We hadn’t had much luck with the weather in the two weeks before approaching Mumbles Harbour in South Wales. The Camp in the fields at Fishguard had been a varied experience for me at the age of twelve years, full of complications due to domestic dissonance and on the verge of puberty. Being at an impressive age I lapped up the Christian teaching we were offered, I laughed enthusiastically at the spectacles offered in the evening and used the night to speculate on all the new things I had experienced.
Of course I needed the therapeutic conversations we had, enjoying the care that was being taken of me. I didn’t understand what was going on, but had accepted intuitively the unspoken fact that my parents were concerned about my development. I wasn’t interested in many things that the school had to offer – instead I was learning steadily that human interaction was a complicated and fascinating subject.
Christine was in her twenty’s, had long straight hair and was slightly overweight. She had been assigned to me apparently and during the two weeks we became closer. She even embraced me tightly, smothering me with her breasts in warm affection. I hadn’t been attentive of the feminine anatomy before and found myself asking why I hadn’t understood that my mother is a woman. I kept trying to get into those arms over and over again. It became very obvious and I learned that not saying something doesn’t mean that nobody notices.
Christine blushed every now and again and gently saved me from an embarrassment of my own. She went for walks with me down to the beach and told me stories of biblical characters who I hadn’t heard of before. It was all very interesting, even though I didn’t make the connection with wanting to hug her. It was the fact that someone spoke to me and tried to listen to my gibbering attempts to seem important that made me admire her. My infatuation grew as the days went by.
I wasn’t allowed to sit with her up at the front of the bus as we trundled down the narrow welsh roads towards the ferry. I think I sulked most of the way, trying to avoid being fascinated with the countryside which seemed to speed pass the window. Finally I took the Bible out that she had given me – not just a New Testament and Psalms like everybody else had, but a complete Bible with Old Testament. It made me feel special again and I delved into Job until the length of the journey and the drone of the engine made me nod off.
Job had been a character that Brian had told us about in a tent with the sign ‘Bible-study’ where I had ended up because I didn’t want to take part in the paper-chase. I had hoped to find Christine there but she had somehow vanished. The King James Bible presented problems at the best of times – even though it all sounded very distinguished in the old language. I actually raised a laugh one evening because I used ‘the King’s language’ to describe something trivial. It was all very confusing because I didn’t realise what they were laughing at and it became the subject of a therapeutic conversation.
Somehow a thought manifested itself within me that you had to read between the lines with Job. Brian had asked what I meant and I couldn’t explain it to him. It just seemed like the story was something like Aesop’s fables, which we had been reading in school. Brian was a little upset with the comparison but composed himself again and said that ‘St. Job’, as he called him, could hardly be compared to an animal in Aesop’s Fables. He didn’t understand that I wasn’t comparing the characters but the story. However, I could have never clarified the situation and so I just said nothing more.
Job still interested me though and my self-made wicker cross marked the spot. I kept returning to the story over and again, asking here and there about things I didn’t understand. Brian found this faintly amusing at first but complained later that he couldn’t have Job ‘for breakfast, dinner and tea!’ Christine did what she could to compensate and altogether I think they behaved as ‘saintly’ as could be expected. It became more clear towards the end of the Camp that Brian and Christine were a couple and I had caused a slight derision in their relationship mainly because they were at odds as to how to handle me.
When the bus halted in sight of the compound that was called ‘the dock’, the ferry to Devon was at it’s mooring place, bobbing in the rain and revealing it’s rusty parts with brown-red rivers on the white and black paint. I seemed to have been very inattentive on the journey from Devon to Wales, as I couldn’t remember the dock at all. Everything seemed new.
Even the skyline looked unfamiliar, fading into a grey mess of rain clouds and sea. The members of my company seemed somewhat pale at the prospect of crossing the choppy sea, I was more occupied with how I was to board the ferry and getting a place where I could see everything.
As it was, there was no problem. Hardly on board, everybody seemed to lunge towards the cabin in the middle of the boat. I had no desire of spending the crossing in there. It was a deep hole with a bar that wasn’t yet open, but from which the remaining fumes of consumed shorts combined with a lack of oxygen, it gave me the idea that I would be better off on deck. Between the tables I could see the leftovers of some kind of residue that seemed vaguely familiar. The rest of the Camp struggled down the steep stairs with their luggage and looked for fixed seats at fixed tables that they didn’t have to wipe clean first.
