Many Lives by Stephanie Beacham

Author:Stephanie Beacham
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Memoir
Publisher: Hay House, Inc.
Published: 2011-10-23T16:00:00+00:00

The house on Dartmoor

Imagine this: the River Dart is down below, twinkling. You’re standing in the garden of the cottage. There’s a pony, there’s a horse, there’s a donkey and there are geese – and you are in heaven. You’ve made your way through the farmyard, the farm gate and the sheep dip. You’d driven up over the moors, and where the car got stuck is where the car will stay until you try to dig it out in a few days’ time. You’ve unloaded the car and, because it’s dark, walked towards the lights of Princetown. Then, following the lights of the prison you get to the stone shepherd’s cottage. When you arrive, you open the back door. You’re greeted by chickens and, yes, they do live inside and, frankly, the only clean place is Odin’s stable, because he’s the hero of everything. Being a mighty horse, he’s kept immaculate. Everything else is Dartmoor shambles. But the sheets are of the finest linen, and the comforters are pure down, because they were bought in a sale at a great house.

Pammy was once snowed in for six weeks. She heard the helicopter and when she saw that it was the Army coming to rescue her she thought she’d better give them a proper welcome. She stripped down and put on her suspender belt and stockings, no doubt laddered, and her lift-up bra. She opened the door in her underwear, saying, ‘Nice to see you boys.’

Dartmoor was fine alternative living; the continuation of my fabulous hippie days. Pammy lives in New Zealand now with her husband, the poet Cliff Fell. She used to live with another dear friend who was called Hairy Pete. When they moved to Dartmoor his name changed to Fairy Pete.

It wasn’t until Pammy was seven months along that she realized she was pregnant with her last baby. When she found out, she phoned me and asked if I would put a phone in at the Dartmoor house. ‘They say I can’t have the baby on the moors unless I’ve got a telephone,’ she told me. ‘Of course I’ll put one in,’ I assured her. That’s the only reason she was the slightest bit interested in having one. Before then, arrivals had always been forewarned telepathically, and were usually a day or so in or out.

Dartmoor is a haven in my heart and I can go there at any time. When my grandmother was very old and living in a care home, I asked her what she did all day. She looked up at a picture hanging on the wall. ‘I go there,’ she answered. Just as my grandmother had lived in her picture, after she was moved from her sweet bungalow with her budgerigar and roses to an old people’s home, I can go to that sweet cottage on Dartmoor. In every cell of my body I can smell the wood smoke, hear the laughter, feel the good living and taste the often very erratic food – because we’d often run out of stuff.

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