ISLA
A stuffy old yellow and orange Wallace Arnold coach doesn’t
sound like the most promising basis for adventure, but that was what took me,
my parents and sister down to Cornwall in the summer of 1987 for what would be
our only family holiday. I was nine years
old. The coach started in West Yorkshire
and detoured to several places in the West Midlands, picking up passengers here
and there, stopping for a fancy afternoon tea at a posh hotel in Weston-Super-Mare
(which we skipped because my parents couldn’t afford it), before eventually
arriving at a seafront hotel in Newquay some twelve hours later. All the
children – me included – got sick. The driver,
amiable and friendly, was called Harry – nicknamed Harry Redhead, because his
hair was red as a rooster’s wattle.
It was on this holiday that I learned to surf, something I
took up enthusiastically but have never done since. Towan Beach was ideal for surfing, and the activity
was popular. Tall white-crested waves in
marine blue crashed from the Atlantic Ocean into the narrow bay and around an islet
on the eastern end of the beach - linked to the coast by a precarious-looking
rope bridge - atop of which was perched a small red house which I always stared
up at and wondered about. Using a cheap
polystyrene board my father bought, it took me many attempts before I could stand
upright in the surf. Amazingly, the
board didn’t crack. The weather in
Newquay that summer was mostly wet and windy, but this didn’t deter me, much to
the bemusement of old man Branock, a wizened, bespectacled local fisherman and
musician who could speak actual Cornish and worked near the hotel. Seeing me emerge at 6 o’clock a couple of
mornings in the middle of a rain shower, he looked me up and down as if I was
crazy.
The holiday included coach trips around Cornwall – we visited
tin mines, craggy coasts, Land’s End and small fishing villages with odd-looking
cottages dated back many centuries. Harry
Redhead would hand out lunch bags to us children, which typically included
plain cheese sandwiches, a bag of crisps and a small glass bottle of cherryade pop
which had to be handed in at the end of each day so it could be cleaned and refilled later. I remember Boscastle and the Old Post Office
in Tintagel, but not the names of many other places. I was not used to old buildings, and in
Cornwall they were everywhere. Back
home, everything was modern – what I would now characterise as, variously,
brutalist and suburban. Cornwall was a
very different place, yet somehow familiar.
It was old, palpably. The
buildings spoke of tradition - sash windows, old grey stone and lintels, dark
roof tiles. The natural landscape – the bright
blue sea and sky merging in shades, the yellowy-white beaches, the verdant rolling
hills beyond – contrasted with an ancient and industrial landscape built by Man,
and rather like attractive old railways, it all seemed to blend together sensitively
and my aesthetic senses developed. But
more than that, Cornwall had culture. Everything
about it – the buildings, landscape and people, the way they looked and spoke -
conveyed distinctiveness and coherence. I
convince myself now that what we saw was the real Cornwall, and not just a Potemkin
show for naïve tourists. I want to
believe that Cornwall really is Cornish, that it has an identity based on a
distinct people and their unique culture – a beacon, if you like, against dreary
modernity and homogeneity.
In particular, I remember a fishing village perched
precariously on the hill surrounding a tiny harbour, with the houses going
right up to the harbour edge. I now think
it was Mousehole but I am not sure. I remember
the funny pronunciation of the name – Muzzle.
It was in the Muzzle-place that I wandered off. The day was drawing in and my parents, as was
typical of them, were preoccupied looking round an antique shop. I was enchanted by the surroundings and something
drew me further into the village itself.
I thought it looked picturesque, especially in the bright evening light. Sleepy-looking grey-bricked cottages and
townhouses with smoky chimneys glinted yellow against a bright red sky and cast
dark shadows that looked like giants reaching out to the sea. I walked along the main street passing sweet
shops and bakeries with huge stacks of white-grey toffee blocks. The smell and taste of toffee is one of my
abiding memories of Cornwall, the other is meeting a real-life witch.
I had happened on a small, poky little atelier that doubled
as a shop. I stood in the door for a while.
