The Riddle of Samson

  THE

  RIDDLE

  OF

  SAMSON

  ANDREW GARVE

  1954

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  ONE

  The day I crossed to Scilly the islanders had just learned that for the first time in their history they were going to have to pay income tax. The news had come straight out of the blue and they were visibly suffering from shock. On the boat from Penzance it was the sole topic of conversation among the home-going Scillonians. They were resentful, of course, and pretty caustic about the plight that "England" must be in if she had to scrape the barrel to that extent. Some of them aired their grievances to the tourists, taking the opportunity to explain the special circumstances that justified the islands' long immunity from mainland taxes, but most of them gathered in tight groups and debated among themselves. Not all of them were well informed about the exact nature of income tax and one anxious little man seemed to think that all his savings were going to be taken from him. I'd have offered a word of comfort but the moment didn't seem propitious—a hearty visitor who had just butted in with a crack about time being a great healer had had a distinctly cool reception. The fact was that on that April morning the friendly easygoing Scillonians sounded capable of exposing a tax collector on Scilly Rock or even of seceding from the Commonwealth with a little more provocation.

  In case you don't know the Isles of Scilly—the "Fortunate Isles," as the guidebooks like to call them—they're a cluster of five inhabited islands and nearly a hundred and fifty islets and rocks about three hours' steaming from Land's End. There was a time, thousands of years ago, when most of them were joined together in a single land mass, but the land sank and all the central part became a shallow, partially enclosed sea. To the south of this sea now lies St. Mary's, the biggest island of the group; to the northwest are Bryher and Tresco, to the northeast St. Martin's, and to the west the uninhabited Samson. On the outer fringes are the Eastern Rocks and the Western Rocks, with Agnes on its own across a deep channel to the southwest. The whole archipelago is on a miniature scale and to say that it occupies a sea area of about thirty square miles probably gives an exaggerated impression of its size. I suppose a modern airplane could fly from end to end of it in about a minute, and by motor boat you can get from any point in the group to any other point in little more than a quarter of an hour if the weather is good. The islands themselves are all very small—even St. Marys is hardly more than two miles across and you can stroll right round any of the others—the "off islands," as they're called—very comfortably in a morning.

  The total population of the group isn't much more than eighteen hundred and most of that is to be found on St. Mary's, the administrative center, which has a tiny "town" called Hugh Town, a harbor, hotels, shops, surfaced roads, a few motor cars and a little airport. In their time the Scillonians have carried on various occupations—fishing, piloting, wrecking, kelp burning, smuggling and market gardening—but now they seem to have settled for tourists and flower growing, particularly the latter. Having an average winter temperature about that of the French Riviera gives them a long start on everyone else when it comes to early marketing. So now almost every scrap of cultivable land on St. Mary's is laid out in bulb fields, which are sometimes no bigger than a few square yards and are nearly lost behind their tall windbreak hedges of pittosporum and veronica and escallonia. Incidentally, the flowers are picked in bud so the place is never quite the riot of daffodil and narcissus that most people imagine. The "off islands" are much wilder. They have their flower plots, too, in sheltered nooks around their tiny settlements, and Tresco of course has its "Abbey" and world-famous botanical garden, but all the northern part of Tresco and Bryher and St. Martin's is rugged moorland given over to bracken, gorse, and granite.

  Unless you fly—and the planes from Land's End carry so few passengers at a time that it isn't always easy to get a seat—the only way to reach Scilly is by the R.M.S. Scillonian, which mostly does the trip on alternate days—out one day and back the next. She's not a bad little boat, but of course it's a very exposed stretch of sea and sometimes the crossing can be grim.

  However, I was in luck that morning. The weather was superb as we chugged in among the islands, and for once there was hardly a breath of wind. The air was deliciously scented and in the sharp clear light the colors were unbelievably lovely. The sea was a vivid tropical blue as it nearly always is around Scilly—because of the absence of plankton in the water, the books say. Ahead, St. Mary's rose in gentle slopes of green and brown, with the mellow gray roofs of Hugh Town clustered on a narrow isthmus between scimitars of sand. Across the roadstead were more patches of color—the russet of twin-hilled Samson, the blazing gorse of Bryher, the pale gold beaches of Tresco against their background of dark trees. There was nothing ugly or jarring anywhere. The old London taxi on the quay and the two smart constables who constituted the whole police force of the islands seemed no more than amusing incongruities.

  There was nothing hurried, either, as the Scillonian cautiously nosed her way into her berth. The men preparing to take her ropes and handle her cargo, the hotel porters with their hand trucks, the visitors and islanders who had strolled down to meet the ship, all moved with leisurely deliberation. Mainland urgencies had no place here. You could almost see the passengers relaxing as they stepped ashore and wandered off without formality to find their hotels in the miniature town.

  The first thing I did on landing was to look around for my gear. I'd written to Barney Randall—a boatman who ran one of the inter-island launch services and whom I'd come to know rather well on previous visits—asking him if he'd mind ordering locally some of the heavy things that I couldn't easily bring down with me. And here they all were, stacked on the quay under a tarpaulin—a galvanized wheelbarrow, half a dozen big planks, a pick and shovel, two four-gallon cans for fresh water and another can for paraffin, and quite a lot of other stuff besides. I added the army entrenching tool that I'd carted all the way from London because it was particularly good in sand, and let the porter take the tent and sleeping bag and the big suitcase to the Ocean Hotel, where I was booked for one night.

