Peaks and Troughs

by Nick Perry

  On Friday evenings, with an exhausted tongue and weary legs, it would take an hour or so slumped on the sofa for me to recover, for all those conversations to clear from my head.

  Ros knew the history of some of these families. She was never judgemental, and sometimes she would say that many things were predestined, that people were condemned from birth to a future they could not escape from. To me their existence seemed so dreary, surrounded by those great piles of discarded slate. But the rounds were fun, as well as melancholic, and we laughed a lot, especially in the dull dark days of winter when life was at its hardest. Sometimes when I drove through Talysarn on a winter’s evening, past the lit terrace cottages, my heart went out to the occupants. I could see them in their kitchens, living out their modest lives. All had become individuals, people I knew.

  Dinah rang that Friday night from Cyprus. It was not a clear line, her voice hiccuping, cutting her words short. There was a background noise of bouzoukis, what sounded like plates smashing. I was not sure what she was saying. I kept losing her, getting half sentences before she faded away. With the delay on the line we spoke over one another. I could only guess what she was trying to tell me. If I’d heard correctly, she was coming home on the twenty-sixth. I remembered that schoolboy joke about the army captain who was thought to have said ‘send three and fourpence, we’re going to a dance’, when what he actually said was ‘send reinforcements we’re going to advance’. Maybe it was over with Stavros, the passion spent. Or the opposite, that she was returning home to tidy up her affairs and would go back to him permanently.

  Sunday: a rare day out with Ros and the children, made possible because Rob was not going to see Kate and could look after things at Dyffryn.

  It was a bright morning with a sun that needed a shielding hand. Ros had made a picnic. We were on our way to the zoo at Colwyn Bay. Above us the darkened summit of rock cast a weight of shadow that contrasted with the green fields, the whitewashed cottages above the Caernarfon road. You could pick out the underbellies of gulls floating on the currents, while the ebb and flow of light swept over the conifer plantations.

  We played I Spy, and for some reason Ros and I sang We’re all going on a summer holiday, which we weren’t: we were going out for the day, and it wasn’t summer. But it felt like it, as we all teased each other. It felt good being away from Dyffryn, not thinking about the farm, being a family man. The twins, sitting behind me, let me know they could see a thin bald patch on the back of my head.

  ‘Daddy, did you know your ears stick out?’

  Ros suggested we should count how many caravans we could see. There were plenty in this part of North Wales, parked in gardens, rented out to tourists who came from the Midlands and Liverpool for their two-week annual holiday.

  At the zoo Sam and Lysta looked at the animals in wonder.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s a porcupine. See all those spikes? They get stuck into whoever threatens them.’

  ‘It’s like a hedgehog.’

  ‘It’s bigger than a hedgehog.’

  ‘Dad, come and look at this bird.’

  ‘That’s an Amazon parrot.’

  ‘Look at the beautiful colours, Mum.’

  We watched the gibbons swing through the trees, the sea lions being fed. For Sam the lasting impression of the day was a Burmese python, which slid over the stones through the foliage, flicking out its tongue. I told him how it crushed its prey to death and swallowed it whole, animals as big as a pig, because it had a mouth that could open extremely wide. My son disappeared into an imaginary world, and as we ate our picnic he said not a word to any of us. Eventually he remarked, ‘So you would see the shape of the thing it had swallowed moving down its body.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘you would.’

  ‘Supposing it swallowed a chair?’

  ‘Why would it bother to swallow a chair?’

  ‘I don’t know, but you would see the shape of it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Imagine being crushed to death and then swallowed.’

  When we put them to bed, Sam asked for the light to be left on, and could Moss sleep with them. As Ros and I ate supper he came down, worried, asking if pythons could climb stairs. So Ros went and read to him until he fell asleep.

  At six thirty in the morning, when the alarm rang, I saw Sam had crawled into our bed. He’d slept between us.

  I dressed and swigged a cup of tea downstairs, waiting for Rob to appear, bleary-eyed after his weekend exertions. Surprisingly he fairly skipped into the kitchen, even gave me a hug.

  ‘Come on, let’s get on with it. Wagons roll!’

