Last year my partner, the cartoonist Carol Swain, and I spent the winter in Pembrokeshire, an experience I have since transcribed into a sort of diary-cum-memoir-with-photographs entitled in which our experiences of Pembrokeshire are interwoven with autobiographical fragments and anecdotes from my New York upbringing and misspent youth. These include my encounters with the likes of Greta Garbo (I used to deliver her groceries), Jimi Hendrix, Sid Vicious, Allen Ginsberg, Johnny Thunders, Russell Brand, and Great Train Robber Bruce Reynolds. Also included in Cow Charmers… is a segment involving our attempt to reconstruct the life of the former owner of an abandoned house we came across in _____ through a cache of letters and documents we found there. It is a rather poignant section, as this man was institutionalised after suffering a breakdown, and then seems to have disappeared.
The first few entries from Cow Charmers… are reproduced below. Other chapters will follow in time.
Monday 11 Oct. 2010
Leave London at 1.00pm, our V-reg Daewoo packed with six months worth of clothing and supplies, three distressed cats, and one collared dove, Ruby, who we found on Hampstead Heath on Carol’s birthday six or seven years earlier. Ruby had been dumped by her owner, who presumably thought he was liberating her, but as doves have poor natural defences, spend much of their time on the ground and aren’t a native species, it’s likely she would have ended up on a fox’s dinner plate.
Carol and I had been to Pembrokeshire twice before on holiday, fell in love with the place, and determined to move there. Born in Kingston-upon-Thames, Carol was raised in Llanfyllin, mid-Wales (pop. c 1100), before moving to Hampstead, in north London. I was born in Manhattan and grew up in Queens, where I was based until a two week vacation in London in 1986 stretched out into 25 years and counting. We met in 1999 at a jumble sale, and bonded over a plastic skull on a stick in a boxful of junk, as one does. I was looking for objects for the sculptures I was making at the time and like Hamlet pondering Yorick I was studying the skull-on-a-stick when I became aware of someone peering into the box over my shoulder, a 30-something woman wearing a bright red leather jacket. We started talking, and it was like two pieces of a puzzle fitting together: Carol wrote and drew comics, while I owned a comics shop; we had similar taste in music, art, and literature; we even knew some of the same people and had been to some of the same exhibitions and concerts – Jean-Michel Basquiat at the Serpentine, a Charles Bukowski tribute in Russell Square, The Who at Wembley Arena in 1989 (though not exactly their best gig, mind you; I’d seen the group in their 60s/70s heyday, and this was merely a weak facsimile of the real thing, more like a mediocre tribute band than the best live act ever.)
Eleven years later, meanwhile, I still have both the skull on a stick, and Carol.
We booked a cottage for six months off the internet, a converted hundred-year-old barn set amidst sheep and cow-filled fields, situated some 500 metres down a bumpy, pot-holed dirt lane about a mile south of Hayscastle. There are three rooms, a fair sized kitchen and living room, plus a bedroom that looks out over the Preseli Mountains.
Our landlord, Sven, a Swede, lives diagonally across the lane from us with his Kenyan wife Lani. They have two kids, a dozen chickens, around forty cows, and two kittens. A third cottage sits opposite ours. The couple who live there moved in a few weeks earlier and drop by to say hello. They tell us how much they like the area, and how they’ll soon be bringing their ponies down from Reading. In our experience everyone has always been pleasant and easy-going here. In New York we’re always in a hurry and are notoriously rude or indifferent - at least to one another - and Londoners aren’t much better. In the 25 years I’ve lived in the city I've watched it slowly deteriorate into New York-on-the-Thames, a dirty, fast-moving, urban sprawl obsessed with Mammon. And increasingly violent. Hampstead is one of the nicer places to live in London, yet one night from our window we witnessed a bunch of hoodies beat a man almost to death over a dodgy car purchase, after which police armed with machine guns stormed the perpetrators’ house. In all my years living in New York I’d only ever seen a few fistfights and a handful of muggings (a couple of which found me on the receiving end). I did almost see a shooting once, but the gun jammed and didn’t fire.
We unpack our bags and let our cats - Froggy, Poppet, and Curry - out of their baskets. It’s well known that unlike dogs, cats hate to travel. The whole compact between cats and people and dogs and people is entirely different. Dogs say feed us and look after us and we’ll devote ourselves to you, we’ll be your best friend and will happily die for you if need be. Cats say feed us and we’ll entertain you with amusing antics and sit on your lap and purr, but none of that best mates stuff, all right? And don’t expect us to eat any old crap either, we’re choosy about what we ingest. And where dogs latch on to their owners, cats become attached to places. Ours seem a bit subdued, but that may be because of the drugs - we sprayed a lot of Feliway on their travel baskets, which acts like a sort of cat morphine, dulling and sedating them; I half expect them to start nodding out and rubbing their noses as they ask us for spare change. Tentatively, they emerge from their baskets, stretch, and begin to explore their new surroundings, though we’ve been advised to keep them indoors for at least two weeks.
