W. has no great love of nature, he says as we walk through the gorse towards Cawsands. The sublimity of nature, mountain peaks, the surging ocean, all that: it means nothing to him. He's a man of the city, W. says. And if we're out of the city today – apolis, as the Greeks would say – it is only to return to it refreshed, catching the bus back from Cawsands to Plymouth.
At most, he admires the sea as it borders the city, just as he admires the edge of Dartmoor, which you can see from his office. But then, of course, he likes to approach the city from the countryside – Plymouth from Cawsands, say, or Plymouth from Jennycliff: either way, there's nothing better than seeing the city – his city – sprawled across along the edge of the Sound and running up all the way back to Dartmoor.
His city, W. says, but not for much longer. By what cruel fate will he be made to leave? Why will he be forced out? Of course, he knows the time will come; he’s always known it, which has made his relationship to the city that much more intense. He’s always known it would slip through his fingers.
W. is familiar with my desperate love for my city. He shares it, after all. When was he happier than when I led him up one of the hills on the Town Moor to survey the city?
It was a bright day, W. remembers, and though we'd already spent many days drinking, I hadn't yet turned, as I am wont to do, he says. Yes, I hadn't yet come to resemble Blanche Dubois as I usually do when I spend many days drinking. I was neither maudlin nor vicious.
W. still cherishes my comprehensive account of the history of Newcastle delivered from the top of the hill on the Town Moor. My account of the history of the city and its buildings, which I pointed out to him one by one. My interest in local history surprised and delighted him, W. says. It ennobled me, he says; I stepped forward in a new way in his imagination.
But then, of course, he knew I was making it up; he knew it was all nonsense; he knew it all along. How could it be otherwise? W. has never liked facing up to the fact that I'm a faker. He always wants to imagine the best for me, and me at my best. He has the highest hopes for me, W. says. He always has.
W. had to piece together the history of Newcastle for himself, he says. He read tour guides and websites; he consulted plaques on our walks. He traced the course of the culveted rivers that run beneath the streets and speculated upon where they run out into the Tyne. He consulted Ordinance Survey maps of the riverbanks and insisted upon reconstructing the medieval city in his own mind, walking the route where he thought the city walls once ran.
You ought to know everything about your home city, W. says, if only to know what you're about to lose. It makes it more poignant, more mournful, W. says: your inevitable loss of your city. Because we will both lose our cities, W. says, it's inevitable. Just as he will be forced out of Plymouth, I will be forced out of Newcastle. Just as he will be kicked out of the city he loves, I will be expelled from the city I profess to love, despite the fact that I know nothing about it.
[Opening passages of Dogma, now replaced]
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