In 1971, Andre Deutsch published an unlikely best seller. It was a collection of letters from a New York writer, Helene Hanff, and a bookseller in London, Frank Doel, written between 1949 and 1969. Doel worked for the bookshop Marks & Co, addressed at 84, Charring Cross Road. Some time in the 80s I went there, not having researched properly I ended up in Foyles, not realising it was further up the street. I recently re-bought a copy, in support of a course I want to run on writing memoir. It is still a lovely read. A modern copy comes with an additional work by Hanff, The Duchess of Bloomsbury, Hanff’s diarised account of her trip to number 84, eventually, in 1971. Her journey starts on June 17th, 1971. As I write these words, I lift my eyes to the computer’s clock, the date is June 16th, 2024. She flew fifty three years ago tomorrow, which for reasons I can’t explain, pleases me.
She explains on page 1 that every year she had planned a ‘pilgrimage’ to London.
When I lived in the Black Mountains, I’d go into the hills for 0307am, April 17th. This is the time and date my great-uncle was shot dead in his Halifax’s pilot’s seat by a night fighter in 1943. When I moved to Cheltenham I’d go own the road to the war memorial at that time, until Covid put a stop to that. Covid postponed all pilgrimages.
Pilgrimages come in all shapes and sizes, mean different things to different people, but usually end at some kind of sanctuary. As inscribed on the SAS clock tower outside Hereford, are two verses of James Elroy Flecker’s On the Golden Road to Samarkand,
We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go
Always a little further; it may be
Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow
Across that angry or that glimmering sea,
White on a throne or guarded in a cave
There lies a prophet who can understand
Why men were born: but surely we are brave,
Who take the Golden Road to Samarkand
To survive, in Special Forces parlance, is to ‘beat the clock’. Just beating the clock is its own kind of sanctuary. My own clock may have wound down recently a little with a few time-stopping diseases, but, given I can still crank up an old, crippled and misfiring body, it’s time to undertake a series of pilgrimages on behalf of those who can’t — other than on the turnpikes high above the sky — before my own ticker, well, waits for no man. More information here.