This is how it goes for flibbertigibbet morons like me. I’m at the laptop processing words and it’s not going well. I’m beginning to bore myself. With so much to see and do within reach of the tip of my middle finger, I take a break and go shopping. A click on ‘save’, another on one of the icons on my ‘favourites’ tool bar, and the next moment I’m sauntering through a virtual global bazaar where I can buy virtually anything from a second-hand car to an Ivy Compton-Burnett first edition. I acquired this taste for shopping late in life. Already this taste is showing unmistakable signs of turning into a tawdry addiction like all the rest. A pleasant sort of madness comes over me, particularly when shopping on-line, and it’s as if I’m in Narnia.
On New Year’s Day I couldn’t see anything I wanted to buy, so I rented a house. I had arrived at a holiday homes website without consciously knowing why or how I got there, and the six photographs and the description of the first house I looked at completely sucked me in. With several clicks and a burst of typing I paid the deposit for eight weeks in the summer. When I came to my senses and stepped back out of the wardrobe, as it were, my impetuosity appalled me.
I should have wriggled out of it by getting in touch with the owners and saying, awfully sorry, big mistake, on drugs. Something like that. But I let the matter drift, as I normally do, and winter gave way to spring, and spring to early summer, and last week I received an email from the owner saying the balance was now due and would I like to come to have a look at the place on Friday between 12 and 2, as she would be there cleaning at that time.
The house was on Dartmoor. When the weather is damp and murky and clouds drift across the stones at just overhead height, Dartmoor can seem like one of the most God-forsaken places on earth, and that Friday was one of these days. I drove down exposed, unfamiliar roads, and the small groups of wild ponies I passed looked wretched. And so was I. In my mind I prepared a speech in which I announced to the woman that I was a victim of my own over-ripe imagination and that I’d changed my mind.
No road passes anywhere near the house, so it was impossible to drive right up to it. So, following instructions, I left my car by the roadside, next to a fearful-looking granite tor, whose highest stones were obscured by swirling mist. There was nothing to suggest a parking place. No other tyre tracks marked the peaty ground. I just sort of abandoned the car on a hillside and walked away.
Again following instructions, I crossed some open moor and looked for a wicket gate in a granite wall. I located this gate at the bottom of a slope, went through it, then followed the path into a wood. The path cast about wildly at first, then led sharply down, crossing first one stream and then another, and after about 150 yards I saw through an opening in the trees below that it was heading for a clearing in a valley. (Not ideal for people with mobility problems, I think, was how the access route was summed up on the website.) And in this clearing, finally, there it was: an ancient stone cottage — or was it gingerbread? Clumps of daffodils at their gladdest studded the lawn in front of the cottage, lending an impression that I had stepped back in time by at least three weeks already. And standing on the lawn was either the owner or the resident witch, and, if the latter, rather an attractive young witch.
‘I’m sorry. I no longer want it,’ I said, reaching out and grasping her offered hand. But, as I briefly held it, I felt then saw that the sky had receded to a more acceptable height. I looked at the cottage. According to the map, the remains of bronze age huts dotted the ground beside it. By the look of the massive stones in the cottage walls, these remnants were plundered in about the 16th century to add solidity. The shrill piping of a blackbird and the gurgling and gushing of running water stood out in the cathedral silence of the sheltered wood. With no TV, radio or mobile-phone reception down there, the sound of nature is all there is, like it or not, apparently. This profound silence lent presence, significance and a peculiar unity to everything my eyes rested on. I was completely sucked in — again. ‘Only joking,’ I whispered. ‘I think I love the place already.’
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