Everything I Have Always Forgotten (20 page)

After a while, the publican came in and sat at the kitchen table with us. My sister at once repeated what she had already told his wife: that he should send a bill to our mother and she would pay by cheque. He was a big man with a florid face. Though his size was intimidating, he was not unkind. He stopped her in mid-sentence and said: “Now then, nippers, I'm wanting to tell you a tale…”

We rested our knives and forks and looked at him.

“I was about your ages back then. Living on a hill sheep farm with me dad, me mam and nain [grandmother]. I was walking to school in Croesor and helping out on the farm before and after, like. Well, one summer, there's this tall young Englishman with a beard comes to live up here from time to time. Was it Garreg Fawr he was to living at? Well, doesn't matter. So this fellow gets to talking to us nippers and he says it's hot, how about we all go down to the beach to swim with him? Well some of us says yes and others says no, but I went along. He had this big Bentley car and he loads us in like sheep, all on top of each other. Five in the dickey, four in the seat beside him. I'd never been down to the beach. What would a sheep farmer be doing on the beach? Well he starts to teach us to swim.

“After that, when it was hot and we could get away, some of us would go down there again with him and he'd teach us some more. He used to lie under water and we'd all sit on him to stop him coming up, but he was strong and sooner or later he would always come back up to breathe. After that summer, I never did run into him again, though they say he married and was living in Plas Parc for a while. Then the War came and I was called up. Then I was at Dunkirk. The boats couldn't come in too close for the Jerries' bombing and strafing at them, like. Hell's inferno, it was –
Diawchedig
[devilish]. I must ‘a swum a mile out and was picked up by this little pleasure boat. He'd come over with the fishing boats and Navy boats and all. He took me out to a troop carrier that brought me home. Then he went right back inshore for more chaps. I often wonder to this day: did he make it home? Plucky fellow, that one.” He paused with the innate Welsh instinct for drama and drew on the cigarette we had not seen him light.

“A sheep farmer, on the hills, me, what would I be having with the sea and with swimming if it wasn't for that Englishman? Nothing! Nothing, I tell you! Never would I have learned to swim without your father to teach me. I owe him my life. So finish up your tea, nippers, and don't be bothering me with no payments…” With that he was gone back to his customers, leaving us reeling with thought.

“
Well
,” breathed his wife as the door closed, “and he never told me nothing about the War and all that. Probably wants to forget it all, I expect.”

We thanked her profusely and she told us not to forget what her husband had told us. I, for one, never have. We walked back to the farm in the gathering dusk and by the time we had crept into our sleeping bags, replete and exhausted, it was dark and we had found a new respect for our Father. We learned much of our Father from the tales of others.

Next day, we rode back up to the Roman Road and continued on north, meeting our Mother at the next river crossing where we had to come down to the road for its bridge. She had forgotten our clean clothes (not that we noticed) but brought us some urgently-needed cash! She drove behind us as we crossed the bridge and followed the road up the side of a spectacular gorge with a raging torrent at the bottom (the River Glaslyn, that fed the other, reclaimed, branch of the estuary, the Traeth Mawr or Big Beach). Traffic was a nightmare, with noisy tourist buses belching smoke at us and practically shaving our legs off as they passed. Even the tourist cars were no better. Nancy was cool as a cucumber, but my sister's mount became so crazed, she had to jump off and lead him, her legs stiff from riding for hours.

After the gorge, we soon left the road and our Mother, and followed the disused track of a narrow gauge slate railway. The rails had been pulled up during the War for scrap metal, but many of the sleepers were still there and the ponies kept tripping on them. Nancy managed better and I just gave her her head and let her work it out. I was dreaming of being somewhere else – probably driving a car!

That night (we left the abandoned railway as soon as we could), we camped at another farm and offered to pay for our grazing. Two such young children, alone on horseback, were sufficiently unusual in those days for the farmer to refuse any payment. His wife even brought us some scones she had just baked. We ate the provisions we had bought before leaving the road… probably canned sausages and beans, if I remember.

The next day was another long ride. There was no more Roman Road and we juggled tracks and short pieces of small road. Here, the hills were lower, rounder, more tamed. The sunny weather held, but nothing much interested me and I sat watching Nancy's furry ears, nodding with her paces, just awake enough to grab the reins when she went for a tuft of grass. That evening, we arrived at the farm of some friends and they showed us a good camping spot. Our Mother arrived just as we were pitching the tent. She busied herself with setting up a plate-drying rack made of sticks in the ground. There was a water trough nearby which we shared with the ponies.

