They would hold hands, as if each was a white stick to the other on that uneven path between school and home. Those four months, a third of the year, were enough for them to keep their Welsh, and, I think, to reconcile them with their Welshness.
After sacrificing so much to send the boys to school, the means were simply not there to send myself and Bob to the County School. Our formal education ended at the village school. Then we returned to Cwm Maesglasau to earn our keep.
At the age of eleven Bob’s dream of becoming a doctor ended, and he became an unwilling farmer.
As for me, I lifted the wooden casing off the old Singer sewing machine which I’d inherited from my Aunt Sarah, and started my “career” as a seamstress: responding to requests for a dress or a suit, for repairs and alterations, or to render an adult’s clothes suitable for a child. And I enjoyed the handwork; it provided me with the busy stillness in which I could think.
Bob and I continued to read extensively, and we both made an effort—under the guidance of a representative of the Royal National Institute for the Blind—to learn how to decipher braille.
This marvelous system uses a system of six raised dots, with sixty-three possible permutations. Since Bob and I were still young, and since manual work hadn’t yet coarsened our skin, the flesh on our fingers was still soft enough. I made sure I used a thimble when sewing, in order to protect the all-important index finger.
So it wasn’t long before we’d both mastered our third language; or at least we knew enough to read our brothers’ letters.
In his teens, Gruff learned to type on a conventional typewriter so that Mother could read his letters. Thus she learned for herself about her sons’ lives at school; a life which, even after a decade, remained as foreign to her as ever.
A fourth brother, sighted, was born at Tynybraich in 1917.
Like the rest of us, Ieuan was of dark complexion. I was allowed to care for the little one often, since my sewing work kept me indoors, while Mother was kept busy. In the absence of Gruffydd and William, here was a new baby I could care for. Ieuan grew into a sharp and lively child, full of laughter. He said his first word at a young age, and that word was golau: light. He learned to read and write, but his favorite activity was drawing. He would draw with his slate pen on his slate all day, portraying life at Tynybraich.
Bob and my father would grumble whenever Ieuan “got underfoot.” There was no point explaining that the artist was merely following his muse.
Nothing pleased Ieuan more than walking to Maesglasau, where he’d draw a picture of the foaming waterfall as it shattered on the rock face, and the sad ruins of Maesglasau Mawr, with ferns growing through the windows and nettles in the hearth.
He often asked about his brothers, far from home, at school. He would look intensely at Gruff and William when they returned home. Ieuan could not imagine what it was like to live without being able to see.
As if the keenness and power of both his brothers’ eyes had accumulated in him, Ieuan’s world was a place where seeing was everything.
Ieuan was three when Olwen was born—a sixth child for the Tynybraich family! Our cup was overflowing! Ieuan, no longer the baby, was more than happy. I too delighted in her. What was fifteen years between sister and sister?
I sewed together a gift for our new baby: a rag doll with golden hair and blue eyes, a patterned frock and ribbons in her hair. Olwen was little more than a dark-haired, black-eyed doll herself.
Ieuan drew a picture of her sleeping, feeding, crying. He drew a picture of Mother rocking the cradle. He drew a picture of my father, looming tall, looking down at his baby daughter.
My own thoughts wandered to the time when we could play together; talk together; share secrets; read together, sew and cook together. We could be true friends, as Mother and Aunt Sarah had been.
But such thoughts were in vain.
Olwen Mai died when she was two weeks old. Born in May. Dead in May. Even the bluebells lasted longer.
To this day I can remember her as she lay, still and pallid, in my mother’s arms. Stunned, we stared at her face, her small nose, the perfect tiny fingers, and the dark eyes which never really had a chance to see.
A coffin was made to hold her which was shorter than an arm’s length.
She had not been baptized, so the wise men of the chapel did not allow us to bury her by day. One fervent elder said she would surely go to Hell. We were made to wait until sunset before we could take little Olwen to the graveyard. She who had seen so little light of day was buried in the dark.
My father never again went to chapel. It was only out of respect for my mother that I did. I could only marvel at Mother’s implacable faith. Not once did she show a sign of bitterness or self-pity.
