Burning Bush Stony Ground: Gibraltar Sojourn

By J. L. Fiol

These stories, along with others, are randomly scattered among the pages of Troubled Water & other irregularities, The Devil in French & other musings, When it was the War & other conflicts, Second Coming & other upheavals, and The View from Below & other peerings.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: May 12, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496978011

J. L. Fiol

N/A

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© 2014 J.L. Fiol. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse   05/08/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4969-7800-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-7801-1 (e)

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Foreword

Thread Endings

The Chastening of Biffo

The Miracle of the Eyes

The Church Militant

The Sound of Silence

Wind Changes

Troubled Water

Palmero Goes Wild

Bunny Hops Off

Sampere Unfrocked

Gone Leafin’

Farewell, Mr Robba

The Black Magic Selection

Sweden in the Lunch Hour

Heroes

My Father, the Russian Cat

The Cakes of Wrath

Passport Control

The Cup Runneth (over)

Password: Basilio

Passion Fruit & Veg

The Stump and the Strongbone

Tarzan of the Rock Apes

Happy Days

Other Titles

Troubled Water… . & other irregularities

The Devil in French… . & other musings

When it was the War… . & other conflicts

Second Coming… . & other upheavals

The View from Below… . & other peerings

Record: Drawings, Paintings, Aquaflo, Constructs,

         Exhibitions, Notes, Films, Project, Books

For My Family

Foreword

These stories, along with others, are randomly scattered among the pages of ‘Troubled Water… & other irregularities’, ‘The Devil in French… & other musings’, ‘When it was the War… & other conflicts’, ‘Second Coming… & other upheavals’, and ‘The View from Below… & other peerings’.

This selection comes with the intention of setting the stories into broad categories and is the first of what, hopefully, will be others under the umbrella title of ‘Burning Bush, Stony Ground’.

All the stories here included have, to greater or lesser extent, undergone alterations, either through a change in perspective, emphasis, point of entry and in two instances, a change in titles.

The intentions behind all the stories, as also the circumstances of their making, have already been touched upon, at some length, in the introductions to the books listed above. These remain constant.

In connection with Gibraltar, I have made liberal use of names. They are names which I have known and are used for the sole purpose of authenticity. They do not refer to or describe any persons living or dead.

J.L.F.

Cornwall 2013.

Thread Endings

I cannot say that I felt fear when I finally went back. Perhaps it was to be expected. Forty-eight years had passed. I was in the company of a guide and there were lights everywhere.

Not like that one time all those years ago. Alone. In utter darkness.

When I think about it, I wasn’t frightened then. Not at first. When Excitement holds centre stage, Fear knows to stay in the wings. The fear came later. It was more than fear. A terror. Lodged in the very marrow. The body paralysed. The brain assaulted by primordial dread of the point at which human-ness ceases. Even infinitely worse, that at which human-ness begins.

Afterwards came the anguish. The need to understand.

Why else go back to rake over the ashes, if not to search for some fragment from which to reconstruct some semblance of the whole. A thread which might link events that could otherwise be dismissed as merely a series of coincidences. Perhaps innate preoccupations drive events. Or at least the way in which we perceive them. Perhaps we have a tendency to seize on coincidence, so as to give significance to individual lives. Perhaps there is a desire, if not a need, to identify linear patterns of sequence imbued with higher purpose.

But how to harness thoughts and feelings into significant sequence, when a thought or feeling in the present can be a recycled memory, or a dream, an aspiration for the future or regret from the past.

I was reluctant to go back. It was close on half a century since I left and I hadn’t been back since. Returning had become more difficult with the passing years. There might have been some apprehension regarding ghosts and perhaps a wariness of false expectations.

Then something abrupt and totally unforeseen happened which seemed to indicate that perhaps it was time to bite the bullet. Overnight, as it seemed to me, I lost all ability to connect with work. Moreover, all interest in the whole business of Art just evaporated. It was a curious state of affairs in that I had just completed a large painting (Imperative 2), set up a workroom, prepared the canvas and was all set, armed with copious jottings, to tackle the third in an intended series.

Conforming to determined pattern, it should have been an occasion for angst, ranting, raving or the scaling of walls. At the very least a withdrawal into uncommunicative moroseness. Instead, there was detached passivity—and it was not as if I was zonked by the side-effects of any prescribed medication. Nor, will I point out, by the soothing caress of alcohol.

