Читать книгу My Midsummer Morning - Alastair Humphreys, Alastair Humphreys - Страница 25

I STIRRED IN THE silent hues of dawn, shivering. Too cold to sleep, too cold to get up. I lay uncomfortably for a while before conceding that I would not fall back to sleep and the morning might as well begin. The hills of Galicia were colder than I had expected for the summertime. I stood, stretched and dressed. My sleeping bag was dew-damp as I stuffed it into the rucksack. Yawn, blink, pack, leave. Into the distinctive moist-earth smell of the early hours, the air raw in my nostrils. It was still dark, but there was enough moonlight to walk without a torch. I padded through villages, the only soul astir. Valeixe, Vilar, Crecente … It was hard to keep heading east on roads that hairpinned and looped as they hugged the contours of the hilly landscape. This early, I was content to walk along country lanes to speed my progress. When the world woke and cars returned, I would return to the fields and footpaths.

The road was a single lane of potholed tarmac, crumbling at the edges, among smallholdings of corn and grapevines. A white dog pricked its ears as I filled my bottles at a village fountain, but it offered only a couple of sleepy barks of protest. The water glinted as it splashed, and sounded loud in the stillness. A solitary streetlight darkened the dawn sky around it. Barns and dry-stone walls were built from blocks of lichen-mottled stone. I ran my fingers along their gritty surface and sprouting clumps of soft moss. A rose bush spilled over a garden wall, and even this early the scent was strong. As the moon set in the purpling west, colour crept back into the world. Morning had returned.

Then the rising dust as the dew dried, the coming of heat and the yeasty presence of farm animals. A pair of blackbirds hurtled across the lane at ankle height, pouring torrents of noise at each other. In the passing blur I could not tell if they were courting or scrapping. A common confusion. My shirt, damp from yesterday’s sweat, steamed with my body heat in the early light. A church bell and the distant jangle of sheep bells amplified the quiet. It was many hours before I spoke to anyone. I reached into my pocket for some bread. It was so stale that I had to use my molars to tear off lumps. I didn’t mind, for it made the enjoyable act of eating last longer. I set a brisk pace as there was a village on my map that I hoped to reach in time for a lunchtime busk.

The first time Laurie played his violin in Spain he was frazzled from the sun, and a glass of wine had gone to his head. He ‘tore drunkenly into an Irish reel. They listened, open-mouthed, unable to make head or tail of it.’ Then he tried a fandango and ‘comprehension jerked them to life’. An old man danced ‘as if his life was at stake’ and afterwards ‘retired gasping to the safety of the walls’. Laurie went on to play in markets, inns, cafés and the occasional brothel along his journey. His instrument became ‘a passport of friendship’. I hoped that might hold true for me. But I was certainly never going to be allowed to perform in a café, never mind anywhere more exotic.

My prompt start got me to the village in good time. The school playground was lively and noisy and I hoped the same would be true of the plaza. My timing was good: the café was busy and customers were walking in and out of the bakery, the bank and the small grocery. I rested on a bench for a few minutes, drank some water and ate a carrot. Then it was time to busk.