by Nick Perry
‘Bloody fools, all of them . . . they never knew who fathered who. And then the place left to one, and not the other. What would you expect, they who had farmed as brothers, even shared their womenfolk? He who was cast out had to raise money and fell into debt.’
‘So he over at Cae Uchaf, is he your cousin?’ I asked him in that dank kitchen, with the dripping tap, and the trail of ants making tracks across the stone floor.
‘He could be, who knows, boy, you the outsider who has come in with your fancy marrying.’
‘Maybe he is your brother.’
‘Yes, but she, my mother, said no. But there is five years between us.’
I left him there and went into the yard, putting together a roll-up. An hour had passed; the spring air carried the smell of fresh grass. As I sat there, surrounded by the desolation of Henbant, I tried to understand the lives that had been lived up here, the history in these hills, beyond forgiveness. The scarred hearts, the barren attitudes, as bleak as the harsh landscapes.
It left no room for hope, for new beginnings. Most of them lived in the Old Testament, an eye for an eye. So Arfon’s father, if he had indeed been his father, was cast out from Cae Uchaf, forced to borrow money to buy Henbant. While the other brother, favoured by the father, inherited Cae Uchaf, where Gethin Hughes now farmed. This thing called bad blood has a lot to answer for.
When I went back, he was asleep, an arm spread out on the kitchen table. I walked through the downstairs rooms, into the once cosy lounge where a cuckoo clock hung on the wall, three ceramic ducks flew away on another, and a sad framed piece of needlework read Home Sweet Home. On the hearth of the tiled fireplace was an empty brass coal scuttle; cobwebs floated in the chimney. When was the last time they had sat in here together, husband and wife?
As I left, an early swallow swooped through the yard. If only it could have been an optimistic omen, that better times were on their way to Henbant. But I was fooling myself.
I drove away along the track and stopped to open the gate, where built into the stone wall was a length of pipe stuffed full of post, the mail he had never collected: brown window envelopes full of unpaid bills.
From the road above Henbant you could see over to Anglesey, as far as Holyhead, where the overnight ferry sailed to Dublin. Such a vast, unspoilt landscape with no industrial buildings, just as nature had created it. A small speck on the map of the world. Here I stopped for a while, trying to understand the tragedy of a man tangled up in family history he had never been able to break free from.
There is a comfort in the smell of baking bread. It filled me with a sense of security, making me feel at home. Ros said Seth had a huge appetite, glugged at the breast rather than sucked on it. I thought it a good sign, showing a hunger for life, suggesting an enthusiasm, that he would get stuck into things. He had put on a considerable amount of weight. In his baby bouncer, with a nappy wrapped around him, he looked like a sumo wrestler. When Ros was out working in the vegetable garden, he was strapped to her back in a harness. There he slept, rocking to and fro as Ros bent over the seedlings, thinning and transplanting them.
Harry had given me the nod again on a deal worth doing, with a mate who drove a ready-mix concrete lorry. The drive down to the house had only a hard-core surface that turned into a river whenever it rained heavily. For a few quid in cash, he would come and empty what remained from his last load of the day. We would be able to concrete the drive cheaply, run two gullies either side to carry away the surface water. It sounded like a good idea.
‘Any hidden costs?’ Always my first question nowadays.
‘None. Not a penny.’
So in the evenings, foot by foot, we gradually laid a drive, smoothing down the concrete with lengths of three by two, hoping no escapees would wander down, leaving their footprints to harden in the night.
Hughie came over, giving me the last chance to buy his plough, which was now £40, down from his original asking price of £55. On top of that he said he would teach me how to plough, asking me again how I could call myself a farmer. Rob was keen, whilst Harry was against the idea. He saw it as a lessening of our dependence upon him. He couldn’t stomach Hughie’s showing us how to plough. I’d never thought about it before, that it suited Harry for us to be at arm’s length from our neighbours. It meant he could play his role here with freedom and influence, and no one questioning him. He’d done us well, and had the just rewards of a man who had given good advice, although without always being aware of the financial consequences. But then Harry was a practical man. He liked to see a job done, even if it had to be bodged.
