A Path to Nowhere

Below is a short observational piece inspired during a visit to Wales. Calvin

A Path to Nowhere

Llanberis, a village buried amidst the hills of Snowdonia, happened to be my starting-point for a hike up Mount Snowdon.  I looked forward to the prospect.  The sun was at its brightest, and there was not a wisp of haze.  My route began between the Llanberis Lake Railway’s boarding point and the Padarn Country Park.  Having gathered my kit together, I set off towards Llanberis Lake.

            There were in fact three paths: a nature trail and the Snowdon walkway were sign-posted, but the third was not marked.  My curiosity ignited immediately.  I suspected the third route to be short, uninteresting, and not worthy of signage.  There was no harm investigating, just to be certain.

            The path led between a steep hill and a copse.  Beyond the trees, the mystery began to unravel.  A pool lay here, hemmed in on the far side by a rocky bluff.  The water’s colour was the most striking iridescent blue, metallic, shimmering, fantastically bright.  Its beauty held me motionless for some time, but I realised such vibrancy had to be unnatural.  Something had caused it, and I suspected industrial pollution.  There was something else about the water, or rather, the air over it.  For some reason, there appeared to be a hazy effect above the surface, as though the scene were being viewed through a camera’s soft-focus filter.  I shifted my position, but the haze remained, adding a romantic, almost magical edge to the beauty spot.

            I glimpsed something hanging through the trees.  It was a small red railway truck suspended from a rusting jib.  These objects seemed ludicrously out of place, but it was now obvious there had been workings of some kind here, and this dazzling lakelet served as the spoil pond.

            The path curved to reveal another piece in an intriguing jigsaw.  Up the hillside, a cutting had been made, and a narrow-gauged railway ascended out of sight.  Everything about this place seemed strange.  The cutting was of some antiquity.  The rails, distorted and encrusted with flaking rust rime, had long been redundant, and yet the cutting itself remained free of grass or plants — odd because both banks were replete with growth, and the bare soil did not look tended or much trodden.  Not far off, flagstone steps ascended.  Some were loose, and the entire stairway was roughly hewn and without the security of a handrail — a strange omission given the ever-increasing tyranny of the health-and-safety paramilitaries’ carping about bumper car dangers, the perils of snowballing and conkers, or any covering of winter ice no matter how millimetric in thickness.  The flight climbed a hundred feet or so and emerged onto a flat terrace thirty yards deep, carved out of the hillside.  This was journey’s end.  All about lay irregular pieces of blue-grey slate like shed dragon scales.  The thinner fragments crunched underfoot; larger pieces sat half buried in the mess.  It was a scene of hasty abandonment.  Near the cutting stood shoulder-high stacks of cut slate.  Each slab was five feet long, two wide, and four inches thick.  At the back of the terrace, a ten-foot strip of bare slate marred the hillside as a dark scar.  Its face caught the sun in places as I moved, making the rock appear wet and as though cut just the day before.  A line of stout slate dwellings overviewed the precipice.  They were small, rectangular, squat, flat-roofed, and functional, utterly functional in fact.  They were so bereft of aesthetics, their ugliness seemed a begrudging concession, a reluctant admission of the weather’s privations.

            I took out my Pentax and fired off a few shots of the hovels, but it was only after having snapped several picturesque landscapes from the terrace’s edge that I realised I was missing the point.  I was basking in the heat and luxuriating in the tranquillity, the solitude, and the sheer beauty of the hills.  Snowdon’s great mass, serene and blued by distance, dominated the skyline.  Nearer mountains, bedecked in an olive-green drab of fir and larch trees, tumbled down to the long, thin shoreline of Llanberis Lake, which stretched to the right almost out of sight.  Closer still, great outcrops of grey rock erupted from the earth, their rugged detail emphasised by early sunlight.  Shining through it all as a backlit sapphire was the gleaming quarry pool.

How different the outlook, though, for those wretched souls who had lived in and worked this place: a captive community toiling amidst the din, filth, and perils of a working quarry.  Each breath, laced with razor-edged slate dust, induced emphysema, increased misery, and hastened death.  Life was Saturday night’s binge and the dutiful trudge to Sunday chapel.  Such rugged remoteness would add to the workers’ pains, their scenic appreciation eroded by drudgery, hunger, ill health, and bone-deep weariness.  Most desperate of all was, for those bygone workers, week followed week, month after month, each a milestone on a path, but where did it lead? — not to an escape from poverty, toil, or sickness.  Perhaps the path led to salvation, or perhaps it was a path to nowhere.

