by Pauline Fisk
But a decision hung over them all, and Mad Dog knew it. No. 3 was still for sale, and he spent long hours on his own, wondering what he really wanted and whether it was fair to expect Aunty to rein in her dreams just because of him.
She was good at what she did, and quite plainly loved it. Uncle too. Mad Dog remembered, when they first started out, thinking that they’d stumbled upon their secret selves. Wasn’t that exactly what he wanted for himself – and didn’t everybody deserve a thing like that?
‘Does it really matter where we live?’ he asked himself. ‘Surely, like Phaze II said, I can be my real self anywhere.’
This was something that he wrestled with for days. When people spoke to him, he didn’t answer, but remained as blank as a plain piece of paper. One day Aunty came to him and said, ‘Those terrible deep silences that you go into sometimes – what exactly happens? Where do you go?’
Mad Dog shrugged. He knew what she was on about, but didn’t want to talk about it. ‘Why do you want to know?’ he said.
‘Because I want to go there too,’ Aunty answered. ‘I can see you struggling and I want to be there for you. You don’t have to do this on your own, you know. I can be trusted, no matter what you think. I want to help you – surely you know that?’
For a horrible moment Mad Dog thought she was going to hug him – but then he was saved by Kathleen in the kitchen calling for assistance. After Aunty had gone, though, he thought about what she’d said. Where did he go when those terrible deep silences took over? They’d been going on for years now, but he didn’t have a clue, if he was honest with himself.
A couple of evenings later, Mad Dog came across Aunty out in the garden stitching labels on to his new school uniform. It was beginning to get dark. Bats were circling the garden and pigeons cooing down in the wood. Mad Dog wished that he could forgive Aunty sufficiently to talk to her, but realised that, even if he could, he wouldn’t know quite what to say.
In any case, Uncle got in first. He came across the lawn in high old spirits, busy with secret preparations for Aunty’s birthday next day, which was a significant one because it had an 0 in it – though whether there was a 3 in front of it, or a 4, 5 or 6, Mad Dog didn’t know.
Aunty called Uncle over and Mad Dog slipped away. Just as he was entering the hotel, he heard Aunty’s clear voice carrying across the garden. It wasn’t her birthday they were talking about. Once again, it was him.
‘I’ve been telling you for years that there’s a story in that boy, waiting to come out,’ Aunty was saying. ‘And something’s happening at long last. I can feel him changing. Feel something stirring up in him. Feel it coming to a head. I want to be there for him, but he doesn’t want me. In fact, I think he hates me.’
Next day, being Aunty’s birthday, Mad Dog did his best to prove that whatever he felt it wasn’t hate. Maybe Aunty’s sisters had the same idea, because they all turned up – the entire lot of them, along with an assortment of husbands, boyfriends and all the children, including Luke, Rhys and Hippie. For once they were one big happy family, eating lunch together round a big table laid in the conservatory because the dining room wasn’t big enough.
Aunty lapped up all the attention, opening a mountain of presents and looking around at her family as if their being there, after all their fallingsout, was the best present of all. After they’d finished eating, she tried helping to clear up. But her sisters wouldn’t let her.
‘We’ll do that,’ they said. ‘You’re always working. Now’s your chance to sit back and relax.’
Aunty did just that. She took a little, unheard-of afternoon nap and awoke expecting to find the hotel falling apart without her. But, when she came out of the vardo, she found a massive picnic hamper being packed into the Range Rover, and the family poring over a series of maps.
‘Ah, you’re awake at last. Where do you want to go?’ the sisters said.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Aunty replied.
‘We’re talking about your birthday picnic,’ the sisters said.
Aunty started laughing, and everybody else laughed too. ‘Are you serious?’ Aunty said. ‘I can’t go off on picnics. I’ve got a hotel to run.’
Uncle appeared at the kitchen door. ‘Ruth and Kathleen say you only get in the way at the best of times,’ he said.
‘You’re lying – they never said that!’ Aunty replied.
