because you KNOW that sending emails when you are halfway into the bottle is a BAD idea

Homecoming

By Roger Creagh-Osborne

“Cast off forrard.”

As I pushed with one foot against the quay wall and flicked the bow line from the bollard I felt an immense release of tension. Nick at the helm cleared the stern line and Widgeon nosed out into the current. The staysail caught the light Westerly breeze and as it filled I tidied up the inevitable tangle of ropes on the foredeck then sat to enjoy the gentle sail up river to our winter mooring.

 

It had been a busy and profitable summer; six trips from Fowey to Villaviciosa in Northern Spain, once having to shelter in the Mobihan on the return leg. A few short hops over to Morlaix, plus some local inshore work. Nick, our skipper and lead trader had done well, developing new contacts and ensuring that we always had a profitable cargo. Now in late September, with the season of autumn fogs and winter storms fast approaching it was time to lay Widgeon up, snug on a mudberth up river for the winter and spend some time ashore.

We had concluded our business in Fowey, and celebrated the end of season late last night around the quayside taverns. Bellis and Jools, our bosun and cook, had left us this morning to head down to their homestead in Laddock. Both were carrying thick heads and packs heavy with their share of the proceeds of our summer. Nick and I were now taking Widgeon on her final short trip, then I would be off to our family place near Lanson leaving Nick to spend the winter living aboard.

My mind skittered away from thoughts of what would await me at home to what, or rather who, I had left behind in Villaviciosa, but that was also a raw place and I found myself remembering the ghostly sight of the small berg we had encountered four nights ago whilst crossing the Bay of Biscay.

I had been on watch, the wind was about force 4 from the South-West and Widgeon was comfortable on a broad reach. We were riding along the Atlantic rollers under small staysail and the main with two reefs in for the night. Broken cloud made for a dark night with no moon. I watched the pale patch that I glimpsed off the port bow from the top of each wave for some time before I realised what it was.

Coming up into the wind to avoid passing too close the change of motion quickly brought Nick up from below. He confirmed my suspicions, although it was very unusual to see a berg this far South so early. Since the total loss of the polar sea ice about twenty years ago, ice from bergs calved in Greenland had become a serious hazard around western European waters throughout the autumn. With the ice came fog and sailing through ice and fog in a small wooden craft was a fool's game if you didn't have to do it. Generally the winter storms, regularly now reaching force 11 and above, broke up the remaining bergs and by May conditions were safe again for small craft to ply the new European trade routes.

The gradual rise in sea level as Greenland shed its ice was changing the face of the whole coastline. Less of a problem in the steep sided river valleys of the Cornish South coast and the Rias of Spain, which allowed small boats like us to pick up trade moving small size high-value items and occasionally people around the coast.

The big operators, with the new build sailing ships and old vessels adapted for steam power with wind assist, still sailed out of the surviving large ports, but dock fees, customs dues, literally cut-throat competition, and general hassle made those uncomfortable places for the likes of us. We preferred to seek out the smaller harbours where personal relationships and remoteness from central authority allowed us a niche market.

On the foredeck now it was peaceful as we glided slowly up-river with the flood tide and I could reflect on Widgeon and her place in my life.

Widgeon was a 35 foot wooden sailing yacht, built about 100 years ago and rescued by my Uncle Nick 10 years ago. She was one of the last wooden yachts built to a traditional long keel design by a yard on the South Coast in the late nineteen sixties.

Nick had found her languishing on a mooring up the Tamar. Three years of work later, delayed much by difficulty in getting materials, and she was re-decked, a new coach house, replaced spars and rigging, and re-launched with a big family party.

Originally a sloop, Nick had converted her to a gaff cutter for more flexibility and easier handling. She was a safe stable boat capable of carrying a couple of tons of cargo, although bulk was not our stock in trade.

The result was that Nick had a seaworthy vessel that could slip in and out of small harbours and which he could use as a base for a trading business. Nick was an experienced sailor and naturally was skipper. Cousin Bellis had worked on the restoration learning shipwrighting as he went and was taken on as bosun. Jools, his partner, insisted on coming along as crew member and cook, and Nick knowing my troubles, my bent for mathematics and my knack at spotting weather patterns had invited me to complete the crew as navigator.