            I put my SLR away, shucked my bag onto my shoulders, and headed off, more thoughtful than when I had arrived.

 

© (2014) Calvin Hedley all rights reserved

Snappy Pete

Calvin writes - The following is the product of a writing exercise set some years ago.  I was braver then, so to write a piece ‘… in the style of Raymond Chandler …’ fired my enthusiasm, as I was and remain a definite fan.  Could the task be anything, I ask now, other than a poisoned chalice?  Chandler was a true craftsman of immense talent.  Such backhanded compliments as, ‘Chandler was great … in that genre …’ reflect literary snobbery among critics far more than they do the writer’s genius. 

I would, of course, be far more cautious these days in attempting the task.  It’s difficult to ‘fill’ anyone’s shoes when you’re not fit to clean them.  However, if writing were easy, everyone would try it.  I don’t normally write in the first person either, so what follows is a true labour of love.  Wherever he is, I hope Raymond forgives me.

Snappy Pete

 After three dead-end leads, fifty a day plus expenses didn’t seem all that easy to earn.  My head felt like it had bounced through several rounds with Jack Daniels and several more with Joe Louis.  Someone was getting nervous, flexing muscle, but whatever they thought I knew … I didn’t.

          The heat had pressed on my chest all day, pushing my lungs flat.  It was impossible to move without dragging in breath, pushing it out, and oozing sweat.  I was tired, felt dirty, and just wanted to wash up and kick back, ready for dawn’s furnace door to open.  But the thought of ‘Snappy’ Pete nag-nag-nagged.  He’d left a message at the office the day before: he wanted to see me, said it was urgent, and I should come the back way.  Everything’s urgent for Pete Jarrow, but something was spooking him.  There was no back way.  There was a way in the back, but that meant jumping a few fences and crushing the odd weed.

          Jarrow had a small patch on the south side, a community of Russian immigrants in crowded brownstone tenements on crowded narrow streets.  He ran the numbers, a few girls, and protection — nothing big, just enough to stand out in the neighbourhood like a fat maggot.  People thought ‘Snappy’ got his nickname because he habitually snapped the fingers of both hands on concluding business.  That wasn’t it.  Once his scams began paying off, Jarrow suddenly dressed like a movie star: silk suits, shirts, patent leather wing-tips, and especially ties.  Whether he wore pastel, stripes, or fine check, vivid colour always dropped from his button-down collar: azure, cerise, carmine, or bright yellow.  ‘Snappy’ Pete would sell your daughter, pick your pocket, and dress for the occasion.

          I walked the last few streets.  The sawmill looked deserted but still gave out a resinous hint of working days.  I cut through its rear access way, stepped round two bums sharing a bottle, climbed a wall, and landed in Pete’s tenement yard.  Light showed through Jarrow’s curtains, and I made my way to the fifth floor, smelling poverty and over-boiled food.  There was no answer at the door.  Possibilities rattled like streetcars in my head.  He was out — maybe, but his message suggested Snappy wasn’t making a splash just then; he was scared to answer — unlikely, no one who wore those colours scared easily; or there was something worse — if so, the door wasn’t saying.  I shrugged and sighed.  If I had to wait, it would be on my rates and Snappy’s bourbon.  I picked the lock, called, waited, considered myself in Pete’s hall mirror, called again, and waited some more.  Pete might not scare, but he could get nervous.  My companion in the mirror looked back at me; he looked uncertain too.  I went inside.

          I found Pete Jarrow in his office.  It was the first time I’d seen him without a jacket, just a white shirt, taupe waistcoat, trousers with knife-edge creases, and shiny two-tone shoes.  As usual, his tie stood out, blood orange in colour and twisted to a tight cord, suspending Jarrow from the ceiling fan.  The tie’s short end — much shorter now — jutted like Pete’s tongue.  The fan’s motor still turned, labouring, slowly rotating the body like it was a shop display.

          No kicked-over chair suggested suicide, and nothing else in the room seemed disturbed.  It seemed only common decency to snoop a little, but smelling a set-up, I soon wiped what I’d touched and scrammed, reaching my car just as sirens sounded.  Jarrow would increase some flatfoot’s paperwork, and I had more to think about.  It was late and I drove away.  The night still felt hot.

© (2014) Calvin Hedley all rights reserved