“I’m sorry to hear it,” I said. “And so you live alone?”
“For quite some time, aye. Until my Jennie came home frae America. So now’s a nice time for me. Jennie was studyin’ architectural design; she got her credentials—top of the class, too—and now works in Exeter.”
We were passing the group of tall stones, their smoothed and rounded sides all grooved with the same horizontal striations. I nodded to indicate them. “They look like the same hand was at work carving them.”
“And so it was,” said Quarry. “The hand of time—of the ice age—of the elements. But all the one hand when ye think it through. This could well be the tip of some buried tor, like an iceberg of stone in a sea of earth.”
“There’s something of the poet in you,” I observed.
He smiled. “Oh, I’m an auld lad of nature, for a fact!”
And, once again on impulse, I said, “Andrew, if I may call you that, I’d very much like you to have that drawing—that’s if you’d care to accept it. It’s unfinished, I know, but—”
“—But I would be delighted!” he cut in. “Now tell me: how much would ye accept for it?”
“No,” I said. “I meant as a gift.”
“A gift!” He sounded astonished. “But why on earth would a body be givin’ all those hours of work away?”
“I really don’t know.” I shook my head, and shrugged. “And anyway, I haven’t worked on it all that long. Maybe I’d like to think of it on your wall, beside my mother’s painting.”
“And so it shall be—if ye’re sure…?”
“I am sure.”
“Then I thank ye kindly.”
Following which we were quiet, until eventually we arrived at the car. There, as I let Quarry into the passenger’s seat, I looked back at the sky and Tumble Tor. The puffs of cloud were still there, but dispersing now, drifting, breaking up. And on that strange high rock, nothing to be seen but the naked stone. Yet for some reason that thin, pale face with its burning eyes continued to linger in my own mind’s eye…
Dartmoor is criss-crossed by many paths, tracks, roads…none of which are “major” in the sense of motorways, though many are modern, metalled, and with sound surfaces. Andrew Quarry directed me expertly by the shortest route possible, through various crossroads and turns, until we’d driven through Two Bridges and Princetown. Shortly after that, he bade me stop at a stile in a hazel hedge. Beyond the stile a second hedge, running at right-angles to the road, sheltered a narrow footpath that paralleled a brook’s meandering contours. And some twenty-five yards along this footpath, in a fenced copse of oaks and birch trees, there stood Quarry’s house.
It was a good sized two-storied place, probably Victorian, with oak-timbered walls of typical red Devon stone. In the high gables, under terracotta pantiles, wide windows had been thrown open; while on the ground floor, the varnished or polished oak frames of several more windows were barely visible, shining in the dapple of light falling through the trees. In one of these lower windows, I could only just make out the upper third of a raven-haired female figure busy with some task.
“That’s Jennie,” said Quarry, getting out of the car. “Ye cannae mistake that shinin’ head of hair. She’s in the kitchen there, preparin’ this or that. I never ate so well since she’s been back. Will ye no come in for a cup of tea, Paul, or a mug of coffee, perhaps?”
“Er, no,” I said, “I don’t think so. I’ve a few things to do at home, and it’s time I was on my way. But thanks for offering. I do appreciate it.”
“And I appreciate ye’re gift,” he said. “Perhaps I’ll see ye some other time? Most definitely, if ye’re out there paintin’ on the knoll. In fact, I shall make it my business to walk that way now and then.”
“And I’ll be there—” I told him. “—Not every day, but on occasion, at least until my painting is finished. I’ll look forward to talking to you again.”
“Aye,” he nodded, “and so we shall.” With which he climbed the stile with my rolled-up drawing under his arm, looked back and waved, then disappeared around a curve in the hedge…
The forecast was rain for the next day or two. I accepted the weatherman’s verdict, stayed at home and worked on other paintings while waiting for the skies to clear; which they did eventually. Then I returned to the knoll and Tumble Tor.