This had been our sixth season, and we had settled into a comfortable routine. Our primary run was Fowey to Villaviciosa. Initially we had pitched up in Villaviciosa by accident after a hair-raising crossing of Biscay intending to end up much further West. With his typical luck, once ashore Nick had run into someone who knew someone from Cornwall who knew him and needed some small items delivering. From this had developed a network of trading that had seen us carry all sorts of unlikely cargoes.

I never really enjoyed our time in port, finding it anxious and stressful and being impatient to get away again to where I was dealing with elements that I could understand. I would go ashore, usually to spend time rummaging in marine junk shops for old charts and talking to like minded souls from other vessels exchanging tips and knowledge. It was there that I had met Frankie two summers ago and the spark between us had smouldered through two long winters, rekindling each summer more brilliantly than before.

Outside the major shipping routes these days there was not much surveying activity and with rising sea levels (up nearly a metre now since the twentieth century when the last reliable paper charts were produced) and changing weather patterns the hazards around small ports were always changing. Navigation lights and marks now tended to be poorly maintained, and on some of the wilder parts of the coastline there were reports of people deliberately setting lights to lure passing boats onto the shore for plunder.

As the tide and a light breeze carried us slowly up the familiar Fowey River and the comforting oak wooded banks enveloped us I couldn't help wondering about Frankie back in Villaviciosa and when we would be able to see each other again. When we parted with a last lingering kiss the plan was that Frankie would try and get to Cornwall for the winter and stay with us at Gwel Dulas – there would be work enough there, and food to share, and I was confident that Frankie would be accepted into the family as my choice. At least it would defuse the increasing pressure from mum and gran to resolve my future, not to speak of the chattering of uncles and aunts and the flashing eyes of cousins – none of whom interested me.

I could also see that if things worked out my summers with Widgeon might be nearing an end. I was sure Frankie would fit in well at Gwel Dulas and we could build a life together there.

The encounter with the iceberg had unnerved me though, the dangers of the voyage and the difficulty for Frankie getting passage from Spain without papers this late in the season made me despondent. There had been no word when Nick had visited the Thenet office in Fowey town yesterday, although it was unlikely that Frankie would have been able to get a message onto Thenet that would have arrived already. Sometimes the Thenet system could be remarkably quick with messages arriving in near real-time, but more usually there would be one or more physical hops involved and thus delays. Sometimes a useful sideline for us was carrying low priority Thenet messages routed via the Guijon node into Cornwall through Fowey, although that was hardly a high traffic volume link.

We were now nearing Penkevel Woods where our winter berth was located. Tucked in the mouth of a creek in a fold of the main channel Widgeon would rest secure. She would settle in to the mud at low tide, just floating at the top of the flood, sheltered from the storms from the west and safe from prying eyes. Nick had access to the shore where a track ran up through the woods to Tremeer Lane. A distant relation farmed around Tremeer and kept an eye on the wood for the parish.

Since the special times Cornwall had found new life through the production of timber. Those far sighted individuals who had persuaded their neighbours to plant community “Millennium” woodlands in the early years of the century had bequeathed a wondrous resource to their descendants, and Cornwall's woodlands were zealously guarded. Penkevel was not yet ready for the mature trees to be harvested, but already coppicing and brash for fuel provided benefits for the citizens around. A few years ago a family of bodgers had been invited by the parish to set up shop at the top of the wood, and the charcoal burners were regular winter visitors.

I liked the Bodgers; the old man, Neil, had a lifetime of working the green wood and some of the items he produced using the simplest of tools – chisels, knives, an axe and a pole lathe that he was forever improving – were truly amazing works of craftsmanship. He liked to talk as he worked and I was always the appreciative audience for his stories. His two boys slightly scared me, lanky and wiry, both with jet black curly hair and able to match their father in speed of work if still lacking some of his flair in the finished items. Dave, the elder one, was starting to specialise in carving, taking his father's pieces and creating fantastic carved leaves and vines and animals winding around the turned legs and bars. Young Neil, his brother, helped his father with seats and assembly but was forever disappearing into the woods. He also had a sideline in knocking out shingles and after a session down in Fowey he would return with a sore head and an empty pocket and spend a solid day with the froe working through the stack of bolts lying ready for him. The regular thwack of mallet on froe over-riding the rhythm of the pounding in his head and the simple repetitive task calming jangled nerves.