My Anorak wasn’t completely waterproof, but it didn’t matter. I found a shelter at the entrance to the crews quarters and avoided the whipping wind there, occasionally dodging the crew as the came out of the belly of the boat. There were only foot passengers and as we set off bobbing through the waves, I had the feeling that some had remained on shore. They watched us ominously, not waving or smiling – just watching.
I was alone on deck, except for one man and his bottle who had wrapped himself up in a kind of sheeting. As we moved out from the coast the waves became larger an the motion of the boat more predictable. I was proud of myself standing there braving the wild sea, whilst the other Campers cowered in the depths of the boat. There was something exhilarating about the wind and the waves and the rain and the feeling rose within me as it became darker. The faint horizon in grey disappeared and the water and the sky turned dark brown. The was no way to see where the water stopped and the sky began, except for a few flashes of lightning in the distance.
In the flashes I could see suddenly that the waves were now at least ten feet above the ferry, surging, pressing and I could feel them. A sudden flash followed quickly by a loud clash of thunder told me that the storm had come closer and the crew appeared on deck, running too and fro, pulling on ropes, checking whether everything was secure. I avoided them seeing me, for fear of having to go down into the pit with the rest.
I gazed into the brown mess and saw a darkness moving towards me. A blackness that seemed to hypnotise me and had me rooted to the spot. A Voice rose above the wind and the waves, saying:
“Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof; When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? Or who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb?â€
I stuttered, “I don’t know…†and the lightening blazed repeatedly across the sky followed by loud and resounding clashes of thunder. I could see the vast expanse of the heavens illuminated by the flash and heard the words, “I know that thou canst do every thing, and that no thought can be withholden from thee. Who is he that hideth counsel without knowledge? therefore have I uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not. I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee.â€
Suddenly the door to the cabin burst open and multitudes of passengers spread out over the apparently falling deck, heading for the railing. All of them held on for fear of grim death and spewed out their revolting residue. More and more of them came, some falling in the rain, some bowled over by the wind. Amongst them were the crew, pulling on ropes, passing the ropes through the belts of men and around the disgorging women, fastening them to the railing as the sea lurched the boat upwards after its long decline, throwing us all off our feet.
Suddenly, from the deck, I looked up into the sky and saw a multitude of stars and the rain stopped falling. The thunder and lightening had passed and even the waves reduced in size. The peaks and troughs became predictable again and on the horizon we saw the lights of Devon. As I stood up I saw Brian bound to the railing, hanging in the ropes around him, and Christine kneeling completely drenched beside him. They looked at me through bleak eyes, pale and exhausted. Christine began to cry and Brian asked me to fetch their bags from the cabin whilst he freed himself from his protective incarceration.
However, that was a task more difficult than I had imagined. The cabin had an insufferable stench and the floor was now full of the residue I had had presentiments about. People were struggling up the stairs and others were falling down them, everyone in tatters and soaked to the skin. The Bags of Brian and Christine had to be cleaned, but they were just wiped down and I tried to carry them out without soiling myself or being influenced by the stench in the air.
At last in fresh air, I saw the man with his bottle fast asleep in his tarpaulin, washed up against the opposite side of the deck to where he had started out. Nobody noticed him and he seemed not to have noticed the excitement around him. Even the crew where looking pale and didn’t return my smile. As the harbour came closer in the dark we could hear voices from the shore calling out, apparently concerned. It wasn’t until we were very close that I saw that our parents were waving nervously, looking out for their children. I saw my father in the crowd, not waving or calling, just looking worried, pulling on his cigarette.
He was a soldier working on the amphibian fleet in Devon. He was strangely silent in those days. Mum had said he had had an accident and some of his friends had drowned. I couldn’t read his thought when I saw him. He just looked at me a little surprised when he saw that I was only wet but healthy - and didn’t have the ill hue of the other passengers. With few words he took my bag and showed me where the car was standing.
“Where’s Mum, “ I asked.
“She’s at the hospital with your brother. He’s had an accident.â€
And so my experience faded against the ordinariness of everyday life, and the accident of my brother. He had a tyre burst on him at high speed on his bicycle and was lying in bed with a broken arm and a fractured skull. It must have been difficult being parents at that time.
I regard that incident as the first of a number of spiritual experiences that have influenced my life. The memories have faded with time and yet I remember I believed to know what was between the lines in the Book of Job, and it gave me assurance through the rest of my life. I never saw Brian and Christine again; I never had the chance to thank them. Although sometimes when I look back, I ask myself whether they saw me as a kind of Jonas and associated their plight with me. But that would be speculation.
Shalom
Bob
