Chapter One When I was a child I used to think that I could learn from my parents; even that this was what they were there for. My father used to talk; I liked to hear him talk; my mother seemed half to listen and half to be ready to tease him or divert him if he got too carried away by words. I had the idea that this was how families worked. It was only gradually that I came to realise that other children did not see their parents like this. They were apt to look on their fathers as something of a joke or a threat; and their mothers, though perhaps somewhat sacred, had to be challenged even if guiltily. And when my school friends came to visit me it was evident in spite of their good manners that they saw my parents in this way -- my father as an authority figure to be subtly thwarted or evaded, and my mother to be charmed perhaps but as a matter of themselves showing off. Everyone except special friends was likely to be seen as a potential enemy. One of the things my father liked to talk about was this characteristic of humans who, in order to stay alive, had had to learn to distrust and to fight other creatures, often even those closest to them. But now this sort of programming had become too dangerous (my father would begin to orate) -- the attitudes of distrust and aggression which in humans had evolved for their preservation were in this technological age working to their destruction. But how could what had become programmed, built-in, decide to change itself? Did it not have to wait for something outside to change it? My mother would say `But you don't believe that. You believe that if we recognise the situation then the programming can change.' `Yes I do believe that.' `Then why don't you say it?' `Perhaps if we get smug then things don't change.' When I went to school I found myself involved in the usual hostilities and alliances; but by that time I had learned that there was something odd about me -- at birth there had been something fragile about my skull and this had never quite corrected itself. As a consequence I was kept from playing some games and was warned to keep out of trouble. I had sometimes been taunted about this, but once I had fought back with such ferocity that it had seemed I might die and my tormentors had become alarmed. After this I was for the most part left alone and could get on with my own devices. I did not mind my solitariness: I was able to read a lot, and wanted to find out how things worked. I had got hold of the idea (I suppose picked up from my father) that things evolved when some individuals stood out from the crowd; and thus I could imagine some virtue in my vulnerability, while the likelihood that I would die young was a counterweight to being smug. My father was a maker of documentary films for television. He specialised in scientific subjects which should be of more than academic interest. A year or two before the time about which I will be writing he had made a series of programmes about the science of the first half of the twentieth century; these had brought him a certain acclaim and he was now being encouraged to do a similar series on the second half of the century that was coming towards its end. But he maintained that this was much more difficult to do, because although the science of the first half had been intellectually puzzling -- what with quantum physics, conundrums about genes, and so on -- it had been strikingly dramatic, with the splitting of the atom leading to the release of nuclear energy and in biology the lead-up to discoveries about DNA. The science of the second half however was largely taken up with trying to know how to handle or even to understand what had been uncovered in the first -- there seeming to be some incapacity in the mind concerning this. Physicists for instance had coined the phrase -- Anyone who thinks he understands quantum physics doesn't understand it. And with regard to genes -- well, were humans helplessly in thrall to them or were they not? I had said to my father `But can't you make a series of programmes about that?' `About going along in the dark?' `Couldn't that be exciting?' My father had recently bought a motor caravan in which to go on reconnaissance trips for his work. I had been on one of these journeys with him and there had then been opportunities to talk -- we had floated off into speculation without being brought down to earth by my mother. We had ruminated on what life was all about; whether it had any meaning. But after a time it seemed that such words became too cloudy even for us; and my father would break off and say -- `But the important things anyway can't really be said. Words can take you so far then you have to go on a journey.' I said `But aren't these exciting discoveries being made in biology now? That's what the master says at school.' `Yes but for every puzzle solved there's always another.' `What about the mutants without which there wouldn't be any evolution -- that are usually, but not always, snuffed out.' `Well yes, but if they're not, that depends on extraordinary coincidences.' I wondered if my father thought I might be talking about myself. I used to spend my holidays with my parents, but then when I was seventeen and working for my A-level exams my parents went off in the caravan on their own on a tour of restaurants in Europe, of which I was both scornful and jealous. But I thought -- All right, I'll be going off on journeys on