Fire in the Abyss

by Stuart Gordon

  One night in a wood near Brecon (it reminded me of Howell Rees) round a fire with vegetable stew bubbling on it, she and I and some others including Archie sat talking to keep the cold away, and I was prevailed on to say a little about my travels in America. With some heat I described how groups of down-and-outs I’d met had little sense of common cause, it being every man for himself, and how glad I was now to meet folk who had some common sense and unity.

  “They all have to Make It in America,” said Archie. “We don’t.”

  “Sure we do!” declared Bob, a heavily bearded man. “We’re just as individualistic. We just can’t afford to make a song and dance about it. We know we’re poor. They still think they’re rich, or ought to be. They’re ashamed if they’re not rich!”

  So, generalisations flew round the fire, and bottles of cider were opened, then Lorraine was telling me how she’d come to the valley, her folks having left London eighteen years before, when she was six. “…It was part of the hippie thing,” she said. “Lots of acid and Love-Thy-Neighbour. Well, that didn’t last. I grew up quick, I can tell you, and it was rough as hell, but I wouldn’t change it for anything. I’d already started learning about herbs an’ that, and seeing peoples’ colours. My folks got sick of the road and for a couple of years we had a smallholding up near Llandod. The winters got too much for my mum, so they moved into town, and I… I took off with… with Jake and this lot. That was seven years ago. Now… now there’s about two hundred of us in the valley every winter. We’ve got our own school, some agriculture, and we’ve built a bit. The bureaucrats leave us pretty much alone now. They spent years hitting us with health regulations and building regulations and drug busts—all of it—until finally they realised it’s useless, we won’t go away, there’s more of us all the time. So last year they cut us off the Social, and said, ‘Okay, do your own thing and don’t ask us for help.’ Bastards!”

  “The Social?” I asked.

  She gave me an amused, secretive look.

  “Sure. They’ve got some new law about the ‘Disreputable Unemployed,’ so we don’t get any money.”

  “From the State?”

  “Right.”

  “Sounds as well to me,” I said forthrightly. “Why remain their slaves? If they don’t pay you, they don’t own you.”

  “It wasn’t their money to start with,” said Archie, and then he shrugged. “Sure, money’s fucked, but…”

  “How do you think the world goes round?” I demanded. “On moral principle? Money belongs to whoever uses it, no matter who or where they got it from!”

  “So you don’t stand on principle, Humf,” said Archie drily. “I’ve tried it,” I said, “but I always seem to fall through. It’s thin ice for making a living.”

  “Humf, man, you’re full of shit!” cried out Sarah from the other side of the fire—and yes, often before we got to the valley I had to put up with this, and learn to take it laughing, feeling I must, and would be better for it, not that I agreed with everything they said and did. But to my mind they are good people, clear and alert, not stupefied, and with a sane understanding of human frailty.

  At length we came to Llandovery amid rainstorms sweeping in, and turned into the wilds past Myddfai towards Black Mountain, then in another direction, and another, until we came to the valley. Down the rough track to a domed building by a river our convoy crawled, some of the trucks by now on their last legs, or wheels, and a crowd of people came out to welcome us in the rain.

  We partied all night.

  In that poor cold place we partied at any excuse.

  The mushroom season was at its height. Someone gave me a handful of little brown growths, pointed like pixie-caps, which I chewed and gamely swallowed. I had a most interesting night during which I discussed the meaning of things with a polite and friendly oak tree.

  The valley, sloping gradually up to bare moorland, gives little protection against the weather. Folk live in all sorts of dwellings, from huts and caravans to tipis and benders, which last are but tarpaulins turned tentlike over tied-down branches and staked to the ground. The dome by the river was built by common labour, the lower part being of river-stones cemented, the upper of transparent plastic sheeting stretched over a wooden frame. Here schooling’s done, and decision-meetings, and common supper every evening, often sparse, from the stores and riverside gardens. People live with each other or not according to their understandings, and of course on occasion there are disputes, disagreements, what-have-you.

