Everything I Have Always Forgotten (21 page)

When we reached home, Father was listening to a radio report saying that the second trio was lost in the dark on the mountain. He called the police with my account of meeting the two groups – but in the morning, they were found dead at the bottom of a thousand-foot cliff. These mountains, which I looked upon as my playground or back yard, claimed (and claim to this day) many fatalities. I was brought up with many great natural dangers, and indeed courted them: between the tides and their currents, the craggy mountains with almost zero visibility in the clouds and vertical drops over cliffs on every side. Yet today's urban child faces just as many dangers from modern society: abduction, drug abuse, traffic accidents, bullying and firearms.

The very first time I climbed Snowdon, many years before, my older siblings woke me at midnight to leave. I remember stumbling into my shorts and sweater, pulling on my tennis shoes, rubbing Dubbin (Mink Oil in the States, a grease to waterproof boots) into my bare legs (on the assumption that it would keep my legs warmer and drier). I was thrilled to be included on this expedition with my older siblings; any misgivings of fear of the unknown, of heights or rain or cold simply never occurred to me. I must have fallen asleep in the Jeep on the way to the foot of the Watkins Path. Aroused again, we started up through a great forest of rhododendrons twenty feet high, they dripped large splats of the rainwater that was steadily pouring from the night sky. I walked behind someone, just doggedly putting one foot in front of the other. The jungle over, the path led up the side of a river gully. We could hear the crash and tumble of running water on our right. We did not use electric torches, so soon our eyes adjusted to the darkness and we could stumble along pretty well. The way became steeper and steeper until, after about two and a half hours, we reached the final climb. Here, the path had disappeared completely and I could only continue to follow the boots in front of me. At least I could not look down and see just how steep this part is, or that there is a precipice below which takes care of anyone who slips and falls. Had it been light, I might have been more afraid – I certainly was on subsequent trips, not that fear ever stopped me following this tricky path. Somehow, being fearful, ‘being chicken', was simply not in the cards – as long as I have lived, I have not considered mere qualms as a reason to turn back. Unless a situation spelled real disaster, I would continue if I could. Clearly fear is part of the instinct for self-preservation, but if there is a reasonable hope of survival, then you press on.

Once at the summit, I slept again, this time under a rock, with someone's raincoat over me. I missed the dawn and its rising sun… but then, so did everyone else. We were in thick cloud under incessant rain. I sat fascinated by the way the rain water beaded on my dobbin-smeared bare legs – perhaps I should have been wearing blue woad, instead of clothes, as the Picts of yore (those ancient cousins of Scots – who together kept harassing the Roman conquerors) are supposed to have done. I tried to see the sunrise from the summit of Snowdon several other times thereafter… and never did succeed, despite conscientiously consulting the weather forecast beforehand. That first time, I was probably six or seven years old. If that sounds a little too young to be climbing a 1,085 metre peak (the highest in England and Wales), I can only say that I have been out-walked by six-year-old great-nephews several times since.

Some couch potatoes have asked me why there was this compulsion to climb mountains in all weathers… I can only think that Britain in those days was grey and middling: everything was Rationed, Restricted and Controlled, standing in queues was a national pastime, public areas were cold and forlorn, smelling of stale beer, cigarettes and urine – so to walk up mountains in the hope of seeing a fabulous view was as liberating as it is to see a raven riding the up-draughts at the crest of a great cliff. We may have been broke and hungry – but hiking the mountains was a huge expression of freedom.

* * *

Now with my new climbing partner of my own age, Alan, we were traversing a rock face much steeper than the angle of repose, yet not quite vertical. He was getting excited and competitive, moving too fast from one tiny foot or finger-hold to the next. Suddenly he slipped and disappeared from view over the steeper slope below us. When I managed to climb down to him, he had landed on a shelf covered in grass and looked unhurt. That was, until he raised one hand that he had been nursing and showed me that a sharp piece of rock had almost filleted off the ball of his thumb, the fleshy part just above the wrist.