  I asked him the reason for the extremely good mood on a dark Monday morning. He smiled. Something had happened over the weekend. ‘Rob, you’re not hiding it very well.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That you’ve got something to tell me.’

  ‘You’ll find out. Come on, let’s go and feed the inmates.’

  On the way up to meet the school bus Sam was half asleep and Lysta lagged behind, followed by Moss and four geese who thought they were chasing us off the property. Sam was grumpy, not wanting to go to school, stamping his foot, breaking the frozen puddles.

  I saw Reg Dyer and Evan Evans driving down the track towards us. They must have had an early start, for I knew Reg lived in Rhyl. Why were they here? They didn’t have an appointment. I told them to go and make themselves a cup of tea, that I wouldn’t be back for twenty minutes. Evan looked sombre, Reg not his usual friendly self.

  ‘There may be trouble ahead,’ I sang to myself.

  When I got back to the house, I’d brought Sam with me. ‘Look at him, Ros. He’s not going to get through a day of school.’ She picked him up as Evan and Reg finished their tea.

  ‘I hope he’s not ill,’ said Reg.

  ‘No, just a troubled night with a python sliding through his dreams.’

  They had no idea what I meant.

  ‘We went to the zoo yesterday. A python left quite an impression upon our dear son,’ explained Ros, carrying him out of the room. I told them they had come at a bad time. I had work to do.

  It wasn’t a story I wanted to hear. Reg Dyer spoke of the changes Crosfields were making. Things had been under review for some time, he said. Geographical areas were being merged and North Wales would now be part of the north-west of England. A new rep would be looking after me a month from now.

  ‘So what’s happening to Evan?’ I asked.

  ‘Evan is going to take early retirement, spend more time with his wife and grandchildren.’

  They were dumping him. I felt as if I’d betrayed him. It was a sad day for a company man when he found himself on the scrap heap.

  ‘I’m not happy with it,’ I said. Not that it would make the slightest difference. I was just a customer with a cheque book, but I could still say what I wanted.

  ‘It’s a younger man’s work nowadays,’ said Reg. ‘This decision has not been taken lightly. Evan doesn’t want to be on the road driving thirty thousand miles a year. It’s time he put his feet up, slowed down.’ Nothing else was said. Reg shook hands with me. ‘We’ve taken up enough of your time.’

  I put my arm round Evan. I wanted to offer some comfort to him. What a lousy, painful day for him, travelling from customer to customer breaking the news. I regretted the Spillers trial, the unhappiness I had caused him. He’d been good to me. I rang him that night, telling him I thought I’d let him down. He remained friendly, convincing me he thought he was better off out of the place. His wife was pleased. I only saw him once more, when he came with the new rep, a fresh-faced chap in a herringbone suit.

  ‘I’ve heard a lot about you, Mr Perry,’ said Crispin Thomas, firmly gripping my hand.

  At least I was now a Mr in someone’s eyes. He was English, lived in Tarvin near Chester. They came off the conveyor belt, these salesmen, having learnt the talk in hotel conference rooms. All the keywords of seduction, the generous discounts for new cu
stomers. It had come over from America and was now polluting the hill farms of North Wales. The likes of Gethin Hughes and Hughie Catchpole, laconic at the best of times, would give short shrift to this new breed of flashy men in their saloon cars.

  When I finished the trial with Spillers and totted up the sums, there was indeed a gain to be had by changing my supplier, all of thirty-six pence per porker. I told everyone the results, and Ros in particular was keen for us to take our business to Spillers.

  ‘That means,’ she said, ‘if we’re selling a thousand porkers a year, an extra profit of three hundred and sixty pounds.’ She was right. But before I told Reg Dyer of my decision I rang Evan to let him know my intentions. He was indifferent.

  ‘What do I care? You do what’s right for you.’

  He sounded depressed, unwilling to pursue a conversation. I wished him well, hoped he would drop by and bring his grandchildren. They were the same age as Sam and Lysta. That was the last time I spoke to him. He died of a heart attack in a bumper car at a funfair in Pwllheli with his grandson beside him.