my own. Then in the summer of 1998 when I had taken my exams and was due to go to a university in the autumn there was talk of going in the caravan to the west coast of Ireland. My mother had inherited a cottage there; her family had originally come from Ireland but the family house had been burned down at the time of the troubles in the twenties; this cottage however with a small patch of land remained, and my mother had to decide what to do with it. Also my father planned to visit a wildlife station in the vicinity. There was a bird sanctuary on a rocky island just off the coast where it had been noted that the habits and physical features of certain varieties of birds had been changing with unusual rapidity. My father's interest in making a film about this was rekindled. He explained -- `Well yes, new varieties do seem to be developing perhaps due to pollution in the sea or in the fish they eat or to changes in the climate -- or whatever -- I mean varieties which seem able to deal with the new conditions. The changes in the birds are not very striking, but statistically they do seem relevant to one of the puzzles about evolution. I mean how small changes in the environment can lead quite quickly to new varieties of organism or even conceivably eventually a new species. This goes against the orthodox Darwinian view that genetic mutation results in adaptation only slowly.' I said `So these birds learn to survive.' `Well in a sense, but it's not exactly learning, the idea is that stress caused by a changing environment speeds up the occurrence of random mutations so that amongst such birds there are quite naturally likely to be one or two fitted to dealing with the changing environment. And so these instead of being wiped out would flourish and proliferate. And so it might seem that organisms might not only adapt to circumstances but pass on their adaptability, but it's more a matter just of who lives and who dies.' I said `And that's what's happening on this island?' `If I make a film it'll probably end up being about a lot of academics quarrelling with one another.' My mother said `Your father will love that.' My father said `What.' `What you really want to make a film about is the way people love bashing one another about.' `Well, yes, and how they might change.' My mother said `What your father can't understand is how the benighted Irish, who seem to live permanently under conditions of stress, never seem to produce any variation at all.' My father said `I've got the explanation for that.' `I'm sure you have.' `Bashing one another about is to the Irish a perfectly normal condition. So it's not stress.' `You see?' `But I mean, how miraculously have they adapted to stress!' He put an arm round my mother. When my father and mother went on like this it seemed that they knew what they were doing. My mother was by profession a psychotherapist: she believed I suppose that all relationships contained stress, but these could be guided to work themselves out. I said `Do you think it's all right for people to blow each other up?' My father said `No, but people may only learn by things getting worse before they get better.' When my parents had been planning the trip to Ireland there had been some talk about my perhaps not going with them. I had been wondering about this myself; but as soon as it was put into words I felt disconcerted -- so in this I was no different from everyone else? But we had not travelled as a family in the caravan before, and it might just be too crowded, and were they not offering me my chance of freedom? But it would be a sad moment for us as a family when I took off on my own. It seemed we were getting into one of the predicaments that my father talked about in which for quite good reasons people were pulled in two ways at once. He said `But do you or don't you want to come?' I said `I don't know.' My mother said `Of course he wants to come.' My father said `I thought we might be giving you a chance to get away.' My mother said `Well we've done that.' I said `Yes thank you, I'd like to come.' The motor caravan was high and wide but not all that spacious inside. It had two narrow double bunks -- one on a platform crossways above the front seats, and the other made up from the settee-type seats at the back. I said that I would not mind sleeping on the floor if my mother and father each wanted a bed to themselves -- when they were both working late at home they sometimes slept in different rooms. But here again we seemed to be approaching a ludicrous situation in which I, by thinking I was being considerate, seemed to be suggesting that my parents could not bear sleeping together, or that I could not bear the thought of this. I had read somewhere that children were supposed to be horrified at the idea of their parents making love. This had seemed to me ludicrous, but how could I explain? My father said `No you must have the top bunk. And perhaps something miraculous will come from the stress of your mother and I being squashed together at the back.' My mother said `Actually we rather like being in a small bed.' So we set off across England and Wales and my father was once more in a situation in which he could orate. (My mother said -- `I thought you were going to get the radio mended.' My father said -- `I've lost the code that gets it started. Ah, couldn't I have lost my own code!') So with my father driving and my mother sitting beside him