All right, so it’s not like that faded old Basil Rathbone Hound of the Baskervilles film. Not entirely like that, anyway; not all the time. In fact in the summer it’s glorious, and that was mainly when I would go there; for I was still attempting to paint there despite that it had become a far more lonely business…often utterly lonely, on my own out there on the moors.
But glorious? Beautiful? Yes it certainly was, and for all that I don’t go there any more, I’m sure it still is. Beautiful in a fashion all its own. Or perhaps the word I’m searching for is unique. Uniquely dramatic…gloriously wild…positively neolithic, in its outcrops and standing stones, and prehistoric in the isolation and sometimes desolation of its secret, if not sacred, places.
As for outcrops, standing stones and such: well, now we’re back to the tors.
On Eastern Dartmoor my mother and I had painted that amazing jumble of rocks, one of the largest outcrops in the National Park, known as Hound Tor (no connection to Doyle’s hound, at least not to my knowledge). But along with a host of other gigantic stacks, such as the awesome Haytor Rock or Vixen Tor, the Hound hadn’t been one of Ma’s favourites. Many a lesser pile or tranquil river location had been easier to translate to canvas, board, or art paper. It wasn’t that we were idle, or lacking in skill or patience—certainly not my mother, whose true-to-life pictures were full of the most intricate detail—but that the necessities of life and the endless hours required to trap such monsters simply didn’t match up to our limited time. One single significant feature of any given rock could take Ma a whole day to satisfactorily transcribe in oils! And because I only rarely got things right at the first pass, they sometimes took me even longer. Which is why we were satisfied to paint less awesome or awkward subjects, and closer to home whenever possible.
Ah, but when I say “closer to home”…surely Dartmoor is only a moor? What’s a few miles between friends? Let me correct you:
Dartmoor is three hundred and fifty square miles of mists, mires, woodlands, rushing rivers, tors carved in an age of ice, small villages, lonely farmsteads and mazy paths; all of which forms the largest tract of unenclosed land in southern England. The landscape may range in just a few miles from barren, naked summits—several over five hundred metres in height—through heather-clad moorland, to marsh and sucking bog. There, in four national nature reserves and numerous protected sites, Dartmoor preserves an astonishing variety of plants and wildlife; all of this a mere twenty miles from Plymouth to the south, and a like distance from Exeter to the east.
Parts of the moor’s exposed heath contain the remains of Bronze and Iron Age settlements, now home to the hardy Dartmoor ponies; but the river Dart’s lush valley—cut through tens of thousands of years of planetary evolution—displays the softer side of rural Devon, where thatched cottages, tiny villages and ancient inns seem almost hidden away in the shady lee of knolls or protective hollows.
Dartmoor is, in short, a fascinating fantasy region, where several of the tors have their own ghosts—which is only to be expected in such a place—but I fancy their ectoplasm is only a matter of mist, myth, and legend. Most of them. Some of them, certainly…
I won’t say where I went that first time—which is to say the first time anything peculiar happened—for reasons which will become amply apparent, but it was close to one of our favourite places. Close to, but not the precise spot, for that would have meant feeling my mother’s presence. Her memory, or my memory of her, in that place, might have interfered with my concentration. And I’m not talking about ghosts here, just memories, nostalgia if you like: a sentimental longing for times spent with someone who had loved me all of her life, now gone forever. And if that makes me seem weak, then explain to me how even strong men find themselves still crying over a pet dog dead for months and even years, let alone a beloved parent.
And there is no paradox here, in my remembering yet needing to hold the memories to some degree at bay. I missed my Ma, yes, but I knew that I couldn’t go on mourning her for the rest of my life.
Anyway, it was in the late summer—in fact August, this time of year—when less than an hour’s drive had taken me onto the moor and along a certain second-class road, to a spot where I parked my car in a lay-by near a crossroads track leading off across the heather. Maybe a quarter-mile away there was a small domed hill, which faced across a shaded, shallow depression one of Dartmoor’s more accessible tors: an oddly unbalanced outcrop that looked for all the world as if it had been built of enormous, worn and rounded dominoes by some erratic Titan infant and was now trying hard not to topple over. An illusion, naturally, because it was entirely possible that this was just one massive rock, grooved by time and the elements into a semblance of many separate horizontal layers.
