by Dai Smith
Alderman Parry-Paylin took hold of Dr Derwyn’s arm and led him into the body of the chapel. They were in solemn mood, both very conscious of their responsibilities. They sat close to each other in the shadow of the mahogany pulpit, so that they could exchange views without being overheard by the old woman. Because of the reverberation in the chapel their voices barely rose above a whisper.
‘Don’t think I am unsympathetic,’ the Alderman said. ‘But you can see my difficulty, can’t you?’
‘Difficulty?’
Dr Derwyn repeated the word slowly as if he were trying to give himself more time to think. He found himself in a situation far more awkward than he had anticipated. His best defence was an air of unworldly detachment. Mihangel’s whisper grew more vehement. It seemed to whistle through his clenched teeth.
‘What are we reduced to?’ he said. ‘This place has more trustees than members. Could this be described as a building of distinction? I hardly think so. I expect Dr Peate was just being nice to the old people. He could see how much Soar meant to them. In any case, it was a long time ago. I was never all that happy here myself. She was a bit of a tyrant you know in her day. A fierce spinster. She disapproved of my father. He was a sailor and he had no business to go and get himself torpedoed. She doesn’t really approve of me either. Just because I married into a family of better off Methodists. Talk about sectarianism. Makes you think, doesn’t it?’
Dr Derwyn had come to a decision.
‘We could take those papers and all the written records,’ he said. ‘And care for them properly. But we couldn’t pay for them. A courtesy ex gratia maybe, but nothing more than that. As you well know these things are regulated by market forces. I don’t suppose there is an overwhelming demand for handwritten sermons in our dear old language.’
The acoustic was too sensitive to allow them to chuckle at his mild academic joke. Alderman Mihangel Parry-Paylin clenched his fist under his moustache to demonstrate the intensity of his sincerity.
‘I try to be understanding,’ he said. ‘And tolerant. It’s no use being in public life without being tolerant on a wide range of issues. The truth is she lives in the past.’
He made a sweeping gesture to implicate the rows of empty pews in front of them.
‘She still sees this place filled with God-fearing peasants. A whole world away. And what kept them in good order? Fear. The fear of death. Weren’t they dropping like flies under things like typhoid and tuberculosis? The NHS with all its faults has done away with that, for God’s sake. So what is she on about? I used to sit over there you know and sit as still as a graven image while some old preacher went droning on, just in case she should catch me fidgeting or sucking a sweet. She could glare like a basilisk. She still can when she feels like it. You can see what she’s like can’t you?’
This was a whispered appeal for sympathetic understanding. Dr Derwyn was minded to be put in possession of more of the facts before he could unreservedly extend it. He knew the Alderman was Chairman of the County Council Planning committee as well as a Trustee of the chapel.
‘Forgive me for asking but am I right in thinking this chapel is scheduled for demolition?’
Mihangel Parry-Paylin could only lean forward to bury his face in both hands. Dr Derwyn was moved by the strength of his reaction.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t wish to be inquisitive. It is widely rumoured. And these things are happening. I read something in the Chronicle that said they were still coming down throughout the Principality at the rate of one a fortnight.’
He submitted this as a melancholy statistic from which the Alderman might derive some comfort. The moving finger of history had written and in its own roughshod manner was moving on.
‘It isn’t that,’ Parry-Paylin said.
He stared into the middle distance as if it were inhabited by a seething multitude of problems.
‘It wouldn’t worry me all that much to see the place come down. It’s the vested interests involved. You are lucky, Doctor Derwyn. You don’t have to deal with vested interests.’
‘Oh I wouldn’t say that…’ The archivist was unwilling to have the difficulties of his profession diminished.
‘People can be very sentimental,’ Parry-Paylin said. ‘You can’t ignore that. And yet in public life the guiding principle must be the greater good of the greatest number. The road needs widening. There can be no question about that. On the grounds of public safety. On grounds of commercial and industrial necessity. There are jobs involved. And progress. There’s always progress isn’t there with a capital ‘P’. Politicians can’t survive without visible Progress. She’s ninety-three. She can’t live for ever. The roof is leaking. Who is going to pay? Should we let the weather and neglect finish the job. You see my difficulty?’