  Tom Felce’s marriage to Agnetta, a sparkling blonde Danish ice skater, brought the small population of Clynnog Fawr to gather at St Beuno’s church in the March sunshine. The couple arrived in a pony and trap, preceded by the Talysarn brass band, who had added a hit from the sixties to their repertoire. Agnetta was four inches taller than Tom, which I could be precise about, because Tom had asked me what I thought of a man marrying a woman taller than himself. I’d said to him, is life really measured in inches? And he’d laughed and said there’s more than one way to take that. Watching them walk down the aisle I must admit it did take my eye, though no doubt their height difference was exaggerated by her high-heeled shoes. She was slim and long-legged, and six feet tall.

  Tom had become a regular visitor to Dyffryn. He liked to dig his own vegetables and kept me up with what was going on in his life. He told me how he and Agnetta had met at Birmingham fish market, a slightly incongruous place to find a Danish ice skater. She had been there with her brother filming a documentary, following fish that had been caught on a trawler in the Atlantic all the way to the plate. Tom it was who bought that particular box of fish, so they filmed him returning to North Wales, where the fish was finally eaten by a chap called Wyn Evans in a caravan in Llanrug.

  The party that night in the village hall in Penygroes was unfortunately gatecrashed by some of the locals and the place became overcrowded. The vicar grabbed the microphone and asked those who had not been invited to please leave immediately. The doors were then locked, and the celebrations resumed. Harry carved the hog roast that we had donated to the feast.

  Tom opened his speech by saying, ‘I hope I’m not skating on thin ice, but I’m looking forward to a long and happy marriage to this beautiful girl. Luckily for me she loves the smell of wood smoke and kippers.’ Agnetta’s father told everyone he had never seen his daughter so happy, that the warmth he and his wife had received from the Welsh people was overwhelming. Then he invited everyone to their village in Denmark, a remark I hoped he was not going to regret. After the cake was cut the dancing began.

  Ros, due in two weeks and feeling too uncomfortable to take to the dance floor, sat in a corner with an iced ginger beer. Sam and Lysta were spending the night at Trefanai, so there was no hurry to get back to Dyffryn. Ros pointed out to me a girl she used to go to school with, Sian Richards, expelled for having her breast tattooed. Jack was dancing with the girl who worked on the cooked meats counter of the Co-op, and played in the Talysarn band.

  Then suddenly I saw Rob banging on the window. He should have been in Chorley. I told Ros it must be over, that was why he was back. But I was wrong, for in they walked, the two of them. At last we were going to meet Kate. A slim figure in jeans, with long dark hair halfway down her back, blue eyes and a broad smile. They didn’t just walk in: he grabbed her round the waist as the band played ‘Yeah, You Really Got Me’. It was an impressive entrance, clearing the dance floor as everyone crowded round the late arrivals. It was a pity Rob went for a move too far by trying to pass Kate between his legs and fell forward, hitting his head on a wooden upright. Although dazed, he managed to bow to the rapturous applause they received. The band played on into the night.

  It was lunchtime on Sunday when Rob and Kate emerged from the caravan. They wandered into the house as Ros and I were eating roast lamb. Rob had been seeing Kate for months, so why he had decided this weekend to invite her down I didn’t know. Maybe he felt there was some permanency in their relationship. She had a self-assured confidence, was good fun and easy-going. When it was feeding time, she came and mucked out the pigs with us, happy to get her hands dirty. She would have fitted in well at Dyffryn, pushing a wheelbarrow to the dung heap, chasing a porker out of the stream or breaking up a bale of straw for the sows. No doubt Rob would be leaving Dyffryn soon to live with her, but there was no talk of it that afternoon. In the evening he drove her to Bangor station, where she took a train home.

