Ring of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell

Author:Gavin Maxwell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: David R. Godine, Publisher

Three · All the Wild Summer Through

WITH THAT SPRING following the publication of Ring of Bright Water the privacy of Camusfeàrna came abruptly to an end. A great number of people who read the book accepted the disguise of place names as a challenge, and were determined to locate and visit the place; they came by their hundreds, and because at first we did not wish to appear churlish the once orderly routine of the house became chaotic. As spring turned to summer and the tourist season reached its height we became desperate, for the inroads upon our time meant that I was able to work only sporadically and without concentration. We erected Private notices on the two tracks by which the house may be approached, but these had little effect, and gradually our days became almost wholly occupied with warding off uninvited visitors. The number of notices that these had to pass before reaching Camusfeàrna was formidable; at the distance of more than a mile all gates already carried estate notices at the entry to the forestry ground, reading Strictly Private; after a further half-mile the hardy encountered the first of my own signboards – This Is A Private Footpath To Camusfeàrna – No Unannounced Visitors Please; then, for those who had penetrated all the outer defences, came an elaborate signboard with a drawing of a beseeching otter and the words: Visitors: There Are Pet Otters Here – Please Keep Dogs On Leash; and finally, at a range of two-hundred yards or so from the citadel, the single word PRIVATE, in foot-high red letters. Despite all these precautions, a steady stream of rubbernecks arrived daily, often with loose and undisciplined dogs, to bang on the single door of the house and demand, as if it were their right, to see the otters and all that had figured in the story.

One of the most extraordinary and revealing aspects of this unconcerted invasion was the conviction of each that he or she, and he or she alone, was the pioneer; that it could not have been possible for any other to have discovered the true location of Camusfeàrna, or for any other to have wished to do so. Each claimed to have established the position by hours of labour with charts and deductive power worthy of Hercule Poirot; by a long past familiarity with the coastline that had yielded a sudden and vital clue; by private information given by a friend of a friend of an acquaintance; by some recognized piece of landscape in a published photograph – always, in sum, by some feat of mental or imaginative agility of which no other could be capable. After one long day, when we had wrestled many hours with such well-disguised angels, and when we were at last sitting down to eat for the first time since the previous evening, there came an authoritative rap on the door and a murmur of perceptibly transatlantic voices. I refused to move, and sent one of the boys to deal with the situation.

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