He mocked me when I tried to take the situation in hand. He told me, from his training as a Boy Scout, that he must be suffering from shock and “would I please give him a cup of hot, sweet, strong tea to calm his nerves!” Instead, we walked down the mountain to the nearest and most competent grown-up I knew: Amabel, wife of the famous local architect and creator of Portmeirion, Clough Williams-Ellis. They lived in a big old stone house that twenty-one-year-old Clough had inherited from his family. At once he set about re-designing the gardens, orienting vistas down which to admire the surrounding mountains. Many years later, when he was in his seventies, the house was gutted by fire. Clough and Amabel escaped unharmed and, far from bemoaning their loss, Clough was thrilled: he said the insurance would pay for the renovation he had always dreamed of and already had the drawings to execute. He immediately summoned a trusted builder and started to put his old ‘pipe-dreams' into reality the very next day, before the glowing embers of the fire had even died. He lived into his mid-nineties, but even then, was never an ‘old man'. He dreamed, he designed, he had fantasies that he realised and he never seemed to slow down for old age or expediency.

Amabel published some fifty books in her lifetime. She was a solidly built old lady with wiry grey hair, who usually wore clothes of locally made tweeds. She was already in her eighties when a granddaughter ran away to an Ashram in the mountains of northern India. Since the young mystic was only on speaking terms with her grandmother, Amabel flew to India and went to the Ashram to bring her back. Once there, she enjoyed it so much herself that she stayed on for a few months. Then, in due course, the two women (divided by some sixty years in age) returned to England together! She had the admirable quality of treating children as equals, so I was hoping she would take us to the doctor in her car, for Alan to have his hand sewn up. She took one look at his hand and refused that suggestion. Instead, she made a poultice of some herbs and skilfully bound up his hand for him. She said a doctor would make a big scar with his stitches, better by far to let it heal naturally. Then she plied us with that essential: the hot, strong, sweet tea that my friend had asked for in the first place, right after his accident.

Amabel was a staunch atheist and enjoyed teasing Father about his Christian faith, a faith that appeared to grow as he aged. We used to go to the tiny Anglican church on top of the Ynys, called: Eglwys Llanfihangel-y-Treathau, or: the Church of Saint Michael of the Shores. Most local people went to chapel (Baptist, Methodist, Wesleyan, Congregationalist, and other Protestant Nonconformists), where the singing was vastly superior, but one of the requirements was often to be a teetotaller, so any backsliders who liked a pint from time to time, finished up in our church. In every small town in the hills, there were large, gloomy chapels for each separate sect – for they hoped to convert everyone else to come to their chapel. In the mid-nineteenth century, half of Britain was Non-conformist, yet now, most of those chapels have been abandoned or converted into houses or artists' studios.

Once, returning to the house after an outing, my Parents found three brothers from a nearby farm, sound asleep on the lawn, all dead drunk. Father was upset that they had used some of his best Burgundy to get sloshed, but nevertheless made them strong coffee, loaded them in the Jeep and dropped them off a mile from their own home, to walk off their binge. Of course he never told their chapel-going father… and they never dared come back for more.

The traveller Giraldus Cambrensis recounts in 1223, that in Wales groups of people sang “In several different tones at the same time, producing a surprisingly melodious sound.” Perhaps the whole tradition of singing in harmony or parts comes originally from Wales. I remember the old vicar, the Reverend Morgan, who preached his sermons for an hour or more, starting out almost hesitatingly, feeling his way into an evangelistic stride, where his halting English became a sudden torrent of poetic Welsh rhythm and force… the ‘hwyl' of Welsh preachers. I have no idea if he was speaking in Welsh or English. It did not matter, for his language flowed, it sang, the flood of the tide was upon him and within him, and surged forth in extemporaneous poetry with the ultimate solution of hellfire! Part song, part poetry and all inspired from above.

Miss Griffiths, the eternally ancient organist, played the harmonium or pump organ, pumping the air with her feet (of course, in those days there was no electricity in the church). Gradually the pumping became a little weaker until one day, she hurt herself badly by accidentally tying the laces of her high, lace-up boots together, so she took a bad fall. We only knew how well she played this harmonium, when my eldest sister was married in the church and asked a brilliant young organist who was up at Oxford with her, to play. He found there were only a couple of stops that worked and that it didn't work at all unless certain other stops were left open but not working. For her wedding, the music was even worse than under poor old Miss Griffiths!

