The Attack of the Killer Rhododendrons (29 page)

And then, between the nettles, I spotted what must surely be the creature we were after. Creamy-white, opaque, no wrinkles … Was it really a Roman snail, or could it be Britain’s second-largest snail,
Helix aspersa?
In order to be certain, I pulled calipers out of my pocket to measure the shell’s width. Forty-two millimetres across—there was no doubt about it. I had found a Roman snail. I
wanted a photograph to commemorate the occasion, and so Errol and Cath kindly nudged the nettles out of the way with their shoes. I used a pencil to carefully move aside the last stalk, but nettles are inherently evil creatures and I got stung pretty badly.

We wandered on and Errol found himself a snail. He rubbed in his success by saying, “Only one member of our merry little band hasn’t found one yet!” Cath soon got her own back by finding a field full of them. Or at least we assumed that the field was full of them; their empty shells were scattered everywhere, but given the abundance of nettles, we weren’t willing to risk our hides on a very careful investigation for their live counterparts. Errol expressed disappointment at the size of the snails, claiming that they had been much larger when he had seen them as a ten-year-old. He speculated that we might have stumbled across a population of hybrids instead of pure Roman snails. Errol speculates about a lot of things.

It was a pity that snails have such rudimentary eyes, because the landscape was truly lovely. Oaks dominate, but the coniferous yew trees made a pretty good show. The ground was rich in great nodules of flint that reminded me of knucklebones. And, sure enough, chalk outcrops broke through the soil in places. I speculated that constructing so large a calcareous shell would require snails to feast on a calcium-rich diet. But even the beautiful view couldn’t keep my mind off the burning of my hand from the nettle stings. Cath gathered up and crushed some dock leaves. I suppose that every child in Britain knows that dock grows close to nettles, and that the juice from the crushed leaves of the former relieves the sting from the latter. It was news to me, but it certainly seemed to work.

Errol is, in some ways, magical. For instance, he seems to get by on very little food, with long, long periods between meals. Even though he had a refrigerator the size of a walk-in closet, there never seemed to be much in it. At Errol’s house, breakfast never appeared to be on offer.

It was rapidly approaching noon, and Cath and I convinced the magician to stop for lunch at a pub in Wrecksley. Then, having seen the snails and consumed some beer, I was keen to learn more
about the Romans who brought the snails to Britain. We set off for Lullingstone near the town of Eynsford, site of what may be the best-preserved Roman villa in Britain.

It seems that this particular villa was constructed shortly after the 43 CE invasion and was in continuous use for the better part of 350 years before being gutted by fire in the fifth century. Excavation had provided evidence of both cult worship and early Christian prayer, with shrines converted to Christian chapels. The villa had a verandah, a three-room bathing complex, underfloor heating, and magnificent mosaics on the floors of the reception room and dining hall. Today, the excavated remains of the villa are all under a protective cover that reminded me of a giant garden shed.

Looking at a painted reconstruction of what the villa might have looked like, Errol said, “I bet it didn’t look anything like that. It looks like a modern housing development.” In a sense, it did. Perhaps the Romans were particularly forward-looking in terms of housing.

We viewed a lead coffin decorated with scallop shell symbols that housed the remains of a twenty-five-year-old man who had stood roughly five foot ten inches. We also saw a fourth-century goose, buried for good luck. The burial of an Alsatian-sized dog had probably not been ceremonial. Although this had been the residence of a well-to-do family, they had not been invulnerable to heartache; we saw a display of the skeletons of three newborn infants.

The walls of the villa had been constructed of flint boulders. Signs indicated that this section had been a verandah, this bit had been a living room, with bedrooms over there. After nearly two millennia of neglect, you had to use your imagination. There was an interesting sequence of rooms labelled as the bath block. Bathing was apparently a big deal to the Romans; it was a shame they hadn’t got the hang of soap the way the Brits had. From what I read, I gathered that occupying the dining room involved a lot of reclining on cushions. Eating preceded orgiastic behaviour by about five minutes.