Nick and Old Neil got on well together. The boys were often down at Widgeon during the winter helping with the maintenance tasks and listening to Nick spin yarns around our summer adventures. Occasionally I had been there when they visited and listened in embarrassed silence as Nick embellished our small adventures into ripping tales of high seas, foreign parts and piracy. The boys clearly lapped it up as a change from their father's shore-based woodland wisdom. At such times I preferred to go up to their canvas home in the woods and spend time with Anita, their mother, who kept immaculate house in the harshest conditions and was always welcoming.

Their home was built around their prized possession, an ancient wood-burning stove, pot-bellied with a firebox oven, above which a kettle continuously hissed on the hotplate. Originally they had expected to move on after a season, but the place suited them and they suited the place so they had stayed. The parish was happy to have someone using the wood and paying good rent for the timber as well as keeping an eye out for thievery. Gradually their canvas home had put down roots and grown appendages. Two sides were now planked and the roof was partly covered by Young Neil's shingles on a roundwood pole frame. Inside the walls were still canvas, but the floor was boarded and the furniture had gradually become more solid. I was happy to see them settling, and Dave was courting one of old man Treemer's granddaughters. I suppose she was some kind of cousin of mine, but I was never really certain of the outer limits of our extended family.

“Oi, look sharp!” Nick's shout stirred me from my idle dreams, and I ran aft to prepare the dinghy. There followed a busy couple of hours as we dropped anchor just out of the main channel whilst waiting for the top of the tide and preparing the mooring warps. Using the dinghy we located the sunken buoys on the mud anchors and attached the stern lines. This year we were lucky, the buoys were both still there where we had left them in the spring, carefully arranged to be just below the water at the lowest tide and so invisible to any passing river traffic. I rowed ashore paying out a long line which, looped around a convenient tree, would allow us to pull our nose in to the bank. With preparations complete we had time for a first round of tidying and stowing before moving inshore.

The breeze had died and it was turning to a perfect still evening as I stood on the foredeck again gently hauling in the line. About twenty feet from the bank I felt Widgeon nose into the mud and Nick came forward to help. We made another three feet or so, feeling the resistance stiffen, and then tightened up the stern lines that would hold her in place as the tide rose and fell.

Later that evening I was alone aboard. I was enjoying the peace of a Cornish river in late summer, birdsong in the dusky trees lining the banks, gentle lapping of the ebbing tide. Widgeon was settling in nicely, as the tide ebbed she started to heel to starboard, but had stabilised at about 20 degrees. Over the coming days she would make a hole for herself in the mud and settle more and more upright. This first night would be the most uncomfortable, but at least my berth was on the down side so I would sleep well wedged between the berth and hull.

Once he was satisfied that she was secure Nick had announced that he had business to conduct back in Fowey and took the dinghy down river as the last of the water was still alongside. I watched him out of sight round the corner, rowing with practiced ease. We had already loaded up with core provisions to see him through the winter, but I had a suspicion that he was carrying something back from Spain that he had not told us about. This annoyed me, it was fundamental to our business that we were completely honest with each other, and that none of the four of us brought anything aboard for a trip that the rest did not know about.

Most of the cargo negotiations were done by Nick himself. Bellis traded in musical curiosities and I smiled at remembering the time he had given up his berth for the voyage home to a double bass he had acquired from a Spanish pedlar. Bellis declared that its tone was unrivalled, but Jools had complained bitterly at the invasion of their space and he had spent most of the voyage in the cockpit whether on watch or not. Fortunately it had been a dry trip and Jools had forgiven him when he had traded the bass on at a healthy profit to a musical acquaintance.

Jools herself always found space to take some jars of honey on the trip out, these sold for a handsome premium in the markets of Northern Spain, the Cornish black bees having done better than most at surviving the ravages of varroa and CCD that had caused such devastation fifty years ago.

For my part I tended to pack some preserved fruit produce from Gwel Dulas. English medlars and mulberry preserves being exotic delicacies for those who could afford them. Recently, of course, my stowage space tended to be taken up with more personal items – small gifts for members of Frankie's family, things that bound us together, items of sentimental value that kept us warm through the last winter apart. Thenet was too public for private words, but these small objects spoke more eloquently than mere words. When I woke in my winter bed at Gwel Dulas and rested my eye on Frankie's treasures arranged on the shelf it was inner warmth that I felt. I had yet to unwrap the items that had been carefully placed at the bottom of my kitbag, that pleasure could wait until I was really home.

