Chapter Thirteen

June and July 1974
We still had our quiet mornings, as school didn’t begin until ten. We would have a cup of tea, meditate, and then go work in the garden before walking into town with Fergus. Our mornings always made me think of the lines, I love to see the morning as it steals across the sky. I love to remember, and I live to wonder why.

One morning while we were in the kitchen, I was watching George shave with the hand mirror he'd hung up at the sink, and I said,
'I love watching men shave. It's so very intimate and personal. The only time I ever saw my dad at it was when we were camping, otherwise it was too personal for him.' He smirked and looked over his shoulder.
'I'm still envisioning your dad too uptight for camping. I can't imagine him hanging off a biv sling on a big wall.'
'We did when we were skiing or hiking. But we had a camp stove and lanterns and air mattresses. It wasn't real camping,' I mused. 'That was the only time my mother ever wore trousers – that and skiing.'
He smiled. 'You don't wear them much either.'
'My mother never wore skirts like this!' I said. 'She'd say I was wearing the tablecloth. She wore tailored things, like a movie star.'

The hardest thing we did in those summer days was working in the garden. Weeding, hoeing transplanting, staking as the garden moved along. But it was good work, and kept us fit in a different way than our walking did. This was good because we had worked out quite a climbing programme, together and with James, for when school was out. Because of our short growing season, we decided that to have fresh veg through the winter we should set up a small indoor garden in the workshop, with grow lights. We could put up some vegetables – we already had zucchini and tomatoes – and could dry herbs, but things like lettuce and spinach we needed fresh.

We had another work party, our last planned project - for putting up our workshop next to the house on the north side. This was sooner than we had expected, as the weather was good and we had the money. It was like an Amish barn raising, all done in a day with everyone helping out with hammers and drills and levels. It was made from reclaimed wood from an old ski cabin up on the ridge that was going to be knocked down- free for the price of hauling it away in James’ truck - and had double doors opening out onto the garden, like a horse barn. Here we could work on instruments and stained glass projects, which required a lot of space and were messy, without cluttering up the house. Inside were shelves and worktables and places to store supplies in the rafters. We used a lot of hand tools, both of us, so there wasn’t much need for electricity, but we did store our solar generator in there anyway, to keep it out of the weather. We used it to run the fridge inside the house and the record player. We didn’t use electric lights, only candles and oil lamps, or electric appliances. We didn’t even have a toaster, that ubiquitous wedding gift. Our toaster was an old Victorian wire contraption, got at a jumble sale for twenty pence.

Sitting around the table later with our watermelon and roasted corn, James looked up at the flowery roof of our house and said,
‘I’m impressed that you can live this way; I find it really inspiring. I’m not sure we could.’ He raised his eyebrows at Betsey sitting next to him.
‘It’s much more comfortable than a biv,’ George murmured, smiling.
‘But don’t you miss conveniences? You especially, Claire,’ James went on. ‘Like showers and hot running water and flipping on a light.’
I shook my head, smiling. ‘No. It’s much more restful without. Life doesn’t rush by.’ I looked at George. ‘We have more time this way, rather than less.’ He nodded in agreement.
‘Well, I’ll be,’ James laughed. 'I’ve been trying to get at emptiness for fifteen years and here you are just doing it.’

‘The uncarved block,’ George agreed. He leaned his head back, considering. ‘I didn’t know if this would work, or how I would feel about it. It worked at Findhorn, I’d seen it do, but staying there for a week is much different to living it every day. Maybe I would miss the underground and watching football in the pub… but I don’t. The stillness and quiet is so powerful for growth, and I enjoy the times of music and company that we do have. It’s a nice balance. Do you agree?’ he directed the last at me.
‘Yes, I do. I don’t feel rushed or pressured. I just do what’s in front of me, and if I need a rhythm I’ll sing a song. If I need company, I can find George or the dog, dig in the garden, or look forward to what’s on in the evening in town. I don’t feel hemmed in, there’s space to think and be creative.’
‘That’ll change, if you have kids,’ James said.
‘Probably,’ George admitted. ‘But we’ll be with that when the time comes.’ He looked at me, his eyes crinkling in a secret smile. ‘Not for a little while, yet.’
Betsey said, ‘You’re so sure….’
‘We have ways,’ I smiled. I caught Maggie looking at me. ‘No chemicals. No prophylaxis. Just a kind of NFP… and no, it’s not Catholic!’ They laughed. ‘I picked it up from my sister in Wales. She has an organic farm there.’
Maggie leaned over behind George, ‘you should talk to Shirley; she could use an apprentice.’
‘Witch?’
Maggie laughed, ‘No, midwife.’
I considered this. ‘It seems like a lot of work.’
‘Well, we don’t have babies everyday hereabouts,’ Maggie said… ‘All evidence to the contrary!’
‘I’ll keep it in mind. Thank you.’