  I had noticed an increase in the rat population at Dyffryn. There were two ways to deal with it. I could poison them with warfarin, which would be dangerous if other animals were to eat it, or, as Harry suggested, I could shoot them with an air rifle. They were living around the feed store, where we kept all the concentrates in twenty-eight-pound bags. I’d watched them disappearing down various tunnels they’d dug into the rendering of the stone walls. Whenever we frightened them off, they scattered in all directions. There seemed to be no pattern to their escape routes. Dewi told me that if I turned a blind eye to them, they’d overrun the place in weeks. ‘They breed every month, and with more mouths to feed more food will disappear.’ Hughie said we’d never get rid of them, that all we could ever do was keep their numbers down. They ate into the bags, and each time I carried one out over my shoulder I left a trail of pig nuts behind me. At night I shone a torch into the store and watched them flee, at least thirty of them, fat buggers, eating into our profits. The only way to protect the feed was to empty it into metal containers, or have it blown into a silo.

  I didn’t like the idea of warfarin, so I thought I’d try to pick them off with an air rifle. I’d never shot anything before; shooting didn’t appeal to me. Harry brought up a gun, and I hid out of sight as the light was fading, waiting for them to come scurrying.

  What I saw was a rat rush hour, all of them busy, coming and going under the feed shed door. They were getting fat on my food, so I took aim and fired. I missed, and missed again, never hitting one, until I gave up because it was too dark. Rob told me he was a dead-eye shot, boasting that he had once won a goldfish by shooting a plastic duck at a village fete. Prove it, I said, so he had a go the next evening, but did no better than me. Maybe Harry should finish them off with a machine gun.

  So warfarin it was, which we put down in handfuls. Every morning we found it had all been eaten. We never found a dead rat, but gradually we saw fewer of them and for a while they disappeared, giving the impression we had killed them off. Then suddenly I would see one, its whiskers twitching out of a hole in a wall. They were regrouping.

  Dinah was back from her odyssey. She telephoned from Bangor station asking where I was. She had been expecting me to pick her up and had been waiting half an hour. I explained I hadn’t been able to hear a word of her last call. Now she was too tired to wait any longer and was getting a taxi. She was going straight to bed, would speak to me tomorrow. She sounded fed up and didn’t ask me how Ros was.

  In the morning as Rob and I were feeding the pigs, Lysta came running to tell me, ‘Mum has started to have the baby.’ We had always planned to have a home birth.

  I rang Anna Westphal, the matriarchal midwife. She’d already been out to the farm to lay down the law. She was a force to be reckoned with. It seems to go with the job, the high handedness, the bossing of a vulnerable patient. She’d made it clear she disapproved of home deliveries, saying to me ‘I suppose you want to be present at the birth’. To which I had promp
tly replied ‘I certainly do not’. Ros knew I wanted to be around, but not at the actual birth.

  ‘So you’re not one of those modern men then.’

  ‘I’m probably quite modern,’ I replied, ‘and I’m looking forward to the birth of the baby. I just don’t want to witness it.’

  Ros was lying on our bed, being cared for by Sam and Lysta.

  ‘I’ve gone into labour. The contractions have begun,’ she told me. It was the first time I asked Sam and Lysta to walk on their own to catch the school bus. But they didn’t want to leave their mother, asking to be allowed to spend the day at home.

  ‘Shall we?’

  ‘Oh, let them stay for a while.’

  Forty minutes later Anna Westphal pulled up in her Volkswagen Passat. Four aggressive geese followed her muscular calves to the front door. I was there before her hand had reached the brass knocker and showed her in. She strode past me, holding a black leather case.

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Upstairs,’ I said.

  ‘Children out,’ she said, sitting on the side of the bed and preparing to take Ros’s blood pressure. ‘How often are the contractions?’ I left the room and rang Gwyn, telling him what was going on. He, of course, knew Anna Westphal, saying that Ros was in good hands. He would come over anyway. Meanwhile I drove Sam and Lysta to school, both pleading with me to let them stay at home to see their brother being born.

  ‘How do you know it’s going to be a boy?’

  ‘Of course it will be, Dad,’ said Lysta.

  ‘It’s going to be a girl,’ said Sam. ‘I want a sister called Lucinda.’

  ‘I want a brother called Horace.’

  How bizarre. What on earth had my children been delving into? Where had those names come from? Certainly not from the Carmel playground. Horace and Lucinda were two names that I could safely say were unheard of in North Wales.