THAT'S MY LAND

There was no way through to the Red River. Someone had padlocked the gate at the top of the footpath. I’d already taken a longish detour due to the access road being closed for resurfacing, so I didn’t need further frustration on the bright February morning I’d set aside for this section of the river. Not only was the gate locked, but whoever’d locked it had filled the path with bramble, ivy and gorse cuttings: even if I climbed the gate I’d be scratched to pieces; there’s nothing so vicious and so fragrant as gorse — or furze, as it’s known locally. I knew a bit about gorse: I’d made wine out of its flowers during my childhood obsession with fermenting and brewing, and had quickly discovered what a painful labour of love plucking those little yellow polyps from the hedgerows could be. Without really thinking about it, I took a picture of the locked gate. I thought, vaguely, I might use it at some point as evidence. But I was also thinking about something I’d read in an archaeological report from the 1980s about a proposed new path along the Red River that never fully materialised: access to the Red River was, it suggested stylishly, like a metaphor for the river itself: diverted and restricted.

The irony of the temporary road-closure notification being stapled to the locked gate was just dawning on me when some shouted ‘Oi, You’. I turned to see a man about my own height, not that much older than myself, but weathered from a life outdoors, walking down the lane towards me. He was holding a rake upright like a spear. ‘What you doing’. No greeting of any kind, just suspicion so naked and obsessive it was as if I were inside his head — not a place I wanted to be. ‘I’m looking for the path.’ He took a step closer to me. He was like a wall in the road. ‘You better not be coming round here causing trouble.’ I could see he was agitated, breathing heavily. ‘No, I’m just trying to find a way through to the Red River. There’s a public footpath.’ I vaguely offered my phone to show him the short squiggle of red dashes marked on the OS map. He ignored it. ‘Why aren’t you working?’ Whoa, there! Wow. It was as if he were now in my head, plucking on raw nerves with that rake of his: it was like talking to my uncle as a teenager. But I wasn’t going to feel humiliated this time. Why I should I keep apologising? I knew what work could be; I’d worked in kitchens and as a porter; my mum had worked 70hour weeks and more as a waitress. I might not be a farmer, but I knew what work was. And I’d had to find it for myself, not inherit it. So, exploiting the neutrality of my accent, which could easily sound to an untrained ear like ‘the establishment’, I planted a thought in him: ‘How do you know I’m not working.’ I could sense the blow going home, and I enjoyed it. I could be from the Council, couldn’t I. You could be in line for a fine. ‘What’s your job, then.’ He was clearly worried. ‘I don’t have to explain myself to you.’ I smiled and stared into his eyes. And then I let him off the hook: ‘Look, I’m just a member of the public out for a walk trying to find the public footpath to the Red River.’

I shouldn’t have let him off so lightly. Or maybe I was useful to do so. It provoked an ancient response from him that I needed to hear: ‘That’s my land, that is —mine.’ The head of his rake was level with his eyes, and its tines were facing towards me. The same old story: a fearful, aggressive, hoarding of things that will always slip through your fingers; and you know it; and you struggle all the more for total control in the face of that terrible knowledge — a vicious circle this man was surrounded by like horseflies round the arse-end of a horse. My presence was threatening his control. He couldn’t own my right of way. I was exposing his secret. I might have credited his anger to a sense of shame and guilt at being found out trying to pull a slow one, but I reckoned his concerns were more financial: there’s a potential £1000 for blocking a public footpath. Later, someone reasoned with me that the farmer was like this because it was a hard life on a small holding; that they had so little. I had balanced this very thought against my frustrated will during our brief encounter, but my will won through. I came back at him quietly, again offering my phone: ‘There’s a footpath to the river from here that is clearly marked on the map: it’s a public right of way.’ ‘There’s no footpath round here.’ ‘It’s on the map.’ ‘You heard me. That’s my land, that is. My land.’ He was gesturing towards the gate with his rake. I could see that the young men who’d been repairing a barn roof were coming down the lane to back him up. I took them to be his sons. ‘You’d better just clear off out of here,’ the old man said. I stared at him and said clearly and quietly: ‘Are you threatening me? You shouldn’t threaten me.’ Then I smiled. I could sense the fear behind the anger. I was an unknown quantity. He couldn’t cut me down like a furze bush. He turned aside, and as if jolted back into reality, lowered his rake. ‘I’m just about to move that stuff’, he mumbled. ‘It’s just temporary.’ And with that I’d won. In victory, I felt momentarily sorry for him. Then his son’s joined in, more restrained, more self-aware, but no less determined to see me off. What was I doing round here? And it started all over again. They said I was mistaken; that the public footpath was back down the road and over the bridge. I knew they were wrong from the map; and the old man had all but admitted the public footpath was behind the padlocked gate to his land. But I’d had enough. I walked away. They shouted directions after me again, a touch of mocking triumph in their voices. I half turned, gave them the thumbs up, and hated myself for doing so.

Further down the the road I had to squeeze myself into the hedge as a road ripping machine — one of those things that look like a mechanical dinosaur with a conveyor belt sticking out front — jolted by me. The men sat high up in the cab in their hard hats ignored me pressed into the hedge. Then, I had to wait another couple of minutes for the low-loader truck with its sticky molasses of tar macadam to pass. It all felt strangely aggressive and macho; as if they were in conspiracy with the farmer. Who was this man walking up a lane in the back of beyond? Can’t be a tourist. Should be at work. What me, paranoid? Perhaps I needed a biscuit and a cup of coffee. Still, I tried to pick up the only other alternative route I could find on the map; but this, too, was blocked, if more subtly, by a confusion of hedges, wire fences, green waste, and what looked like a friendly, strategically placed, family garden area. By this point I’d lost faith in my map reading skills. Surely the path couldn’t run directly between the swings and the plastic unicorn rocking-horse? I felt conspicuous, as if I were a burglar giving the place the once over. So I gave up the hidden stretch of river and headed to the commons of the beach at Gwithian.