Turtle Diary

36 Neaera H

I woke up in the van. Ah yes, I thought, this is where I went to sleep. There was wood near my face smelling salty, oceany. Empty turtle crate. I put my ear to it, listened: silent-roaring ocean. There was rope, I touched it, licked my fingers: salt. I touched the trolley, salty as well. I rolled over, there was William still asleep. It seemed like spying to look at his sleeping face so I got out of the van.

It was afternoon. Vans with curtains in the windows were parked on either side of us and people inside them were being domestic. Refreshment and souvenir stands were open at the car-park entrance. A man with a horse and a bedizened yellow wagon half full of passengers beckoned to me like the coachman who took Pinocchio to the Land of Boobies.

Stupid really, to feel as I did just then: low-spirited and dissatisfied. There was no reason for it. We had come to Polperro to put turtles into the sea and we’d done it.

The sunlight was hot, the sky was blue. I felt all astray. At home the day and I always approached each other by slow degrees: brushing my teeth, washing my face, the first cup of coffee, the first cigarette, opening the post. Here I had nothing, just suddenly some rough beast of a day with vans and curtains and people feeding children.

Scale is a funny thing. Sometimes on hot days everything seems too big and spread out. Not to be grasped by the mind, not to be held in the eye. I thought of winter. Winter grey skies, winter early evenings make London small like a model town. Lighted windows in shops are like model shop windows, tobacconist, launderette, bakery. I saw the little model streets in my mind, the shops. In the model bakery, a three-tiered wedding-cake, great in its tinyness. Pictures of other wedding-cakes: the ‘Windsor’, the ‘Paradise’, the ‘Wedgwood’. Small, small, astonishing detail in the model memory, all there to be found. The model Polperro here at Polperro was still in my mind, I compared it to the model London. The Polperro one was much bigger, huge and thick, not to be held in the mind or in the eye.