Story, Volume I

by Dai Smith

  ‘Long enough I’ve listened to your insults, Blod. Where did you get that idea from that I’ve been running loose? Eh? Has that old bitch been lying to you then?’

  ‘You told her you been seeing Mrs Montague naked—’

  ‘Well, well, and so I have—’

  Blodwen struggled to be free. ‘Oh, oh!’ she cried aloud.

  ‘Some women there are,’ he said, ‘who are not so mean as you about their prettiness! Mrs Montague’s got very good ideas how to make her husband happy. Listen, my silly little pet…’ and he told her of the afternoon’s event.

  She became quiet. Surprise, astonishment, and amazement leaped successively to her wild-coloured face. And, also, there came a slow and wondering dawn in her eyes…

  ‘There now,’ Gomer finished. ‘See how ready you are to think evil of me. And here I came home wishing to see a better sight than Mrs Montague could give me. And well I could have it too, only you been brought up wrong. That’s where the mischief is. Too much shame you have been taught, by half.’

  Blodwen’s head was a little low. The curve of her healthy red-gold cheek filled him with tenderness. And magnanimity. He said softly:

  ‘I tell you what, Blod. We’ll strike a bargain. You want the piano bad, don’t you? Well, say, now, we’ll give way to one another—’

  She hung her head lower. Some threads of her rust-brown hair touched his lips. He quivered. His hand slipped over her shoulder. But she would not speak.

  ‘—And be nice to each other,’ he continued, ‘not always squabbering as your mother and father used to do! Live in our own way we must, Blod… there now, isn’t she a sweet one… there, ah! sweet as a rose, my darling, a better pink and white than any rose’s…! there, my pet, my angel!’

  THE SHEARING

  Geraint Goodwin

  All down the two sides of the barn they went, sitting straddle-legged on rough untrimmed benches, their backs against the loose stone walls. Sometimes they would move a sheep across their knees and start the talk going, without raising their heads.

  The place stank with the warm-sweat reek of fleeces: they lay there in a growing heap as one man after another, with a final flick of the shears, tossed them on to the stone floor.

  They had come in on ponies across the mountains and from the valley farms to lend a hand with the shearing, as they in turn would be so helped themselves.

  For the short, harsh spring of the Welsh coast was mellowing into the milder summer and the sheep were going up to the mountain shorn of their wool. And the natural gaiety of the people kept pace with the seasons. In this farm near the village the men were telling the old stories or fashioning new ones with native wit: without in the yard was the commotion of boys mitching from school while from in the old farmhouse itself came the raised laughter of women, making their own fun in the big kitchen, as they busied themselves with the men’s food.

  Two boys were running endlessly carrying in the sheep. They carried them as they would a child, their bellies up, and laid them down on benches for ever emptying. Only in between times would a man find time for talk, wiping the reek off his hands and leaning his back to the wall as he looked about him.

  The old farmer had let go his sheep. It went scuttling through the open door with the lads holding on to the shorn neck as they raced her without, on to the commotion of voices around the boiling cauldron of pitch. The old man wiped his brow with the gesture of a job well done and looked across to his young neighbour. And then, in the casual way of small talk:

  ‘So married life is all right then, Lewis John?’

  ‘Not bad.’

  And the lad, whose wild young face set as though there frozen, buried his head still deeper in the fleece before him.

  And it was not all casual as it seemed. The old man brought his hand with a comic gesture backwards across his nose and winked around him. He was a great wag and what people call a character, an old man now of seventy but still good for his fifty sheep a day, and all done clean, which was a good deal more than any of the others. There was no harm in John Shadrach Ifons, or John Shad as he was to everyone, with his round, fresh, crab-apple face and the sharp blue eyes that missed nothing, always a twinkle; the white, untidy hair ruffled up heedless on his head; the long, white, arrogant curve of his moustache that gave the face some semblance of age.

  At the same time they thought he was skirting near thin ice, and secretly enjoyed the prospect of what was to come. Not one of the others dared have gone so far, but then he had the privilege of age and again of innocence.

