It was in that precise moment that I became self consciously aware that I was being observed. For how long this someone else had been there I don’t know, but as I met his eyes there was a smile and I immediately relaxed and hailed him as a fellow walker. ‘You are reading Belloc.’ He observed, and I nodded, thinking he must have good eyesight for a man of his age or perhaps some other gift? He looked to me to be approaching seventy years of age, upright and wiry and to be attired in some ecclesiastical garb modified for practical outdoor purposes. My inquisitiveness as to what this monastic looking figure might be up to was immediately wakened.
His rough blue grey habit owed, with its simple cut more to what might be seen around the fishermen’s huts of Hastings than in some grand monastic cloister. A dark heavy wooden cross hung high on his heart. His floppy hat had a seaside air about it too – and I immediately thought of it as his ‘Bless me Quick’ hat and wouldn’t have been altogether surprised to see that legend emblazoned on it.
Standing together on the Downs above Harting we were able to make out through the mists of autumn below, the distinctive copper green spire of Harting Church and clustered around it the few streets and dwellings that comprised the village that, depending on how you choose to look at it, is first or last in Sussex from the Hampshire border.
‘From today I am undertaking a walk of my own.’ confided the man. ‘A pilgrimage in fact’ he added. I nodded and smiled to which he asked ‘So, perhaps I may join you? After all, ‘a man is more himself when he is in the company of others’ he quoted, from the book which I had so recently been inwardly digesting, pressing his request with a knowing wiggle of the eyebrows, and that appeared somehow to seal some sort of pact between us. Nor was the company intrusive. His knowledge of Belloc or ‘Hilaire’ as he preferred to familiarly call him was to prove a bonus.
In repose his lined face bore a weary, even perhaps melancholy air. It was all the more remarkable that whenever he spoke or his eyes met another that his features, especially his eyes seemed animated by some quality that almost appeared to be an inner lustre. I was reminded the first time I noticed it of a flower responding to the sun and basking in the source of the light. His voice at first seemed high pitched in relation to his physique but it carried on the air with a note as clear as that of the oboe above the other instruments of the orchestra.
This may sound silly,’ he went on ‘but I am heading at least as much towards a time as to a place. In four days it will be the feast of All Saints. I pestered the brothers of my community to let me out for these few days on condition that I return with evidence of the holiness that so many seem sadly to have ceased to believe in. Like the countless forgotten saints it seems even the church may have lost hope in holiness and forgotten where it can be found. My destination is the festival of All Saints.’
‘From Sin City to Sanctity?’ I quipped, immediately regretting such a flippant, not to say dismissive sounding summary of such a sacred pledge, but ‘Pilgrim’, the name by which I now thought of him, to my surprise rather than assume any attitude of religious affront laughed heartily out loud. ‘Yes – laughter is often the first step, a healthy sense of the absurdity of things. I feel our friend was on that track, and the name his father gave him Hilaire – seems to have set him off and suited him perfectly in that respect.’
I reverently shut my copy of Belloc’s The Four Men, the inspiration for my walk and put it in my rucksack as we began walking together, to begin with at a slow pace. The first part of our walk with some steep climbing afforded opportunities to stop, appraise each challenging incline as one approached it and to stop again for breath when we had attained it. Otherwise we spent much time alone with our own thoughts only exchanging the occasional remark. I was out of practice as far as any serious walking went and was more than happy to adjust to the pace of an older man.
At the top of one of our climbs I shared my personal conundrum. ‘I suppose many have retraced Belloc’s journey across Sussex – I’m not sure why, but I decided to walk it backwards’. Laughing at the image that my words no doubt conjured up he immediately twirled round and began himself walking unsteadily backwards, feigning an expression of fear as he made his reply.
‘Perhaps you are more likely to bump into the elusive fellow than you would if you were pursuing after him down the years since he last walked this way. Maybe’ he added with mock excitement ‘There’s a chance we may catch him coming in the other direction?’ With the insertion of that one word ‘we’ it seemed as though I had suddenly acquired a companion not just for this stretch but for the county wide walk in its entirety. I began to think that rather than chasing a figure receding into history that Belloc might indeed be nearer than I had first realised. In fact as we talked it emerged we knew of only one other lover of Sussex and devotee of Belloc who had recreated the walk of The Four Men. Bob Copper, a Sussex folk singer of international repute had done it in 1950 and with a view to seeing how much the county and especially the roads had changed, repeated the exercise again in the early 1990s, of necessity devising an alternative route in places where the volume of road traffic had increased beyond the imagination of Belloc since 1950 to say nothing of the increase in the first half of the 20th century.
Bob had written an entertaining and informative account of his travels. He had walked predictably enough as Belloc had, from east to west, whereas by doing it ‘backwards’ I was starting at Harting, almost in Hampshire with Robertsbridge on the border with Kent my destination. The singer had probably been of a similar age to Pilgrim when he last completed it.
We had stopped once more to look down on the peaceful morning scene below. Through a break in the trees we saw framed a perfectly square field below on which sheep appeared to have been placed like pieces in order ready for the start of some Downland giant’s board game. From somewhere much nearer however the plaintive bleat of a sheep piercingly if weakly and intermittently, carried on the breeze. Instinctively we looked for the source of the cry and then I saw clearly a sheep that had rolled onto its back and was struggling to get right way up. Immediately I came to the rescue and it was in that moment as I picked the poor animal up that I felt I had grasped the real fabric of the Downs themselves, of which for generations these flocks and their faithful shepherds were surely the rightful inhabitants.
Seeing the tuft of wool left in my hand Pilgrim said ‘Put that in your boots. There’s nothing like sheep’s wool to cushion your feet against blisters, and it’s better than holding it in your hand as the shepherds liked to be buried. For them it was a passport to show Saint Peter they had a reason for irregular church attendance.’ He had resumed his backward walk as he dispensed this wisdom, but just as he said this, a few yards ahead of us off the path a movement and splash of colour alerted me to the presence of someone sitting in the grass, unseen of course by my apparently careless companion who suddenly seemed in danger of tripping himself or trampling the figure behind him. I gave a cry to look behind him and as I caught up the man got to his feet thinking he would have to allow the backwards walker past. The man we had disturbed was holding a small sketch pad on which a pencil drawing could be seen.
‘I’m sorry’ my new friend said to the stranger although I have to admit that he didn’t look excessively contrite. ‘We were experimenting as regards the virtue of walking backwards.‘ There was a pause as the man seemed to be taking this information in.
‘A good way of not getting lost’ replied the other ignoring the narrowly averted injury to himself. ‘Every once in a while it is good to look back and memorise the scene behind you. If you take a wrong turn and have to retrace your steps you should be able to almost instantly recognise the way you’ve been.’
‘Very practical’ I replied, the novice walker that I was, suitably impressed. I noticed that when he spoke there was the slightest trace of some accent I couldn’t quite identify. It suggested to me that he might have travelled a long way with his pad and pencil to make this appointment with us. He was what in times past the Sussex native would have called, without any trace of unfriendliness a ‘furriner’.