XVII

When my family first returned to North Devon in 1971 after an absence of nearly two decades, during which my parents fought gallant rearguard actions against the fall of the British Empire in Nigeria and Hong Kong, they quickly made friends with various members of the local gentry. In those days there was a remarkable range of minor aristocracy and interesting, though often impoverished, gentlefolk who lived in the area. Woolsery Manor, for example, which in later years was a hotel, then fell into disuse, and now as a derelict building has been bought by the bloke who started Bebo, was inhabited by the Count de St Quentin and his wife, a Swedish princess. They were very kind to me during my first year or two in the village, and encouraged me in my pursuits as an amateur naturalist, and wannabe poet.

They even had a private museum, which inspired me that one day I would have something similar of my own. It housed a remarkably arcane collection of disparate things including the foot of a mummified Egyptian priestess, and Marie Antoinette's christening slippers. I loved visiting them, and was very sad when they left the village for pastures new.

But there were other interesting people as well, so I was not entirely bereft. On an insignificant bend in the road, one of the most obscure lanes between Woolsery and the slightly bigger village of Bradworthy four or five miles away, there was (and is) a cottage even more tumbledown than my own. In it lived an elderly bachelor clergyman and his older spinster sister. The Rev Cymbeline Potts and his sister Britannia were a remarkable couple. Both retired from active duty, (although history didn't really relate whether Miss Britannia had ever had a proper job, or indeed any gainful employment except for looking after her brother) they seemed to do little else apart from frequent junk shops, jumble sales, and auction rooms in search of items to swell their ever growing collection of bric-a-brac.

Their collection encompassed everything from late Victorian militaria to long obsolete items of scientific and quasi-scientific equipment. They even had an epidiascope; a late Victorian equivalent to the overhead projector, which I used to play with for hours, projecting the images of my model aeroplanes onto the wall, and pretending that I was directing a remake of The Battle of Britain.

They were, in their own peculiar way, pillars of the local community, and every village fete saw the elderly couple running a tombola, or a stall where they would run a massively eccentric quiz, asking the village children a series of questions about English history that neither the children, or often their parents, had even the vaguest idea of what they were talking about. Miss Britannia would always be dressed as her cryptomythological namesake, complete with shield, robe and Graeco-Roman helmet, and their appearance always confused everyone mightily and brought joy to my adolescent heart.

Cunobeline (or Cunobelin, from Latin Cunobelinus, derived from Greek Kynobellinus, Κυνοβελλίνος) was a king in pre-Roman Britain from the late first century BC until the 40s AD. He is mentioned in passing by the classical historians Suetonius and Dio Cassius, and many coins bearing his inscription have been found. He appears to have controlled a substantial portion of south-eastern Britain, and is called "King of the Britons" (Britannorum rex) by Suetonius.

Cunobeline appears in British legend as Cynfelyn (Welsh), Kymbelinus (medieval Latin) or Cymbeline, as in the play by William Shakespeare. His name is a compound made up of cuno- (hound) and Belenos (the god Belenus).

This Cymbeline achieved legendary status in my eyes, but - although he was always very kind to me - he always seemed fonder of my little brother, and my younger, prettier friends. When a rumour went round the village that he was a convicted child molester, they cut him out of our lives completely. Or at least they thought that they did. I was a rebellious enough teenager to take the opposite viewpoint on anything that my parents did, and I had reasons of my own for suspecting that the story was not true....at least not completely so. A year or two later, when I was old enough to own a bicycle, and proficient enough upon the machine to travel around the district unscathed, I started to visit the elderly couple again, and revel in their collection of arcane junk. They always made me welcome, and asked after the rest of my family wistfully.

The Rev. Cymbaline never showed any signs of wanting to seduce me, and the only harm that I ever came to during my visits to their house was indigestion from Miss Britannia's terrible cooking. As I got older, and eventually passed my driving test, my visits to the odd couple became less frequent as I discovered girls and alcohol, and eventually left home, but I would still go and visit them whenever I came home.

