Chapter Twenty

March 1977
It wasn’t really necessary for us to do anything especially about the kid until around Geordie’s birthday. I had borrowed a few clothes from Anne and Maggie, but until then I wasn’t huge. Suddenly, I was huge and the impending reality of a need to make some plans and space sank in with us.

We lived by a philosophy that was similar to the old wartime ‘make it, make do, or do without’. Whenever we considered acquiring something, we asked ourselves,
1) Do we really need it?
2) Can we make it? borrow it? barter it?
3) Can we get it used? (as at a jumble sale)
So, with a list from the mothers in the Zen quilters, we sat down in the toasty kitchen one night and made a plan to suit our lifestyle and needs. Most of the stuff we eliminated – mobiles and changing tables and gizmos like walkie-talkies. We decided that the kid would need a small space for when we didn’t want it to sleep with us, so we could use a basket, such as the kind Mag and Anne hauled their wee ones to festivals in. It wouldn’t need its own bed for years, so we didn’t worry about that. Everyone said, get a baby carrier, and from what Shirley said about the kid feeling snug, it seemed like a good idea. The rest was just clothes and blankets and diapers. We got all this from Maggie and Joe, who said it was a gift and not a loan, because he had ‘gone down to the mobile spay and neuter van’. Mag’s celebration at Jack’s birth was specially because she knew he would be their last hurrah.

Midsummer 1977
At the end of the afternoon session I was sitting with Anne and Betsey in the audience having a rest. George, Joe, Maggie, Mike, Karen and Dave were playing. Mike leaned over to Joe, and they started in on 'The Banks of the Bann,’ a ‘come all ye’ and one of the band’s and our personal favourites.
As I was a-walking down by yon hill-town,
The fair and lovely mountains they did me surround;
I spied a pretty fair maid, and to me she looked grand;
She was plucking wild roses on the banks of the Bann.

So I stepped up to this fair one, and to her I did say,
"Since nature has formed us for to meet on this day --
Since nature has formed us, won't you give me your hand,
And we will walk together on the banks of the Bann."
Oh they were having a fine time, high and happy, and just then George looked out across the bow and caught my eye, with the biggest smile I have ever seen.
Now it being a summer's evening and a fine quiet place,
I knew by the blushes that appeared on her face....
We both lay down together unto a bed of sand,
And she rolled into my arms on the banks of the Bann.
"O young man, you have wronged me; won't you tell me your name,
so that when my babe is born I may give it the same?"
"My name is Willie Archer, and I'd have you understand
That my home and habitation lie close to the Bann.
"But I cannot marry you, for apprenticed I'm bound
To the spinning and the weaving in Rathisland town.
But when my time is ended, I will give you my hand
And we will be married on the banks of the Bann."

So come all you fair maidens, take warning by me:
Don't go out a-courting at one, two, or three.
Don't go out a-courting so late if you can,
Or you'll meet with Willie Archer on the banks of the Bann.

They played out the awesome riffs and ended the piece in a flourish to applause. Joe announced the break and they broke up with hugs and chat and laughter. I didn’t go up right away or pay much mind- they would be down in a moment- but sat talking with Betsey about the Zen quilters’ project, until Anne nudged me, and nodded her head. Up on the stage, George was standing with his arms crossed, squinting, listening to one of the come-heres – a barefoot blonde girl in cut off jeans and a skinny tank top. She stood in front of him, very obviously a groupie type, and to our astonishment jumped up and threw her arms around him with a sexy kiss.

Anne and Betsey and I just stared at one another. George leaped back as if he had been burned. Maggie Joe and Mike, who were winding up their cords, stopped cold, staring. With a face like thunder, George picked up his fiddle and bow from his chair, leaving the rosin bag and all, and jumped off the three-foot stage, stomping off like Thor bestride the world.
‘What the hell!’ Betsey said. I looked at her, cold and numb. I’d never heard her swear before,
The groupie stood staring as well, and was led off by Joe and handed over to her friends. By a weird prescience, I heard him say, ‘Do something with her, she’s drunk.’ He looked over at me, white faced, and off in the direction of the old amphitheatre, where George had gone.
Anne patted my arm. ‘We’ll get him, don’t worry.’
‘You don’t understand –‘ I said, childishly. ‘I have never seen him angry before. Annoyed, but not angry, not like that –‘
‘Everyone has their limits,’ Betsey said. ‘He just has a longer fuse.’ She nodded. ‘Look, Joe and Mike are going off to get him. Don’t worry.’
How to explain that I wasn’t worried about fidelity, but this aspect of him that I had never seen before, which frightened me?

Mike came back about a quarter of an hour later, and asked me if I was all right, then said that George wanted me to come to him alone – he was sitting beside the creek on a rock with his elbows on his knees, staring pensively into the water, white-faced. He looked up, stricken, and jumped up, flinging his arms around me.
'Thank God,’ he said over and over, shaking. I realised that he was crying.
‘Oh baby, darling,’ I couldn’t bear his upset. ‘Sweetheart, don’t. Oh, babe,’ I felt like a mother with a child. He moved away a little to look at me, wiped his nose.
‘I am so sorry!’ He put his hands on either side of my face. ‘I love you. I love you, I love you and only you forever. My whole heart, for my whole life,’ he swore. ‘Claire!’

I shook my head, and kissed him. ‘It was not your fault. We all saw everything. Joe said she was drunk. You didn’t encourage her,’ I smiled a little. ‘Certainly didn’t welcome it. Oh baby, don’t be upset, I can’t bear it.’ Saying it really did make me cry.
We went to sit on the rocks, he with his arm under my elbow as if I were made of glass. He hugged us, me and the kid, and rocked for a while, before he said,
‘But I did. ‘ He looked up, ‘Oh, not in the way anyone would think. But I love that song, and it always makes me think of Tintern Abbey… and we were having such fun and it felt so juicy and sexy, and I threw that out to you –‘
‘I caught it,’ I assured him.

‘I know you did! But that…blasted girl felt it too, and thought it was for her. By no provocation of mine! But there’s a belief about musicians being easy that is borne out far too often. I – maybe I’m the exception that proves the rule, but I wasn’t always! God knows, I slept around in Soho. I guess that’s why it made me so angry, because I was like that, and I don’t ever want to be again. It took me by such surprise! Maybe I over-reacted to her invading my space as she did, but I don’t feel like I did. I’m still angry. Shit.’ He looked out over the meadow beyond, shimmering in the high blue heat of summer.
‘I’m supposed to be so “enlightened” as Jimbo says, but I handled it very badly, and shouldn’t be angry. I hate feeling this way ! I thought it was over in my life.’ He looked at me sharply. ‘I used to live this way!’
‘I know,’ I murmured, covering his hands.
‘It’s a lesson to me about focus and energy,’ he said grimly, ‘that I can’t just broadcast certain feelings… and about what I am actually still capable of. It’s easy to think I’ve got it and that kind of energy – this energy, God it’s awful! – won’t happen any more.’
‘It scared me,’ I said after a little, into the silence, ‘how angry you were. Like Thor at Ragnarok.’
He smiled a little. ‘It’s nice of you to put it that way.’ He kissed my cheek. ‘I’m sorry I frightened you, baby. I frightened me too…. God, help me shake this, Claire.’ He put his head on my shoulder.
‘You can’t go around it,’ I said after a moment. It was pure inspiration. The words were not my own wisdom. ‘You must go down into the darkness and confront it, to be reborn, as a child is reborn into the world….’ The kid added its opinion to this, elbowing us.
He laughed a little. ‘Well-done, kid. God! What a funny world!’ He sobered and looked at me, his eyelashes all stuck together like a child’s. ‘Okay, down into Hades it is. Will you help me?’
I nodded.
He sighed. 'Oh, I have to let go of thinking I was done with this! Breathe with me, Claire.’

We sat for some time and meditated, the energy deepening and stilling slowly, until it seemed that we were in a vast pool of warmth, like the lake in full summer.
He kissed my temple.’ Thank you, darling. I love you.’
‘I love you too, babe.’
We went back to the festival then, walking slowly – by his instigation – hand in hand. When we got to the picnic area, Mike and Joe launched themselves off the table they were leaning against sharing a beer, and came over to us.
‘Hey, man, are you okay?’
‘Yes.’ George said. ‘I will be. We have some things to work on, but everything is okay.’

After the bonfire we went home and began a guided meditation which we did at intervals over the next two days, the result of which we discovered that this anger came from when George was very small. His mother Anne was fairly permissive, and had not forced him too much to conform to bedtimes, mealtimes, or supervision. But when he was four, an aunt – Herb’s sister- had come to visit, and didn’t like the way he was let to run wild at all. For her entire visit he was forced to comply, sometimes being tied to the chair. Herb did everything that Laney said, and Anne argued and cried but the woman was a sergeant major. Being physically forced against his will by an adult to do something had engendered a rage – that was the word George used –in him, against the world, which could force itself upon his autonomy. It was the cause of his bad attitude as a teenager, his wild life in Soho, and – on a more positive line, his turning to self-reliance and personal responsibility as a way of life. Once we had got to the incident, we worked on changing it. He said to Laney, in the present tense: ‘you can’t force me to do anything, I am a free being, whole and complete and as much a part of God as you are. You have no right to do that, and I won’t let you.’

Early the next morning, before dawn, I woke up feeling rather crampy, and knew that this was it. I just had that sense. I lay there in the blue-purple light and watched the first violet streaks of dawn seep across the sky, then deep rose – and George was awake, by habit turning and enveloping me in arms and legs.
‘Good morning, cupcake.’
I smiled at him, ‘Good morning.’ I touched his face. ‘The kid is coming today.’
He was instantly fully awake. ‘My God! You’re sure?’ he raised his head a little and looked at me. I nodded.
‘Mm hmm.’ I smiled at him.
‘Wow,’ he said, and frowned. ‘Do you need anything?’
I shook my head. I felt very dreamy. I just wanted to stay in this luscious dreamy, meditative state and be with that being I could feel in the room. I told George, ‘I can feel it, all around us, the presence.’ He stopped then, and sighed, and relaxed, snuggling with me and we both fell into a wonderful meditation.

He got up after a while, to make breakfast and feed the dog, but brought the breakfast back to bed. There we sat against the pillows, listening to the sounds of summer and getting really high and juicy from necking and petting, under the theory that 'what gets 'em in gets 'em out', as Shirley put it. About noon I started to feel really heavy with the rushes, like something had shifted, so he fished under the bed for the groundsheet we'd brought in for the purpose and put it on the bed. Not before time! The waters broke, and suddenly the baby moved down like a bowling ball down a laneway, and I heard myself making some pretty mooselike noises.
‘Oh,’ I was really uncomfortable and thought maybe it was because I was getting hung up about it.
‘Breathe with me,’ I said – and we sat together, lost in each other's eyes, breathing together in the guru meditation, sharing breaths, and both got really high and starting laughing, and there she was – the kid – coming in that golden light that was full of green shadows, slipping out like a wet kitten into her first day. We were both crying and looked in amazement at this grey-pink little stranger, and as we did, she opened her eyes and looked at us. Then yawned and mewed like a kitten and we were in love.

The afterbirth was a really sharp experience, nothing like the labour, crampy and actually painful as if I were low on electrolytes. But it was whole, and he scooped it up and moved it away from us. The kid was still attached to it. He got the scissors off the shelf that we had boiled for this day, and freed her.
‘There you are, little baby,’ he said, smiling, covering her head and back with his hand. His eyes were full of tears. ‘Welcome to the world.’

Born in the month of June, No silver spoon to help you out
Your mother had you naturally, Naturally's the way you came out
You know your own mind and you show it to me
Give me the high sign When you want to be free
And open up your eyes To the wonders that you see
See the airplane fly See the trees rush by
Be brave and strong when you hurt yourself
And don’t you have a worry in the world.