We were more likely to keep Shirley in mind for our own purposes, but when we talked about that later, we decided that we didn’t want even that intrusion, at least the first time.
‘Apart from the tribal experience,’ George said in the shadowy light of the candle late in bed, ‘humans have been just having babies for millions of years without an entourage. Animals do it. They always go someplace quiet off by themselves, if they’re let to do.’ He turned his head and kissed my forehead. ‘How do you feel about it? Would you want a party or a group of women or your sister? I can’t imagine you’d want a hospital!’ I heard him smiling.
‘No, not a hospital,’ I smiled. I considered. ‘I’d like to do it all as naturally as possible. If there were some problem then we could always go for help. But…’ I had a rush of feeling, warm and aching, ‘it’s such a holy thing... It would be something we made together, that love made, and so it would be ours, like sex or meditating. I’m not sure I’d want to share that with anyone else.’ He’d caught the rush, and wrapped arms and legs around me.
‘Where did you come from, amazing girl?’ he murmured, hushing, into my hair. ‘Are you real, or were you made for me? Will you vanish one day, like a selkie? Am I enchanted?’ He sighed. ‘If I am, then I don’t want to wake from it. I love you, Clare.’

I am a man upo' the land,
I am a selchie in the sea,
And when I'm far frae every strand
My dwellin' is in Sule Skerrie.'
'Alas, alas, this woeful fate! -
This weary fate that's been laid for me,
That a man should come from the Wast o' Hoy
To the Norway lands to have a bairn wi' me!'
'My dear, I'll wed thee with a ring,
With a ring, my dear, I'll wed with thee.

At the end of June, I had a letter from Ellen in the same packet of letters in which George got one from his mother. Ell’s letter was full of news of the farm, the sheep, Moran, and the village Midsummer Festival. Anne’s was full of news of the glebe, Herb’s rheumatism, and the endless rain; there was some trouble getting the haying in.

We spent our own Midsummer at the community celebration, sponsored by the co-op, in the meadow at County Park, with good fellowship: a barbeque and a bonfire, and music and dancing. Students from the summer school were there, tourists from Palm Springs and Riverside, and one group all the way from Los Angeles. I wandered by where Anne Burke was sitting with Betsey – her baby in a basket under a card table – and saw that she was spinning on a wheel. I had never done this, only on a drop spindle before, and sat down and asked to learn. I had an idea to make my own Fair Isle jumpers in the manner of knitting I had seen in the Island, round rather than back and forth on four needles, and of course, to spin the wool and dye it myself was a huge artistic challenge, which I could not resist. It was a different technique to using a drop spindle, more like running a treadle sewing machine, but after an hour or so, I was fairly proficient, and able to spin a fine yarn without slubs. I looked up to find George watching me, with his head cocked. I laughed.

‘See what I can do!’ I cried.
He grinned. ‘ Rumpelstiltskin!’
‘Now I can make our jumpers from start to finish,’ I said.
‘Does this mean a sheepfold?’ He asked, coming over. ‘Hi Annie, Hi Bets,’ he said to the women. ‘I don’t know a thing about sheep.’ I looked up at him. ‘We could use one for milk, or a goat,’ I wasn’t entirely joking. 'Wouldn’t it get lonely? I’ve only seen them in herds.’ he asked, looking at Anne. She raised her head and smiled without stopping her knitting.
‘A neurotic sheep! That would be something… I don’t know. I’ve never seen a lone one either, except in the mountains.’ ‘It would give Fergus a job,’ George admitted.
‘What did you want?’
‘Just to say we’re starting the nature walk in a bit, and wondered if you wanted to go, Madame apothecary.’ He made a very Elizabethan stage-bow, and peered at me. ‘Are you all right out here in the sun?’ He poked to edge of my floppy hat.
‘Yes,’ I smiled. ‘Not burned yet. I put on some St. Johnswort… Yes, I’ll come. Let me finish up here,’ I said, taking the spool off the bobbin. ‘Oh,’ I looked up again, 'can you bring my flask?’
‘Will do, cupcake.’ He came and gave me a kiss on the cheek. ‘ I’ll see you at the trailhead.’ He sprinted off then, all long legs and flying curls. Betsey shook her head as she looked after him.
‘That man is hopelessly in love.’ She wrinkled her nose at me. ‘You know it was everything he could do not to say, “I missed you, where were you?"'

‘Thank God,’ I said, winding the yarn onto Anne’s niddy-noddy. ‘I hope he never changes.’
‘You don’t mind being “the little woman” then?’ Betsey asked.
That’s what they thought? I had to laugh. ‘No! And I’m not, anyway; he does the washing up and makes the tea and hangs the laundry, just as I do…. He is my liegeman.’
Anne rolled her eyes. ‘You guys are way too Shakespearean!’
‘Never!' I said, getting up and brushing off the odd bits of fibre. ‘Thanks Annie! I’ll manifest a wheel, now.’ I bent to look in on the baby. ‘Good-bye, little Brendan!’ To their cries of farewell, I broke into a run across the green to meet up with the hikers, light-hearted. I didn’t care a jot what any of them thought or said. What we had was good, and nothing could spoil it unless we let it, and we would not.