  I moved into a well-made tipi with Lorraine, Colum, and Deirdre, and did my best, being agreeable and hard-working, but still saying little of past life, and Lorraine still not asking. There was work to do, it being such a hard, marginal life; and though sometimes I thought it odd that I, once Sir Humfrey Gylberte, should find myself in such a place, I who am Humf put such empty reflections behind me.

  Winter came. Cold wet winds turned the poor pastures to mire. There was little food, and often we went hungry for the children. The nights grew long and dark and wild; the outside world seemed scarcely to exist; there was no radio, and few books, and Lorraine grew silent unless she had something practical to say. So, many nights I spent seated on the burlap sacking, staring into the glowing peat fire, watching the smoke waft up through the gap at the ridge, considering the centuries and all I have known. Slowly I came to a perspective on things, about my adventures and all the changes.

  In particular I spent many a night considering that weight round the English neck (as I see it now) of the class system, whereby each incoming conquering race has thrust down the previous rulers a layer, so that after thousands of years many layers developed, like a cake, which system is now at last strongly challenged and opposed.

  Now, once I was a beneficiary of this system, and found no reason to question it, thinking it as fixed and unalterable as the stars in the sky. Yet here at last after all my travels I found myself among folk who admired not the upper classes nor any classes bound into the existing framework of things. No, instead they chose to admire and adopt whatever ways from whatever times most suited them, including the wisdom of those who lived in Britain before the Normans, before the English, before even the Celts and Picts. At first this perplexed me; it seemed unrealistic, another form of retreat, at the same time as they use lorries and such. But gradually I recalled more of what Tari had said, about marriage between Ancient and Modern, and the science of learning what History means. So, while the winds wailed, I began to put a new construction on things.

  Only now in Britain, with Empire gone and Order questioned, might the traditional pattern be snapped. But hatreds developed over centuries take a long time to boil out: now the land endures a dull turmoil in which small minds have their way, one thing being over, but the new thing not yet quite born, and a country at the bottom of the turning wheel having much to endure.

  Yet when Order’s cracked, old dreams spring up anew, demanding marriage with what is lately learned—and it is the heart that beats, not the bones. Clearly the world is caught in great changes; and now with Tari I say that the Phoenix will rise flaming again. Nothing can stop the Hawk taking wing! No number of individual deaths, wars, repressions, or foul bloody massacres can stop the process of History from having its intelligent Light-seeking way. It is written!

  I left the valley and Wales in spring of last year. Perhaps I was foolish. Perhaps not. Even if you don’t quite see your road, still you will follow it. Lorraine understood what Marianne had not, for she knew I would go before I did. One day she told me so, matter-of-factly. I was puzzled, and asked her what she meant.

  “Don’t know.” Unsmiling, she shrugged. “The way you walk. The faraway look that never leaves your face. You’ll have to go. Your feet demand it. They can’t stay still much longer.”

  “What do you think I’m looking for?”

  Again, that shrug which accepted everything.

  “Don’t know. To heal your heart, maybe. To be strong again. But you know what i
t says in the I Ching. No blame.” She had introduced me to that remarkable Chinese book, and to much else, to healing herbs and serene ways. She never tried to change or restrict me. But on this day a year ago she asked one thing of me:

  “Please,” she said, “tell me your story before you go.”

  I knew I must. Her eyes encouraged me. So, with the winds sweeping March rains hard into the valley, I told her all I could or would then remember. I told her of my Newfoundland expedition, of Vulcan and Horsfield, of Tari and Herbie and Masanva. She listened patiently to all of it, and made no comment.

  No! I’m wrong!

  She did make comment! She said something I forgot, or drove out of mind until now. It suddenly flashes back! For when, with difficulty, I spoke of Tari’s presumed death, she said the way I talked gave her the odd impression that secretly I wanted Tari to be dead.

