Under the Tump (22 page)

He was based in the Birmingham area previously, in a job he liked but didn’t love. Catherine, too. Midway through middle age, they now wanted out. Each hankered for a life free of line managers and client meetings; a life in which phrases like ‘end-of-year appraisal’ and ‘company protocol’ held no sway.

So they bought a second-hand camper van. Every weekend for the best part of a year, they trundled down the M5 and made the winding crossing into Wales, where they reckoned their money would go further and their dreams might prosper. Up and down the Marches they drove in search of that perfect place. The derelict farmhouse on the south
facing slope. The dilapidated barn ripe for renovation. The gable-ended longhouse with its own wood and well.

Ahead of the van, bouncing along the road, ran their imaginations. They saw their kids playing in the blackthorn thickets behind the house, a pair of untoggled scouts with permanently sun-freckled noses. Catherine would have a dapple-grey horse that would trot in contented circles around her purpose-built paddock. Johnny would be tending the veg patches, packing their larder shelves with homegrown produce that would nourish their souls.

Never did it rain in these vivid imaginings. Only sun or snow, a condensed climatic couplet. Nor did the bills for the bottled gas or veterinary visits ever put in an appearance. There were no pot-holed roads, no snowed-in driveways, no dial-up internet, no mice in the bedroom, no foxes at the chickens, no power cuts, no broken fences. Only cloudless skies and empty days.

Then, a three-storey, end-of-terrace town house in Hay popped up on the estate agent’s website. ‘Charmingly restored, views of the river, centrally located.’ It was exactly what they
weren’t
looking for, Johnny happily confesses. But it burst their bubble. The affordable price, the extra bedroom, the proximity of the school and the shops: it all made eminently more sense.

I think of Rob and Layla up on their smallholding, living out Johnny’s fantasy. Does he regret not doing it? He laughs. No, not once. Deep down, he’s a ‘people-person’, he now realises. The isolation of the hills would have sent him around the bend. When he had his fiftieth birthday a few years back, almost 200 people turned up. Everyone dancing, drinking, mixing among themselves. In truth, that’s more his scene.

He is still chuckling when a second customer approaches.
She is younger and fresher-faced than the first, a small boy at her side. The child is clasping his mother’s hand. She’d like a latte, please. It’s her second already today, she tells him. ‘But who’s counting, hey?’ A glow of holidaymaker happiness infuses her manner. She’s pleased to be away. Away from where, Johnny asks. They’re from Hatfield, in Hertfordshire. Just off the A1.

She must be finding it quiet, Johnny says, his soft sarcasm hidden behind a good-humoured grin. Yes, she says. She thought it would be busier. She supposes it’s the rain. I smile at Johnny, who doesn’t disabuse her of the idea by telling her how much more sedate the town usually is. Instead he asks her if she’s enjoying the festival. It’s not the first time he’s asked the question, nor will it be the last. As with all successful local retailers, Johnny genuinely appears to enjoy small talk. He listens for her reply, twisting his head over his shoulder as he prepares my drink.

The coffee is black and hot when it comes. I take a sip and feel my spirits lift immediately. For a brief moment, my senses register nothing but its velvety warmth. When I reenter the world, the woman from Hatfield is saying how she went to four talks on her first day and three yesterday. She’s two more planned for this afternoon. ‘I’m more into the artsy, happy side of things,’ she’s saying. ‘Less economics and politics and what not.’ There’s something for all tastes, Johnny responds, liberal and likeable as always.

Her boy starts tugging at her arm, lured by the next door ice-cream van. ‘Okay, okay, Freddy,’ she says. The ice-cream man isn’t about to go anywhere. Johnny tells her not to worry. He’ll bring her drink over once it’s ready. She thanks him and walks off, the little boy pulling at her coat sleeve.

Johnny looks towards his first customer. She is sitting
stiffly on the bench in the centre of the garden courtyard. Next year, he’d like to get some kind of awning for the seating area. ‘Give it a more Mediterranean feel, you know.’ He turns and twists the filter holder from its socket. A fine steam rises up from the damp pocket of freshly pressed beans as he holds it above the bin.

