Loneliness is designed to help you discover who you are, and to stop looking outside yourself for your worth.
- Unknown
After disembarkation at Calais, McClain and I hitch-hiked quickly to Boulogne, a fairly picturesque place - considering its function as a ferry port - and found the youth hostel on the slope of a quaint little street near the centre of town. I remember my perplexity there when faced for the first time with a traditional French toilet. I mean, how did you do your doodoos when there was neither seat nor bowl? However, I guessed the correct method and squatted for the job, but McClain, laughing, told me later that he’d just stood astride the down pipe and gripped the bars on either side and began a bombardment!
Our lucklessness in thumbing lifts next day was somewhat frustrating. After about three hours with
thumbs out, we got a lift at last, but only to Montreuil-sur-Mer, a mere 40 km
south, but then, to our wild surprise, a Bentley bearing a GB plate sailed past
and swerved to the verge. Grabbing our packs from the roadside, we dashed to this swanky vehicle and climbed inside, a bit mystified why someone so
affluent would stop on the road to pick up a couple of hikers.
Well, we learned
that the driver was not rich at all. He was just a lowly chauffeur, ordered by his boss to deliver this magnificent vehicle to the Paris Paris
But the city proved so vast and so difficult to negotiate, that when we’d finally found
our way to its heart from our drop-off spot, the light of day was
fading fast. It was futile now to seek the city's single youth hostel, since its doors would
be closed and bolted for the night by the time we got there. But, as our budgets would not
run to renting a room for the night, we strayed aimlessly on the lookout for a
place to lay our weary heads in the open air. Eventually, we found ourselves, quite by chance, at the gate of that wonderful Parisian retreat, the Jardin de Luxembourg.
Jardin de Luxembourg, Paris
Trudging into the grounds, I saw that a line of trees and shrubs served to isolate the park from the busy city streets - and that gave me an idea.
“Why don’t we spend the night here?” I suggested. “We could hide in the shrubs until they close the gates and then we could come out and sleep on the grass.”
“I’m not sleeping here,” my fellow
traveller declared in that clipped tone he’d used on his visit to the bakery.
It was a plain fact that I’d known the fellow longer than anyone else in my entire life,
but the notion was slowly dawning on me that I didn’t really know him at all.
Still, I thought maybe he’d got in mind some glimmer of a different idea, so I let the matter rest. We plodded back the way we’d come, and outside the gates we turned and drifted
down towards the Seine .
Reflected lights
twinkled in the inky river by the time we'd got to the parapet bounding the
embankment. At the bottom of the sheer wall we overlooked, on a cobbled lamplit
landing, a row of dark figures was ranged, some sitting, some changing places, some
simply stretched out on the cobblestones, evidently settling in for sleep, I mused, with a bottle of vin ordinaire.
“Let’s go back
to the park,” I urged. “It’s better than this.”
As no objection
was raised to my suggestion, we plodded back to the park in fading twilight while the first lights began to twinkle in windows. But when we reached the tall gates once more, we saw that they were firmly shut and locked. Very
distressing, as we were both very weary by now, unused as we were to trudging
about for hours with heavy packs on our backs.
“What are we
going to do now?” I asked in some anguish.
As the street
was dark and close and sombre, we naturally gravitated back to the wide, open river
and its dancing lights. Peering over the parapet once more, I surveyed the scene below. It seemed the same as before, except that
stillness now reigned among those slumbering recumbent forms.
“I’m sleeping
here,” said McClain brazenly.
“Aw, no!” I groaned.
“There must be some place better than this!”
“You can do what
you like,” was the frosty response. “I’m sleeping here.”
That casual
trashing of the compact we’d sealed to tour Europe together maddened me.
“What! You passed up a nice place in a park for this!” I seethed, with a sweeping gesture of disgust over the snoring forms below.
“What! You passed up a nice place in a park for this!” I seethed, with a sweeping gesture of disgust over the snoring forms below.
“I’m sleeping
here!” he repeated doggedly, and just turned and trudged off along the parapet.
I can’t believe
this is happening! I thought. I’ll just wait here for a minute or two until the
craziness of this idea dawns upon him and he comes back. Once he sees those old
soaks close up, I reflected, he’ll have second thoughts about sharing their
sleeping quarters!
I stood staring
at the river and the lights for a long time, but at last I knew that McClain was not coming back. As my indignation had somewhat softened by now, I gave some sober thought to my predicament. Here I was alone, late at night, with neither room nor
shelter nor bed nor companionship, thousands of miles from home in a strange city among mortals who spoke a strange language. It was a daunting thought.
What to do? What
to do!
I had not a glimmer of an inkling, but I couldn’t just stand there forever, so I pulled my collar closely
about my neck and hunched up my pack on my back and just drifted off down river
in the forlorn hope that someone or something might turn up to rescue me from this baffling calamity.
