Homage to Gaia (50 page)

My first encounter with the Irish war itself was in 1939, when the Irish Republican Army left a suitcase in the Left Luggage office of Tottenham Court Tube Station. It contained a small bomb and a timer-controlled detonator. At the time, I worked for a firm of consultants in Kinnerton Street, Knightsbridge and attended Birkbeck College as an evening-class student. I had ninety minutes to spare between the time I stopped work at 5.30 and the first lecture at Birkbeck at 7.00, and I would sometimes break the journey at Tottenham Court Road and walk the rest of the way to the college in Fetter Lane. I did so in February, but before the bomb exploded. Up until then, I had excused the Irish violence, as did most of the Left inclined, because we believed that they were victims of oppression and therefore had the right to protest. Suddenly, I realized that I might easily have been a victim of the protest. Nineteen years old, and full of testosterone, I was impatient for action myself. I sympathized with the Irish protest, but never thought of the consequences. I had even fantasized in simplistic socialist dreams a heroic suicide by taking a suitcase bomb into the Stock Exchange—a place I then saw as the temple of capitalist exploitation. It was not lack of knowledge about how to make explosives, and detonators, nor lack of practical experience in using them, that stopped me. What stayed my hand was the natural restraint of life as a subject of a civilized monarchy; in such a society to go this far was right over the top. It took the Tottenham Court Road bomb to make me realize the awesome responsibility placed on those who commit acts of terrorism. My bomb would not have killed the hated capitalists; it would have blasted the young clerks and people like me. Similar thoughts must have restrained the left-wing fervour of the poet John Betjeman when he wrote, ‘Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough’. He pleaded with the bombers:

In 1939 most of us were marinated in socialism, and it was natural to think of profit as something unconditionally bad. We were certain that an industry run for the benefit of the people by the people would be just, kindly to the workers, and more efficient than private enterprise could ever be. As a young man, I believed in it wholeheartedly and it was not until I read Orwell’s
Animal
Farm
in 1948 that I understood its flaws. This simple faith in socialism still pervades in the north of these islands and it led that otherwise able man, Alan Bennett, to say that he could not understand how anyone intelligent could be other than a socialist. Do not assume that by doubting socialism, I see no good in it—I am passionate in my support for the Health Service, especially as it was until recently. Do not think that I have a similar simple enthusiasm for market forces, or some other political recipe. As a scientist, I have no faith, only a sense of wonder. I now look on socialism as a luxury, something that a rich and civilized nation can enjoy. I doubt if the poor can afford it.

I thought about Ireland again on a cold grey day in January 1965, when I heard the putter of a motorbike come to a stop, and the house door slam. My daughter Jane came in. She had travelled the thirty miles from Southampton on her small Honda bike and she was tired after her journey and her work as a trainee nurse. ‘Dad,’ she said, ‘I have a week off. Can we go abroad for a holiday?’ A holiday seemed a good idea and I could spare about a week. Charter flights to interesting destinations such as the Canaries and Seychelles were not an easy option in those days in the 1960s. I also knew that southern Europe and the Mediterranean could be bitterly cold in January so that going there was a gamble. It suddenly came to me, why not go to Ireland? I turned to Jane and said, ‘Would Ireland do?’ and at first she seemed disappointed. And then I said, ‘Well, it is abroad, you know. We have to go there by ship if we’re going to use our car over there.’

We all pored over the
Times
Atlas
to
see where to go in Ireland, and without hesitation, chose the far west; that is, the south-western part of Ireland where the mountain ranges, like five extended digits of a hand, point into the Atlantic, as if reaching for America. Rarely has political and physical geography so well concurred. We looked in our
guide and found the Great Southern Hotel at Kenmare, which looked like the best in the region. Helen called the hotel and booked our rooms. I must admit to a fear of telephones so marked that I find it difficult to use them. Perversely, I feel exposed and vulnerable, trapped by the earpiece. I can only describe it as a feeling like the embarrassment of nakedness. Because of this, I cowardly welcome any offers to telephone on my behalf, and Helen, who in wartime had manned the National Institute for Medical Research telephone exchange, usually did. Perhaps my fear of telephony had something to do with the recent discovery that the disembodied voice is more revealing of a person’s true intentions than a complete image: face, body, and voice. It is easier, apparently, to fool an audience by television than by radio. When they ask me by telephone to give a lecture or do something equally distasteful, I find it difficult to say no. Even when, in truth, I once told my tormentor: ‘I am sorry but I can’t do it. I have been invited to the South Pole on that date’, it was clear from his voice that he did not believe me.