I move to go, holding my cup aloft in gratitude and wishing him well for his new venture. I’m not sure if he hears. The courtyard is already reverberating to the sound of hammering.

Turning left along Castle Street, I set off towards the tented festival site on the western edge of town, where I have a date with a newly published author.

Pedestrians fill the narrow pavement, persuading the more impatient to chance walking in the road. Parked outside the Swan hotel is a young man on a cucumber green bicycle rickshaw. It’s the best part of half a mile to the festival entrance and trade is busy. Payment is on a donation basis. ‘A foreigner, every time,’ he tells me, when I ask who his ideal customer is. ‘Brits are such misers.’ I continue walking.

Further down the street, just after the left turn heading up to Hay Bluff, where Castle Street merges into Brecon Road, Richard couldn’t disagree more. Sporting jeans and a grubby black T-shirt, he is standing behind a makeshift bar on the front lawn of the Masonic Lodge. His beard and hair are remarkable for achieving precisely the same degree of dishevelment.

‘Can’t complain,’ the young brewer from Whitby tells me when I enquire how business is going. Books and booze, he
sees them as a natural fit. I ask where he’s staying and he points to the floor behind the bar. ‘Someone has to watch the barrels,’ he says. Not that he sleeps much anyway. Last night, his final customers didn’t leave until about 3 a.m.

I’d been lured into his beer tent by his colleague, who is stationed on the pavement with a tray of taster cups. ‘American hops,’ he’d told me in a thick Yorkshire accent, inviting me to try the black IPA. Dry, peppery and caramel sweet, it tastes good. Inside, I find a clutch of others have come to the same conclusion, all of them with a lunchtime pint in their hands and the sheepish look of absentee husbands on their faces.

One of them, Martin, who has two days of stubble on his chin and a six-year-old son at his side, isn’t wasting any time. He tried the Platform 3 first (‘Sort of nutty taste, but goes down smoothly enough’) and is now nearing the bottom of a pint of Jet Black. We fall into conversation. His wife is currently at an event starring the actor Benedict Cumberbatch. Last night they had both gone to see the comedian Marcus Brigstocke. Very funny. Have I been? He suggests I get tickets for one of the evening stand-up routines. They’ve been coming down to the festival for six years. ‘We always try and catch at least one comedian.’

He asks where I live and I explain that I’ve recently moved to the area. He looks momentarily wistful. ‘We love it here,’ he says. They stay in the same bed and breakfast every year. ‘Hay feels just like a village, don’t you think?’ I nod. He’d like to get into the hills or go canoeing next time. They’ve still not done anything like that.

He checks his watch. Fifteen minutes. He necks the remainder of the Jet Black and catches Richard’s eye. He’ll have another, ‘for the road’. The young brewer gladly takes
his glass. ‘Saltwick Nab?’ Richard touches the respective tap handle with the flat of his hand. ‘It’s a best bitter. Four point …’ he twists the tap to read the label. ‘Yup, four point two per cent. Good malty kick to it.’

Martin evidently enjoys the ritual accompanying his beer: the choosing, the pouring, the admiring. He listens intently to the descriptions of the brewer-barman. The Saltwick Nab sounds like a fine idea, he says, and reaches into his pocket for cash. ‘Shame not to try them all, eh?’ His mood is jocular, the alcohol in the first two pints already seeping into his bloodstream.

I order a half for myself.

They’ve just been round the second-hand bookshops, Martin tells me. ‘Haven’t we, Nath?’ The boy is sitting on the floor, cross-legged, his nose in a comic-strip version of ‘Three Billy Goats Gruff’. He loves that story, his father says. Found it in the first shop they went into. He didn’t see much point going into the others. ‘We can do that tomorrow, right, Nath?’

We drink in silence for a while. He looks down at his boy. They went to see the toll bridge yesterday, over the Wye, in Whitney. There’s a book about Walter, the friendly blue troll who lives under the bridge. His son loves that one too. The boy looks up at his father and grins.

