Towards the end of my recent week in North Devon I made a tour of the country churches to the south of Great Torrington. It was a Saturday, and a fine, dry, warm afternoon. I planned to visit Little Torrington, Buckland Filleigh, Black Torrington and Huish - marvellous country place names! - which would not take me far, but would involve many a narrow country road.
Despite Fiona being a large car, I'm always up for exploring narrow, winding country lanes and usually find it rewarding. You might think that large cars and narrow lanes don't mix. Not so: a large car has the power and general capability to handle any kind of road, and will get you out of almost any rough-road situation. You may, it's true, have to back up before advancing tractors, combine harvesters, milk tankers, livestock lorries, or school buses, but they can't bully you as they might if you were in a small car.
So you can proceed with confidence, only making sure that your side-mirrors are retracted in case they get clonked by the high hedgerows on either side, or any of the aforementioned vehicles as they squeeze past at a passing-place. You must also remember the last passing place you drove by, in case you need to reverse back to it. Often you don't have to: many country locals are amazingly considerate to strangers, especially to women drivers. I love that kind of cheerful, old-fashioned courtesy. I will wind my window down as we pass and give them heartfelt thanks, because they deserve it.
But sometimes I encounter unchivalrous high-and-mighty men in spotless Range Rovers, who seem to think they own the road, and that women drivers are less than the roadkill beneath their wheels. For some reason, they all remind me of Jeremy Clarkson. So I play them, and make them look boorish and discourteous by going into reverse before they do. I will kow-tow to their greatness! But they'll have to endure my slow, nerve-fraying manoeuvres. It serves them right for not instantly making way for a woman on her own. Let them feel embarrassed at the heavy weather I make of it. The further I have to reverse, the longer it goes on for, the more they become red-faced with discomfiture. They know they have broken the code of a true gentleman.
If I can, I deliberately veer into the hedge, and then run forward again - at least twice - signalling a dreadful 'lack of skill', exactly the kind of thing they'd expect from a 'mere woman'. Which of course winds them up. What fun! To be fair, they often mumble thanks as they finally get past. Well, there is at least some mouth-movement, possibly suggesting words of acknowledgement, though I could be mistaken about that. They never look me in the eye.
But back to my tour.
I was of course using the churches mentioned in the opening paragraph as a means to an end. Driving between them would reveal beautiful countryside at every turn, and tucked-away villages not visited by holidaymakers who prefer beaches to farmland and woods inland. Not that this area is entirely off the tourist trail. My mini-tour would take me around what is termed 'the Ruby Country'. The name derives from the distinctive red cattle that were bred here. It's marketed as a secret and enchanting part of rural Devon, quiet and unspoilt, perfect for a hideaway holiday or weekend break, with great pubs, good food, plenty of history, and a host of activity pursuits.
The easternmost part of the Ruby Country (but in particular the land between the Rivers Torridge and Taw) was the haunt of renowned photographer James Ravilious, who died in 1999, and whose widow I met at Appledore in 2015. James Ravilious was the younger son of famous painter Eric Ravilious. He settled in this very rural part of north-west Devon in the 1970s and set about recording it in photographs. These now form an important and treasured collection of partly-vanished country life. Only 'partly' - it hasn't all gone. On this and previous forays, I have felt very much as if I've been following in James Ravilous' footsteps, even if I haven't the same eye for perceptive camera-work, and only now and then shoot in black and white, a medium he exploited to wonderful effect.
How did I get on?
Well, Little Torrington village, just off the main A386 road, was pleasant, but the church was locked. So on to Buckland Filleigh, which was a scattered place, a former estate centred on grand Buckland House, now a sequestered posh wedding venue, with apartments. The church was in its grounds. There was nowhere nearby to park, so I left Fiona in a wide part of the road two or three hundred yards away, and walked along the narrow lane towards the House entrance, which was also the way to the church. I'd covered most of that distance when a giant combine harvester suddenly loomed into view. I honestly don't know how it managed to negotiate these lanes. It entirely filled the one I was walking on. At the spot I'd reached, there was no possibility of tucking myself in on one side, and letting it run past. I'd have to retreat until the lane widened out again.