The last day of summer school coincided with the town meeting. There was a report on the fiscal management and feedback from students, so to help next year’s school. We were now free of outside work until the end of September, after the Whole Being weekend, when we would start up at the school as regular music teachers. This was not a strenuous job, thank God, only our previous three hours a day. The job came with benefits which, after some discussion, we did not accept – medical insurance, life insurance (George swore at that one), and a pension plan, into which would have paid from our salaries. We wanted as little of government in our lives as possible; we had tangles enough getting George his Alien Registration Receipt card. The refusal of medical insurance led to some opposition by the administration.
‘What will you use, Medicaid?’
‘We will live healthy lives and treat ourselves as we can. If we need a bone set, we can go to the free clinic,’ George told Harold, who shook his head. I hadn’t studied herbalism since I was fourteen for nothing.

Otherwise, in the interim, we would work on our own projects – both for the workshops and in our own right. I set up my jewellery and stained glassworks in one part of the shop. George was very interested in my soldering without an electric soldering iron – I had a small kiln, which he ended up using as well. He had his fiddle-making, which he had been aching to get to; watching him go out and find the hardwood, cut it, mould it (in an old barrel-half filled with water) and fit the whole thing together with handmade glue was a real education. There was mastery in it. But he said the same thing of me.

At the end of the meeting, George sang ‘Lover’s Heart’ - what he called an ‘anti-war song’, but it really was because he and James were going off for week’s climbing in the morning, and it was the first time we had been apart for any length of time since we met.

She was in the flowery garden when first she caught my eye
And I just a marching soldier she smiled as I passed by
The flowers she held were fresh and fair, her lips were full and red
And as I passed that shady bower, these words to me she said
"Last night we spoke of love, now we're forced to part
You leave to the sound of a marching drum and the beat of a lovers heart"

She was by the shore in the evening when next I saw my dear
Running barefoot by the waterside, she called as I drew near
The sunlight glanced at the water's edge making fire of her auburn hair
My young heart danced at her parting words that hung in the evening air
She was on the Strand next morning when orders came to sail
And as we slipped our ropes away I watched her from the rail
She threw me a rose, which fell between us, and floated on the Bay
And as our ship pulled from the shore, I heard her call and say
"Last night we spoke of love, now we're forced to part
You leave to the sound of a marching drum and the beat of a lover’s heart"

Now the soldier's life won't suit me, sweet music is my trade
For I'd rather melt the hardest heart than pierce it with a blade
Let the time be short till I return to my home in the north of Skye
And the loving girl who stole my heart with these words as I passed by
"Last night we spoke of love, now we're forced to part
You leave to the sound of a marching drum and the beat of a lover’s heart"’

‘You always get to us, man,’ Mike said afterward.
‘Mission accomplished,’ George murmured.

James came by at seven the next day. We had already been up for three hours, and all the camping and climbing gear was outside at the door. James knocked and smiled when I poked my head out. 'Going somewhere? Good morning, Claire.’ George came out from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a towel.
‘Right you, there you are. We were just finishing breakfast.’ He smiled, ‘last home-cooked meal.’
‘I can see that you’re ready,’ James said. Nodding at the coils of rope.
‘But for one thing,’ George agreed. He looked at me. We had said our proper goodbyes in the dawning of the day, but my heart still gave a leap, not least because I wanted to be climbing with him. We had agreed that he would scout the routes with James, and pick the ones he thought we would like. ‘Goodbye, sweetheart,’ he said now. ‘Miss me.’

‘I will.’ He bent to kiss my cheek, murmuring in my ear, ‘keep the bed warm!’ which made me blush and go hot. The dog was whining around his knees. He bent down, ruffling Ferg’s ears.
‘No, stay. You have to stay with our lady.’
Ferg barked.
‘No,’ George said patiently. ‘Be good. Sit.’ The dog sat, and George rose again, smiling.
Smile for me and hide the sadness. The music was running in my head. His look said everything.
‘I’ll bring him back in one piece,’ James said.
‘Oh, I’m not worried about that. I’ve climbed with him on Scafell Pinnacle,’ I smiled. ‘Have a good time, you guys.’

They shouldered all the gear, George heaving a coil of rope over his head, and they were off, walking down the path through the garden to the road. I held onto Ferg’s collar, in case he should bolt, but he did not, only whined a little.
George looked back, once, when they were about to descend the hill, with a beaming smile that reached out with all the love he was. Then they were gone, and I closed the door.
‘Come on, old boy,’ I said to Fergus. ‘Where’s your dish?’ He ran off into the kitchen, and that was that, for a week.