And two other friends have experienced turbulent months as well – one having just lost her job and another being continually undermined and bullied by managers at his workplace. In the last months, I’ve a tried to do of listening, advising and caring, more than usual. Maybe there’s a benefit in this, being entirely responsive to others’ needs. At least, for a time.
*
The weather forecast for this evening is wild but I’m full of anticipation as I pack the boxes into the car, dodging heavy London showers. I’ve now managed to carve out eight whole days to work on revising the manuscript. I’m bringing all the books and papers I might, possibly, use this week. Then piling bedding and my other bags onto the back seat. Finally I transfer the limited contents of my fridge into a green Hackney Council recycling crate, and also throw in coffee, coffee grinder, tea, milk, some onion soup and a couple of cans of Guinness. I aim to leave London at 7.30 or so, avoiding the worst of the traffic; I calculate I could be at the cottage in Wales by 2 a.m. As usual, I dose myself with a final, strong black coffee once the car is packed, today having a Lemsip chaser with it, to try and ward off the cold I sense is coming.
Some final phone calls and emails and then I’m off, easing through the dark, wet streets of east London. The worst of the rush hour is over, and there’s a pause in the rain as well. I’m on the M11 in a few minutes, make good progress north, and after an hour or so I have my first stop, as usual, at Cambridge services, for petrol and more coffee. This place always appeals to me, this neon island by the dual carriageway, because it is about as far removed from ‘dreaming spires’ and academia as it’s possible to imagine. There’s a man in his sixties who works here, laconic but friendly, he often does the night shift. We have a little chat, I go outside to drink my coffee and ring the woman who looks after the cottage to say yes, I am coming, but I will be arriving very late, and don’t want to disturb her. That’s no problem, the key’s in the usual place in the porch. Megan in the neighbouring house is still away, and nobody’s been in the cottage since before Christmas, so it hasn’t been cleaned for a while – she hopes it won’t be too dusty … At this point I consider passing on Quentin Crisp’s advice about living without cleaning, but decide her chapel sensibilities might be scandalised by hearing that ‘after the first four years, the dirt doesn’t get any worse’. My habitual desire to drive on smaller roads is offset by my reduced energies and the fact the radio’s forecasting bad weather later on, so I stick to dual carriageways and motorways. I get to Birmingham in another hour, before striking west to Bridgnorth and Shrewsbury. On the way I pass my favourite road sign in Britain, not far from Much Wenlock – the magnificent pairing, on a single sign, of the settlements of Wigwig and Homer.
After Shrewsbury I decide to try a new route west, over the mountains. The wind is getting up, blowing rusted leaves along the country road that leads to Knockin. I’m listening to a discussion about a book I read many years ago and loved, Monsignor Quixote by Graham Greene. The way the guests are talking with such enthusiasm about the different belief systems represented by the communist mayor and the monsignor, and the friendship between them, makes me want to reread the book as soon as I get back to London. And there’s another book, Norwegian I think, something about ice and shared secrets between teenage girls, which also sounds intriguing. One of the guests is describing his experience some time ago of sheltering in a basement in Montreal with a hundred other people during severe power cuts which lasted for days, and how they sensed the world of ice gathering all around them. And as the reviewers talk, these border roads, with their bare February trees, become entirely connected in my mind to this other kingdom of ice.
In the darkness I sense the hulk of the Berwyns away to my right. The houses get more scattered, the ground more undulating. Past eleven o’clock now, and I only meet one car every fifteen minutes or so. Darting over a crossroads, an illuminated house, a sudden curiosity about the lives that people lead in such places. Stone bridges, bends, having to slow down to third gear, second at times. Through Llangynog – a name that is strangely familiar, though I’m not able to work out why. A man staggers out of a pub, and for a moment threatens to fall into the road. I swerve to avoid him. Then the mountains really begin. And a first squall of serious rain. The headlights reach out and show me that I’m climbing above the treeline now, into a rockscape, only gorse bushes fringe the mountain road, twisting higher and higher. Round a blind bend I have to brake suddenly. Two sheep are sleeping in the middle of the road. They seem very huffy to be disturbed and shuffle away fussily. With superb timing Dylan is encanting one of the most wonderful openings to any song I know – ‘When you’re lost in the rain in Juarez and it’s Easter time too …’ I stop to pee at the top of the valley, in gusts of rain and wind, my arc twisting and silvered in the headlights. Sense of the land plunging away to my left. A single light from a farmhouse far away on the other side of the valley. Then roaring off into the night again with only Mr Zimmerman for company.
Hairpin bends, down and down, towards the comforting lights of Bala in the valley below. A single car precedes me through the closed-up town, always linked in my mind to Sebald’s minister and wife, and the little Jacques Austerlitz, growing up here in the freezing rectory during the war. Then climbing again, the road through the Arenigs, the reservoir shimmering down below on my left, and underneath the waters, the village of Capel Celyn, flooded to provide water for Liverpool, destroying an entire community here in 1965, and, unintentionally, creating a new wave of passionate Welsh nationalism in the process. Now an unfamiliar version of ‘Visions of Johanna’, rockier, heavier. It doesn’t really work, but I still appreciate Dylan’s restless urge always to reinterpret, to try something different. But ‘Ballad of a Thin Man’ has never sounded more magnificent than in this outstandingly bleak landscape, with the rain now teeming down diagonally.
You’ve been with the Professors, and they’ve all liked your looks.
With great lawyers, you’ve discussed lepers and crooks.
You’ve been through all of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s books;
you’re very well read, it’s well known,
but something is happening here, and you don’t know what it is,
do you MISTER JONES?
Not a single car for half an hour now, nothing else moving in the landscape. Then, a mile or two from the junction at Trawsfynydd, I see the smudged spots of distant headlights in my mirror. And, although I’m driving at sixty or so, they seem to be getting closer. It’s completely irrational but this car behind me, in this landscape, seems far from benevolent. Too many thrillers watched over the years, where bad things begin with a car sighted in the rear-view mirror. I accelerate, but the lights are still getting closer and closer. If I can just make it to the junction before they catch me! The famous Free Trade Hall ‘Rolling Stone’ now beginning. That notorious cry of ‘Judas!’ from the crowd, and Dylan snarling back. I get to the turning, right towards Harlech, and with the street light here feel a bit calmer. But I still want to lose the car behind. Down the hill towards Gellilydan, nudging seventy. Turn off at the bottom, left towards Harlech. I stop, look back, and to my enormous relief, see the headlights speeding on towards Porthmadog. I shout after my pursuer, perhaps rather unnecessarily. Now, closer to my destination, and only six hours from Hackney – not bad going at all.