by Simon Edge
Henrica studied his expression. Was he mocking them? Everyone knew about the ‘cultural struggle’, as their tormentor called his campaign against them, and it must be obvious from the way they were dressed why they were leaving. But the young man’s face seemed innocent enough. “We are much obliged to you,” she said. “Thank you, we don’t need a porter. We have no other luggage than this.”
Until now, the biggest vessels any of them had ever seen were riverboats: massive barges some of them, hauling cargoes across the continent, or passenger liners serving the towns and cities of the Second Empire. But nothing compared to the monster that awaited them, its vast black funnel sandwiched between two towering masts on a deck that stretched as far as they could see. Two of Henrica’s companions crossed themselves, and even Aurea stopped her chatter. Everything about the ship asserted its readiness not for a tame inland river, but for the cold, grey sea.
Stevedores were rushing about the quay, dodging between coils of rope as thick as a man’s arm, to ferry wooden trunks, sacks of food and bales of cargo into a gaping maw in the iron hull. Departing emigrants gripped relatives in final, grim embraces – tableaux frozen in a different plane to the frantic activity around them. A small boy wound tight in a muffler stopped to stare at a crate of chickens before being pulled protesting away, while just in front of them a liveried youth ushered a black-bearded gentleman in fur-trimmed coat through a rope barrier onto a carpeted stair. Henrica wondered if they were to board here too, but the youth said, “That way, madam,” pointing towards the front of the ship without bothering to look at her.
Pressing on towards the far end of the quay, they climbed a ramp that doubled back in a long, gentle incline to raise them to the level of the deck. Henrica had imagined she might feel some pang of anguish at leaving dry land, but the journey from the mother-house had been so complicated – two days by road, with Aurea squealing with excitement all the way and Brigitta gasping at every bump; one night in a rough village coaching inn, and the next in the absurdly plush railway hotel in Bremen itself; the search for their own church in that bewildering, hostile city, so that they could hear their last Mass on German soil; and then the final, short leg to the port by train – that all she could think now was what a relief it would be to find their cabins. Above their heads, rope lines tapered up to the two masts. The sails were still furled on broad yards extending out over the quay. A row of raised skylights, like miniature glasshouses peeping up from the polished pine deck, glinted in the low winter sunlight. Through one of them she saw a vast mechanical wheel, like something from a watermill. An iron bridge straddled the deck at its broadest part, above an engine house built around the funnel. Now they were being ushered away from it towards a doorway that stood proud from the deck, encased in its own hut. Inside was a steep stairway plunging into the ship’s innards. Norberta the giantess had to go down backwards, clinging to the banister with one hand and her skirts with the other, with Henrica reaching her bag down after her.
They found themselves in a small chamber, lit by a single small porthole. Trunks and boxes were stacked along the walls and there was an oily smell, seasoned with brine. What hit Henrica most was the din: a steady mechanical roar was punctuated by a regular series of creaks and clangs.
An angular girl in a lace-trimmed cap bobbed to meet them, offering a hand to help each of them down the stairs, and introduced herself as Marta. “Are you all here? One, two, three, four … ah yes, and the tall lady.” She was shouting to be heard. “Don’t worry about the noise, you’ll get used to that. And if you follow me though this door you’ll find it’s quieter anyway. I’ve put you in the last set of berths…”
The sway of the ship on the lapping tide was more noticeable in the gloomy interior than it had been on deck. They followed Marta along a narrow corridor and through two doors, and found themselves in a tiny lobby serving the compartments where they were to live for the next two weeks. They were four slivers of rooms, taller than they were wide, but not so very tall either. Each cabin contained two bunks built into the wooden panelling, more the size of cots than beds. There was a miniature wash-stand, a shelf, a narrow bench and a row of hooks. A curtain could be drawn along the front of each bunk, and there was another row of hooks above the mattresses, on one of which hung a white hessian life-belt.
