Guernsey in 1974 – Part 1

Guernsey in 1974 – Part 1

This is an extract from Peter Haining’s guide book of 1974, which is as much interest today for the historian as to the tourist, as many of the places and industries described in his book have long vanished. Please do not take it as a current guide. I have taken time to annotate some of the changes in italics.

Introduction

Guernsey is sometimes referred to as the “Island of Greenhouses” —and certainly should you be flying to it the view from above is of acre upon acre of glass. The impression is not altogether correct, however, for only about one fifteenth of the island is devoted to greenhouses, and in the remainder are houses for the population of 50,000, some delightful wooded and rural areas, plus enough beaches, bays and attractions to keep the average visitor happy for weeks.

The description of Guernsey as an "Island of Greenhouses" is largely outdated due to the collapse of the island's commercial horticultural industry, leaving many structures derelict rather than actively cultivated. Additionally, Guernsey's population has increased from the historical estimate of 50,000 to approximately 64,600 residents today.

The island is the second largest of the Channel Island group and covers 24 square miles. It is seven miles long by three miles wide and has over 25 miles of coastline. The ancient name for Guernsey was Greneze, “Green Isle” and as the visitor makes use of the 300 miles of roadway he will soon see how true this is. 

The Claim: That the ancient name was Greneze, meaning "Green Isle." This is a persistent folk-etymology myth. The name "Guernsey" is actually of Old Norse (Viking) origin. The suffix -ey is the Viking word for "island" (seen also in Jersey and Alderney). While older medieval records used spellings like Gernesey or Gernezeye, the root Guern- is believed to stem from a Viking personal name like Grani, or the Old Norse word grǫn (meaning spruce or pine)—not "green". To the Romans, the island was known as Lisia or Sarnia.

The Bailiwick of Guernsey, which includes Alderney, Sark, Herm and Jethou, is a self-governing community and the people have a fierce spirit of independence. They make their own laws (some of which have a distinctly feudal severity about them), impose their own taxes and even mint their own currency. The island has its own Norman-French patios which, although not used a great deal today, can still be heard spoken in the outlying communities.

When this guide was written, this was a direct nod to Sark, which was famous for being the last feudal state in Europe. Sark was ruled by a Seigneur and a parliament (Chief Pleas) made up of hereditary landowners. However, in 2008, Sark officially abolished its 450-year-old feudal system and held its first fully democratic elections to comply with modern human rights laws. While ancient customary laws still influence the islands, the "feudal severity" is a thing of the past.

The guide is referring to Guernesiais (Guernsey French). In the 1970s, it could still be heard naturally among older generations in rural parishes like Torteval or St. Saviour's. Today, it is no longer spoken as a primary community language and is classified as critically endangered, though intensive language revitalization efforts are being made in local schools.

The spirit of independence has persisted throughout much of the island’s history and smuggling between the Continent and Britain was one of the islanders’ chief methods of earning a living during the 17th and 18th centuries. Throughout the island the visitor can find caves and cellars where the ‘‘free traders” hid their booty. The climate on Guernsey is particularly suited to maturing wines and spirits and consequently huge quantities of raw liquor found its way onto the island—and helped to put considerable fortunes into the pockets of local cask makers and smugglers.

The historical narrative regarding Guernsey's 17th- and 18th-century smuggling economy is largely accurate, serving as a primary economic driver due to the island's strategic tax-exempt status rather than its climate. While romanticized caves are tied to smuggler lore, contraband was primarily stored in merchant cellars.

Today there is no need for smuggling spirits either in or out of the island, because prices here are as low as anywhere in the world. The main bone of contention, however, is over licensing hours. During the summer period the permitted hours for hotels and inns are 10.00 a.m. to 11 p.m. from Monday to Saturday. But on Sunday all bars are closed and you can only get a drink in the hotel where you are staying or with a meal. This is a point to remember if you are out on that day. (Just as it is to remember that petrol is not sold in Guernsey on Sundays.)

Guernsey's historical restrictions regarding Sunday alcohol sales and petrol availability are heavily outdated and have been completely dismantled. Standard venues can now legally serve alcohol on Sundays from noon until late, and fuel stations operate regular Sunday hours. 

An interesting item to look out for when you are in a bar is the “Black List’ pinned up behind the counter. This is a selection of photographs and descriptions of islanders who have been barred from the local taverns. Guernsey takes a very strong view over drunkenness and to go on this list (which is circulated to every inn keeper and hotel proprietor on the island) is considered the severest and most effective form of punishment. Some offenders have even been known to plead in court that they are put on the list in order to halt their excessive drinking!

The account of Guernsey’s historical "Black List"—a court-mandated registry of individuals barred from local taverns under the Intoxicating Liquor (Prohibition Orders) (Guernsey) Law, 1960—is historically accurate. Chronic offenders occasionally requested inclusion on the list as a legal deterrent to curb excessive drinking, though the practice was eventually phased out in favour of modern privacy frameworks and health initiatives.

Guernsey is divided up into ten parishes and although they have not been dealt with separately in this book, all the interesting sights and attractions they contain are mentioned in the various sections. The bays and beaches have also been treated individually—with their facilities and accessibility—so as to simplify selecting a spot. The coastline is probably Guernsey’s outstanding feature, particularly along the southern edge which has few accessible beaches but provides breath-taking views. Along many other stretches there are ancient remains to be seen and some incredible caves with histories of smuggling and piracy. 

Of all the caves on the island the one which should not be missed is the Creux Mahie at Havre du Bon Repos which can be reached from the road named Chemin le Roi going to Torteval. The cave, which is the largest on the island, is entered by a small hole which suddenly breaks out into a passage some 200 feet long and varying in height from 20 to 60 ft. A torch is needed to explore the cavern, but don’t waste time wondering about the mysterious black marks on the walls—they were caused by the Fire torches carried by fishermen using the place in the past. In the bay below this there is a beautiful rock pool called the ‘““Venus Bath” where bathing is possible.

The guidebook implies you can simply walk in with a torch. This is no longer true. Le Creux Mahié sits entirely on private land and is closed to the general public due to safety, land ownership, and steep, dangerous cliff descents. The only way to access it today is via specially permitted eco-tours, such as those occasionally organized by Outdoor Guernsey.

The author has mixed up two different islands. The famous, deep-water tidal rock pool known as the Venus Pool (or Venus Bath) is actually located on the neighbouring island of Sark (specifically on the rugged headland of Little Sark). It is not at the foot of Creux Mahié

The visitor will obviously spend time in the capital town, St. Peter Port with its tiers of ancient buildings (many of which were built with the spoils from smuggling and piracy), and a separate section is devoted to it. 

No visit would be complete, either, without a trip to the huge reservoir at St. Saviour’s. This is one of the finest pieces of construction work on the Channel Islands and no less impressive because it has been created by such a comparatively small community. The reservoir holds 240 million gallons of water and covers over 38 acres. Beneath its tranquil surface lie three valleys in which there were seven farmhouses and approximately 600 trees. The total cost of the project was £400,000 which is quite a sum for a small island to raise! Guernsey also has its own £257,000 sea water distillation plant which was opened in 1960 and now produces 500,000 gallons of fresh water each day if required.

While the sea water distillation plant opened in 1960 at a cost of £257,000 to produce up to 500,000 gallons daily, it proved uneconomical and was permanently decommissioned in 1970.