His jaw froze as he heard his aunt’s measured approach. She appeared in the open door to practice a gesture of old-fashioned hospitality.
‘Now come along, gentlemen. What about a nice cup of tea?’
IV
The sun shone and the verandah’s sharp shadow spread across the drive as far as the first herbaceous border. The Alderman paced back and forth somewhat in the manner of a captain on the bridge of his ship. In the bright light of morning the problems that beset him had to be more amenable to solution. There had to be a residue of authority in the very place where he stood. His late wife’s great-grandfather had been far sighted enough to build his mansion on the brow of a hill that commanded a view of a magnificent mountain range, as well as the slate quarry he needed to keep an eye on. The quarry had long been closed and the bitter criticisms Mary Keturah made about the old minister’s hypocrisy and bogus religiosity were no longer in any way relevant: nevertheless the owner of Penllwyn (the ‘Hall’ had been dropped on the insistence of his dear wife who found it insufferably pretentious) was in an ideal position to lift up his eyes to the hills from which help and inspiration were bound to come to a man of goodwill such as himself, devoted to public service.
He stretched himself and blinked in the sunlight. There were interesting smells wafting through the open kitchen window where his daughter Iola was busying herself with baking cakes. From the walled garden he could hear the little boy Nino laughing as he dodged about the raspberry canes while his mother picked the fruit. Iola had persisted in drawing his attention to how phenomenally well behaved the little boy was; not to mention his mother who seemed to tremble gently in her anxiety to please.
Iola insisted that a great movement of peoples was taking place: not unlike the great waves of emigration that gave the nineteenth century its special character. He smiled as he took in her youthful exaggerations. At the same time he acknowledged it was wise for a man in public life to lend an ear to what the young were saying. There were great unseen forces at work as difficult to fathom and control as the world’s weather. And since his house had nine bedrooms he had to admit he was in a privileged position. He had to accept that it was her benevolent intention to lead him gently into the new paths and patterns of positive existence. ‘You are never too old to learn, Mici?’ she said. Her innovations, surprising as they were, he had to believe would in no way detract from his civic responsibilities; it was up to him to make sure that, if anything, they would enhance them. It was not impossible at any rate while the sun shone, that he would come to be proud of his daughter’s colourful eccentricities.
The little boy’s laugh provided the amenities of Penllwyn with a new and pleasant dimension. It was Parry-Paylin’s habit before committee meetings to take a walk in the wooded area above the house in order to rehearse arguments and sometimes test oratorical phrases aloud. Primroses grew among the trees in the spring and crocuses in the autumn. He was always ready to enthuse about the views he could enjoy throughout the changing seasons. Yesterday he had looked down at a wild corner of the gardens and saw the little boy chasing butterflies among the overgrown buddleia bushes. He was raising his little arms and trying to fly himself. The Alderman was
so pleased with what he saw he wanted to race down the slope and chase the butterflies himself.
Bicycle wheels crunched across the drive and a young man braked and skidded with a flourish, to pull up in front of where the Alderman was standing with his hands behind his back enjoying the undisturbed beauty of the morning.
‘Lovely day, isn’t it?’
The Alderman had little choice but to agree. The young man’s hair was dyed yellow and sprouted around in indiscriminate directions. It wasn’t a spectacle that he could contemplate with pleasure and he was obliged to look up at the sky as though a sudden thought had occurred to him he needed to hold on to.
‘Iola back then? Hell of a girl, isn’t she?’