I was irritated by the thought that Nick had kept something from us at yesterday's reckoning up. Never mind the potential implications if what he had was in any way dodgy, and knowing Nick it likely was, there was a principle involved. We had to be willing partners in whatever cargo we carried, laws were mutable affairs these days and we needed to assess and agree the risks together. The advantage of a small vessel like Widgeon was that the authorities were unlikely to waste precious fuel chasing us down on the off-chance we carried contraband. We could arrive at small harbours unannounced and be gone before word had got to the nearest big town that we were even there. The authorities knew that their borders were porous, and in a sense we were tolerated as a safety valve, but it was a delicate line to tread. The sudden flash of a searchlight in the darkest night, the chill of harsh words in a foreign tongue challenging across the water, the tramp of unfamiliar boots on the deck. These we had experienced; others spoke in whispers in harbourside bars of much worse deeds. Nick always seemed to brush such words aside in public, but we noticed that he had paid heed to the warnings when it came to executing our plans.

At some point during the night I heard Nick come aboard having come back up river with the flood, whatever business had taken him back to Fowey evidently concluded. He made his way to the down side forepeak berth and I feigned sleep.

I woke first and was sitting in the cockpit with a mug of fresh tea when he surfaced. Tea was our favourite brew aboard, it was one of the privileges of being Cornish in a time of changing climate that the first tea plantations at Tregothnan at the turn of the century had taken well and now our local teas were a valuable trade commodity. Nick's impish grin quelled my lingering irritation at his secretive behaviour last night.
“Had a final bit of business to conclude, sorry I didn't tell you guys before”.
I grunted neutrally.
“Just a private letter we were carrying for a certain party, but they paid well to receive it in person and secure. Didn't really have time to discuss it before we left.” and I remembered the odd scene at the quayside.

Frankie had come to see us off, Bellis and Jools were arguing about something in that pointed not-saying-anything way that couples have. Bellis in the cockpit, Jools on the bow line, myself amidships torn between Frankie and setting the mainsail and where was Nick? From the corner of my mind's eye I saw him on the quay in earnest discussion with a woman, or possibly a small man, in a hooded black cloak. They parted abruptly and Nick leapt aboard and we were away. My eyes were on Frankie on the shore, but in the background the hooded figure disappeared into the shadow of a building and two dockside watchers got to their feet and sauntered off in the same direction. The end of the outer harbour wall crossed my vision blanking out Frankie and the other scene, but my thoughts were only on Frankie. The other story could wait.

“No risk, and a tidy profit – here's your share” and I gasped at the glint in the handful of coins Nick proffered, there were at least two sovs in there. He was still grinning in a way that implied there was more to come.
“What?”
“Nothing really, just stayed for a drink in the Hope whilst waiting for the tide.”
That grin was taunting me
“And?”
“Oh, yes, I dropped in on Thenet to pick up a forecast...”
“Infuriating old man!”
“They did have something for us, well for you actually” and he pulled out a buff Thenet envelope with my name on the outside. I snatched it from him and turned away to open it, could it possibly be from Frankie? Our likely passage time and destination were known, but only an all-electric transmission could have relayed to Fowey faster than our passage. Even electric to London and then onwards by hand would barely have had time to make it.

In the old days they had an all-electric world-wide-network, but time and resource constraints had eroded the system and now the communication channels almost always involved one or more physical hops. All-electric was ruinously expensive for all but the briefest urgent messages. Each character doubled the cost and the first one was a whole CC unit for all-electric transmission.

The envelope contained a single slip of paper on which the following was printed.

GD30X

The originator address was Frankie's handle, and the office was Guijon two days after we had left Villaviciosa.

GD could mean Gwel Dulas, but why 30? The X was probably pure extravagance on Frankie's part but the love it tokened was worth it. Thirty kisses? Thirty thousand from me!

An hour later I was ashore on the East bank, waving to Nick as he rowed back across the river to Widgeon, the ebb now flowing fast as he crabbed across, and Widgeon already starting to lean as the waters around her receded. I turned, hoisted my pack and set off up the track on the first step of the final leg of my journey home. If things went well I could pick up a lift on the Lerryn road and be in Liskard by lunchtime, then on up the edge of the moor to Tregadillet and down into the Kensey valley and home.