We are told that Nature abhors a vacuum and, sure enough, the filling up began. In a curious way. It took the form of mental journeys through the streets of my boyhood and adolescence. They came without any conscious attempt at retrieval on my part, as I sat with eyes open in bemused lethargy, entranced at the imagery projected on that screen which we use for dreams.

The startling part was the detail in the recall, if recall it was. I found that I was able to select some route from A to B and experience the journey in some strange complete reality. And not just in terms of topography. There was an emotional component. It was the detail that was overwhelming: the pattern of peeling paint on a particular door; geometric cracks on paving stones; accumulated rust on the underside of railings; the bulge in chain-link fencing; the dent in a lamppost; revealed layers of pink and white on green-painted shutters. On and on. Tedious to excruciating in the telling: fascinating in the experiencing.

(Once again, to avoid speculation, I should say that at no time did I hear voices which, had that been the case, might have cast different implications on this narrative).

In contrast to the wealth of sensation of the very detailed recall, then came a void. A blackness. Independent of the absence of light. That time it filled with foreboding. Anxiety. Apprehension. There was an advancing and a retreating. Then a succession of flash-lit images among them that depicted in my painting ‘Imperative 1’: openings into darkness; indeterminate silhouettes. Then a feeling I can only describe as incompleteness, something unresolved. Insistent. Strident.

I arrived at the thought that possibly the long-delayed visit to past places might, if not exactly provide answers, at least help to restore energy and a sense of purpose.

But I needed some sort of starting point. Something other than emotional regression or fanciful projections. Something palpable and verifiable. Some small link which, with the subsequent addition of others, might be fashioned into a chain of sorts. Something in black and white, as they say.

I found it, among old papers. Granted, the black and white was tainted with yellow. But what better and more literal than an old newspaper clipping? It was dated 1952, which justified the yellow cast. The cutting came from the Gibraltar Chronicle. The piece was headed ‘Rope Rescue of Cave Explorers’.

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We were taking a break from the hectic gun-drill rehearsals in preparation for our coming Passing-Out parade. I stood at the wall of the parade ground with fellow conscript Emilio Hernandez, looking down on Rosia Bay. Sipping the insipid NAAFI tea in the white concrete mugs, we weighed up the possibility of being able to make our way down the cliff, after lights out at some future time, with a view to a spot of unauthorised absence from barracks. As it turned out, we were not able to avail ourselves of the opportunity.

One dismal Sunday, some weeks after demob, found me strolling, in my capacity as civilian, along the then deserted parade ground. With me one Alfred Dawle who, due for conscription himself was avid for details regarding my role in the defence of the Realm. During the guided tour, we stopped at the wall overlooking Rosia Bay, where I touched on the possibility offered by the cliff for arriving at the beach below.

Then the thought occurred, although by then of purely academic interest since it no longer served me any useful purpose, as to whether it was indeed possible to access the beach below, with the proviso of doing so without undue velocity.

Well, in a spirit of enquiry, we clambered over the wall. If one cannot be foolhardy at nineteen, what chance is there once prudence kicks in.

Some fifty feet down from the wall, we came to an overhang, where we paused to consider the best way to get past it. A small twisted olive tree grew close to where we were. Partly obscured by its branches there appeared to be a dark shape which did not accord with the piebald grey of the limestone. It turned out to be an opening in the rock of roughly triangular shape, perhaps some two feet wide at the base.

Retaining the spirit of enquiry, with stomach to the ground, we were able to squeeze through the opening and were surprised to find ourselves in a sizeable chamber. As our eyes adjusted from the sunlight, we could see what appeared to be further openings in the rock around the area of the cavern in more or less direct line from the one through which we had entered. Distracted from our original enterprise, we resolved to return to that cavern, suitably equipped with some form of lighting to explore what we assumed to be passages perhaps leading deeper into the rock.

Once outside, we opted to return the way we had descended from the wall, rather than negotiate the overhang. It was then that we made another discovery.

We appeared to be stranded on that ledge. We had half-jumped half-clambered down to it. Crawling back was another matter, with the added possibility of sliding back and over the ledge. There was nothing for it but to sit it out and wait for dusk and hopefully attract the attention of courting couples on the beach below, which suddenly seemed rather a long way down.

Eventually, with a combination of hollering, semaphore, dislodging loose rocks and frantic pointing at the wall above, we made ourselves understood.

In due course three men, earnest of aspect, complete with helmets, ropes and assorted hardware, joined us at the ledge to deliver a homily on health and safety. We listened duly chastened, my mind racing to concoct a viable reason to account for my late arrival at home. One running along different lines to those of our escapade. My plea in mitigation was reluctantly accepted through lack of available evidence to the contrary.