It was the presence of little Ieuan, not the absence of Jesus Christ, that prevented me from darkening my vision of the world. But even that was taken away from me by the “Heavenly King,” in whose righteousness my mother placed her faith.
I was telling Ieuan a story about the Gwylliaid Cochion, the Red Bandits of Dugoed, one evening: a chapter from our increasingly fanciful epic. (Ieuan had started to believe he could hear them tapping his window at night, seeking help to hoodwink the Baron.)
But that night he seemed not to listen. His eyes were glazed, his cheeks flushed. I raised my hand to his forehead and felt his fever. I hurried downstairs to tell Mother. She brought him some broth, but he would not drink.
Ieuan weakened during the days that followed. We tried every way to draw the heat from his body, to bring a smile to his pale face. The doctor recommended wrapping him in woolen blankets and placing him in front of a blazing fire, to sweat out the fever.
His condition deteriorated dramatically one night. His high temperature became a terrible fever. He shivered and sweated at the same time, and his face took on the pallor of a ghost. And he was slowly choking.
My father departed by moonlight to fetch the doctor. Eventually he found him in the Red Lion tavern. Grudgingly, the doctor left his seat.
I remember the doctor’s arrival, tripping as he crossed the threshold. He was unsteady on his feet; his speech was blurred. He did not hold much hope, but judged it opportune to cut a hole in Ieuan’s throat: a last ditch attempt to counter the boy’s diphtheria. Whatever his intentions, he failed.
As dawn broke Ieuan turned to look at us, as if he wished us to be his last sight. I remember Father turning away.
Ieuan, the little artist, died on his fifth birthday.
*
The two brothers from Cwm Maesglasau made good progress at the Worcester College for the Blind. Toward the end of his time there, as he approached the age of eighteen, Gruffydd decided to become a chapel minister. He applied for a place at Bala-Bangor Theological College. He mentioned his early upbringing at Tynybraich, the family faith, his education at Worcester, his many qualifications and his blindness. The Congregationalists wrote back by return of post rejecting him.
His excellent results at school ensured him a place to read History at Bristol University. There, under the guidance of one of the History lecturers, he began not only to row, but also to box, in order to strengthen his weak lungs. He rowed, boxed and studied, and through his typical perseverance succeeded.
After graduating in 1933 he gained a place at Oxford to read Theology. He had set his sights on becoming an Anglican vicar. This was a happy period for him. We gained the impression, from his letters, that he was enjoying every minute of it, coping well with life in the “city of dreaming spires.”
Gruffydd enjoyed his studies. He was by nature a man who enjoyed order, and formal, purposeful conversation.
The “gentlemanly” atmosphere at Mansfield College, Oxford was an extension of life at his school in Worcester. There were firm boundaries, not only spatial, but social and educational too. The enclosed quads and the neat gardens; the self-contained nature of the colleges. There was a daily routine, almost monastic, in which he and his companions shared breakfas
t, dinner and tea in the high-ceilinged college hall. All dressed in their black gowns, with Grace intoned in Latin before each meal. Even the terms—Michaelmas, Trinity, Hilary—were well-defined, each one exactly eight weeks long.
To this life there was regularity, discipline and hierarchy. Gruff enjoyed tutorials in the masters’ paneled rooms, Sunday services at church and the junior common room’s raucous meetings, as well as rugby, cricket, rowing and athletics.
It was at Oxford that he first came into contact with peers from Wales. Indeed, a Welsh-language service was held at Mansfield College every Sunday morning, which many of the Welsh students attended. Gruff was already too “British” to attend the meetings of Oxford’s newly established branch of Plaid Cymru. But he enrolled immediately with the Dafydd ap Gwilym Society for the Oxford Welsh, the university’s second oldest society, established by men of distinction at the end of the nineteenth century: luminaries such as Sir John Rhys, W. J. Gruffydd, and Sir John Morris-Jones.