But despite progress such as this, the island still clings tenaciously to many old customs and superstitions. For instance the author was told that many islanders believe that a criminal can be exposed by using a Bible and a key. This is effected by placing the key upright on a certain text in the Bible and then getting two people to hold the key upright with their marriage fingers. The name of the suspected criminal is now spoken and if the Bible moves under the key, the person is guilty. More customs are mentioned later in the book, including details of witchcraft, which has long been practised on the island and is still believed to exist in the more remote areas.

Known formally as coscinomancy or bibliomancy, this was a widespread European folk custom. While the guidebook treats it as a uniquely local superstition, 19th-century accounts compiled in Sir Edgar MacCulloch's seminal book Guernsey Folk-Lore confirm that old islanders heavily relied on the "Bible and key" to resolve neighbourhood thefts without involving the courts. It is no longer practiced or believed by modern islanders, existing purely as an entry in historical folklore archives.

Guernsey has one of the darkest histories of witch trials in the British Isles. Between 1560 and 1640, the Royal Court of Guernsey tried over 100 people for sorcery, resulting in 44 people being tortured, hanged, and burned at the stake. By 1974, these supernatural beliefs had effectively vanished from daily life, making the guidebook's claim that witchcraft "is still believed to exist" a massive exaggeration designed to sell books to tourists.

The author's claim that people were still actively using the "Bible and key" or hiding from witches in 1974 is a romanticized embellishment. The last actual legal trial involving witchcraft in Guernsey occurred in January 1914 (the case of Aimée Lake, who was prosecuted for fraud and fortune-telling after selling charms to ward off evil spirits). By the 1970s, the island was fully modernized, highly educated, and transitioning rapidly into a global financial centre. No one in 1974 was seriously consulting a Bible and a key to solve a local crime.

The tourist trade now probably accounts for a large percentage of Guernsey’s income, but the tomato growing industry is not far behind. The industry has grown up over a comparatively short time and there is a story told on the island that when the first tomatoes were introduced from Spain in 1865 and grown locally, many housewives refused to have anything to do with them, believing they were poisonous! Today Guernsey tomatoes are popular all over Great Britain and the Continent and bring in an annual revenue of about £9,500,000 from the millions of trays which are exported. The particularly mild climate of Guernsey (snow and frost are very rare and it is often possible to bathe on Christmas Day) mean that the plants can go in the ground in December and be ripe for sale before any other competitors. There are plenty of opportunities to visit tomato greenhouses, and an inquiry to a grower will almost certainly result in an invitation to a conducted tour.

The author’s story about 1865 housewives refusing to touch tomatoes because they believed they were poisonous is 100% historically true. Because tomatoes belong to the Solanaceae (nightshade) family, they were widely feared across Europe for centuries. Wealthy Europeans also mistakenly blamed the tomato for lead poisoning—not realizing that the fruit's high acidity was actually leaching toxic lead out of their fancy pewter dinner plates!Guernsey did not embrace them commercially until the 1870s and 1880s once these fears were debunked.

The collapse of Guernsey's commercial tomato industry is one of the most dramatic economic turnarounds in the island's modern history. At its peak, the "Guernsey Tom" was a massive economic engine, utilizing over 2,000 vineries and employing 30% of the island's male workforce.

To beat UK and European competitors to market, Guernsey growers planted seeds in December. This required keeping millions of square feet of glasshouses intensely heated through the cold winter months using heavy oil boilers. When the global oil crises of the 1970s struck, the price of fuel skyrocketed, making the cost of heating the glasshouses mathematically unsustainable.

1979: The Second Oil Crisis and the Breaking Point. Fuel costs surge to a level where it officially costs more to grow and heat a Guernsey tomato than it is worth on the open market. Total acreage dedicated to tomatoes drops immediately by more than half, falling from 567 acres down to 240 acres over the next few years.

While Guernsey struggled with soaring oil costs, the Netherlands discovered vast reserves of cheap North Sea natural gas. The Dutch government heavily subsidized heating costs for their own greenhouse growers. Combined with advanced massive-scale automation, Holland completely undercut Guernsey's prices on the UK market.

Historically, Guernsey tomatoes were rushed from the harbour at St. Peter Port to English ports, then distributed nationwide via efficient British Rail fruit-train networks. Changes and cuts to the UK railway system disrupted these classic distribution lines, driving up transport freight costs.

July 1992: The official tourist-facing Guernsey Tomato Centre, which had opened in 1977 to champion the history and heritage of the crop, permanently winds up operations and shuts its doors

Disappearing Christian Thinkers: Maurice Wiles

Maurice Wiles (1923–2005) rounds out this vanishing act as the consummate academic insider whose radical revision of Christian doctrine was so polite, precise, and decorous that it failed to spark an enduring movement.

While his contemporary Dennis Nineham dismantled the historical reliability of the Bible, Wiles dismantled classical Christian dogma from the inside. As the Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford University and the chairman of the Church of England’s Doctrine Commission, Wiles held the keys to the theological establishment. Yet, his legacy has faded because his elegant, rationalist critique of the supernatural ultimately left academic theology with nowhere to go.

His eclipse is a result of several defining characteristics of his work and career:

1. The Quiet Demolition of the Incarnation

Wiles is best remembered as the driving intellectual force behind the explosive 1977 book The Myth of God Incarnate, a collection of essays that caused a massive public outcry in the UK.

• The Argument: Wiles argued that orthodox Christian claims—specifically that Jesus of Nazareth was literally God incarnate—were not factual descriptions of reality. Instead, he argued that "incarnation" was a poetic, mythological way for the early Church to express Jesus’s profound awareness of God.
• The Erasure: Unlike Don Cupitt, who used this idea to launch a media career as a radical iconoclast, Wiles presented it with the dry, understated caution of an Oxford don. Because his presentation was so academic, once the initial media storm of 1977 passed, his ideas were folded into standard university debates rather than serving as the rallying cry for a vibrant, living movement.

2. A World Without Miracles (Deistic Tendencies)

In his 1986 Bampton Lectures, published as God’s Action in the World, Wiles took his critique to its logical conclusion by arguing against the idea of divine intervention.

• He asserted that God does not perform localized miracles, answer specific intercessory prayers, or alter the laws of nature. To Wiles, God's sole action is the single, ongoing act of creating and sustaining the universe.
• The Problem: By reducing God's activity to a hands-off, cosmic backdrop, Wiles's theology began to look indistinguishable from 18th-century Enlightenment Deism. For subsequent generations of theologians, a faith without a prayer-hearing, intervening God felt spiritually sterile. It offered very little nourishment for preaching, liturgy, or Christian practice, causing the Church to quietly move past it.

3. The Rebound of Orthodoxy

Wiles’s career peaked in the late 1970s and 1980s, during what seemed like the final triumph of secular, liberal enlightenment over traditional religion. However, he did not foresee the massive theological counter-revolution that followed.

• In the 1990s and 2000s, academic theology experienced a dramatic resurgence of orthodox, conservative, and post-liberal thought (such as Radical Orthodoxy).
• Thinkers like John Milbank and N.T. Wright argued that Wiles's rationalism was a dated product of Victorian skepticism. They reasserted a robust, supernatural, and historically grounded orthodox faith. Wiles’s polite skepticism suddenly looked like yesterday's news, trapped in a mid-century modernist paradigm.

4. The Scholar of the Past Who Undermined the Past

Wiles was initially a world-class patristic scholar—an expert on the early Church Fathers who hammered out the creeds in the 4th and 5th centuries. His books like The Making of Christian Doctrine are still praised for their historical clarity.