In the late 1970s they acquired a maidservant; a taciturn and podgy girl in her late teens, with a hare lip and a serious speech impediment, who they called Lysistrata, although I very much doubt whether that was the name that her parents had given her. Each time I would drive up to visit them, she would answer the door with a grimace and - spraying me with saliva as she did so - would announce my arrival, and tell me that "The Master and the Mistress will see you now Sir". For some reason that I could never fathom out there was something incredibly sexy about this deformed and socially inept young woman, but my knowledge of social convention forbade me from taking the matter any further.

One day, whilst I was sitting with The Rev Cymbaline in the tiny drawing room, the subject of my parents came up, and he wistfully told me how much he missed seeing them, and asked me whether there was anything that I could do to repair the rift in their relationship. Sadly, and as tactfully as possible, I told the old man that my parents were disgusted by what they had found out about him, and that they were convinced that if they did so there would have been serious repercussions as far as my brother's safety would have been concerned.

He looked at me with the saddest eyes I have ever seen on any creature except for my dear bulldog cross boxer bitch Prudence, and said: "Things are often more complicated than at first they seem, dear boy. I wish your father would understand that".

I tried to explain that my parents found the complexities of my life too complicated to deal with, and I think he understood. We sat there in silence for about ten minutes, sipping brandy and looking sadly at each other, until Lysistrata shambled in, banged a grubby brass gong and announced that the mistress wished to see us in her parlour.

It was the last time I was alone with him. I returned to Dawlish, my girlfriend, and my own complex sex life, and a few weeks later it turned out that he went into the woods at the back of their cottage, and shot himself with an antique shotgun that he - of course - had never notified the authorities about. My parents went to the funeral, and in the aftermath tried to make friends again with Miss Britannia. But she just sniffed haughtily at them, pulled herself up to her full height of just over five feet and stormed out of the church, clutching her trident, and with her rusty helmet plonked back on her head. From then on, as far as I am aware, she never had contact with any of my family again, except on the odd occasions when I would pay a visit to the ever more tumbledown cottage full of junk, where she and Lysistrata eked out a living on State Benefits handed out by an ever more parsimonious government.

Slowly I began to realise that Miss Britannia Potts was a remarkable old lady. Feeling that she and her brother had been well and truly shafted by The Church of England, she turned her back on Mother Church, and began to investigate the old religion of her forefathers. She collected wild herbs which she dug with a silver athame at the full moon and grew them in her little garden, and over the years became a very wise woman, if you know what I mean.

I got married, moved to Exeter and dramatically fell out with my parents, and so for the next twenty years or so my visits back to North Devon were few and far between. However, on the few occasions that I visited my family, I would sneak off for an hour, drive along the network of tiny lanes towards Bradworthy and visit Miss Britannia and Lysistrata. Each time I visited they would look older and more decrepit, but still basically the same.

Ten years ago I returned to Woolsery to look after my dying father, and - against all the odds - the two of us, who had been figuratively at each other's throats for all our lives, were reconciled. On his deathbed, a few weeks before the end he said to me that he wondered whether he had been too harsh to the Rev Cymbaline. I answered noncommittally not wishing to sunder our newfound closeness by admitting that I had continued to visit the old parson and his sister for years, taking them gifts of groceries, and listening to their woes.

In passing, Dad told me that Miss Britannia was still alive, and still living with Lysistrata (the unspoken nuance being that their relationship was somehow unwholesome, whereas I had always considered them two orphans of the storm who had been thrown together by cruel happenstance). Miss Britannia still refused to speak to my Father, but could, he told me, occasionally be seen trudging through the lanes, Lysistrata at her side, still clutching her trident, and always wearing the increasingly rusty Graeco-Roman helmet.

After my Father died I went to visit them again, occasionally. But usually they just would not answer the door. On the odd occasions when they did, Miss Britannia would gaze at me with cloudy eyes over which the fog of Alzheimer's had long since settled, which only occasionally gave any indication that she knew what I was talking about, while Lysistrata, still wearing a tatty and grubby maid's uniform, crouched by the side of her chair glaring malevolently at me.