Gruffydd wrote to us about “the Dafydd,” as this society dedicated to a great fourteenth-century poet was called, noting its fiftieth anniversary while he himself was at Oxford. Indeed, Gruff was elected to the post of “arch-incense-bearer”—a key position in the society’s secretive ceremonies. An Eisteddfod was held for members once a year, and Gruff won the competition for composing a limerick, the pinnacle of his literary career.
One of the highlights of the year for the young men of “the Dafydd” was to go in punts along the River Cherwell, followed by a meal at the Cherwell Arms. Gruff also wrote of his friends at the society, a number of them becoming distinguished and well-known figures in Wales, including the politician and nationalist, Gwynfor Evans; the philosopher, J. R. Jones; the novelist, Pennar Davies; and the historian, Hywel D. Lewis.
These were, of course, all men. My impression was that women did not really figure in life at Oxford. Though there were a significant number of female undergraduates at Oxford in the 1930s, they played a marginal role in university life, as far as I could see, and were rather disregarded by their male colleagues. Women were not allowed to be members of the Dafydd ap Gwilym Society at that time—a fact which did not change until the 1960s.
My impression was fortified when I went to Oxford with Bob. After reading about it, it was exciting to go there by train, to visit our brother and his college. I was not disappointed by the university’s splendid architecture: the Bodley Library, the Radcliffe Camera Library and the circular Sheldonian theatre designed by Christopher Wren. The colleges seemed to be built with stones of gold, blazing against a bright blue sky when caught in the early morning sun. I listened in amazement to the chatter of students in the streets; stared at the countless bicycles wheeling through the city.
It was a great pity that Gruffydd could not see the outward beauty of his university.
But neither was I allowed to see within those golden walls. As a woman I was forbidden from viewing what lay behind them, and had to rely on the no-nonsense descriptions provided by Bob.
I felt disappointed and frustrated by this. In the words of Virginia Woolf, when she was chased off the lawn of an Oxbridge college by a Beadle: “This was the turf; there was the path. Only the Fellows and Scholars are allowed here; the gravel is the place for me.”
After leaving Oxford, Gruffydd was ordained at Southwark Cathedral in London in 1937, and became vicar at Kennington. He stayed in London throughout the turbulent first years of the Second World War. As he approached his church one Sunday morning he was given to understand that the church had been destroyed by a bomb. His family at Tynybraich were worried about him, and finally he left London for the Welsh Marches in 1942, when he was given a living at Presteigne by the Bishop of Hereford.
Soon it was time for him to baptize his first child. Such was his nervousness that he held the infant upside-down and began to baptize his feet instead of his forehead. From the congregation came a cry: “It’s the other end!” Gruff had to baptize the child a second time; he secretly believed that he’d apportioned that child a double measure of grace.
It was at Presteigne that he met Christine, whom he married in 1946. They had three children: Richard, Elizabeth and Hugh.
During the same year as his marriage Gruffydd was given the living of two churches in the villages of Little Marcle and Preston in Herefordshire. He remained their minister for the rest of his life.
This was a rich and fertile hop-growing area. Other crops, too, grew in abundance. Bob and his friends from Dinas Mawddwy would make the trip there to pick apples each harvest. Those excursions were greatly enjoyed. We were greatly in awe when they returned, laden with those Marcher apples, the fruits of Eden, providing such sweet sustenance during the cold winters in Cwm Maesglasau.
Whenever Gruff returned to Tynybraich he would be ushered into the parlor by Mother. In her eyes the formal parlor was more in keeping with his standing as a clergyman.
Bob was not so fearfully respectful. He and Gruff would have frequent debates. After all, one was a Labourite and the other a Tory. One was a Union man and the other an Establishment man. One a Welsh Congregationalist and the other an Anglican. Arguments were unavoidable, but rarely lasted long.
Bob always had some wry story to illustrate the corruption of the established church. One of them concerned a former cleric at Mallwyd who offered to reward his flock in the world to come. In order to make their mouths water with hunger—and they were literally famished, said Bob—he promised them “a very big dumpling, yes a huge dumpling—bigger even than the field of Cae Poeth.” Bob would laugh as he recited this story, finding it hard to deliver the punch line.