• The irony of his career is that he used his immense knowledge of the Church Fathers to argue that their conclusions (like the Nicene Creed) were historical accidents that modern people should abandon.
• Because he used patristics to dismantle patristic authority, he ended up in a no-man's-land: traditional patristic scholars found his conclusions unacceptable, while modern radical theologians found his focus on ancient texts boring and old-fashioned.

The Fourfold Collapse of British Liberal Theology

Looking at all four of these thinkers together, we can trace the precise trajectory of how mid-to-late 20th-century British theology vanished:

• John Macquarrie built a traditional cathedral but used modern existential scaffolding that eventually rotted away.
• Don Cupitt sawed off the branches of the Christian tree, declared the tree dead, and walked into secular mysticism.
• Dennis Nineham proved that the soil the tree was planted in (historical scripture) was highly unstable, but stayed in the shade of the tree anyway.
• Maurice Wiles used impeccable manners and Oxford prestige to neatly prune away every supernatural branch of the tree until there was nothing left but a bare trunk.

Disappearing Christian Thinkers: Dennis Nineham

Dennis Nineham (1921–2016) represents yet a third type of vanishing act: the radical biblical critic whose shocking ideas became so completely normalized that his own name was absorbed into the background noise of modern scholarship. [1]

Unlike Macquarrie (who was too moderate and systematic) or Cupitt (who became a post-Christian iconoclast), Nineham was an establishment academic. He held prestigious chairs at London, Cambridge, and Bristol, and served as Warden of Keble College, Oxford. Yet, his legacy has faded due to the unique way his specific breakthroughs were swallowed by time. [1, 2, 3]

His disappearance from the forefront of public memory is due to several intersecting factors:

1. The Death of the "Pelican Paperbacks" Shock Factor

Nineham’s most famous and lasting work was his 1963 commentary, The Gospel of Saint Mark, published by Pelican/Penguin. [1, 4]

• The Shock: In 1963, publishing a highly sceptical, German-style "Form Critical" analysis of Jesus in a cheap paperback for the general public was incendiary. Nineham argued that Mark’s Gospel was not an eyewitness biography of Jesus, but a collection of heavily edited preaching material designed to win converts. He cast deep doubt on whether we could know the literal, historical details of Jesus' life. [1, 4, 5]
• The Erasure: Today, many of Nineham's conclusions are often standard, foundational curriculum in almost every mainstream university and seminary globally. Because his radicalism became the textbook status quo, students read the concepts without needing to read the specific 1963 commentary that first shocked the British public. [6, 7]

2. Cultural Relativism Built a Dead End

Nineham took his historical skepticism a step further in his 1976 book, The Use and Abuse of the Bible. He argued that human cultures change so radically over time that it is effectively impossible for a 20th-century person to truly think like, or understand the mindset of, a 1st-century first-century Christian. [3, 8, 9]

• He famously used the example that if a man collapses frothing at the mouth, the New Testament authors see a demon; the Middle Ages see a chemical imbalance of "humours"; and the modern world sees an epileptic or psychiatric event. [9]
• Because he argued that the Bible is entirely locked in its own ancient, unbridgeable cultural past, his theology struggled to say anything constructive to the modern church. Once you argue that the text cannot easily speak across the centuries, you render yourself obsolete to theologians looking for active guidance.

3. High on Controversy, Low on Output

Despite holding the highest academic offices in the UK, Nineham was famously a "controversialist" rather than a prolific writer. [2]

• He was appointed to major chairs on the strength of brilliant lectures and tutorials rather than a mountain of published monographs.
• Aside from his St. Mark commentary and his epilogue to the notorious 1977 collection The Myth of God Incarnate (which argued that Jesus being the literal "Son of God" was a poetic metaphor), he published relatively little solid, multi-volume academic theology. Without a massive library of authored books, an academic's name rarely survives the generational shift. [2, 10]

4. The Churchman Who Cut His Own Branch

Nineham was an ordained Anglican priest who remained deeply, stubbornly loyal to the Church of England, its liturgy, and its synods until his death. This created an unsustainable paradox for his legacy: [1, 4]

• Secular skeptics didn't read him because he remained a devoted, church-going priest.
• Churchgoers and conservative theologians largely ignored him because his scholarship systematically dismantled the historical reliability of the gospels they preached. [1, 4]

The Trio Compared

If we look at the three thinkers together, we see the full collapse of mid-to-late 20th-century British radical theology:

• Macquarrie built a beautiful, elaborate house using a tool (existentialism) that people stopped using.
• Cupitt burnt the house down and walked away into the wilderness.
• Nineham meticulously took the historical foundations out from under the house, but then insisted on sitting in the living room anyway.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com

[2] https://www.churchtimes.co.uk

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org

[4] https://www.telegraph.co.uk

[5] https://www.amazon.co.uk

[6] https://www.amazon.com

[7] https://www.goodreads.com

[8] https://www.bristol.ac.uk

[9] https://www.thetimes.com

[10] https://www.thetimes.com

Disappearing Christian Thinkers: Don Cupitt

Don Cupitt (born 1934) presents a completely opposite type of "vanishing act" compared to John Macquarrie. While Macquarrie faded because his philosophical framework became outdated, Cupitt vanished because he deliberately stepped off the edge of traditional Christianity altogether, leaving both the church and academic theology behind.

As a Cambridge dean and the face of the radical Sea of Faith movement in the 1980s, Cupitt’s trajectory toward absolute "Christian Buddhism" or "solar living" became so extreme that he ceased to be a theologian in any conventional sense, effectively erasing his own place in the institutional memory of the Church.

His erasure stems from several sharp, self-inflicted and cultural departures:

1. The Shock of "Non-Realism"

Cupitt’s 1984 BBC television series and accompanying book, The Sea of Faith, popularized theological non-realism.

• The Core Idea: Cupitt argued that "God" is not an objectively existing being, creator, or entity out there in the universe. Instead, God is simply a spiritual ideal, a human projection, or a symbol of our highest ethical aspirations.
• The Fall-Out: By stripping Christianity of a real, objective God, a literal resurrection, and an afterlife, he turned theology into a branch of human psychology and linguistics. For the vast majority of practicing Christians, Cupitt was no longer reinterpreting the faith—he was introducing a disguised form of religious atheism.

2. A Movement Born and Died in the 1980s

For a brief moment, Cupitt was the most talked-about religious figure in Britain. He gathered a passionate following of clergy and laypeople who felt they could no longer believe in supernatural dogmas but still loved the aesthetic, moral, and community aspects of the Church.

• The Problem: The Sea of Faith network quickly ran into a structural dead end. If God is just a human construct and the church is just a club for ethical self-improvement, it is incredibly difficult to sustain institutional momentum.
• The Result: The movement aged out and shrank. Once the initial media shock factor wore off in the 1990s, mainstream theology largely ignored Cupitt, viewing his work as a spent firework of late-20th-century secularization rather than a lasting theological system.

3. Deliberate Self-Exile from the Church

Unlike other radical theologians (such as John Robinson, author of Honest to God, who remained an Anglican bishop), Cupitt eventually realized his positions were entirely incompatible with the Church of England.

• He stopped officiating at Holy Communion because he felt it was hypocritical to lead a liturgy directed at a personal God.
• He stopped attending church altogether, choosing instead to write increasingly idiosyncratic books on what he called "radical immanence," "lifeism," and "solar ethics" (the idea that humans should burn brightly and burn out, like the sun, without looking for eternal life).
• By severing his ties to the liturgy and the institution, he ensured that future generations of church historians and seminary students would treat his work as an eccentric footnote rather than a part of the living tradition.

