DROPPING ANCHOR
In 1887, Captain Thomas Davies sat on the river wall to proudly appraise the completion of his new house, a solid riverside haven on the edge of a small Welsh coastal village. Himself captain of a modern steamship, he had named this enterprise after his father's fine sailing ship. The doorsteps were polished purple eggslate brought all the way from Brazil, the bay windows sported sandstone pillars from Argentina, and the rooms would soon brim with ornate bounty that he and his father had gathered from around the world. Here too he would soon stow away his greatest treasures, a strong wife and a burgeoning brood of children.
Hereafter, he would straddle two worlds. As captain of the all-male Rambler, he would consume horizons, savour strange lands and challenge tempestuous seas, hiraeth* ever clutching at his heart. As master of the female domain of the Villa, arriving literally out of the blue, he would step down from the horse-drawn coach that had borne him from the harbour, stride up the lane, and swing open the iron gate. Would his hand then hesitate a moment before raising the heavy brass knocker that would herald the worldly footprints about to muddy those polished tiled floors? Did his storm-torn voice roll around the house before, larger than life, he swept up his surprised loved ones, smelling of the ocean, spilling tall tales and trinkets, and sighing deep Celtic sighs?
And as the days passed, would he sit on the river wall on a starlit night, envying the river as it teased him below, racing off to its assignation with the ocean beyond?
And how was the life of a mariner's wife? Mistress of a grand home, securely moored among extended family and a congregational community, but essentially so alone. Her heavy Victorian skirts would have swirled through the doorways and briefly caught at the turn in the stairs. Through the landing window, the low early morning sun would glimpse the solitude of her wedding band as her fingers grasped the banister, her right hand stroking a tight belly. Every husbandly homecoming would fill the rooms a little more - with treasure, with memories, with shadows, with more babies. As she climbed to clean the fiddlesome corners of the tall windows, which afforded a distant sparkling glimpse of the sea, her mind would stray and struggle to picture his whereabouts, and pray for his safety. There was then no telephone tittle tattle, mailings were minimal, rumours filtered slowly, speculation abounded.
And where O where was he when five children, ranging in age from five weeks to eighteen years, were carried down to the local churchyard during the two year curse of the Great Influenza Epidemic of 1918? Just how much anguish could these stone walls absorb and share, could the river soothe and sweep away? And yet, many years later, a surviving relative told of how the house would ring with squeals of glee as the mother played hide & seek with her remaining children when they returned from school.
The last two daughters, still inclined to wear full Welsh costume every Sunday, finally abandoned ship in 1972. Soon the village witnessed a day of unprecedented auctioneering frenzy as the old house was methodically stripped of her finery. Many items had been gifted to the museum, but most were scattered to the winds of trade.
For the next three years, the old ladyship stood crewless, plundered, becalmed. At her feet, the river burbled sympathetically and sometimes seemed to try to offer up faint echoes of singsong laughter.
Then one bright day in spring, an urban English pirate stepped tentatively aboard, her high-heeled boots echoing through the dusty void of the hollow hulk. This first boarding was cursory and somewhat dismissive. The vast dark and aching vacuum offered no comfort to this exotic asylum seeker.
A week later she returned to re-appraise, paying more attention to the exterior, to the location. Hacking a path through the tall Sleeping Beauty brambles to the river wall, she perched on the cold stone. Immediately all sense of time slid away as she succumbed to the coquettish rhythms of the water far below, the soft whisper of the freshly clad trees, the excitable chitter of birdlife. It was an instant enchantment, but sadly insufficient to disarm the negativity of the house, however much of a bargain it may be.
She swashbuckled a few more swathes through the daunting undergrowth, coming upon a small clearing where a bonfire had apparently consumed the last worthless scraps of a family life. Kicking peevishly at the ashy debris, her cowgirl boot dislodged a small shiny object that flew into a beleaguered clump of thyme. The retrieval from the perfumed tuft of a tiny gold buddha prompted an instant epiphany. A dispatch from some ghost-ship captain, perhaps?
Within a few months, the house-ship had embarked on a whole new and somewhat bohemian journey. Her windows were flung wide to June birdsong, her sombre rooms enlightened and she shuddered to the pulse of worldly music. And a steady trickle of new treasures was to accumulate in the ensuing years. Then came the day when the sweet cry of a newborn once more awakened the house to its purpose. From now on, the pirate would be the captain of a proud new mothership, with new horizons.
******
Almost fifty years on, the old she-captain perches on the wall with the ship’s cat. The river chortles by in timeless motion, absorbing and savouring the random flotsam of its history. She wonders if she senses a whiff of sweet tobacco, and a companionable presence alongside, adrift in his own watery hiraeth.
hiraeth .. (Welsh, n.) a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, for our soul’s past. It is in the wind, the rocks, the waves, and everywhere ..