Then three days later, that unnecessarily alarming article in the Chronicle landed Alfred and me well and truly in it.

Complicit in shared adversity, the bond of acquaintance between Alfred and myself strengthened into comradeship. Within it we envisaged further enterprises in which ignomy aspired to the heroic. With singular fixity of purpose we were able to secure a bank loan towards the purchase of a sailing vessel which would facilitate a maritime enterprise which in turn embodied the potential to have recourse to the Lifeboat Rescue Service.

While Alfred was a competent and enthusiastic sailor, I languished in the surmise that, having dispensed with gills for some time now, it was somewhat unseemly to revert to the aquatic: a disposition which might appear at odds with the ownership of half of a floating article. But that would be to just skim along the surface of what can motivate purpose and to disregard the vagaries of the human psyche. To further confuse the issue, I extracted one cast-iron condition from the bemused Alfred. Such was his delirium in the ownership of the vessel and at the prospect of our joint venture, that he would readily have consented to put his grandmother up for public auction.

However, my condition did not involve such extremes. It was simply that I would not set foot on the vessel until the very time of our setting off on the venture. On the face of it an obtuse and adverse requirement. It hinged on the belief that there are certain undertakings, of a daunting nature, that are best tackled in ignorance and relying on faith. As I saw it, Alfred was more than happy to organise the raising of spinnakers and dodging of swinging booms. I, on the other hand would be an extra pair of hands, whilst providing the inspirational and spiritual underpinning of the enterprise. The premise of the abdominal logic rested on the feeling that, placed in extreme and daunting conditions, it is possible to have recourse to sources otherwise untapped, when life is lived at a certain intensity. It can be likened to a confidence trick played on oneself. I have had opportunity to employ the ruse on subsequent occasions.

Alfred duly embarked on intensive training as preparation for the projected venture, tacking ceaselessly across the Bay, obsessive with all aspects of seafaring competence. I remained landlocked, equally obsessive about that opening behind the olive tree.

One day of favourable breeze while Alfred traversed across the Bay, I made my way to Rosia Beach. Finding my bearings by the parade ground wall, I was able to locate the olive tree above. I set about finding a route to the tree from below. Luck was on my side and I managed to reach the tree and also return to the beach without incurring another article in the Chronicle.

On a blustery Saturday, propitious for sailing, I set off once again towards the olive tree. Although feeling uneasy, I needed, for whatever reason, to go on my own.

Once more inside the chamber, I set about getting my equipment ready. The source of light would come from a prototype of my own design, which I was keen to test. It consisted of an empty baked beans tin with one end taken out and the other punctured with numerous holes. Held at the horizontal, it contained a candle stub secured with melted wax. A de-luxe feature was a bent wire handle with which to hold the tin and crucially minimise its potential to deliver first degree burns when heated. Other equipment consisted of additional stubs along with matches and a specialist item: a reel of black cotton thread.

When lit the lighting equipment worked at peak, casting a beam to the front and a constellation at the rear from the punctured end. I tied the thread to a loose rock on the ground. Invoking the powers of chance, I selected one of the passages and slowly entered it, paying out the thread as I went along. At first the going was easy, with enough room to be able to walk upright with enough width. Then the passage narrowed, making it necessary to squeeze along sideways. Then came a particularly difficult stretch where I needed to alternate between going on hands and knees and crawling in snake fashion. It was very tiring and I was relieved when I was able to stand again.

I stopped to regain breath and take stock of my surroundings. Wherever I pointed my light, other than in the direction from where I’d come, I was unable to make out anything of substance. I appeared to have arrived at a space of indeterminate dimensions. Hoping to detect some slight seepage of light, which might indicate another opening, I blew out the flame from the candle stub, only to fumble in haste to re-light it.

Never before had I experienced such darkness. It was other than darkness for it seemed that, rather than resulting from the negation of light it had positive existence. Vital. Ominous. An anti-light. As if it had been held at bay, brooding to claw dominion, by the tiny flame. Exulting the instance the flame was extinguished.

With the stub re-lit and a shake of the head to divert the traffic in my neural pathways elsewhere, I turned around and began gathering the thread with the intention of returning to the chamber and try to find out where the other passages led, if anywhere.