Faced with his brother’s scorn, Gruff maintained that by returning to the established church he had merely reactivated the pre-Revival religion of the Tynybraich family.
This thought seemed to comfort him.
As a curate, he came to preach at Mallwyd church. The congregation at the great scholar John Davies’ old church were rather surprised to see that Tynybraich’s frail little boy had grown into a solid man who read clearly and confidently from his braille Bible. And his English was the King’s English.
Gruff’s Welsh, too, was formal, his conversation dotted with phrases from William Morgan’s Bible. Indeed, it’s likely that “the great book” was responsible for keeping his Welsh alive. After all, he’d left Tynybraich for London at the age of three and a half, and had never properly returned.
*
William came home to live at Tynybraich after leaving school and began a career copying R.N.I.B. texts in braille. At last we had an opportunity to get to know our brother properly. Mother took great delight in caring for him. And William, now eighteen, could enjoy the maternal affection he had missed for almost fifteen years.
It wasn’t easy for him to embrace life on the farm again. He brought elements of his public school education at Worcester with him to Tynybraich. This helped him to acclimatize. He would insist on doing physical exercise daily, walking from the farmyard at Tynybraich to Llidiart y Dŵr, and then back again. He’d walk to and fro for hours between lunch and tea. Like a pilgrim on some unknowable journey, he followed his path with a sense of purpose, turning on his heel at the same spot—to the inch—every time.
We had to be careful what we did along the road to Maesglasau, lest we disturb William as he did his exercises. Woe betide anyone who left an obstacle in his way. He would lose his temper, repeating his favorite expletive—botheration!—as if reciting a cross prayer. The pride he had inherited from Father, combined with Mother’s devoutness, made every fall a cruel humiliation.
In fact, we gained two brothers at Tynybraich at that time. In 1927, a year before William returned, another son was born, the last child of Rebecca and Evan Jones as they approached the age of fifty. I myself was twenty-two when Lewis arrived, old enough to be his mother.
Lewis could see. He saw the greenness of the fields at Maesglasau. He saw the stream flowing through it. He saw the colors of
the flowers in the hedges, and the changing hues of the trees. He saw the sun and the moon. He saw day and night.
But his eyesight was weak—and getting weaker.
Like Ieuan before him, Lewis loved to walk to Maesglasau. I would accompany him (for Mother disliked the cwm’s narrow end, and its oppressive rock face). I reveled in my brother’s company, thoughtful and articulate little Lewis, with his thick spectacles. Of all the children born at Tynybraich, we were the ones who looked most like each other. I believe we shared the same creative nature, and the same urge toward spirituality.
Lewis liked walking to Maesglasau alone, too, much to Mother’s concern. He liked to sit on the banks of the stream, throwing stones, hearing them hit the water, noting how the sound changed with every throw. He’d sit by the ruin of Maesglasau Mawr imagining the monks communing with God to the sound of the stream. He’d sit on a ledge above it, listening to the haunting cry of the curlew, a sound that, for him, embodied the cwm. Yet, when he heard the bird’s call he’d run away from Maesglasau toward his home at Tynybraich.
But there was no halting the deterioration in his eyesight. The time came when he too had to be sent away to school.
One Saturday morning in late May, Lewis disappeared. There was no trace of him. We called and searched the cwm, and eventually found him on a ledge above the house. He was lying face down among the bluebells. He had been crying.
I lay by his side, asking him what was wrong. He pressed the flowers against his eyes, inhaling their blue scent. He said that this was his last chance to see the bluebells. Next year he’d be at school, and his sight would go.
Lewis was six when he faced that. Through a veil of blue on the side of Tynybraich mountain he stared blindness in the face, and saw blue turn to gray.
By the time Lewis left Worcester College he was a masterful piano player and an excellent player of chess. He was steeped in the language and literature of France, was a lover of poetry and of the music of Bach. He went on to read Law at university in Aberystwyth, but left prematurely and went to Bala-Bangor College to study theology, a path which had been closed to his brother.
The Life of Rebecca Jones Page 4
