I said that I had had a glimpse of Portmeirion from the train and wanted a closer look, if there was time.
We drove there in her car and parked under the pines. She had known the architect Clough Williams-Ellis very well. "He was a wonderful man," she said. "On his deathbed he was still chirping away merrily. But he was very worried about what people would say about him. Funny man! He wrote his own obituary! He had it there with him as he lay dying. When I visited him, he asked me to read it. Of course, there was nothing unflattering in it. I asked him why he had gone to all the trouble of writing his own obituary.
"He said, 'Because I don't know what the Times will write in the obituary they do of me.'"
We walked through the gateway and down the stairs to the little Italian fantasy town on this Welsh hillside.
"He was obsessed that they would get something wrong or be critical. He had tried every way he could of getting hold of his Times obituary — but failed, of course. They're always secret."
She laughed. It was that hearty malicious laugh.
"The funny thing was, I was the one who had written his obituary for the Times. They're all written carefully beforehand, you know."
I said, "And you didn't tell him?"
"No." Her face was blank. Was she smiling behind it? "Do you think I should have?"
I said, "But he was on his deathbed."
She laughed again. She said, "It doesn't matter."
There was a sculpted bust of Williams-Ellis in a niche, and resting crookedly on its dome was a hand-scrawled sign saying, the bar UPSTAIRS IS OPEN.
Jan said, "He would have liked that."
We walked through the place, under arches, through gateways, past Siamese statuary and Greek columns and gardens and pillars and colonnades; we walked around the piazza.
"The trouble with him was that he didn't know when to stop."
It was a sunny day. We lingered at the blue Parthenon, the Chantry, the Hercules statue, the town hall. You think: What is it doing here? More cottages.
"Once, when we lost a child, we stayed up there in that white cottage." She meant herself and Elizabeth, when they were husband and wife.
There was more. Another triumphal arch, the Prior's Lodge, pink and green walls.
Jan said, "It's supposed to make you laugh."
But instead, it was making me very serious, for this folly had taken over forty years to put together, and yet it still had the look of a faded movie set.
"He even designed the cracks and planned where the mossy parts should be. He was very meticulous and very flamboyant, too, always in one of these big, wide-brimmed antediluvian hats and yellow socks."
I was relieved to get out of Portmeirion; I had been feeling guilty, with the uncomfortable suspicion that I had been sightseeing — something I had vowed I would not do.
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.
12. The 20:20 to Llandudno Junction
"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.