' For the love that’s been given you is the one thing time can’t erase
and every day it’s growin’ like the knowin’ smile upon your face
You’re startin’ out strong you get a kick out of life
you like to sing songs and be in the spotlight
And when everybody’s watchin’ you you shine so bright
See the airplane fly See the trees rush by
Be brave and strong when you hurt yourself
And don’t you have a worry in the world.

We sat together for a while before he got up to tidy up and I to use the pot, carrying the baby around with me. I felt very ancient, and rather grotty, as if I were squelching through the bog of time, the Palaeolithic Mother Goddess. George stripped the bed pretty quickly, and took the slop bucket out to the workshop. We intended to bury the afterbirth – not eat it! as Shirley had suggested. The linens could be boiled tonight and everything would be fresh tomorrow.
We had thought to call her Anne for his mother, but it did make me laugh – Anne Gregory!
‘"Only God my dear could love you for yourself alone, and not your yellow hair."’ I quoted in the morning, when she was all clean and fuzzy and sleepy after feeding.
He frowned. 'Eh?'
‘Yeats,’ I said. ‘He wrote that about Lady Gregory’s daughter Anne, whom he fancied.’
‘Ah,’ he thought for a moment. ‘We could call her Asgard.’ For our experience at the Midsummer festival.
I laughed, and kissed him. ‘That’s a very hippie name…. I like it!’ So she was called for the Norse heaven on earth.

George posted a notice at the co-op the next day and stopped by Maggie’s, the cafe, and the General to tell folks. Shirley came by in the evening straight from work to check me out, and asked many questions about the birth – laughing at me when I said I thought I was getting hung up at the end. ‘That’s transition, silly child! No wonder you were bellowing like a moose.’
She looked the baby over too, and marvelled at her little round head. ‘No moulding! God, you could probably have ten kids, and shoot ‘em out like grapes.’ I giggled at the image. ‘I was worried,’ she admitted, 'because Geordie’s so much bigger than you are. But I didn’t want to freak you out because everything seemed okay… I am still blown away at you guys – out here like pioneers! No help, not even any hot water, just having a baby like it was nothing.’
‘Oh, it wasn’t nothing,’ I smiled. ‘It was very holy.’
‘Yeah, it is,’ Shirley smiled. ‘Are we going to see you tomorrow? ‘ It was the quilting group meeting tomorrow. I nodded.
‘Good. I’ll pick you up. No arguments!’ She collected her things from the bed and put them back into her bag.
‘Remember what I said about nookie,’ she said at last.
I smiled. ‘I’m not a teenager. And he’s not a beast.’
‘Just doing my duty,’ She gave me a kiss. ‘Bye sweetheart. And you, little Valkyrie,’ she said to Asgard. ‘Hang loose.’

Chapter Nineteen

September 1976
The new moon in September fell on our anniversary, and as my cycle ran with the new moon, we decided that according to our plan now would be a good time to make a baby. We were done with Wobbly, school didn't start for a couple of weeks; perfect. So we laid off for a week before the first fertile day, and I didn't take any wild carrot; it would be a great experiment to see if just going off it the once would work. We had set aside the three days to devote to the project. If it didn't work, we'd try again next month. For a couple of weeks I had felt a presence hovering, a presence that was warm and humming, like the kundalini buzz. I told Geordie, and this is one of the reasons we chose now to try this. Certainly all the right physical signs were there; I had a tremendous cramp.
'It's holding us to our promise,' he said, smiling.

In our morning meditation we focused on that presence, and got really high. The room got very hot and I felt a buzzing in the small of my back and the top of my head itched. George had that too.
'Kundalini,' he said. We knew it now. 'Come on, baby,' he gave me a slow juicy kiss. We were very careful and didn't rush. Only when the energy was rising up through the solar plexus did we seal the circle and let it come fully, carrying us into that mind-blowing space of pure existence.
We drifted there, coming down very slowly, and I felt like a limp rag, but very peaceful. The room was full of a deep rose light, Into this holy atmosphere, he murmured,
'I can see it.'
I opened my eyes and looked at him. He was so high, with a blissy smile like a new-born babe's. He was drenched, and his hand fell under my chin heavily, burning. I smiled slowly, and rubbed my cheek against his arm. We did it. We knew we did.
I knew as the days passed, well before I was late, that we had succeeded. My body was suspended in that high juicy open state of fertility. Two late days then passed, then five; at eight days I could say certainly that we had a baby, though I didn't have to. There were plenty of signs, on which George commented with a smile.
'First time lucky,' he said.
'No luck about it,' I rejoined. 'It was craft,,, and pure art.'
He caught that with delight, and swung me around in the common room. 'Wha's like tha?' he murmured, with a kiss.
'Thou be,' I returned. 'All in all.'

I saw Shirley in the co-op the next day and told her, and a little of how we had done it.
'You have to tell this is to the girls,' she said. 'It'll inspire them.'
So I told our story in the Zen quilters' meeting the next night, after Shirley's preamble.
'Leave it to Claire and Geordie to invent a new way of making babies,' Maggie joked.
'Hush up and listen,' Shirley said, 'this is awesome.' She nodded at me. 'Go on, Claire.'
I told them how since we married I had been taking wild carrot, which I had got from my sister; how we had abstained for a week before hand, not our usual practise.
Shirley was nodding. Yes. Yes.
I told them about the presence and the kundalini, our careful pose and sealing the circuit of energy.
And Shirley was nodding. Yes. Yes.
I told them about our resting in the rose light of the room and letting the presence be with us – not getting up and rushing about.
And Shirley was nodding. Yes. Yes.
'Conscious conception,' she murmured. 'It's a girl,' she said, looking at me.
'Because of the pink light?' Betsey asked.
Shirley smirked at her. 'No, that's just the being's energy vibe. No, because they were early in the fertility cycle. To get a boy you have to get it smack on the day.' I nodded in agreement.
Betsey was impressed.
'Claire, you should teach NFP at the community centre and at Wobbly,' Shirley said. 'People would dig it.'
There were lots of question to us then about how wild carrot worked and what other things one cold use, to increase fertility or cure cramps or heavy bleeds.

Later, Shirley gave me a lift to the trailhead, and said while we were sitting in the truck,
'Claire, I'd be very happy to send some of my folk to you for herbal advice and mixtures.'
'I don't know all that much about pregnant women,' I protested.
'I get a lot of other questions too,' she said. 'It would be such a gift to the community. Think about it, won't you? You could put up a notice at the co-op.'
I told her I would think about it. 'But folk would have to come to me, or leave me a message on the board.' I didn't want us to have to get a phone for consulting.
Shirley smiled. 'That's the way my granny did it, back home.'
And that is how I became the village apothecary.

Chapter Eighteen

March and April 1975
In the middle of March, Maggie was due to have her baby any time. When I saw her on Tuesday at the quilters' meeting she was complaining of a backache and aching joints. She stayed home from the Friday jam, so I wasn't entirely surprised when on Saturday morning Joe poked his head into the workshop, where we were – Geordie working on a recorder and I on a glass panel for the community centre. It was nice and toasty there because of the kiln.
'Howdy, good morning to y'all,' he said. He ruffed up his shoulders in his sheepskin coat.
'Joe!'
He stomped his feet on the flagstone threshold, and stepped inside.
'I'm here to fetch Claire,' he nodded. 'Maggie's having her baby and all the womenfolk are coming in by bus.' He smiled ruefully.' She asked me to fetch you.'
'I'll come. Just a moment.' I got up and pulled my work apron off over my head.
'Tribalism,' George smiled, as I put away my tools.
'Shoot!' Joe said in his long slow way. 'I have never heard so much giggling and crying in all my born days. And there's panties I have never seen before hanging in my bathroom. I thought I'd walked into a harem. When I left they were all running out for the sauna like a bunch of goslings following the goose.'
He looked at me, 'I'll fetch you up there, but I'm keeping well out it. I like women, but a couple of dozen is too many. I'm going down to the Feed and Seed and set out with the guys, until it all blows over.'
I took my coat down from the nail.
'You're not invested in seeing it born then?' I pulled my hair out from underneath the coat and scrunched down my knitted cap.
'I have birthed most of 'em myself,' Joe said. 'Three, no four of 'em. Mag can have her hen party if she wants to.'
It was hard not to laugh at his lovely complacency, at his pure Cracker sensibility.
'Right,' I said. I went and kissed Geordie's cheek. He was merry.
'Have a good time, cupcake.'
'I will, and I won't bring back the wrong panties.'
He laughed, because I didn't wear them.

Joe, true to his word, let me out at the drive and went off for town. I crunched up through the snow and ice to the house. Maggie's mother was in the kitchen with Mark and Zachary, making play dough in a big red bowl.
'They're all out in the sauna yet,' Martha said. nodding. She was a tall, large soft woman, with salt and pepper hair cut short in an Ava Gardner style. 'Where's that Joe?'
I smiled. 'He fled to play chess at the feed store. Hi guys,' I said to the boys.
'Hi Claire! We're making play dough with mammaw!' Zachary said.
'I have green,' said Mark solemnly.
In the common room, Ezra was lying on the floor building a tower with Lincoln logs, amid the heaps and piles of everyone's stuff. I put down my rucksack, went down the hall, grabbed a towel from the shelf, and went into the bathroom. It was indeed festooned with various bits of underwear. I put up my hair and came out in the towel.
'Have fun,' I said to the boys.
It was very cold outdoors, and the footpath was icy and hard to navigate in flip-flops. There were squeals when I opened the sauna door. Maggie sat the middle of a group of about eighteen women; her two daughters Elizabeth and Abigail, her four sisters, our friends, and some of her old college chums.
'Claire!' She cried, rolling sweat.' Come on in girl, and close the door.'
I went, and sat on the floor in front of Shirley, who was sitting next to her.
We hung out there for some time, talking about men and babies and boyfriends past, recipes for coffee cake, and how to get the stains out of collars. Maggie and Shirley told her birth story of Joshua, her knee-baby as she called him - who was three, how he was nearly born in the wading pool at the Midsummer festival because he was such a 'little squirt', which made everyone laugh. As it was, Mag simply went over to their tent, pulled down the zip and had the baby.
'It surprised the heck out of the kids.' She said.

It was lunchtime then and Maggie's little girls led us all inside because they were hungry. We took up every room in the house, getting back into our clothes, and by the time we were done, Shirley had set up her kit in the bedroom and Maggie's sister Joan cleared out the loo of panties and ran a bath in the tub. It had Jacuzzi jets, and Mag was feeling pretty heavy.
'Don't you have this baby in the tub,' Shirley told her, 'My back can't stand hunkering down like that,' But she was smiling. It was an old joke between them.
She didn't have it in the tub. Along about teatime Maggie had set up a low mooing chant and was rocking back and forth on her hands and knees. Martha called the kids in from their rooms, and they watched their brother's little head and arms slip out, 'just like a horse!' as Ezra exclaimed. John was born amid a lot of crying and laughing, and pretty soon, Maggie was asking for something to eat because she was starving. It was a very good time. John's birth was special, not only for the common feeling between us women, but because, a long time afterward, he married our Sassa at Midsummer. They called him John because as Joe said with his ironic smile, he was the unexpected child of their old age. But nobody ever called him John; he was forever Jack, and as gentle and lovely a soul as you could hope to meet.

By March, all the chat in town was about the unimpeded rush of North Vietnamese forces into the strongholds of South Vietnam. The view of most was that it would have happened long ago had the French, British and Americans not interfered. We were in the general on the 30th and everyone was listening to a radio report, which ran, ‘A Saigon Government spokesman said today that radio contact with the encircled northern South Vietnamese port of Da Nang has been lost, indicating that the city has fallen… One observer, calling from a ship, informed us “all we can see is wall-to-wall people along the shore."’