All that remained was to book a passage on the ship that travelled from Swansea to Cork. This done, we piled our luggage into the capacious boot of our Jaguar and set off for Swansea, which is about 200 miles from Bowerchalke. In those days, there was only one motorway in the United Kingdom, and that went north from London, the M1. There were no motorways in the south-west or Wales. We travelled along the small winding roads across England to the Welsh border just beyond Gloucester. The driving through south Wales was far from pleasant; it was an urban industrial scene of smoking chimneys and horrendous air pollution. We drove along seemingly endless terraced streets with barely a sight of a tree. The Welsh are a vocal, not a violent people, and they expressed their tribal hatred of the English by large crude graffiti expressions such as ‘Kick the English out of Wales’, scrawled in letters feet high on bridges and buildings. It did not augur well, we thought, for a visit to Ireland, where feelings ran even higher. I suppose the English must be high on the list of the world’s most hated tribe; no doubt a legacy of our past imperial prowess and tendency to win wars. America, now the lead power, is experiencing this same dislike, but we will have to endure it for a long time yet. Individuals may be able to forgive and forget but tribes have memories lasting centuries or longer.

After six hours’ driving, we reached the docks at Swansea. We took our hand luggage, watched our car driven on to a pallet, and then
hoisted by a crane into the cargo hold of the
Innisfallen
,
the ship we were to take to Ireland. We had a pleasant pair of cabins on the upper deck, where we stowed our baggage, and went down to the saloon for tea. These were the days before mass travel on passenger aircraft and roll on–roll off car ferries. Travel on ships, even small ones, was a pleasure. There was a sense of leisured dignity, and there was the quiet and courteous attention now only available to the seriously rich. In addition, ships in those days did not suffer the din and vibration from overpowered diesel engines that makes the car ferries so unpleasant. Nor were there cramped and noisy quarters and cafeteria feeding the masses. I never tried it, but I’m told that the old aeroplanes, like the flying boats and the stratocruisers, provided an almost marine standard of comfort. Lack of comfort is the high price we pay for cheap mass travel.

For once in January, our journey to Cork, about fifteen hours, was quiet and free of the Atlantic storms that so often savage the western approaches to these islands. Arrival in the morning was a delight. The ship sailed into the drowned valley that forms the estuary leading to Cork Harbour and passes Cobh, once the port where transatlantic liners stopped to take on Irish emigrants. Then it sailed on down the river, between the green fields of Ireland, to Cork itself. We enjoyed a leisurely breakfast on the ship whilst it docked and discharged cargo, including the few cars that it carried. There was a customs inspection, and then we were free to drive on through Cork into Ireland. The quiet roads and small towns we passed through on the way to Kenmare wholly delighted us. We went by Bandon, Bantry, and Glengarriff, and rejoiced in the mountain scenery.

The Great Southern Hotel was a graceful manor house in spacious grounds near the small market town of Kenmare. It was warm, comfortable, and wonderfully quiet. Not surprisingly, we were almost the only guests. Mid-January is hardly a time for holidays anywhere, especially in these islands. To give a measure of the style of the hotel, the other party choosing to holiday there were Lord Rank, the media magnate, and his friends. We explored two of the mountainous peninsulas that stuck out into the Atlantic. The Beara Peninsula to the south, and the larger mountain chain to the north, which contains the McGillicuddy Reeks—the highest mountains of Ireland. It is a region of enthralling landscapes and coastline. Imagine the mountains of Wales, somehow placed within Cornwall, and all of it uninhabited but for a sprinkling of farms, small fishing villages, and towns.
We fell in love with it there and then and prospected for a cottage to rent for a summer holiday later that year. We chose one on a mountainside just outside Kenmare.