4. Overtaken by Post-Modernism and the New Atheism

Cupitt’s writing style was highly fluid and fast-moving—he published over 50 books—but his ideas became trapped between two cultural waves:

• Philosophically: Academic theology moved toward Post-Liberalism and Radical Orthodoxy, which fiercely re-asserted traditional dogma and Christian narrative against secular critiques. Cupitt’s hyper-modernist scepticism suddenly looked old-fashioned.
• Culturally: In the 2000s, the "New Atheism" (led by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens) took over the public square. Secular people didn't want Cupitt's nuanced, churchless "religious textuality"; they preferred outright scepticism. Meanwhile, religious people wanted a robust, supernatural faith to counter the secular onslaught. Cupitt's middle ground pleased absolutely no one.

Summary: Macquarrie vs. Cupitt

• Macquarrie is forgotten because he was a moderate coordinator whose specific philosophical tools (existentialism) grew dusty in the attic of academia.
• Cupitt is forgotten because he was a radical iconoclast who blew up the foundations of his own house. Once the smoke cleared, there was no building left for subsequent generations to inhabit.

Religion, History and G. R Balleine – Part 1

Religion, History and G. R Balleine – Part 1
(The Reformation in Jersey)
By Jason St John Nicolle

From "The Pilot", 1991

WHETHER we realise it or not, we all tend to look at the past through the eyes of particular historians.

When we look at Jesus, we see Him as a handful of contemporary Jews saw Him: we share in their profound insights and personal knowledge, but also in their preconceptions, their misapprehensions — and, because they, like us, are merely human, in their ignorance too. All is hardly surprising: we are busy people, and few of us have the desire, the opportunity, or even the ability, to want to think everything out for ourselves.

But it does us good to be reminded that often we see things as they have seemed to some particularly influential writer, and not as they really were. Our romantic vision of the Middle Ages, with its castles and chivalry, is largely a product of two late mediaeval writers, Thomas Malory and Jean Froissart, although it was popularised through the works of Sir Walter Scott. If we go back earlier, and try to picture England in the seventh century, we find ourselves peopling it with saints and kings whom a Northumbrian scholar called Bede saw fit to include in his early eighth century "Ecclesiastical History of the English People," So it should not come as a surprise to learn that when we turn to the history of our own Island, and examine its religious history in the sixteenth century, a period which saw fundamental changes in the beliefs and organisation of the Christian churches throughout Europe, changes packed together for convenience and carried about in a suitcase called the Reformation, we again tend to look at the past through somebody else's eyes.

The name of George Reginald Balleine, probably the most and perhaps the most important, of the twentieth century historians of Jersey, will be familiar to anyone with an interest in Island history. The son of Oxford don who was to become Dean of Jersey, he read history at his father's university and decided to follow him into the church: he was ordained priest in 1897 and served in two London parishes before being appointed to the Vicarage of St James, Bermondsey, in 1908. He was to retain the living for the next thirty years, until he left the mainland for the Island which was to be his home for the remaining years of his life. It was then that he began the detailed and conscientious research which was to result in three of the most familiar works on Island history: the "Biographical Dictionary of Jersey"; the historical gazetteer, "The Bailiwick of Jersey"; and, above all, the "History of the Island of Jersey."

Balleine possessed many of the qualities of a great historian: thoroughly acquainted with the sources, and perceptive in his judgments, he combined the broad vision of the story teller with the scholar's eye for detail. But all historians have their limitations. Balleine was more than a detached and impartial historian: he was also a convinced and enthusiastic Evangelical Christian; and if the two came into conflict, he would doubtless have been relieved to have found the duties of religion overriding those of disinterested scholarship.

Balleine's churchmanship is illustrated by the subject he chose for his first significant historical work, "A History of the Evangelical Party in the Church of England," published in the year he was appointed to Bermondsey and still a standard text more than eighty years later. In the author's own words, it was "the work of one . . . entirely in sympathy with his subject," written in the hope that it might "stir some readers to greater earnestness in the service of God." In Balleine's eyes, the Evangelical faith was self-evidently the only true Christian faith: grounded in the Bible and tested by reference to the New Testament, it was the Religion of Redemption, in which nothing could be allowed to interfere with the believer's direct and personal relationship with Christ. Its superiority over other forms of Christian faith was so self-evident that its triumph was inevitable; so self-evident in fact, that all the historian had to do was to chart its successful progress.

Balleine knew that this faith was not some novelty of the twentieth century. It had been taught by Luther and Calvin, the scriptwriters of the Reformation; it was the faith which had begun to spread through France and Germany in the 1520's, and through England in the 1530's. And, Balleine tells us, it was the faith which, by the 1550's, had seized the hearts and minds of the men and women of Jersey. But are we seeing the events of the sixteenth century as they really happened, or merely as George Reginald Balleine would have liked to have seen them?

To answer this question, we need to look at the religious history of sixteenth century Jersey in more detail; but this will have to wait until the next article.

In memory of joy lost

Another sad poem. It seems to be a constant theme at the moment.

In memory of joy lost

Time to come back, time to return
So often, so very often I yearn
For those past evenings, full of peace
But change came, and they did cease
Reaching outwards in song and prayer
Love at the centre, we held so dear
Dew in the evening, in darker skies
A community of hope, bound in ties
Of hearth and home, of candlelight
Mary on the wall blessed this sight
Frescos from ancient time, past days
And yet we still follow in their ways
Until suddenly it stopped, was ended
A fracture that could not be mended
And inward turning, to feeling self
Evening prayers placed on the shelf
Enlightenment and a journey taken
Which I still feel was so mistaken
We made choice, and paid the cost
Change leaves a memory of joy lost

Surville Manor: 1967 Report – Part 1

Surville Manor: 1967 Report – Part 1

SURVILLE MANOR
GARDES LA FOY
By PHYLLIDA CAMPBELL
Jersey Life, 1967

PEACEFUL AND REMOTE, approached only by traversing narrow twisting lanes, Surville Manor in the parish of St. Helier and St. Lawrence, is surrounded on all sides by pastoral scenes, and had it been built a trifle further north would have been sited in the dead centre of the Island.

It is certain that Surville Manor is ancient, perhaps one of the oldest manors in Jersey. The Fief de Surville belongs to Mr. Hedley John Messervy, solicitor of Hill Street and the Manor and grounds are owned today by Commander and Mrs. T. Chamberlayne, who make their home in the new 'cod-house' built in 1841 in front of the ancient dwelling, now restored and let to a farmer and his family.

Many people are a little vague as to what a Fief in Jersey really means. The system is of course a survival of feudal days, in fact from the time a Duke of Normandy named William Longsword captured these Islands in A.D. 933, dividing his new possession into fiefs, keeping some for himself and giving others to his followers. There were the great ones, St. Ouen, Rozel, Trinity, Samares and Melesches whose seigneurs owed knight service, and a hundred or so smaller fiefs divided into various sizes. All, whether big or small, carried with them certain privileges and certain obligations, particularly in time of war.

