I look out on the grey stone village through the windscreen wipers still slapping rhythmically. On the other side of the road I can see three teenagers smoking and drinking in a bus shelter. In the dark it’s hard to tell if they’re boys or girls, all of them in hoodies, passing a bottle between them. I feel an ache of solidarity with these three figures, remembering teenage years in rural isolation, far from town or city, not yet able to drive. Not even able to go to the local pub, if there was one. And yet their dreams are as fierce and beautiful as anyone else’s. And there must be compensations to growing up here as well – the proximity to mountains, forests and sea … maybe that explains a lot? I try to imagine a London electrician or plumber talking unselfconsciously about grief and poetry – and I can’t. Not that they don’t think about these subjects, but the idea of talking to a stranger about them – no, it’s just inconceivable. Perhaps the rocks and the rivers of these parts of Wales, and the deep culture of song and storytelling, have some intangible effect on all who grow up here.
Gwyn returns, holding out two main fuses – ‘I knew I had these somewhere. I’m sure one of these will work, let’s give them a try,’ and soon we’re driving back to the cottage by the sea. Prompted by what we’ve been talking about, on the way back I tell Gywn about the Brazilian educationalist and activist Paulo Freire – and an account which I’ve never forgotten from one of his last books, Pedagogy of Hope. He recounts how, thirty years before, he had been invited to the city of Recife in the north-east of Brazil to give a presentation at Amarela House, in a poor part of the city, about the relationship between freedom and authority in education. The hall is packed, with local people, mainly urban workers and labourers, and Freire speaks for a long time, citing the work of Piaget on the development of the child’s moral code:
When I had concluded, a man of about forty, still rather young but already worn out and exhausted, raised his hand and gave me the clearest and most bruising lesson I have ever received in my life as an educator. I do not know his name. I do not know whether he is still alive. Possibly not …
He raised his hand and gave a talk that I have never been able to forget. It seared my soul for good and all. It has exerted an enormous influence on me … In almost every academic ceremony in which I am honoured, I see him standing in one of the aisles of that big auditorium of so long ago, head erect, eyes blazing, speaking in a loud, clear voice, sure of himself, speaking his lucid speech.
‘We have just heard,’ he began, ‘some nice words from Dr Paulo Freire. Fine words in fact. Well spoken. Some of them were even simple enough for people to understand easily. Others were more complicated. But I think I understood the most important things that all the words together say. Now I’d like to ask the doctor a couple of things that I find my fellow workers agree with.’
He fixed me with a mild, but penetrating, gaze, and asked: ‘Dr Paulo, sir, do you know where people live? Have you ever been in any of our houses, sir?’ And he began to describe their pitiful houses. He told me of the lack of facilities, of the extremely minimal space in which all their bodies were jammed. He spoke of the lack of resources for the most basic necessities.
He spoke of physical exhaustion, and of the impossibility of dreams for a better tomorrow …
As I followed his discourse, I began to see where he was going to go with it. I was slouching in my chair, slouching because I was trying to sink down into it. And the chair was swivelling, in the need of my imagination and the desire of my body, which were both in flight, to find some hole to hide in. He paused a few seconds, ranging his eyes over the entire audience, fixed on me once more, and said, ‘Doctor, I have never been over to your house. But I’d like to describe it for you, sir. How many children do you have? Boys or girls?’
‘Five,’ I said – scrunching further down into my chair. ‘Three girls and two boys.’
‘Well, Doctor, your house must be the only house on the lot, what they call an “oitao livre” house, a house with a yard. There must be a room just for you and your wife, sir. Another big room, that’s for the three girls. You have another room for the two boys. A bathroom with running water. A kitchen with Arno appliances. A maid’s room – much smaller than your kids’ rooms – on the outside of the house. A little garden with a … front lawn. You must also have a room where you toss your books, sir – a “study”, a library. I can tell by the way you talk that you’ve done a lot of reading, sir, and you’ve got a good memory.’
There was nothing to add or subtract. That was my house. Another world, spacious and comfortable.
‘Now Doctor, look at the difference. You come home tired, sir, I know that. You may even have a headache from the work you do. Thinking, writing, reading, giving these kind of talks that you’re giving now. That tires a person out too. But sir,’ he continued, ‘it’s one thing to come home, even tired, and find the kids all bathed, dressed up, clean, well fed, not hungry – and another thing to come home and find your kids dirty, hungry, crying, and making noise. And people have to get up at four in the morning the next day and start all over again – hurting, sad, hopeless. If people hit their kids, and even “go beyond bounds” as you say, it’s not because people don’t love their kids. No, it’s because life is so hard they don’t have much choice.’
This is class knowledge, I say now …
That night, in the car on the way back home, I complained to [my wife] rather bitterly. Though she rarely accompanied me to meetings, when she did she made excellent observations that always helped me.
‘I thought I’d been so clear’, I said. ‘I don’t think they understood me.’
‘Could it have been you Paulo, who didn’t understand them? … I think they got the main part of your talk. The worker made that clear in what he said. They understood you, but they needed to have you understand them.’
We’ve reached the first gate on the track at the brow of the hill as I finish this story. Gwyn has been listening intently.
‘Yes, I can see why the academic is upset. But I’m not sure I agree with the point of this story – at least as I understand it.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, I was brought up in a Labour family, proper Labour – socialism – not the New Labour crap. Anyway, you know what we were always taught?’ “Workers by hand and by brain” – we’re all working class, whether you’re an electrician or a teacher – we should focus on everything we share, don’t you reckon?’
Back at the cottage, with a little coaxing of pliers, and the odd adjustment, Gwyn slides one of the main fuses in, we wait for half a second, and then we hear a whirring as the fan in the bathroom comes on, and we delightedly click the other switches. We’ve got back the power! And now I’ll be able to write for the next week. I thank Gwyn from the bottom of my heart, he’s saved the day. But he won’t accept any money from me. It was an old fuse he had, and anyway, he’s enjoyed our conversation, that’s more than enough for him – ‘By the way,’ he asks me, ‘I suppose you probably know where the word “conversation” comes from, do you? No? Well, my sister, who’s the brains of our family, she told me it’s from “con” – with – and “versare” – to turn. To “turn with somebody”, which then became, you know, to turn something over, to talk about something. Well, that’s what we’ve been doing, isn’t it? Turning things over – conversare!’ And with that unexpected etymological flourish, he’s off with a smile and a wave, and I’m left contemplating the nature of power in our world. The power of a hurricane, of a child, of a voice, of a corporation, of a hand, of a pen.