And here I think I had better give the stack a name—even one of my own coining—rather than simply call it a tor. Let’s call it Tumble Tor, if only because it looked as if at any moment it just might!
My mother and I had tried to paint Tumble Tor on a number of occasions, never with any great success. So maybe I could do it now and at least finish a job that we had frequently started and just as often left unresolved. That was the idea, my reason for being there, but as stated I would not be painting from any previously occupied vantage point. Indeed, since the moors seem to change from day to day and (obviously) more radically season to season, it would be almost impossible to say precisely where those vantage points had been. My best bet was to simply plunk myself down in a spot which felt totally strange, and that way be sure that I’d never been there before.
As for painting: I wouldn’t actually be doing any, not on this my first unaccompanied visit to Tumble Tor. Instead I intended to prepare a detailed pencil sketch, and in that way get as well acquainted as possible with the monolith before attempting the greater familiarity of oils and colour. In my opinion, one has to respect one’s subjects.
It had been a long hot summer and the ground was very hard underfoot, the soil crumbling as I climbed perhaps one third of the way up the knoll to a stone-strewn landing where the ground levelled off in a wide ledge. The sun was still rising in a mid-morning sky, but there in the shade of the summit rising behind me I seated myself on a flat stone and faced Tumble Tor with my board and paper resting comfortably on my knees. And using various grades of graphite I began to transpose my oddly staggered subject onto paper.
Time passed quickly…
Mid-afternoon, I broke for a ham sandwich with mayonnaise, washed down with a half thermos of bitter coffee. I had brought my binoculars with me; now and then I trained them on my car to ensure that it remained safe and hadn’t attracted the attention of any overly curious strangers. The glasses were also handy as a means of bringing Tumble Tor into greater resolution, making it easy to study its myriad bulges and folds before committing them to paper.
As I looked again at that much wrinkled rock, a lone puff of cloud eased itself in front of the sun. Tumble Tor fell into shade, however temporarily, and suddenly I saw a figure high in one of the outcrop’s precipitous shoulders: the figure of a man leaning against the rock there, peering in a furtive fashion—or so it seemed to me—around the shoulder and across the moor in the general direction of the road. Towards my car? Perhaps.
The puff of cloud persisted, slowly moving, barely drifting, across what was recently an empty, achingly blue sky, and I was aware of the first few wisps of a ground mist in the depression between my knoll and Tumble Tor. I glanced again at the sky and saw that the cloud was the first of a string of cotton-wool puffs reaching out toward Exeter in a ruler-straight line. Following this procession to its source, I was able to pick out the shining silver speck that had fashioned the aerial trail: a jet aircraft, descending toward Exeter airport. Its long vapour trail—even as it broke up into these small “clouds”—seemed determined to track across the face of the sun.
I looked again at Tumble Tor, and adjusted the focus of my binoculars to bring the lone climber—the furtive observer of some near-d
istant event?—into sharper perspective. He hadn’t moved except to turn his head in my direction, and I had little doubt but that he was now looking at me. At a distance of something less than four hundred and fifty yards, I must be visible to him as he was to me. But of course I had the advantage of my glasses…or so I thought.
He was thin and angular, a stick of a man, with wild hair blowing in a wind I couldn’t feel, some current of air circulating around his precarious position. He wore dark clothing, and as I once again refocussed I saw that indeed he carried binoculars around his neck. Though he wasn’t using them, still I felt he gazed upon me. I tried to get a clearer view of his face but the image was blurred, trembling with the movement of my hands. However, when finally I did manage to get a good look…it was his narrow eyes that left a lasting impression.
They seemed to glow in the shade of the rock with that so-called “red-eye” complication of amateur photography: an illusion—a trick of the light—obviously. But the way they were fixed upon me, those eyes, was somehow disconcerting. It was as if he was spying on me, and not the other way around.
But spying? Feeling like some kind of voyeur, I lowered my glasses and looked away.