Peering down a well, I found it contained a wide assortment of coins dating to the rule of Emperor QEII. I spotted a bench plaque dedicated to Josephine Birchenough (1920–1994), widow of Edwyn, co-discoverer of the site. I suspect that the Romans had discovered the site long before Edwyn, and the paleolithic people of Britain may have had something to say about the Roman “discovery.”

The best part of the villa was the beautiful and elaborate mosaic floor. Designs would have been chosen from a pattern book. Among these designs, often repeated in the mosaic tiles, were swastikas, which held no special negative association before being adopted by Nazis. Errol noted that the gift shop’s postcards of the mosaic floors had been very carefully doctored to remove or de-emphasize the swastikas.

As we prepared to leave, Cath explained that she always found sites like this a bit of an anticlimax. She fully appreciated the significance of such spots, but when only the foundations remain, she is left with a lust for more. She was cheered a bit as we drove down Lullingstone Lane and back to Eynsford; the bells of St. Martin were pealing, celebrating a wedding.

That evening, Errol and I descended on The Weavers for a pint and the opportunity to sort out the world. The pub was surprisingly crowded with rather intoxicated gentlemen dealing with the outcome of both the FA Cup, won by Liverpool, and the Scottish Cup, won by Hearts of Midlothian. The local chaps had bet on the wrong team in both matches. Even though they were on the punch-up side of the fine line between sober and sloshed, I knew I had nothing to fear. Errol is just the sort of companion you want on your side if things get rough.

A
CCORDING TO MY EDITION
of
The Joy of Cooking,
ancient Romans were addicted to snails, which they raised on ranches. At this point I conjure images of snailboys and snailgirls eating beans around a campfire after a day or lassoing and branding … but perhaps that is just me. Admittedly these are big snails, but the effort required to prepare them for consumption barely seems worth the
trouble. First they are starved for a couple of days to allow them to poop out whatever noxious material they have been eating. Then they are fed nothing but fresh lettuce leaves for two weeks. When the time is right for a feast, you scrub and scrub them until no more slime is apparent. A Roman snail would, presumably, make a lot of slime. There is no talk of a merciful death. Rather, the snail’s operculum, which it uses to lock itself in the shell, is sliced off. They are then placed into several rinses of water and vinegar. Apparently, if this isn’t enough to make the snail poke its head out of its shell, you chuck it away. They get boiled for five minutes, ripped out of their shells, cooked until tender, seasoned, and then put back in their shells for presentation. And just before you eat one, remember that a snail is just a slug with a house.

Every time I arrive in Canterbury, my first stop is the gates of Canterbury Cathedral, at the heart of the old city. I took advantage of a bench near the cathedral to catch up on my notes. An elderly lady, laden with shopping bags, took the spot next to mine. As I scribbled, she pulled a few slices of bread from her bag to feed to pigeons. We were both immediately overwhelmed by the flurry of dozens of wings. She apologized by saying, “There were just three of them. They must tell each other.” I reassured her that pigeons do not faze me at all, and speculated that the flock may have spied her loaf of bread and followed her, waiting for a generous feeling to settle on her.

“Oh,” she said, hearing my accent. “You must be American.” When I corrected her, she went on to explain that Canadians had been a big presence in Canterbury during WWII. A group of them had been billeted next door to her, “And they were always so nice!” I laughed and suggested that this was exactly the image Canadians go for. We love everyone and want to be loved by everyone.

In Canterbury, you can’t dig a hole without hitting something left behind by the Romans. Even Canterbury Cathedral was built on the remains of a Roman temple. And not far from the cathedral walls lay one of the best examples of pre-Christian Canterbury—the Roman Museum. Down the stairs to a level below the streets
of the pilgrim city, I entered a time long before Chaucer’s pilgrims arrived.

The setting was vaguely eerie. Not because of dim lighting and creaking floorboards, but because I was the only patron. It was just me, the displays, and the soft hum of air conditioning. On display were harness fittings and buckles and amulets and coins with the image of Emperor Caligula. Carefully arranged behind glass were an oak and iron Roman spade, clothing fasteners, bone hairpins, and pottery weights. It was all starting to look like every other museum of archaeological artifacts that I had ever seen. Building tiles and plaster and beakers and bottles and a lead drainpipe. Not that every bit of it was dusty and dry; the museum had a large, cool green bottle holding the cremated remains of a twenty-year-old woman from the second century. Of course it made me wonder how they determined the era, age, and sex of the deceased from ashes.
CSI Canterbury.