We were standing at the counter with James, listening as the report went on and on. Jimbo just got more and more grim, and crossed his arms at last.
‘We never should have been there,’ he said. ‘We added to the problems. Man, this is going to get ugly.’
He was right. The scene was repeated a month later, when Saigon fell. ‘Panic is clearly visible in Saigon now as thousands of Vietnamese try desperately to find ways to flee their country. There are few exits left, and most involve knowing or working for Americans. United States Air Force C-141 jet transports took off all day and night from the Tan Son Nhut air base, the lucky passengers heading for Clark Air Base in the Philippines or for Andersen Air Force Base on Guam–‘ the report ran ‘ Others, not so lucky, rushed to drug stores to buy quantities of sleeping pills and tranquilizers, with which they could commit suicide if the worst came to pass. Still others, trying to get a seat aboard one of the planes, offered everything they had…. With American fighter planes flying cover and marines standing guard on the ground, Americans left Saigon yesterday by helicopter after fighting off throngs of Vietnamese civilians who tried to go along… large groups of Vietnamese clawed their way up the 10-foot wall of the embassy compound in desperate attempts to escape approaching Communist troops. United States marines and civilians used pistol and rifle butts to dislodge them…The American involvement here has ended in tumultuous scenes at both airport and embassy. Marines in battle gear have pushed all the people they could reach off the wall, but the crush of people was so great that scores got over. Some tried to jump the wall and landed on barbed wire strung along the top. Earlier today we saw a middle-aged man and a woman lying on the wire, bleeding. People held up their children, asking Americans to take them over the fence….’
I looked at Geordie. He was white-faced, and looked sick. His eyes filled with tears. ‘My God, I can’t listen to any more of this! Let’s get out of here!’

We had a peace and prayer vigil that night on the green, with everyone in the whole town out, praying and chanting by candlelight in the bright light of the moon, and singing ‘Give Peace a Chance.’
’Ev'rybody's talking about
Bagism, Shagism, Dragism, Madism,
Ragism, Tagism
This-ism, That-ism, is-m, is-m, is-m
All we are saying is give piece a chance,
All we are saying is give piece a chance

’Ev'rybody's talking about ministers,
Sinister, Banisters
And canisters, Bishops, Fishops,
Rabbis, and Pop eyes, Bye, bye, bye byes
All we are saying is give peace a chance,
All we are saying is give peace a chance

’’Ev'rybody's talking about
John and Yoko, Timmy Leary, Rosemary,
Tommy Smothers, Bobby Dylan,
Tommy Copper, Derek Taylor, Norman Mailer,
Allen Ginsberg, Hare Krishna,
Hare Krishna
‘All we are saying is give peace a chance,
all we are saying is give peace a chance’

Chapter Seventeen

Christmas 1974
We went into town on the 21st, for supplies and for the Solstice party. At the co-op we put up our notice about our Twelfth Night party, and then slogged down to the general through the ice rimes for our monthly stock. There was a note on the middle of the doors:
‘Close the door: it be winter.’
It was full of tourists and smelled of cinnamon and cocoa. Jingly Christmas music was playing over the PA, and it was warm from the well-stoked fire in the stove. James was at the counter, wearing a Santa hat and red suspenders. His habitual salesman’s smile became a broad grin when we stepped up from the queue.

“Haha! Geordie! ‘ He clapped him on the shoulders across the counter. ‘Hello Claire. I have your order, and something else! Stay right there!’ He disappeared into the back behind the curtain – now red and green flannel – and returned with a box that was the size of a Boxing Day gift, and a smaller one, suspiciously tall and lean.
‘Plain brown wrapper,’ he said with twinkling eyes. ‘Hell of a time getting it through customs.’ George looked perplexed.
‘It’s not French postcards…. May we open it?’
‘Please!’
He tore the wrapping away… and there was a bottle of 15 year old Laphroaig. I thought George would cry. He was silent for a long moment.
‘By God Jimbo, you are a true mate,’ he murmured at last. ‘How the hell did you swing this?’
James was still twinkling. ‘I had Bob get it for me –‘ the barman. ‘There’s another one at Mosey’s, just for you. ‘
‘We’ll have to share this one.’
‘I was hoping you’d say that.’
‘We’ll have something to properly toast the haggis,’ I said.
‘That’s what made me think of it,’ James told us, ’when I was ordering the sheep stomach.'
‘Thanks, brother,’ George said, and they shook hands warmly over the counter.

It was about two in the morning when we got home, hauling the sledge behind us on skis from the road. The fire was still nicely banked, so it was easy enough to warm it up for a few moments longer; it had snowed while we were out, and we had to clear the path to get in the door. When we were unmuffled, George went into the kitchen and rummaged in the drawer by candlelight. A few minutes later he returned to where I sat with the dog on the floor in the common room, and handed me a juice glass, with a dram of beautiful aromatic peaty single-malt. I stood with him, because it was proper to do.
‘Here’s to a Happy Christmas,’ he murmured, and raised the glass in James’ direction. He looked at me, that intense look that thrilled and stilled at once, and very slowly took a drop of the beautiful stuff.
‘Oh….’ He closed his eyes in ecstasy, and gave a long sigh. ‘Almost better,’ he smiled, ‘almost. But not quite…. Maybe both,’ he came and kissed me. ‘Oh yes, that’s it. Come on, baby.’ He dipped his finger in the rare scotch and touched my lips. It burned like fire. Another kiss. Then, putting the glasses down on the bookshelf, he moved into a slow dance with me, humming a jazz tune huskily. 'Until the Real Thing Comes Along.' Oh my....
‘Is there anything that fella of yours can’t do?’
I have yet to discover it.

We decorated the house in greens and red ribbon for Twelfth Night. I had made a couple of haggis, one vegetarian, black bun, and a vegetarian version of cockie-leekie, and we brought out the Stilton we had also special-ordered. We lined the path from the road in pierced tin lanterns – borrowed from James – waiting until the last moment, in case it should snow. The house and workshop were all open, and we wondered how we could cram thirty people in our little space to eat. The rest was not a problem. When Dave and Carrie arrived, Dave went up to George, and he nodded. Dave had his bagpipe around the back, and we had agreed we'd hand the haggis through the kitchen windows.

When everyone was assembled, Geordie and James poured out a wee dram into everyone's cups – displacing the lamb' s wool that preceded it – and George said,
'As some of you know, in England this is a very special night. It is the old Christmas. And since it would be extravagant to have two parties, Claire and I thought to combine it with Burns Night. And if you don't know who Rabbie Burns is, you have to leave –'
There was laughter. 'No,' He held up a hand. 'But to that end, we do have something rather special, in thanks to you all for your good friendship –' He nodded to me, and I handed the torch to Carrie, who went to the door and clicked it twice. In a moment, there was the sound of piping, a solemn pibrochaid, and then murmurs from those near the door when Mike and Dave appeared out the darkness, Mike in a dark plaid, bearing the haggis crowned with holly, and Dave piping before. It was quite a spectacle. There was a hush as they came into the house, and proceeded gravely to the top of the common room, where there was a small table, lit with candles; the place of honour.

I looked over at Maggie, whose eyes were shining, and we began the stamp-and- clap rhythm, pre-arranged. When the haggis arrived before George, he raised his head and recited in his beautiful voice,
'Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o' the puddin-race!
Aboon them a' ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy o' a grace
As lang's my arm.
The groaning trencher there ye fill,
Your hurdies like a distant hill,
Your pin wad help to mend a mill
In time o' need,
While thro' your pores the dews distil
Like amber bead.'

How long we had worked on that! But it came off wonderfully. Then, Mike placed the haggis on the table, and George went behind it, taking up the biggest kitchen knife we had, he cut through the haggis crosswise, chanting,

'His knife see rustic Labour dight,
An' cut you up wi' ready sleight,
Trenching your gushing entrails bright,
Like ony ditch;
And then, O what a glorious sight,
Warm-reekin, rich!
Then, horn for horn,
they stretch an' strive:
Deil tak the hindmost! on they drive,
Till a' their weel-swall'd kytes belyve,
Are bent lyke drums;
Then auld Guidman, maist like to rive,
"Bethankit!" 'hums.
Is there that owre his French ragout
Or olio that wad staw a sow,
Or fricassee wad mak her spew
Wi' perfect sconner,
Looks down wi' sneering, scornfu' view
On sic a dinner?

'Poor devil! see him ower his trash,
As feckless as a wither'd rash,
His spindle shank, a guid whip-lash,
His nieve a nit;
Thro' bloody flood or field to dash,
O how unfit!
But mark the Rustic, haggis fed,
The trembling earth resounds his tread.
Clap in his walie nieve a blade,
He'll mak it whissle;
An' legs an' arms, an' heads will sned,
Like taps o' thrissle.

'Ye Pow'rs wha mak mankind your care,
And dish them out their bill o' fare,
Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware
That jaups in luggies;
But, if ye wish her gratefu' prayer,
Gie her a haggis!'

He raised his glass, then did the company, and we all toasted the haggis. I looked at James during the exclamations over the whiskey, and he laughed out loud.
When it came time for the eating, some people were dubious about the haggis, especially as George was having the vegetarian one.
'What is it?'
'Mutton and beef and barley, raisins and spices,' I said, 'A meat pudding.'
'...in a sheep stomach!' winked James.
People who were already eating turned white.
'You eat sausages,' Joe said. 'Same thing.'
It was a great laugh.
We had all the usual Twelfth Night games, snapdragon and pantomimes, 'What am I?', King Bean and Queen Pea (Dave and Maggie), and wassailing the trees round the house. The sun was rising before the last of our revellers left, and we went to bed. 'And a good time was had by all.'

My sister Ellen for Christmas had sent me a copy of the Third Foxfire book. I had the other two, and copies of the magazine. This compendium of rural living, yielding both practical advice and sociological commentary, became a kind of encyclopaedia to us, to which we referred often or simply read for entertainment. The folk in it sounded so much like Joe and Shirley! Those two were delighted to see the books and would pick something out at random and say 'oh yeah, we used to do it that way' or 'My Daddy' or 'my aunt Marilee did it thus and so...' which added to our store of knowledge and the richness of our lives. Through the years, every two or three years, we added to the store, until the latest one – Number Twelve. There were additional books: a cookery book, a Christmas book, a book of toys and games, and we got those too.

Chapter Sixteen

October and November 1974
We had our first snowfall in the middle of October, a scattering of a couple of inches that laid only a few days on the ground, but it brought with it a cold that harbinged winter. Gone were the lazy days of summer and Indian summer. It was cold now in the mornings, with ice in the washbowl, and dark by six o'clock. We covered over the summer parts of the garden with straw, and turned our efforts to the squashes and pumpkins and late potatoes. We laid the onions and garlic up in the workshop, braided and thrown over the rafters, and the late herbs as well. It was time to turn on the grow lights in the jardinière.

The dog grew a thick winter coat, and we knew that there were snug times ahead. With a dozen yards of wool flannel got at the Episcopal Church jumble sale, I put up curtains in the bedroom and common room, and made covers for the doorways. George laughed at this and said that we looked like a Tayside lounge, for the stuff was an unbalanced plaid of green and grey.
'You'll thank me in hoary January,' I replied.
'I'm sure you're right.'
As the weather got colder and the days shorter, we were actually pretty snug. The double-glazed windows and our sod roof, with the minor addition of the curtains, meant that we used far less wood than other people with spaces roughly the same size – a little under three cords of wood for the whole winter, as opposed to five or six. This information we got from James, who talked to everybody. Our total wood consumption for a year was equal to theirs, because of our kitchen stove, which of course we used every day. The trick seemed to be that our wood, stacked against the side of the workshop under a little overhang in the roof, was very dry. According to Foxfire Magazine, dry wood burned cleanly with little or no smoke, and this was our experience. We didn’t get creosote in the chimney pipes or gooey messes on the bottom of the stoves. The wood was easy to light and burned very hot.

