Last week Nick, the farmer, was waiting to plough as I bounced down his stubble field and flew off in the Cub past St Donat's Castle, out over Nash Point light house and across the Bristol Channel. I was bound, due South, for Devon to pick up Tim, my kid brother and then on to Stoke St Mary Woods, near Taunton, to scatter the ashes of both Mum and Dad.
I did not enjoy crossing those few miles of murky sea water at all especially when I had locked myself out of the house and unable to retrieve my satellite beacon, life jacket and flares. I had to make do with a five gallon drum and a length of rope round my waist. A shiver went down my spine as the engine coughed and spluttered momentarily, mid channel of course. Memories came flooding back of my ditching, earlier this year, in the Caribbean in ‘Liberty Girl', my other General Patton D-Day Piper cub and my freezing three hours, waist deep in a leaking life raft. "But enough of that," I thought, "I have serious work afoot".
Denis and Violet Alicia Kirk's remaining five kids were scattered from Jersey, Channel Islands, South Wales and West Devon to Canada, Rupert being in Dawson Creek and Christopher in North Vancouver. It was abundantly clear to me what had to be done. Mum and Dad needed to be back together.
Not only were Mum and Dad with me on that thirty minute flight but I also had the ashes of Mollie, my faithful old gun dog. She was named after Mollie, Dad's sister, a very special Aunt to us all. My ‘old ***', I remembered, had been in many an aircraft or perched precariously on a motor bike for shooting trips. As a six month pup we had flown to Brother Michael's wee air strip just outside Ballymena, Northern Ireland. Mollie had retrieved her first duck, first missed by me but knocked down by Dad, despite his failing eyesight!
It was the last time we were to see Mike alive just before his fatal air crash in the mountains those many years ago. The low fly past over the cortege by many of Mike's mates, led by a Cub in the teeming rain, Mum and Dad walking behind with policemen all saluting a ‘Kirk' was as vivid as if it was yesterday! As the little engine chattered on in front of me I crossed the rocky Somerset coast and flew low over Doon Valley Country of Exmoor where I could see the Red Deer look up at me as if to say, "Hi!". It made me think of the fun Mike and I used to have in aeroplanes like rounding up the geese in 1970 to a chosen lake on Innisfree, like a sheep dog, off the coast of Donegal in my 1950's French Sipa. A flick manoeuvre stressed aerobatic aeroplane made out of wood and bought for less than the value of the old wooden propeller currently pulling us all back to Somerset. I remembered my landing an old war time Auster on Port Stewart golf course in the early hours and taking Mike up for some impromptu aerobatics only to hear, in but a few weeks, he had also been ‘bitten by the bug' and had gone off and obtained a pilot's licence!
Tim was there patiently waiting at Dunkeswell Aerodrome and with little said between us we made the short flight for Taunton where we had all once lived. But not, I decided, before we had flown over the old fighter base once known as RAF Culmhead, perched on the Blackdown Hills overlooking the Vale. This was where Dad, in 1943, as an explosives expert in the Home Guard, had been chosen to break in, in the dead of night and simulate sabotage on Spitfires, parked around the apron but heavily guarded. Four bold crosses, in chalk, on their engine cowlings, seen in the next day light and a few red faces, no doubt, caused me to smile as I throttled back for the descent. Down we flew over Corfe and Orchard Portman and the small lake, nestled in the valley, where, as a kid, Mum had taken us all for picnics to ramble for blackberries in the autumn or toads and tadpoles in the spring. Stoke St Mary church loomed up ahead again causing memories flooding back of Celia and Richard's wedding, my own, funerals and Sunday schools. All of this was such a long time ago and yet so vivid, in my memory. The vicar then, Mr Jones and my fear and dread on being asked to read the lesson, without warning, at the tender age of fourteen and then, forty eight years later, having to say a few jumbled words about our Dad. Genevieve, only eight, then read out a delightful poem. Brother Rupert had spoken the eulogy for Mum but a year ago it was my turn, the most frightening experience in my life
Tim's job was to scatter, sitting up front with door and window wide open. My job was to fly the ‘old girl' low over the woods, forty acres of ancient oak laid down originally for the making of Admiral Nelson's ships and where dear Mum and Dad had lived for forty years or more. "Ah, Dad, that Birch sap wine you made, the countless trees you and Mike planted".
I pulled on ‘carburettor heat', throttled back and descended still further for an almost silent glide across the carpet of trees with only the sound of the wind swirling around the cramped cockpit. Tim removed the tops of the urns in turn and allowed our parents ashes to drift the full length of the woods. We will never forget, on behalf of the kids and family friends, our final goodbye. No more of your ‘jam rolley- polley', Mum and custard with lots and lots of Aga thick skin. No more tricks to show me, Dad, on how to get a too big a calf out......so, so many personal memories.
Timothy and I flew back on a lazy meander over the farms where Dad had been so much respected and where he had used his BA Swallow, an open cockpit early 30's radial engine aeroplane, to be nick named ‘The Flying Vet'. I had to face the fact that only the sons and grandsons were now running those farms stretched out below.
Waving Tim goodbye, back at the airfield, I ‘broke the bonds of Earth' once more and flew off North to South Wales just before dark with just one more duty yet to perform. Mollie's ashes were to be scattered where she had also so enjoyed life, in our woods by the Norman castle. I scattered her ashes up wind and watched them drift into the trees just as the wood pigeons broke cover. "No ‘right and left' and retrieving for you today, Moll, my old girl," I mused.
I put the Cub down in another stubble field, rotating with the crops, where Mum and Dad's favourite tipple was waiting for me, well hidden in the hedge. Earlier Tim had agreed, reluctantly, that my previous idea, once the deed was done, of sharing a bottle of Remy Martin in amongst the clouds high over Somerset was not such a good idea. So much, I suppose, for getting old.
"Do not hide your light under a bushel", Mum and Dad always used to say, "pass on your knowledge of life to others, it is a duty", to the six of us in the days when kids were made to sit down at table, shut up and eat with their parents!
St Vran, Brittany, France 26th October 2008
http://www.kirkflyingvet.com/ & http://www.wacl.org.uk/