This wasn’t a statement he could disagree with either. This was Moi Twm, Iola’s friend and devoted admirer. Not a suitor he had long been given to understand by his only daughter. This only brought limited relief. They were, Iola said, ‘partners in crime’. What could that mean except, an unappetising procession of raucous protests? Moi Twm kept a bookshop in an unfrequented corner of the market town. The books in the window were fading in spite of the cellophane he wrapped around them. He lived behind the shop among heaps of magazines and papers and flags and slogans of protests gone by. It was his way of life he said. Living on a pittance was the best guarantee of eternal youth. This light-heartedness might fill his daughter with admiration; all it brought him was suspicion and foreboding. He had an Uncle Ted who wrote a muckraking column in the local weekly. Uncle Ted followed the proceedings of the Council with relentless diligence. The more so because he had failed to get on the Council himself. There was always the possibility Moi Twm could wheedle secrets out of Iola; which meant he had to take extra care when talking to his own daughter: and that in itself was an unnatural curtailment on the resources of family life. If he couldn’t talk to his own daughter, who else could he confide in? It all made the business of local government more irksome than it needed to be. And this thin and hungry-looking young man with his silly hair a less than welcome visitor.
‘I wanted to see you too, Alderman, Sir. If you can spare a moment.’
Moi Twm had a trick of cackling merrily as though the simplest statements he came out with were potentially a huge joke. Iola had said she couldn’t be sure whether this was evidence of a depth of insecurity, a need for affection or just a nervous tick; whenever he heard it the Alderman closed his eyes and racked his brain for an avenue of escape.
‘About Soar chapel, Alderman Paylin. I’ve got just the answer. A rescue operation.’
The alderman restrained himself from saying Soar chapel was none of his business. His long experience of public life had taught him the value of a judicious silence.
‘It could make a lovely bookshop of course,’ Moi Twm said. ‘But Miss Parry would never allow that would she? She’s a hell of a girl, I have to say, but we have to respect her wishes.’
Parry-Paylin winced in anticipation of another cheerful cackle.
‘You must know this,’ Moi Twm said. ‘Being one of the children of Soar yourself. But I have to say it came as a complete surprise to me. R. J. Cethin was the minister at Soar for ten months in 1889.’
The alderman did not know this and saw no reason why he should have known. The name of R. J. Cethin meant little to him. Moi Twm was an amateur antiquarian as well as a bookseller and he had an irritating habit of displaying his arcane knowledge at inopportune moments. It often came with a brief cackle.
‘A deep dark secret,’ he said. ‘At Soar I mean. You wouldn’t have heard Miss Keturah mention it, I expect?’
‘I wouldn’t be sure,’ the alderman said.
He resented being cross-examined. A shuffle of his feet on the verandah floor suggested he had more important matters calling for his attention.
‘I dug into it,’ Moi Twm said. ‘Nothing I enjoy more than a bit of research. There was just a paragraph in the old North Wales Gazette for February 1890. But it was enough to give the game away. The fact is he got the organist’s daughter pregnant. They fled and started a new life in the United Sates. He became pastor of a Unitarian Church in Toledo, Ohio. And began to write pamphlets in English about workers’ rights and female emancipation and all that sort of thing. Author of Christ the Socialist, The Church against Poverty, and The Land for the Poor and the Poor for the Land. He’s very well known over there now. As a pioneer. Not much honour for a prophet in his own country though. The old story Alderman Paylin.’
There was a powerful cackle.
‘Anyway, I don’t want to keep you. Now this is my idea. Why not turn Soar into a nice little museum? A tourist attraction you could call it on the lowest level, so to speak. But in the true interest of culture and local history it could really be made into something. With your personal associations, it could be a jewel in your crown. So to speak. Don’t take any notice of my frivolous manner, Mr Paylin. It’s a silly habit I can’t get out of. I’m making a serious suggestion. And who would have thought of it. The great R. J. Cethin the minister of Soar chapel Llandawel. Ten months or ten years. What does it matter? And the organist’s daughter into the bargain. I haven’t investigated her background yet. But it’s bound to have interesting local connections. As you said in the council last month. We needed to diversify. In the face of the decline of agriculture and the quarries closed and being too remote to attract new industry. Tourism is our best chance. Our best resource if handled properly. With taste and discretion of course. How else?’