and myself reclining in the back, he said as if over his shoulder -- `How much do you know about Ireland? I mean the history, the politics, the oppression, the famines, the violence. All this for centuries blamed on the ghastly English invaders but then when the English wanted to get out and there might at last have been peace then it was as if the Irish had got so used to outrage that they had to carry it on between themselves; and indeed Catholics and Protestants could just as easily blow each other up.' I said `I thought something had been settled this Easter.' My father said `There are signs that that won't last.' My mother said `You really think people don't want to change?' `Not unless there's something more exciting.' `There's getting rich. That's a change.' `Yes, that could be a stage.' We spent the first night somewhere off the road in Wales. I lay in the top bunk screened by a curtain, and I could hear my father and mother giggling in the back. I thought -- Well, they must know that I'm in no way horrified at the idea of their making love. Might not a cosmic ray have come down at the time of my conception -- to give me my vulnerable skull, my mark of being a possible mutation? At least I have no interest in bashing people about. The next day we crossed the sea and trundled through the central Irish plain. There were peat bogs on either side: I wondered how anything so soft and damp could burn. My father seemed to want to counteract the impression he had given about the Irish the previous day, because he talked now about the paradox of the Irish being so humorous, so imaginative, so creative -- about their legends, their poetry; about how before the coming of the English Ireland had been a country not only of warriors but of scholars and holy men and shrines. `This island for instance where nowadays seabirds breed was for centuries a home for hermits and monks; they came to find refuge from the butchery of the Dark Ages, in which every activity seemed to be a provocation for hatred and revenge. The monks wanted to break out of this, to break the cycle, and perhaps they did for themselves. They fasted and prayed, practised terrible austerities, copied and illustrated amazingly beautiful manuscripts. They adapted to paradoxes but they didn't transform society.' My mother said `In the end they did.' `What survived was the Church.' I said `And that didn't work?' `It got hooked on power.' My mother said `The other thing works secretly.' I said `What is the other thing?' My father said `Well, holiness. But that's what you can't quite say.' I thought -- You mean, it's like cosmic rays whizzing about? My mother said `It's not God's job to make things easy.' I said `What is God's job?' My father said `To make things possible.' When we got to the fishing village somewhere in the vicinity of which was the cottage that now belonged to my mother we could not at first find it, and we were at the end of a long day. My mother said she was sorry, but she had been there for only one holiday as a child: my father said `No one's blaming you.' We enquired at a farm and a woman directed us up a track and there was a white-painted cottage with a tiled roof and my mother said she remembered it as being made of crumbling stone and thatch. We turned back to the farm and the woman seemed to have become hostile: she said she had told us correctly and retreated into the house. My father said `Perhaps they burned the old cottage down to get the insurance.' My mother said `I don't think I can stand your jokes.' We went back to the cottage and stared at it and my mother said `Well if this is it I don't want it.' My father said 'Didn't you notice all the nice new cottages along the coast? I expect people are making fortunes smuggling explosives.' My mother got out of the caravan and went through a small garden to the door of the cottage and found the key which had been left by the local agent under a stone; this fitted and she went in. My father followed. I stayed in the caravan: I thought -- Perhaps I won't fred it so difficult after all in this place to get away from my parents; this is a place where there have been those monks, those birds. After a while I thought that I would get out of the caravan and walk towards the sea. I tried to imagine the holy men who had come here to live on rocks like birds; they had hoped, imagined themselves to be mutations? But they had not wanted to alter the world? They had dreamed of another world? The track along which we had come ended at the cottage, but there was a footpath going on directly into the setting sun so it seemed this must be the direction to the sea. But the sun was in my eyes so that I could hardly see: I thought -- Well this is what we have been talking about, isn't it? The journey to where one wants to go without exactly knowing where one is going; moving in darkness towards the light and the sea. By shielding my eyes I could see that I was coming to the edge of a cliff; the path led to where there seemed to be steps going down. The steps were narrow and cut into the cliff face; there was no railing. The steps led, so far as I could see, to a narrow beach of shingle and a promontory of black rock; to the right of this there was the long curve of a bay where waves came in ceaselessly; on the left beyond the shingle there was what looked like a narrow concrete landing stage. In the setting sun the dark sea gleamed; the rocks