  “What in hell’s name do you mean?” I demanded angrily.

  “Perhaps she awoke a sleeping part of you,” said Lorraine calmly, “but you found it too hard, keeping it awake, so you let it go back to sleep. Whatever it is, your memory of her is a key to it. That’s why you don’t like remembering. Secretly you’re scared it’s you that’s dead. You keep looking for an answer you have already that you ignore, so you can’t stop, you can’t let yourself find any real peace. Until you do, you won’t stay here… or anywhere.”

  Three days later I left. I drove out what she said. God, Gilbert! You persist in aiming at cloudy distant peaks when all the time the truth’s like an open barn door ten feet away that a child couldn’t miss! Yes, Tari’s a ghost now, and no, she is not! She lives in her purpose, and her purpose lives, in myself and others, and it looks now as if I serve it despite my every objection and other intention! Oh, Fool! Why fear and blame others? Look to yourself, to the Light, and step out again!

  I wonder if Lorraine is with them at Betws-y-Coed?

  30. With Red Robbie on the March to York

  Michael just called.

  It is late, after midnight, and much still to tell if I’m to be away in the morning, and who would be calling that I might want to hear from? I tried to ignore it, but it went on ringing, until at length I went and snatched it up, cursing the device.

  “Thank God!” said a tired voice.

  “Michael!” I said. “Michael!”

  He told me that he has only just come back from the hospital, has only just learned from his wife that she ordered me out.

  “She didn’t want me to call you…” God, he sounded so weak! “I’m sorry, Humfrey, she shouldn’t have done…”

  “Michael,” I said, deciding, “don’t speak! Listen! I’m leaving in the morning. The writing’s all but done. I’ll get it to you, and you can do what you like with it. But that’s all. Ursula’s right, and I’ll bring no more unhappiness on you. The past is the past, so let it be! Sir Humfrey Gylberte is dead and gone—so please forget about him. I’m going, Michael. Thank you for everything.”

  He spoke a little more, but I stopped him, and said farewell.

  It is best. Yes. But his voice was so strange.

  Well, I marched most of the way up Britain, to Aberdeen, and then I marched halfway down again, to York.

  Before I left the valley I took Archie aside and gave him half the money I still had, to go towards whatever was needed. Not much, but I was glad I did it, and it was the only thing I was glad of at all as I walked away with pack on back. I felt an utter fool, thus to obey my legs and abandon such good company, and superstitiously wondered if I had some black spell on me like those put on Flying Dutchman or Wandering Jew. There seemed no good reason to leave at all, but I could not stop myself. I had to go, and did.

  Six weeks and five hundred miles later I came through the Highlands of Scotland to the Moray Firth, still jibing at myself for all this senseless, exhausting wandering. Yet during my arduous trek I learned much, and now it’s clear that all this walking helped me to what sanity I have. Only by relationship with the natural world, by constant treading of the solid earth, have I been able to come to any sort of terms with the present societies. Yes, so, and on my long walk I met not only trouble and anger, but also that goodheartedness that can spring out of folk when times are most critical. If not for that I’d have lost all will. Luck, or Seven, helped too, for drifters were being checked and jailed, there being threat of riot everywhere in the industrial parts. Yet I had little trouble, and was never stopped. Perhaps I looked too much a shabby ghost to worry about. So many folk were now unemployed that during winter the Social Security system had broken down. Suddenly everyone without work found themselves “disreputable.” The government said there was no more money, which many refused to believe, so that now in some areas the army was engaged in the time-honoured tradition of protecting rich from poor. But soon, I heard often, there was to be a great march of the unemployed from every part of the land to London.

  I felt little connection to any of this and had no thought of joining the march before I came to a fishing-town, Buckie, on the Moray Firth coastline, between Aberdeen and Inverness.