  ‘Not bad!’ went on the old man, as though taking the words from him and turning them over. ‘Well, well, that is one way of putting it, I suppose.’ He looked around him again with the same show of dumb innocence. ‘When I was a young man I thought it very good.’

  And again he rubbed his nose with that sly, backward swipe and reached his tongue out slowly round his cheeks and went on:

  ‘Life is very unfair – to the young people, I mean. Now if I had to choose between coming here and a warm feather bed at the farm of Ty Newydd I think perhaps the bed would win. In all this world there is no place like the bed.’

  ‘Myn ufferni – you ought to know: you have been in plenty.’

  For the first time the lad raised his head from out the sanctuary of the sheep’s belly. There was the quick, bright flash of a smile that seemed to shed light around him. He nodded, knowing that he had scored, and as though to say he was going to play their own game for once and keep his temper on a leash. This was his first initiation into the old hierarchy of married men and he had to submit to the baiting of his elders with as good a grace as he could. And if that was all there was to it, then he was going to let it pass.

  ‘In my time – in my time,’ mused the old farmer, not taking it amiss. He clamped his gums together and spoke as to the wall, and his eyes went off into distance. ‘And the happiest days of my life, too, and most men know it.’

  He was talking to them all now, half banter half serious, with the warm intimacy that their own tongue gave. And for all its frankness it was natural to them as the light they saw or the food they ate, that ancient, undiscoverable life of the mountain farms, which Christianity had touched but not altered. Even in the rapt ecstasy of redemption that followed the first revivals, this old, worn, pagan life endured: the things of the earth, the ways of a man with women, these they knew as the psalmist did, for it was their life.

  ‘Well, well, Nature, after all.’

  He was a man named Wili Owain and the thin and rather foolish white face was set gravely, as though to hold in the weight of thought, and a mouth without meaning was clamped down hard in a judicious line. He was no match for these two and the profundity was meant to ease out the distance.

  ‘Nature – ah, Nature!’

  The old man calmly pulled out the torn strips of rag from between his teeth and, crossing the ewe’s legs, bound them up, and then settled her on his knees. He rubbed a hand softly over the fleece to search for a beginning, prodding carefully with his shears into the thick wool of the neck: a few careful snips and the fleece fell open, and, like a furrow ripped in dirty water, the shears went down the belly to the tail. The fleece fell apart, trailing its ragged edges almost to the floor: what was once a furrow widened, as the uncovered belly showed itself, the short virgin wool beneath as white as drift snow.

  He raised his head a moment, and then, looking to the lad Lewis John beside him and as though the young wild head that tossed restless in its life gave him a tag on which to hold his sermon, went on, with a quiet munching of chops:

  ‘She is a funny old girl is Nature – as stubborn as a woman and just as contrary. And you can trust Her just about as much, boys bach! For she is thinking in Her way and we, poor fools, go on thinking in ours. And who is right, think you?’

  He tossed this over to them as some stray morsel which in the process of time should be considered, simply for its own sake. And to start them off, and in one of
those abrupt changes from the joking to the serious-minded in the way of the Welsh, he leaned forward and raised a free hand over his head, wagging a finger solemnly into space. And then his voice, like a preacher filled with the spirit, went mounting up in invocation:

  ‘And who is right, m’achgen’i? Nature, in all her wonderful glory who sendeth the spring into the valleys and giveth drink to every beast of the fields: yea, yea, who appointed the moon for seasons and who toucheth the hills and they smoke… or Lewis John Williams of the farm of Ty Newydd in the parish of Pantymaen?’

  ‘Me again!’

  ‘I am only saying, my boy, for the sake of illustration. It is the same with all of us.’ He stroked his chin again in the same sly way. ‘Unless perhaps Llew Pryce here who is too timid…’

  ‘Give me a chance, that’s all.’

  The quiet youth, as though startled into speech, raised his head laughing, in a show of braveness.

  ‘You have had plenty, so they tell me. Only when the girls begin to think things, off he runs to his mam, and that is no good to anybody.’

