Most of this western coastline in Scotland looked elemental in that way — as if it had been whipped clean and was waiting completion. It was hard and plain, most of it. It was very cold. I imagined sheep dying on it. Fort William was powerfully craggy. I began to think that this was the most spectacular coastline I had seen so far in Britain — huger than Cornwall, darker than Wales, wilder than Antrim. I stared at it and decided that it was ferocious rather than pretty, with a size and a texture that was surprisingly unfinished. It changed with the light, as coastal cliffs always did; it was always massive, but in a certain pale light it seemed murderous.
***
I was anonymous in Fort William. The other visitors had knapsacks, too, and oily shoes and binoculars. With Ben Nevis above it, and all the campsites of the Highlands just behind it, Fort William was full of hikers and fresh-air fiends all frantically interrogating each other about footpaths. The town was crowded and unpleasant-looking, heaving with campers, so after lunch I wiped my mouth and walked north and west along the railway line to the coast. Once again I thought: Some travel is a fantasy of running away.
Three miles away I came to the lower end of the Caledonian Canal. I wanted to see a boat passing through, but there was nothing on it except ducks. It was a sunny day and I was glad to be alone in the empty glen.
Then a wheezing voice said, "Hae ye got a match?" and I almost jumped out of my skin.
It was Jock MacDougal, with red eyes and a filthy face, trembling next to a tree. He had a scabby wound on his forehead, and his clothes were rags.
"I just want a match," he said. "I'm nae being cheeky."
He was trying to reassure me: he knew he was filthy and dangerous-looking. I gave him my matches and he slowly lit an inch-long cigarette butt that was flat, as if it had been stepped on. What an odd person to meet in a green glen.
He said, "I was never had up for assault or bodily harm or a breach of the peace in me whole life."
I stared at him. I did not know what to say.
"Only for being drunk and incapable," he said.
He had a little camp nearby — a nest of rags, some bottles, a smoky fire, and two comrades. There was a frightened woman named Alice and a man named Crawfurd, who was even filthier than MacDougal. Crawfurd called himself Tex. He was from Aberdeen.
"But I'm a Glasgow man," Jock said. "A Glasgow man will stick by you."
Alice looked wildly at him, but said nothing. She looked injured and was very silent.
Jock sang a song,
"Coom doon the stairs.
Tie up your bonny hairs!"
This seemed to frighten Alice even more.
He sang a song about a place called Fyvie. He there's a statue of a cow!"
"What's your trade?" Crawfurd said. He had a end of his nose and smelled of dead leaves.
I told them I was in publishing.
"Ha!" Jock said. "I'm a tramp! I'm a man of the road!"
Crawfurd said, "Do much traveling?"
"A certain amount," I said.
Crawfurd said, "I've been everywhere in the world."
"New Jersey? Argentina? Fiji?" I asked.
"Everywhere," he said.
I asked him to describe for me some of the more colorful spots he had seen.
"That would be too hard. There were so many."
Five feet away, Jock was crouching with his arm around Alice. Then he thrust his hand under her green sweater and she squawked.
"I have three passports," Crawfurd said. "A woman in Perth once said to me, 'I'd like to have twenty-four hours with you.'"
This amazed me. He stank, his teeth were black, he had blades of grass in his beard.
"She said, 'Know what you should do? You should write a travel book.'"
"Why don't you?" I asked. Now I was sorry I had told him I was in publishing. But what would he write, under this tree?
"There's too many bloody travel books," he said, and faced me, as if challenging me to deny it.
I did not deny it.
"Why are you here in Scotland?" Jock shouted to me. "People in Scotland are rubbish!"
I said I had to go, but they stood on the path, blocking my way.
"Give me some money," Jock said.
"Which way to Corpach?" I asked, still walking.
"I'm not telling any secrets unless you pay me!"
"All right, I'll pay."
He pointed. "Down there on the road."
I gave him a ten-pence coin.
He said, "Give me sixty or seventy."
"That was only worth ten," I said. "Now step aside."
The train was the 16:30 to Mallaig. I looked back and saw the hump of Ben Nevis, with streaks and splashes of snow in some of its hollows. It was a huge gray forehead of rock, with a green bare dome in front of it and three more on the south side. All the mountains here had the contours of hogs.
Mrs. Gordon in the next seat said, "Taking the train, to me, is like going to the cinema."
It was a splendid ride to Mallaig — one of the most scenic railway journeys in the world. But the train itself was dull, the passengers watchful and reverent, intimidated by all this scenery.
Scotland had a paradoxical beauty — its landscape was both lovely and severe; it was a monotonous extravaganza. The towns were as dull as any I had ever seen in my life, and the surrounding mountains very wild. I liked what I saw, but I kept wanting to leave. And the Scots had a nervous way with a joke. Their wit was aggressive and unsmiling. I wondered: Was that meant to be funny? When they were forthright they could become personal, especially on the subject of money. A Scot I met in Oban had accused me of wasting money when I told him that I had been planning to take a first-class sleeper to London; he regarded it as wasteful and selfish that I should want to be alone. And here on this Mallaig train a man wanted to know why, if there was no youth hostel in Mallaig, I planned to stay the night there? And why hadn't I bought a round-trip ticket — didn't I know it was cheaper than the one-way fare on a weekday? This was Mr. Buckie, who saved rubber bands — he had fourteen on his wrist — and had been wearing the same tweed cap since 1953. Coronation Year. He was not trying to be helpful. Penny-pinching had made him abusive, obstructive, and cross. He ended up by disliking me, as if I were wasting his money.
But I thought: In travel you meet people who try to lay hold of you, who take charge like parents, and criticize. Another of travel's pleasures was turning your back on them and leaving and never having to explain.
I changed my seat as we passed along the shore of Loch Eil. There were high mountains rising in the west, and more lochs. Some of the mountains were three thousand feet high and some lochs a thousand feet deep (Loch Morar a few miles away was even deeper). We crossed the Glenfinnian Viaduct — it was curved and long and had Romanesque arches, and it stood at the north end of the shiny black water of Loch Shiel, which lay beneath more rugged mountains.
There was great emptiness here. The train stayed high on the hillsides and did not descend into the valleys. There were ferns and bracken in the foreground, and some trees growing in narrow sheltered gullies out of the wind, but no human beings. The westerly gales had torn the soil from most hillsides. It was hard and lovely. The beauty was only part of it; you had to be tough to live here.
The landscape widened after Loch Ailort Station, and we were heading west, where the bright sun was setting, making the water blaze on Loch Nan Uamh, which was also the sea, and making the green grass luminous and vibrant, as if the pasture were trembling a foot from the ground. The light was perfect, because there was nothing in the way: the mountains stood separate and all the sea lochs here were long and stretched westward, so that the last of the sun shone uninterruptedly down their length.