Famously, Windermere is the setting of the children’s adventure story Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome, and it’s also one of our son Torin’s favourite books. It appealed to his own love of adventure, mischief and all things piratical. Along with his little sister, Lowri, we embarked upon many canoe adventures together on the River Dart in the summer months, spotting wildlife and playing pirates with other boats. Torin – which means chief – was always ship’s captain, of course, because the children from the story often tussled for the position. Torin also loved practical jokes. His favourite was the whoopee cushion, normally hidden very indiscreetly on a seat where you would be ordered to sit down with great anticipation and stifled giggling.
Torin was born with a rare form of life-limiting, mitochondrial disease. After many lengthy admissions to Bristol Children’s hospital over several years, he developed some close relationships with its staff. One of the closest was with Katie, a brilliant play therapist who, when Torin was 11, asked me if she could apply to a charity that could send a family like ours on an all-expenses-paid trip of a lifetime together. She said: “Ask him where he would go if he could go anywhere in the world.”
He was sitting in his usual place on the sofa by the window in our sitting room, legs outstretched, while getting his weekly Beano fix, when we popped the question. We braced ourselves for a reply of “Disneyland”. Torin’s immediate answer, without even looking up from his comic, was “Windermere”. He then said, “I want you to sail me to Wild Cat Island – just like they do in the book.”
As his disease progressed, Torin’s ability to move about like other kids lessened. His sight and hearing were also slowly deteriorating, which meant he had only one other place to go that was unaffected by his body’s inability to produce enough energy – that place was his vast imagination. He had a voracious appetite for learning and a love of story, mythology and magic that carried him away to far-off realms.
On 23 January 2023, about six months after he told us about his dream to sail on Windermere, and not long before he would have turned 12, Torin died in hospital in the early hours of the morning. This was five weeks after a surgical procedure had gone horribly wrong and he had contracted sepsis. The shock and the horror were all-consuming. A couple of days later, we brought him home and for five days and five nights he was with us. We could barely leave his side as a string of close friends and family processed through the house to see him one last time.
Lowri, Torin’s little sister, who was only eight years old, was dealing with the enormity of what had happened in her own way. When other children came to the house, she would take them by the hand and ask if they wanted to go and see her brother, saying to them, “Don’t be afraid, he’s peaceful, he looks like he’s sleeping.” So, we tried as best we could on the day to honour both Torin’s imagination and the love that blossoms when beauty and grief are welcomed together.
Many people who have had children will remember the oxytocin-fuelled love bubble that emerged the moment their child was born. Our time with Torin after he died was like childbirth in that it was full of the same tenderness, but in reverse. As the physical bonds between us began to loosen, all we could do was hold him, kiss him and look on his face because, very soon, even that possibility was coming to an end.
We had to make real the loose plans we had intermittently discussed over the years for Torin’s funeral. We already knew where he was to be buried. In late 2012, I managed a construction project at a natural burial ground downriver from where we live. It is high up overlooking the River Dart and drenched in beauty, whatever the weather.
In the weeks between Torin’s death and his funeral, we knew what we had to do. It was an intuition, a knowing without a necessity for understanding.
A team of my woodworker friends built a small boat for him to be buried in. On the morning of his funeral we took him down to the river, carefully putting him into one of four large canoes where a 35-strong escort was at the ready. Family and friends gathered on the quayside for a special prayer that sent us on our way. As the flotilla paddled downstream, Torin’s classmates, teachers, friends and a women’s choir lined the riverbank. Arriving at the burial ground, we were greeted by 300 people. A dear friend conducting the ceremony told us to choose love over all other things: it was the way Torin had lived his life. It was the most devastating, beautiful day of our lives, a day that shimmered and glistened as the edges of worlds, known and unknown, ever so gently collided.
As I write, it has been one year, four months and five days since Torin died. Since then, the boat theme keeps returning to us and it has become clear that my wife, Siân, and I must build a boat together so we can realise Torin’s dream of sailing on Windermere. I have noticed over the years that there is a cross-cultural phenomenon in the imagery of the afterlife involving boats and bodies of water. The spirit of the dead person usually has to undertake a journey across the water and from some of the accounts I have read, they can’t do it alone. It requires the living to help them get there.
I am a woodworker with 25 years’ experience, but I’ve never built a boat before. Siân, an artist and printmaker, is also very keen to learn the ancient skill of traditional boatbuilding. It will be an adventure of our own, as well as an opportunity for us both to learn this endangered craft. We hope to start building in August, in my workshop, which has plenty of room for a 15ft-long boat to be built within its walls. We will spend about six months working towards completion and hope to launch next May on Windermere.
The boat will resemble the sailing dinghies that feature in the original Swallows and Amazons film of 1974. I hope to use homegrown European larch for the planks of the hull – I don’t like to use imported wood if I can help it. There aren’t many people building these boats any more, but I managed to find someone in Plymouth who, in a boatyard surrounded by superyachts, is keeping the tradition of wooden boatbuilding alive. Thanks to his hand-drafted drawings and his comprehensive “how to” manual, we will build a Swallows and Amazon-style boat for Torin.
The location used for Wild Cat Island in the 1974 film is actually Peel Island, on the south end of Coniston Water, a 25-minute drive away from Windermere. We plan to sail on both lakes to cover all the bases. Siân and I know that if Torin were here now, he would be beside himself with excitement. He’d want the boat built yesterday and he’d want us to be sailing it on the lakes tomorrow.
It was most probably the sense of freedom in the book, above the innocence and playfulness, that Torin was most enchanted by. As a child born with a progressive illness, his enthusiasm and love for that kind of freedom through story was heartbreaking and beautiful. The word “imaginary” is not looked upon kindly these days. The material, measurable world is seen as superior. But it is dangerous to forget everything is born of imagination. Torin knew this intimately. The imagined world was his friend and ally in a physical world that was becoming increasingly challenging.
The building of this boat for our son is one point in our journey of grief and love. In the making of it, we are reaching out across those imagined realms. It’s impossible to pin the project down with “why” and “what for” questions. The Walker children in Swallows and Amazons knew they had to find Wild Cat Island’s Secret Harbour. What we know is that we have to make this boat. We have to move into the next stage of our lives this way. It’s all we have to go on, for now.
To help Duncan and Siân build a boat for Torin, go to gofundme.com/f/build-a-boat-for-torin