  The sound of low laughter, of men pleased within themselves rose around the high metallic snip of shears. They did not raise their heads, only grunted over their work. There was too much to do. And the old man might catch their eye and out would come a sally at their expense, which they did not want at all.

  ‘Oh, no, that is no good to anybody,’ went on old John Shad, heaving the sheep over on his knees. ‘Lewis John is better than that, I must say. He knows the way to the ladies’ hearts and once you have touched their hearts there is no knowing what… or so they tell me.’

  He raised his worn head a moment and cocked a live eye at the young man before him.

  ‘Hush, hush – fair play. He is a married man now,’ one of the men broke in.

  There was always a time when things began to get out of hand, when a sally with the point of truth in it got home. So the old man, free of the sheep at last, tossed up his hands in a casual way, and in a voice meant to condone all things said simply:

  ‘Wild oats! And better when you are young – a spring sowing, whatever the harvest. Ay, Lewis John?’

  The lad winced as under a blow and his head jerked up from his work, flung up in anger: the sheep he held reared up her dumb head in a frantic heave.

  ‘Ah – you’ve touched her, Lewis bach.’

  The old man pointed his shears-end to the soak of fresh blood that spread out on the white, shorn belly.

  ‘Hell – can’t I see?’

  Lewis John threw the shears on the bench before him and, not waiting for the oil bottle but with one brief glare around him, shouted:

  ‘Look here, Mr Ifans – that’s enough for one day! Now leave it alone!’

  Then he flung himself out through the door.

  ‘Tut, tut – so childish,’ went on old John Shad as though nothing had happened. Then he looked round to the others with the same old, all-comprehending look. ‘And everyone knows, boys bach, which is small wonder as she is a girl of this parish. And whatever his wife might like to think or say that girl was not brought to bed by the fairies!’

  ‘She is here today’, a man said, in the same way of small talk.

  ‘What! Gwenna?’

  The old man’s head went up as though startled out of himself: then he cocked it as though trying to distinguish between the shrill laughter of women in the kitchen. Then back to the same easy tone: ‘Well – that is awkward, boys bach, to say the least… but they are bound to meet sometime, after all.’

  He waved his hands up in the same offhanded way but it was still on his mind: he shook his head several times as though to wipe out the memory of it. These days of shearing, when all came in a spirit of good fellowship, were soon over as it was. It was a pity to see one spoilt. But they were back again to the old talk.

  ‘As though the folk at Ty Newydd will let a small thing like that worry them – now that they have got Blodwen off! Myn ufferni, you would think, to hear them talk, that Lewis John had wings, instead of a son by another woman,’ broke in Wili Owain in a bitter challenge.

  And with the empty seat before them the tongues were loosened and they began to argue among themselves, taking sides as they were bound to do in a thing which touched the village, and its honour, so deeply.

  They could not help liking the lad Lewis John still – would have done much to excuse him if only they could. For he was one of those men who do not belong to themselves but to the people: his quick tongue and nimble wit, the flashing, open tilt of mischief in his face, forestalled the angry word. And after some fresh, some daring piece of devilment, there was only a wise nodding of heads and an indulgent holding-up of hands:

  ‘Goodness only knows what we shall make of him.’

  And yet no one really wanted him otherwise and so one and all continued to give false evidence to river watchers and angry policemen and he took it all quite cheerfully as his due, promising to behave next time – and with a great show of hurt innocence.

  And now the old happy days had gone. He was quick to sense it and it gave a fresh edge to him.

  ‘No,’ picked up old John Shad, ‘the Ty Newydd folk are not going to let a small thing like that worry them.’

  Beyond the words the old man sounded his voice so that it had a faintly unfamiliar air of deference that chilled. And it was noticed they were always referred to as the ‘Ty Newydd folk’, never in the more homely way that warmed.

  ‘Well, he’s done well for himself, whatever,’ broke in the timid man Llew Pryce, which only provoked Wili Owain to a fresh shout:

  ‘I tell you Gwenna is worth ten of her, any day of the week, and she has not two thousand pounds fastened on to her knickers.’

  ‘Now, now. That is unfair – that is unfair,’ old John Shad broke in with a gesture of peace. There was bound to be a row – always had been since it happened.

