them back in my purse.

  On the other side of the estuary, Padstow was heaving. Another quaint village that had been a fishing hub in a previous life, but was now more famous for Rick Stein’s fish restaurants than for its fish. Busloads of tourists listened to buskers in the harbour, while devouring half the north Atlantic’s cod stocks. Rick seemed to have taken over the village, with his name on the restaurant, the chip shop, a pub, bistro, patisserie, in fact most places claimed a connection to him. We sat on the harbour, dangling our feet over the stone edge, listening to the young buskers rattle out cover versions of rock ballads, while their guitar case filled with coins and notes.

  ‘Wish I’d brought my guitar.’

  ‘Wish you’d learnt how to play it.’

  ‘Don’t think they are playing, I think it’s a recording.’

  The salty smell was inescapable torture. Eating noodles for a week had reduced our appetites and when we did eat we needed far less to feel full. But the onslaught of food was unbearable and virtual eating just wasn’t curing the hunger.

  ‘Shall we go? I can’t watch this any more.’

  ‘Let’s check the bank before we leave, in case.’

  ‘In case?’

  ‘The balance of your account is thirty-two pounds and seventy-five pence, and the amount you can withdraw today is thirty pounds’. Not the forty-eight pounds we thought might be there, but we didn’t care where the other sixteen pounds had gone, or if the thirty-two pounds should have been there at all, or that it was Tuesday when we thought it was Thursday, and held the notes like precious gems.

  Moth bought more packs of ibuprofen and we went back to the harbour to share a bag of Rick’s chips.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘They’re okay, just taste like chips.’

  Fighting our way off the harbour, through the crowds with people tutting and complaining about our packs, we stopped for an ice cream, a ridiculously expensive indulgence, but we’d forgotten to fill the water bottles and they were empty.

  ‘Thanks, and would you be able to fill our water bottles?’

  ‘No. You can buy a bottle. We can’t just fill water bottles for free when we have it for sale.’

  It was the first time anyone had refused us water and we were stunned. Passing a pub at the edge of the harbour we filled the bottles in the toilets and then left the village, finding the path again with relief.

  The tent sat low among the sand dunes at Harbour Cove, hopefully out of reach of the dog walkers and the tide. The river had refilled and oystercatchers ran in chattering lines up and down the strip of sand left to them. Further down the beach a group of terns huddled quietly, and further still herring gulls were slowly gathering. All keeping to their own patch, segregated by choice.

  September now, and getting dark by nine o’clock, the nights in the tent were becoming longer, and chillier. We hadn’t slept on sand before and it was shockingly cold. Inescapably cold. I put on the short leggings over the long ones, two vests, the long-sleeved T-shirt, the fleece jacket, the Ibizan hemp sunhat, and shivered inside the one-season super lightweight sleeping bag.

  Morning didn’t come soon enough, and I was out moving as quickly as I could. But not as quickly as a hairy Labrador/spaniel/terrier that dived through the sand, knocked the water off the stove and jumped into the tent, rummaging through the bags. Moth sat up as the hairball leapt all over him.

  ‘There’s no food in here, mate.’

  He bounded out again chasing his master’s whistle, skidding sand behind him.

  ‘It’s not a campsite, you know. You can’t camp here. It’s disgusting, sleeping in public.’

  ‘Yes, good morning, lovely day again.’

  The dog owner stomped on, as the hairball bounded after him.

  Trying to shake the heavy beach condensation from the tent we succeeded only in spreading sand over the now wet inner walls, so gave up, rolled it into a ball and walked on in the early light. The sea birds were out at sea and the dog walkers were heading home for breakfast as we rounded Stepper Point, the wind welcoming us back to the edge.

  12. Sea Dancers

  Stepper Point could easily have been missed by cutting across to Gunver Head. But our feet instinctively followed the path, drawn west on the dusty umbilical cord that was allowing us to grow, unseen, in our strip of wilderness. Trevose Head appeared in focus, with endless headlands disappearing south into the mist, yet to be trodden.

  Tamarisk flourish
ed in greater numbers, forming banking walls of hedgerow, their feathery branches stroking the air. Softer, gentler, more welcoming than the gorse and bracken further east but tough and resilient at its core, flexing in the breeze and gale alike. On a bench, tucked into the stems, was a pile of rags, surrounded by supermarket carriers full of possessions and hovered over by flies.