‘Even if he’s lying, it’s still your birthday, and we can manage without you for one evening,’ Ruth and Kathleen said, coming out behind him. ‘So, where are you going?’
Aunty thought about it for a moment, then said, ‘All right, then, it’s Plynlimon. I’d like to have a picnic on Plynlimon.’
Everybody started rushing about, too busy packing the cars to notice Mad Dog standing in a state of shock, his face bright red. Why had Aunty said it. Why Plynlimon? Had she said it for a reason? Or had she said it off the top of her head? All around him, cars were being filled with blankets, cushions, fold-up chairs, barbecue equipment, cricket sets, tennis rackets, towels, swimming gear, maps, water containers, crates of beer – and the birthday cake.
Mad Dog tried to join in, making it look as if he was helping. But his brain was on another planet. ‘Do I have to go?’ he said when all the cars were packed and everyone was ready to go.
‘How could you even ask that?’ Uncle said. ‘It’s what your aunty wants, and it’s her birthday, so of course you do.’
Part V
The Silver River
26
The Designated Campsite
They drove up in convoy. It was a perfect day for picnicking. Mad Dog tried not to think about where they were going, but kept his mind fixed on the smell of ripe blackberries and the sun on his face. When the mountain did come to mind, he told himself it would be different this time. Plynlimon wouldn’t do anything weird to him with all these people around. The knack was to stay close to them and not go wandering off.
Occasionally Mad Dog caught glimpses of the sunlit Rheidol, and once he saw a red kite soaring in the bright sunshine – a perfect picture of freedom. They reached Ponterwyd, and Uncle turned on to the main pass road and started snaking up it. He didn’t take the Nant y Moch turn, much to Mad Dog’s surprise, but took the back route that the Ingram sisters had shown him. This involved so many twists and turns that Aunty, who was meant to be map-reading, threw up her hands in horror and gave up.
‘We’re lost,’ she said. ‘You think I don’t know what I’m doing?’ Uncle said.
‘I think the entire family, following after us, knows you don’t know what you’re doing!’ Aunty said.
Uncle laughed and said, ‘Relax.’ He drove them over open moorland, down in deep dark valleys and out again, through forestry commission land densely planted with rows of conifers, beside rivers, up and down tiny switchback roads, and along lanes so unused that grass grew up the middle of them.
Finally, when Aunty declared that she’d given up all hope of their ever stopping before it got dark, Uncle pulled off the road into an official designated campsite, complete with Welsh and European flags, public lavatories, tourist information boards, taps of running water and way-marked nature trails.
The place was as unexpected as it was unlikely. What all these amenities were doing in a remote corner of Plynlimon, Mad Dog couldn’t imagine. Tentatively he got out of the car. There was an area for tents and camper vans on one side of him, set back between trees, and a picturesque view down to a riverbank on the other, with picnic tables, a place for making barbecues and a covered shelter in case of rain.
This was an entirely different Plynlimon to the one that Mad Dog had seen before – and he felt relieved. Telling himself that nothing strange could ever happen in a place like this, he trailed down to the river, which turned out, according to a way-marked sign, to be the Hafren, also known as the Severn.
Uncle called him to come back and help, but he pretended he hadn’t heard, and so did all the other Lewis and Williams
children, including Luke, Rhys and Hippie. The river was shallow enough to play in, and they charged in without stopping to take off their shoes and proceeded to kick water in each other’s faces, laughing and shrieking and running about. In just a few days’ time their new big school would claim them. But, just for now, they could lark about and still be little kids.
Finally they trailed back to the picnic site, wet and shivering, hoping that their mothers had thought to bring changes of clothes. Here they found a campfire built and Aunty’s sisters cooking over it while she sat with her feet up, doing nothing, as befit the birthday girl. The sun was lowering and the day was golden and mellow. They crouched around the fire to eat food on plastic plates, drink Aunty’s health and watch her blow out the candles on her cake. Then one of the sisters’ boyfriends got out a guitar and they all started singing.