Of course if my luck was not in it would be a full day's walk to Liskeard and then another day up the Lanson road, I would be lucky to be in by nightfall on Monday at that rate.

Standing beside the Lerryn road I heard the distant slow chug-chug before I saw the smoke rising above the treetops. The woods were still in leaf and it was unlikely that logging had started already so it couldn't be a log road-train, but that is what it sounded like. I had walked two miles along the road without seeing any sign of life so I was glad to hear the steam traction engine coming up behind. There was a good chance that I could hitch a ride and it might even be someone I knew driving who could fill me in on the summer news from this corner. I sat on my pack beside the road to wait.

“Can you keep a fire in? Could do with a hand here”

Jogging beside the engine the voice from the footplate hidden in a cloud of steam sounded anxious. I grabbed the rail and swung up; the engineer glanced at me from his dials and levers and nodded at the tender. “Keep it roaring. We need all the heat we can get. And watch the water level.”

I started grabbing logs from the tender and placing them in the firebox, being careful not to disturb the already burning mass. It was incredibly hot and steam seemed to be leaking from several tubes with a roaring angry hiss that made conversation impossible. The regular thud of the pistons marked our slow progress as we started the ascent to Doballs.

Only when we reached the summit where the Lerryn Road joined the Old Three Eight did the engineer seem to relax.
“All right” he said shutting down two valves and reducing the noise and escaping steam to a tolerable level, “We should be ok now, we can roll down to Moorswater and then Tom'll put her right.”

I knew Tom at the Moorswater smithy and machine shop. He and I had knocked about together during the year I had been kicking my heels at the technical school before Uncle Nick offered me a way out on Widgeon. Tom was there to learn the theory behind what he already knew from working his dad's forge. I was there ostensibly learning maths and surveying, but really to get me away from Gwel Dulas and the memories of Dad.

Surveying seemed dull, just mapping what is already there and never using the knowledge. I had always loved being out exploring on my own across the old moor above Gwel Dulas, and could find my way around naturally with a good sense of direction and place. As it turned out that the skills I learnt at Technical School gave me a way out as Widgeon's navigator.

“So how is Tom?” I asked.
The engineer looked at me. “You and he used to spend some time together as I recall” he said with a sly grin.
This so annoyed me, the way everyone around seemed to know everyone else's business and history. As far as I knew I had never met the man before, but he seemed to know who I was and some of what I'd done.
“He's doing good now, running the shop real good and taken on another lad.”
He paused, then added “If you've been away you might've not heard – his pa had a accident in the summer. Boiler he was working on burst, blew him clean to bits.”

That ended the conversation from my point of view. At the Moorswater turn I jumped down and strode off up the hill towards Liskard town. The engineer's news had un-nerved me, I'd never got on with Tom's dad, and I had barely seen Tom for six years so I didn't want to get caught up in his troubles again. I had my own life to lead now and my future waiting at Gwel Dulas if Frankie could get over.

The town was bustling. I had forgotten that today was the second day of the autumn fair. Normally I would have been keen to stop and enjoy the atmosphere; the second day was always my favourite. The three towns Lanson, Callytown and Liskard were within a day’s walk of each other and each held a two day fair every year. Lanson's was in the late spring on Kensey meadows, Callytown decamped to the top of Kit Hill every year as near the winter solstice as possible depending on the weather, and Liskard held the autumn fair on the recreation grounds.

The first day was always games and competitions with teams from the three towns and the hamlets around competing furiously for prizes and then much ribald revelry into the night. The Callytown fair went right through the cold winter night until dawn and, if the forecasters got their predictions right, the sun rising over Brentor in the South East hitting the top of the summit chimney as the climax and marking the turning of the year. The second day at Liskard was my favourite, a more laid back affair with music starting mellow in the afternoon sunshine, and the fancy stalls setting out their wares.

This year I was impatient to be getting home though. I was hopeful that there would be some traffic heading north leaving the fair and I would be able to hitch another ride. As I neared the top of the hill I could see the flags and banners fluttering over the rec. It was tempting to detour up to the field, but I already had some treasures from Spain for mum and gran and I didn’t really want to run into people who knew me until I was ready.

On the other side of town I sat on the verge of the Lanson Road and got my lunch out. My last Spanish peach, a hunk of Jool’s pot-bread together with some fresh Cornish cheese she had picked up on Fowey market. My three worlds in a meal – Spain, Widgeon and Cornwall.