Britannia is an ancient term for Roman Britain and also a female personification of the island. The name is Latin, and derives from the Greek form Prettanike or Brettaniai, which originally designated a collection of islands with individual names, including Albion or Great Britain; however, by the 1st Century BC Britannia came to be used for Great Britain specifically. In AD 43 the Roman Empire began its conquest of the island, establishing a province they called Britannia, which came to encompass the parts of the island south of Caledonia (roughly Scotland). The native Celtic inhabitants of the province are known as the Britons. In the 2nd Century, Roman Britannia came to be personified as a goddess, armed with a trident and shield and wearing a Corinthian helmet.

The Latin name Britannia long survived the Roman withdrawal from Britain in the 5th Century, and yielded the name for the island in most European and various other languages, including the English Britain and the modern Welsh Prydain. After centuries of declining use, the Latin form was revived during the English Renaissance as a rhetorical evocation of a British national identity. Especially following the Acts of Union in 1707, which joined the Kingdoms of England and Scotland, the personification of the martial Britannia was used as an emblem of British imperial power and unity. She was featured on all modern British coinage series until the redesign in 2008, and still appears annually on the gold and silver "Britannia" bullion coin series.

The age of the British Empire, the last few years of which I lived through, was well and truly past. The Empire on which the sun never set was reduced to just over a dozen tiny island possessions of little military or commercial importance. Britannia no longer rules the waves, but I am one of the few people who suspects that she is embodied by a lonely old woman living with a sociopathic maidservant on Disability Living Allowance, in a tumbledown cottage which stank unaccountably of yeast, and because her own world had crumbled around her ears she was stoically waiting for the end of the world for the rest of her species.

My visits there had become less and less frequent, and eventually I stopped going altogether. But I now knew what I had to do next. Despite everything that I felt, it was time for me to go and talk to Britannia.

XVI

I stared at the advancing policemen blankly. It has been over fifteen years since I had the boys in blue visit my house. That was back in 1997 after a young girl was killed in an inexplicable, and still unsolved murder, only a street away from where I had been living for many years, and where - in the aftermath of my own horrific divorce - my friend and partner in crime Graham Inglis spent much of his time. Being by far the weirdest and most non–conformist people in the little red brick estate, as well as the only single men, we were obviously going to be suspects. We were both quite happy to give DNA samples, having absolutely nothing to hide, but as we were questioned in some considerable detail about our activities that weekend, as said activities had involved Olympic levels of substance abuse, and a mildly debauched party, we were not particularly willing to share too many details with the rozzers.

But we were innocent. We knew that we were innocent, and eventually - despite my suspicions that the Birmingham Six, and the Guildford Four were just about to be joined by The Exwick Two - we were eliminated from the enquiry, and although it took me two years to get back the Gurkha kukri that I had hanging on my wall, we essentially left the affair without a stain on our characters.

But on this occasion what on earth could I have possibly done. I kept the implacable look of injured justice on my face as I struggled to stay calm, wracking my brains to try and think what the hell I could have done wrong! "Yes, Officer. can I help you?" I said in the grimly patrician manner that has saved my bollocks from the fire on many occasions, and which even now seems to alert the plods to the fact that - contrary to appearances - they were not dealing with some crusty traveller, but an old fashioned English Gentleman.

However, on this occasion, the boys in blue looked singularly unimpressed as they surveyed the piles of mildly esoteric bric-a-brac which lay heaped in piles across my tiny study. Their companion in the black overcoat, whom I was rapidly beginning to suspect was more than plain CID, if only because that acronym stands for Criminal Investigation Department, and I honestly couldn't think of anything even vaguely criminal for which I could have been pulled up.

He looked at me with steely grey eyes.  "I believe that you know a man called Daniel Miles," he said.

I slumped into my battered office chair. "What the fuck has he done NOW?" I asked.

I could see a flicker of humour pass for a fraction of an instant across his countenance. But it vanished almost immediately. "I don't think that there is any need for language like that, Sir", he replied, but I took a deep breath and said. "This is my house, and I will use any language I see fit here, officer. I will not be antagonistic and aggressive, but I am damned if I will temper my vocabulary to suit the sensibilities of an uninvited visitor. Now either arrest me, or sit down and we will discuss the matter like gentlemen..."