A clear, soft, June morning buzzing with insects, the air full of swallows, the breeze warm enough to tempt you to take off your jacket, a day when any man would feel good about the world. That is, until the terrifying roar of low-flying jets from RAF Valley shattered the peace, stampeding the animals, frightening some into instant heart attacks, so that they dropped dead on the spot. These unpredictable occurrences enraged everyone, for the MoD never gave us prior warning of such manoeuvres, saying it depended on weather conditions. The planes appeared literally out of the blue, flying no higher than two hundred feet through the valleys. The Farmers’ Union of Wales complained bitterly, but were always met with the same response: it was an essential part of a pilot’s training, necessary for the defence of the country.
Once, when they came swooping low over the fields of Dyffryn, sheep ran into the barbed wire fencing, climbing on top of one another, tearing their fleeces and getting their heads stuck in the netting. Farming was hard enough without having to suffer an aerial threat from the RAF. I got on the phone and asked if they were aware of the effect these training flights were having on our livestock, only to be told that any complaint should be put in writing. Their written responses were always sympathetic, but we never received a penny in compensation.
I sat with Gwyn one Sunday before lunch. Behind him a rose bush pressed its pink petals against the library window. I could hear the children laughing in the garden. He told me what I feared without emotion, as he would have done had he been giving a diagnosis to the relative of a sick patient. He had bowel cancer, no more than three months to live. He had no intention of going on a prolonged course of treatment, and would let the illness run its course with, as he put it, the minimum of fuss. He knew it was going to be harder for those around him than himself. He would talk of practical matters later, but the care of his books was what concerned him now.
‘There is,’ he said, ‘a weight of responsibility in looking after books. I want you to consider these words.’
He went on to tell me how we were to treat his dying, that it was not to be a topic of conversation. He wanted no sympathy from those closest to him. It was as if we were to remain indifferent during his gradual decline. I told him this would not be possible, even daring to say that showing our sadness was the natural thing to do. I suspected there had been too many years of having to suppress his emotions, sitting with the parents of sick children, being the bearer of bad news. Even in this he was trying to protect us. Or maybe it would be too much for him to witness the grief of his loved ones. He would rather have everything dealt with now, wanted to tidy things up.
‘No loose ends. I have decided on everything.’
Then he touched on Eryl, for although nothing had ever been said he knew full well the state of our relationship. But it was me who pulled back, saying we didn’t need to talk about it, that things would never be resolved. No warmth would ever exist between me and my mother-in-law. He said only one more sentence on the matter.
‘She always wanted Ros to marry a Welsh doctor. She knew a young man she thought would make the perfect husband.’
So I could never have won her over, however much I tried.
We shed tears that night, Ros and I together in the sitting room. Moss, sensitive to the mood in the house, spent the evening behind the sofa.
We decided not to tell Sam and Lysta everything, just that Taid (Gran
dfather) was ill, that he had asked everyone not to make a big fuss about it. I told my mother, whose spirits were now restored. She’d joined an art history course at Bangor university. Every Tuesday evening she caught the bus to Caernarfon, where someone on the course drove her to Bangor.
‘He’s a charming man, fascinated by British railway timetables.’
‘Sounds just up your street.’
Hughie was good to his word and came over to show Rob and me how to plough. We took it in turns to work an acre of land, which we split into a half acre of wheat and a late crop of potatoes that Tom ’Tatoes had recommended. Our old Fergie tractor pulled the three-shear plough with ease, to a depth of nine inches. It was pleasing on the eye to see the furrows turning over behind us, the stones glinting, worms wriggling through the soil. Earthworms, a good sign that the earth lacks nothing in minerals. From time to time a chap would come from the Ministry and take samples away, a service we paid for. We never once had to add any nitrates or the like to the land at Dyffryn. Every year after we had moved the sheep up to Cesarea we spread well-rotted manure on the fields.