Up at Gwel Dulas the apple harvest would be well under way by now. When I had left the late flowering blossom had still been on some trees, at that stage you couldn’t tell how good a season it was going to be. When I heard from mum a month ago before we last left Fowey it looked like being an emperor year. My favourites were the late season apples, the big Colloggetts juicy and sharp, the Snells Glass best poached gently with quince, and of course the midwinter russets, their warm smell permeating the apple loft.

Great Granddad had started the farm with just a few acres, originally pasture, which he had planted up as a mixed fruit orchard with perennial understory. In the early years, as I knew from his journals, his vision had been to establish a resilient base which could provide for his family when times got hard. He seemed to have seen the special period coming, and it was in part thanks to the work he started late in life that we now had a comfortable home able to support us.

The old man and Great Gran Jane had built the first cottage and moved there full time around 2015. They were both in their late sixties then and had lived on for many years, surviving the worst of the special times and gradually extending and developing the holding as other family members joined in.

I have a dim half recollection of the old man as a presence around the place when I was a child. His bequest to me included two slide rules, which according to the note with them he had used when training as an engineer over 100 years ago now, and a brass sextant that he had picked up much later. Whether he knew how I would turn out, or whether his legacy made me what I am I never knew, but they were my most prized possessions. Both were in daily use guiding Widgeon around the coasts.

Gran was one of their three daughters, she and her husband Col had escaped from Bristol down to Cornwall at the start of the trouble times. My dad Roger was their son and had been three when they arrived and spent all his life since at Gwel Dulas until the terrible events of seven years ago. Gran and Col had at first shared the Old Man and Jane’s tiny cottage, eventually building the new house when the family took over the ten hectares extending up the valley. It had been Col who had persuaded the Old Man to go back on his initial ‘no livestock’ premise for Gwel Dulas, and now the small flock of sheep and the mix of poultry were an integral part of the holding.

Gran’s sisters and their families had arrived some time after her, both had been living up-country and had extraordinary experiences through the special period until they arrived at Gwel Dulas. It was only after Dad died that I was finally able to extract some of their story from Gran, I think it consoled us both to rehearse the family history and see our place in everything that had happened.

Uncle Nick was Dad’s cousin, son of Gran’s younger sister Heather. She had lost everything including Nick’s dad and sister in travelling across country to get to our haven. Heather had died shortly after, her health and heart both broken, and Nick was taken in by Gran, but he was always rootless until Widgeon had at last given him a home and a purpose.

We will never know how things would have worked out if Gran and her sisters had not made the journey to Gwel Dulas in response to the Old Man’s call. The cities are still harsh places to live, the citizens trade freedom for security and that is a different choice to our country way of life. The collective farms around the cities are run under strict control of the authorities with citizens required to spend periods giving their labour to the farms, or forced to in the case of the prison-farms. Our nearest city is Plymouth, 35 miles away, and the three-towns, Lanson, Callyton and Liskard, cooperate together as an independent self governing area outside the direct control of the central authorities. We rely on no-one that we do not know personally, but we lack some of the supposed conveniences of living within city walls. The Old Man created Gwel Dulas as an “off-grid” holding, using only resources immediately available, and that principle of self-reliance was carried forward by Col and then Dad and Nick.

The third sister, Great Aunt Roz, and family had initially moved in to Gwel Dulas with Gran and Heather, but when Aunt Masie moved down to Laddock to set up home there Roz went too. Bellis was Masie’s second son and he spent summers on Widgeon and winters making music around the local bars and dances and working as a shipwright down in Mevva.

So now it was just mum and gran running Gwel Dulas, and I could feel that the time was coming when I would want to make my own home there – if things worked out with Frankie this winter I would be spending less time on Widgeon next year. Mum could certainly do with the help, and Gran needed someone to pick up on all her recipes for lotions and ointments from the herbs we grew.

I was just wrapping up the peach stone with some flesh still attached and wondering if Mum could grow something from it in our climate when I heard the clop and rumble of a cart coming up the road. Mixed luck, it was Phil Legget who had the fields above us at Tregadillet clearly returning from the fair and a night on the town. He and I didn't really get on, but at least it would be a lift to within a mile of home.

