How Unfamiliar the Everyday Seems

Gwyn Walters, one of the lost souls from the Novella 'I Went For A Walk And Never Came Back'.

There was a time when I lived in a house of slate and flint. It spoke to me. Maybe it was just the whispering coastal wind playing tricks, but I could have sworn it once called my name. We were alike. We stood silent and strong through many storms in our time, expressionless and still. We even looked alike: I had volcanic-ash coloured hair, and the wrinkles on my face gave me a fine-grained, foliated look.

Perched on the hazardously steep Buarth Road, the house overlooked the Irish Sea. As with most Welsh houses, it had a name rather than a number. Neighbouring Gwladys and Llwyn y môr, mine was Nanternis. I always thought a place you call home ought to have a name. I lived in Nanternis for as long as my marriage, and my wife certainly didn’t go by any number. Agnes was her name. People become a part of you, and so do houses after a long time: creaky steps, cracks in walls, musty smells, faded wallpaper – all of them as comforting as a smile or a caress.

I slept on the top floor. From my bedroom front window, I could see the cliff railway on Constitution Hill; from the back, the sheep-freckled hills surrounded by crooked slate walls; and when I lay my head on my pillow, I could see the sea. For most of my adult life, I had awoken to this view. I couldn’t have imagined starting a day any other way. How surprising it was then – how utterly absurd it all seemed – that one morning, all of a sudden, the view in front of me appeared totally unfamiliar. In fact, Nanternis felt – how can I put it – uncharacteristic? I started seeing past the cracks in walls and faded wallpaper, and I noticed all the empty spaces in between. I too felt like an empty space. Strangely enough, this emptiness wasn’t in any sense an absence – it was a presence. I could feel emptiness. The cold, salty air whistling through my bedroom window didn’t just give me a chill, but a cavernous feeling of futility. And the strangest thing – I felt an unspeakable loneliness when I gazed at the little stones I had collected from Aberystwyth’s shingle beach. They were perched on the windowsill. Their smooth, eyeless and voiceless presence had in some sense absorbed, fixated, the particular sort of sorrow I felt in Agnes’s absence.

I plodded downstairs. I must have trodden on those steps a million times, but I never really paid attention to the mustard yellow, paisley-carpeted steps. It was eerie how an everyday familiarity could feel so unusual. A strange gurgling noise from the boiler reverberated down the tiled corridors. It was strange that I found it strange! I felt like a stranger in my own home. Nanternis had a faint morning glow. The hall light was still on. It, too, felt a bit unusual; on any other day, it would’ve been just a hall light and nothing more, but that day, I began to notice details. It was an antique lamp with a murky green shade which resembled the jade clay of an avocado. I thought to myself, ‘Gwyn, you know this lamp – and what of it?’ Indeed, nothing was different about it; only I never paid attention to it before. The orange sun fanning through the rustling trees outside made the house flicker like an ochre-coloured projection from a magic lantern. But then a dark cloud gradually darkened the sky, and Nanternis changed colour – a little flat and monochrome.

As I stood on my little doormat, gazing at my old leather shoes, I felt like I was looming over the edge of a black, infinite void. But which way was the void? Was it in front of me or behind me? I looked back. What did I have left? The empty spaces on the wall? The eyeless stones on my windowsill? What did I have in front of me? A coastal storm and a steep road leading nowhere? I stopped listening to my head and followed my legs instead. They had decided to leave Nanternis.

The weather had worsened. I went out into the downpour down the steep, slippery Buarth Road, knowing full well that the locally dubbed ‘Breakneck Buarth’ had claimed the hips of many pensioners in such weather. I strode through the horizontal rain. My jacket and tie smacked the coastal storm with whiplashing sporadic jolts. I eventually walked past the Aberystwyth Castle ruins, battling with an inside-out umbrella, until I came to a secluded spot for shelter. My umbrella had been shredded to pieces by the wind, so I threw it in the bin. I gazed into the sky and was struck with a heavy emptiness again. I was lost. I couldn’t remember where Nanternis was!

After about twenty minutes or so, the rain stopped. The wind whispered to me. I could have sworn it called my name. My nerves were a little calmer. I looked out onto the seafront view of Cardigan Bay, and was relieved to find that it was all so familiar again. I was home. I remembered this view, and that was enough. I listened to the sea. Each crashing wave seemed to have a narcotic quality, which made me reluctant to leave from the place where I was standing. I imagined that I was a statue, and that I had been standing there for a century, and that I would remain there for many centuries more, stoic and strong. My body had a displaced tingling sensation, like an itch on a phantom limb. My memories seemed blurry. Recollections of my life flashed past me like small fiery sparks; too fast to catch, too bright to forget, and all that was left was an afterglow.

Gwilym Rees. Copyright ©.

Extracts edited from the novella 'I Went For A Walk And Never Came Back'

Read the novella synopsis here.