I was crawling through the awkward stretch when I registered a sound which I put down to my body scraping along the ground. However, when I paused to take a breather, the sound persisted. It was faint, regular. A soughing. Susurration. I held my breath, trying to determine the direction from which it came but confused by even fainter echoes. As far as I could make out it came from somewhere behind and, judging by the volume, from some distance away.

The sound rose in pitch. Louder. A paralysis spread over me. The sound was a laboured exhalation. The roots of my hair screamed to be heard above the thumping in my chest, sending shock waves to my ears. It was behind me. Close. My legs broke the paralysis. Kicking back in spasms.

I have no recollection of coming out of that opening in the rock. I remember an explosion of light and the blessed balm in the celestial blue of God’s good light.

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I tapped once on the door and entered. That was the easy part. Coming out would be a different matter entirely. It was always the same. It was necessary for me to go into Mr. Lorris’ office in the course of my duties at the Secretariat.

Mr Lorris was one of three Assistant Colonial Secretaries. Not that you’d guess it if you spoke to him and much less so if he spoke to you. Mr Lorris exuded a certain disconnection perhaps arising from what I presumed was a conflict of interests. For the Assistant Secretary, despite his designated post, which was administrative, aspired to the condition of Archaeologist: his office to that of a Museum. In the course of our acquaintance, I was to learn that he possessed a degree in Archaeology. Over that period I was to be given a personal introduction to most of the multitude of excavated fragments which littered every available flat surface in his office.

On that particular occasion, he waxed lyrical over a fragment of bone reputed to be some million years old that Tuesday. To the indifferent it might have appeared as a stale bit of Cadbury’s Flake chocolate. Having exhausted the known details of the fragment’s parentage, he launched into his signature topic: the Civilization of Crete and specifically the Minoan Period.

In an effort to stem the flow and so be able to attend to my duties, I mentioned that prehistoric remains had been unearthed in one of the caves in Gibraltar. The throwaway line seemed to entrance Mr Lorris, whose hand went involuntarily to the specimen hammer next to his blotter. I myself, without the use of a spade, proceeded to dig a deeper hole for myself with a casual mention regarding my knowledge of local caves.

Thereupon Mr L abruptly left his chair with the exclamation what a great coincidence. It appeared that he was expecting a visit from two University friends in a fortnight’s time. Apparently keen Speleologists and would I consider taking him and his friends on a tour of the subterranean wonders of my allusion.

I had managed to put the incident inside the opening behind the olive tree to the back of my mind, with time and daily preoccupations helping to distance the incident into unreality. I wouldn’t have been keen to return just in the company of Mr Lorris, doubting his ability to confront heavy breathing with equanimity. However, a group of four would provide a reasonable measure of reassurance. Further, it would give me an opportunity to explore the other passages. I agreed to the tour and made good my escape.

I took Mr Lorris and his two friends through my hole in the rock. What with numbers in the group, the blinding lights from their helmets, the abundance of sandwiches and ginger beer, along with the constant tapping of Mr Lorris’ hammer, there was little room for the laboured breathing. Other than that coming from one member of the party who obviously was out of condition. With the three searchlights augmenting my candle stub, we were able to determine the dimension of that space which I had previously come upon when emerging from the passage. Huge it was. Complete with vaulted ceiling and described by one awestruck member of the group as the interior of a cathedral. We were able to ascertain that the other passages converged on that vast space. If the guided were to be believed, the tour was a success. Mr Lorris was elated and back at the office expressed his thanks by insisting that I borrow his lavishly illustrated ‘Minoan Civilization’. Word spread and I lost count of the personages eager to squeeze through the opening behind the olive tree. A large percentage were propelled in my direction by Mr Lorris. One particularly memorable party, introduced to the wonders of the underworld, comprised staff from the Secretariat and included the entire Typing Pool. I acquired a spurious knowledge of Gibraltar’s connection with antiquity as well as its folklore and thus was able to add a little seasoning to the subterranean experience.

Mr Lorris asked me how I was getting on with ‘Minoan Civilization’. I hoped my confusion didn’t show when I gave the glib answer of finding it fascinating. Disturbing would have been a better word. I had flicked through the excellent illustrations and frozen at a certain page with another of those scalp/heart/ears moments. Granted, in the light of day it registered low on the scale but nonetheless there was a definite frisson.

Along with the text, the page included what must have been an etching depicting the Minotaur in which the man’s body appeared to be staggering under the weight of his massive bull’s head. What unsettled me was recognising the creature as that in recurring dreams when I would have been around thirteen years of age.

The dreams followed the time when my parents took me and my younger brother to the Easter Fair in La Linea, across the