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

Jan said, "Want to see my gravestone?"

It was the same sudden, proud, provocative, mirthful way that she had said, Want to see my grave?

I said of course.

The stone was propped against the wall of her library. I had missed it before. The lettering was very well done, as graceful as the engraving on a bank note. Tt was inscribed Jan & Elizabeth Morris. In Welsh and English, above and below the names, it said,

Here Are Two Friends

At the End of One Life

I said it was as touching as Emily Dickinson's gravestone in Amherst, Massachusetts, which said nothing more than Called Back.

When I left, and we stood at the railway station at Porthmadog, Jan said, "If only these people knew who was getting on the train!"

I said, "Why should they care?"

She grinned. She said, "That knapsack — is that all you have?"

I said yes. We talked about traveling light. I said the great thing was to have no more than you could carry comfortably and never to carry formal clothes — suits, ties, shiny shoes, extra sweaters: what sort of travel was that?

Jan Morris said, "I just carry a few frocks. I squash them into a ball — they don't weigh anything. It's much easier for a woman to travel light than a man."

There was no question that she knew what she was talking about, for she had been both a man and a woman. She smiled at me, looking like Tootsie, and I felt a queer thrill when I kissed her goodbye.

"I LOVE STEAM, don't you?" Stan Wigbeth said to me on the Ffestiniog Railway, and then he leaned out the window. He was not interested in my answer, which was "Up to a point." Mr. Wigbeth smiled and ground his teeth in pleasure when the whistle blew. He said there was nothing to him more beautiful than a steam "loco." He told me they were efficient and brilliantly made; but engine drivers had described to me how uncomfortable they could be, and how horrible on winter nights, because it was impossible to drive most steam engines without sticking your face out the side window every few minutes.

I wanted Mr. Wigbeth to admit that they were outdated and ox-like, dramatic-looking but hell to drive; they were the choo-choo fantasies of lonely children; they were fun but filthy. Our train was pulled through the Welsh mountains by a Fairlie, known to the buffs as a "double engine" — two boilers—"the most uncomfortable engine I've ever driven," a railwayman once told me. It was very hot for the driver, because of the position of the boilers. The footplate of the Fairlie was like an Oriental oven for poaching ducks in their own sweat. Mr. Wigbeth did not agree with any of this. Like many other railway buffs, he detested our century.

This had originally been a tram line, he told me; all the way from Porthmadog to Blaenau Ffestiniog — horse trams, hauling slate from the mountain quarries. Then it was named the Narrow Gauge Railway and opened to passengers in 1869. It was closed in 1946 and eventually reopened in stages. The line was now — this month — completely open.

"We're lucky to be here," Mr. Wigbeth said, and checked his watch — a pocket watch, of course: the railway buffs timepiece. He was delighted by what he saw. "Right on time!"

It was a beautiful trip to Blaenau, on the hairpin curves of the steep Snowdonia hills and through the thick evening green of the Dwyryd Valley. To the southeast, amid the lovely mountains, was the Trawsfynydd Nuclear Power Station, three or four gigantic gray slabs. An English architect, noted for his restrained taste, had been hired in 1959 to make it prettier, or at least bearable, but he had failed. Perhaps he should have planted vines. Yet this monstrosity emphasized the glory of these valleys. I found the ride restful, even with the talkative Mr. Wigbeth beside me. Then he was silenced by a mile-long tunnel. The light at the end of the tunnel was Blaenau Ffestiniog, at the head of the valley.

"Where are you off to, then?" Mr. Wigbeth asked.

"I'm catching the next train to Llandudno Junction."

"It's a diesel," he said, and made a sour face.

"So what?"

"I don't call that a train," he said. "I call that a tin box!"

He was disgusted and angry. He put on his engine driver's cap and his jacket with the railway lapel pins, and after a last look at his conductor-type pocket watch, he got into his little Ford Cortina and drove twenty-seven stop-and-go miles back to Bangor.

I walked around Blaenau. I had thought of spending the night there, but it seemed a dull place and I felt negligent, being away from the coast. It was still like a bright afternoon when I took the 20:20 to Llandudno Junction, but moments after leaving Blaenau Station we plunged into a tunnel two miles long. When we emerged I began looking for the peak of Snowdon on the west, and imagined that I saw it at Dolwyddelan. The castle ("In 1281 Llewelyn the Last was here…") was solitary and high and looked like a bad molar. At Bettws-y-Coed I searched for Ugly House ("once an overnight stop for Irish drovers"), but could not see it. The village was pretty but overcrowded this hot evening, and I had a happy, hooky-playing feeling as I left on the empty train rolling north through the Vale of Conway, stopping at Llanrwst and Dolgarrog. Now the light was golden, and the motion of the little train lulled me as we traveled along the river under the peaceful hills to the coast.

***

I was not frightened at the hotel in Llandudno until I was taken upstairs by the pockmarked clerk; and then I sat in the dusty room alone and listened. The only sound was my breathing, from having climbed the four flights of stairs. The room was small; there were no lights in the passageway; the wallpaper had rust stains that could have been spatters of blood. The ceiling was high, the room narrow: it was like sitting at the bottom of a well. I went downstairs.

The clerk was watching television in the lounge — he called it a lounge. He did not speak to me. He was watching "Hill Street Blues," a car chase, some shouting. I looked at the register and saw what I had missed before — that I was the only guest in this big dark forty-room hotel. I went outside and wondered how to escape. Of course I could have marched in and said, "I'm not happy here — I'm checking out," but the clerk might have made trouble and charged me. Anyway, I wanted to punish him for running such a scary place.

I walked inside and upstairs, grabbed my knapsack, and hurried to the lounge, rehearsing a story that began, "This is my bird-watching gear. I'll be right back—" The clerk was still watching television. As I passed him (he did not look up), the hotel seemed to me the most sinister building I had ever been in. On my way downstairs I had had a moment of panic when, faced by three closed doors in a hallway, I imagined myself in one of those corridor labyrinths of the hotel in the nightmare, endlessly tramping torn carpets and opening doors to discover again and again that I was trapped.

I ran down the Promenade to the bandstand and stood panting while the band played "If You Were the Only Girl in the World." I wondered if I had been followed by the clerk. I paid twenty pence for a deck chair, but feeling that I was being watched (perhaps it was my knapsack and oily shoes?), I abandoned the chair and continued down the Promenade. Later, I checked into the Queens Hotel, which looked vulgar enough to be safe.

Llandudno was the sort of place that inspired old-fashioned fears of seaside crime. It made me think of poisoning and suffocation, screams behind varnished doors, creatures scratching at the wainscoting. I imagined constantly that I was hearing the gasps of adulterers from the dark windows of those stuccoed terraces that served as guest houses — naked people saying gloatingly, "We shouldn't be doing this!" In all ways, Llandudno was a perfectly preserved Victorian town. It was so splendid-looking that it took me several days to find out that it was in fact very dull.