`Ten sixty-six and all that' could have meant little to the Channel Islands, still a part of the old Duchy of Normandy. It was when King John lost his Norman possessions in 1204 and the Channel Islands, given complete autonomy of Government, stayed with the British Crown, that some of the Norman-Jersey fief owners began to wonder where their loyalties lay. In many cases they also held rich lands in Normandy and after all, were of French descent. Those who departed had their fiefs confiscated by the Crown, some to be re-bestowed later, some to remain today as 'fiefs de la Reine'. Nine in all, of which Surville was one, remained loyal to King John and retained their fiefs on the original terms of grant. The 'disloyal fiefs' were subject to new rights on re-bestowal and remain as it were, junior. Naturally, for one reason and another, the changes of ownership of most of the fiefs over the centuries have been innumerable.

An Ancient Fief

The mists of antiquity tend to shroud the origins of Surville Manor, but it is known that the fief, which forms the northern boundary of the Fief de Bellozanne, was held by Guillame de Sureville in the twelfth century. A Mathilda de Sureville was mentioned as owing 40 shillings for 'fine and relief' in 1180 and then there were the brothers Robert and Nichola de Surville who owned the water mill, Moulin de la Haye at St. Lawrence at about that time. The name of Nicholas, heir of Thomas de Surville, crops up in old documents for having extorted relief illegally, a bad habit of mediaeval seigneurs. There is mention of Maitre Nicholas de Surville, a clerk, in the thirteenth century, also of his son, and then the name seems to have died out. In 1399 the fief passed to the family of le Gallais who lived in the charming little manor for 15 generations.

The Le Gallais family migrated to Jersey from Brittany long before the time of the Norman Conquest, and a Matthew Le Gales was the first Seigneur of Surville of that name. After their long sojourn, little that is positive is known about the occupants, but there is an interesting pointer in the fact that the Coat of Arms of the famous family of Pawlett of Poulet who governed Jersey for three generations in Queen Elizabeth the First's reign, are displayed on the facade of the new manor.

There over the front door of this early Victorian mansion are the arms 'sable three swords in pile silver, points meeting in base, hilts and pommels gold' and the crest `Gardes La Foy', an identical replica of which can be seen by any visitor to Mont Orgueil Castle at Gorey, the official Governors' residence of those days. Unless there was some monkey business, these arms must surely have been removed from the decaying old Surville Manor and placed on the new house which is so unfortunately built directly in front of it as happened so often in those days.

Queen Mary's Gaoler

During the rule of the Pawletts from 1550 to 1600, members of this family inter-married with any number of prominent Jersey families, and a descendant must have found himself in possession of Surville Manor, possibly through marriage. This was a fine old Somerset family, and the first to come here, Sir Hugh, was appointed by the Queen to the governorship of Jersey in 1550. He, his son and later his grandson, had endless struggles with the Queen to be granted more money for repairs to the fortifications of Mont Orgueil Castle, and spent hundreds of pounds from their own pockets when she held out on them, preoccupied as she was with building the new castle to be named after her in St. Aubin's Bay.

Sir Hugh's son, Sir Amyas, was once called from his duties in Jersey to act as gaoler-in-chief to Mary, Queen of Scots.

A suggestion was made to him, presumably from Royal channels, that he might quietly liquidate the lady, but he replied that 'never would he make such a foul shipwreck of conscience'. Eventually with gentle gallantry he escorted the ill-fated Queen to the scaffold. She turned to him and her last words were 'Thanks, Sir Amyas, this will be the last trouble I will give you'.

Housewife 1947: Something to Read

I am never quite sure why some books I are considered so eminently suitable for holiday reading, but each year at about this time lists of them appear in the Sunday newspapers and in the magazines. Their titles have a drowsy, deck-chair sound, and their contents, I imagine, conform to a definition once given by Aldous Huxley to this kind of book. It should be, he said, one you can open anywhere and be sure of finding something interesting which does not require continuous or prolonged mental effort. Holiday reading for me, however, is nothing like the kind recommended by the literary critics, or even Mr. Huxley. For years now it has been queer, fascinating stuff, as you shall see. In the family circle I am looked upon as a mild bibliomaniac, chiefly because I buy books with the money I might be spending on cigarettes or the cinema. When quotations come up in the conversation, or some doubtful literary reference is made, faces turn expectantly towards me, often with most disappointing results. 'She's a great reader,' they say, in tones that suggest this is an eccentricity, and go on to mention a youthful occasion when I sold a drop pendant in order to buy a complete set of Shakespeare in limp leather. The pendant was atrocious, but nothing is said about this.

Reading for pleasure, profit and information is part of my job. I belong to two libraries, subscribe to a reprint society, and buy as many books as I can manage. This takes care of what children might call 'reading properly.' But all bibliomaniacs, even the mild cases, have their special madness. When I go away on a holiday for a fortnight or less, I read what I find in the places where I stay. In the spare rooms of dear friends and comparative strangers, in shelves of small hotel lounges—you never find anything exciting or strange in hotels that get starred in the guide books!—in boarding-house drawing-rooms and, best of all, in 'rooms,' I have found reading that is almost a holiday in itself. My searches for 'something to read,' as distinct from mere books, have led me up wild, improbable and enchanting paths, and along some so gloriously dull that even in memory they can still fascinate.

It all began in a Donegal cottage twenty-years ago. I was sent there to recover from an illness and from too much study. Part of my prescription was to lie still and drink in the winey mountain air for three weeks. A large box of books was sent well in advance because, although I was forbidden to study, I was allowed to read if it kept me in one place. The cottage belonged to Bridie O'Hare, the widowed mother of our housemaid, Teresa. She was seventy-two, a famous local story-teller, and a master baker of griddle bread. Her nearest neighbour lived three miles down the mountain valley.

The box of books was not there when I arrived, and on the first evening I inquired anxiously for something to read. 'I have a fine book,' Bridie said, with great pride, and took down a huge volume from a curtained shelf above the fireplace. It was not the Bible, as you might suppose, but a Sears Roebuck catalogue, sent to her many years before by her emigrant son from America. `What any man can write, surely I can read," said dear, good Charles Lamb, but he made some exceptions. Among them he included court calendars, directories, pocket books; draught boards, bound and lettered on the back; scientific treatises, almanacs, statutes at large—all those volumes which 'no gentleman's library should be without.' I am sure he would never have included a Sears Roebuck catalogue on his list.

In the weeks that followed I read the catalogue, issued by that famous American mail-order firm, from cover to cover. My own box of books disappeared into the maze of the Irish railway system and was not found until three months later. During the long, soft days I progressed from reapers and binders, dairy equipment and domestic utensils, through medical supplies and seeds to the latest—twenty years before—in ladies' underwear. I made innumerable calculations on how much it would need to furnish a house or stock the perfect medicine chest, and took notes which later earned me good money. I have them still.

In the evenings I sat in the chimney corner and talked to Bridie about the book. She could not read a single word of it, but from the old, worn catalogue she had made a picture of American life, as complete and a lot more accurate, perhaps, than any she could have made from more conventional sources.

`It's a wonderful place,' she said. I asked her if her son had ever come back to the old country. 'No,' she said humbly. 'Sure, why would a fine boy like that come back from a place where he gets his fill three times in the day and a grand house with taps in it ?'

Some authors seem destined to linger in hotels, boarding-houses and rooms. The quality of the work, its subject, the fame of the writer, and even the price of the book, does not seem to affect this. I have read, though not recently, all the works of O Henry in hotel sitting-rooms, but in twenty years I have never come across a single copy of Katherine Mansfield. Among the classics, people leave behind Scott and George Eliot, but never Trollope or Dickens—or at least that has been my experience. There was a time when I expected to find some work by Bishop Heber in any modest lodging. He must have been the favourite prize-book writer of his day, for I came across him everywhere, always in flawless condition and with “For general progress” written on the flyleaf. Another dead certainty was Windsor Castle, fat, lush, good reading for several days.