“… and to get into the top one you have this box, under the bed, which you may use as a step. Usually the smaller passengers find it easier to take that one. There are two other ladies coming who will share one of the porthole cabins. The other three are yours. I’ll leave you to decide which of you goes where. We sail at half three, with prayers on deck before we leave. Dinner is at six, breakfast at eight and lunch at one. And if there is anything at all… A bathroom? You did see one, madam, but that was for first-class passengers only. You have an excellent jug and basin here, and I can bring you fresh water. Now if there’s nothing else…?”
And the girl was gone, bobbing still.
They remained squeezed together in the lobby, the others clearly waiting for Henrica to decide who was going where. She hadn’t even thought about it. Should she take the cabin on her own? She had no particular desire to spend the voyage in solitude, so it would be a sacrifice. But the others might assume she was taking advantage. The wisest thing was to think who most needed the extra space to herself, in which case the two obvious candidates were Norberta, who needed it vertically, and Barbara, laterally. As it was, Barbara would barely fit between the bunks and the opposite wall. But Norberta was better suited to being alone. Barbara could take care of Brigitta, who had coped so badly with the coach journey and had turned an ominous shade of green after just five minutes on board, while she herself would room with Aurea and attempt to endure the constant prattle in that throaty Silesian accent that Henrica would never be able to love.
“But there’s no porthole,” the girl was complaining already.
“We can manage quite well without.”
“We’ve got one. You can swap if you want. I’d rather try to forget we’re at sea.”
That was Brigitta. She really did look dreadful.
“That hardly seems likely,” said Barbara.
This was less than helpful, but Barbara had been like that ever since they set out. With her wide-set eyes, her flat nose and her broad forehead, she was the eldest of the group as well as the stoutest, and perhaps she thought she ought to be in charge. But there was nothing Henrica could do about that. It wasn’t as if she had asked to be made leader.
“May we go and explore the ship?”
“Let’s settle ourselves first, Aurea dear. You’ll have plenty of time to see it all. What can you see from the window?”
“It’s a porthole. Not much. Lots of people on the quay. Some of them are waving and some of them are crying.”
We have no one to do either, Henrica thought.
The door to the lobby opened again and the bobbing stewardess reappeared with a nervous-looking young woman in tow. Introduced as Fräulein Forster, she was no more than Aurea’s age. She smiled to reveal too many teeth in a mouth far too small for them, putting Henrica in mind of a colt she had ridden as a girl. Nodding back in as friendly a manner as she could muster, Henrica closed their own door so that Marta could carry on demonstrating the correct use of the wash-stand and the position of the storage hooks to the new arrival.
A little while later there was a further commotion as the last occupant of their quartet of cabins arrived. From the gruff observations that punctuated Marta’s babble, it was clear that the elderly lady was not the meek type. Aurea was listening at the door.
“Why doesn’t she go first class if she’s so grand?” she whispered.
“The Lord is not always kind enough to bestow material wealth on those who believe they most deserve it.”
Aurea giggled, then clapped a hand over her mouth as Henrica shushed her, and they both jumped as there was a
knock on the door.
It was Marta again.
“Frau Pitzhold and Fräulein Forster are going up for prayers, if you’d like to join them.”
“We will say our own,” said Henrica firmly.
North Wales, the present
The old man wraps his hands around his pint glass but seems reluctant ever to bring it to his lips. He has been nursing this one for forty-three minutes, which Tim knows because he started timing his principal customer’s beer consumption a few weeks ago and has found it hard to stop. The first one always lasts at least an hour. The old boy then follows it up with a half, which lasts the best part of an hour too. Tim doesn’t know how he manages it. He has tried to speed the process along by pouring the half-pint five or ten minutes before the full hour has elapsed and leaving it sitting on the bar, by way of temptation, but it doesn’t make any difference to the rate at which the first one slips down. He has also tried treating his customer to a second full one and only charging him for the half, to see if he can wean his intake up. But that just means the old boy drinks the second one even slower than the first, and the next night is right back to normal, ordering a half. Tim has come to the conclusion that it’s the talking that does it. This is an activity that generally makes people thirsty, but in the old boy’s case it keeps his mouth so busy, there’s little opportunity to use it for drinking.