I got there early morning when there was some ground mist still lingering over from the night. Mists are a regular feature of Devon in August through December, and especially on the moors. As I left the car I saw four or five Dartmoor ponies at the gallop, their manes flying, kicking up their heels as they crossed the road. They must have known where they were headed, the nature of the uneven ground; either that or they were heedless of the danger, for with tendrils of mist swirling half-way up their gleaming legs they certainly couldn’t see where their hooves were falling! They looked like the fabulous hippocampus, I thought—like sea-horses, braving the breakers—as they ran off across the moor and were soon lost in the poor visibility.
Poor visibility, yes…and I had come here to work on my painting! (Actually, to begin the second phase: this time using water-colours.) But the sun was well up, its rays already working on the mist to melt it away; Tumble Tor was mainly visible, for all that its foot was lost in the lapping swell; a further half-hour should set things to right, by which time I would be seated on my ledge in the lee of the knoll.
Oh really? But unfortunately there was something I hadn’t taken into account: namely that I wasn’t nearly as sure-footed or knowledgeable as those Dartmoor ponies! Only leave the road and less than ten paces onto the moor I’d be looking and feeling very foolish, tripping over the roots of gorse and heather as I tried to find and follow my previous route. So then, best to stay put for now and let the sun do its work.
Then, frustrated, leaning against the car and lighting one of my very infrequent cigarettes, I became aware of a male figure approaching up the road. His legs wreathed in mist, he came on, and soon I could see that he was a “gentleman of the road”, in short a tramp, but by no means a threat. On the contrary, he seemed rather time- and care-worn: a shabby, elderly, somewhat pitiful member of the brotherhood of wayfarers.
Only a few paces away he stopped to catch his breath, then seated himself upon one of those knee-high white-painted stones that mark the country verges. Oddly, he didn’t at first seem to have noticed me; but he’d seen my car and appeared to be frowning at it, or at least eyeing it disdainfully.
As I watched him, wondering if I should speak, he took out a tobacco pouch and a crumpled packet of cigarette papers, only to toss the latter aside when he discovered it empty. Which was when I stepped forward. And: “By all means, have one of these,” I said, proferring my pack and shaking it to loosen up a cigarette.
“Eh?” And now he looked at me.
He could have been anything between fifty-five and seventy years of age, that old man. But his face was so lined and wrinkled, so lost in the hair of his head, his beard, and moustache—all matted together under a tattered, floppy hat—it would have been far too difficult if not impossible to attempt a more accurate assessment. I looked at his hunched, narrow shoulders, his spindly arms in a threadbare jacket, his dark gnarled hands with liver spots and purple veins, and simply had to feel sorry for him. Rheumy eyes gazed back at me, through curling wisps of shaggy eyebrow, and lips that had been fretted by harsh weather trembled when he spoke:
“That’s kind of you. I rarely begged but they often gave.” It was as if with that last rather odd sentence he was talking to himself.
“Take another,” I told him, “for later.”
“I didn’t mean to take advantage of you,” he answered, but he took a second cigarette anyway. Then, looking at the pair of small white tubes in his hand, he said, “But I think I’ll smoke them later, if you don’t mind. I’ve had this cough, you see?”
“Not at all,” I said. “I don’t usually smoke myself, until the evening. And then I sometimes fancy
one with a glass of…” But there I paused. He probably hadn’t tasted brandy in a long, long time—if ever.
He apparently hadn’t noticed my almost gaffe. “It’s one of my few pleasures,” he said, placing the cigarettes carefully in his tobacco pouch, drawing its string tight, fumbling it into a leather-patched pocket. Then:
“But we haven’t been properly introduced!” he said, making an effort to stand, only to slump back down again. “Or could it be—I mean, is it possible—that I once knew you?” He seemed unable to focus on me; it was as if he looked right through me. “I’m sorry…it’s these poor old eyes of mine. They can’t see you at all clearly.”
“We’ve never met,” I told him. “I’m Paul.”
“Or, it could be the car,” he said, going off at a tangent again and beginning to ramble. “Your car, that is. But the very car…? No, I don’t think so. Too new.”
“Well, I have parked here before,” I said, trying my best to straighten out the conversation. “But just the once. Still, if you passed this way a few days ago you might well have seen it here.”
