The Walls
by
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Three walls prevented the waters of the
The outer and most recent had been constructed by supervised convicts from the local prison.
The next inland wall, some 100 metres distance from the outer wall, had been constructed 400 years earlier, in the 17th century, to claim more land from the sea to help feed a growing population.
A further 200 metres inland was the wall constructed under the supervision of the Romans in 300 AD.
At the start of the new millennium, when man is more cognisant of fellow creatures’ needs, the land is leased for 25 years by a local nature conservancy group, who produce a wetland by the breaching of the two outer walls, to enable flooding of the land at high tides. This allows the water to regain its original domain and link the three walls.
The water briefly links the three eras and, at high tides, provides glimpses of those who lived and worked there.
Simon Tailor is a leading light in the
He spends much of his spare time at the newly created wetland, with the birds that feed there and with his binoculars.
The water has its inevitable way. It existed before Simon, before the convicts, before 17th century man, before the Romans, before life. It greedily reclaims its own and, in so doing, awakens past spirits that lay dormant in the flat, bleak landscape.
Simon encounters the people who lived their previous lives there.
Is the water thanking him with these encounters? Is it pulling him back into their worlds? Or is it simply demonstrating that the water was, and is, and is to come; that Simon and his like have their short day and their days are only linked and forever linked by the water?
Simon looks for proof of continuing sanity and confirmation of the past people and lives that he briefly touches when high tides link the walls. Lorna Swift, a photographer with the local newspaper, and Bill Saydon, the local farmer, are dragged into Simon’s extended world and play their own insufficient parts in the unfolding story and the unfolding history.
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About the Book
Three walls kept back the sea from the farming land adjacent the Lincolshire Wash.
The first inner wall had been built under the supervision of Roman soldiers during their occupation of
Simon Tailor, a leading light in the local nature conservacy group persuades the farmer to lease the land and breach the walls to form a new wetland habitat.
As the sea regains its original domain it reawakens those past spirits from each era. Simon encounters the spirits and draws others into his quest for confirmed sanity.
Until a perhaps inevitable, dreadful end.
About the Author
Dr Derek Earls has written a number of novels since his early retirement from a scientific career.
He lives in Newton Abbot,
He writes for the pleasure of writing per se and hopes to share the pleasure with his readers. Ideas accumulated over the years tumble out into his works as fresh as the day they were seeded in his mind.