It wasn’t long before his fellow students noticed his dry wit and his ability to take a ribbing. During a meeting in the common room one of his peers proposed that Lewis be appointed “chief rat catcher” at the college. This prompted great laughter. But Lewis took the wind from his sails:
“No problem,” he responded. “I’ll catch every rat I see.”
He met Rachel when he went to work as a telephonist at the Ministry of Labour at Nottingham. They married and settled in that city, and had three children: Isobel, Bronwen and Dominic.
Lewis became a computer programmer at Nottingham University. And in the same way as he’d grown accustomed to the hills of his native cwm, he soon learned to cope with life in a busy city, with its constant stream of traffic, uneven pavements and impatient commuters.
Once, he’d been standing at a bus stop waiting to go to the city center. Hearing the approaching bus, he stuck out his white stick to halt the vehicle.
The driver promptly told his blind customer he’d stopped the wrong bus—“You need the green bus, mate”—then drove on.
It was the clamor of the city which disturbed him most. He used to say that he closed his ears in Nottingham and didn’t open them again until he was back at Tynybraich. As soon as he reached home he allowed his hearing to rejoin him, reveling in the sounds of the birds and the stream.
He came home often. Sharing the company of such a lovable, agreeable person was a joy to me. And it was a joy to my mother also, being able to call “Lew Bach” back to the nest again—the last of her brood.
Maesglasau stream
It was Bob and I who’d fetch him home from the train at Cemaes Road, driving the familiar roads toward home. Supper would be on the table ready for him; he’d sit down to the same feast every time: two boiled eggs, with Mother seated in front of him spooning the egg into his mouth. Lewis would sit still and accept the soft food.
This rite—Lewis’ first supper—was Mother’s way of welcoming her favorite back to her.
Lewis would wander around the cwm as though his blindness did not hinder him. He’d go to Dinas Mawddwy to meet up with friends; he’d visit Dolgellau fair, and the annual August show. He’d go for jaunts on the back of Idris Puw’s motorbike, or to play chess with Morris Roberts, the parson at Mallwyd, who was always amazed that Lewis could leave a game of chess half-finished and return to it a week later, still remembering the position of every piece on the board.
Lewis’ defective eyesight had strengthened his memory.
Yet, it would be wrong to claim that Lewis came to terms with his blindness. He would have given anything to see Tynybraich mountain again, and the faces of his family. Indeed, of the three brothers, Lewis was perhaps least reconciled to his blindness. The wish to see was a driving force in his life. His memory of color was always awakened by the scents of Maesglasau.
His favorite pastime was seeing through the eyes of others. He loved listening to visual descriptions: evocations of landscapes; the description of a face, or a painting. Using his memory of color he’d imagine the sights for himself.
I remember well sitting by his side one day at Tynybraich, and he said to me: “Tell me what you can see.”
Unthinkingly, I looked around and said “nothing.” I immediately realized my error and hastened to describe the scene around me.
Lewis also loved to compare two different descriptions of the same object. He would note how the descriptions varied; the differences of emphasis. He used his friends’ and family’s eyesight to get to know the world.
As for me, I was as happy to chat with Lewis at Tynybraich as Bob and Gruff were to argue and then make peace. We’d talk until the small hours, his face aglow in the soft glow of the embers. We’d talk about literature, art, religion.
It was during one of these conversations that Lewis mentioned his wish to convert to Catholicism. Despite his deep feelings toward nonconformism—the Sunday School, its congregational singing, its close ties with his upbringing and with Welshness in general—he yearned for an unshakeable dogma, something he felt was lacking in chapel religion.
Breaking the news to the family was difficult. Bob’s response was silence, though I know he thought long and hard about his brother’s decision. Mother could appreciate the Catholics’ devotion to the Virgin Mary, but there were other aspects of their creed which greatly perplexed her. And yet, she said to me many times: “We all go to the same place in the end.” Mother had a gentle way of ordering life.