In July we returned for two weeks and confirmed our January impressions. It was a wholly delightful place. We found the people of that part of Ireland courteous, friendly, and helpful. They remained so throughout the Troubles that were soon to start. A few of them were to become the staunchest of our friends. We so enjoyed the first week of our holiday that we looked for a house to buy so that we could come there and use it as a second home and place of work. The estate agent in Kenmare gave us a list of properties for sale and we travelled along the Beara Peninsula looking at them. All were inexpensive by English standards, ranging from £1,000 to £3,000 for small cottages, some even with acres of land. The choice suddenly narrowed to one cottage on the south coast of the Beara Peninsula, near the small village of Adrigole. There, on the slopes of the mountain Hungry Hill, made famous by Daphne DuMaurier in her novel, were three cottages, one of them a relatively modern-looking bungalow with a ‘For Sale’ sign outside. We stopped to look, when suddenly there was a knocking on the car window. I opened it to find a lady who asked if we could give her a lift into Castletown Bearhaven, about eight miles to the west. ‘Yes’, we said, and she then called out, ‘Jimmy’, and a small boy ran from the hedge to join her.

As we drove into the small town, we quizzed Mrs O’Sullivan about the cottage. Her husband, she said, had built it, and Miss Smith, who worked at Bantry Hospital as a pathologist, now owned it. It was a fine cottage, she said, and just the place for people like us. Her genuine enthusiasm confirmed the cognitive dissonance of our choice. The price asked was relatively high for Ireland, just over £3,000, but we bought it without bargaining. Extravagant by nature, I always believe that a little extra money paid for just what one wants is no waste at all, just an insurance against losing the chance to buy the place of one’s dreams.

Ard Carrig, the Adrigole cottage, was to become a dream place for us for nearly twelve years. It is still in the family. I sold it to my Irish son-in-law, Michael Flynn, sometime in the 1980s. We spent two or three months there every summer until 1977. We frequently went to Ireland in the other seasons as well, and soon established firm friendships with our neighbours, the O’Sullivans. Michael O’Sullivan was a tall lean man who was as strong as an ox. He would lift a 200-pound
gas cylinder onto his shoulder and stride up the slope to the cottage as if it were no heavier than a bunch of flowers. It took me weeks before I could understand him, so strong was his West Cork accent. Theresa O’Sullivan, his wife, was a well-built handsome woman and known as ‘The Queen of Beara’. She knew everything and everyone on the peninsula, and far beyond as well. In those days, in what seemed to be an act of spite, the prosperous and growing European Economic Community denied the United Kingdom and Ireland membership. Consequently, both countries were still relatively poor. The O’Sullivans found it hard to make a living from their farm, which went from the shoreline to the slopes of Hungry Hill. Michael O’Sullivan welcomed the chance of winter work building a laboratory and an extra bedroom onto the small bungalow. He also, as a project, built a swimming pool one summer. Not so much as a luxury, but so that Helen could gain the exercise she needed to offset the enforced immobility of multiple sclerosis.

The easy informal life of western Ireland suited us as a family wonderfully well. Had it not been for the remoteness of the place and the difficulty for me of travelling elsewhere and keeping in touch with science, we would have moved there and kept only a foothold in England. I grew to love the wild slopes of Hungry Hill: warm slabs of bare, old, red sandstone piled up at an angle of forty-five degrees from the sea to the summit, some 2500 feet high. It was gloriously healthy walking and climbing country. There were a pair of lakes at about 1300 feet, overlooked by the precipitous mass of the mountain itself, and in the summer, the clear peaty water of these lakes was wonderfully warm for swimming. I used to sit on my favourite slab of rock overlooking Bantry Bay and the broad Atlantic. Here I would think through scientific problems that were my life’s work and here I composed my first book,
Gaia:
A
New
Look
at
Life
on
Earth.
I wrote it almost entirely in the cottage below.

As I sat in the warm sun on my ledge, high up on the sandstone slabs of Hungry Hill, it was not easy to think about the Earth in any way except romantically. I composed the book as if I were writing a long love letter to a woman I had never met. I saw her as someone intelligent, lively, and full of fun, but not a scientist. My imaginary partner was like someone the Irishman, Bernard Shaw, had in mind when he wrote his work,
An
Intelligent
Woman’s
Guide
to
Socialism,
Sovietism
and
Capitalism.
My lady was not as serious, I think, as his. I sometimes wonder if my romantic style of writing was what offended
my macho male critics of Gaia. If an excuse is needed, let’s say it’s the fault of the Irish, just as they say, when the weather is bad or they don’t win at the lottery, it’s the fault of the English. The extraordinary and wonderful thing that happened was that twelve years later, Sandy Orchard read the book as it was intended and written, and that is how and why we met.