Story, Volume I

by Dai Smith

  The old man’s voice rose again.

  ‘And we think better of you than that, my boy.’

  ‘She has asked for it.’

  The lad set his lips in a stolid, incommunicative way and stared before him.

  ‘That is not the way to speak of your wife, either.’

  The lad bowed his head under the reproach and the old man went on.

  ‘There are certain things that are not said in public – not said and not done, whatever the provocation.’

  It was a point, granted the lad who lifted up his face in a dumb show of thanks. ‘For your heart is in the right place, Lewis John, I will say that…’ The old man paid him this grudging tribute and then went on in a brighter voice, ‘And left to yourself there is no great harm in you.’

  ‘No, indeed,’ broke in Wili Owain, finding a place for himself. ‘But as a man sows, Lewis bach. And Gwenna was the girl for you.’

  Wili Owain wagged his head reassuringly in the cocksure way of the knowing.

  The lad winced as though cut to the quick. Wili Owain was a foolish man and was privileged to say foolish things so that he could not take him up.

  But the others shuffled their feet uneasily and looked hard at the floor – that this of all things should have been said, and now of all times!

  ‘Answer not a fool according to his folly,’ broke in the old man in the same tranquil way, ‘and there’s no fool like the fool who means well. Come on, Lewis bach, we shall be friends yet.’

  He got stiffly to his feet and slapped the lad across the shoulders. Lewis John looked up with the same harsh challenge, and then his better nature rose and took hold of him, his face gradually warmed into life again. He could not bear malice for long.

  The old man groaned as he took a heavy ewe across his knee, and rubbed his hand over the timorous muzzle, looked into the sad, disdainful eyes with a comic, meditative squint.

  ‘As a sheep before her shearers is dumb: and a damned good job too, boys bach – one old woman is enough in this life.’

  And again the laughter rose, after how long an interval. It was like a thaw in a warm spring sun. The laughter and the native wit, the old stories told again, and a sudden burst of song as someone would take a bar or two out of sheer gladness of heart. And Lewis John threw himself heart and soul into it. It was the old life come back again. He made more droll the droll story and his laughing eye and the wild gleam of mischief in the young face provoked even the glum ones to extravagances. He and old John Shad were the natural leaders through whom all passed: and then they again, with the natural deference paid to each other’s greatness, capped the other’s sallies.

  ‘Those were the days,’ began Wili Owain, as though talking of a time gone. ‘Remember, Lewis John, that night on the lake? Keepers all over the place and, myn ufferni, they had enough of it!’

  Lewis John raised his head and looked out through the door to the broken, lifting sky over the mountain, and then he made a grimace as though the memory had come back like a known face to torment him. It was all too real. There was a lot about that night that no one would ever know – only he and Gwenna. There was no going back now, and he shook his head bitterly at the remembrance of something gone – the old life which, for all it may have been, was as real as the day itself.

  ‘There’s innocent for you!’ someone taunted ‘Have you ever seen a gaff, Lewis bach?’

  ‘And the dog otter we killed on the way…’

  Then old John Shad, raising his mildly browsing head:

  ‘Was that the night that a young man climbed up a ladder to a lady’s bedroom? Well, well! The keepers have been after me many a time, but there were never any ladders left lying about – though I was always in hopes…’

  The laughter rose like a rustle around and he pulled at the white sweep of moustache with a sly, cocked eye.

  ‘…because there are many cosier places than a night in jail. No, boys bach, there were no ladders in my time, but oh dear me, a great deal of red flannel – and rough going it was: the path of true love was not as smooth as it might have been.’

  There was no harsh voice now. Lewis John had entered into the life around him, just as though he had opened his hands and gathered it up. The sense of it was as real to him as something he saw and handled. He felt his spirit loosen within him like a hard knot in the belly gradually resolving itself. He gave himself in the same way, felt the touch of the sheep quicken in his hands, until his fingers no longer had a separate sense. The shears went surely, with a new rhythm as they sped over the warm flesh, and his eyes were alight with the felt joy of work.