Today, Lewis is an artist—a blind painter. When he retired he began to attend art classes, going by train from Nottingham to Leicester every week to receive training from a lady called Rachel Sullivan who specialized in teaching blind people to paint.
It is a remarkable art form. As with painting for sighted people, it involves the use of colors and markings on canvas. But the outcome—a visual product—is never seen by its creator.
Yet, who understands the meaning of color better than Lewis?
On the blind painter’s canvas every mark has its meaning: sad marks, angry marks, happy marks, dreamy marks. The meaning of each mark is conveyed by the slant of the brush. The union of markings and colors creates a powerful and unique means of expression.
Lewis is often inspired by poetry—a sonnet by Shakespeare, a poem by Shelley or Keats, or the poetry of his compatriots Dylan Thomas and R. S. Thomas. Each of his paintings is a representation of the emotions evoked by the poems.
For example, lines from a poem by William Blake inspired him to paint a bird of paradise flying from East to West, and there is also a field of flowers, and the figure of the poet, John Clare. An arm extends toward the bird, trying to grasp it. In the north of the picture there is a representation of the industrial revolution, conveying Nottingham.
He who binds to himself a joy
Doth the winged life destroy.
A few years ago Lewis won a European prize for one of his paintings. He traveled to Luxembourg to receive his prize and exhibit his picture. It was a self-portrait, an abstract expression of his relationship with the world.
On one side of the painting is a pattern drawn with the fingers. This is an expression of feeling and touch, representing the way Lewis, a blind man, interacts with the world. On the other side of the painting is an impression of a mountain, with a river flowing down its flank. On the banks of this river Lewis himself is represented, touching a stone from the ruin at Maesglasau, preparing to hurl it into the stream, so that he can hear its sound as it hits the water. An orange sun shines in the sky, just as Lewis remembers it. Not far from the sun hovers a dark cloud.
Lewis was surprised to receive the prize. Smiling in disbelief, with his usual wit, he could fully appreciate the irony of a blind man gaining glory in the field of visual art.
But I know that like Ieuan before him, Lewis loves painting. There came a second sight in the wake of his blindness.
There was a time when I cast my eyes further than the stream and the beautiful cwm she waters. I looked beyond the hedges and the primroses, buttercups, celandines, wood anemones, herb robert, pignut, pennywort, yellow toadflax, harebells, yarrow, foxgloves, red campion, vetches and knapweed. I looked beyond the small flowers of the field, beyond the hawthorn and blackthorn, and the wild rose. Beyond the swallow’s nest in the ancient beams of the old house. Beyond the red berries of the rowan and the black berries of the elder. Beyond the hazelnuts and the acorns and the topmost branches of the trees.
It was at those times that I lifted my eyes to the hinterland above the high crag at Maesglasau.
And though I see it nowadays only in the mind’s eye, it is not diminished. A quarter of a century has elapsed since I last climbed up there. I must content myself now with life within the cwm. But before old age overcame me I climbed that crag countless times, sometimes for pleasure, but mainly to work. A thousand feet of Silurian cliff-face.
My brother Bob and I would make the ascent often enough. Sometimes it was in order to rescue a shee
p gone astray, when we’d have to lower ourselves on a rope onto a narrow rockshelf. At other times we’d climb up to the high pastures to count the lambs, to protect them from the fox or the cruel-beaked crow.
In Winter’s long months we’d ascend to seek out sheep in the snow, delving into the drifts with long poles. It would dishearten us to discover the frozen bodies. When a late snowfall occurred we found lambs whose mothers had lain on them, suffocating their own offspring.
Forasmuch as the Winter is a season of tempests, and the elements do conspire against all life, and bring upon the land great hardship, and losses are manifold, most specially with sheep, which are forbade to crop the sustenance of the sweet grass when the snow hath overcome the land, and they shall be covered over, bye the bye, underneath the drifts.
Hugh Jones, 1774
As Winter loosened its cold grip we’d climb the mountain again, this time to drive the sheep down to the farm’s lowland meadows, so that they could be docked, washed, sheared and marked with pitch. We’d start our trek in the small hours, as the sky took on shades of blue, pink, yellow and white, and the night’s bruise was on the mend.