In the middle of November we had a letter from Jack. They wanted to come up for the skiing on the Thanksgiving weekend and would we mind if they stayed with us?
'The question is rather, will they mind staying with us,' I said to Geordie. 'You saw their house. I don't think the kids will mind sleeping on the floor, but Jack thinks he deserves innerspring mattresses and eiderdown like a birthright.' I patted the sofa, which was a futon.
George laughed. 'Well, they'll live with it or go someplace else, it's up to them.'
'You don't mind?'
He shrugged. 'As I don't know what all the fuss is about with Thanksgiving, I can't say. I wouldn't grudge anyone the skiing here.'

The prescience turned out to be well founded. We sent Jack and Beth very explicit instructions about how to find us, and how to navigate the logging road and the path from it, which we marked with posts before for first snowfall, but on Wednesday they still got lost. Then Jack was cross because they had to carry the kids a quarter mile through two feet of snow to the house. The kids loved it, of course. But, the first words out of Jack's mouth to me were a complaint,
'Why the hell don't you have a proper driveway?'
I smiled, 'for a quarter mile, uphill? Are we the Wilkeses at Twelve Oaks, then?'

We gave them the grand tour of the house and its peculiarities, the workshop, and the privy, showed them where their towels were in the kitchen dresser, and handled the inevitable storm of incredulity and protest from my brother.
'You have an outhouse? Jesus, what do you do in the middle of the night in the winter?' He gestured. ' What are the kids to do? I'm sure as hell not trudging out to the john with a flashlight through the snow.'
'There's a pot under the sofa for you,' I said, nodding. 'I'll show the kids how to use it. It's no big deal, Jack, it's just like camping.'
He shook his head. 'You and Ellen are too much! But you're even more off the wall than she is. I mean, you wrote about all this, but I didn't believe it.'
'Thanks, bro,' I said.
We helped them collect their ski gear from their Range Rover, and we all went cross-country skiing for the day, which helped to quell Jack's bad mood somewhat.

In the kitchen as we were making dinner, Beth examined the set-up with interest, poking into cupboards and reading the jar labels as they ranged on the shelves under the ledge on the window side. She had watched me regulate the stove as if she were a medical student on the first day of surgical procedures.
'I had the ideas from Ellen,' I said of the jars and shelves. ' Her kitchen is pretty much the same. But the organisation is mine.' And it was all very organised, from herbs and spices to grains and flours, to legumes and dried and preserved foods. Everything was in glass and tins. There was nothing plastic, except for a couple of bowl scrapers. Our grinder, for grains and legumes, was an old iron one, and mounted to the ledge. From food to pots to crocks to bottles of milk, it was all organic.

Over the last six months we had slowly changed our diet to a grain and veg based one, and milk and eggs were really the only animal things we bought; I made butter and cheese and yoghurt. Geordie was starting to go off animal products entirely, so I had begun experimenting with making gluten and using soy recipes from Kloss. I had discovered in my experiments that that master hadn't discovered the best way to make something, every time, and that knowledge was heady. But if we were to have kids, I still wasn't sure if they or I should be vegans, so kept my toe in the animal products world. And I liked fermenting things besides. It put me in touch with those old human traditions.
'It looks like a restaurant,' Beth said, impressed. She smiled, looking about at the lamps and all the gear. 'A Victorian restaurant!'
Geordie came in for the corkscrew to open a bottle of Zinfandel. 'Hello, darling girl,' he kissed my cheek and took a tea towel from the drawer. Then he carried bottle, corkscrew and all into the common room.
Beth frowned.

'You don't have any paper goods, do you?'
I looked up. 'Except to light the stove, no.'
'No, I mean like napkins or towels, or' – she lowered her voice – 'toilet paper. I noticed that in the john – the pile of cloths and bucket. You have to wash all that stuff?'
I nodded. She paused, and coloured.
'And you wash it by hand! '
'I have a hand agitator and a mangle, actually,' I corrected.
'But what about – ' she looked over in the direction of the common room and lowered her voice –' what about your monthlies?'
Talk about Victorian! Monthlies, good grief. 'I made my own pads and I wash them.'
She looked thunderstruck. 'Ew.' Pause. 'Really?'
'Yes, lots of the women around here do.'
'...But isn't it messy? And what does George think?'
I smiled. Oh yes, we must not be real women in front of men! We must always wear makeup, and never bleed or have hairy legs or pits. That was the life I was raised in – to be a perfect, unreal doll. And I was until the Summer of Love smacked me in the face.
'Given that he's never lived with any other woman before he doesn't know the difference,' I said frankly. 'And he wouldn't want a Barbie doll if he did.' I wasn't about to share with her more intimate details of managing bodily fluids. If she wanted to know more about that she could read Ina May Gaskin. But somehow I didn't think she would. Whatever, I wouldn't want to experience their kind of sexuality for anything. I suspected there were words Beth had never used, and if you couldn't talk to your own husband frankly about your own body, then what kind of a relationship did you have? I had to tell Maggie and Shirley about this conversation. They would laugh themselves silly.

'Look,' I said, as gently as I could, 'it's neither practical nor economical to waste a lot of paper up here. We can't bury it, and so we have to burn it and using all the stuff you mentioned would mean we're burning all the time, polluting the air. You might think it's gross, but this is the most commonsense way to live here – and the way that people have lived for thousands of years. What do you think folk did before there was all that?'
'I never really thought about it,' Beth said doubtfully.
I smiled and put my arms around her. 'Oh, Bethy, you are so cute! Think about it, and make choices from there. Live consciously! ' Smiled at her again and went back to my sauce. 'Can you help me pour this out?' I said of the pasta.

I went into the common room to tell the guys and kids that dinner was on. The kids were sprawled out all over the dog in front of the stove and George sat on the sofa, smoking his pipe – which he rarely did- and the room was wreathed in the sweet smell; Jack was going on about the recession and the price of gas.
'I hadn't noticed, actually,' George admitted when he could get a word in edgewise. 'We hardly ever drive and don't buy a lot of consumer goods.' He looked up and thought at me with an expression that said, thank God you're here. Get me out of this.
'Dinner's ready,' I said, coming over.
Geordie laid his head on my hip. 'Thanks, babe.'
I went over to the kids. 'Davie, Barbie, would you like to go sit at your very own special table?'
Davie rolled over. 'We want him to come!' he said patting the dog.
'Ferg isn't allowed in the kitchen during meals, ' I said. 'But you can come and play with him when you're done.' I took his hand. 'Come on, we have special plates for you and everything.'

I took the kids by the hands and herded them into the kitchen, sat them up on the stools from our workshop at the ledge. They had their own little space with autumn leaves and a bunch of dried yarrow, and tin plates that the Wheelers' kids had painted for us at Wobbly. They had cups of carob cocoa to go with their dinner. Above them on the window stave, too high for them to reach, a candle burned in one of our old folding climbing lanterns. Maybe they were bewitched by the calming yarrow, but they were very good the whole meal, on which Beth commented. For us, however, it was not so good.

'You say you don't notice, ' Jack went on, inexorably, as George poured out the wine, 'but you must, up here. Things must come hard by.'
'What do you mean?' I asked, passing out the salad –laden plates. I had an idea of what he was about to say.
'Well you don't really work.'
George looked up sharply, putting the wine bottle down and handing Beth her glass. 'I beg your pardon, but we do work,' he said softly, with a glance at me.
Jack took a drink from his glass. ' Yes – oh this is very good! - Yes, I know, Claire wrote about teaching kids music, but that's only part time, isn't it?'
George agreed that it was.
'How many hours?'
'Between twelve and fifteen a week, ' I said, 'it varies.'
'Exactly, ' Jack said, nodding. 'And how much do you make from that a month?'
George looked at me. It was really none of my brother's business, and it was rude of him to ask. But he realised, as I did, that Jack had some game on, and he wanted to see it to the end.
'About two hundred dollars a month,' George said shaking his hair from his eyes. I nodded.
'And how much do you spend?'
'About a hundred.'
Jack paused in his rant, nonplussed. '...Oh. Still, that's not very much –'
'We made seven hundred dollars last month over and above that on instruments and jewellery,' George said quickly, into the breach.
Again, Jack paused. 'Shit, that's more than my house payment!' He said. I smiled and handed him his plate back, full of carbonara. 'Thank you.... Do you make that frequently?'
'Almost every month,' George agreed. He too was smiling. Game on, now.
'Shit. Who'd have thought, from arts and crafts?'
I looked at Beth and noticed she was pushing the remains of salad around her plate. Oh dear. She hadn't said anything since we sat down.

'So where does the money go?' Jack asked, now truly perplexed. He looked about the kitchen.
'Not up in smoke, if that's what you mean, ' Geordie laughed. 'The only herbs we have are culinary and medicinal.' He winked at me. Jack was very red.
'Well I didn't mean –'
'We give it to the co-op, for local projects – like the roads and maintenance of public buildings – or to Oxfam America, for relief projects for the poor.' I said.
Jack was silent for some moments, thinking and eating.
'You work and give all your money away?' He ascertained.
We nodded.
'We were brought up, Jack, to tithe to the church and the poor box,' I reminded him. 'We don't need it.' He stopped, very red, and looked up at me from under his sandy eyebrows. He was really angry.
'But not to throw away money with both hands and live like paupers!' he burst out. 'Jesus Christ, Claire! You have two and a half million dollars sitting in a trust fund and you live like you were in Appalachia!'

We all stared at him, Beth because she was mortified, and Geordie and I because we were dumbstruck. We had no idea how much money was in the trust. I had never asked.
'It can stay there,' I said, after a moment.
'Until when?'
'Until Hell freezes over for all I care,' I said flatly. Under the table, George reached out with his foot and rubbed my leg. Well done, it said.
'It can't just sit there, ' Jack insisted.
'Why not? ' I asked. 'Is there a run on the banks?'
My brother rattled his silverware in frustration. 'No! But it's not doing anything! You should let me invest it.'
The penny dropped. I looked at George. 'Ah,' I said. 'I get it.' He nodded, and so I went on. 'Times are bad so you want to use my money to make yourself rich in speculation.' I turned to Jack and looked him fully in the face. 'Well, you can forget it.'
'But Claire you don't know anything about money.'
'Enough to know that what you are suggesting is wrong.'
'Dad made his living this way,' Jack insisted.' Gave you a privileged life, gave you the ability to live out here like this.'
I bit my lips and stared hard at Geordie. He was beaming peace and loving-kindness at me. 'No, Jack,' I said at last. 'I gave me the ability to live out here like this, by my own study and practise, by my own work with my own two hands. I never used a penny of that money for any of this.'
'What about Juilliard?' He challenged.
'That was on full scholarship.'
'What about Holy Family?' He went on. The girls' Catholic boarding school in Connecticut I went to.
'I didn't choose that,' I said. 'Dad and Mom did.'
'God, you are the most stubborn woman!' Jack exclaimed, reaching past me for the wine. George laughed.
'What sort of trust is it?' he asked Jack. We both looked up in surprise.
'A revocable trust,' Jack said. 'That’s –'
'Yes. I know what that is,' George said softly, holding up a hand. He looked keenly at my brother. 'Why not make it an irrevocable trust?' He looked at me, 'for our grandchildren.' I smiled. Oh what a splendid joke! Tie it all up for generations.
'You want to entail it?' Jack exclaimed, consternated.
I laughed. 'Yes.' That would fix him.