It shocked me when Jack turned up and threw a dead ewe on the ground in front of us.
‘That’s what a dog can do when it’s on the rampage,’ he said. ‘That’s why farmers shoot dogs.’
‘Is it one of ours?’ I asked.
‘Yes it’s one of ours, and we’re lucky it’s only one.’
Jack told us what had happened. A group of ramblers from the Wirral, camping over in Rhyd-Ddu, had been out walking on the footpath towards Nantlle. They had a dog off the lead and while they were climbing over a stile it was gone in a flash.
‘If I hadn’t been there and sent Meg out, more would have been killed.’
‘Did they pay for it?’
‘I got thirty quid out of them, told them if I had a shotgun I would have killed the dog.’ Jack rarely got angry. I had not seen him like this since his punch-up with Idris Owen. ‘It’s not the dog’s fault, it’s humans and their bloody ignorance!’
From time to time in the summer months we heard of dogs killing ewes in remote places. It is surprising how irresponsible people can be, not shutting gates on footpaths, leaving litter in fields after they’ve had a picnic.
I hadn’t seen Jack all week. I told him about Gwyn and his mood changed quickly from anger to sadness. He put the dead ewe back into the van. ‘How old is he?’
‘Seventy,’ I said.
Later that evening, with the children in their beds, I asked Ros, ‘Who’s this man your mother always wanted you to marry?’
‘How do you know about that?’
‘Your father told me.’
To speak of past lovers serves no purpose, and can wake a jealous heart, from which I do not suffer, but I wanted to know not so much Ros’s feelings as the qualities this young man had that so appealed to Eryl. What was it I fell short of in making a good husband? There were no surprises: he came from a solid Welsh family of doctors and lawyers, played rugby for his public school, went to a good university and supported the eisteddfod with generous donations. But for Eryl his crowning glory was that he owned a large house on Anglesey, overlooking the Menai Strait.
‘Hmm,’ I said. ‘So what have I got that he hasn’t?’
‘A sense of humour, a buccaneering spirit for adventure.’
‘Thank you, Ros.’
‘He was in fact dull, and very predictable, and he had the whole of his life mapped out to the finest detail. His wife would have merely been an accessory.’
So that pretty much summed up our little excursion into Ros’s past. You would have thought that Eryl would have taken into account the obvious fact that her daughter was happy.
As I was filling up the Land Rover at the Paragon garage, Trevor Thomas, the owner, a second-hand car dealer with a forecourt full of used cars, made his way towards me in some haste. He knew who I was, having made several attempts to corner me in the past. This time there was no escape. ‘Perry,’ he said. ‘I heard all about your speech to the WI. Won a few hearts that night, didn’t you?’ He was softening me up. He had a car coming onto the market that would suit Ros down to the ground.
‘I’ve noticed that Hillman. A bit tatty for a doctor’s daughter, isn’t it?’
There was certainly rust along the bottom of the driver’s door and blotchy patches had started to appear on the boot. But all cars around here rusted, being exposed to the sea air.
‘It’s had one woman owner,’ he said. ‘She only drives it thirty miles a week, to Caernarfon and back to do the shopping.’
‘I wasn’t thinking of buying another car until we’ve run this one into the ground.’
That was our philosophy on cars, or rather Harry’s, who said let them go to the scrap heap having given their all, or sell the body parts, as he called them, to somebody trying to keep the same model on the road.
‘No, I really cannot agree with such methods. Have you not heard of part exchange? We could allow you something on your wife’s car.’
‘I’ll think about it.’
‘It’s an Opel Kadett coupe, a lovely deep blue. I’ll have it in at the end of the week. Come in for a test drive.’
‘I’ll be in touch. Thank you Mr Thomas.’
‘Call me Trevor, please.’