The thrill of those heights never lost its magic. As we ascended, different shades of green gave way to the peat bog’s somber tones and the darkness of ancient oak woods. The marshland extended in one direction as far as Dyfi Forest and the heights of Aberangell and Mallwyd; in the other it stretched to Gribin Fawr and Gribin Fach, then onwards to the vale of Llyn Mwyngil. Here was lonely moorland unevenly spread, like a huge rumpled blanket, decorated with bell heather and bilberry, cotton grass sticking out like duck down.
At last, having reached Craig Rhiw Erch, I could pause to get my breath, facing the mountain peaks: Waun Oer, Foel y Ffridd, Foel Bendin, Glasgwm, Mynydd Ceiswyn, Mynydd Gwengraig and Cadair Idris. But I never ventured to the summit of the Cadair. It was said you’d come down mad—or a poet.
3
The season of harvest-tide, if we heed the opinion and testimony of the wise, was also that happy time of year when God created the earth … It is when He made a feast for the whole world, and laid his table with sundry sumptuous treats to fill his creatures with fine foods and good cheer, they that wait upon him for all due sustenance, in the allotted time.
Hugh Jones, 1774
The days of harvest were days of gold, rich and opulent. The green gold of hay in swathes. The gold of haycock, rick and stack. The gold of hayloft and barn. The gold of stubble.
This was Rumpelstiltskin’s gift of spinning straw into gold.
But it was no fairy tale: harvest time on the farm was the busiest time of the year. A time to pray, asking Providence for protection against the rain.
We had wet harvests, certainly, with rain weeping on the fields. But as I recall those golden times, the memory of sun dries up the tears.
A day was chosen (rain discounted), and a procession of men would wind its way to the fields, each carrying a scythe which swayed with each step. The grass was mown in silence, the blades moving steadily in unison. Lladd gwair, “killing” the summer hay, was an act of quiet intensity.
Once mown, the hay was left to dry in the sun, ranked in neat swathes. The upper side was left for a day or two, then Mother and I raked each row over, in order to get the full benefit of the sun. It was a gift we had: hooking our rakes under the swathe, flicking the wrist and tossing the hay so that it landed upside down in the same spot. The reverse side, too, was left to dry for a day or so.
The next step was to spread the hay, working our way through the field, dispersing the damp clumps. The crop had to be dried through, otherwise it would turn moldy, giving our animals’ winter fodder a bitter taste.
After it had dried, the hay had to be gathered. This, for me, was the heart of the harvest. All the farmsteads in Dinas Mawddwy came together to complete the task. Everyone pitched in, moving from one farm to the next by rote. A dozen, fifteen, twenty farmers worked shoulder to shoulder with a common aim.
It was hard work. The slightest indication of rain was like a whip driving a slave into action. The swathes were gathered into tussocks, smallish mounds of hay rounded in such a way as to repel the worst of any rainfall. The name for fair-weather stacks was heulogod. Using pitchforks we would carry these to a big haystack at the bottom of the field. Each haystack in turn was carried toward hayloft and barn in the cart.
The children’s task was to climb aboard the heaped-up cart to tread down the hay. I remember leaping up, then throwing myself into the warm, springy prickliness of dead grass. Between the peppery aroma of dry hay and the crystal-clear waters of the stream, harvest time delighted our wide-awake senses.
Getting the hay into the barn was a great relief, guaranteeing food for the animals for the long winter. This sense of relief belongs to the past. We no longer experience it with the arrival of the big-bales’ polythene shrouds.
What I reveled in more than anything during those days of harvest was the break between each burst of activity (though it wasn’t much of a rest for us women). We’d have to leave the field to fetch tea to quench the men’s thirst. Everyone sat around an old tree stump on the riverbank, waiting for refreshment. It was a time of great conviviality as everyone chatted and teased, listened to a story or fell into a reverie. Four o’clock was teatime in the fields: bread and butter with damson jam, pancakes made with buttermilk; a loaf or two of bara brith. The men would eat it all, hardly noticing what or how much they ate after toiling in the fields.