“Hmmm!” he mused, blinking as he peered hard, studying my face. Then his oh-so-pale eyes opened wider. “Ah! Now I understand! You must have been trying very hard to see someone, and you got me instead. I’m Joe. Old Joe, they called me.”
And finally I understood, too. The deprivations of a life on the road—of years of wandering, foraging, sleeping rough, through filthy weather and hungry nights—had got to him. His body wasn’t the only victim of his “lifestyle”. His mind, too, had suffered. Or perhaps it was the other way around, and that was the cause, not the effect. Perhaps he had always been “not altogether there”, as I’ve heard it said of such unfortunates.
And because I really didn’t have very much to say—also because I no longer knew quite what to say, exactly—I simply shrugged and informed him, “I…I’m just waiting, that’s all. And when this mist has cleared a bit, I’ll be moving on.”
“I’m waiting, too,” he answered. “More or less obliged to wait. Here, I mean.”
At which I simply had to ask: “Waiting? I didn’t know this was a bus route? And if it is they’re very infrequent. Or maybe you’re waiting for a friend, some fellow, er, traveller? Or are you looking for a lift—in a car, I mean?” (Lord, I hoped not! Not that he smelled bad or anything, not that I’d noticed, anyway, but I should really hate to have to refuse him if he asked me.) And how stupid of me: that I should have mentioned a lift in the first place! For after all I was there to paint, not to go on mercy missions for demented old derelicts!
“Buses?” he said, cocking his head a little and frowning. “No, I can’t say I’ve seen too many of those, not here. But a car, yes. That’s a real possibility. Better yet, a motorcycle! Oh, it’s a horrid, horrid thought—but it’s my best bet by a long shot…”
And my best bet, I thought, would be to end a very pointless conversation and leave him sitting there on his own! Yes, and even as I thought it I saw that I could do just that, for the mist was lifting, or rather melting away as the sun sailed higher yet. And so:
“You’ll excuse me,” I said, with a glance across the moor at Tumble Tor, “but I’m afraid it’s time…” And there I paused, snapping my head round to stare again at the ancient stack; at its grainy, grooved stone surfaces, all damply agleam, and its base still wreathed in a last few tendrils of mist. “…Afraid it’s time to go.”
And the reason I had frozen like that, albeit momentarily? Because he was there again: the climber on the tor. And despite that from this angle I could see only his head and shoulders, I knew at once that it was the same person I’d seen the last time I was here: the observer with the binoculars—perched so precariously on that same windy ledge—who once again seemed to be observing me! The sunlight reflected blindingly from the lenses of his glasses…
“I paid my way with readings,” said the old tramp from his roadside stone, as if from a thousand miles away. “Give me your hand and I’ll do one for you.”
Distracted, I looked at him. “What? You’ll do one?”
“A reading.” He nodded. “I’ll read your palm.”
“I really don’t—” I began, glancing again at Tumble Tor.
“—Oh, go on!” He cut me off. “Or you’ll leave me feeling I’m in your debt.”
But the man on the rock had disappeared, slipped away out of sight, so I turned again to Old Joe. He held out a trembling hand, and however reluctantly I gave him mine. Then:
“There,” he said. “And look here, you have clearly defined lines! Why, it’s just like reading a book!” He traced the lines in my palm with a slightly grimy forefinger, but so gently that I barely felt his touch. And in a moment:
“Ah!” He gasped. “An only son—that’s you, I mean—and you were so very close to her. Now you’re alone but she’s still on your mind; every now and then you forget she’s gone, and you look up expecting to see her. Yes, and those are the times when you’re most likely to see what you ought not to be seeing!” Now he looked up at me, his old eyes the faded blue of the sky over a grey sea, and said, “She’s moved on, your mother, Paul. She’s safe and you can stop searching now.”
Spiders with icy feet ran up and down my spine! I snatched my hand away, backed off, said, “W-w-what?”
“I’m sorry, so sorry!” he said, struggling to his feet. “I see too much, but so do you!” And as he went off, hobbling away in the same direction he’d come from, he paused to look back at me and called out, “You shouldn’t look so hard, Paul.” And once again after a short, sharp glance at Tumble Tor: “You shouldn’t look so hard!”