I spent some time in Penygroes that morning. I needed to buy a birthday card for my youngest brother, four years younger than me, who lived out in Darwin. It took ten days to get a letter to him. I was wearing wellingtons and a pair of corduroy trousers. I’d come straight from the farm after mucking out the porkers and moving a load of bales into the farrowing house. I tried the chemist, knowing they sold hand-painted ones by local artists. I’d only been there a minute or two when Maimee Jones, a delicate woman who was not only the chapel organist but also captain of the Penygroes bowls club, came up to me and did not mince her words.
‘A bit high today,’ she said, holding her nose with her fingers. An elderly couple in the shop were looking at me distastefully, as if I were a tramp.
‘Do you mean I smell?’ I asked.
‘To high heaven – not to put too fine a point on it.’
‘Really?’ I was genuinely shocked. I had no idea.
‘I must ask you to leave. This is a chemist, not a pig farm.’
So I apologised, deeply offended, and watched her from the street spraying air freshener around the shop. I still had to go to the Co-op to get a few things. Ros wanted a sheet of stamps from the post office, I needed to buy some nails, and I stank. Why had nobody ever told me before? I remembered the advert about someone who had an underarm problem. It began with the words ‘Even your best friend couldn’t tell you’. I smelled of pig and nobody had ever mentioned it. I decided to give it one more try. I’d go into Griffiths, the ironmongers, and if I was on the end of any strange looks I’d leave immediately. I made my way through the domestic area, where they sold lighting and crockery, to where Arwel Watkins, chairman of the Penygroes Allotment Association, looked after the DIY stuff. Behind him were lots of drawers full of every size of nut and bolt, screws and nails, staples and curtain hooks. You name it, Arwel would find it in a split second. It was his boast to say there was no man quicker on the draw in this town. As I stood in front of him he greeted me in the way he always did. ‘Perry. How is the world of swine?’
‘The sun is shining on the world of swine,’ I said, and asked for two pounds of six-inch nails, which he poured into the metal bowl of his scales, placing the brass weights until they balanced. Not once during this mundane activity did he sniff the air, or give a clue that I was giving off a pungent aroma.
I asked him, ‘Arwel, do you notice anything unusual about me today?’
‘You have always been of an unusual disposition since the day I met you.’
‘I want to ask you, man to man, do I smell of pig? I need to know. I’ve been thrown out of a shop this morning.’
‘Duw, Duw, boy, there’s a turn up for you, and I be
t I could tell you which shop.’
‘Which shop?’
‘The chemist, of course. You’re not the first; she doesn’t like the agricultural type.’
‘So there is a smell to me.’
‘Well, yes, I suppose so, but if I threw out all those who smelled of their profession, hardly a customer would come into the shop.’
I managed to get in and out of the post office without any adverse comments, but at the till in the Co-op, as I paid for shampoo, I was sure Mrs Angwyn was holding her breath. I told Ros about it, and she didn’t deny it for a moment, but said she was used to it. In the clean environment of a chemist’s shop of course the smell of pig would be quite overwhelming.
Sam and Lysta were now at that age when friends had become the most important thing in their lives. After school in the summer months they would often go home with classmates and play until eight o’clock in the evenings. It was usually me who picked them up, Ros having to stay with Seth. Lysta’s closest friend was Eleri Topliss, the daughter of the Hotpoint engineer who lived over in Nebo. He sold reconditioned washing machines for cash and was a suitable target for me to home in on to barter some meat. Our old Bendix had a life of its own. When it went into its spin cycle it made its way across the kitchen floor like something out of Doctor Who, Dalek alert! Dalek alert! He had saleable machines piled high in a disused chicken shed, and while Lysta pushed Eleri on the swing hanging from an old pear tree in the orchard we talked business. He was an Englishman who had fled Stourbridge after spending five years working in a glass factory. I’d met him a few times, usually outside the school gate. The only other time was when I beat him in the parents’ sack race on school sports day.
‘It’s Allen, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, to you it is. To the others around here it’s Topliss with no Mr in front of it. Then of course to the children it’s Topless. It’s hard for Eleri having to bear the brunt of it.’