  That night was now so real that the actual physical sights and sounds came to him. He could smell the harsh tarn water in the rushes and raise his head to the taste of salt in the wind from the sea: the sour stink of sea birds that had made sodden the rush-clumps at the far end, and the whiff of peat smoke somewhere far off.

  He remembered that night – remembered plucking his cap off and turning his head up into the wind. The fading landscape was going in the way he knew: the deeper blood-red hue of mountains like a slow fuming fire in the thin light, and then a triumphant sky, with no longer a sun, far out over the sea. He remembered throwing his arms up, just in the exultation of being alive, then shaking his fists in defiance at something that he never, even now, understood. The wide, moving splendour overhead, the sense of a world so near that all the live sounds rose up in a last wailing cry in the stillness, and then so remote that the far-off, fading yellow sky over the sea was but a beginning. All this came to him as he stood there. A day like all others, remembered by felt things – by wet earth and the chill of mountain water, and the soft pulp bellies of fish, felt under squeaking rushes: then the blue splendour of mountain and the fired sky far over the sea and a night coming, edged with frost and the blue sparkle of stars.

  ‘Duw – that was a night!’ He tossed his head up in the old triumphant way, the level white teeth showing in a grin and the wild gleam in his eyes like a light flashing.

  Then, free of the sheep, he reached up to the rafters where some old gaffs lay on pegs, and made play with one. He got the haft bent under his forearm as he reached down to a fish, the body braced into a lean, poised curve and the eyes hard and lightIess. And then he struck.

  ‘Got him!’ said old John Shad, looking up. ‘Oh, he has not forgotten the way, whatever.’

  Lewis John flung the gaff back with a gesture of disgust and sat down on the bench again. He pushed his hand up through the wet hair and screwed his eyes shut. Everything about that night had become too real.

  The keepers had taken a hiding that time – one that they would long remember. And he, having fallen too far behind, had had to drop the salmon and swim the lake – right across to the Rectory on the far side where Gwenna worked. He had gone into the old church and carried the ladder from the broken bell-cote, through the rhododendron bushes to her window.

  It was the end of a daft night. She tried to play off his fooling, as she had done so often before, when he would go off in a sulk, swearing that it was the end of all things. And yet she knew that a time would come when she would not have the strength to do so. She had known that almost as soon as she began to think about Lewis John at all, and she sought desperately to hide it from him in any way she could.

  When at last he tried to clamber across the sill she shook her head with a slow, deliberate shake, not daring to trust her voice: but her unquiet, bounding heart and the lit-up eyes spoke for her.

  And as he tried gently to unfasten her hands from across the window, she let her head droop downwards on her breast as the last act of surrender. And a look of dismay went, like a shadow, darkening her face, as she asked in an old, grave way:

  ‘I know – but do you?’

  As he carried her away from the window to the old cast iron bed of the maid’s room, festooned with church texts, he tried out the solemn language of love (but with no great sureness), feeling that it was demanded of him.
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  ‘Gwenna – I’m… I’m awfully fond of you.’

  ‘So it seems!’

  The still grave face broke with the flash of a smile. And the wit was not lost on him. And for all that triumphant note that sounded in him he felt a long way behind, humbled by what she was.

  Fused for ever in his own soul was that night. The two were one and indistinguishable: the riding triumph of the sky with its beckon into space, and Gwenna: the first brief bewilderment at life in the slowly widening eyes as passion woke, like a flower warmed out of the still earth. His own live world came back to him at the memory – so real that he felt he could reach out and touch it.

  ‘Duw – what about a song, boys bach?’

  He flung his head up in the old wild way. And then without more ado he broke into an old Welsh folk song. Its theme was the burden of young love, so old a song that their fathers had heard their grandfathers sing it at such another shearing, and yet as fresh now as ever. Young love and a sighing lover who in the dawn had followed the foot-tracks of the beloved one in the woodland hollows, so that he might kiss the pressure on the turf. Lewis John sang it very well. He breathed into it that fresh, pliant feeling the Welsh have, making it his own.