In the seven months that he has been landlord and owner of the Red Lion, Tim Cleverley has had plenty of time to reflect on the wisdom of coming here. It’s hard not to conclude that it’s one of the stupidest things he has ever done, which is saying something for someone nicknamed Not-So Cleverley, generally shortened to Notso, throughout his adolescence.
When the solicitor’s letter first arrived to say a distant Welsh uncle whose name he can barely pronounce, let alone spell, had died intestate (of cirrhosis of the liver, it transpires) and left him a wholly-owned free house a few miles inland from the coast of North Wales, it seemed like a godsend. His mistake came when he relied on Google Earth, rather than an actual visit, to check out his inheritance. The online pictures, taken on a freakishly sunny day, revealed a quaint, low-roofed structure of whitewashed stone with a large car park that was empty when the Google cameras passed that way (as it is every other day too, Tim later learns). If the cameras could have seen inside, they would have shown an equally empty bar and restaurant, but Tim wasn’t focusing on that kind of detail at the time. He was too busy thinking about where he was going to live after his divorce, how little he was earning from his online life-coaching business, and how nice it would be to get away from it all and pull pints for the next few years in a bucolic Welsh idyll, where the pace of life was slow and the quality high. In what appeared in this dazzle of optimism to be perfect serendipity, the sum he would have to give the taxman in order to keep the Red Lion exactly matched his half-share of the proceeds of the flat that he and Nadine had just sold, once the mortgage was paid off and solicitor’s and estate agent’s bills settled. So when he eventually arrived in his rusting Suzuki Swift, with the few possessions he had to show for his forty years boxed up in the back, his debit/credit balance was a rejuvenating zero.
Unfortunately his plans for a fresh start have not taken account of the fondness of most of his uncle’s former patrons for a cigarette. The smoking ban has kicked in at some point during the old man’s final illness, and if it’s a choice between stepping into the Red Lion’s rainswept beer garden every time those old regulars want a smoke, or staying put in front of their tellies at home, staying put seems to win the day – particularly now they can get six-packs of lager from the local Morrisons for less than three quid. The arrival of a new landlord who can’t even speak the language is evidently another reason for them to stay at home, and through most of the winter Tim has shared his evenings with those two or three regulars who don’t mind speaking English and whose home lives are clearly even more dismal than his saloon bar.
Having always been Tim’s most loyal customer, these days Alun Gwynne is pretty much the only one. Of the other stalwarts, one has died, another is increasingly bedridden, and the third seems to have taken offence at a joke with which Tim was trying to lighten the mood. He still doesn’t see why it was offensive, because he heard it told by an actual Welsh comedian on some late-night TV show. But there was an ominous silence when he told it, and when he says the next night that he hopes Old Tom didn’t take his idle banter amiss, Alun Gwynne merely rolls his eyes ominously and clears his throat with a rattle of phlegm that makes his ancient black labrador Macca – short for Macaroni, apparently – break wind in alarm.
He has spent the winter and spring expecting business to pick up when the summer visitors arrive. To listen to Alun Gwynne, who likes to think of himself as a local historian, the area is bursting with attractions, from the ruined coastal fortress built by English invaders in the thirteenth century, to the sacred spring where Henry the Fifth bathed on the eve of Agincourt. But these places are either so compelling that the visitors can’t tear themselves away, or Alun Gwynne’s idea of a good time is not most people’s. Now that summer has nearly arrived, it’s clear the passing trade is too busy passing to stop, or is somewhere else entirely. The school holidays haven’t started yet, but Tim is already adjusting his expectations downwards. He has become skilled at grunting at his regular’s stories without actually listening to them, and is wondering whether he can restart the online life-coaching (yes, he is aware of the irony) from a stool behind the bar. He is also considering offering odds on Betfair for how few pints a country pub can sell in one day and still remain open.