There was one member of the congregation who “had been chapel” and now came to our little church. A very large, prosperous farmer, he sang a huge bass, in harmony, which filled the church. Mr Jones the Bacon, was also a church warden (as Father also became) and his very size and voice itself instilled Faith. I never learned why he no longer went to chapel.

Mr Jones had a son who was a particularly gifted singer, but too shy to perform for anyone else, even too shy to sing in church or chapel. A producer from the BBC asked Father if he might record someone local, singing as they went about their work. He asked Mr Jones about his son. “He'll never sing if he knows he's being recorded,” said the farmer, “just come at 5.30 when he's doing the evening milking and pass around to the window of the dairy. You'll get your music all right.” So, now picture three city gents in dark, three-piece suits and shiny shoes, crawling across the farmyard under the pouring rain, their knees deep in cow filth and mud, clutching the old-fashioned, bulky tape recorder and microphone! Who knows whatever happened to the tape recording? Was it ever aired on the radio? Did it disappear into the archives?

As it turned out, our afternoon with Amabel passed pleasantly in theological discussion washed down with more cups of tea and some home-made cake. She never gave the impression that she was trying to convert us but she did show her disdain for ‘old-fashioned faith values'. I forget how we eventually got home, probably by hitchhiking. It was only about eight miles by road and in those days, most people would pick you up.

Back then, neither hitchers nor drivers were particularly concerned for their own safety. Everyone did it when necessary and those who did not stop their cars, either had a full load already or were just ‘dogs in the manger' who didn't want a dirty stranger in their new cars. At nineteen, I made lifelong friends with a family who gave me a ride in Tarsus (eastern Turkey), where Saul had his revelation (
“
Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?”) and became Paul, eventually Saint Paul. That family always found space in their car and enjoyed many such encounters. In their lives, they had offered hundreds of rides to strangers and even made real friends, such as myself. Expressways, the press and insurance companies have changed much of that. It is a much different world now, but then it was a very practical means of transport, by sharing a car going in the same direction. For me it was a way of life.

Once, I had gone to the dentist, dropped off by someone, or perhaps I had gone by train for a few stops. He pulled two molars “to make space for my wisdom teeth”, and told me to go straight home and rest. Instead, I set off towards the mountains to go climbing by myself, as was my wont. I had walked a mile or so toward the hills and away from home, holding my thumb up for any of the few passing cars, when finally one pulled over for me… it was my dentist! “You live in the opposite direction, don't you? Is this how you go home and rest?” He asked, so I confessed that I was going climbing. He did not try to send me home, he seemed resigned to where I was bound and graciously dropped me off when our paths separated…

Yes, hitch-hiking seems to have gone the way of hallucinogens. It would seem that the baby-boomers who all did it when they were young, now fear for the lives of their children and themselves. Nowadays, only the very poor hitch, and few people pick them up. For myself, in the fifties and sixties, it served as a superb introduction to locals and locales, from Britain to the Persian Gulf (through Iran), from Mauritania to Egypt. I am afraid no one would pick me up now. There is an assumption that when you're old, you should be rich enough to buy a ticket on public transport or buy your own motorcar. Most of the people I pick up myself are only going half a mile and could have walked it. As for acid, people seem to prefer crack and cocaine to hallucinogens. That's the way it goes. The ‘mind-expanding' drugs of the sixties have given way to addictive ones.

I was beginning to understand that one of my prerequisites for enjoying life was to choose what I did. There were givens, such as going to school and university (further education was assumed to be necessary). Manners were required and anyway, I quickly discovered how much more pleasant, agreeable and open life is, if approached with manners. I yearned for adventure.

I dreamed of travelling anywhere I wished to go, rather than where I was sent. Since I had no money, that meant I had to walk, so walk I would and Alan and I covered a good many miles together. When I could finally afford a real bicycle, as a teenager, I would set myself targets, usually fifty miles away. A round hundred miles in a day seemed like a good day's ride.