  ‘Well done, well done,’ chimed in old John Shad, brought up out of himself. They all applauded him. No one really believed it; Lewis John in the dawn, searching for the foot-prints of the cherished one on the woodland moss: but no one was meant to believe it. And at the same time they were to believe it, what had happened and what had not happened, the real and the unreal becoming one: the foolish, inconsequential lifting of the spirit which worked like leaven in the hard lump of life.

  He took his place again and for a long time nothing more was said until, raising his head out of the sheep’s belly as he let her go:

  ‘Duw – what is the good of life if… if…”

  ‘If what, m’achgen’i?’

  John Shad was not listening: he had a fleece just coming loose at the neck and it needed care. He answered simply to show he had heard, and then bent his head still lower. Lewis John sat there, hands on his knees, head bowed.

  ‘Last one for the morning!’

  The old man straightened himself with a sigh. It was nearly time for the midday meal. And then, remembering something that had been said:

  ‘What was that, m’achgen’i?’

  ‘What is the good of…’

  And then the words slowly faltered away. Gwenna stood at the door. She had a coarse sack apron round her; arms bare with the morning work were poised on the curving hips.

  ‘Dinner, you men – and not so much singing,’ she laughed in her mellow, lilting way.

  She looked from one to another as though to ask whose had been the song. They stood back towards the wall in their discomfiture, eyes on the ground, leaving the lad alone before them.

  ‘Oh – I see.’

  She bit her lip until it seemed the blood would come and her eyes hardened like the cold gleam of steel. Then the colour surged like a loosened flood into her face, and beyond to her pounding breast.

  They stood there for that one brief moment as though unable to free themselves one from the other. Then she turned with a wild toss of the head and ran on towards the house.

  One by one the men had gone off in a stagger across the yard, stretching their cramped legs. They stopped at the stone spout and wrung their hands under the cold spring water and then flung them free. And then on towards the house, the high shrill laughter of women, the clatter of plates.

  John Shad had stayed behind in the now empty barn. Once more he slipped his arm through the lad’s in a final appeal.

  ‘She must get used to seeing you, Lewis bach,’ he pleaded.

  Lewis John raised his head slowly from his knees as though he had heard for the first time.

  ‘Ay – she shall, too!’

  He nodded in the same grim, defiant way that she had had for him. Then he drew himself up and cocked his head with his old assurance. It was as if he had said that two could play at that game, and she should see…

  But as he went across the yard the anger had already left him – there was only the tumult that welled up, like a hand clutched at the throat.

  LET DOGS DELIGHT

  George Ewart Evans

  The first time anyone heard about him was when young Danny Lewis came home from the mountain and said he’d been bitten by a big brown fox that could run as fast as a train.

  The kids had been up on the breast of Gilfach-Y-Rhyd, playing Indians among the rocks. Danny had jumped down from a big boulder nearly on top of this fox. Curled up it was, asleep in the sun. It took one bite at him and was away along the path towards Craig-Yr-Hesg, as quick as a moment.

  There was no mistake about the bite – the teeth had gone right into the kid’s forearm – but down in Pontygwaith they were not too sure about the fox. They hadn’t seen a fox around the Gilfach in years; not since Jenkins the Farm had taken to shooting them.

  It was Wil Hughes Flagons who really noticed him first. Just below Craig-Yr-Hesg Farm there’s a fairly level shelf of ground bitten into the side of the mountain. Wil Flagons was up there one Sunday morning sitting against a rock. He had his greyhound bitch, the famous Tonypandy Annie, with him, and while he was nearly dozing off after reading the newspaper, the bitch suddenly tugged at the lead and started barking and kicking up no end of a shindy. Flagons looked up and saw what was worrying her.

  About two hundred yards away was a big brown greyhound, poking around among the rocks. When the dog heard Annie barking, he turned round sharply, cocking up his head, like a gossip. And what a head! It was as smooth-lined and well cut as a snake’s. The dog held it high, but as soon as he saw Flagons, down it went and he was off towards Craig-Yr-Hesg, up past the quarry on to the moorland.

