XX

MY VERY OWN TRIP

I was getting wanderlust, but it had to be journeying according to my own desires. Before leaving on the pony trek, I had met three brothers, whose family had rented our cottage for a holiday. One was younger than I, the other two, older. They had invited me to stay with them in England, five or six hours’ drive away, when I returned. At once I started making plans, assuming that I would just hitch-hike there. I was ten years old at the time.

Somehow, for once, my Parents united forces to find another way for me to go there. They did not come out and say I could not hitch. Mother just spent some time on the telephone and found a friend who was leaving for that part of the world, but from a town already two hours away. Telling me that I could not refuse the friend’s ‘kind offer’, I was put on a train for the first leg. I spent the night at their house – he was Provost of a university and resigned soon afterwards, when his Board of Directors announced that ‘students of colour’ would not be accepted… this was deep in Wales and virtually no non-Caucasians would apply for many years to come, anyway. That was in the mid-fifties and eventually the issue came to the fore and, like it or not, universities were then obliged to accept any qualifying student.

Thus, the Provost (Goronwy Rees) was vindicated, but by then he was already a highly successful journalist and writer. Eventually too he was accused of being a Russian spy – an accusation that was never proven but upset him and his family no end.

Next day, Mrs Rees drove me further down and across Wales to the rich farming area of the Marches. I had always been told that the land was so called for the Roman sentries who marched up and down, keeping an eye on the Welsh and making sure they stayed in the highlands where the land was poor – nowadays, there are different theories, such as they were called Marches for the Marcher Lords who were given land along the frontier. Later Offa’s Dyke was built in segments, which may have been joined by wooden palisades (which have long since disappeared – since they were made of wood). Up north, the Romans had built Hadrian’s Wall to keep out the ‘Barbarians’ (Picts and Scots). The Welsh border, however, was much longer, so no wall was envisioned until Offa’s Dyke. Instead they had patrols marching up and down the lowland side of the border – hence The Marches. Nevertheless, the Welsh, having been forced west out of their own rich farm land, frequently came down with raiding parties to help themselves to some fat cattle, sheep or goats. Their animals could not be fattened, because they had been reduced to such poor, upland grazing.

Mrs Rees drove an enormous American car that was, of course, left-hand drive. For the passenger, facing oncoming traffic on narrow Welsh roads that were almost completely blocked by this huge automobile, was terrifying. It was good training for the days when I would be hitch-hiking and accepted any ride I could get, however hair-raising it turned out to be.

Going back to the Marches: since I went away to school, in Wales I was considered to be English. The neighbouring children steered clear of me and when Mother invited them for tea, they were shy and embarrassed. Small wonder, I remember teasing one boy about his accent, making him blush at table. No one stopped me and I may well have found the idea in my English school. The Welsh boys mocked me behind my back for living in a ‘Plâs’ or mansion. While in English schools, first I was nicknamed ‘Misty Mountain’ – which I took as a compliment, though coming as it did from my teachers, it surely meant that I never paid attention in class.

“Taffy was a Welshman,Taffy was a thief,”

“Taffy came to my house and stole a leg of beef…”

Which was surely a mind-set that goes back to the Marches, during Roman times. Then the Saxons and after them the Norman Conquest of England, reinforced the same attitude and wealthy Normans took over the rich farms of the Marches. Gradually, the Welsh were considered second-class citizens because they were not as rich as the English, because the land they lived on was poor, because that was where successive invasions had pushed them. Instead of monetary wealth they became known for, and proud of, their literary, poetic and choral traditions. Their Bards were heroes. The Latin Bible was illegally translated from Latin into Welsh, 141 years before the King James English Version was translated. On the whole, I had no objection to being called a Welshman and hardly noticed the downside of the implied attribute: dishonesty, deviousness, and plain criminality. Not to mention that ‘welshing’ on an agreement is common usage to this day.

Still, the idea of being different, inferior, certainly formed me and I chose my few school friends from amongst those who lived overseas and rarely went home, those who had lost a parent and were neglected and other misfits like myself. And yet, throughout my life, I have hated and avoided criminality and dishonesty, searching to conduct business in as ethical a manner as possible.

Now I was staying with the three (very English, Etonian) boys I had met in Wales. They lived in a small castle, the older two went to Eton and their father drove an old Rolls Royce. They were kind to me, but clearly not sure how to take me. In Wales, they had had great respect for my knowledge of the mountains, the winds and the tides. But here? What did I know of Huntin’, Shootin’ and Fishin’? The shooting I knew was rabbits and wild duck to eat, not standing in a line while farm hands beat the brush to drive pheasants, quail and suchlike into a barrage of shots.

Our fishing was for urgent food and involved setting nets and nightlines, not standing in a river in thigh boots with a fishing rod and throwing back most of the fish. I had told them I was going to hitch-hike there and one of them had exclaimed that “I was jolly plucky”, but I had no idea what he was talking about. I was not a peasant at dinner, I had been brought up to have manners and make polite conversation. I even enjoyed (and still do) being a chameleon – adapting to my environment as best I can.

I am happy to be an outsider, unaccepted when I worked as a labourer, unaccepted when I have dined with the Mighty. Of course ‘unaccepted’ is a far cry from ‘ostracized’. I am not scandalous or outrageous. I have learned to fit in but I just don’t feel like anyone else.

When it came time to leave my kind hosts, there was no longer any question of my hitch-hiking. I was put on a train and sent home in time for school.

My Welsh/English life was always a dichotomy in those days. I was accepted by neither. I was away from Wales in an English school for eight months a year. I could read and sing in Welsh, with a just passable accent, yet I spoke only a smattering of the language. I had a romantic leaning towards Wales as a land, the place in which I was brought up, but I also had the English superiority vis-à-vis the Welsh. As for the English, I saw them as rich and conventional. I did not mind the rich part, but I had been raised to despise conventionality. I had been convinced that convention and conformity are boring. I was not aware that some of these qualities actually make the World go round and put food on the table. They politely accepted me because I spoke the language of an educated person with the accent of a boy whose parents could afford to send him to a private school, but there was always something of the anarchist, the loner in me that troubled those wealthy English people with their bridge parties and chintz-covered furniture. No one knew quite what to make of me… I liked it that way, I still like it that way – no labels please.