The bus might have stopped at Treen of Senner. It`s a little hard to remember, but I know we weren`t far from Land`s End, the westernmost and southernmost tip of Cornwall, in England.
Pam, our tour director, had told us we might see the Scilly Isles, but our luck wasn`t running that way. There was a heavy fog just off shore and it looked like it was moving in.
Two old men, faces weatherbeaten like the figures on a toby mug, sat on a bench facing the sea. One of the tourists, a lady in her middle years, approached them.
”May I take your picture?”
One of the men pulled his cap down and tried to draw his chin into his coat. The other just waved his hands as if pushing the whole idea out of his mind.
”Oh, no, ma`am, you mustn`t do that. You see, the police are after us.”
The lady, clearly disappointed, put her lens cap back on.
”Course, if you did take our picture, I suppose we could hide out in the pub.”
The lady was confused but Pam stepped foreward. ”Gentlemen,” she said. ”As long as you`re headed that way, perhaps I might stand you for a drink.”
”Now, that would be very nice. Ham`l, take off your cap.” The other man pulled his chin out of his collar, took his cap off and both men stood and faced the lady with the camera, smiling. ”Wait, before you take our photograph, would you be good enough to take the lens cap off your camera?”
She took her picture, a few coins changed hands and the two men went back to their bench.
As Joyce and I sat on the other end, one of the men turned to us.
”Terrible thing,” he said.
”What?” said Joyce. ”What`s a terrible thing?”
The moment she spoke, both men tipped their caps and half rose as we introduced ourselves. They said they were Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Speaks and that they were pleased to make our acquaintance.
Mr. Hamilton continued: ”What I was saying was there`s few enough ways, here, for a man to make a little for his pocket, and now some fellow`s gone and bought Land`s End. And he`s going to charge everyone who comes just for the look. A terrible thing to take a view that`s always been free and charge money for it.”
Mr. Speaks shook his head. ”The big tour companies will never pay. The buses will stop arriving. The Americans, the Japanese and the Germans will never come here anymore and there`ll be precious little left. The good times are all gone.”
The tour director called out and the driver of our bus tapped the horn. As we all filed back on, the two old men got up and walked toward the village. The driver turned his key and pushed a button a couple of times, but nothing happened. Pam slipped back into her high heels and she and the driver got off the bus for a few minutes, then got back on and went through the whole routine once more before the driver gave the button a last push and declared the bus ”temporarily dead.”
Pubs are great places to wait, but the legal hours seem to close them up at all the wrong times. The restaurant was open, though; the coffee pots were started, more water was set to boil for tea and an elderly lady put on a shawl and ”ran” for scones and clotted cream.
The conversation was already going, thanks to the two old men, who`d gotten there ahead of us. The proprietor sipped his tea as if wetting his throat and then lit into the two. ”You`re doom-shouting again,” he said.
”Now, you wait a minute,” said Mr. Speaks. ”It makes no sense to chew over old arguments when we have a very wise person among us, a professional lady.” When several of the women in our tour group laughed, including Pam, he realized how his words sounded. ”I mean the director of a fine, important, tour company.”
”Miss, with the sale of Land`s End,” the proprietor cut in, ”what do you think is going to become of us here?”
”The Lord will provide,” said one of the regular customers.
”Oh, you`ll survive,” said Pam. ”You`re a race of survivors. If the Lord doesn`t provide, you`ll provide for yourselves, like you always have.”
She`d struck a good chord.
”But there`s talk of a big hotel.”
Pam held up her hands. ”Almost 100 years ago, for an exposition in Paris, the French government built a great tower designed by a man named Eiffel. The French hated it. They said it would be the ugliest thing in the world, that it would ruin the city and that no one would come to Paris anymore, ever.
”Now, they love it.”
”That`s right enough,” Mr. Hamilton acknowledged.
”And 280 years before Christ, the government of Rhodes built a great bronze statue. It was of a man, hands on hips, feet planted on the two points of land on either side of the harbor, straddling the seaway.
”It took 12 years to build and, from what I`ve read, the people hated it. `Who,` they asked, `will ever want to sail his ship under such a thing. The world will laugh at us.` The people grew to love the great bronze giant that stood so tall and reflected the sun like fire. And as for people laughing, it was considered one of the seven wonders of the world.
”It was said that when an earthquake destroyed The Colossus in 224 B.C., Rhodes began to fail. It never recovered from the blow.”
”Almost every change,” said Pam, ”meets with fear and doom-shouting.”
”I suppose,” the proprietor said, ”the Egyptians weren`t all that thrilled at having those pyramids cluttering up their desert.” Everybody laughed.
”And the great rocks at Stonehenge,” said someone else. ”I`ll wager there was a lot of cursing by the first man who found himself plowing around them.”
”So, I say, wait and see,” said Pam. ”It could mean jobs. It could bring people to Cornwall.”
”Maybe,” the proprietor said, ”I should look into putting in a Colonel Sanders Kentucky Fried Pasties.” Most of us laughed, but none of the locals seemed as entertained as they were concerned.
”Of course,” said Pam, ”there is the legend, you know.”
”What legend is that?” asked Mr. Hamilton.
”I know of no legend,” Mr. Speaks said.
”Well,” said Pam, ”The story is, that Land`s End isn`t really Land`s End at all. That King Arthur`s Camelot was not located in any of the places people say, but on a great arm of England running south from Cornwall, past the little `finger` of rocks we call Land`s End.”
The room grew still, except for her voice. ”According to the legend,” Pam continued, ”when England`s great King Arthur died, and they took his body away, the land, itself, began to shake in mourning, and the great arm that was Camelot, with all her towers and her fortifications, broke off and sank beneath the sea.”
”Never to be seen again,” said Mr. Speaks.
”Not so,” said Pam. ”The legend has it that one day, on some bright, sunny morning, there`ll come a roaring sound and a heaving of the Earth and the wind will blow and Camelot, in all her glory, with all her lands, will rise, shining from the sea and be a part of England once again.”
There was a long silence before a small woman, the lady who`d gone for the scones and clotted cream, spoke. ”And do you believe it? This legend?”
”Of course,” said Pam. ”Of course.”
We had a proper tea before we left, with buttered scones and clotted cream and strawberry jam and conversation. There was skepticism about the legend, but I remember hearing an aside from Mr. Speaks to Mr. Hamilton, about how grand it would be on the morning of Camelot`s return, to go and watch the face of ”the damned fool who bought Land`s End,” to see how he looked when he realized he didn`t even have oceanfront property anymore.
As our bus headed back toward Falmouth, Pam told us that the legend was not something she`d made up. She`d told it because it was full of hope, something the people of Cornwall always needed.
”But,” she said, with a wicked smile, ”there are other legends, too.” And she began telling one about the ghost of old Henry VIII, dragging his ulcerated leg through Hampton Court for all eternity, pursued by the ghosts of the queens he`d killed.
On May 1, 1988, The Statehouse, a 34-room hotel, opened under private ownership at Land`s End. The proprietors are reportedly charging Pound Sterling1 to park each vehicle and Pound Sterling2 1/2 per occupant. According to the British Tourist Authority, hotel management is also planning ”another attraction.”
”No matter,” said Joyce. ”We`ll probably be going back later to see the real Land`s End, anyway.”
”Then you believe Camelot`s going to rise from the sea?”
”Of course, some bright, sunny morning there`ll come a roaring sound and a heaving of the Earth and the wind will blow . . .”