So, flip-flopping in my summer sandals, I ran before it. I couldn't go very fast, but even so I thought I was making a good (if undignified) effort for a lady who was obviously not in the first flush of youth. I had to cover most of the distance back to my car. The thing was, the combine harvester didn't follow me at a slow, easy pace. The more I ran, the faster it followed! So that I was quite puffed out when I came to a spot where I could at last stop and let it get by. A wave of the hand from the driver. Huh. And I now saw that a car had been impatiently following the combine harvester. They couldn't have seen me running for safety. Eyes stared at me disdainfully as the car passed, as if I'd held everyone up on purpose.
I was now close enough to Fiona to give up on visiting the church. But I didn't. I went back down the lane, this time without being forced into another ignominious retreat, and had a look. The public had a right of way through the grounds of Buckland House to the church, which turned out to be attractive and well cared-for, an on-the-spot facility for marrying couples and their guests, as the House was adjacent. So was a swimming pool, a boating and fishing lake, and acres of woodland walks.
Recovered from my exertions, my next stop was Black Torrington. It was a proper village, not just a hamlet, with a church, pub, school, modern village hall and some shops. I ended up walking around it, but headed first for the church. Approaching closely, I saw pink fabric tied to the railings that led to the porch.
Ah, a wedding. Was I about to walk in on it? The time was just after 2.30pm. Not impossible! I advanced carefully, but could hear no sounds from inside the church. It was all right. It was all over; everyone had departed and were now at the reception, wherever that might be.
Inside the church, all was as it had been when the newly-married couple left together, followed by the the family members of both sides and their guests. Nobody had yet started to clear up for the next church service. I'd never seen this before: it was a sort of Marie Celeste moment, except that there was no mystery about what had just taken place, and no concern about the present whereabouts of the participants. The wedding ceremony had been scheduled for 1.00pm, and had surely finished not long before I arrived. I'd missed it by perhaps no more than thirty minutes.
I'd interrupted nothing, and had the place to myself, but was I still intruding? And yet the church was a public space, not a private house. And I was only an interested, respectful and well-disposed visitor. I decided that provided I disturbed nothing, and merely captured the atmosphere of the church with my Leica, I would do no harm.
Obviously, I did look to see who the bride and groom had been. There were at least two discarded Orders of Service left behind. I was pleased (and curiously touched) that the bride was also named Lucy. That gave us a tenuous connection. There was a picture of her, and her man. But I don't want to say more. I didn't know them, and wasn't one of their guests. They deserved privacy.
It was however fascinating to look around, and get pictures of what there was to see after a church wedding. I hadn't been to a 'proper' church wedding (as opposed to a 'blessing') for decades, not since the 1970s. I recalled that after the ceremony one filed out, and there was no going back inside. So viewing all this now felt like a rare privilege.
Gosh, the aisle that the bride and groom would have to walk down! A fateful, life-changing, perhaps panicky experience that each would remember forever. But I hoped that they had walked down that aisle, and back, with joy in their young hearts.
The words said, the ring or rings positioned on fingers, and the deed done, the couple would have made their way together back down the aisle through a barrage of party-poppers. What fun! (And much easier to clear up than confetti)
I liked the simplicity of the decorations. Wicker hearts painted white. Pink bows on the church columns.
The flowers were very well done. I liked them very much.
All the signs of a happy and successful ceremony, the start of a new era in the couple's relationship. I knew from my own experience that things are different after marriage. The bond is tighter, the relationship more purposeful, more significant, and one acquires a new status.
I got married in 1983 - on St Valentine's Day as it happens (my idea). A register office affair in suburban London, with frost on the ground, so that we all shivered. Not a White Wedding in a country church in sunny July. The register office, because I wasn't religious and hadn't wanted a great fuss. I wanted something simple and direct. Actually, in my dreams, I really wanted to be romantically married by a ship's captain, like two penniless people picked up at sea, thrown together by fate.
Well, we weren't penniless, but there was no money for an elaborate celebration. Mum's brother, my Uncle Des, over from Australia, generously put up at least £1,000, and that was enough to cover nearly all the costs. I was most grateful. But this gesture also took a lot of control out of our hands. Mum could now have a big say in who the guests were. In the end, there were twice as many as on our original list. But Mum insisted. I had to accept.