Meanwhile, having swung across the sky, the sun had found me; soon my hollow in the side of the hill, rather than providing shade, was going to become a sun-trap. And so I reckoned it was time to call it a day and head for home. Before I could put my art things aside, however, a tall shadow fell across me and a deep voice said, “Aye, and ye’ve picked the perfect spot for it. What a grand picture the auld tor makes frae here, eh?”
Momentarily startled, I jerked myself around to look up at the speaker. He was a dark silhouette, blocking out the sun.
“Oh dear!” he said, himself startled. “Did I make ye jump just then? Well, I’m sorry if I’ve disturbed ye, and moreso if I’ve broken ye’re mood. But man, ye must hae been concentratin’ verra hard not tae hear me comin’ down on ye.”
“Concentrating?” I answered. “Actually I was watching that fellow on the tor there. He must be a bit of a climber. Myself, I don’t have much of a head for heights.”
“On the tor, ye say?” Shading his eyes and standing tall, he peered at Tumble Tor, now bright once more in full sunlight. “Well then, he must hae moved on, gone round the back. I cannae see anyone on the rock right now, no frae here.” Then, stepping down level with me, he crouched to examine my drawing close up. And in my turn—now that the sun was out of my eyes—I could look more closely at him.
A big, powerful man, I judged him to be in his mid-fifties. Dressed in well worn tweeds, good walking boots, and carrying a knobbed and ferruled stick, he could well have been a gamekeeper—and perhaps he was.
“I…I do hope I’m not trespassing here,” I finally mumbled. “I mean, I hope this isn’t private ground.”
“Eh?” he cocked his head a little, then smiled. “What? Do ye take me for a gillie or somethin’? No, no, I’m no that. And as far as I ken this ground’s free for us all. But a trespasser? Well, if ye are then so am I, and hae been for some twenty years!” He nodded at the unfinished drawing in my lap. “That’s a bonny piece of work. Will ye no finish it? Ye’ll excuse that I’m pokin’ my nose in, but I sense ye were about tae leave.”
“Was and am,” I answered, getting to my feet and dusting myself off. “The sun’s to blame…the shadows on the tor are falling all wrong now. Also, the back of my neck was getting a bit warm.” I stooped, gathered up my art things, and looked at the drawing. “But I thank you for your comment because this is just—”
“—A preliminary sketch?”
“Oh?” I said. “And how did you know that?”
Again he smiled, but most engagingly. “Why, there’s paint under ye’re fingernails. And ye’ve cross-hatched all the areas that are the selfsame colour as seen frae here…stone grey, that is. Ye’ll be plannin’ a painting—am I no right?”
I studied him more closely. He had tousled brown hair—a lot of it for a man his years, —a long weathered face, brown, friendly eyes over a bulbous nose, and a firm mouth over a jut of a chin. His accent revealed his nationality, and he made no attempt to disguise it. The Scots are proud of themselves, and they have every right to be. This one looked as much a part of the moors as…well, as Tumble Tor itself.
Impulsively, I stuck my hand out. “You’re right, I’m planning a painting. I’m Paul Stanard, from Torquay. I’m pleased to meet you.”
“Andrew Quarry,” he came back at once, grasping my hand. “Frae a mile or two back there.” A jerk of his head indicated the knoll behind us. “My house is just off the Yelverton road, set back a wee in a copse. But—did ye say Stanard?“
“Paul Stanard, yes,” I nodded.
“Hmm,” he mused. “Well, it’s probably a coincidence, but there’s a picture in my house painted by one Mary May Stanard: it’s a moors scene that I bought in Exeter.”
“My mother,” I told him, again nodding. “She sold her work through various art shops in Exeter and elsewhere. And so do I. But she…she died some nine months ago. Lung cancer.”
“Oh? Well, I’m sorry for ye,” he answered. “What, a smoker was she? Aye, it’s a verra bad business. Myself, I gave my auld pipe up years ago. But her picture—it’s a bonny thing.”
I smiled, however sadly. “Oh, she knew how to paint! But I doubt if it will ever be worth any more than you paid for it.”