The alderman gave so deep a sigh, the young man grew apologetic. For the first time his enthusiasm subsided sufficiently for him to become aware of another person’s reactions. For the alderman, he had taken the bloom off the morning.
‘It’s only an idea,’ Moi Twm said. ‘I just thought I’d mention it. A contribution. People ought to know about these things.’
The alderman’s silence implied he was wondering whether in fact they should. He was startled by a yelp of delight as his daughter rushed out of the house. Down on the drive below him, Moi Twm and Iola became locked in a fierce embrace. They were like two footballers who had managed to pierce the defence and score the winning goal. He had to look away. He was always embarrassed by too much explicit emotion. And it was hardly right that these young things should be so close. People were talking freely about ‘partners’ these days. In that case could someone tell him what was to become of the family? It was as if he had to live with a veiled threat of being thrust out of his own nest.
‘You little devil,’ Moi Twm was saying. ‘You just shot off without telling me. Without a word. I’m furious with you. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Listen you old bookworm. I’ve got a surprise for you. A lovely surprise.’
‘Chocolates? Pearls? Green bananas?’
She took his hand and dragged him towards the walled garden.
‘Something you’ve been looking for, for ages. The nicest girl you could ever wish to meet.’
V
In a matter of days Iola established a routine at Penllwyn that her father found moderately reassuring. Price the gardener who came three half-days a week remarked, not for the first time, how much she reminded him of her dear mother and how Iola had always been a young lady who had a way with her. This was the kind of music the alderman liked to hear and he heard it again from Mrs Twigg the diminutive cleaner who was ever faithful but had a chronic inability to detect dust anywhere higher than her eye level. Maristella and the boy Nino were proving satisfyingly low-pitched and even docile. It amused him to detect that when they passed his study they moved on tiptoe. The flow of chatter through the house did not disturb him unduly. When he stopped to listen it was invariably Iola that was doing most of the talking. The guidelines of dispensation had been laid down skilfully enough to avoid disrupting in any way his own focused way of life.
It was summer and the new arrivals had contrived to make themselves pleasing figures in the landscape. Maristella had a knowledge of plants and was very w
illing to go on her knees and do some weeding, even without gloves. In the orchard, Price the gardener put up a primitive swing for the little boy and Iola drew her father’s attention to the child’s remarkable capacity for amusing himself for hours on end. ‘It’s the Garden of Eden for the child,’ she said in a subdued tone that was loaded with darker implications. It suggested too that her father could derive satisfaction from the knowledge that he had helped to rescue a child from an unmentionable fate. The Corsican father was a gendarme in Marseilles notorious for his brutality. The Alderman would have liked to learn more. He had to be content with the knowledge that Maristella, in spite of her courageous nature was extraordinarily naive. Her father must have noticed, Iola said with a passing sigh, how often it happened that nice girls were taken in by the most awful shits. It was in the end a phenomenon that could only be attributed to some obscure force that surfaced from a primaeval past in the animal kingdom.
Supper time became a pleasing occasion. The strangers were transformed into guests and out of courtesy the Alderman spoke more English. Maristella for her part clenched her small fist and declared her firm intention to dysgu Cymraeg. This caused much pleasant laughter. The Alderman was especially pleased when Iola prepared a lamb stew with mixed herbs in exactly the way her mother used to do. It was in the middle of this meal, he could only assume for want of a fresh crusade, that she returned to the attack.
‘I hear there are plans afoot to bury toxic waste at the bottom of Cloddfa Quarry.’
Alderman Paylin looked longingly at his plate. There was a lot of delicious stew left and he would have liked to enjoy it in peace.
‘In a democracy I suppose we have to put up with incredibly stupid and vulgar politicians. At least until the population arrives at a higher level of education: and that seems a long way off. But you are in a position of authority, Tada. You can make decisions. Or see to it that decisions are made. Whose idea was it?’