  ‘And two hundred pounds spent on a wedding does not make it any the more right – no, nor photos in the County Times!’ went on Wili Owain in the full flood tide of his indignation. He began beating with the end of his shears on the bench beside him, trying to make himself heard. The three Methodist ministers, the two hundred guests with printed invitation cards, the dinner for the poor in the County Workhouse – he waved his hands dismissing it all, and then leaned over and spat out through the open door. And on a high note of piety:

  ‘Oh, no – a poor girl has nothing to offer but herself…’

  ‘Myn ufferni – that’s enough, too.’

  The sudden burst of laughter that greeted old John Shad’s sally eased the feeling between them, and some of the old intimacy came back.

  ‘We are all very foolish indeed, boys bach.’ It was old John again. ‘The best thing is to marry a girl for love… who has got money though not because…’

  Again he brought his hand backwards across his nose in the familiar mischief-making swipe. But Wili Owain was now in the full flood-tide of righteousness:

  ‘He did not do the right thing, boys bach, and mark my words, no good will come of this other.’

  He brought the shears-end a resounding blow on the bench again and glared round with a light of challenge in his eye. Then leaning towards the door:

  ‘Ty Newydd folk indeed!’

  And he spat outside with the passion of the righteous.

  It was hard to know why the Ty Newydd folk were not liked. They had made money, which was a good thing, and they had made it out of the English – and that was better still. And what was more they had come back to spend it in the district where they had been born and bred. And yet their own people no longer knew them: they had taken fresh root elsewhere. They knew the old man simply as Tomos Richards, one-time cowman at Ty Newydd, and his wife Sara as the servant girl there. They were simply London Welsh milkmen with ‘pots of money’, even though they had bought the farm in which they once worked. It did not put them back on the land. And Sara knew this, though it did not daunt her. She was an ambitio
us woman and in some ways a dangerous one and she straightway set herself the hard task of making herself somebody: her grim, big-boned face with the few sparse hairs of a moustache, her sour, unlighted eyes and the shorn hair which was to keep her for ever young at sixty, was seen everywhere, often enough trailing around her daughter Blodwen.

  ‘Sara had a little lamb’ began one of the local penillion and it ended up on a bawdy note, of how Sara had found the little lamb a man. For Blodwen, a spoilt child and oversexed to boot, was not so discriminating as her mother. So ran the local gossip and it was usually right.

  Nevertheless Sara was a character, entitling her to her maiden name, and though they laughed at her it was only to hide their fear. And she was a person of some importance, on almost all committees, a magistrate and a deaconess in Shiloh, the Calvinistic Methodist chapel from which she had been married in the long ago. And with her head bobbing in the chapel vestry or over the tea urn in the Sunday School or with two or three people about her in the street, they knew something was going on, though what that something was did not always reveal itself.

  It did not seem likely that scandal would ever touch her or hers but she reckoned without Blodwen. Lewis John was going through an awkward time just then: hard things were being said about him. Perhaps it was to spite the parish (which he saw settling on him for ever and ever) or perhaps it was the inducement of the great outside world which he had glimpsed on a short spell of lorry-driving. Or it may have been Blodwen herself, who was attractive enough in a spitefully passionate way. But there is no doubt that she made a fool of herself and Lewis John, who was used to shaking the tree for the fruit to fall, did not mind it coming otherwise. People began to talk. In the end Sara took a hand. She had hoped for a doctor or at least a minister, but the lad, even to her own hostile eye, was presentable enough, like some lanky pup with the promise of turning out well.

  There was only one thing in the way – this unhappy affair with Gwenna that still dragged itself on in the life of the village.

  ‘Trust Sara,’ they said, with a grim nodding, and they were right. For in ways that no one quite knew, and without ever anything being said in so many words, people were now beginning to believe that perhaps Gwenna was not all that they had thought she was. It came as a shock to people who had known her since childhood but then, it was explained, she was ‘at an awkward age’. And as for poor Lewis John – well, ‘you know what he is’. And as they most certainly did, they found themselves forgiving him much.