At lunch and supper everyone returned to the house and gathered around the table in the kitchen, ready for the food prepared for them by Mother and myself. In no time at all, the ravenous men devoured the meat and potatoes, followed by rice pudding.
Soon after harvesting the hay came the time to harvest corn. The same skill was called for. The corn was cut with a scythe and gathered into sheaves, then tied together with straw. The sheaves were brought together in fours to form stooks. The fields of stooks in those Indian summers, standing in still rows, drying in the heat, were a marvelous sight. They were proof of our labor. As soon as they were dry they were transported by cart to the barn. It was here that threshing took place, the ears of corn separated from the straw. Then the yield was winnowed to separate the grain from the chaff.
In the old days the grain would be taken to the nearest mill to be ground into flour, although my own memories stretch no further than seeing the grain stored in sacks, to be used as cattle-feed throughout the winter. The straw was chopped up finely and carried in sacks as a supplement feed for the cattle. Thus, all the goodness of the crop was used.
In the autumn, the russet-colored bracken was cut and carried in armfuls to the barn, to be used as winter bedding for the cattle. I recall its aroma: a harsh smell, pungent and sharp.
The harvest demanded much from the shire horse which drew the haywain, as it had drawn the plow in spring. I remember two horses from those distant days. One was named Robin: a bad-tempered blue-gray horse which bit me. The other was Captain, white and good-natured. Indeed, Captain and I became the best of friends. I was allowed to climb up onto his broad back and he’d carry me regally around the fields … until Father came.
The tractor did not arrive until after the Second World War, and a certain innocence was lost when the wheels of the Massey-Ferguson replaced the slow tramp of horses’ hooves. But the iron horse was not sure-footed on the valley’s many slopes. How many times did it career down the mountain, ripping away the mountain face? Bob managed each time to stay on, pressed inside the rolling ball of metal until it crashed upon the valley floor.
If I loved harvest, then Bob loved shearing time. Like every other farm in the district we had our own shearing day at Tynybraich: the Wednesday in the first full week of July. It was important to follow the shearing rota. If we missed our slot because of fog or bad weather we’d have to wait another ten days or even longer, until the district timetable had been completed.
We spent a long time preparing f
or shearing. The ewes would have their tails and rears cleaned and sheared in May, a practice called tocio. This made shearing easier and prevented maggots from infesting them. The ewes were dipped in June, when the farmers dammed the stream, forcing their sheep through the water. Great fun was had at the end of the day when the sheepdogs suffered the same fate.
Then came shearing day itself. Hundreds of sheep were driven into the pens, their desperate bleats filling the air. Up to thirty men sheared in a semi-circle, wielding their shears over sheep lying with their feet trussed together, snipping away all day, cleaving flesh and fleece. The wool seemed to fall away of its own accord. It was the children who put a length of string into the shearer’s hand to tie up the next sheep. They were hard to handle unless trussed.
Bob, second from left, shearing
It was the children too who had the privilege of pressing a distinct pitch insignia on the sheep’s shoulder. The women wrapped the wool, folding the border of each fleece inwards and rolling it tightly into a soft white ball.
In my mind’s eye, I bury my face in the smell of lanolin and feel the softness of the newly shorn wool.
For the women, shearing day was exhausting. They had to make space for thirty men in the kitchen, ensuring there were enough plates, knives, forks, spoons, bowls and cups for everyone, not to mention all the food. The potatoes they must have peeled! The bowlfuls of rice pudding they must have cooked in the bakehouse. The currant cakes they must have griddled. The bread they must have baked. All to satisfy the hunger of men. And how many times did they refill the kettle dangling over the fire, or run to the pantry to fetch milk, to make enough tea to quench the shearers’ thirst?
The women were the key to a successful shearing day.
The Life of Rebecca Jones Page 5