  As I followed him along the narrow main street, past the chemist's shop and the chalked boards announcing which of the islands the motor boats were visiting that day and the window with the shapely bottles of Cornish mead "made by the Druids 400 years ago," I was sharply reminded again that this was Scilly's "Black Day." Although it was lunch-time, quite a few people were standing in the road talking to those who had just come off the boat with news from the grasping mainland. A young workman in dungarees and a cloth cap who had evidently been drowning his sorrows was reeling from group to group calling out in a loud voice, "This tax 'ave 'it me 'orrible!" Outside the Town Hall, a placard said "Protest Meeting 8 P.M." Even in the hotel there was no getting away from the subject, for the unheralded arrival of four newspapermen from London by special plane that morning had complicated the room arrangements and it took a little time to get me fixed up.

  Most of the guests were taking advantage of the fine weather to spend the whole day on one or other of the "off islands," so I lunched almost alone. I had a big program for the afternoon, laying in stores, and directly the shops reopened I borrowed the hotel's hand truck and went off with the list I'd drawn up. Apart from the considerable amount of food that George and I would need there were all the cooking utensils to get, as well as the hundred-and-one minor articles you've got to keep by you when you're camping on a desert island. I had to make several journeys, and when all the stuff was stacked up in the Ocean's annex it looked as though a major expedition were about to set off into the unknown. I dispatched a card to George telling him that everything was under control and then went for a stroll round the little western peninsula of the island called the Garrison, which is famous for the fact that in the Civil War the King's men were still holding out there against Parliament years after everyone else had stopped fighting. Apart from its historical associations, I always think that it offers about the finest short walk in Scilly.

  By the time I got back to the Ocean the launches had returned with their loads of holiday makers and the spacious bar was beginning to fill up. I'd arranged to meet Barney there but he hadn't arrived yet so I ordered a half of bitter and turned to see what sort of company the evening had brought. It was a pretty mixed crowd. There was the usual bunch of high-spirited girls with wind-polished cheeks and peeling noses, flirting with the boatmen and clamoring to be taken round the Bishop Lighthouse. There were two eager young people arguing whether a bit of stone they'd picked up on Bryher that day was moss agate or not, and there was a youngish man in well-cut tweeds discussing bird watching with a white-haired old boy in a blazer. There was a party of four women together, probably schoolmistresses, with stout shoes and bramble-scratched legs, and two couples sibilant in corners who were stamped all over as honeymooners. And of course there were the locals—the flower farmers and shopkeepers and businessmen, still harping on the iniquities of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

&
nbsp; Presently there was a new and noisy influx. Five men, who appeared to be carrying on a running argument, swept in like a minor avalanche, preceded by a most striking-looking girl. She was dark, and tall for a woman, and though her expression was too hard and aloof for my taste she had a highly individual land of good looks. It was her clothes that caught everyone's eye, though. She was wearing a pleated tartan skirt in dark greens and a black turtle-neck sweater and a cream leather jacket with a lot of heavy black stitching on it and nylon net stockings and beautiful shoes in hand-sewn natural leather. The general effect was extremely elegant but a bit spectacular for Scilly—it was the sort of rig-out you see advertised as smart holiday wear in the glossier fashion magazines. She seemed a little detached from the rest of her party and after she had accepted a glass of sherry from one of the men she turned away rather coldly and gazed around the room in a haughty, self-possessed way, obviously sizing everybody up. She got some pretty fierce stares in return and the collective antagonism of the windswept girls with their bare legs and ankle socks and tankards was palpable.

  At first I couldn't place the new arrivals at all. They were certainly not residents and although they were lively enough they lacked the invincible cheerfulness of holiday makers. It wasn't until I heard one of the men say something about an "interview" that I realized they must be the Press. Four of them were quite young fellows, neatly dressed and "towny" and rather nondescript. The fifth, who was wearing a sports jacket and flannels and a checked wool shirt, was considerably older and a lot more impressive. He was a big man, with a rich brown beard and mustache, a deep resonant voice, and the heaviest pair of horn-rimmed glasses I'd ever seen. It was he who'd been doing most of the talking as they came in, and as soon as they'd got their drinks he leaned back against the bar, very much at ease, and continued to hold forth as though he were conducting a seminar. He gestured freely as he talked, waving in one hand an enormous empty pipe and in the other a bulging tobacco pouch. He was aggressively uninhibited and was talking about the Scillies and the Scillonians as though they were something under a microscope rather than a living—and potentially resentful—reality all around him.

  "The Fortunate Isles?" he said rhetorically, ramming tobacco into his pipe and spilling about half an ounce on the floor. "I'll say they're fortunate. Pampered's the word. Just look at the money the Duchy's spent on them! Look at the visitors who come pouring in all the year round! Look at the flower industry! You're not telling me the farmers don't make fortunes out of a hundred million flowers a year?"