How long I
wandered in baffled anguish I know not, but at last, dead on my feet, I judged that a
landing by the river would, in the end, be the best place to lay my weary carcase – if only
it were safe from fingers that might covet the cash and traveller’s cheques
stuffed in my wallet. So it was that I descended a shadowy flight of steps down
to the dark riverside and laid out my sleeping bag by a solitary tree for
company. I then shimmied into it, propping my pack under my head for a pillow.
For a time, I lay quietly regarding the sparkling stars, feeling as lonely and abandoned as the last man on earth, till sleep laid hold of my weariness and bathed all my sorrows away.
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When I awoke to the morning, my eyes were dazzled by the light of a bright blue sky floating little
clouds over a shimmering blue river. Then, turning my side onto the hard cobbles I’d
slept on, I was staggered to find that, besides a tree for company, I had
several human beings as well, tucked up in sleeping bags like myself. But I sensed at
once they embodied no threat. In fact, they identified themselves to be English hitchhikers. The fellow next to me was from Liverpool , he said, and he was ‘on the road’ too, but unlike myself, he was no
novice. He was completely at ease with this style of life, whereas grave
reservations were seizing hold of me.
Since my sense of isolation and insecurity had not faded with the coming of the morning, I decided that the events of the previous evening had been a regrettable calamity that must be speedily redeemed. I resolved upon a rapid return to the place of separation, with the aim of finding McClain again. Seizing that fleeting aspiration, I ascended the steps of the embankment and emerged upon the bright boulevard above. Directly opposite was the tall obelisk of the Place de la Concorde, casting a long shadow across the great square.
Place de la Concorde
I quickly retraced my steps strait to the place where the fatal separation had taken place.
My heart sank. The landing was abandoned.
My heart sank. The landing was abandoned.
Okay, the thing
to do now was what we had both come to Paris to do: a bit of sightseeing. Maybe I’d
be lucky enough to locate McClain amongst the crowds of sightseers.
Staring upwards from the bottom of the Eiffel Tower, I was shocked at its shier height. It would now cost me just
five francs to realise one of those dreams I had dreamed almost two years before, seated on my army bunk, dumbstruck with Hughie’s bold plan to visit Europe. But I was
reluctant to part with five francs and made that the pretext to prevent this
prairie lad from being hoisted to the dizzying heights of those vertiginous
girders. Of course, I could have climbed the steps for nothing, but that would
have been even more terrifying!
Notre Dame failed to
impress me. I mean, it was just a church, and for that reason alone,
suspect. In those days I hadn’t the faintest feeling for architecture. I had
come to see the place for the same reason that many hundreds of others did: it
was famous.
Notre Dame Cathedral
I wandered along
the Champs Elysées, sidestepping the swirling traffic in L’Etoile to
visit the Arc de Triomphe.
Arc de Triomphe
Napoleon had
built it, I knew. But what for? I knew not.
The tomb of the
Unknown Soldier was there, too, I knew. Had Napoleon built it for him? But, if
so, why, if he never even knew him?
It was with the
same blank ignorance that I viewed the Mona
Lisa in the Louvre. Why was this portrait
the most famous one in the world?
Why, she wasn’t
even as pretty as Suzanne!
Mona Lisa
As for the Venus de Milo, why hadn’t she any
clothes on?
And why were the
people gawking at her not embarrassed by that fact?
How they would have
sniggered in Winnipeg
Venus de Milo
Meanwhile my
mind was mainly engaged with the question of where my travelling companion had vanished to. I had to find him, for otherwise how could I continue such a lonely odyssey through
many lands?
I began to grasp
at straws. It occurred to me that prior to our parting, we’d talked vaguely about making our way to Tours Paris Spain Loire .
Sometime later
I confessed to myself that it was beyond my competence to find my way out of the city, as national
routes were so poorly signposted in the town centre. Thus, much as my reluctance
was to spend precious funds on a fare, I decided to take a train to Tours. When I’d discovered that the Gare
d’Austerlitz was the place to board trains headed southwest, I made straight for the station and bought a ticket. Disappointingly, my train was not due to leave
until the evening, so that I had to hang about waiting I can't remember where for several hours.
Night had fallen
when my train stole out of the station. As I sat in the lighted carriage
amongst a crowd of strangers and strove to make out aspects of the passing landscape, a
sense of utter hopelessness took hold of me. I wasn’t sure what time the train was
supposed to arrive in Tours,
It was raining.
It was raining.
The method I eventually developed for finding the youth hostel in any French town was to get its
address from the hostel guide I possessed and then to head for the mairie, or town hall, and consult the plan de ville, or map of the town, invariably posted outside it. I did so in this case, for in some remote suburb of the town I found what I
sought all right – its windows dark and lifeless and its door closed and bolted.
Once more I
wallowed in a swamp of despondency. I should have remained in Paris
I shambled back
to a little square I’d passed before, where blurred figures in a lighted window
leaned against a bar. I would go in, buy a drink, sit down to rest, and stay
dry for a time while I thought what to do. I might even get help from
someone inside.