I got up then and went to the icebox for the shoofly pie I had made for dessert, with one tiny one each for the children. When I sat down again with the pie, I said to Jack,
'I'm sorry you're feeling squeezed in the stock market, Jack. I really am. But I think that your interest in my trust fund is just a little bit the wrong side of greedy. Especially, as you say, when I don't know anything about money.' I handed him a plate of the sticky sweet pie with a smile. Beth was looking at him with her head cocked, with a kind of smirk on her face, a 'see I told you!' look that made me very merry.

In the dark that night, George said of the evening,
'Well, that was interesting.'
'God,' I exclaimed. 'Jack is such a pain in the ass!'
He chuckled and put his fingers over my mouth. 'Shh, shh shh, they'll hear you.' He kissed me. 'You were brilliant,' he whispered. 'What a bonny lass.' I could feel him laughing silently.
'How did you know about trusts?' I hissed.
'Part of my internship at the Phil was in the front office,' he reminded me. ' I learned just enough about non-profits to be dangerous. We had several important donors.'
'I can just imagine.'
He chuckled again, 'oh, sweetheart, what a joy you are. Steadfast. I love you so much Claire.' He kissed me. 'Even if you are an heiress... even if you were a Catholic schoolgirl....'
'Ah now, whatever do you mean by that?'
He laughed again, softly. 'Come here. I'll show you.'

The next morning there was a rather awkward, but funny, incident. Barbie came in to our room, following the dog, as the sun came up. We were already up, meditating, and into the silence, we heard Jack hiss in a stage whisper:
'Don't go in there!'
I opened my eyes, to see my brown-haired niece standing by our bed with her finger in her mouth, regarding us solemnly with big blue eyes.
'It's alright, bro,' I called out. 'We're not naked or anything!'
'Shh! ' George poked me, and then laughed too.
'What are you doing?' Barbie asked.
I smiled. 'Meditating.'
'Do you want to come up?" George asked her.
She nodded and climbed up on the bed, sitting before us with her feet splayed out on either side in the extreme flexibility of childhood.
'Here,' I said, taking her little soft hands. I put them together as if she were praying in church.
'Now close your eyes, and listen for God,' I said. She did, obediently, and we hung out for a couple of minutes with her, in a really good vibe. Kids are so open to that Godspace, they just move right into it, and so did Barbie, because she was only four. But Jack had to stick his fool head through the edge of the curtain and say,

'What the hell are you doing?'
He scared the poor little thing, so that she jumped a mile.
'Meditating with us,' I said, looking over at him.
He barged in fully, in long underwear, and pulled the kid up by the hand.
'I don't want my kids corrupted by any of that Eastern shit.' He said.
I shook my head at him. 'Jack you are so uptight. It's just prayer.'
He glared at me. 'Do you go to church anymore?'
'Do you?' I asked rhetorically. 'I fail to see how that's any of your business,' I said. 'As a matter of fact there was a Franciscan priest at our all Souls celebration –' I wouldn't call it Samhain in front of him – ' and he blessed us all.' It was nice, because it was my birthday.
'Hippie priests in sandals!' he scathed.
'St Francis of Assisi? '
He made a noise and went out, dragging the kid by the hand.
'It's going to be a long day,' I said. I was in a really bad mood now.
'Hey,' Geordie murmured. 'Hey. Look at me.'
I turned round and he put his hands on my face, and we breathed together the guru breath for a while until I felt better.
'We'll work on this,' he promised, 'when they've gone.'
It was just like him to know without being told that there was more going on here than met the eye.
We all went downhill skiing for most of the day, which was a relief. Any ratty feelings could be put into the activity and dissipated, and even Jack loosened up and had a good time. We stopped by the house for the pies for the dinner at town hall, and then headed into town.

Everybody was there, and the talk was loud, in the room festooned with leaves and pumpkins and cornucopiae of candy corn. The Zen quilters had made runners for the tables and it was very inviting and warm. I put our sweet potato pies over on the buffet table and introduced Beth to Maggie and Betsey, who were there.
'You have worked so hard,' Beth said to them, looking at the room.
'Nah,' Maggie said. 'Everybody pitches in. Welcome!'
There was a group blessing led by Joe and James, with everybody holding hands, and we sang the Merry Meet Merry Part, Till We Merry Meet Again song, before queuing up for the food:

'By the Air that is Her breath,
By the Fire of Her bright spirit,
By the Waters of Her womb,
By the Earth that is Her body.
Our Circle is open -- Yet unbroken.
May the peace of the Goddess be ever in our hearts.
Merry meet and merry part and merry meet again.
Merry meet and merry part and merry meet again.

'By the Air that is Her Wisdom,
By the Fire of Her bright Courage,
By the Waters of Her Love,
By the Earth that is Her Strength.
'Our Circle is open -- Yet unbroken.
May the love of the Goddess be ever in our hearts.
Merry meet and merry part and merry meet again.
Merry meet and merry part and merry meet again.

'We're the keepers of Her Wisdom,
We're the keepers of Her Courage,
We're the keepers of Her Love,
We're the keepers of Her Strength.

Our Circle is open -- Yet unbroken.
May the joy of the Goddess be ever in our hearts.
Merry meet and merry part and merry meet again.
Merry meet and merry part and merry meet again.

That didn’t go down too well with Jack, who harrumphed loudly as we got our plates.
'Chill out,' I muttered to him.' It's just a song about gratitude.' Behind me, Geordie put his hand on my back.
Jack didn't find the food any better – it was vegetarian, not a turkey in sight, though there were plenty of nut roasts and cranberry sauce, close enough to fool the staunchest carnivore – including James, who sat across from us with Betsey, a plate before him heaped as high as Mt. San Jacinto. Joe and Maggie and their kids were to our right, and Shirley and her little Jewish husband David to our left. Mike and Karen Oldfield were at the next table at about the same latitude, with Dave and Carrie Morrisey and the Burkes and their four kids. After some eating went down, the kids were all running around together, carrying on, stopping at whichever Mom happened to be nearest once in a while to check in. Even my niece and nephew joined in on this mayhem, laughing and running and free. I half heard Jack make a blue remark about 'communes' saw him looking at me out of the corner of my eye, but I steadfastly ignored him.

After way too much dessert, the Carolina Sweethearts were prevailed upon to give some music, so we went up to the end of the room where our set up was, and whiled away a couple of hours in some get-down bluegrass; it was the only completely free-feeling part of the evening to me.

Finishing off we played Will the Circle be Unbroken,
Well I followed close behind her
Tried to hold up and be brave
But I could not hide my sorrow
When they laid her in that grave.

'Will the circle be unbroken?
By and by Lord, by and by,
There's a better home a-waitin
In the sky lord, in the sky.

'I went back home Lord that home was lonesome
Since my mother, she was gone
All my brothers and sisters crying
What a home so sad and alone.

'Will the circle be unbroken?
By and by lord, by and by,
There's a better home a-waitin
In the sky lord, in the sky.

' One by one the seats were emptied
One by one they went away
Now that family they are parted
Will they meet again some day.

'Will the circle be unbroken?
By and by lord, by and by,
There's a better home a-waitin
In the sky lord, in the sky.

' I was singing with my sisters
I was singing with my friends
And we all can, sing together
‘Cause the circle never ends'

Tired and happy, we wended our way to the jeep at midnight; George with sleepy Davie sprawled across his chest while Jack carried Barbie.
'I don't think we'll come back with you,' Jack said unceremoniously at their Range Rover. George and I looked at one another. Beth protested.
'But all our clothes, and skis, and the children's toys are at the house!'
'We can send for them,' Jack insisted, looking me dead in the eye. He was so full of bad feeling. Resentment, disapproval, even hate.
'Don't be stupid,' I said. 'It's the middle of the night, and a three-hour drive.'
'We'll get a hotel.'
'There aren't any,' George offered,' unless you go to Palm Springs.'
'Then we'll go to Palm Springs.'
'But they won't be open now,' Geordie continued.
'Then I'll drive.'

'Jack,' I said, 'I don't know what's bugging you so much, but it won't be solved by doing this. Be sensible.'
He exploded, drawing stares from passers-by going to their cars. 'Sensible! Says my hippie sister with her hillbilly house and godless pagan commune friends. You make me sick.'
'That's quite enough,' George said quietly, shifting Davie up on his shoulder. He glanced at Beth, who was crying softly. 'I won't allow you to speak that way to my wife,' he went on softly. He looked at Jack for a long time, steadily, neutrally. 'You can rant all you want all night, and say whatever you want to me, and I'll hear you. But you will not speak that way to her. It is very late, and we were up early. I should not like it on my conscience if you should meet with an accident. These are dangerous mountain roads. It's slick and likely to be icy. There are no lights. For the sake of your family, if not your own, come with us,'
'Jack!' Beth cried. 'The children!'
'Be quiet!' He said sharply. He looked back at Geordie, who faced him with calm neutrality for several more minutes. The cold of the night was setting into us all. Finally, finally, Jack sighed deeply and said,
'Okay.' He nodded like a child and herded his family into the car.

'What did you do there?' I asked George in the darkness as we turned onto our logging road. 'Something I learned at Findhorn,' he said quietly. 'From Peter, who learned it in the RAF. From MI6...' He glanced at me. 'It's a form of mind-control, and I don't like to use it. But I really felt that lives were at stake....'
He was silent for a long time as he drove. Then,
'Jack wasn't ever in Viet Nam?' He ascertained. He knew he wasn't, so I was puzzled at the double-checking.
'No. Daddy got him out of it somehow... Why?'
'I think he feels guilty.' There was silence for a while again. Then, 'did he have any really close friends who were there?'
'Oh yes!' I had an instant image of his best friend, Matt Carberry. Matt played the bass, was a CO, and went over as a medic. I told Geordie this.
'What happened to him?'
'He was blown to bits and came back in a shoe box.'

'Jesus!' He looked at me. 'Someone who talked like you, and Ellen, about peace and love and right livelihood.' It was not a question.
'Yes.'
'Did Jack agree with him?'
'Heck no! He told him he was a nancy.'
'And Matt went off and died.'
I nodded.
Geordie considered. 'He probably thinks that "peace love and right livelihood" killed him. That if he'd been a real man, carrying a gun, he wouldn't have died. So there's conflict. It would explain a lot. But he can't face it....' He looked at me and smiled in the darkness. 'And our loving peaceful friends just pushed him to the limit. Poor blighter.'

Jack was very subdued in the morning. We woke very early and did our meditation in peace, and were sitting drinking tea at the kitchen table when he came in, looking like death.
'Will you be all right to drive?' I asked him.
'I don't know,' he admitted, rubbing his head. 'Beth can drive.' I was relieved that my know-all macho brother was admitting a human incapacity. He lumbered over and sat down at the table heavily.
'I had a strange dream,' he said. 'Claire do you remember Matt?'
I glanced at George, and nodded.
'Well, I had a dream that he came to my office and told me I was an asshole,' I stifled a smile, 'really told me off for not going with him to Nam, that if I had gone with him, he would have been okay, wouldn't have run over that landmine.'
There was the guilt, pointed out to him by its object.
'What did you say?' George asked.
Jack was silent for a moment. 'I told him he was a pantywaist and that real men weren't out there driving ambulances, but were in the forests clearing out the Viet Cong.'
There was the ambivalence.
'He was awarded the purple heart, Jack,' I said, aching.
'Fat lot of good it did him,' Jack said, and his eyes filled with tears. I got up and got him a towel, but he shook his head.
'I'll be all right.'
'I'll make you some coffee, then,' I said.
'Thanks.'