On display were bits and bobs from a household shrine, contributed in memory of the late Dr. Frank Jenkins. Among these items was a small, headless, footless statuette of a naked woman. Someone had chosen to display the figurine back-to-front, so that the naughty bits could be seen only by craning my neck. I suppose the best bit of the museum was the tiled floor of a Roman house. It really was a nice bit of tile work. Sixteen hundred years of shifting ground had turned an originally flat floor into a rigid bouncy castle. The sign indicated that the house had been occupied from 70 CE to 380.

So here is what I gathered about the city of Canterbury from the museum’s plaques and displays. Before Caesar’s arrival, there had been no Canterbury. At the time, Britons lived in small homesteads, not cities. There was a hill fort at Bigbury with ditches and ramparts for defence. In 54 BCE, Caesar and his bullies stopped briefly at what was to become Canterbury, and were impressed by the locals. According to Caesar, they fought naked and painted themselves blue.

When the next Roman crew arrived in 43 CE, they found
Durovernum, the settlement of a local leader. Recognizing the strategic importance of controlling the crossing of the River Stour, they threw together a fort and named it Durovernum Cantiacorum, which translates as the marshy, alder tree grove of Cantii. Within a century, the Romans had erected a honking great settlement, with a town hall, marketplace, temple, theatre, public baths, another temple (now buried under Canterbury Cathedral), and several cemeteries. The city was home to soldiers, merchants, visiting traders, labourers, slaves, and the whole sort of general mishmash. By 300 CE, the layout of Canterbury had been established by a girdling wall, and that layout persists today.

But nothing lasts forever, including the Roman occupation of Britain. On display in the Roman museum was a lovely set of silverware that had been buried by someone waiting for safer days to return to the region. Instead, the treasure lay buried for 1,550 years until it was exposed by road works. If the world were a kind and gentle place, Roman Canterbury would have slowly evolved into the modern Christian Canterbury. Instead, when the Romans pulled out in 410 CE, disorder ruled, and the town disappeared. Buildings decayed and streets became overgrown. The defensive walls and massive theatre remained, but everything else got covered over by time. A century later, a new town sprang up and was named Cantwaraburg. The Pope’s missionaries arrived in 597 to meet with the local honcho, King Ethelbert. The king’s wife was Christian, and so he allowed Christianity to establish a foothold in Britain.

When it comes to aimless wandering, Canterbury is one of my favourite targets. It is certainly not the only city in Europe whose streets change names every few steps, but it is one of the best. I offer as evidence the section of pavement named, from northwest to southeast, Whitstable Road, St. Dunstan’s Street, St. Peter’s Street, High Street, The Parade, St. George’s Street, and St. George’s Place before finally settling on New Dover Road. My favourite example involves a short street with a single name change; just east of the city walls, Love Lane turns seamlessly into Monastery Street. I can
easily spend a day walking in lazy circles, peering into shop windows. The window display of
Dickies Suit Hire for Men and Boys
featured a lovely assortment of lavender and lime-coloured formal gowns. When Canterbury shops close for the evening, I can always head for a Canterbury pub. And usually do.

The Three Tuns is situated almost exactly at the centre of the old walled Roman city of Canterbury. The pub is at the intersection of Castle Street, St. Margaret’s, Beer Cart Lane, and Watling Street. I would soon be looking for the other end of Watling Street at Richborough. Painted on the pub’s outside wall were the words:

I had walked past The Three Tuns many times since my first visit to Canterbury as a child, but I had never been in. It was time for a drink.

Under the low, low ceiling, I found two punters with pints on one side of the bar and a barman propping up the other. I ordered a pint of Spitfire and waited for an opening in the conversation. I jumped in when the talk turned to diamonds. Jim, a forty-six-year-old decorator and painter, claimed that the price of diamonds was so high because all of the diamonds in the world were controlled by De Beers. I stepped in and explained that large diamond mines had recently opened in northern Canada, and that to the best of my knowledge, they were not owned by De Beers.