Read Online Atlantic Britain by Adam Nicolson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Adam Nicolson
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‘in the world’,
with those words slapping his hand on the table. One day, as Scothine was walking across the waves, he met another saint, Findbarr from Cork, who was rowing a boat.
‘Why are you walking on the sea?’ Findbarr asked him. Big smiles from Herve.
‘This isn’t the sea,’ Scothine said. ‘It’s a field.’ He bent down and picked a white clover flower from the water and threw it to the saint in the boat. ‘And why are you rowing your boat on the field?’
Findbarr said nothing, dipped his hand into the grass, pulled out a salmon and threw it to Scothine who caught it and held it, shining, in his hands. ‘There you are,’ Herve said. ‘It’s the hands! The hands arethe heroes of the story! Now lunch! What about lunch? What shall we make for our lunch today? Do we have wine? Do we have meat? And do we have time? Oh yes, I think we have time. Georges! Onions!’
The following morning, he left. He started up his engine, said goodbye and hoped we would meet again. We untied his lines, he began to move off, standing in his wheelhouse, heading under the bridge and up the channel towards Cahersiveen. As the boat gathered way, he stepped out of the little wheelhouse and gave a big sky-wiping wave, his hand as big as a gull in the air. It was then that I saw the boat’s name for the first time:
Happy Days.
No one at Port Magee heard any more of him, but a few weeks later a letter arrived at the Valentia lifeboat house. It contained 100 euro in notes and a few lines of thanks. Herve had brought the
Happy Days
home. ‘Thank the bitter treatment of the tide,’ Auden wrote in ‘The Sea and the Mirror’, ‘For its dissolution of your pride.’ Herve Mahe, neither modest nor with any need for modesty, a man beyond pride, who had already absorbed all the lessons the tide might teach him, profoundly intimate with the realities of risk and experience, an uninsulated man, as naked to the worldand its riches as any of us ever might be, had nothing to learn there. If I were in the habit of blessing people, I would have blessed him.
5
The Beach
Two weeks later, George and I had our own version of an Herve experience. We had now embarked on making a television series about the
Auk
and her journey, and a crew from Keo Films, a London production company, had joined us. They had missed the beginning and so the boat had returned from Ireland to Padstow in north Cornwall. It was, in many ways, a beginning again, but George, I and the
Auk
were all in good shape and, from the Cornish coast, 120 miles to the south, on a good southwesterly wind, we had breezed steadily up to the coast of Pembrokeshire. It was the
Auk’s
happiest point of sail, a broad reach, with the wind just coming on to her over the port quarter, across your left shoulder if you were at the helm, striking the face on the left cheek from behind, even in a gust just lifting the lobe of that ear, all sailsfull, their big creamy bellies curved out against the sky behind them.
All day long, coming north, the bow, as it bit into each new wave, had made that repeated wet breathy sigh, as the bulk of the new water beneath her was compressed and driven back under the hull. It’s the most evocative of sea sounds, not exactly the sea breathing, nor the boat, but the steady, half-hissing rhythm of that wonderful amalgam, a boat-at-sea.
Manx shearwaters from the Pembrokeshire islands provided a kind of welcoming party for us, forty and fifty miles out from land, turning around the boat on their black scimitar wings half an inch above the wave tops, slicing through a layer of air as thin as paper above the sea. They were the real edge-dancers. If they misjudged their flight, the sea surface would trap and catch them. It never did; the shearwater is the great sea lesson: endless attentiveness and total response. I watched them for hours. All that grace is nothing but focus.
They became a symbol of everything I wanted to be and all year long George
‘in the world’,
with those words slapping his hand on the table. One day, as Scothine was walking across the waves, he met another saint, Findbarr from Cork, who was rowing a boat.
‘Why are you walking on the sea?’ Findbarr asked him. Big smiles from Herve.
‘This isn’t the sea,’ Scothine said. ‘It’s a field.’ He bent down and picked a white clover flower from the water and threw it to the saint in the boat. ‘And why are you rowing your boat on the field?’
Findbarr said nothing, dipped his hand into the grass, pulled out a salmon and threw it to Scothine who caught it and held it, shining, in his hands. ‘There you are,’ Herve said. ‘It’s the hands! The hands arethe heroes of the story! Now lunch! What about lunch? What shall we make for our lunch today? Do we have wine? Do we have meat? And do we have time? Oh yes, I think we have time. Georges! Onions!’
The following morning, he left. He started up his engine, said goodbye and hoped we would meet again. We untied his lines, he began to move off, standing in his wheelhouse, heading under the bridge and up the channel towards Cahersiveen. As the boat gathered way, he stepped out of the little wheelhouse and gave a big sky-wiping wave, his hand as big as a gull in the air. It was then that I saw the boat’s name for the first time:
Happy Days.
No one at Port Magee heard any more of him, but a few weeks later a letter arrived at the Valentia lifeboat house. It contained 100 euro in notes and a few lines of thanks. Herve had brought the
Happy Days
home. ‘Thank the bitter treatment of the tide,’ Auden wrote in ‘The Sea and the Mirror’, ‘For its dissolution of your pride.’ Herve Mahe, neither modest nor with any need for modesty, a man beyond pride, who had already absorbed all the lessons the tide might teach him, profoundly intimate with the realities of risk and experience, an uninsulated man, as naked to the worldand its riches as any of us ever might be, had nothing to learn there. If I were in the habit of blessing people, I would have blessed him.
5
The Beach
Two weeks later, George and I had our own version of an Herve experience. We had now embarked on making a television series about the
Auk
and her journey, and a crew from Keo Films, a London production company, had joined us. They had missed the beginning and so the boat had returned from Ireland to Padstow in north Cornwall. It was, in many ways, a beginning again, but George, I and the
Auk
were all in good shape and, from the Cornish coast, 120 miles to the south, on a good southwesterly wind, we had breezed steadily up to the coast of Pembrokeshire. It was the
Auk’s
happiest point of sail, a broad reach, with the wind just coming on to her over the port quarter, across your left shoulder if you were at the helm, striking the face on the left cheek from behind, even in a gust just lifting the lobe of that ear, all sailsfull, their big creamy bellies curved out against the sky behind them.
All day long, coming north, the bow, as it bit into each new wave, had made that repeated wet breathy sigh, as the bulk of the new water beneath her was compressed and driven back under the hull. It’s the most evocative of sea sounds, not exactly the sea breathing, nor the boat, but the steady, half-hissing rhythm of that wonderful amalgam, a boat-at-sea.
Manx shearwaters from the Pembrokeshire islands provided a kind of welcoming party for us, forty and fifty miles out from land, turning around the boat on their black scimitar wings half an inch above the wave tops, slicing through a layer of air as thin as paper above the sea. They were the real edge-dancers. If they misjudged their flight, the sea surface would trap and catch them. It never did; the shearwater is the great sea lesson: endless attentiveness and total response. I watched them for hours. All that grace is nothing but focus.
They became a symbol of everything I wanted to be and all year long George
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