While I made the coffee, George asked him about Matt, and his life and their friendship, and how they left it. Jack unwound a long and complex tale, slowly drinking the black coffee before him. But when he came to how they left it, he shook his head and balked.
'I let him down,' he only said. 'I was an ass to him. I was a big cruel jerk. And I never apologised.'
Davie came in just then, in his footed pyjamas, and laid is head on my leg. 'Auntie Claire,' he said. 'I want to stay at your house with Ferdus.'
Beth must have told them they had to go home. I smoothed his hair. 'You can come back again and play with Fergus, ' I told him.

When they'd gone, we grabbed our ice gear and went climbing with Rob for the next three days. Hanging off a frozen sheer face and bivying in a sling is extremely bracing to the mind and clears the head wonderfully.

Chapter Fifteen

September 1974

George and I had planned our workshops for the Whole Being weekend so that we would have more or less all of the third day free, for it fell on our anniversary, the 22nd, and we wanted to spend the day together. The first day we had our all-day workshops on fiddle-making and stained glass, from eight in the morning until four, so we didn't see each other much until dinner time; the second day there was George’s workshop on universal energy and I was doing concessions, and the last day were our music workshops, only two hours long.

The Wobbly was a deal of work setting up. From Lammas onward there were work days – mostly carpentry- for which we volunteered, as the whole thing was run on volunteerism. The fee for the three days was $10, and the food, all donated, was free. We were not paid for our workshops, but we didn’t have to pay a camping fee either. It was nominal, but the freebie was nice. We took our two-man climbing tent, camp chairs, a canister of paraffin and the stove; snacks, powdered milk and tea, treating it like a climbing weekend. Fergus was very happy to have his own zabuton beside us. He was used to camping out, and so long as George was there morning and evening with his food wherever we were, he was the best of best friends.

Early on Friday morning on their way to the festival site, James and Betsey stopped by our camp in Buckhorn under the pines, and said it looked very homey. George crawled out of the tent and shook the hair from his face.
‘Eh? No more Spartan than home, you mean?’ He was smiling.
‘How do you fit in there, with all that?’ Betsey said, peering into the tent, which was full of our instruments at the moment.
‘We have a ground sheet and tarp for that,’ George said.
‘Still doesn’t explain how you can cram yourselves in there,’ James said. ‘You’d take up most of it all by yourself.’
‘Tantra!’ I said, and they laughed. George zipped up the tent, whistled to the dog, and we walked with them through the trees for the day.

There were maybe a thousand people present on Friday, and at the morning meditation, probably six hundred sat on the lawn before the stage. We began with the Chenrezig chant – Om mani padme hum – for about ten minutes, and then everyone fell to silence, which became progressively more profound as time stretched into timelessness. Geordie and I sat spooned together, as we often did, his head resting against mine, holding hands, and flowing along in a sea of beautiful energy. The circuit was so complete that we could do the guru breathing in this way, one flowing into the other. The silence became a hum, then a roar, and the whole world was contained in it. Six hundred people, breathing peace together; it was so calm and loving and steady.
There wasn't any call to come back from cloud cuckoo land, it just happened, with everyone opening their eyes more or less at once and a lot of people laughing. The light was brilliant, a bright white-blue, and it felt like the first day of the world.
Wow.
'You look like a Thangka,' James told us.
'Danke,' George smiled.
There were seven people in my glass class, which was plenty. I set up the stations of the workshop along three tables with various stages of the work. The kiln had been going since the day before, and I used the old glass from our windows for painted work. They were a little freaked out at first at not having electric soldering irons, but they soon got the knack, and one girl, Beth, whom I'd seen in Maggie's, was ecstatic over making glass art in the way of mediaeval artisans. Here was someone who would keep it up, bring forward the old traditions. That made me feel very good. I gave them several design templates I had made, from pieces I had already sold, and it was a joy to watch their creativity bloom.

At the lunch break, which was only half an hour, I went over to George’s fiddle class, where the work was really intense. Six men and George were in the middle of sounding backs with a tuning fork, so I took Ferg for a walk and left them to it. When I got back the fiddlers had also taken a break and the water I brought was much appreciated.
George was laughing with one of the guys there about having to bail on the Long Climb on Ben Nevis in bad weather, so I knew that he was a climber as well.
‘Thank you darling,’ George said of the flask. He leaned his head against me and put an arm about my waist. His hair was sticking to his neck in the heat, and I found it awfully sexy. He poured some of the water over his head. ‘Rob, this is my wife Claire.’
The brown-haired man with the sharp face nodded. ‘Rob Bellamy,’ he said in pure Glaswegian.
‘Nice to hear a voice from home,’ I returned. I looked at George. ‘I have to get back to my class,’ I said, moving the hair from his neck. It was just an excuse to touch him. ‘Have fun, sweetheart.’
Well, he got the vibe, because in answer he ran his hand up my leg under my skirt and smiled.
‘See you, baby.’
Rob was at the celebration that night too, and sat with us and James and we all talked about climbing for a while, sharing the Glenfiddich Rob had brought. He was a lecturer in astronomy at UC Riverside and one of the Stonemasters, the local rock club stars, so I figured that we’d be seeing a lot more of him in the future. In the last few weeks, he was climbing close by when John Long made a couple of his famous first ascents, including on some routes that Geordie and James had done, and he told us about climbing on Tahquitz with Royal Robbins, which was great.

Saturday
I spent the morning after the meditation at concessions, doling out buns and baklava, scrambled tofu and herb tea to people who were in such a high and loving space that the ordinarily mechanical chore was full of God. As I made tea in the back for the second time, in a big stock pot – I knew that this is what it was like to be a monk, forever enmeshed in God in prayer. It wasn't chanting or reciting Aves- I smiled to myself at that because I had used to go into a meditative state at wakes when long rosaries were said - it was being in God, or God being in one, very simply. When we were at Findhorn, George and everybody else had talked a lot about living in this manner – breathing in the breath of God, and I really got it now.

At about ten, I left the work and scuttled in the back of the tent as George began his workshop. He had changed into his white ruffled shirt, but he still wore jeans, and a red silk scarf for a belt. He was deeply tanned from all the summer's climbing, and so looked rather like a gypsy. I'd have to remember to tell him later that he looked like an ould tinker fella. There were about thirty people present.
'My name is George and I am an asshole,' he said. About half the people laughed. Some looked perplexed.
'All right,' he said, holding up a hand. 'Some of you get that and some don't and that's okay. But it is the truth and we will start from there, because connecting with the power of divine force starts from accepting what you are, as you are, right now, and not pretending you are holy or spiritual or ascended to a higher vibration.' That got some laughs too, from a different set of people. 'And however different you become from what you once were, you cannot ever forget that the potential lies within you to fall back into that negativity...

'I'm not talking about mortal sin here –' I laughed and he raised his head, smiling. 'That is my Irish Catholic wife laughing at me back there. Thank you darling. It's important to have someone to laugh at your jokes.... I'm talking about awareness. It's easy to get lazy and think you are being high and spiritual when you're really just fooling yourself. ' He went to the small table and took up a basket of smooth stones we had collected on the shores of the lake, and walked along, giving one to each person from the centre of the row as he spoke.

'I want you to sit for a moment and centre yourself. Hold this little stone in your hands. Be with it. You and it are the same thing, come from the same source, and the same stuff. What made the stars made you. And that source is not uranium and hydrogen; it is Love. Chi. God. We are that.... This little stone has come on a long journey, from the creation of the universe, through the heavens, to this place, to you. It is part of a vaster whole, a great mountain that once was. It is little now. Yet it remembers being a mountain, being a gas in the centre of the universe. Its body is small now, but it is older than ours. Compared to it, we are transient, as bodies. As consciousness, we are at one with it, the same, no older or younger. It is our brother. Be with it. Let it speak to you.'

He had come to the back of the tent now, and came and kissed the top of my head. His hand on my cheek was hot. He stood for a long timeless time at the back, then walked slowly, mindfully, to the front, through the echoing silence, the soft sighs, and the Presence that had dawned in the room. Someone started to cry. He smiled, his beautiful gentle smile.
'You can come back into the room when you want,' he said softly, and waited for a long few moments.
'"Be still and know that I AM".... That is God, what we are, speaking to you, in whatever way you felt or heard it. That is universal energy. It can change your life. It changed mine.' He glanced at me and sat on the table. He went on softly, so softly and evenly,

'When I say to you that I am an asshole, I don't want to draw a lot of glamour to that. I tell you truly that I was a heroin addict in London, running dangerous games with sharps and pimps and every low character. I was that far from selling my soul to the devil. I thought I was an atheist. Why? Because I was so gifted and by the age of 20 had come to the end of the road. Philosophy had led me to despair. Talent had made me contemptuous. Politics had made me cynical. All I could see were decades of the same and more of the same. I knew there had to be a better way, but I didn't know that I led myself here, that it was my own doing, by how I thought, about myself and other people. I had shut them out – any real communication just didn't happen. I was a train wreck on the inside, and a cocky asshole on the outside.

'... When I was at Findhorn in the winter of '72, David Spangler, who trained as a molecular biologist, told me pretty much the same thing I just told you, and it cracked me open to feel, really feel that I was a part of something, something old and deep and infinite, and it was calling to me.' Some people in the group were crying again. 'Now, I didn't have breakthrough as some of you did here, not then, but I felt it – warm, and benign and present. I was elated and ashamed at once – I felt joyful that I had found what I had been missing, but ashamed because my whole life up to then was a lie... but God is so merciful. It loves us and calls us home, always, like the Prodigal son....

'We'll continue with how to keep this going in a few minutes, but I want you to break up into groups and talk about what happened to you with our brother stones.'
The crowd dispersed into six groups, and for forty-five minutes everyone shared their experience. George moved from group to group, listening, asking 'how are you doing?' and giving hugs where needed. Some people were wide open and crying. He embraced them and told them with shining eyes that they were beautiful. In my own group, a man who was about sixty, for all the world a longshoreman, cried like a child and told a story of how as a child he had had imaginary friends in the woods of Arkansas – and had been made fun of at school, so closed down emotionally. The room was swirling with emotion – love grief, gratitude, anger. It would have been easy to lose control of it. But George did not.

He clapped his hands, softly, twice, from the head of the room and began to speak again.
'Thank you all, for your sharing. It has enriched us all. Now, how do you keep this, when the boss is breathing down your neck or the kids are fighting or your husband comes home drunk or your wife is nagging you? –Not that mine does,' he smiled, and got some laughs, which was his object.
'I'm not going to tell you to walk about with this little stone in your pocket, although you could do that. I'm going to tell you to close your eyes – do it now, with me – and breathe in. Breathe in the Presence. And breathe out all those tumultuous feelings. Do it more than once if you have to. You may not feel the Presence, but think it. It will come.... There,' he smiled. The room was peaceful again.

'We are creatures of habit,' he continued, 'and it is so easy to come away from a weekend like this feeling so high, and it lasts for a few days or maybe a week or two, and then our everyday life keeps happening and it brings us down and we get back into the same habits of mind and of life that we had before. So we become enlightenment junkies, chasing after every trick and workshop. This is a pointless circle.' There were laughs at this. 'Because all we ever do is confront ourselves. We come up against the same issues and difficulties again and again – and if we never stick with something and break through then we can spend our whole lives in this place. And that's a kind of hell too.

'So if I have the same fights with my husband or wife over and over, or with my secretary or whatever, there's a fairly good chance that I'm the problem, or to put it another way – the situation at the moment is not what's bugging me; rather it's reminding me of something in the past that I haven't worked through, confronted, let go of. I need to find out what that is – and then what is now will stop hitting me in the face. Mostly importantly, I need to remember all the time to listen for the voice or feeling or sense I had in connecting with the Divine and ask it what I should be understanding at the moment. It will tell you.'
He smiled. ' We all know that it's easier to do this when we are less encumbered by stuff, less hung up with getting ahead in the rat race, we all get that, or we wouldn't be here. But it can be done anywhere.... If you want to break up into groups again and talk about this you can, or ask me anything privately, or just be for a while, that's fine. Thank you so much for being here.' He said the last with his warm smile, and several people laughed. They got it.