And much to my amazement, my high-handed attitude actually worked, and as he made no move to arrest me, I gestured to him to sit down. "I am afraid that I don't have enough chairs in here for your colleagues...", I started to say, but the ice was broken. He told the two uniformed policemen to go outside and sit in the car, and acquiesced like a lamb when I asked them to park up by the church rather than annoying my neighbours by blocking the lane outside.

They left. Graham was still hovering in the background, and I dispatched him for coffee and whisky. Much to my surprise the plainclothes policeman, who I suspected by now was almost certainly Special Branch, graciously accepted both. I didn't bother to ask him whether he was OK with me smoking, and lit one up anyway.

"You haven't answered my question," I said, sounding far more confident than I was feeling. "What the hell has that idiot Danny Miles done now?"

The policeman made himself comfortable and adjusted himself in his seat. "The trouble is, sir, that we don't know. We were hoping that you would be able to tell us."

I looked at him in silence. I would love to say that at this point I raised one eyebrow quizzically, but although my wife, my adopted nephew Max, and even my mother-in-law, can do this undoubtedly impressive facial contortion, I can do nothing of the sort. So I just scowled at him, and asked another question, although this time I was pretty sure that I knew the answer. "Why me?"

He had the good grace to look mildly embarrassed. "Well, sir, you have helped us with our enquiries on previous occasions..."

I snorted. "And I am sure that your records will have told you that I was found to be entirely blameless on each of those occasions," I barked angrily, because - unlike most citizens of this sceptre'd isle - I have attracted the attention of the security forces on at least three occasions over the past twenty years.

The first took place during the last year of the John Major administration, when the Conservative Government was reliant on the capricious and stormy political friendship of the Ulster Unionists to stay in power, and was getting more and more concerned that anti-government interests from Britain and Ireland would team up to try and bring the government to its knees.

Well it so happened that in the spring of 1995 I had a telephone call from a very drunk ex-Royal Marine sergeant who claimed to have been in charge of one of the detachments of Royal Marines, who, ten years earlier, had been hunting The Beast of Exmoor. He claimed that they had shot a big black cat, but as they had been on private land without permission they had buried the body and vowed to say nothing about it. However, because my informant was down on his luck he was prepared to take me to the body...for a consideration.

I was sceptical, especially when, in an attempt to establish his bona fides, he told me (in confidence) that he had been part of a detachment of Marines acting as bodyguards to the then Princess of Wales as she visited her "Fancy Man" in rural Devon. This was months before the relationship between Princess Diana and James Hewitt became public knowledge. I had discussed the claims about the Beast of Exmoor in writing and on local radio, and because I had vaguely known Hewitt when we were both schoolboys (he was an egregious little shit even then) the increasingly paranoid Conservative administration decided that I was obviously trying to destabilise the royal family, and - according to several sources, especially On the trail of the saucer spies, UFOs and Government Surveillance by my friend Nick Redfern - my phone line was tapped for several months.

A couple of years later, the taps were renewed when circumstantial evidence suggested that I was an IRA sympathiser (I wasn't but had friends who were) and even appeared in a drunken photograph taken at a gig by an Irish republican rock band, in An Poblacht. But again, the taps were removed eventually.

Most recently, in 2012, I shot a video for the title track of Merrell Fankhauser's Area 51 Suite. I'm rather proud of this. Not only is it the first pop video that I have directed which didn't feature either me, my band, or some mate of mine screaming avant garde nonsense, but I almost got arrested by Special Branch whilst making it. Although Area 51 is in Nevada, it was filmed in North Cornwall outside GCHQ, because of their impressive satellite dishes.

Worryingly for the state of the nation's security, the base security forces noticed the fat hippy with an expensive camera but failed to notice to relatively small teenagers (one dressed in an alien mask) and a large, bumbling dog with impressive jowls. The police were very nice to me when we spoke on the telephone, and I am pretty sure that I have avoided being sent to some secret interrogation facility on Diego Garcia, as they seemed to believe everything I said (which was good, considering that it was the pure and unadulterated truth).