PERHAPS because they have a peculiar fascination for me, old books come first on my long list of holiday reading over the years. You might belong to the London Library for ever and never come across Maria Monk, with ghoulish illustrations; a deliciously prim tale called a Kiss for a Blow; and the Imperial-Royal Dream Book, Fortune Teller and Book of Fate Combined. Those were my weekend portion as lately as 1940 at a Welsh inn.

A Devon farmhouse produced Meriel's Pilgrimage in twelve parts, and The Art of Tormenting, or Illustrations of the most approved Methods of excelling in this valuable acquisition comprised in Forty Four subjects. I fell in love with Meriel so deeply that I copied her twelve parts out and learned most of them by heart. For years 'Tell .us about Meriel' was a favourite bedtime request in our house. Who cares if the summers' evening is set or drawing in when bookcase has yielded an Esquimeaux Vocabulary, for the use of Travellers to the Arctic Regions! In hotels and lodgings which cater mainly for men—fishing and golfing hotels for example—you can be sure of a fine selection of books on dog breaking, salmon fishing, hurricane guides, every kind of extremely ancient sporting annual. Under any roof that shelters me and a good encyclopaedia, there can never be a dull moment, but if I may choose, it should be Britannica, and the twelfth edition.

If I must give a prize to one find in my long and fruitful search for holiday reading, it goes without hesitation to four copies of Thomas Hoods' The Anniversary of the Literary Fun, published each year between 1830 and 1833. I commend it to all those who make collections of story, feature, and verse, either in fine binding or paper covers. I doted so much on these books that my landlord said I could have them for half a crown. Nobody ever got a better bargain. There is an article in one called `The Wooden Leg,' which is a model. It begins, 'Ever since the year 1799, I have had, in the, coachman phrase, an off leg and a near one; the right limb, thanks to a twelve pounder, lies somewhere at Seringapatam, its twin brother being at this moment under a table in Brighton.'

Another particular joy is a Letter from a settler for Life in Van Dietnan' Land, written by Susan Gale to her friend Mary, a housemaid at 45 Mount Street, Grosvenor Square. `Little did I think,' writes Susan, 'when I advertised in the Tims for annother Plaice of taking wan in Vandemins' land. But so it his and hear I am amung Kangerooses and Savidges and other Forriners. But goverment offering to Yung Wimmin to Find them in Vittles and Drink and Close and Husbands was turms not to be sneazed at, so I rit to the Outlandish Seckertary and he was so Kind as Grant.' I can never find this kind of literary fun in modern holiday reading. and from all appearances neither can any of the guests who so often occupy my spare room.

The Visitor

"The Visitor" is an eerie 29-minute horror episode of the BBC television series West Country Tales, originally airing on February 22, 1982

The Visitor
by Elizabeth Elliot

From the first I loved the cottage. This was the one I wanted, and I was deaf to all suggestions that I might feel lonely here, with Andrew — my husband — away at sea one month out of every two. The whitewashed walls, uneven ceilings and thatched roof were as different as possible from the suburban home we had left. I thought I should never be tired of looking out of the windows each one framing a different fascinating view of the Cornish countryside. Beyond the cottage, less than a mile away, great Atlantic rollers hurled themselves against a rocky coastline. I had not quite lost my childhood idea that people who actually lived at the seaside were outstandingly lucky, their lives a perpetual holiday.

We are nearly a mile from the village, and our only neighbours are an elderly couple down the lane. I would be solitary here, I thought — but not lonely. And of course I would have Kelly, our three-year-old daughter, and Andy, a sedate collie who takes her responsibilities seriously. Andrew had bought her before he went away. To protect me, he said.

How good those first days were. I locked up the car in the garage, bought some stout shoes, and made up my mind to become a walker again. Most mornings I went up to the village — Kelly in her push-chair and Andy at my side. I had expected the villagers to regard us with reserve — we were foreigners from London after all — but a three-year-old is a great breaker-down of barriers. Soon they knew her name — and her teddy's name — and she would be greeted with a smile, and sometimes the offer of an apple or a lollipop in the village shop. I felt I had been quietly accepted too.

In the afternoons we went further afield, making the most of a spell of fine autumn weather. We walked through leafy woodland paths, smelling of wet moss. Kelly called them 'green tunnels'. She saw her first seagull and I shared her delight in discovering beaches almost empty of holiday makers. We picked our way among stones sea-washed to an exciting smoothness, 'popped' seaweed, and watched little crabs scuttle away under the rocks.

Towards evening, I would light a fire in my small sitting room, and with Kelly asleep upstairs and Andy gravely watching the crackling wood from her place on the hearth rug, I would sit down to write to Andrew -- a daily chronicle of small events. Writing to him was so easy, then. And always I would be looking ahead in my letters to the time when he would be home to share it all with me.

Peaceful, ordinary days. A little too peaceful, I began to think. With no adult company -- none of the friends who had said they would visit me seemed able to get away at that time — my life had shrunk to the scope and focus of three-year-old. Kelly was with me all day, for there is of course, no nursery school near us. Eventually I asked the woman down the road if she would do a bit of cleaning and baby-sitting for me. She and Kelly had taken to each other, and I could confidently leave Kelly in her charge some afternoons while I explored further afield.

One day, taking my usual way along the cliff top, I noticed a narrow track, almost overgrown with grass and gorse — a hidden path but definitely a path, and I could see that it led gently downhill. I followed its gradual descent, Andy bounding ahead. Country smells seem to make her quite young and skittish again. I could hear the reverberating boom of the breakers, and caught glimpses of the sea between the trees. In a few moments I was standing at the entrance of a little secret cove. The rocky cliffs, rearing up on each side, seemed to cut it off from the rest of the world. The waves made lace ruffles along the edge of a beach peppered with large stones. With a wonderful sense of freedom, as though I had re-entered my own childhood, I strode and ran about the beach, glorying in the great expanse of sand, the little shining pools around the rocks, and the tremendous sound of the wind and waves. I felt a child's pleasure in seeing my shadow stretch ahead of me, knife-sharp, as I followed Andy to the edge of the sea.

I felt buoyant with energy, and after a bit, wanted to climb the rocks and possess myself of the whole place. I easily clambered up, and was soon looking down on my cove --- as I thought of it — from a rocky platform. I decided to bring Andrew here as soon as he got home. I could just see him climbing up to the ledge with Kelly on his shoulders. I have always specially enjoyed the times we can share our daughter's company. I took my book from my pocket, and spent a lazy hour or so alternately reading and gazing round me. The beach was empty now, but I tried to picture the people who might have been there in the past. It was just the sort of cove that might have been used by smugglers, I thought. One could imagine the boat grating on to the shingle under cover of darkness, the laden figures making their silent way up the cliff path. Then I wondered if ships had ever been wrecked on those cruel-looking rocks. I knew this coastline was famous for wrecks. That would have been a different kind of landing — the air full of shouting and cries and the sound of splintering wood.