I was getting anxious now. All along I had known that the son of our friend the farmer had a home-made sports car that looked like a cigar on wheels. I couldn't wait to ride in it. Next day, we learned that he was away and his car with him. Mother spent time with the farmer's wife, my sister with her daughter Diana and I sulked. Finally, the farmer announced that he was taking a cattle truck down south to get some sheep and he could give the ponies a ride back. My sister and I rode with him. I was thankful and relieved not to be riding all the way back! Travel in one direction opens new horizons; return along your own footsteps and you see it all again. I have always tried to travel in some kind of loop.

XX

MY VERY OWN TRIP

I
was getting wanderlust, but it had to be journeying according to my own desires. Before leaving on the pony trek, I had met three brothers, whose family had rented our cottage for a holiday. One was younger than I, the other two, older. They had invited me to stay with them in England, five or six hours' drive away, when I returned. At once I started making plans, assuming that I would just hitch-hike there. I was ten years old at the time.

Somehow, for once, my Parents united forces to find another way for me to go there. They did not come out and say I could not hitch. Mother just spent some time on the telephone and found a friend who was leaving for that part of the world, but from a town already two hours away. Telling me that I could not refuse the friend's ‘kind offer', I was put on a train for the first leg. I spent the night at their house – he was Provost of a university and resigned soon afterwards, when his Board of Directors announced that ‘students of colour' would not be accepted… this was deep in Wales and virtually no non-Caucasians would apply for many years to come, anyway. That was in the mid-fifties and eventually the issue came to the fore and, like it or not, universities were then obliged to accept any qualifying student.

Thus, the Provost (Goronwy Rees) was vindicated, but by then he was already a highly successful journalist and writer. Eventually too he was accused of being a Russian spy – an accusation that was never proven but upset him and his family no end.

Next day, Mrs Rees drove me further down and across Wales to the rich farming area of the Marches. I had always been told that the land was so called for the Roman sentries who marched up and down, keeping an eye on the Welsh and making sure they stayed in the highlands where the land was poor – nowadays, there are different theories, such as they were called Marches for the Marcher Lords who were given land along the frontier. Later Offa's Dyke was built in segments, which may have been joined by wooden palisades (which have long since disappeared – since they were made of wood). Up north, the Romans had built Hadrian's Wall to keep out the ‘Barbarians' (Picts and Scots). The Welsh border, however, was much longer, so no wall was envisioned until Offa's Dyke. Instead they had patrols marching up and down the lowland side of the border – hence The Marches. Nevertheless, the Welsh, having been forced west out of their own rich farm land, frequently came down with raiding parties to help themselves to some fat cattle, sheep or goats. Their animals could not be fattened, because they had been reduced to such poor, upland grazing.

Mrs Rees drove an enormous American car that was, of course, left-hand drive. For the passenger, facing oncoming traffic on narrow Welsh roads that were almost completely blocked by this huge automobile, was terrifying. It was good training for the days when I would be hitch-hiking and accepted any ride I could get, however hair-raising it turned out to be.

Going back to the Marches: since I went away to school, in Wales I was considered to be English. The neighbouring children steered clear of me and when Mother invited them for tea, they were shy and embarrassed. Small wonder, I remember teasing one boy about his accent, making him blush at table. No one stopped me and I may well have found the idea in my English school. The Welsh boys mocked me behind my back for living in a ‘Plâs' or mansion. While in English schools, first I was nicknamed ‘Misty Mountain' – which I took as a compliment, though coming as it did from my teachers, it surely meant that I never paid attention in class.

“Taffy was a Welshman,Taffy was a thief,”

“Taffy came to my house and stole a leg of beef…”

Which was surely a mind-set that goes back to the Marches, during Roman times. Then the Saxons and after them the Norman Conquest of England, reinforced the same attitude and wealthy Normans took over the rich farms of the Marches. Gradually, the Welsh were considered second-class citizens because they were not as rich as the English, because the land they lived on was poor, because that was where successive invasions had pushed them. Instead of monetary wealth they became known for, and proud of, their literary, poetic and choral traditions. Their Bards were heroes. The Latin Bible was illegally translated from Latin into Welsh, 141 years before the King James English Version was translated. On the whole, I had no objection to being called a Welshman and hardly noticed the downside of the implied attribute: dishonesty, deviousness, and plain criminality. Not to mention that ‘welshing' on an agreement is common usage to this day.