So, I have attracted the nation of Britain's guardians of law and order on at least three occasions, and as I have written and spoken widely about my negative view of both the British and American governments (check out my book Island of Paradise for the really damning stuff) I am not at all surprised that I have a file on me, and that it remains open. But Danny? He is just an irritating small town conman, and - if I may steal Tim Good's phrase - of no defence significance whatsoever.

I said as much to the man from Special Branch, who was sitting back comfortably sipping my whisky. He looked at me quizzically for a few moments before saying. "But in your writings, Mr Downes, you have intimated that Mr Miles is quite capable of running a cult. Indeed, I believe he did so at one time, and you were a member." He picked up his attache case and got out a copy of my 2004 biography, in which I described some rather disturbing events during the autumn of 1981, when I was busy opening the doors of perception by the use of psilocybin, and Danny was playing mind games with the more gullible members of the North Devon alternative community.

He turned to the relevant chapter and read out loud:

I can't remember whose idea it was, but at the end of October someone suggested that we should follow in the footsteps of Carlos Castaneda and indulge in a group psychedelic experience out of doors. The idea was to somehow contact the spirit of the sacred mushroom on the psychic plane, although it has to be admitted that most of those present (including me) thought of it more as a groovy and rather daring Halloween party. I was really looking forward to it until I discovered that in his wisdom Danny had decided to hold this experiment on Abbotsham Cliffs. In many ways this made a lot of sense. If there actually was a sacred mushroom spirit, it stood to reason that he would reside amongst the more tangible proofs of his existence, and as already stated, at the time at least, the best magic mushrooms in the area grew at Abbotsham Cliffs.

   

I was a little uneasy. Although ten years had passed and I had tried to put the matter out of my mind I had never entirely forgotten the events of June 1972. But, I rationalised wildly displaying a capacity for self-delusion that was remarkable even by my standards. That had been in the woodlands several miles along the cliffs. And it had been in summer. And we had been looking for the werewolf. This time we were engaged on a mystical quest for the spirit of the sacred mushroom. It was obvious that nothing nasty could possibly happen.

   

On Halloween night, seven or eight of us camped out on the flat land just behind Abbotsham Cliffs. There were three girls and four or five guys, all dressed in the punk styles that were then de rigeur. Cheerfully, we parked our cars in the lay-by, and in the late afternoon sunshine t was a cheerful party that walked the half-mile or so along the footpath to the cliffs. Although it was the end of October it was surprisingly warm, and the two elderly sheep grazing on the scrubland by the cliffs gave the place a delightfully bucolic air.

   

We built a large bonfire and as the final rays of the setting sun disappeared into the Bristol Channel, Danny, in his self appointed role of showman and shaman, came around and dispensed what he described as his “funky communion.” It was a potent mixture of gin, mushroom tea, peyote and LSD and was the precursor to one of the most horrific nights of my life. It was a night that I shall certainly never forget, and which I seriously suspect will be permanently etched on the psyches of everyone involved.

   

The evening started pleasantly enough, because although the chemical mixture that we had ingested was incredibly powerful, the mixture of the pleasantly sylvan surroundings, and what we hadn't yet learned to call “chill out” music issuing from what we hadn't yet learned to call a “ghetto blaster” kept everyone in a mellow and happy state of mind.

   

Danny started to read aloud from The Tibetan Book of the Dead and then began to recite Aleister Crowley's Hymn to Pan. None of us realised at the time, but Danny was (knowingly or unknowingly) manipulating the situation like a master. Although everyone was hallucinating heavily by this time, the three girls in particular seemed heavily affected and, encouraged by Danny, started to behave in a most uncharacteristic manner.

Despite their Mohicans and studiously torn clothes they were actually very reserved young ladies on the whole; but coaxed by Danny they started to become very affectionate and sensual. They danced rhythmically to the music and kissed and stroked each other, the guys in the group (including me) and particularly Danny.

   

One plump girl called “Sarah” [not her real name because I see her around Exeter sometimes, and she is now an eminently respectable, professional lady] who boasted the particularly unpleasant punk soubriquet of “Scab” even started to undress and dance semi-naked in the firelight.