Aunty sat back, full and contented, her family around her just like in the old days before the Aged Relative’s inheritance had become their poisoned chalice. It was beginning to get dark by now, and someone said what a shame it was that they’d have to go. But then, a beer or two later, someone else said, ‘Who says we should go?’ and suddenly the talk was all of how many blankets they’d got between them and whether, with the help of coats and cushions, they could make themselves comfortable for a night under the stars.
It wasn’t what they’d planned, but everyone agreed that it was the sort of opportunity that, when it came along, had to be seized. Someone poked the fire and set it sparking. Someone else went off for a fresh supply of wood to see them through the night. The beers went round again, by which time nobody was fit to drive anyway.
Soon half the family was asleep, lulled by fire and song. Mad Dog watched them dropping off one after another. The last to go was Aunty.
‘This has been the best birthday ever,’ she said. ‘Shame I had to get to forty before it happened. But, now it has, I don’t want the day to end.’
‘I don’t either,’ Mad Dog said. ‘I wasn’t sure to begin with, but I’m glad I came.’
‘You do know, don’t you, that if ever you wanted to talk …’ Aunty began.
‘… that you’d be there for me,’ Mad Dog said.
They both laughed. Aunty said she knew what a pain it must be having someone like her always trying to get inside his head. Mad Dog said he wished that she could. If he could make it happen, he would. In fact, if he could get inside his own head he’d make that happen too.
But Aunty never heard him. Her eyes had proved too heavy and she’d fallen asleep. Mad Dog smiled and pulled a blanket over her. Then he reached for another one, rolled up in front of the fire and tried to sleep as well.
But it wasn’t as easy as it looked. Everybody else had dropped off, even Luke, who’d sworn he was going to stay awake all night. Mad Dog itched with restlessness, tossing and turning until he couldn’t bear it any more. The harder he tried to sleep, the more awake he felt. What was the matter with him?
In the end, he got up, built up the fire and walked around the campsite. Even in the darkness, it was surprising how much he could see. With nothing but firelight to help him, he could even read the information boards.
They told him nothing he didn’t know already from his project at school, but he read them anyway, mugging up on kingfishers and otters, mountain ponies and foxes. He read up on snakes, and how to recognise their different skins. Read up on skylarks and their nesting habits. Memorised wild orchids and which toadstools not to touch.
This was the real Plynlimon, wasn’t it? The mountain on these information boards was a world away from washrooms, tarmac car parks and shelters from the rain. And suddenly Mad Dog wanted it again. He wanted cotton-grass and gadflies, ponds full of lilies and mountain springs bursting out of secret places. They were out there, and he felt them calling him.
Mad Dog drew in his breath. He stood there trembling, not quite understanding what was happening to him. Then, behind him, Aunty stirred and the spell was broken. Twice the mountain had lured him away, but not this time.
This time he had more sense.
27
It’s Time
Long after the fire had burned out, Mad Dog heard dogs barking. No one else heard them, only him. No one else sat up, took a quick look around to check that everything was all right, then drifted off to sleep only to awaken later as if an alarm clock had gone off inside their head, shrilling the words it’s time.
Mad Dog sat up like a shot, wanting to believe that he’d dreamt those words but knowing he’d really heard them. He tried to go back to sleep, but something inside his head shouted that it wasn’t for sleep that he’d been brought back here to Plynlimon. It wasn’t for pretending he hadn’t heard things when he had.
Mad Dog got up, knowing he had no choice. This wasn’t a matter of staying close to Aunty and keeping safe. It was a matter of doing what he had to. He crept away, telling himself that if there was any reason for his being here, it wasn’t for staying wrapped up in blankets, but for following whatever had called him and seeing where it led.
Stepping over Aunty, Mad Dog disappeared into the night. ‘You won’t even know I did this,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll be back before you wake up.’
Then he was gone, taking the way-marked path down to the river, before following the river up through the forest, heading for its source. Somewhere up there, he told himself, high on Plynlimon in the wild places where the snakes and the red kites lived, was the one thing he was looking for. The mystery. The treasure. The answer to his questions. Whatever.