Moments later a swell of mist like some slow-motion ocean rose up, deepening around him and obscuring him. His silhouette was quickly swallowed up in grey opacity, and having lost sight of him I once again turned my gaze on Tumble Tor. The moors can be very weird: mist in the one direction, clarity in the other! The huge outcrop continued to steam a little in the sun, but my route over the uneven ground was clearly visible. And of course the knoll was waiting.
Recovering from the shock Old Joe had supplied, determined to regain my composure, I collected my art things from my car’s boot and set off on my semicircular route around Tumble Tor. Up there on the knoll twenty-five minutes later, I used my binoculars to scan the winding road to the north of the tor. Old Joe couldn’t have got too far, now could he? But there was no mist, and there was no sign of Joe. Well then, he must have left the road and gone off across the moor along some track or other. Or perhaps someone had given him a lift after all. But neither had I seen any vehicles.
There was no sign of anyone on Tumble Tor either, but that didn’t stop me from looking. And despite what Old Joe had said, I found myself looking pretty hard at that…
I couldn’t concentrate on my work. It was the morning’s strangeness, of course. It was Old Joe’s rambling on the one hand, and his incredibly accurate reading on the other. I had always been aware that there were such people, certainly; I’d watched their performances on television, read of their extraordinary talents in various books and magazines, knew that they allegedly assisted the police in very serious investigations, and that seances were a regular feature in the lives of plenty of otherwise very sensible people. Personally, however, I’d always been sceptical of so-called psychic or occult phenomena, only rarely allowing that it was anything other than fake stage magic and “supernatural hocus-pocus”.
Now? Well, what was I to think now? Or had I, like so many others (in my opinion) simply allowed myself to be sucked in by self-delusion, my own gullibility?
Perhaps the old tramp hadn’t been so crazy after all. What if he’d merely used a few clever, well-chosen words and phrases and left me to fill in the blanks: a very subtle sort of hypnotism? And what if I had only imagined that he’d said the things he said? For of course my mother, comparatively recently passed on, was never far from my mind…anyone who ever lost someone will surely understand that the word “she??
?—just that single, simple word—would at once conjure her image, more especially now that there was no other “she” to squeeze her image aside.
Psychology? Was that Old Joe’s special ability? Well, what or whichever, he’d certainly found my emotional triggers easily enough! Maybe I had worn a certain distinctive, tell-tale look; perhaps there had been some sort of forlorn air about me, as if I were lost, or as if I was looking for someone. But alone, out on the moors? Who could I possibly have been seeking out there? Someone who couldn’t possibly be found, obviously. And Old Joe had simply extrapolated.
Stage magic, definitely…or maybe? I still couldn’t make up my mind! And so couldn’t concentrate. I managed to put a few soft pencilled guidelines onto the paper and a preliminary wash of background colour. But nothing looked right and my frustration was mounting. I couldn’t seem to get Old Joe’s words out of my head. And what of his warning, if that’s what it was, that I shouldn’t look so hard? I was looking “too hard”, he’d said and I was “seeing too much”—seeing what I ought not to be seeing. Now what on earth had he been trying to convey, if anything, by that? One thing for sure: I’d had a very odd morning!
Too odd—and far too off-putting—so that when a mass of dark cloud began to spread across the horizon, driven my way by a rising wind out of the south-west, I decided to let it go and return to Torquay. Back at the car I saw something at the roadside, lying on the ground at the foot of the verge marker where Old Joe had seated himself. Two somethings in fact: cigarettes, my brand, apparently discarded, just lying there. But hadn’t he said something about not wanting to be in my debt?
A peculiar old coot, to say the very least. And so, trying to put it all to the back of my mind, I drove home…
Then for the next three days I painted in my attic studio, listening to the sporadic patter of rain on my skylight while I worked on unfinished projects. And gradually I came to the conclusion that my chance encounter with Old Joe—more properly with his rambling, indirect choice of words and vague warnings—had been nothing more than a feeble, dazed old man’s mumbo-jumbo, to which on a whim of coincidental, empathic emotions I had mistakenly attached far too much meaning.