Still, the idea of being different, inferior, certainly formed me and I chose my few school friends from amongst those who lived overseas and rarely went home, those who had lost a parent and were neglected and other misfits like myself. And yet, throughout my life, I have hated and avoided criminality and dishonesty, searching to conduct business in as ethical a manner as possible.

Now I was staying with the three (very English, Etonian) boys I had met in Wales. They lived in a small castle, the older two went to Eton and their father drove an old Rolls Royce. They were kind to me, but clearly not sure how to take me. In Wales, they had had great respect for my knowledge of the mountains, the winds and the tides. But here? What did I know of Huntin', Shootin' and Fishin'? The shooting I knew was rabbits and wild duck to eat, not standing in a line while farm hands beat the brush to drive pheasants, quail and suchlike into a barrage of shots.

Our fishing was for urgent food and involved setting nets and nightlines, not standing in a river in thigh boots with a fishing rod and throwing back most of the fish. I had told them I was going to hitch-hike there and one of them had exclaimed that “I was jolly plucky”, but I had no idea what he was talking about. I was not a peasant at dinner, I had been brought up to have manners and make polite conversation. I even enjoyed (and still do) being a chameleon – adapting to my environment as best I can.

I am happy to be an outsider, unaccepted when I worked as a labourer, unaccepted when I have dined with the Mighty. Of course ‘unaccepted' is a far cry from ‘ostracized'. I am not scandalous or outrageous. I have learned to fit in but I just don't feel like anyone else.

When it came time to leave my kind hosts, there was no longer any question of my hitch-hiking. I was put on a train and sent home in time for school.

My Welsh/English life was always a dichotomy in those days. I was accepted by neither. I was away from Wales in an English school for eight months a year. I could read and sing in Welsh, with a just passable accent, yet I spoke only a smattering of the language. I had a romantic leaning towards Wales as a land, the place in which I was brought up, but I also had the English superiority vis-à-vis the Welsh. As for the English, I saw them as rich and conventional. I did not mind the rich part, but I had been raised to despise conventionality. I had been convinced that convention and conformity are boring. I was not aware that some of these qualities actually make the World go round and put food on the table. They politely accepted me because I spoke the language of an educated person with the accent of a boy whose parents could afford to send him to a private school, but there was always something of the anarchist, the loner in me that troubled those wealthy English people with their bridge parties and chintz-covered furniture. No one knew quite what to make of me… I liked it that way, I still like it that way – no labels please.

XXI

COURTING DEATH ON CLIFFS

A
lso, in that summer of 1954 (when I was ten, my friend Alan, a year older) we had spent many days walking and scrambling up rock faces that deserved the respect of ropes. Neither of us had any formal rock-climbing instruction, but we knew enough not to use ropes if we did not know how to use them… as I came to learn, fatally:

A couple of years later, I was acting as guide to a cousin who wanted to climb Mount Snowdon by the Crib Goch saddle. One section, near the summit, involves a series of ‘knife-edges', where ground on either side of the path falls away on either side to a precipice just a few feet away. Like crossing a rope suspension bridge in the jungle, one could have crossed over on all fours, but instead we walked, buffeted on either side by the ferocious updrafts of wind which swept dense cloud up to collide with the wind from the other side, bursting skywards like a vast mist geyser. The path would then swoop up again to another small peak where you could hold on to the rocks, before falling away again to another ‘knife-edge'. On the way back down, we were already fearful of the approaching dusk (in the cloud and driving rain it was dark enough in broad daylight), when we passed two groups of three young men, roped together. Although I was still only about twelve years old, I summoned the courage to ask the leader if it was wise to be still going up with dusk not far off and the weather so dour. He brushed me aside, saying he was a trained instructor and knew what he was doing. My concern was that the two trios were walking fast while roped together, if one slipped, the other two would not have a stable position of purchase to hold him back. So that far from saving him, they themselves would be dragged over by him.