  "Eighty million, Ronnie," said a stocky little man in a tone of mild reproof.

  "Well, eighty million, if you like," Ronnie said. "Whatever the figure, they're still rolling. Look at the dough that chap left in his will the other day—twenty-two thousand pounds! No wonder they can spend their holidays in Cannes and Bermuda! I wouldn't mind betting a lot of them are making a cool five thousand a year. They've nothing to squeal about—they ought to have been taxed long ago." He took a gulp of what appeared to be neat whisky and began to light his pipe, blowing out a huge cloud of smoke and a shower of sparks. Between puffs he kept glancing across at the girl as though seeking her approval of his harangue.

  The stocky man said: "That's all very well, but this tax is going to hit everybody, not just the wealthy farmers. It's bound to mean higher freights, and you can't get away from the fact that prices here are already far above those on the mainland. Elevenpence for a loaf of bread is no joke, after all, and . . ."

  "I agree," Ronnie interrupted, "but why are prices so high? Because the chaps who run the boats are piling up whacking profits—that's why. They're simply soaking the rest of the islanders."

  A pasty youth with long hair and a supercilious expression said: "Easy, old boy, we're not alone."

  "Personally," said the stocky man, dropping his voice, "I reckon they earn every penny they get. It must be damned hard work keeping a service going in all weathers—and pretty hazardous, too, at times."

  "Hazardous? My dear chap, there's nothing difficult about these waters. All you've got to do is study the rocks at low tide and after that it's child's play."

  "Damned precocious child!" said the stocky man.

  Ronnie ignored that. "Now where I learned my sailing, in the Thames Estuary, it really is tricky—mudbanks everywhere and not much shelter. Here you've only got to watch the bottom and keep inside the islands and you can't go wrong."

  "Then how did you manage to crack that plank in Truant?" asked the supercilious youth.

  "Hell," said Ronnie, "you can't avoid rocks when a boat's almost out of control. With the mizzen gone and only a jury rudder I was darned lucky to reach an anchorage at all." He drained his glass and looked inquiringly around. "What about some more drinks?"

  The girl shook her head. The others had beer and Ronnie stuck to whisky. He produced a bundle of loose notes from a side pocket and flung one of them carelessly on the counter.

  "Anyway," persisted the stocky man, "I still think you're wrong about the boatmen. There's a lot of competition, don't forget—and look at the capital they've got tied up. Those big launches cost anything up to a couple of thousand."

  "The trouble with you, Bill," said Ronnie, "is that you don't understand economics and you believe what people tell you. That flower farmer we talked to this morning, for instance—why, the figures he gave us were as phony as he was. When I saw you solemnly taking them all down I nearly died. . . ." Suddenly Ronnie's features seemed to crumple and change, and he began to talk in an affected drawl that was obviously intended to be an imitation of someone they'd all met. It must have been a good imitation, too, for there was a gale of laughter, in which the supercilious youth joined. Even the girl gave a fleeting smile.

  I lost track of the reporters after that. As I turned to have my own glass refilled I saw that a man standing beside me had a map spread out on the counter—and a map, even a familiar one, is something I always find it hard to resist. He was an odd-looking character of about my own age—very spare and angular, with bony wrists and knobbly sunburned knees lapped by a pair of gray flannel shorts that looked as though they'd been cut down from "longs." At his feet there was a rucksack of crippling size. He seemed a friendly soul and we soon fell into a typical Scillies conversation about the islands and their comparative attractions. This, I gathered, was his first visit, and he was full of enthusiasm and determined not to miss anything. He'd been in the place for only three days but he'd already explored Tresco, Bryher and St. Martin's, besides taking in the eight-mile coastline of St. Mary's in a morning. He liked walking, he told me, not only for the interest but for the exercise.

  "Don't you find the islands a bit cramping?" I asked him.

  "Well," he said with a gentle smile, "I do sometimes go round them twice. As a matter of fact I was just wondering if I could give myself an extra mile or two by walking across from Tresco to Samson? It looked today as though it might be possible."

  "Oh, yes," I said, "that's perfectly feasible if the tides are right."

  "The boatman was saying this morning that they're going to be exceptionally low for the next few days."

  "In that case you should have no difficulty at all. Samson Flats run out almost to Tresco and I've often seen the channel practically dry in between."

  He looked pleased. "Then I think I'll have a shot at it tomorrow."

  "If you want to do something really strenuous," I said, "why not try walking from here to Tresco and then on to Samson?"

  He looked through the window at the blue expanse of sea. "From here to Tresco! You don't mean that, surely? The roadstead can't be as shallow as that."

  "No, but further along there's a sand bar—Crow Bar, they call it. It runs from Bar Point on St. Mary's across to Tobaccoman's Point on Tresco, and the distance isn't more than a mile." I indicated the route on his map. "Some people say it's an old Roman causeway, but there's no evidence for that. I'm inclined to think it's a huge natural sand dune that's been slowly eroded."

  "And it actually uncovers at low water?"

  "I don't know that it's ever quite dry, but there wouldn't be more than a foot or two at low water springs and that would only be for a short distance. People certainly have crossed."