   

It would be easy for me to pretend that some sort of totally far out hippy orgy then ensued, but it didn't. Most of the people who were there were too drunk, too stoned, and far too tripped out to perform sexually. I know I was, but again under coaxing from Danny, “Scab” and one of the guys coupled - I won't say `made love` because there was no love, emotion or tenderness - just animal rutting in the firelight as Danny chanted lines from Crowley and the rest of us looked on giggling inanely and waving our hands about to the rhythmic beat of the music.

   

Eventually everyone passed out, and that was when the fear came.

   

I have spent more of my life than I like to admit in alternate states of consciousness. Once upon a time I believed it was because I was exploring a genuinely alternative route to spiritual self-empowerment. 

Nowadays I believe that all that is rubbish. If there is such a thing as an interventionist God, and for me personally the jury is still out on that one, I am sure that he or she would not wish the objects of his/her creation to perform acts of supplication by poisoning themselves. Although the concept of trying to second guess a deity is a pretty dodgy one, the theories of trying to reach nirvana through substance abuse is a pretty dodgy one. I haven't taken psychedelics since that terrible night in 1981. These days when I go to a different place it is usually with alcohol, or prescribed tranquillisers and occasionally with the fruit of the poppy. And these days, when I take drugs it isn't to reach some magickal and non-existent nirvana - it is purely and simply to blot out the fear.

   

I am convinced that the fear first came to me on All Hallow's Eve 1981.

The policeman looked at me in silence for a few moments before continuing...

"We have received information that Mr Miles is involved with another cult of young people in North Devon, and this time the casualties are likely to be far more than just three elderly sheep. What do you know about it?"

I replied fairly honestly. I agreed with the policeman that the events taking place in the dank forests on the Cornwall/Devon border were both sinister and worrying. But as far as I could see the police were barking completely up the wring tree.

"Have you heard a song called 'Black Flags Rising'?" he asked, taking me completely aback.

I nodded that I had.

"We believe that this is a reference to the black flags flown by Islamist insurgents in the Middle East..." And he looked terribly shocked when I burst out laughing.

"Danny a radical Muslim? Nonsense..." I spluttered, and tried to explain that the black flags in the song were a reference either to Saruman's banners in Lord of the Rings, the Anarchist black flag, or to this line from a famous Irish rebel song...

"The black flag they hoisted, the cruel deed was over,

Gone was a man who loved Ireland so well,

There was many a sad heart in Dublin that morning,

When they murdered James Connolly, the Irish Rebel"

But this was all obviously too much for my unwelcome visitor, who obviously had no idea what on earth I was talking about.

"So you are saying that they are Irish Muslim anarchists, then sir?"

And I had to spend the next ten minutes trying to explain to the bloody man that I meant nothing of the sort, and that I was a seriously disabled music journalist and zoologist who spent his time breeding tropical fish and raising money for animal welfare projects, and that I was not the new Lord Haw Haw apologist for a band of fundamentalist Irish Muslims, and that I knew next to nothing about what Danny was doing and cared less.

Of course, I wasn't being entirely truthful. I knew more than I was admitting, but the more I thought about it the more I worried about the safety of poor Panne.  Truthfully I didn't care what happened to Danny, Mr Loxodonta, Lynnette or any of the others, and suspected that the world would quite possibly be a better place without them.

But I was not prepared to be the agent of their destruction if it also meant the destruction of a sweet little goatgod from the woods who had done nothing more to me than ask for my help and eat my wife's chocolate.

So I obfuscated, bluffed and carried out all the tricks of verbal prestidigitation that I knew how to do.

I knew that the policeman knew that I was hiding something, and I knew that he knew that I knew he did. But, thankfully,  even in our crumbling democracy, I knew that I was safe from being arrested on suspicion of treason, just yet, and so I continued to lie, and the policeman continued to probe until we both got tired of the charade and he went home, and I went upstairs to join Corinna and the dogs in bed.

However, unusually for me, I lay awake for hours with a million and one things going round my head. But by the time I finally went to sleep, just as the pale fingers of dawn were tracing filigree patterns across the early morning sky, I knew exactly what to do next.

I would have to do exactly what I had been told back in Norwich. I would have to go and see Britannia.