Perhaps my imagination became too active. I began to be aware of how isolated I was in my new-found eyrie. There was no one in sight over the whole landscape — nothing but sea and cliffs and swooping, screaming gulls. The sun had gone in, and — suddenly it seemed — the rocks took on a sombre, menacing look. I felt inexplicably uneasy, and thought longingly of my cosy sitting room. I called Andy, who had clambered up after me, put my book in my pocket, and we began making our way down to the beach again. As we set off, I thought I heard something in the wind; it sounded like a cry. I stopped and looked back. It had seemed to come from the rocks. But there was no sign of anyone there. I started off again. Then — there it was again; unmistakably the cry of a child. This time I didn't look back; I walked on as quickly as I could without breaking into a run. It must have been a gull, I told myself. Gulls can sound extraordinarily human. After all, there had been no child or in fact anyone at all in the vicinity all afternoon. But my spine was tingling with fear.

It was a relief to reach the road again, and meet a couple of fellow walkers. I was back in the world of people and familiar sights. By the time I reached my own front door, the memory of the desolate cry had faded, and I was almost ready to laugh at my fright.

As soon as I walked in, I smelt cigarette smoke. Then

I saw an unmistakable carpet bag in the sitting room, and I knew with a sinking heart that Fran had come. I was surprised — yet not surprised. We had parted on cool terms, and I had thought I might not see her again. But Fran always turns up.

She first came into my life when I was working in London at one of the big hospitals, sharing a flat with two other physiotherapists. None of us can ever remember how we first got to know her. Was she a cousin's friend, or a friend's cousin? Anyway, after that unremembered first meeting, she was always dropping in. Perhaps our stable, well-organized lives fascinated her. She would get us to talk about ourselves: 'You really did play hockey every day at school?' 'You really do clean the flat every Saturday?' It was not a friendly interest. Of her own way of life we knew very little. She seemed to have no settled occupation, but never to be out of funds. We gathered she did odd jobs from time to time including a little modelling and film extra work. She had a face to interest a photographer, with its slightly slanting eyes and secretive smile. A fascinating face, somebody called it. Another of our friends said there was something waif-like about her. He was mad about her — but none of her relationships with men seemed to last long. Whether she ended them or they did, one didn't enquire.

One Christmas time, she arrived unexpectedly with three young men in tow. One of them was Andrew, who had only met her that evening. It was love at first sight with us, and within weeks we were engaged. I rather hoped that after we were married, I should see no more of Fran. But she continued to drop in at our new home, and Andrew didn't seem to mind. He said she interested him. I used to tease him about her — I knew she just wasn't his type. Andrew is a warm, outgoing person, energetic and practical, good at every kind of sport. I share his interests, which is what makes our marriage so good.

I looked through the window and saw that Fran was in the orchard with Kelly. There was no sign of Mrs Kims. I assumed, with annoyance, that Fran had sent her home. I steeled myself to seem welcoming as I went out to join them. Kelly was clinging around her, as usual, and had no eyes for me. I suppose I have always slightly resented the way my daughter abandons me as soon as Fran appears. Fran cares nothing for children, I know. But she has quite a way with her when she sets out to please. And she certainly was sparing no pains to please Kelly. They were playing hide-and-seek as I joined them. I hung about for a few minutes, feeling almost an intruder, then suggested we should go into the cottage and have some tea.

As we strolled across the grass, Fran told me she had just come back from 'wandering around India', and thought she would come and see how I was making out in Cornwall. She seemed amused at the idea of my living in an isolated cottage. But then she has always taken a slightly mocking attitude towards me. She said she had spent part of her childhood in Cornwall. Where you live as a child, she said, with one of her odd looks, is home. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that I knew very little about her past life, though mine was an open book to her. She never spoke of any family or relatives.

When I came into the sitting room with the tea, she was already settled in my chair. Her presence — although she had gone into one of her silent moods — changed the room. Her reticence made me chatter on about the first things that came into my head. But I was not at ease. All the time I was wondering, why had she come again? What did she want?

It was obvious that, for whatever reason, Fran was here to stay for a while. She had soon made my pretty spare room her own. It was filled with her clutter, including some strange things she had brought with her from India —masks and ornaments. Although I've known her for several years, I have never felt comfortable with Fran. There is something alien about her. I wanted her out of the cottage. Yet, as always with her, I couldn't bring myself even to ask how long she was staying.

So the days went by . . . The rhythms of her life were quite different from mine. She would still be asleep when we went to the village in the mornings. Later in the day she would go wandering off on her own. I never knew where. Certainly she didn't seem to be known to the locals. At night, long after I was in bed, the melancholy haunting chords of her guitar kept me awake. I could imagine her long fingers twanging the strings as she stared into the fire, half-tranced, as I'd often seen her do.

Her attitude to Kelly was quite inconsistent. She would completely ignore the child for a couple of days, then spend hours with her, swinging her tirelessly in the garden, making daisy chains, telling her stories which stopped abruptly as soon as I appeared. It irritated me that Kelly still appeared devoted to her.

Between Fran and me there was little communication. She remained the most remote and secret person I have ever known; in my house but not of it.

One day, a disturbing thing happened: I came back from the village to find Andrew's photograph smashed to pieces on the sitting room floor. Fran was sitting in my armchair looking particularly dreamy. It must have been the wind, she said. But the windows were all shut against a sudden shower of rain. I was sure she had deliberately broken it. But why should she do such a thing?

All this time I was waiting for a letter from Andrew. Usually, his letters arrived every few days. But now, when I especially longed to hear from him, I had to wait over a week. At last, I came• down one morning to find the envelope waiting on the mat. I took it to my favourite seat in the garden to read, feeling light-hearted for the first time for days. This should give me details of his arrival next week. And once he was home I knew he would help me, tactfully but firmly, to get rid of Fran. The first part of the letter was full of allusions to our pet jokes. His letters always make me laugh. But in a moment I was trying to keep back tears. His leave had been postponed. We must now wait five weeks to see each other. Five weeks! It seemed an eternity. I felt unaccountably desolate.

For once I needed Fran. I had to pour out my disappointment to somebody. I started up to go into the house and wake her— she was sure to be still asleep at this hour. Then I saw a curtain move upstairs and saw her move away from her window. I had only caught a glimpse of her expression, but somehow I was sure my news was known to her. Was it then that I began to feel frightened?

It was a fine day of wind and glinting sunshine. After lunch, I decided to pack up a picnic for Kelly and myself and get away from the cottage for a long afternoon. A good walk, I told myself, would get rid of this bout of depression. I was in the kitchen, looking for Kelly's favourite biscuits when Fran appeared in the doorway, and for a minute stood watching me. Then she asked if I was going out. Yes, I said, getting milk out of the fridge. I did not elaborate.

THE VISITOR

After another pause, Fran said she thought she would come along with us. I opened my mouth to tell her she was not wanted, that I particularly needed to be on my own with Kelly. But that sort of remark doesn't come easily to me. I said nothing.

I filled a thermos, added another cup to the basket, and we set off, Kelly in her push-chair clutching her teddy, which she had insisted on bringing. I was fond of Teddy —he had been mine as a child, and age had given him a sort of battered leering charm — but he was a large creature, and I usually ended up having to carry him. Andy walked close to my side, between me and Fran. She did not share Kelly's affection for Fran. In fact her distrust of my visitor could have been embarrassing if I had cared about it. I had not mentioned Andrew's letter, and did not now. Nor did Fran. We were an oddly silent party.