He spent the next hour talking with the groups or individuals, and when the tent was finally empty, I came up to him with a smile where he stood leaning at the table with his arms crossed with a blissful smile.
'Woman!' he said, lunging for me. I was gathered in and he gave me a long kiss.
'I am so high, and my head is buzzing,' he admitted. 'I don't know whether to say let's go somewhere and make it or fall down in a heap. I couldn't do this for a living... Oh come here, darling girl, and let me run off some of this energy –' he wrapped himself around me, arms and legs, buried his face in my neck, and held on tight. He was shaking deeply. I heard his unspoken thoughts, scalding and intimate, and couldn't have moved for worlds. The kundalini rush built with inexorable slowness, but it hit like a storm. It was complete oneness, as transcendent as sex. We hovered there for a long time, and we were one with everything and each other in that wordless, shattering place.

It ebbed slowly, his shaking stopped, and we were both drenched. He moved his head away and looked at me, his eyes dark.
'My God,' he murmured. 'That was remarkable.' He kissed me. 'Can you do that across the room?'
I smiled shakily. 'We could try.' I was as dazed as he.
'Bottle and sell it,' he said, and then sighed deeply. 'Now I'm hungry!'
I laughed. 'Well, that doesn't change!'
'Naughty girl,' he smiled. 'Let's go find something to eat now we've had our fling or I shall fall down. My God!'
He pushed himself up from the table with both hands. 'David never told me that running energy was like that! That could be a whole new career for him in marriage counselling.'
He shook his head like a wet dog to clear it, and took my hand and the empty basket in the other. And we ambled out of the tent.
'I feel like I've climbed the Eiger North Face,' he said ruefully. 'Really wobbly.'
I laughed. 'Maybe that's why they call it that.'

At the concessions booth we met up with Joe in the queue ahead of us, who turned and said, 'Hey there you are! Man, you've got the whole place humming about your workshop! They're all babbling about breakthroughs and totally blissed out.'
George smiled, and sang, 'little human upon the sand, from where I'm lying here in your hand.... I'm glad they liked it. They were so ready for it. It was beautiful.'
We got our food – George a heaping plate of what seemed like a full Indian dinner- and sat down under the trees, where the breeze far above in the pine-tops sounded like a waterfall.
'I learned something there,' George said thoughtfully as we ate.
'Eh?'
'A few things: I know why David left Findhorn; it was time yes, but it was also very intense and there was too much of a chance of being set up in the minds of the community as some kind of father-figure, as Peter had been... I know why also some relationships broke up there,' he looked at me frankly. 'It would have been really easy back there to fall into some game with one of those women, if I had been thinking with blind Willie in an "I'm okay you're okay" sort of way. It happened regularly. People felt all that love, and with the belief that whatever happens is God's will... they just didn't know how to handle it properly, didn't know how to disconnect love from sex, the person from the body – ' he smiled ruefully. 'Even though I felt mighty sexy in that high!' He paused. 'I'm so grateful to be able to step back in my mind and let things be, not do anything stupid.' He looked at me with those storm-coloured eyes. 'You are so precious to me, and what we have is so amazing. I wouldn't ever want to mess that up. I love you.' He touched my face, and I leaned into his hand. Perfect, perfect moment.
'I am so lucky,' I told him. ' And I feel so grateful all the time. Who'd have thought a spoiled rich girl like me could find someone like you?' The words sound so paltry. 'But I love you. You are my life.'
We leaned together there, with eyes closed, until we heard James say,
'Now there's a picture. Shakti and Shiva.' He was smiling.
George smiled too, softly, still in the high. 'Hello there Jimbo. What's up, man?'
'Can you come help set up for the bonfire tonight? We need another couple of guys.'
'Duty calls!' George said. He put aside his plate, got up and took off his shirt and the scarf. 'Can you put this in my rucksack, darling? I'll be back as soon as we're done.'
'It shouldn't be more than half an hour,' James assured me.

We spent Sunday morning in the group meditation then meandered down to a workshop on manifestation, and had our auras photographed by a girl with a Kirlian plate. It was very interesting, as we did it individually and together, which was supposed to show the level of connection or friction between us. What happened was we each and then together put our right hands – the ‘energy hand’ she said – on the plate and it was exposed. When we made the mutual print, George leaned near and brushed my ear in a kiss, murmuring wordlessly. His hand beside mine on the plate was very hot, and I felt a rush of energy. It was completely spontaneous, and dead sexy.

Individually, mine was blue and purple, with a silvery colour in the dotted outline, but Geordie’s was a deep violet, with red at the centre and yellow at the edges. Amy read off the results, and said that he was a much more physical person than I, which made us laugh. She put it rather that I had the spiritual connection in the relationship, and he was the tether to manifestation in the world and that he was deeply emotionally attached, which was pretty close to the truth about how we operated, which was very cool.
When she looked at the joint exposure she gasped and looked at it for a long time before speaking.
‘Wow,’ She said, showing us the print,’ this is so totally cool! Look at this. It’s just what is supposed to happen if you’re attuned –‘
There was a complete blend in the colours: swirls of deep violet and orangey red with a perfectly golden edge– and the corona had grown from about half an inch to an inch and a half – it was a great fuzzy mass; the boundary between the prints had disappeared. It looked like a nebula.
‘Far out!’
George smiled. ‘Heaven on earth.’
It was a nice anniversary present – a confirmation from science that we were made for each other.

Amy told us that we could use this method to monitor our meridians, or chakras or check out how our meditations were affecting our bodies.
‘Biofeedback,’ George said.
‘Yeah,' Amy agreed. ‘You know, I love doing this here because people are so high and loving that the pictures are almost always really beautiful. Works of art. Thank you so much for sharing this! You guys are awesome. Do you mind if I hang this in my studio?’
‘Not at all,’ we said.
‘That was lovely,’ Geordie said as we were walking away,’ but we don’t need something like that to tell us how we are together.’ His glance was full of that deep speaking intimacy, and he swung my hand in his.

In the afternoon we Zen quilters hung the panorama quilt in the visitors centre with a little ceremony headed by Joe. The quilt ran around two walls and looked really beautiful. I did four panels in the end, all of the mountains, and was happy with the result. Afterward we went back to Wobbly for the closing puja. At the end, after all the prayers and chanting and dancing, we were blessing ourselves with the tsampa and George said, smiling, ‘no one threw rice at us before, so I call this fitting.’ He kissed my cheek.
Betsey leaned across James. ‘Is it your anniversary?’
George laughed. ‘Yes.’
‘Well, I’ll be, ‘ James said. ‘How many is it?’
I held up a finger.
‘Oh my God!’ Betsey exclaimed. ‘No wonder you two are so ... attached! Jeez! Oh, you have to let us take you out.’
‘I’d rather go in, if you don’t mind,’ George said.
I couldn’t speak for blushing.

The camp would not break up for us until the morning, so we spent the night in our little tent, with our headlamps glowing low in the corners. We were completely apart from the world. We could have been anywhere, and it would have been the same: love and musing and drowsy sleep in a beautiful cycle until the morning came.
'If I never live another day, lady,' he said in the hushing hours before dawn, 'I shall have lived in this year and day. And if I wake to find myself beneath the Eildon tree, then I shall speak the truth of this before the whole world.'
My breath caught, 'Good my lord of Erceldoune, Lay down your head upon my knee, ere we climb yon hill, and I will show you fairlies three. Take this for thy wages,' I kissed him. 'It will give the tongue that cannot lie. But ye maun hold your tongue, Whatever you may hear or see, For gin ae word you should chance to speak, You will ne'er get back to your ain countrie.'
His breath was also caught, ' I cry you mercy, lady, give not this gift to me. For how shall I counsel Prince or lord, or court a fair lady?'
I touched his mouth with my fingers, and he kissed them.
'Now haud thy peace, ' I whispered. 'For as I say, so must it be.'
Down then we went, into the bliss in silence, in that lovely game.

Chapter Fourteen

July 1974
I worked on jewellery and glass projects, the panorama quilt, and the garden, and took walks. There were enough tomatoes to put up conserve and sauces and I took some of each to the Sunday night jam session. It was weird being there without them, James and George, but Betsey, Shirley, Karen, Anne, Maggie and I made up for their lack by leading the dancing for about four sets.
‘Girls night out in Idyllwild,’ Mike drawled when Karen came back to the jam, red-faced and sweaty. She picked up his beer. ‘At least we’re not out in the woods casting spells,’ she rejoined.
‘Bubble bubble toil and trouble –‘ Maggie said.
‘Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and caldron bubble,’ I corrected, without thinking.
Maggie laughed. ‘Pedantic!’
‘What’s the rest?’ Karen asked, leaning over for her fiddle.

‘ “Fillet of a fenny snake, In the caldron boil and bake; Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog, Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting, Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble Like a hell-broth boil and bubble… Scale of dragon; tooth of wolf; Witches' mummy; maw and gulf Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark; Root of hemlock digg'd i the dark; Liver of blaspheming Jew; Gall of goat, and slips of yew Sliver'd in the moon's eclipse; Nose of Turk, and Tartar's lips; Finger of birth-strangled babe Ditch-deliver'd by a drab, — Make the gruel thick and slab: Add thereto a tiger's chaudron, For the ingredients of our caldron.”’ I leaned back in my chair. ‘The Scottish play.’
‘I don’t want to mess with you chicks,’ Joe said, shaking his head.
‘Better not,’ said Maggie.

Mike launched into ‘Susanna Martin’ and we all had to scramble to follow. Maggie caught up first and sang,
Susanna Martin was a witch who dwelt in Amesbury
With brilliant eye and saucy tongue she worked her sorcery
And when into the judges court the sheriffs brought her hither
The lilacs drooped as she passed by
And then were seen to wither

‘A witch she was, though trim and neat with comely head held high
It did not seem that one as she with Satan so would vie
And when in court when the afflicted ones proclaimed her evil ways
She laughed aloud and boldly then
Met Cotton Mather’s gaze

‘"Who hath bewitched these maids," he asked, and strong was her reply
"If they be dealing in black arts, ye know as well as I"
And then the stricken ones made moan as she approached near
They saw her shaped upon the beam
So none could doubt 'twas there


‘The neighbors 'round swore to the truth of her Satanic powers
That she could fly o'er land and stream and come dry shod through showers
At night, twas said, she had appeared a cat of fearsome mien
"Avoid she-devil," they had cried
To keep their spirits clean

‘The spectral evidence was weighed, then stern the parson spoke
"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live, tis written in the Book"
Susanna Martin so accused, spoke with flaming eyes
"I scorn these things for they are naught
But filthy gossips lies"

‘Now those bewitched, they cried her out, and loud their voice did ring
They saw a bird above her head, an evil yellow thing
And so, beneath a summer sky Susanna Martin died
And still in scorn she faced the rope
Her comely head held high.’

We went into the riffs, which became ‘Stormy Waters’, which became ‘Barefoot Nellie’ and ‘Cotton Eyed Joe’. Then Maggie began 'The Blacksmith' and all we ladies sang,
'A blacksmith courted me
Nine months and better
He fairly won my heart
Wrote me a letter
With his hammer in his hand
He looked quite clever
And if I was with my love
I would live for ever.

' But where is my love gone
With his cheeks like roses
And his good black Billycock on
Decked round with primroses
I'm afraid the scorching sun
Will shine and burn his beauty
And if I was with my love
I'd do my duty.

