‘And you know what?’ she told me. ‘I still read those letters. I still take them with me everywhere.’
‘Everywhere?’
‘Yes. Even on these trips. I’ve got them right here.’ She tapped her forefinger against the laptop. ‘I scanned them all in. And all the photos he used to send me. This one, for instance – this is one of Clive’s.’ She was pointing to the photograph of the washed-up boat. ‘Well, he didn’t take it or anything like that,’ she explained. ‘It was taken by an artist called Tacita Dean. The boat’s called Teignmouth Electron.’
‘Teignmouth?’ I said. ‘That’s in Devon, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right. Where Clive and my mum grew up.’
‘So why do you have it on your desktop?’
‘Because there’s an amazing story associated with it. The story of a man called Donald Crowhurst.’ She gave a yawn, protracted and involuntary, before remembering to cover it with her hand. ‘Sorry – I’m really sleepy all of a sudden. Have you heard of him?’
I shook my head.
‘He was the man who sailed round the world in the late sixties. Or at least said he did, but actually he didn’t.’
‘I see,’ I said, totally confused.
‘I’m not explaining this very well, am I?’
‘You’re tired. You should go to sleep.’
‘No, but it’s a great story. I think you should hear it.’
‘I’m fine. I’ll just watch a movie. You’re too tired to talk. Tell me the story in the morning.’
‘I wasn’t going to tell you the story. I was just going to read you what Clive wrote to me about it.’
‘It can wait.’
‘Tell you what.’ Poppy tapped a few keys on her laptop before passing it over to my table, and then reaching beneath her own seat where she had stashed her pillow and blankets. ‘You can read his letter. There it is. It’s a bit long, sorry – but you’ve got plenty of time, and it’ll do you more good than watching some terrible rom-com for a couple of hours.’
‘Are you sure that’s OK? I mean, I don’t want to look at anything that’s … too private.’
But Poppy assured me it was OK. So while she snuggled down under the blankets, I placed her computer on my lap, and looked at the first page of her uncle’s letter. It had opened up in Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, so that I could still see the creamy yellow of the notepaper on which he had written it, and even make out the faint swirling watermark behind the handwriting. The writing itself was crisp, angular and easily legible. I guessed that he had been using a fountain pen. The ink was navy blue, shading almost into black. As I started reading the first sentences I felt a slight pressure against my left shoulder, and looked down to see that Poppy had placed her pillow next to it and settled her head there. She looked up at me, just briefly, as if to ask permission with her eyes, but at the same instant her eyelids flickered and closed, and already she had slipped into a deep, unshakeable sleep. After a few seconds, when I felt it was safe to do so, I breathed a goodnight kiss into her hair, and could feel my own body tingle with happiness.
Water
The Misfit
12 March 2001
Dear Poppy
I was sorry not to see you this weekend. Weekends are always a bit lonely here when you’re not around. You missed a glorious display in the Gardens – the crocus carpet is in full bloom already – very early this year – and to stroll along Cherry Walk, one’s eyes taking in swathe upon swathe of these white and purple beauties, their heads bobbing in the breeze, is to realize that spring has come again – finally! Anyway, I hope you had a good time with your mother. Did she take you anywhere, do anything interesting with you? The NFT were showing The Magnificent Ambersons on Saturday evening and I would also have liked to take you along to that. I went by myself in the end, but while I was there I bumped into a friend of mine, Martin Wellbourne, and his wife Elizabeth, and they were kind enough to invite me for supper with them afterwards. So it was not such a solitary evening after all.
Now, about our plans for Saturday. I think I mentioned that there was a show at Tate Britain at the moment that you might find especially interesting? They are showing some films and photographs by a new young artist called Tacita Dean. You might possibly have heard of her already. A couple of years ago she was shortlisted for the Turner Prize. If you don’t like the sound of it, just say so and we shall certainly find something else to do, but I hope you will want to come. I have to say that I have very particular and personal reasons for wanting to see this show. You see, it contains a short film inspired by the disappearance at sea of the lone yachtsman Donald Crowhurst in the summer of 1969 – and even, so I am led to believe, some photographs of his ill-fated yacht, the Teignmouth Electron, which Ms Dean has taken just in the last couple of years, travelling for this purpose to its final resting place at Cayman Brac in the Caribbean.
It occurs to me that you might not know what on earth I am talking about here. It also occurs to me that, if I am to tell you a little bit about my fascination with the story of Donald Crowhurst, this is going to turn into a very long letter. But, no matter. It is Monday morning, an empty day stretches ahead of me, and there is nothing I like better than writing to my niece. So, excuse me for a moment while I go and pour myself another cup of coffee, and I shall try to explain.
Well now.
If I am to make you understand what the figure of Donald Crowhurst meant to me, when I was an eight-year-old boy, then I must take you back – back more than thirty years, to the England of 1968 – a place, and a time, which already seem unimaginably remote. I’m sure that the mention of that year summons up all sorts of associations for you: the year of student radicalism, the counter-culture – anti-Vietnam rallies and The Beatles’ White Album and all of that. Well, that only tells part of the story. England was – and always has been – a more complicated place than people would have us believe. What would you say if I told you that, in my memory of things, the great hero, the defining figure of that era was not John Lennon or Che Guevara, but a conservative, old-fashioned, sixty-five-year-old vegetarian with the looks and bearing of an avuncular Latin master? Can you even guess who I might be talking about? Does his name even mean anything any more?
I’m referring to Sir Francis Chichester.
You probably have no idea who Sir Francis Chichester was. Let me tell you, then. He was a yachtsman, a mariner – one of the most brilliant that England has ever produced. And in 1968 he was a celebrity, one of the most famous and talked-about people in the country. As famous as David Beckham is today, or Robbie Williams? Yes, I should think so. And his achievement, although it might seem pointless, I suppose, to today’s younger generation, remains, in many people’s eyes, much greater than simply playing football or writing pop songs. He was famous for sailing around the world, single-handed, in his boat Gypsy Moth. He completed the voyage in 226 days, and most incredibly of all, during that time he made only one stop, in Australia. It was a magnificent feat of seamanship, courage and endurance, performed by the most unlikely of heroes.
I had the enormous good fortune to grow up next to the sea. I think you’ve visited the town where your mother and I grew up, haven’t you? Shaldon, it is called, in Devon. We lived in a large Georgian house close to the water. Shaldon itself, however, is built around a relatively modest saltwater inlet, and to get to the seafront proper you have to go half a mile up the road to neighbouring Teignmouth. And here you will find everything you might want from a seaside resort: a pier, beaches, amusement arcades, miniature golf, dozens of boarding houses and, of course, down by the docks, a lively marina, where yachtsmen and boaters of every description would gather every day, and the air was always alive with the whispering noises of masts and rigging as they creaked and shifted in the breeze. From an early age – ever since I can remember – my mother and father used to take me down to the marina to watch those comings and goings, the ceaseless ebb and flow of maritime life. Although we never sailed ourselves, we knew plenty of people who did: by the age of eight I was a veteran of several modest ocean voyages aboard yachts belonging to my parents’ friends, and had developed a deep schoolboy fascination for all things nautical.