For a while we walked along with no discussion of where we might go. Then we passed the beginning of the path I had followed on the day Fran arrived. She stopped and said she was sure she had been this way before. Didn't it lead to a cove? There was something tense about her attitude. I felt strongly against going there again — especially with Fran. It was not worth seeing, I said, and too long a climb up again with the push-chair. But she walked ahead, taking no notice. I need not have followed her, but Kelly began demanding to 'get out and walk with Fran'. I almost pushed her out, and let them go ahead, while I followed with the push-chair and picnic. My jealousy had become an obsession. I recognized, but could not control it. It seemed to me that Fran was trying to take over my child. I felt she had some sort of power over all our lives which I could not shake off.



Fran went ahead, more and more purposefully. Soon she seemed oblivious even of Kelly. I dropped further and further behind, hampered as I was. When I got to the cove, I at first could not see either of them. Then I saw Fran, a motionless figure, looking out to sea. Kelly was playing at the edge of a pool. Some instinct of danger made me leave the push-chair and hurry across the sand to her. It was not until I caught up with her that I felt she was safe again. Fran hardly seemed to notice when I called Kelly to come and look at some seaweed. For a while Kelly and I played on the edge of the ocean as though it were an ordinary afternoon. But all the time I was aware of the silent, rapt figure looking out at the waves.

At last she came towards us, holding a piece of drift-wood, which seemed to interest her. It might have come from a wreck, she said Gulls were circling, screaming, above our heads, almost drowning her words. Fran glanced up at them.

`You know,' she said, 'there's a legend that seagulls are the souls of dead children?'

`No, I didn't,' I said composedly. I knew she meant to frighten me, and was determined not to show it. But I remembered the mysterious cry I had heard before, and felt as though cold water were being poured down my spine.

I asked her if she did remember the cove.

`Oh yes,' she said. 'It's just as I remember it.'

That was all. But I was sure it was no ordinary childhood memory which had kept her tranced beside the sea.

Suddenly she swooped on Kelly and picked her up. Kelly shouted happily as Fran ran off with her towards the sea. I ran after them, pretending to join in the game; but it frightened me to see my child in her arms. The mood of the beach had quite changed since the sunny afternoon when I had discovered it. The stones and rocks now looked to me like part of a stark, primeval landscape. And I was possessed by the most primitive emotions — fear and anger. Anger had liberated me at last: I was ready to tell Fran to clear out. But while she still had Kelly I dared not speak, could only call out that it was time to climb the path again for our picnic.

At the suggestion of a picnic Kelly began struggling to get out of Fran's arms. Fran did not put her down, but changed course, and we all set out for the cliff top.

`I suppose you've heard the local story of the shipwreck and the child?' Fran said, as we climbed. Her question sounded rehearsed, as though this were another attempt to frighten me. I shook my head, looking uninterested. But Fran went on to tell me the tale whether I wanted to hear it or not.

It seemed that in the eighteen-forties the packet for America set out from Falmouth one October afternoon. Fog came down, she went off course, and was wrecked on the treacherous rocks near the coast — just as I had imagined. Among the people struggling in the water on that terrible night was a young woman who managed to reach the shore with her small girl in her arms. She had just managed to set the child down on a ledge of rock — 'It was in this very cove,' Fran said — when a strong wave swept her off her feet back into the sea. She was rescued and brought ashore unconscious. But no one heard the child crying in the foggy darkness, and when they searched the cove the next day there was no sign of the child. Presumably she had been swept off her ledge into the sea.

`The locals will tell you,' said Fran, 'she still searches.'

I was thankful to reach the cliff top; we were safe from the sea and rocks. But Fran still held Kelly. There was no pretence of politeness as I snatched her away, and jammed her into her push-chair. Our rivalry was out in the open. Kelly began to wail, but was soon satisfied with the return of her teddy — which I had been carrying -- and a biscuit. Fran sat down beside the push-chair. She had become very quiet, dangerously quiet it, seemed to me. She refused to share our picnic. I saw that she was looking at Kelly with an expression which is hard to describe, but which chilled me. Then she looked at me, and held my gaze for a long minute. It seemed that whatever was between us must explode.

She reached out and put her hand on Kelly's head. She spoke only two words:

`My child.'

Her child? What could she mean? Horrible possibilities crowded into my mind.

Fran got up, and without a further look at either of us, walked away towards the cliff edge. I called to her to come back and explain. She just walked on as though she hadn't heard. In a second I was on my feet, rushing after her, screaming out all my hatreds, all my jealous fears about Kelly, about Andrew, things which I had not allowed myself even to think . . . A line of bushes hid her briefly from my view, and when I reached the cliff edge the beach seemed deserted. Then I saw a figure at the water's edge. Even allowing for her knowledge of the cliff paths from a child, I couldn't imagine how she had got there in so short a time. Tears of rage and shock blurred my eyes for a moment. When I could see again, she had gone. I tried to think she must have swum out to sea or hidden behind a rock to frighten me; there must be a logical explanation.

I called her name, several times, my voice cracking with fear. There was no response.

I turned away, dazed and shaky. Then I stared, unable to believe my eyes: the teddy bear, zombie-like, was rolling towards the cliff edge. At the steepest part it fell over, and disappeared. I was horrified to see that Kelly was getting out of her push-chair. She began to run -- but not towards her teddy. She was running towards another part of the cliff edge, as though someone were calling her

I don't know how I got to her in time. When I did, I clung to her, feeling my knees must give way. After a few seconds, I felt strong enough to carry her, protesting, to the security of the push-chair. But as I tried to grasp it, I felt it being pulled away from me as though by a powerful gust of wind. I tried to hang on to it, but my hands were shaking and clammy, and it slipped from my hold. I saw it roll along the grass and follow the teddy bear over the edge. I stood watching its slow, dreadful descent as it was gathered into the shadowy dusk of the cliff. So Kelly might have fallen, had been meant to fall, I now believed.

A drowned child . . . A mother who still searches . . . Had Fran some unimaginable connection with them? For a moment longer I stood as though frozen. Then I began to run as though all the powers of darkness were behind me. Panic — held at bay till now — had me in its grip. As I went running and stumbling along the path, I hardly heard Kelly's wail about her lost teddy, or Andy's short, anxious barks as she ran beside me. I had only one goal in life: to be home. Home was safety. I hardly noticed my aching arms and back, or that my breath was coming in great, sobbing gasps. Home . . . home . . . the word seemed to beat in my head with the banging of my heart.

At last the familiar front door was in sight. I was inside, gasping painfully for breath as I leaned against the door. At last I could put Kelly down. She was safe, we were back in the world I knew. I allowed myself the luxury of nearly fainting.

Kelly's shout of delight made me open my eyes. Her push-chair, undamaged, was standing in the sitting room. She was just lifting her teddy out of it He also looked no more battered than usual. Over the fireplace Andrew's photograph, whole again, stood in its usual place.

As I was trying to take this in, I heard Andy give a low growl. My eyes were drawn to the mirror. I could swear that for a fraction of a second I saw Fran's reflection, a look of sadness in her eyes. A waif, as someone had said. Then she had gone.

Yes, Fran has gone. There is no sign of her carpet bag, her Indian ornaments. I don't believe I shall see her any more. The cottage is my own again.

Yet it is not the same, and never can be. My world of familiar things, predictable days has been shattered. Fear has moved into my home with me. Staring at my distraught face in the mirror, I wonder, did it happen? Is loneliness driving me out of my mind? How can I begin to explain it to Andrew? I have passed the evening writing this down. But now darkness is enclosing the cottage. I have put on every light, but the night is still ahead.