Russell Hoban - Turtle Diary

Back to the van we went without a word. William dragged out the first crate, tipped it on to the trolley and wheeled it away with an amount of noise that would have waked the dead. I followed with the rope. I thought it would take both of us to get the trolley up the incline but William did it by himself. At the breakwater we wrestled the crate off the trolley, laid it on the steps as on a slipway and lowered it with the rope through the ringbolts. ‘Don’t be alarmed, ladies and gentlemen,’ I said, ‘those chains are made of chrome steel.’ William must have seen the film, he was laughing whilst standing on the steps with the tide breaking over his feet.

I gave him slack as he up-ended the crate on the edge of a step, he tilted it forward and with a great splash the turtle hit the water and dived. We hugged and kissed each other, ran back for the next turtle, launched it, then the next. Each one dived under the wild water and was gone. It was done, it had actually happened. Three empty crates and the turtles safely off.

‘The champagne!’ said William. He rushed off, came back with the bottle and the two cups from the Thermos flask. He popped the cork into the wind, the champagne foamed up in the moonlight. ‘Here’s wishing them luck,’ we said, and drank to the turtles. The waves were silver under the moon, the spray flew up from the rocks on either side of the harbour entrance, there was a beacon on the headland. The champagne tasted like clear and bubbling bright new mornings without end. We gulped it greedily and threw the empty bottle into the ocean. The ocean was rough and real, always real, only real. It wasn’t Polperro’s fault that the place had to go begging with souvenirs and money-boxes and a model village. I forgave Polperro, loved it for what it had been and what it now was, for its happiness and sorrow by the sea. I forgave myself for not loving it before, loved myself for loving it now. I forgave everybody everything, felt the Caister two-stone in the pocket of my mac, flung it out into the moonlit ocean.

When I felt the wind on my face and saw that the tide was in it seemed all at once that I didn’t need any answers to anything. The tide and the moon, the beacon on the headland and the wind were so here, so this, so now that nothing else was required. I felt free of myself, unlumbered. Where the moon ended and I began and which was which was of no consequence. Everything was what it was and the awareness of it was part of it.

The crates came out of the van and on to the trolley easily, went up the incline smoothly, there was no separation between crate and trolley and me and motion. It happened, turtles happened into the ocean, champagne happened in the moonlight.

On the way back to the big car-park we stopped at the public lavatory. Adamant, said the urinal. There was a device like the Order of the Garter but with a lion on top. Something that looked like an owl’s face in the middle. Here, now. Coming out I listened to the stream that runs through the village, heard an owl quavering in the dark. Not adamant, nothing adamant.

We pulled into the car-park, I switched off the engine. We got into the back of the van with the eiderdown and the blankets and the pillows. We lay down with our clothes on, side by side with a little space between us. First we lay on our backs then we rolled over on our sides. The space rolled over with us, stayed quietly between us all night, shaped of the front of me and the back of her.

I woke up in the van. Ah yes, I thought, this is where I went to sleep. There was wood near my face smelling salty, oceany. Empty turtle crate. I put my ear to it, listened: silent-roaring ocean. There was rope, I touched it, licked my fingers: salt. I touched the trolley, salty as well. I rolled over, there was William still asleep. It seemed like spying to look at his sleeping face so I got out of the van.

It was afternoon. Vans with curtains in the windows were parked on either side of us and people inside them were being domestic. Refreshment and souvenir stands were open at the car-park entrance. A man with a horse and a bedizened yellow wagon half full of passengers beckoned to me like the coachman who took Pinocchio to the Land of Boobies.

Stupid really, to feel as I did just then: low-spirited and dissatisfied. There was no reason for it. We had come to Polperro to put turtles into the sea and we’d done it.

The sunlight was hot, the sky was blue. I felt all astray. At home the day and I always approached each other by slow degrees: brushing my teeth, washing my face, the first cup of coffee, the first cigarette, opening the post. Here I had nothing, just suddenly some rough beast of a day with vans and curtains and people feeding children.

Scale is a funny thing. Sometimes on hot days everything seems too big and spread out. Not to be grasped by the mind, not to be held in the eye. I thought of winter. Winter grey skies, winter early evenings make London small like a model town. Lighted windows in shops are like model shop windows, tobacconist, launderette, bakery. I saw the little model streets in my mind, the shops. In the model bakery, a three-tiered wedding-cake, great in its tinyness. Pictures of other wedding-cakes: the ‘Windsor’, the ‘Paradise’, the ‘Wedgwood’. Small, small, astonishing detail in the model memory, all there to be found. The model Polperro here at Polperro was still in my mind, I compared it to the model London. The Polperro one was much bigger, huge and thick, not to be held in the mind or in the eye.

When I woke up and saw the bright sunlight the night before seemed far away and small. I was stiff and sore all over. Neaera wasn’t there. I opened the doors and saw her leaning against the concrete wall of the car-park. I thought about the turtles and I couldn’t believe they’d got out to sea against that heavy tide. Surely they’d been beaten back against the breakwater or swept into the harbour through a gap where the boats go in and out. They were probably in the harbour now, they’d probably been picked up by fishermen.

We slowly made our way through tourists and their children to the public lavatory. I hadn’t brought a toothbrush or shaving things or anything. I brushed my teeth with my finger, washed and let it go at that. Slowly and blinking in the sunlight we went to a teashop where we had sausages and eggs. It was while we were eating that I most felt the awkwardness of this morning after. Afternoon actually, worse than a morning. Sometimes I’ve felt that way after sleeping with the wrong person, and the intimacy of sex is nothing compared with the intimacy of driving two hundred and fifty miles at night and putting turtles into the sea. But it wasn’t that, it wasn’t that she was the wrong person for the turtles. I didn’t know what it was. There seemed to be little for us to say to each other. Nothing in fact.

We walked to the harbour. The tide was out when we got there, the boats were standing on their legs or sitting on the mud. The little beach beyond the breakwater displayed broken glass and contraceptives. There were some fishermen sitting on the quay and I asked them when high water had been. Seven in the morning, they said. No one said anything about turtles and there were none in sight. They must have got out to sea all right. We walked back to the car-park, got into the van and drove back to London.

Well, then. This was the back of the turtle thing. Not quite despair as I had thought before. Just a kind of blankness, as blank and foolish as a pelmet lying face-down on the floor with all the staples showing. That’s all right, a pelmet can have a front and a back, it’s only a thing. A dress can have an inside and an outside. A drawing is only on one side of the paper, even a drawing by Rembrandt.