A Breeze on a Lonely Road may be the most level-headed account of madness every written. Not that Trevor Greyson, Sully’s lonely bachelor solicitor is raving and frothing at the mouth mad. Trev has a very moderate, very English form of madness: for over thirty years, he steps into an alternate reality out on the moor: “On the moor he had many friends — all who came there. On the moor, he was not a greying and balding man of fifty: he was a supple youth whose voice rang with enthusiasm.”
On the moor, exciting things happened. On the moor, people were friendly: genuinely interested in him, genuinely please with his company. Unfortunately, “He had been escaping to the moor for many years and now it had become a greater reality than his waking live. It was his reality — so much that his work and daytime activities had become less and less important.”
The matter comes to a head during one of his mental trips to the moor when he comes across a group of badgers who have been killed. Dozens of their bodies lie scattered about. Trev finds this deeply perplexing: if this is his fantasy, as he understands it to be, then why would such a violent, evil act have taken place?
The experience leads him to reflect deeply on what it means for the moor to be part of his reality. He neglects his work to prepare a detailed map of the moor as he has experienced it. He compares it with real moors around England and finds no match, not even close. One night, as he is out with his friends on the moor, he asks them for their names, addresses, other details about their lives.
These are pointless questions, one of them, Edward, responds:
Telling you would mean nothing, and there is no name — no name that one could name though, if there were, how to get there? No map or chart could show the way but there is no map and, if there were, you would not be able to travel in that direction. Dear boy, do be content.
When Trev wakes, however, he writes down everything he can recall. He shuts his office and heads off to follow these clues.
None of them leads to anything definitive. It’s the wrong address, or no one by that name has ever lived there, or other details are off. Not just a bit off — wholly wrong in most cases. But still there are … resonances. He neither finds clear answers nor convincing disproof.
Concerned, his few acquaintances arrange for two psychiatrists to speak with Trev. And in a remarkably moderated depiction of psychiatrists at work, they bring Trev’s attention to possible connections between his moor experiences and his real life and leave it at that. No locking him away, no drugs, and no miracle cures.
In fact, they confirm what Edward had told him on the moor: “What you find out, prove or disprove will alter nothing except your attitude.” In Trev’s case, the most significant change is indeed one of attitude: from quietly and covertly sneaking away from his own day-to-day reality to a fantasy that makes him happy to deliberately making happiness part of his day-to-day reality. In the end, he’s still fifty, balding, and single and still responsible for what makes him happy: it’s a moderate sort of transformation, and all the more convincing as a result. In its own calm, softly comic way, A Breeze on a Lonely Road is one of the healthiest books I’ve read in a long time.