  An old man with his life in plastic bags.

  He was motionless. Like a rabbit in the hedgerow, picked over by crows, swarmed by flies, eggs lain, maggots growing, sucked up and absorbed into the cycle. We stood by the body on the bench, feeling our place beside him, our place in the cycle, one foot in the hedgerow of decay.

  ‘Fuck off.’ Not dead then.

  ‘Do you need anything, mate? I’ve got some bread.’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘Or a chocolate bar.’

  ‘Leave it on the bench, then fuck off.’

  Moth put half our rations next to the rags and we walked away, willing ourselves to turn our back on the flies. Not our place, not yet. But if we stopped, stood still for a moment too long?

  We begged some water from the lifeguards at Harlyn Bay. They’d come from South Africa and Australia to watch over the hapless holidaymakers on their foam body boards, before returning south like geese in the winter. If only we could head somewhere warm before the dark coldness of winter crept in. We left them, envious of the ease of their life, crossing the broad stretch of clear sand to a rocky outcrop on the other side of the bay. Pouring our stinking, dirty clothes into a rock pool we left them to soak while we leapt into the foaming waves, washed clean, salt scoured, shrieking. An oasis of clarity: clear water, tide-rippled sand, free from time.

  Lying on the rocks, our clothes stretched around us, air dried, preserved, we slept into mid-afternoon. When we woke we found ourselves with a large family, cut off by the incoming tide. As we scrambled up twenty metres of rocky cliff, the grandad explained that they always came to Harlyn Bay, and had done since his children were as small as his grandchildren, staying in the caravan park on the hill. At Mother Ivey’s Bay they disappeared through vast metal gates into a city of caravans, laced with concrete and stadium lighting. They might have been sleeping in a concentration camp, but at least their days were spent free on the beach. We turned right, the headland luring us forward, returning to our line of wild.

  Trevose lighthouse dazzled in the late-afternoon sun, shocking against the blue, too bright to focus on. Lying on the dry grass, peeling burnt skin from my nose, most needs had slipped away. Less hungry, less thirsty, less everything. We slept soundly until early evening, when a cool wind woke us and we left the headland, dropping down towards a perfect beach backed by marram-covered sand dunes. We pitched the tent on the grass hoping the hard-green shards would insulate us from the cold, opening the tent to the wind to dry the sodden fabric.

  The tide turned, bringing pristine barrelling waves on to the beach. And then they came. Neoprene figures, surfboards under their arms, running from the road, the path, out of the sand dunes, every direction, sleek black bodies waddling, ungainly, their boards blown by the gusts. They paddled out beyond the breakers, huddling together as a black shoal until the waves came and as individuals they broke away, standing, becoming one with the rise and fall, elegantly curling their way to the shallows. Humans transformed into sea dancers.

  We sat in the door of the tent in our sleeping bags, until the light had gone and with it the last of the surfers. The tide headed away and, as it hesitated before returning, the birds came to claim the empty beach for their own. To run and call through the night, between the sand and the water.

  The next morning brought the heavy beach condensation, but we waited for it to dry, drinking tea and watching dog walkers and early-morning surfers, before Moth smoothly left the tent without help and we finally packed it away. The hunger was still there, but like the aching joints and hardening blisters, was becoming something to observe rather than feel.

  The wind continued to rush in from the west, cool and gusting. Whipping the sea into foam against the tiny rocky islands just off the shore. The rocks grew bigger until they became the Bedruthan Steps, the legendary stepping stones of the giant Bedruthan. No one seems to know where the legend came from: ancient Cornish inhabitants or the National Trust who sell the rocky stacks to the vast number of visitors that fill the path and the tea room. We’d heard mutterings amongst the locals of a dislike for the National Trust who own over a third of the coastline of Devon and Cornwall, bought by Project Neptune to save the coastline from development. There were complaints that the Trust are too restrictive and don’t understand the need of local people to make a living. I’ve lived on the land, and making a living is hard. I’ve also been to Mother Ivey’s Bay, and without a doubt the coast should be saved from that. But walking past the heaving car park, stone paths and cash tills, I had a strong whiff of hypocrisy.

  ‘Just go inland up the valley; there’s a little campsite. Bit quirky, but it’s dead cheap.’ The rain had started as we sheltered under the awning of a beach shack. The girl was trying to be helpful.