Phil was taciturn at the best of times, but let me climb up on the back of the cart and I settled down among the empty crates. Phil had sold the last of his cider from last season yesterday evening around the big bonfire, and the horse's load was now a cart full of crates of empty bottles and one very tired and tetchy farmer. Even good fortune didn't seem to satisfy Phil.

We travelled in silence, broken by occasional shots from Phil.

“So you'll be back from your wanderings then, that'll be a relief to your mother.”

Well yes, but I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of agreeing, and what would he know about Mum.

The road rose up toward Pensilva Down on the edge of the moor. I recognised the horse as Vetch, a good working horse, she could manage the cart back home over the ups and downs of the moorside Lanson road without guidance. She plodded up the hill and Phil hunched on the front seat motionless with the reins.

“You here for the winter then? I knewed you'd be back. I told 'em. You'd better stay on now.”

Not that it was any of his business, and what did he know anyway. Down through Upton Cross now, no-one around, I supposed they must all be back at the fair. Another two miles nearer.

“You'll be helping with the making then.”

That was a statement, not a question. Of course I'd be helping with the crushing and pressing and bottling. We all worked together on that as the apples came in, and the other fruit stores too. Mum would be in a frenzy of preserving until midwinter, and then her work would bring its reward as we set up our stall at Lanson market and townsfolk would rush for our produce to sustain them through the hungry winter.

“Hear you're getten someone to keep you here now.”

What?! Was that a shot in the dark? No way could he know about Frankie possibly coming over. Or even that Frankie existed. I couldn't stop myself.

“What do you mean Phil?”

“Eh. Your Gran said.”

“Said what? When?”

“Said you'd a visitor from Spain”

This was not right, Gran knew nothing of Frankie, nothing I'd told her anyway, but she did have this annoying knack of seeing things that she wasn't supposed to.

Kilmar Tor rose above us on the left as the road turned for the descent to North Hill. We rumbled down to where the temporary wooden bridge across the River Inny still stood. The old stone bridge had been washed away in the torrent two winters ago and I saw no signs of work to replace it properly. The wooden structure always felt a bit rickety, and the stones from the old bridge had been arranged to make a base for a ford alongside. Most vehicles preferred the ford in summer although it was nearly a metre deep even when the river was low. Vetch went for the ford, but half way across she stopped.

“Come on with yer, giddup”, Phil shook the reins. Vetch remained stationary.

“Phil, what about Spain?”
He turned to look at me properly, for the first time on the road.

“That's where you been all summer, ain't it. Gave your Gran and Mum a lift to the fair yesterday and your Gran said you was coming back for good with a Spanish one.”

“She's just an old woman, she doesn't know anything.”

“Well she seemed pretty sure, and your mum was expecting you yesterday. Heard they'd gone home in the afternoon with someone, but youse here so it weren't you then. Giddup will you!”

The air was still, the Inny flowed beneath us. White bergs of cloud floated in a blue dome above. Behind us the old road from Liskard fell down from North Hill. Two buzzards were mewing and circling around the wood on the side of Kilmar. To the right the river disappeared babbling into the leaf shaded valley down to Rilla Mill, and ahead the road rose for the final climb up to Tregadillet and down to the Kensey Valley and Gwel Dulas.

Yesterday was the first day of the fair, which meant it was the last Saturday in September. We had left Villaviciosa a week ago which would have been Sunday 24th. Frankie was in Guijon on 26th. GD30X. A faster ship could have made Falmouth by Friday 29th, from there it was possible to get transport up to Liskard in a day, especially if the trains were running at least part of the way. Yesterday was 30th. GD30. It was possible.

Vetch raised her nose from the water and finally started up the long last hill.

All the way my heart was pounding and my mind reeling. This was not what I had imagined, but could it be true?.

After crossing the trunk road I hoisted my pack and swung down off the cart by the Square & Compass. I was almost running through the village and into the lane at the top of Sebastapol Wood. As I emerged from the wood there is a view of our fields on the valley floor below through a gap in the hedge.

Ewes and store lambs almost indistinguishable in the far pasture. Chickens in the orchard. Woodsmoke rising from the cottage chimney. A figure in white was bending over in the veg plot in front, I could recognise mum fussy among her late lettuces.

Round the corner of the house another figure emerged with a wheelbarrow.

Tall and dark, with his shirt off in the lndian Summer afternoon glow he gleamed like a god. He looked up the hill towards me, sensing he was watched.
My God.
My Frankie.
My Home.