  By the time I got there I was in a dream of exhaustion. Even now I cannot recall any of the last hundred or so miles before Buckie. After surmounting the impressive hurdle of the Grampian Mountains I continued north in an automatic daze, and no doubt would have gone further north if not for the sea. One morning after walking on an hour or so, over gentle land with fields of unripened corn, I found the waves before me, and nothing else, but for a line of pale blue mountains seventy or eighty miles away across the water.

  Turning east along the road I soon came to a town of neat grey streets, to a large harbour where many fishing-boats were laid up, paint peeling. At a hotel I got a room and slept for thirty hours.

  Awakening, I ate, then took my pack and went into the hotel bar for a pint before hitting the road into the night again.

  They were hard to understand in there, but cordial. I asked about the laid-up boats. The barman said the industry was ruined because the cod, herring, and mackerel had been hunted virtually into extinction. I could hardly believe this, that now all you could find on the slabs were expensive flat monstrosities from the depths. But apparently it was so. Wondering what Pysgie would have said to all this, I took my pint and sat down, shucking off my pack.

  “So ye’re a travellin’ man too,” said a voice.

  I looked up and aside and saw along the wall-bench a small thickset man with a shock of red hair and a freckled face. He was dressed much as I, and had a pack beside him too. We got to talking. He said his name was Robbie. He said his last regular job had been as a steelworker, ten years before.

  “Could you not find anything else?” I asked him.

  He grinned dourly and raised his glass to the light.

  “Nivver a chance. The bastards blacked me—Red Robbie they called me—an’ whan the steel-mills closed, that was it!”

  I asked him what he meant, and got his grin again.

  “How lang ye been asleep? Yer name Rip Van Winkle then?”

  I spun my yam about long exile, about my wanderings over America and up the length of Britain.

  “An’ whit are ye doin’ it for?” he demanded. “Hae ye got a purrpose in a’ this waakin’? Is it for health, or whit?”

  I had no good answer. I could only ask why he was on the road.

  “No got the bus-fare,” he said, nodding vigorously at the barman to set both of us up, “an’ need the practiss. Gannin’ tae Aiberdeen tae join the Big Marrch tha’ll take us doon sooth tae sweep that bloody pairnicious excuse for a government richt oot! Nae a single thing tae lose, an’ looks tae me that ye’re in the same boat, Jimmy. Ye should come alang an’ help thraw the boogars oot!”

  Well, he had no bus-fare, but he had drinking-money, and I had a yen to be drunk, and so for unmeasured hours until closing-time I gabbled with Red Robbie, though for the most part he did the talking. He told me much fascinating stuff about Marxism, interpreting my sufferings as I descri
bed them in terms of this philosophy. I was impressed, yet he could not convince me that this Marxian Dialectic of Class Struggle is something new in human affairs. I seem to remember quoting him Ovid and Seneca and Joachite prophecy of the twelfth century, on the Three Ages of History. “Surely,” I argued, “this Equality of Man is age-old belief flying in the face of age-old fact: the Corruptibility of Man! These Levelling attempts are nothing new!” And I think I told him the words of John Ball, executed as a leader of the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381: “Good folk, things cannot go well in England nor ever shall until all things are in common and there is neither villein nor noble, but all of us are of one condition.” Robbie wasn’t impressed: the last I clearly recall of that night is that he turned my knowledge against me. “Aye,” he said thoughtfully, “well, if the notion’s been aboot that lang, then it’s due its day. Man, ye canna haud back an idea wha’s time hae come. Those Yanks’ll hae to blaw us a’ tae smithereens afore they’ll stop it. Mind, I’m no sayin’ the Russians are ony better, an’ there’s truth in whit ye say—but ye canna go back, man, ye canna go back.”

  At closing time we were both turned out, but must have helped each other, for with pounding head I awoke at dawn to find myself in my sleeping bag on the shingle above high tide, and first I saw Robbie’s red head sticking out of his bag a few feet away.

  Next I saw the policeman who moved us on.