Almost the first thing we notice once we've begun to settle in is how peaceful and still it is here, the sky speckled with stars with nary a sound to be heard. To paraphrase Dorothy, I have a feeling we’re not in London anymore!
Tuesday 12 Oct.
Off to Haverfordwest (Hwlffordd in Welsh, meaning “ford used by fat cows”), around six miles south of our cottage. It’s the county seat, and the would-be commercial centre of Pembrokeshire, sitting in the shadow of the ruins of an imposing 12th century castle, one of several built by the Normans that divide north and south Pembrokeshire along the so-called Landsker line. Back then, the Normans and Anglo-Saxons grabbed the superior agricultural land to the south, which became known as Little England Beyond Wales, and left the native Welsh the lesser northern lands. Such is the arrogant and aggressive Anglo-Saxon gene. I have to confess that although I've lived in London for a quarter of a century and have made some good friends and met any number of fine people, on the whole I don’t really care too much for the English. I find them for the most part belligerent, petty, sheep-like, constantly whining, and not at all interested in anything beyond themselves. That England of the popular imagination, that civilised nation of fair play and cultured, intelligent people with proper manners and stiff upper lips went out with the bowler hat, the shilling and the pink bits on the map, if it even ever existed at all.
In any case, here it is a pleasant weekday afternoon in Haverfordwest, and the streets are deserted. Where are the people? On Bridge Street, in the town centre, there are but a handful of souls in sight, wandering aimlessly about like extras from a George Romero film. The high street is even worse, three or four people panting their way up the hill; truly we dodged a bullet!
To wit: Carol and I have a business in Hampstead selling second-hand books, and we had the brainstorm of moving our operation out here, to Haverfordwest. On our last trip we met with an estate agent whose company had an arrangement to refurbish about a dozen shops on the high street and adjoining Market Street if the council would widen the pavements and provide a few parking spaces in return. Fair enough, but what they should have done was get the council to level that hill, as climbing so steep a gradient is a real limb killer. Market Street is even worse, confirming our suspicion that such inclines are not conducive to the passing trade needed to sustain a business, though we didn’t appreciate that at the time. Instead, we selected a shop about two thirds of the way up the high street and were but a John Hancock away from committing to a five year tenancy when common sense prevailed over wishful thinking: the recession was beginning to bite hard, there was no passing trade, the hill was far too steep, the rent far too high, and the lease was heavily balanced in favour of the landlord.
That was a year ago. Today that shop and most of the others remain desolate and empty, and as we walk by we catch a glimpse of our would-be selves sitting glum and anxious in the empty premises praying for customers while attempting to stave off bankruptcy, bailiffs, and ruin.
NB: If Pembrokeshire Council is serious about revitalising Haverfordwest and attracting new businesses to the area, then what they should do is offer the vacant properties at a peppercorn rent, at least temporarily, which would give businesses a chance to establish themselves and build up their clientele. Otherwise I suspect it'll be some time if ever before the majority of shops are filled.
As for the mystery of the missing people, it turns out they're all in the mammoth Tesco superstore, where we join the herd and do a food shop. We also join the local library.
Wednesday 13 Oct
Drive to Fishguard (Abergwaun), a cosy little burgh about a dozen miles to the north, and the embarkation point for the Irish ferry. We eye an empty shop, though given its central location the rent is probably too high. There are two charity shops, and some sort of swap shop which we look for but can't find. In London we buy most of the books for our business from charity shops, albeit selectively. We specialise in quality fiction and literature, with some crime and popular novels, though of a certain standard. Katie Price might sell billions of books, but you won’t find any of them in our shop, nor any of those so-called misery memoirs, though thankfully no one has ever actually asked us for one. Hampstead being full of celebrities, Gerri Halliwell is an occasional customer, but she won't find any of her books there either; Jodi Picoult is about as low as we’re willing to stoop; beyond there lies chick-lit and Mills & Boon.
But even if we didn’t need to buy books for our business, we’d still frequent the charity shops. They’re fun and they’re cheap - why spend £100 on a new pair of Levi’s when you can get a decent pair for under a fiver, or a nice shirt for even less than that? Plus there’s always the chance of unearthing a real treasure. Over the years we’ve had a few such finds, including a gold coloured belt which Carol realised was actually real gold, which we bought for £4.50 and immediately sold to a jeweller for £650, the exact sum we then paid for a second hand Renault. Forget about alchemists turning lead into gold, we turned a belt into a car! But since the advent of eBay, everyone is now an expert, so it’s been a while since we’ve found any real gems.
