I have taken almost a month to read Horatio Clare's first volume of autobiography Running for the Hills, and waited a few more weeks before I have sat down to write about it. A few chapters read hither and yon with time to ponder in between, and I have come to the conclusion that this is one of the best memoirs I have read in ages. Not easy to strike the balance between the adult-self reliving the child-self and find the voice, or to make a book interesting enough to have me eager to start the next volume; I've read many a memoir where one volume is plenty.
The first child of journalist parents Jenny Williams and John (known as Robert in the book) Clare, young Horatio spends much of his childhood on a seventy-two acre working hill farm in Wales, bought for £11,000 and with sheep thrown in. His mother in particular wants to escape London and brings passion and instinct to the role of a sheep farmer that she rapidly has to undertake, whilst Robert takes a much more considered approach buying the books, identifying the problem, talking to people who know and applying logic and reasoning with Jenny still dashing about learning on the hoof.
The results are at times eye-wateringly chaotic, and having recently read The Shepherd's Life, and James Rebanks words of caution to any would- be shepherds, my eyes were out on stalks of incredulity at the life the family plunged themselves into.
'It is a leap backwards through centuries of time. It is an attempt to gather in the fraying threads of old ways and plait them into a lifeline...'
Thus comments an adult Horatio Clare having watched an old cine film of his mother and Jack, the farm hand (Jack in reality much more than that, more the wisdom required for the farm to function) both of them at work in the sheep pens.
It is a chance for adult observation to blend with childhood recollection, and with it the realisations and reflections that make Running for the Hills so compelling. There are moment of rosy happiness but there are plenty of moments of misery, fear and anxiety too as a young Horatio and his brother Alexander watch their parent's marriage disintegrate in the face of Jenny's insistence on sticking with the tough and isolated farming life. Horatio watches his parents not so much drift apart as set sail as Robert chooses London and his career whilst Jenny chooses the farm and the children.
'Her heart was no mystery at all. It beat for her children and her farm.'
As a child often dragged out to help on that farm, and one particular day demanding hours and hours of catching and holding the reluctant sheep in the pens, Horatio has his own idea of what may have gone wrong...
'I thought darkly of my father's departure and decided that there was no mystery to it at all. He probably resented being used as a sort of sheep dog with arms.'
Once the couple have separated for good, and only after Jenny has returned to London with them to give city life and togetherness one more chance, life for the family becomes even harder. Determined that her children will live their lives steeped, infused and marinated in the countryside, the work to keep the farm afloat is relentless, daunting and back-breaking as well as a continuous drain on already limited finances, yet Jenny soldiers on regardless. With spirits undimmed (I'd have cracked at maneouvering a car up the precipitous track for starters) she ensures some truly magical moments for her boys in amongst the hardships... ones that must surely set a child up for life regardless of what may follow, and it is clear Horatio Clare can bring them to the fore with ease...
The snow at Christmas...
'The valley a twinkling masterpiece, as if the starlight had thickened and fallen on the world.'
Watching the badger cubs......
'adorable fat little bears full of play and trepidation...we had known the edge of an evening wood as a badger knows it...we had slipped the separation between us and the world.'
And then there are the smells...once known never forgotten...
'Freshly baled hay is a plaited harmony of scents, reeking of clover, old suns and cut grasses, rain and earth and dew...'
Of these things it would seem are memories and resilience made, and with Horatio Clare's vivid recollections it is clear his mother's plan had worked...
'She encouraged us to stop and drink in the beauty, to set sights in our minds like postcards...'
We do it all the time here, especially at this time of year, as if we are storing up some mental light-bright days to counter the winter grey.
Our field behind the house (not ours at all but we pretend) had just been cut as I read and it was all enough for me to go out and capture the moment, to smell the 'old suns' for use in the depths of January...
There are un-favourite things in Horatio's life too... crows, maggots flies, magpies, thorns, thistles, barbed wire, rain... I'd add in horseflies (huge and plenteous this year) and slugs (equally huge and plenteous) and all is not set fair in young Horatio's world. With his father absent he frequently assumes the role of man of the house whilst nursing a deep-rooted fear that he may somehow lose his mother. There is a form of surrogacy evident, the child containing the anxieties of the parent, and along with the isolation and the sparsity of peer-group contact outside school it isn't hard to see a childhood that may be cooking potential problems in later life.
But this is also a childhood full of adventure and freedom as well as books and reading. so one that may well breed some very useful life-skills to take into adulthood, particularly self-sufficiency and resourcefulness, so I am looking forward to reading the sequel Truant where I think things may all be about to go horribly wrong.
I won't spoilt the ending of Running for the Hills because nothing is ever certain as you read, but I do want to share one of Horatio Clare's wonderful and very true observations...
'Baler twine holds the countryside together...'
He's right, it does, never without it here.
Recent Comments