'Strange news is come to town
Strange news is carried
Strange news flies up and down
That my love is married.
I wish them both much joy
Though they can't hear me
And may God reward him well
For the slighting of me.

'Don't you remember when
You lay beside me
And you said you'd marry me
And not deny me
If I said I'd marry you
It was only for to try you
So bring your witness love
And I'll not deny you.

'Of witness have I none
Save God Almighty
And may he reward you well
For the slighting of me
Her lips grew pale and wan
It made a poor heart tremble
To think she loved a one
And he proved deceitful.'

It was a fine time.
At the end of the night, I was packing up and Joe asked me if I wanted a lift.
‘No, thanks. Fergus is outside. We’ll be fine. But I thank you, Joe, that’s mighty nice of you.’
‘Shoot,’ he said, ‘he’d lay into me if anything happened to you.’
I looked up. ‘Did he ask you to look after me?’
‘Would you be mad if I said yes?’
I laughed. ‘No. It’s adorable.’ I patted his arm. ‘I relieve you of any responsibility. I’d like the walk. I’m hot.’
‘Just so you know,’ Joe said.

Musing on the long walk home through the dark wood, with the dog at my thigh like a sentinel, I thought on how much we had become part of the community, more than I could ever have hoped. And in those few words exchanged, Joe had brought George’s presence very near. I had felt it, at odd hours, and knew that he was thinking or dreaming of me too. Now it was late. Perhaps they were coming back from a climb, or just in. There was no need for Alpine starts here; it was as good to climb with the light, rest in the middle of the day and climb late with headlamps, at this time of year…. I felt as if we belonged to this place now, had begun to add something to it. Tradition soaked into the night, which was still and warm.
‘Drinking all the day
In old pubs where fiddlers love to play
Saw one touch the bow
He played a reel which seemed so grand and gay…

‘Talking all the day
With true friends who try to make you stay
Telling jokes and news
Singing songs to pass the time away

‘Dreaming in the night
I saw a land where no one had to fight…
Sleeping where the falcons fly
They twist and turn all in your air-blue sky’

At the quilters’ meeting on Tuesday, everyone made sure I was okay, ‘living out there all alone in the woods.’ I was grateful for the caring, but it did make me laugh.
‘It’s not as if the Zodiac killer is in our neighbourhood!’ I protested. There was no crime in these parts, and we didn't even have a sheriff.
‘Well, you don’t know,’ Anne said, ‘there could be weirdoes… there are bears. Aren’t you afraid of bears?’
‘That’s what we have a gun for.’ I said serenely.
‘I can tell you are not Buddhists,’ Betsey joked.
‘I am not going to try and deflect a bear with good energy!’ I protested.’ That’s just stupid. Something city folk would think up. “Be one with the bear.” Phooey.’
‘The Indians do that,’ Shirley said seriously.
‘Before they shoot at them with arrows!’ Maggie said. ‘I’m with Claire. ’I’m not negotiating with something that wants to make me dinner. It’s not a fair contest.’
‘It’s all right so long as you don’t wander into their territory and threaten them,’ Shirley said. ‘Especially the mamas.’ She and Maggie laughed.
‘Yea, you gotta look out for those mamas,’ Maggie drawled.

There was silence for a few minutes. Then, Shirley, without looking up, said,
‘So are you going to tell them, or what?’
We all looked up. Maggie was grinning. ‘Okay, you got me, Shirl. Yes girls,’ she rolled a knot of thread off her finger, ‘it’s true. We’re waiting on bun number seven.’
There were squeals.
‘…I thought you said folk didn’t have babies here every day,’ I teased.
Maggie rolled her eyes. ‘Gawd, Claire, no sooner did I say that than I fetched up pregnant. I have to learn to keep my mouth shut!’ She laughed.
‘What did Joe say?’ Betsey asked.
‘Well, he went kind of pale, and then said he reckoned what was the difference, one more? We have all the stuff. But damn, I did just get Joshua out of diapers… Such is the life of womankind. Those that dance must pay the fiddler…. Sorry, Claire!’
I smiled. It was a good joke. But I was grateful it wasn’t me, not yet.

Shirley gave me a lift to the trailhead, and she asked what all of them must have been bursting to know: speaking of fiddlers, was there any chance of that our way? I didn’t think her question too nosey because she was the midwife, and said no then told her why not. She looked at me in surprise. ‘You’re the first person I’ve met out here to stick by wild carrot. My granny used that and gave it out to all the ladies, back in Kentucky.’ Shirley’s family were from the Daniel Boone National Forest. ‘Fine girl you are!’
‘Thanks.’

On Wednesday at teatime he was home. All the doors and windows were open, because the day was still in full heat. I had spent the morning in the garden with the dog, but about ten it had become far too hot, so we went indoors, where I worked on a new necklace. The bluejays called in the searing skies, and in the silence from up the path I heard an unmistakable jangling – karabiners! Popping my head up, out the bedroom window, I saw him in the shimmering heat, in a thin white Indian shirt, with a scruffy beard, deeply tanned, eyes scanning like some ancient hunter. I pushed the bead tray aside and jumped up.

George dumped everything unceremoniously at the door and stepped inside. 'Woman of the house!' He cried, the traditional greeting, and ran, open armed, as I came into the common room. He swept me up, and with a thousand kisses laughed, and said, 'I love you! I missed you! darling darling girl.'

'It's of a jolly beggarman
Came tripping o'er the plain
He came unto a farmer's door
A lodging for to gain
The farmer's daughter she came down
And viewed him cheek and chin
She said, "He is a handsome man.
I pray you take him in."

'The farmer's daughter she got up
To bolt the kitchen door
And there she saw the beggar standing
Naked on the floor
He took the daughter in his arms
And to the bed he ran
She says, "kind sir, be easy now,
You'll waken my old man."'

He had a few bruises, many scrapes from brushing against rocks, and was very lean, with broken fingernails, and a tremendous appetite that evening. After a cold bath, he lured me back to bed, smelling of soap and looking as innocent as an angel, to go through his journal and tell me all about the climbs they'd made. He was happy as a child. Happy with the climbing, happy to be home, happy with life. It was really joyous to see him so alive.
'We started off on some of the 5.8s on Tahquitz,' he said, 'to warm up and get a feel for one another. I had the feeling he might have preferred starting off on some of the 5.5s. The first day I was sceptical of climbing with him,’ George admitted of James. ‘He seems so much one of the “bag the summit” types, who wouldn’t have good flexibility or endurance, and while he’s a little solid, he goes well, and never had a problem with bulk on a pitch.

'We did Grandnote as a compromise because it has some 5.7 pitches. It's all third classsing getting up there, as you know, just scrambling, There's a chimney at the start, but you have to spring into it because it's got some bushy outcropping. The first pitch is a left-facing corner, not too complex, just finger work, until you get about halfway up, and then you have to swing round the corner and back because there's a boulder in the way. The rest of the pitch is just a left corner until you get to the ledge – it's good six-inch ledge, a nice belay where you can stand and look down into the valley. There's a bit in the pitch above where you can swing over onto some easier rock – the holds here are very fine - but I think it's part of another route. From here there's a good bit of traversing the face by nicks. But you have to look for them, and all of a sudden you come to the ledge and you're home free. The rest is all fourth class. The holds are really big and easy, to the top.'

Apart from Grandnote, they did Last Grapes, which was a thin crack climb; Liken to Lichen, and the Y Crack, which George raved about for the view. Through the week they progressed to the 5.11s – Le Toit and the Magical Mystery Tour, The Sham and Zeno's Paradox before doing the Edge, the Last Judgment and the TurboFlange. Then James felt game enough for the Hangover, which was a 5.12, so called because it was an overhang, traversed over to from the Last Judgement. Then they moved on to Suicide, where almost all the climbs began at the 5.10 range, with a lot of face climbing. They did Valhalla and the Paisano, both the Pinnacle and the Overhang. The one break that James had on Suicide was a long chimney climb, a 5.7, called Major. Minor ran over to the right and was a crack climb.

When we were in the General a couple of days later, James said to me, ‘I never realised how all arms and legs Geordie was, until I saw him on rock in rock shoes and shorts. He seemed a little skinny to me, but my God, you never saw such grace and strength on an overhang! Hove himself over the Paisano on Suicide like he was swinging into a T-bird on the main drag. I was impressed.’

I had to smile, because I had seen it all in Wales and the Lake District, and so knew what James had not: that George was a magnificent climber, all perfect balance and surprising strength. The Paisano, George said, was a 5.12.c, and had just been climbed a couple of weeks ago, by John Long. 'Jimbo didn't tell me until after we did it that Long John did it with duct tape wound about a pair of welding gloves. All I had was chalk and guts. I was mighty cheesed off, as I was leading.'

‘It scared the shit of out me though, pardon me,’ James was saying, ‘because he hardly uses any pro, and would be up a pitch almost before I had the belay.’
‘He free climbs a lot,’ I said, ‘on his own.’
‘That’s what he said,’ James nodded. ‘Man, what an experience… I get the slides back tomorrow, do you two want to come to dinner and have a look?’
‘Do you think Betsey can stand us?’ I grinned.
George came over with the groceries. ‘Doing what?’
‘Talking about climbing for hours –' I said. ‘James has invited us to look at the slides.’
‘Right you!' George grinned. ‘She’ll have to. I want you to see so you can really know what I was talking about.’
‘If you want,’ James offered, ‘I can make snapshots from the negatives.’
‘Yes!’

We did go to dinner, and the pictures were awesome. When I saw the Paisano overhang, I gasped. The crux is a fourteen-foot pure horizontal climb – upside down – then up over the huge face of the overhang. All with a thousand foot drop below you.

On Friday night, at the end of the first set, Joe launched into 'Carolina Sweetheart' and oh, we were going! Maybe because we were the full group again, but there was magic in the playing, and Maggie and Joe's great harmonies.

Carolina sweetheart
Oh, how I miss you so
Carolina sweetheart
I'll never leave anymore

'I'm going back to the mountains
To the place that I left so long ago
A place where I spent a happy childhood
And left the sweetest girl I've ever known

'When I get back to the old home
We'll stroll by the riverside
And look way up to the mountains
I know that someday you will be my bride

'I hope that you will be waiting
For I'll be there in just a day
So please be waiting by the road, dear
And walk with me along the old pathway'

At the end of it, folks in Mosey's were clapping and stomping and hooting, and Mike leaned over to Joe and said, 'Brother, we should take this gig on the road.'
Joe looked askance. 'You mean a band?'
'Yeah, locally, or maybe to festivals.'
'Shoot!'
'Carolina sweetheart, man – look at them.'
Joe frowned thoughtfully then punched Mike playfully on the shoulder. 'Let's talk about it, bro.'

And that is how we formed a bluegrass folk band, Carolina Sweetheart. We played at the Idyllwild Bluegrass Invitational, where George won the fiddling competitions, and later did a lot of festivals over the next twenty six years: Blythe in mid January; the Riverside County Fair in February, which was always Joe's favourite; Temecula around St. Patrick's Day; Strawberry, up in Yosemite, in the third week of May; Live Oak in Santa Barbara in mid June; Big Bear at the end of July; Summergrass in the third week of August, my favourite; Strawberry again at the end of August; Millpond in Bishop in mid-September; more rarely the Julian festival in mid-late September because it too often conflicted with Strawberry or Wobbly.

We got used to taking our gig on the road, the lot of us in a great caravan of trucks, kids, pets, and trailers. It was a great bonding experience, sharing all the laughs and hazards of the road, meeting new people and learning new songs. We wore out the jeep beyond repair eventually – its breaking down regularly became one of the hazards of the road, a running joke- and got a second hand truck at the Hemet swap-meet, for a dollar and helping the guy to re-shingle his roof. Coming back home to Idyllwild became like coming home to Nashville.