I was a very shy boy anyway, but something made me afraid to go in. Then I met eyes with the woman sat at a rough
wooden bench making something (I can’t remember what it was) and she smiled and
beckoned me forward, as if it was alright for me to come in. Behind her I could see shelves with steaming
cauldrons emitting coloured smoke. The
inside of the shop smelt of sweet marzipan or something almondy – a smell that
I remember throughout my childhood, for some reason. The place was a mess. Even though I must have been small, I was
practically tripping over things that were dangling here and there at my height
– incense sticks, candles, jars of various homemade things, rainbow V-stitch
blankets, brightly-coloured stout little liquid tubs with blower sticks, handcrafted
jewellery, strange hats, robes of different colours – I remember black, red and
bright green - old bric-a-brac, thick dusty volumes with odd symbols on them,
and some general interest books, some boyish fiction. The latter drew my attention and I started browsing.
The woman, who I assumed to be the proprietor, had a
definite accent that could have been Scottish or Cornish. I think of Scottish only because of the name,
which I do remember – she called herself Isla.
She was perhaps in her 40s or 50s, tall and thin. Her face was bright and alert. I remember jet black hair and eyebrows, stern
sharp green eyes that bore into me, heavy makeup with red lips and green
eyeshadow to match her irises, and a sharp aquiline nose. She was attired in a patchwork quilt dress,
high boots with pointy toes, wore numerous necklaces and bangles, and sported large
earrings, all of which jingle-jangled a little as she busied around. The most interesting things were what she
wore around her neck – including a large silver star shaped medallion, which I
later realised was a pendulum containing a Pentagram, and what looked like an
ivory or whalebone pendant.
A book had caught my eye – I liked the cover, which showed
a colouring of mountains, and on flicking through the pages the story seemed to
be about wolves and pioneer men somewhere in America. I was keen to buy it, had some pocket money from
my parents, and decided to spend some of it.
I took the book to the workbench.
The woman looked up.
“That’s a handsome
cover, and you’re a handsome little boy, aren’t you.”
I blushed and looked down.
I realised the almond smell was her.
“Come on, I have something out back that will interest you”,
she said as I tendered my money.
She kept various things, most of which I don’t remember,
but some I do. There was a long wooden
table on which was laid out a red cloth and on which she kept magical tools,
including a razor sharp, glistening athame with a jet handle, a wand, a besom
made of birch twigs, a chalice, candles and crystals, a small rusted bell and what
looked like a pile of notebooks.
She was a witch. She
explained her name was Isla and asked me where I was from. I’d not thought that witches were real. As a nine-year old, it had not occurred to
me. I admit I was a little frightened,
but I gradually became more comfortable as the minutes ticked by and she
explained her religion and asked me questions.
I told her about my own precocious beliefs. I had attended Sunday School and had quickly
rejected superstitious Christianity, thinking it ridiculous. I thought all the Jesus miracle stories were
funny and had struggled not to laugh out loud when reading them to the rest of
the class. This had caused me to be
thrown out for a while. The teacher had
called me an atheist, which I realised meant somebody who does not believe in God.
She told me it was good that I thought this way – she was
the first person who had ever told me something like that, which surprised me
since everybody else disapproved. This
was at a time when atheism was still frowned on. In fact, she was the first person who seemed
to think along the same lines as I did, except it was confusing. She didn’t believe in God, instead she
believed in a Goddess of some sort and another Horned God and practised magic
as the priestess of a coven. This confused
me still more.
Her faith was paganism, she said, which she explained was
an ancient religion of Britain. She
believed in celebrating nature.
“What about magic, druids and things like that?”, I asked hopefully.
“Yes, there are rituals.
Those are part of it because paganism is tradition. Play-acting, dressing up, pretending, is our
way of keeping traditions alive, so we recognise where we have come from. But magic is real too.”
“How can it be real?”, I spoke back sharply, with a
definite tone of scepticism – which she didn’t seem to like, but her expression
quickly changed back to friendly.
“I’ll show you.” She
dipped one of the blowers in a tub and then handed it to me, motioning with a
tilt of the head. “Say this: Be blissful,
Be free, Blow away these troubles in me”.
I did. “Now blow”, and I blew the
bubbles, and that was my introduction to magic.
I read the wolf book on the way back to Newquay. It was by Jack London – White Fang and
Call of the Wild. These would be
the first adult stories I read, and Jack London became one of my favourite authors.
