Silent Conspiracy

Apple Tree Cottage struck me as being quaint, and it was off the beaten track in the North Yorkshire Moors, nearby Scarborough and Robin Hood Bay. I needed the tranquillity more than the work, anticipating this new assignment would be tame. A community of Carmelite Nuns conjured up images of peaceful contemplation from the harsh realities of the world, of cloisters, incense and Gregorian chant. I had a new Dell laptop with 320 gigabytes, had upgraded the Photoshop software, and packed the laptop with my camera gear in the car for the trip to the North East. Photographers, much like artists and writers, tend to be tenacious. We persist with honing our skills, seeking the unique, the perfect shot. As a photojournalist, I had travelled extensively. My last assignment had been for the BBC in Somalia, where I became sick with Hepatitis. After that it was impossible to continue. The dragging illness precipitated months of lassitude and painful reflection. I had seen more famine, war, death and destruction, than I cared to remember. Most especially children’s pitiful emaciation in the countries where people struggle to survive as refugees, their lives on the desolate edge of existence. As with most photographers in my field, I had taken too many risks in the opinions of those who love me. Young, feisty, and determined to succeed, my career began in the 1970s when feminism was changing women's perceptions of what could be possible.

Even early in childhood, I had railed against the constraints of being a girl. Unlike the boys in the neighbourhood, we girls had to be sedate, predestined to conform. Boys had more freedom, something I envied. Most girls play with dolls, but I quickly tired of the lifeless, baby caricatures, other girls seemed thrilled by. I would have been nine years of age then, a privileged girl with access to the boy’s inner sanctum. One of the gang. My summer clothes comprised navy blue shorts, with yellow cotton tops. Girly frocks were no good for climbing trees, leaping over streams, cat-walking on dykes, or scrumping apples from orchards. Of the three Cleary boys, who lived next door, my favourite was Billy. He had his mothers nut brown hair, and his father’s sturdy build. Always tanned from an outdoor life, Billy had a gypsy spirit with a gentle respect for nature. We were constantly together.

The long hot summer of 1967, when in our teens we hiked in the fells, would be one of my most enduring memories. Billy’s elder brother, Stewart, had casually said a magic lake was hidden in the woods there. We never really trusted Stew, he was a consummate liar. But curiosity got the better of us, we had to find out. Billy's younger brother, James, tagged along with us. We had filled empty lemonade bottles with water, and taken thick cut cheese sandwiches with us. Trudging along the edges of fallow fields, we played at being soldiers on manoeuvres with James. Splashed through shallow streams, soaking our sandals, climbed upwards and onward, to where we thought the woods might be. Stopping to slake our thirst, we rested for a while under a giant beech tree, listening to the hum of insects in the bracken. There were lingering moments, when the larks sang sweetly, feathered gymnasts, hovering, dipping and diving, in the bluest of blue skies. When long speculations like flowing dreams, urged us that magic could be stirred at the next tree stump, round the next bend in the track, or stumbled upon when hope has almost vanished. And so it was on that day, we found a small deciduous wood of golden aspen, silver birch, and eared willows. We wandered into a shimmering glade startled by shafts of sunlight. Saw a lake where we could swim, where on the far side the water capriciously swirled.