  One glance at the dog in action and Wil Flagons knew he was a right ’un. The dog moved like a champion, taking the rocks and the sheep-wall like a bird; like a fairy; like no milgi that’s been in this valley.

  A quarter of an hour later the bitch spotted the dog again, right up on top, on the moorland. He was basking quiet in the sun. Flagons stopped, slipped the lead off her collar, and said to her very gentle, like he did before races: After him, gel! When the dog saw the famous Annie blazing towards him, he just cocked up his head and looked interested. But just as he got up to meet her, he saw Flagons standing with the lead in his hand, away in the background. Without as much as a sniff for Annie, the dog turned, and was off in the opposite direction like the wind. And Annie, thinking it was all a bit of sport, went full pelt after him.

  Now Wil Flagons has got a few middling words handy when he’s surprised. He must have used them all when he saw what happened to his famous Annie when she went after the big greyhound. He couldn’t believe his eyes. The dog was leaving her standing, and before they were half-way across the bit of moorland he was as distant from Annie as a rich relation. Tonypandy Annie, mind you, who was meeting all comers and was live fire on the skin of the bookmakers.

  Flagons really thought he had the nystagmus when he saw it. He went home after he’d collected the bitch, and he got so worried, trying to think whose dog it was, he couldn’t get to sleep. He thought once it may be Twm Aberdare’s dog that had got loose; but Twm’s dog couldn’t raise a gallop, leave alone make Annie look like a lapdog. He had to give it up and he dropped off to sleep dreaming he was riding down to the sea on the back of the big greyhound.

  Next day he went round all the pubs in Pontygwaith asking questions; but when he started to talk about the dog on the mountain the blokes didn’t take him serious, thinking he was on the cadge for a pint; so he was none the wiser at the end of it.

  But after a week or two, one thing was sure: the greyhound was as wild as the bracken. No one came to claim him, though even if they did they couldn’t get within a quarter of a mile of him to catch him. As soon as he saw anyone coming he’d look furtive over his shoulder and slink away into the thick ferns
, as smooth as a fox.

  He must have hated humans like poison. He wouldn’t wait for the sight nor the smell of them. The last one he came up against must have treated him like nothing you’d care to tell about. The dog had been beaten till there was no trust left in him. Wil Flagons could see that plain enough, but he couldn’t forget how quick the dog was and he would have given one of his eyes to catch him.

  Whenever he got a chance he used to be up on the mountain, watching the dog move about. One evening he borrowed a spying glass and went looking for him special. He found him, as usual, up by the Big Rock, and he spent half an hour watching him, sizing him up; his shoulders and the strong curve of his body. Suddenly it struck him that the dog was wearing a collar. Then it came to him in a flash. He shut up his spying glass and off he went for home, with Tonypandy Annie trotting along behind. Catch him? I’ll catch him, said Flagons, and then for some fun, Annie gel.

  First he looked up Dai Banana, who lived next-but-two, and asked him for a loan of his terrier. Now Dai Banana was proud of the terrier, which was a champion ratter, notwithstanding he had about four breeds of dog in him, and Dai wouldn’t hear about lending him to Flagons until he knew what all the fun was going to be about. So he had to let Dai into his secret.

  Now it was his idea to train Annie to grab the wild dog by the collar when they were playing together on the mountain. Then Annie would hold him until they came up to get him proper. After a few grunts and grumbles, Dai Banana agreed to lend his terrier for Annie to practise on, on condition, of course, that Flagons would pass on a handful or two of the clover when the wild one would be winning all the races he was talking about.

  So the both of them started to train the bitch to do the collaring act. And that was the easiest part of the business; for Annie was as knowing as they make ’em, Flagons had nursed her like a baby and she knew the lift of his little finger. She went at it, natural as walking, and Dai Banana’s terrier had a rough time at the rehearsals; though show fight he did at first and raised hell till they calmed him.