  ‘Shall we go up, see how much it costs? We could always pitch in that wood if not; they’d be more sheltered than the cliffs in this.’ The wind had increased with the rain and shelter was tempting.

  The lane to the campsite was lined by a horsebox, a cattle truck and a grain silo, grown through with tall grass; they didn’t appear to have moved all summer. The trees opened up to a handful of chalets, a field of pigs, two donkeys and a marquee. A man in a ripped jumper with a wild curly beard came from behind a chalet carrying a mop and bucket. Five pounds a night for the tent, and cold showers. The rain kept coming, so we took it.

  Beyond the marquee, we trudged through a zinc barn lined with old sofas and a washing machine, past wooden sheds, stone sheds and another horsebox, to a field in the trees.

  ‘Come down to the barn later, the boys’ll be there, they’ve usually got a few beers.’ The boys? There didn’t seem to be a soul around.

  I started to undress in the shower shed, a garden shed with two showers and a chair, but grabbed for a towel when I realized I wasn’t alone. A woman on the other side of the room looked up at me: hair like a bird’s nest, burnt brown face with a shredded red nose, red calloused feet, lean athletic legs and ribs poking through saggy flesh. I ran my hand down the ribcage in the mirror: it looked alien to me; it hadn’t been visible for years. I attempted to untangle my hair in the cold water. It didn’t work, so I dried quickly and shoved the hemp hat back on. Cold showers on a cold day are like virtual eating. You can put a scrappy thin fleece on afterwards and it feels like a down jacket, but the feeling doesn’t last long; quickly the cold comes back, like the hunger, sharper than before. Rather than shiver in the tent, we headed for the barn.

  The side door of the horsebox opened and a tanned, blond youth jumped out. The wooden sheds along the way similarly released more young, tanned twenty-somethings, and as we reached the barn a young couple with dreadlocks came out of the stone shed. We attempted to drop ourselves on the sofas with the same cool, languid fluidity, without success.

  ‘What are you all doing here? We didn’t think there was anyone around. Are you on holiday?’ We felt so old and alien, struggling around for something to say.

  ‘No, man, we live here. We work here, Kurt lets us live in his sheds if we do odd jobs and errands, then in the winter it’s away with the waves.’

  ‘You live in these sheds, not just an odd night then? Where do you work?’

  ‘Lifeguards, most of us, a couple of waitresses, but we’re all surfers. None of us could afford to rent around here – the rental prices are crazy. So yeah, the sheds are so cool. This’ll be my third year, but next year I’m upgrading to the horsebox.’

  ‘What about the stone shed?’

  ‘No, you’ve got to be one of the chosen ones to get the stone shed.’

  The Rasta hair at the washing machine turned around as he heard this a
nd tipped his chin at the boy on the sofa.

  ‘Wanker, go and get the beers. So, old folks, what are you doing here, washed up in the barn?’

  Moth glanced at me and shrugged his shoulders. No need to lie.

  ‘We’re homeless, lost our house, business, everything we’ve ever worked for all our lives, penniless, and I’m dying, so we thought: What the fuck, let’s go for a walk. We’ve come from Minehead, going west, who knows from there.’

  ‘Wow. That’s a story, right?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Fuck.’

  ‘Yep, fuck.’

  ‘But that’s okay, you’re like a wave, man.’

  ‘A wave?’

  ‘Yeah, how good a wave is depends on what nature’s doing. It starts to pick up when the wind blows on the water, way out at sea, then it’s all down to how strong that wind is, how long it blows for and how far it travels across the water – we call that the fetch. A big wind, a long fetch, a good stretch of coastline and you’ve got it, you’re barrelling. But you, you’re blown up by a fucking gale, man, and your fetch is still running, you’re heading for the biggest, cleanest barrelling wave, man. Don’t you get it? You’re gonna swash in style! Kurt, Kurt, they’re cool, open the lock-up.’

  The bearded man unlocked the back of a Portakabin. It was chock full of every kind of alcoholic bottle you could possibly need. The boys relayed boxes to what appeared to be a stable in the corner of the barn, but when the door swung open Kurt was behind a built-in bar, stocking the shelves.

  It was early evening and we really needed to eat, so inevitably hungry bodies that had barely touched alcohol in weeks didn’t last long before it was all a blur. Colonel Roots billowed reggae from the speakers on the washing machine and nothing mattered any more. We were with the best friends we’d ever had, in our favourite place in the world.