From Fishguard it’s a short drive to Strumble Head, with its iconic century old white lighthouse, which stands on a tiny islet just off the mainland. The area is known to be a good place for sighting seals, sunfish, porpoises and dolphins, and sure enough, we quickly spot some porpoises, and a small white seal pup stretched out on a rocky inlet that can't be more than a week old, its mother swimming about nearby. It looks very vulnerable, lying on its back like a giant, juicy slug, but other than another seal, nothing can actually get near it.
Thursday 14 Oct
Sven comes to tell us that the fox hunt will be riding past our cottage this morning, and a dozen or so horsemen soon appear on the lane, flanking a pack of around 35 excited, yelping hounds, with the hunt master blowing his horn to spur them on. Luckily our cats are still inside; the sight of several dozen frenzied, ravenous canines searching for small furry animals to tear apart must be their worst nightmare! Personally I find the “sport” barbaric, on a par with bear baiting dog fights, but in theory it’s a drag hunt, and admittedly a thrilling spectacle. Now I know we’re not in London!
Friday 15 Oct
Carol is applying for a grant to the Welsh Academi for her next graphic novel, called Gast, about a young English city girl who becomes intrigued with the suicide of a reclusive, cross-dressing Welsh farmer, and seeks to find out what happened by talking to those who knew him best, which turns out to be his animals, who have the most to say. Not surprisingly, one reviewer called Carol “the love child of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Raymond Carver”. It will be her fourth graphic novel, if you count one we did together (Giraffes in my Hair: A Rock’n’Roll Life, a selection of stories from my misspent youth), and her first major work since the 2009 release of her anthology, Crossing the Empty Quarter.
As for myself, I’m working on a London-set crime thriller called The Rain Man, about an atheist Jewish cop on the trail of a serial killer, who is prompted to examine his Jewish identity after a family crisis. He finally gets his man – or does he? It’s my fifth book, though only two have thus far been published. The first one, about the Jack the Ripper murders, is what brought me to the UK. Our story begins back in 1975 in New York, when I was looking for something to read and happened to pick up a book on the subject, and before I even finished it I felt I had solved the crime. To my eyes the solution seemed obvious, and I couldn’t understand why no one had singled out my suspect before. I did a bit of research, and wrote an article outlining my theory for a British crime magazine, and a few years later came to London for a two week holiday to do more research. At that time I knew only one person in the country, but it so happened that he was looking for someone to manage his comic book shop, and I had some experience in the field. The job came with a flat, and I never looked back. I ended up buying the shop, which allowed me to hire staff, which in turn enabled me to continue my research so that over the next several years I spent much of my free time poring over thousands of documents – hospital and employment records, census returns, old newspapers, sewage and street plans, and so forth. The result was my book, Jack the Ripper: the Simple Truth, which was recently named the best book ever written on the subject by the esteemed Journal of the Whitechapel Society, who know about such things.
On the downside, however, my visa had long since run out, and I had become that scourge of the tabloid press, the double I word, the Illegal Immigrant, come to take jobs away from the British and jump the queue for the best council houses! But by that time I was firmly settled with a job, a flat, and a partner, so hoping to avoid detection I created a false British identity, replete with documentation and a phoney back story, a process gleaned from that well-known terrorist handbook, Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal. Only once did that cause a problem, many years later. It was shortly after the 9/11 attacks, so the London police were on high alert, and as it happened, the rear window of our Peugeot had recently been smashed when someone broke into our car, and we hadn’t yet repaired it. We were just a couple of hundred yards from home when the police pulled us over and asked to see some identification. With practiced casualness, I handed the officer my driver’s licence, in the name of Howard Paley. “And what’s your date of birth, Mr Paley?” he asked. My date of birth? Blimey! For the life of me, I couldn’t remember my supposed birthday, which of course was different from my own. “Uh, I don’t remember,” I said feebly. “You don’t remember?” “I'm nervous,” I suggested, but he wasn’t buying it. “No one forgets their date of birth,” he pointed out as he fastened the handcuffs to my wrists as Carol looked on stunned. I remembered that when Carol and I first met, she asked me if I was the kind of person things happened to. “It won't be dull,” I told her.
Nor has it been.
At any rate, there was to be a happy ending. Evidently it’s not illegal to have some documentation in another name, and after spending the afternoon pacing around my cell like Papillion while they determined that I wasn’t a terrorist, I was released, though bizarrely, like an outtake from a David Lynch film, as I was being processed a dwarf casually strolled out of another cell and asked if anyone knew the football scores!
Luckily the issue of my legality never came up during all this. I told the police I was a writer and that writers often did that sort of thing, and they accepted that. Whether they bought that or not I couldn’t say, I think they were just relieved that I hadn’t been planning to blow up the Houses of Parliament. Nor did it hurt that I was an American, I suspect. The British hate absolutely everyone I've realised, but they seem to dislike Americans the least. Otherwise, I spent a total of 14 trouble free years flying under the radar before HM Government granted me indefinite leave to remain in the UK, the logic being that if you’re a clever enough chappie to have survived and avoided the authorities for all that time then you might as well stay.
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