Raynor Winn - The Wild Silence

The Salt Path

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First published 2020

Copyright Raynor Winn, 2020

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Artwork Angela Harding

The Cure at Troy Seamus Heaney, 2018, Faber and Faber Ltd so the peleton passed Simon Armitage, from the forthcoming collection New Cemetery, Faber and Faber Ltd

This book is a work of non-fiction based on the life of the author. In some limited cases, the names of people or detail of places or events have been changed to protect the privacy of others. The author has stated to the publishers that, except in such respects, the contents of this book are true. Any medical information in this book is based on the authors personal experience and should not be relied on as a substitute for professional advice. The author and publishers disclaim, as far as the law allows, any liability arising directly or indirectly from the use, or misuse, of any information contained in this book.

ISBN: 978-0-241-40148-4

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the authors and publishers rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

For The Team

The shell must break before the bird can fly.

The Promise of May, Alfred, Lord Tennyson

I can hear the voice, but I dont know what its saying.

Somewhere deep in my brain,

a noise between the rush of blood and electrical charges,

a sound, or is it

a feeling?

Its dark and low, a voice like a hum of words

rising from a hundred throats,

or the beat of a drum in tune to feet on hard earth,

or one bird call

long and low at dusk

as the light dips below a ridgeline

and the land

becomes blue.

I should have been in bed, sleeping like the rest of the country, not on an ice-cold rock on a cliff top before the dawn of New Years Day. But as my eyes opened in the darkness of a winter night, Id felt the same agitation that had been keeping me awake for months, heard the same sounds whispering in my head, and Id had to go

through the enclosed, narrow streets of Polruan, where curtains were drawn and quietness had settled. All the revellers, fireworks and noise of the night before had disappeared. A dark stillness had returned, broken only by pools of streetlight and the sense of the river moving, wide and deep near its mouth, but heaving inland with the force of the tide, the surface shattering into a thousand reflected lights. Only one boat was moored in the fast-running current, its bows straining on the anchor chain, its stern drifting in a rhythmic fishtail motion. I walked beyond the last of the houses and out on to the open field. I didnt need a torch; Id come to know this route so well that even in the gloom my feet found their way to a foot-wide strip of worn earth that winds its way through gorse and rock, up steep-hewn steps where the land falls away to the sea, breaking against the deep blackness of the cliff below. Then beneath the arched, wind-shaped hawthorn, bent and contorted as it shadows the shape of the land. Up rough broken ground, my feet barely visible, through the gate to where the land flattens and the wind rises. I couldnt see it but I knew it was there. I could feel the pull of the coast in both directions and as I stretched my arms wide and blended into the unseen, craggy, well-known shapes my exhaled breath became the wind, as did I.

In a field just back from the coast path I found my way to a small rocky outcrop surrounded by an arc of gorse bushes, where the sheep had worn away the grass as theyd pushed themselves in to shelter from the weather. A place to stop and sit. The agitation in my body began to fade and I let go, slipping beneath the wave of exhaustion. The darkness was dense and impenetrable but the air hissed through the gorse above my head, carrying the acidic scent of the needled leaves, as the weight of the sea on the cliff below boomed through the earth in a steady rhythmic vibration. I curled in a ball, the hood of my coat pulled over my hat, gloved hands under my armpits, and my thoughts finally moved outside my head, dissipating in the wild black air. No voice in my head, only silence. I couldnt think any more, only feel, and I gave in to sleep, a deep, brief, total oblivion.

A slight wash of light broke the darkness, bringing me back into my aching, cramped body, but I didnt move; I stayed curled tight, my body wrapped, hanging on to a small scrap of warmth. A dark form slipped through the greyness overhead, his firm tail and long broad wings tipping only slightly into the wind as he dipped over the cliff edge, disappearing from view. My eyes held the clearing skyline, waiting for his return, not blinking in case I missed him. My head ached from the effort and my attention slipped to the horizon as the slightest slither of golden light began to break, brief and brilliant, before a curtain of squalling rain far out at sea obscured the wonder. Then he came silently back from below, rising into the sky without effort and hanging above the scrub of the headland. His dark back and black-tipped wings almost blended with the low sky; only the flash of white above his tail gave him away as a harrier hoping for breakfast.

Uncurling with a dull pain in my hips, I crawled out from beneath the gorse to see a badger leaving the coast path and climbing up through the field towards some undergrowth at the far fence. His short, stubby legs moved quickly through the patchy tufted grass. Caught out by the light, up too late, stirred from his winter slowness, hed been driven into the cold night by hunger, but now he needed to be back in his sett, deep underground, safe, warm and hidden from view. He paused at the wide entrance to his tunnel, looking around, checking the air. Then he was gone, slipping into his safe invisible world. Hed gone to earth.

In the faint greying lift of light I climbed on to the last rock and sat with my feet hanging over the edge. At the edge of the land and the start of the sea. In a space between worlds, at a time between years, in a life between lives. Im lost, but here, at least for a moment, Im found.

Back through the village and still nothing was stirring. In Fowey, on the opposite side of the river, a few lights were on. People were groggily making coffee, turning up the heating and going back to bed. I followed the path-wide streets to the huge looming bulk of the chapel, through the iron gate and along a concrete-paved corridor between the building and the cliff face. Through the door to the narrow apartment at the back. The cold had crept into my bones and my body ached all over. But I thought Id found a sense of understanding that Id been searching for since the day we arrived at the chapel, since the day wed walked through that door for the first time. The day wed put our rucksacks down on the bare floor at the end of a 630-mile walk, unlaced our muddy boots and tried to rediscover how to live under a roof. Finally I thought I knew why I couldnt settle, why I was restless, sleepless. I made tea and took it up the stairs to Moth, my husband, lover, friend of over thirty years.