The figures at the bar turned out to be several soldiers, and when I entered wearing my khaki raincoat with my rucksack on my back, they just looked at me and laughed. This was almost more than I could bear. To be alone so far from home in a strange city, where no one spoke my tongue was bad enough, but to be made a laughingstock, too! I would not linger long in this place. I bought a bottle of beer, sipped it quickly and left.
The figures at the bar turned out to be several soldiers, and when I entered wearing my khaki raincoat with my rucksack on my back, they just looked at me and laughed. This was almost more than I could bear. To be alone so far from home in a strange city, where no one spoke my tongue was bad enough, but to be made a laughingstock, too! I would not linger long in this place. I bought a bottle of beer, sipped it quickly and left.
Luckily, the rain had almost stopped. I plodded back to the hostel, crept under the branches of a shrub in the grounds and unrolled my sleeping bag and wriggled into it. Placing my pack under my head as before, I settled myself for sleep and looked up at the stirring damp leaves. Here I am again, I brooded, passing another night crouched in the wild like any animal. But thoughts like these did not haunt me for long. I soon fell into oblivion.
-----------------------------
-----------------------------
Opening the
hostel door next morning and stepping inside, I met a fellow sweeping
the floor. Thinking he was a worker in the place, I tackled him with scraps of
the French I’d crammed at school, but much to my surprise he answered in
English. Well, you know, I’d got so hungry for the sound of my native tongue
in the last couple of days that I dropped upon him like a bird of prey. How was it he spoke
English? I wanted to know, and what was he doing working in a place like this?
He spoke English
because he was Irish, he told me, and he was not working here. He was just making a stop on
his way back home after a tour of the Continent.
But what about
the broom?
Oh, that. When
you spend the night at a youth hostel, you were supposed to do a little tidying
up in the morning as a kind of recompense for the economical lodging offered.
The Y.H.A., I
should say, was a body ideally adapted to the needs of young men and women on
the move. Its accommodation was sometimes a little austere,
but always clean and comfortable. The larger ones served meals cheaply, but
most provided just a kitchen and utensils for cooking your own food. The
dormitories commonly contained rows of double bunks supplied with mattresses
and blankets. You were supposed to supply your own sheets in the form of a
‘sleeping sack’, an article of bedding somewhat like a sleeping bag but wholly
made of cotton. I had indeed secured a sleeping sack before my departure from England
Not the least
attraction of hostel life was the opportunity it offered to meet people with a
taste for travel, just as I had met this Irish lad. I ended up spending more or
less the entire day in conversation with him. One of the subjects he talked to me about was the common culture of the country and especially about
wine. I winced at the word. Only once in my life had I ever tasted wine. It
was in Winnipeg
Not so, said my
new friend. The red wine of France
He also had a
useful store of advice to pass on to me about how to survive on my travels and
how to make my journey last as long as possible by keeping the shackles on spending. ‘Always ask the price of anything before you buy it’ was perhaps
the wisest of his maxims.
A routine was eventually
developed around the need for food and drink. Somehow, space was found in my
rucksack for a small jar of marmalade, some sugar, coffee and powdered milk. On
waking each morning, I went out to a boulangerie and bought a baguette. Back at
the hostel I made a cup of coffee and ate half the bread spread with marmalade.
The other half I
stuffed into my rucksack till lunchtime, when I bought 100 grams of paté and a
tomato. It was then I cut my left-over bread lengthways and spread the bottom
piece with paté. The tomato was now sliced and added and then the top of the sandwich was put on. It was then ready to eat. Sometimes I used
Camembert in place of paté.
Shopping for the
evening meal consisted of purchasing a packet of Knorr chicken noodle soup or
similar, a potato or two and an onion and a carrot. In the hostel kitchen I set
the soup simmering and then chopped the vegetables into it. When those were
cooked, my meal was ready. Back in Canada Europe on $5.00 a day’. I did it on less than a dollar a day.
By the way, I
didn’t find McClain there – but neither did I miss him, for I was now beginning to
realise that friends were waiting in almost every youth hostel, where you found the
companionship of the road. Still, before departure from Britain Spain
I savoured the
luxury of a shower and the blessed comfort of sleeping in a bed for two consecutive nights,
and on the morning of the third day I said good-bye to my friend. He was heading north now, and I
steeled myself for going it alone again. But no sooner had I got out to the nearby
N10, however, when I met a fellow I’d seen in the hostel. He was wearing a black
beret, a khaki battledress blouse and a kilt. After a few words we decided to
try hitching together. His name was Roland Worthington, he told me, and he was
from Inverness . He was in the Territorial Army, he said, and he was heading for his summer camp in Madrid
When I asked why he was wearing his uniform now, he said it helped to get lifts. That proved
to be true, for moments later a Mercedes pulled up and we jumped in. It
rocketed off and shot down the N10 at a colossal speed all the way to Bayonne Anglet
Anglet, France
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