appeared suffused with blood; the whole scene was like a mythical scene in a painting. Just off the landing stage there was a small boat and the figure of a man or boy leaning over the side with his hands in the water. This might be the miraculous draft of fishes: the dipping of whoever-it-was by his heel into the sea? Myths seem to have meaning without having to say what the meaning might be. Or might it be that the boat was simply that of a smuggler or gun-runner such as my father had hinted at -- his arms in the water to drag up a sunken cache of weapons, or even to hold down the head of an enemy condemned to be drowned. My father had said this was a favourite part of the coast for terrorists to land weapons: in which case shouldn't I turn back? But if one was on some mythical journey, should one turn back? And the man or boy was more likely to be a fisherman. I had begun to grope my way down the steps with the sun against my eyes like varnish on a painting; the man or boy was struggling with something in the water; someone not yet quite drowned? some great fish being dragged to the land? As I went on down the crumbling steps I could see that the figure in the boat was manoeuvring it in towards the landing stage with one hand while with the other he hung on to whatever it was in the water. This seemed to be alive because it reared up suddenly as if with the arm or neck of some strange monster; it did not seem to be a fish because it was too splayed out and craggy: perhaps indeed it was a mutant: but then -- a bird? It was a wing rather than an arm that was waving up out of the water. I had arrived at the bottom of the steps; I had to set off -- unless I turned back now -- across the shingle to the landing stage. An explanation of the scene if not the meaning seemed to become clear: the boy -- for the figure in the boat was that of a boy, perhaps even one of much the same age as myself -- the boy was trying to rescue a bird that had become trapped or injured in the water; probably it had become contaminated by oil; that was why the sea had seemed to glisten like a painting. And so of course I was right to come and help the boy. I crossed the shingle. The boy had now got the boat up to the landing stage and was holding it there while at the same time trying to lift out of the water the large bird by its seemingly infinitely extensible wing; but he could not do this without using two hands, which would unbalance the boat and might upset it. However if I knelt on the landing stage and put my arms in the water under the bird we might together lift it, the boy and I, on to the landing stage or into the boat or whatever. This I found myself doing. The bird was like something taboo to the touch; clasping it was like getting a hold on its tendons, guts, lungs; we struggled with it, the boy and I, dabbling our hands in the oily water that was like blood. We did not speak; it was as if for what we were doing it was not necessary to speak. We got the bird up on to the landing stage; it was the size of a large goose or swan, but I did not think it was a goose or swan, it had too short a neck and a curved beak; its colouring was obscured by the oil. It looked at us, the boy and I, with a dark bright eye. Then I saw that as well as any contamination by oil there was entwined round its feet a mess of wires and plastic that might have been part of a fisherman's tackle or net; the bird would not have been able to take off and fly or even probably to swim; before long it would have drowned. The boy began to pull at the wires but they were too tight, they were cutting into the bird's legs. Also the light was now fading so that we could not see what we were doing. I thought -- You must take the bird home and disentangle it carefully: it would be easier for you to do this than me. Then I heard my mother calling from the top of the cliff. I helped the boy to get the bird from the landing stage into the boat. He smiled at me as if to thank me but he seemed to be hurrying to get away, as if he felt that it was important for him not to be seen by anyone but me. He pushed off with an oar and used it like a paddle to go silently out to sea. He went into a mist that was now rising from the water; the sky above it was like the roof of a cavern. I did not want to call out to my mother to tell her that I was all right because I thought that any sound might shatter the odd fragility of this scene. The boat disappeared in the mist. Then there was the sound of an outboard motor starting up. I had not noticed the outboard motor; perhaps now the mythical spell of the scene could be broken. And what indeed had been mythical about it, except that there was still the feel in my nerves, my mind, of the odd roughness combined with softness that had seemed taboo -- of the bird's feathers and bones that had been so uncanny in my hands. And the boy, what had it been about the boy, that he was like myself in some other existence? I had crossed the shingle and begun to climb up the steps. I thought I should not tell my mother of what had happened -- how could I describe it? You would have to experience such a scene for it to have meaning. The boy and I had not spoken. I thought I should tell my mother that I had just gone to look at the sea. (Continues...) Excerpted from The Hesperides Tree by Nicholas Mosley. Copyright © 2001 by Nicholas Mosley. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