And it all went off well enough. But I felt that my role, my personal influence on the event, the personal touches that could have made it something to cherish in the future, had all been compromised and diminished. It made my wedding something I wouldn't look back on with much sense of possession or pride. I'd been reduced to a stage player reciting a few lines from a script. I was glad when the pub reception was done with, and we could get in the car, and finally head off to Cornwall in the cold late afternoon light of February. We were going to honeymoon at Padstow. The first night was to be at The Grosvenor Hotel in Shaftesbury. Our love-nest in Padstow was called The Nook Hotel. Snow was forecast, and I recall flurries of it in the lamplit streets of Shaftesbury, as we strolled arm in arm after dinner that first night. There were snow-drifts crossing Dartmoor next day. The central heating at the Padstow hotel was barely adequate, and the rivulets crossing the beaches nearby had turned to ice.
It was my partner's second marriage, my first. I rather relied on my partner possessing some hard-earned knowledge of what not to do, how to make a marriage come alive with a shining brilliance. Me, I knew nothing. I was thirty, coming up thirty-one, but still no good judge of people, nor how to get along in constant intimacy. I certainly didn't know myself as well as I needed to.
Our married life began in apparent harmony, but it ran out of steam after a few years. I inherited a step-daughter, but there were no new children. I always say that we had four good years, then it slowly died. Neither of us could give it the right kind of nourishment. We separated early in 1991, and divorced in mid-1996. I have never remarried. Aversion to making another mistake has turned into a rock-hard determination not to surrender my independence, whatever the inducement offered.
To this day, I ponder my sole effort at nuptial bliss. I still can't see any clear and obvious reason why it fizzled out, except that perhaps we had different agendas, different notions of what we wanted, and that our natures were too dissimilar to be good for the long haul.
I don't feel ashamed about having clocked up a failure. I don't feel inadequate. Certainly not defeated. But I wish I had not wasted my time and my partner's on a doomed adventure. I wish I could have had my present-day perspective (I almost said 'wisdom') before committing myself. But then, I wouldn't have agreed to marry, neither then nor later.
I couldn't help thinking about all this while still in the church. Why did I function best on my own, instead of in a partnership with somebody? Why did I prefer to face the world without somebody by my side? Which way was best? It seemed inappropriate to have these questions in my mind amid the aftermath of a happy wedding, but I couldn't easily dismiss them.
However, as with so many subjects, it wasn't profitable to do too much analysis. Whatever the reasons and explanations - or lack of them - things were as they were. One's actual life and outlook were the truth, the reality. Not some imaginary life and outlook one might wish for.
I firmly believed that one's character and personal attributes were fixed and never changed: they could only be kept hidden, or drawn out. This was unpalatable but had to be accepted. One couldn't assume an entirely different nature, nor transform into a totally new person. It was only possible to develop a more honest, more revealed, more reasonable, and perhaps more mature version of the same old self.
I simply wasn't good wedding material. I was no idealist. I had no faith to steer by. No creed to rely on. No desire to start a dynasty, nor to perpetuate one. I'd never wanted to belong to anyone. I recoiled against being owned - and the converse, claiming somebody as 'mine'. As if we were property to tote around or throw away. Nor to sink my soul and identity into a joint existence, with the aim of creating little replicas to pass the family baton on to. That loss of individuality, that conventional buying-in to the future of the human species, was very unappealing. So I had refused to be part of it.
This ruled out all but a solitary life. If such a position was offensive, immoral or a threat to society in general, then I was defiantly unrepentant. I always came back to my personal motto: stay alive, stay free. As if already a survivor of some overwhelming upset or disaster. In a sense, that was indeed so. Over the previous dozen or so years I'd adapted to many fundamentally new situations, and had made a good fist of it.
As for love, what was that? I didn't know. I'd confused it with fondness and infatuation and occasional desire. It was an exalted emotional state that I couldn't grasp. Couldn't, or dared not? Right now, in 2021, aged sixty-nine, I was well beyond worrying about it.
I thought instead about the persons who had exchanged promises in this church, shortly before I came by. They had years ahead in which to explore what their marriage had given them. I wanted them to enjoy all of it, and make their marriage work well.
Leaving the church, I heard a man's voice nearby, over the hedge. It was an impatient voice, apparently directed at his wife. A voice that didn't care how harsh the words or tone might be. A marriage gone wrong? I felt grateful not to be in such a thing. But also irritated that the man made no effort to encourage his wife with softer, more understanding words. It seemed to spoil the afternoon.
But my resentment didn't last. I walked it off, looking around the entire village. The pub was busy - was it full of wedding guests? I wasn't sure. Should I go in and make enquiries? Mention that I'd been in the church? Toast the bride and groom, if they were there? But really it was none of my business. I walked past, eventually coming back to Fiona, and drove thoughtfully on to Huish.