“Ah, laddie,” he said, shaking his head. “But I didnae buy it for what others might reckon it’s value. I bought it because I thought it might look right hangin’ in my livin’-room. And so it does.”
Andrew Quarry: he was obviously a gentleman, and so open—so down-to-earth—that I couldn’t help but like him. “Are you by chance going my way?” I enquired. “That’s my car down on the road there. Maybe we can walk together?”
“Most certainly!” he answered at once. “But only if I can prevail upon ye tae make a little detour and drop me off on the Yelverton road. It’ll be a circular route for ye but no too far out of ye’re way, I promise ye.”
As I hesitated he quickly added, “But if ye’re in a hurry, then dinnae fret. The walkin’s good for a man. And me: I must hae tramped a thousand miles over these moors, so a half-dozen more willnae harm me.”
“Not at all,” I answered. “I was just working out a route, that’s all. For while I’ve crossed Dartmoor often enough, still I sometimes find myself confused. Maybe I don’t pay enough attention to maps and road signs, and anyway my sense of direction isn’t up to much. You might have to show me the way.”
“Oh, I can do that easily enough,” Quarry answered. “And I know what ye mean. I walk these moors freely in three out of four seasons, but in the fourth I go verra carefully. When the snow is on the ground, oh it’s beautiful beyond a doubt—ah, but it hides all the landmarks! A man can get lost in a blink, and then the cold sets in.” As we set off down the steep slope he asked: “So then, how did ye come here?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Ye’re route, frae the car tae here.”
“Oh. I followed the path—barely a track, really—but I walked where many feet have gone before: around that clump of standing stones there, and so on to the foot of this hill where I left the track, climbed through the heather, and finally arrived at this grassy ledge.”
“I see.” He nodded. “Ye avoided the more direct line frae ye’re vehicle tae the base of the tor, and frae the tor tae the knoll. Verra sensible.”
“Oh?”
“Aye. Ye see those rushes?” He pointed. “Between the knoll and yon rock? And those patches of red and green, huggin’ close tae the ground? Well those colours hint of what lies underfoot, and it’s marshy ground just there. Mud like that’ll suck ye’re shoes off! It would make a more direct route as the crow flies, true enough, but crows dinnae hae tae walk!”
“You can tell all that from the colour of the vegetation? The state of the ground, that is?” He obviously knew his Dartmoor, this man
.
He shrugged. “Did I no say how I’ve lived here for twenty years? A man comes tae understand an awfy lot in twenty years.” Then he laughed. “Oh, it’s no great trick. Those colours: they indicate mosses, sphagnum mosses. And together with the rushes, that means boggy ground.”
We had reached the foot of the knoll and set off following the rough track, making a detour wide of the tor and the allegedly swampy ground; which is to say we reversed and retraced my incoming route. And Quarry continued talking as we walked:
“Those sphagnums…” he said, pausing to catch his breath. “…That’s peat in the makin’. A thousand years from now, it’ll be good burnin’ stuff, buried under a couple of feet of softish earth. Well, that’s if the moor doesnae dry out—as it’s done more than its share of this last verra hot summer. Aye, climatic change and all that.”
I was impressed. “You seem to be a very knowledgeable man. So then, what are you, Mr. Quarry? Something in moors conservation? Do you work for the National Park Authority? A botanist, perhaps?”
“Botany?” He raised a shaggy eyebrow. “My profession? No laddie, hardly that. I was a veterinary surgeon up in Scotland a good long spell ago—but I dinnae hae a profession, not any more. Ye see, my hands got a wee bit wobbly. Botany’s my hobby now, that’s all. All the green things…I enjoy tae identify them, and the moor has an awfy lot tae identify.”
“A Scotsman in Devon,” I said. “I should have thought the highlands would be just as varied…just as suitable to your needs.”
“Aye, but my wife was a Devon lass, so we compromised.”
“Compromised?”
He grinned. “She said she’d marry me, if I said I’d come live in Devon. I’ve no regretted it.” And then, more quietly, “She’s gone now, though, the auld girl. Gone before her time. Her heart gave out. It was most unexpected.”