Mad Dog walked through the darkness and never felt lost. Every other time on Plynlimon, its vastness had overwhelmed him. But, this time, every tree he passed and every twist and turn along the riverbank felt like an old friend. Climbing Plynlimon felt as easy as walking round his own garden.
Eventually the forest fell behind Mad Dog. He scrambled over a stile and found himself on the open mountaintop. The night was cloudy, not a star in sight. But he didn’t need starlight to know where he was. He could smell the mountain all around him, peaty and alive.
Mad Dog walked for miles across the silent grasslands. At one point, he found himself at the ffynnon of the Severn, surrounded by a sea of duckboards. He stopped to look at the little bit of black bog, clogged with lichen, that marked its source, marvelling that this could be the start of anything big enough to become so mighty a river. Then he carried on, passing close to the Wye’s source too, though not stopping to look for it because the words it’s time drew him on.
But time for what? Mad Dog didn’t know. All he knew was that the night seemed to go on for ever, day never breaking and the sky never getting any lighter. On the far side of Plynlimon, he picked his way down a tricky little rocky gully, not knowing where it was leading but feeling perfectly at home – and that even before he saw the van.
It was in the bottom of the valley – a broken-down, rusty thing, crouching like a dead beast on the side of the track. At first Mad Dog assumed that it was empty and abandoned, but then the smell of wood smoke came his way and he looked again and noticed a thin strand of smoke winding out of a tin-can chimney.
Immediately Mad Dog’s heart started turning like a piston. He knew that smell of wood smoke, didn’t he? And he knew that chimney too. In fact, he even knew that van – and a long, low breath came whistling out of him like a train out of a tunnel. Of course he knew that van! There were curtains at the windows, and he knew those curtains. And he knew the lights behind those curtains.
They were the lights of home!
Mad Dog cried out loud. No wonder Plynlimon had felt like his back garden! It was his back garden. At least, it had been all those years ago!
He started running. Someone inside the van must have heard him because a door opened. A woman appeared in a handful of yellow light. She had long hair, a flowing skirt, a tea towel in one hand and a baby in the other.
She was Mad Dog’s mother.
His mother!
Mad Dog stumbled to
wards her. Strange sounds came out of his throat, meant to be words but completely indecipherable. Mad Dog’s mother waved to him, but she didn’t come to greet him. Instead, in measured tones – as if he’d only just stepped out to play and this was just another ordinary day – she called, ‘There you are. I was just wondering how long you’d be. Supper’s on the table. Come and eat.’
Mad Dog wanted to hug her, but she’d already turned back inside. In a state of confusion, he followed her, only to find his dad, of all people – his dad, his dad! – sat perched on an all-too-familiar bench at a tiny, all-too-familiar, fold-up table. When he saw Mad Dog, he showed not a flicker of surprise. He didn’t hug him or get up. He didn’t even scold him or ask where he’d been. And as for how much he’d grown – neither he nor Mad Dog’s mother made a single comment.
‘You’d better wash before you eat. Your hands are filthy,’ was all that either of them said.
Mad Dog couldn’t work it out. None of it made sense. What was going on here? Where were his mother’s tears? Why didn’t his dad want to know where he’d been? What was wrong with his parents – and who was that baby?
When Mad Dog had washed his hands, his dad made room for him on the bench. There they were, all together again for the first time in years, and Mad Dog mightn’t have been away at all. Never once, in all his dreams of finding his parents, had he imagined it would be like this. His parents looked unchanged by the years, as did the van. But he had changed, and he wanted everybody to comment on how big he was, how tall and grown up, what a different boy from the one who went away.
Instead, Mad Dog’s parents carried on as if nothing much had happened since he’d gone. His dad went on about some problem to do with the van’s engine, which would cost a fortune to repair. His mum went on about the baby. She didn’t ask about Elvis. Maybe one baby was much like any other as far as she was concerned. Maybe Elvis was forgotten and she didn’t miss him, just as she obviously hadn’t missed Mad Dog.
