He checked that footnote.
"Saturdays only," he said. "So the next bloody train—"
I went down the line in a small train to Dovey Junction and I continued on a second train to Barmouth. The junction was in the middle of the river valley, just a halt in a marsh, but the other train was waiting for this one as we drew in. The remote branch lines of Wales were run with efficiency and pride. The services were frequent, even here, and I could easily have crossed the line and taken a train to Shrewsbury and been in London in time for dinner.
The train traveled seaward along the north bank of the river, and then westerly into the glare of the afternoon sun skipping through the marsh. Tracking around a hillside on a ledge, the train swung away from the wide estuary of the Dovey, and its shore of sand and broken slate, and then north to Aberdovey — houses on the steep hillside, tin caravans on the beach.
Caravans — it soon became obvious — were the curse of the Welsh coast. They were technically mobile homes, but they were not mobile. At best they were tin boxes, the shape of shoe boxes — including the lids — anchored in a field next to the sea, fifty or a hundred at a time, in various faded colors. Sometimes they were plunked down on slabs of concrete, and where there were more than a hundred — I counted over three hundred in some places — there was a fish-and-chip shop and a tin shower and another tin outhouse with a sign saying conveniences. What fresh water there was came from a standpipe surrounded by squashy mud. The whole affair put me in mind of nomads or refugees, certain Afghans or Somalis or Kurds, or the dizziest Gypsies who had perhaps made a little money but refused to abandon their old ways, sending their womenfolk out for buckets of water. You wondered how they could stand it so close to each other in such tiny unsheltered quarters, and you also began to ask the questions that true savages inspired — not the civilized Afghans or Somalis, but those people in remote parts who looked so naked and uncomfortable, you wondered how they washed and ate and kept dry and did their business. And there was something totally savage in the way they did not notice the incongruity of the settlement, how ugly it was, how beautiful the beach. The caravan settlements were always hideous and always in the loveliest coves.
They were English people, of course, encouraged by the Welsh to have a cheap holiday here. Some lived in orange tents at the margins of the caravan fields. It was always a lurid sight on a hot day, the pink people reading the Sun in front of the orange tents, making cups of tea on little flaming tin stoves.
It was like the nuclear power stations and the junkyards and the shallys and sewage farms: you could do anything you liked on the British coast, beside the uncomplaining sea. The seaside belonged to everyone.
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.