At present the old man is running his fingers through his hair and scratching his scalp. He has a remarkably low hairline for his age, an improbable slate-gray thatch that starts halfway up his forehead and makes him look to Tim, who doesn’t want to admit how envious he is, like a slow-witted Mexican bandido. If that makes Alun Gwynne sound exotic, the snowstorm falling on the bar is less so. At the end of every night, Tim sweeps the flakes of dead skin away with a brush and dustpan.
“Do you ever miss your own country, landlord?” the old boy asks in his sing-song nasal accent.
“This is my own… oh, I see what you mean.” Tim knows he is an outsider here, but has never quite thought of himself as an expat. “No, not really. I mean, I had a difficult couple of years before I came here, so to be honest I’m glad to get away.”
“That’s good,” says Alun Gwynne. “Because I don’t suppose you have much option to go back.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well you know, what with all these pubs going bust…” The old boy cocks a shaggy eyebrow and glances significantly around the empty bar. “Nobody else would want to buy it off you, would they? So I suppose you’re stuck here.”
He chuckles to himself and takes a tiny sip of beer.
“Thanks for that, Alun. Very comforting. But I’m not planning on going bust.”
“I’m glad to hear that, landlord. I just thought, you know, when a man doesn’t open his bills…” He gives another significant glance at a pile of unopened brown envelopes on a shelf beside the bar. “It’s never a good sign, is it? Not that it’s any of my business. But I like to have somewhere to go of an evening.”
Tim gives him a wintry smile, wondering at what stage it’s acceptable to tell your sole customer to mind his own sodding business.
“Don’t you worry, Alun. I’m not planning on closing the Red Lion any time soon. Not when I’m having this much fun.”
But it’s a worrying thought, he acknowledges when Alun Gwynne has finally shuffled off homewards and he is locking up. He doesn’t have many other options so it’s high time he found a way of making the damn place work. The alternative – having to slink back to England even poorer than when he left – is too gruesome to contemplate.
North Wales, 1875
The iron-grey sky of the past week had gone and the sea s
hone blue in the bay. It was a recreation day, and Hopkins had drawn to walk with O’Rourke, a labourer’s son known at lectures for asking complicated theological questions in Liverpool-accented Latin. He would not have been Hopkins’ chosen walk-mate, but that was the point of these lotteries: there was no choice. In the hazy past before Hopkins had joined the Society, walks had been an occasion for developing friendships and for confidences. Such things were forbidden to him now, and his old life was so long ago that he was sure he had lost the art of expressing feelings, even if he wanted to. Each with their parcel of sandwiches, he and O’Rourke would restrict their conversation to religious subjects and natural phenomena.
They chose to head south, up the valley away from the sea. The college sat tucked in a sheltered thicket on the side of a minor range of hills. Beneath, the valley widened into a gentle saucer that might have been Oxfordshire, were it not for the purple drama of Snowdonia in the distant backdrop. But the hillsides were a tougher kind of country: narrow, winding roads banked with tall hedgerows, behind which rough farms sprawled; fields scattered with spent implements and weeds, where cows and crows were languid companions and the rush of running water was never far away. They passed through the first village, with its mean stone houses and ancient church dwarfed by its guard of colossal yews, and then the second, with St Stephen’s more modern tower sprouting from the corner of the spur.
They were heading for Moel y Parc, with its wooded ring giving way to a treeless tonsure that was topped at this season with a cap of gleaming snow. Hopkins was the only member of the community who had taken the trouble to learn that moel did not actually mean hill, even though so many of the peaks had it in their name, but ‘bare’ or ‘bald’, and was pronounced ‘moil’; or that the mutations of the Welsh language came in the initial consonant rather than at the end, so that it could also be foel, which you pronounced ‘voil’. Of course his enthusiasm had been thwarted by the rules of the Society. He might only learn the language, the Rector had told him, if he planned to convert the locals – and since it was obvious just by looking at the native population that there was no hope of that, he had been forced to drop his formal studies. But he could hardly be accused of disobedience if he continued to observe names and signs while he walked around.
