Paul Theroux - The Kingdom by the Sea - A Journey Around the Coast of Great Britain

After Tywyn and more caravan camps, the train climbed to open cliffs and traveled through rocky sheep pastures, and then near Fair-bourne passed the foot of Cader Idris ("the chair of the giant Idris"), a high ridge with a three-thousand-foot peak, which was one of the most beautifully shaped mountains in England. Then across the bar of the Mawddach estuary, with the watering place of Barmouth lying under a hill. The river was wide and purple-blue in the lowering sun, with flat sandy banks rising to steep hillsides and more mountains. Barmouth looked to be a place of great refreshment, but closer it was excruciating, much too small to contain the mobs, not enough parking lots or sidewalks. The sunburned people were milling around, and — unusual on the coast — the train cut right through the middle of town; everything was halted and tangled while the train made its stop, and Barmouth was suddenly full of pedestrians impatient to cross the line.

I had thought of getting off at Barmouth, but I changed my mind when I saw the numbers of people — in fact, I did get off, but I hurried back on, not wanting to be duffilled. And I had another reason: there was a note in the Cambrian Coast Railway Timetable that said, under certain asterisked stations, Calls on request. Passengers wishing to alight must inform the guard, and those wishing to join must give a hand signal to the driver.

I decided on Llandanwg. I told the guard I wished to alight there. We continued along the coast, passing four or five tiny platforms, and then the train stopped at Llandanwg, for me alone. Llandanwg was lovely, which was why it was full of ugly caravans. I walked to Harlech.

Welsh mountains looked like mountains, and its cottages like cottages, and its castles like castles. Harlech Castle was the very image of the gray mass of round towers high on a sea cliff that children dream about after a bedtime story of kings and princesses and dragons. But I kept my vow against entering castles or cathedrals, and instead walked through the Royal St. Davids golf course to the dunes and examined the caravans and tents. I did not really hate them. I was fascinated by them, as I had been by the shallys on the English coast. I made notes about the furnishings (camp cots, folding tables, transistor radios playing loud music) and about the food (tea, cookies, soup, bread, beans). The people in these encampments were great readers of the gutter press — lots of cheap newspapers were in evidence.

Tony Henshaw had been a policeman in Liverpool for five years — Constable Henshaw, people called him — and he had thought of making a career of it. "But last year finished it for me," he said.

He was rather cautious with me at first. He claimed that being a policeman in Liverpool was like anything else. But I knew it was not — or else why had he come to Harlech in his caravan, intending to spend the rest of his life here, and him not even being Welsh?

"It's rather a foony business," Mr. Henshaw said, looking around policeman's fashion, no sudden movements.

"Funny in what way?" I asked.

"I was in Toxteth last soomer."

"You mean the riots?"

"Riots and fighting, like. It woosn't easy. They was kids everywhere in the streets. Everywhere you looked, kids. All of them fighting. The fighting was bad. It was very bad." He became silent.

I stared and waited, expecting more.

"I can tell you I was scared."

I said in a patronizing way, "That's nothing to be ashamed of. You could have been killed."

"I could have been killed," he said gratefully.

Then he said, "You actually feel sorry for soom of them. They have no chance, no chance at all. It's 'awpless, really. The kids, small kids, all in tatters. It's sad."

"So you quit?"

"I was dead scared," he said. "But the situation hasn't changed. I think of them sometimes — all in tatters."

***

The next day, without thinking. I walked out of Harlech, past the castle, and down the road to Tygwyn. It was about a mile. And then I remembered the train; but now I could see whether flagging it down — giving a hand signal, as the timetable said — actually worked. I waited, and at about ten-thirty I heard the train whistle. I stuck my hand out. The train stopped for me. I got on and rode up the coast. It was the 10:32 to Criccieth.

We came to a long tidal estuary, and I saw across the water a dome, a church spire, a campanile, some pink and blue cottages, and some fake ruins: Portmeirion. It was a fantasy village, a large expensive folly, built by Sir Clough Williams-Ellis (1883–1978), a Welsh architect. Inspired by Portofino and liking this part of the Welsh coast, he created this village from scratch — the colors and shapes were not at all Welsh, and it looked unusual even from two miles away on a moving train. But it was a steamy day, and soon Portmeirion disappeared into the heat haze.

In Penrhyndeudraeth, the next stop, there was a large explosives factory. The local people called it Cooks, after the former owners, but its correct name was the Nobel Explosives Factory, a horrible conglomeration of vats, tubes, metal elbows, and wired-up pipes, arranged on the hillside like an enormous homemade whiskey still, and surrounded by prison fences and barbed wire. The interesting thing to me was not that this ugly explosives factory was in a pretty village, or that this grubby dangerous business gave us the Nobel Peace Prize — it was rather that for fifteen years in that same village of Penrhyndeudraeth, with this dynamite under him, lived Bertrand Russell, the pacifist.

Eight more miles on this sunny day and we drew into Criccieth, where I hopped out of the train. I owned a guidebook that said, " Criccieth: For several years this small town was the home of James (now Jan) Morris, probably the finest living British travel writer." The "James (now Jan)" needed no explanation, since the story of how she changed from a man to a woman in a clinic in Casablanca was told in her book Conundrum, 1974. She still lived near Criccieth, outside the village of Llanystumdwy, in what was formerly the stables of the manor house, looking northward to the mountains of Eryri and southward to Cardigan Bay.

I seldom looked people up in foreign countries — I could never believe they really wanted to see me; I had an uncomfortable sense that I was interrupting something intimate — but I did look up Jan Morris. She had written a great deal about Wales, and I was here, and I knew her vaguely. Her house was built like an Inca fort, of large black rocks and heavy beams. She had written, "It is built in the old Welsh way, with rough gigantic stones, piled one upon the other in an almost natural mass, with a white wooden cupola on top. Its architecture is of the variety known these days as 'vernacular,' meaning that no professional architect has ever had a hand in it."

She was wearing a straw calypso hat tipped back on her bushy hair, and a knit jersey, and white slacks. It was a very hot day and she was dressed for it. There is a certain educated English voice that is both correct and malicious. Jan Morris has such a voice. It was not deep but it was languid, and the maleness that still trembled in it made it sultry and attractive. There was nothing ponderous about her. She shrugged easily and was a good listener, and she laughed as a cat might — full-throated and with a little hiss of pleasure, stiffening her body. She was kind, reckless, and intelligent.

Her house was very neat and full of books and pictures. "I have filled it with Cymreictod — Welshness." Yes, solid country artifacts and beamed ceilings and a no smoking sign in Welsh — she did not allow smoking in the house. Her library was forty-two feet long and the corresponding room upstairs was her study, with a desk and a stereo.

Music mattered to her in an unusual way. She once wrote, "Ani-mists believe that the divine is to be found in every living thing, but I go one further; I am an inanimist, holding that even lifeless objects can contain immortal yearnings… I maintain, for instance, that music can permanently influence a building, so I often leave the record player on when I am out of the house, allowing its themes and melodies to soak themselves into the fabric."