‘You got kids?’ he asks me. Two, I tell him. Must be a wonderful place to bring them up, he says. It is, I tell him. ‘Yeah, it’s kind of old world, isn’t it? Hay, I mean,’ he replies. He looks momentarily pensive. It strikes him every time they come down: how tucked away it is, how much it feels like stepping back in time.

He loves the fact that the nearest big supermarket is twenty miles away, for instance. They’re from the Wirral.
He has an ASDA, Sainsbury’s and LIDL more or less within walking distance of his house. ‘And the beer in all of them is terrible,’ he says, slapping his thigh and roaring with laughter.

It’s my turn to check my watch now. I hadn’t meant to stop so long. Wishing Martin and his bibliophilic offspring the best, I head back out onto the pavement.

Almost as soon as I step out of the beer tent, I bump into a couple from Clyro Primary School, their limbs laden with small offspring. They’ve just been to the ‘Make and Take’ tent. Had I been? Jimmy just loved it. The older boy gets his hair ruffled, an action that sends a swatting hand upwards. ‘Maa-umm.’ I explain that we’ve rented out part of the house for the week and that Seth and Bo are with their grandparents. ‘Where? How?’ the mother asks. There is envy in her voice. Or is it disapproval? I am a childless parent; fancy-free, beer on my breath, denying my kids a unique cultural experience.

She’s right, of course. The breadth of talent that finds its way to the Marches every May is truly remarkable. This year’s itinerary runs to nearly 500 events, with iconic US writer Toni Morrison topping the bill. Last year’s headliner was the Peruvian author and one-time presidential candidate Mario Vargas Llosa, fresh from winning the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Behind them come the breakthrough first-time novelists, the rising star of Africa’s ‘new wave’ or an entrant in Granta’s latest ‘Best of …’ list: all of them dripping with talent and bravado, the literary world at their feet. Then there are the jobbing authors, churning out solid material year after year, working the festival circuit as they go with dogged charm and well-worked witticisms.

Finally, the crowd-pullers who make the economics of it all work: Martin’s comedians, for one. Plus the food writers, the children’s authors, the historians, the scientists, the biographers, the campaigning provocateurs, the sports stars, the sci-fi wonks, the columnists. A potpourri of publishing output, in short.

‘They’re back at the end of the week,’ I blurt out to the mother, in reference to Seth and Bo, and excuse myself speedily.

On the left of the road is an old churchyard, Hay’s fire station and the town’s sports fields, where the boys have tennis lessons and Saturday morning football club. Beyond are open fields, converted momentarily into overspill car parks. On the opposite side of the street, beyond Richard’s beer tent, are some almshouses and a home for the elderly, then a long row of semi-detached 1930s properties. Every other resident of Oakland Villas seems to be out on their front lawn, either rattling a charity tin or flogging cold drinks and foodstuffs.

Outside No. 4, a lady in a plastic poncho is standing under a temporary gazebo armed with a two-way radio. Her free hand is resting on a table laid out with jams, jigsaws, craft items, second-hand clothes and other charity knick-knacks. She’s raising money for Parkinson’s UK, a banner declares. Tea and cake are advertised as well. She too invites me to step in off the pavement.

‘What sort of cakes do you have?’ I ask, yet to commit but feeling my resolve weaken. Oh, all sorts, she says. ‘Come on through, now, why don’t you.’

I like the fact that the residents of No. 4 see the festival crowds as an opportunity to raise money for charity rather than to line their own pockets. Kilvert, who used to dispense
blankets among Clyro’s poor, would have approved. So too would Updike, I imagine. What is charity if not a clear expression of loving your neighbour in the old sense?

Persuading people to donate is obviously the primary purpose of charity fund-raising, but philanthropic endeavours have a core secondary function too. They bring citizens together. Rarely does a week pass without an invitation to attend a concert or coffee morning for a good cause.

Such occasions strengthen communities. Not just because their focus is often local: a refit of the playground where the kids play and the young mums congregate, say, or a new minibus to help the elderly group get out and about. More fundamentally, they reinforce the ethos of communal living, reminding us that we are collective beings, born not to live behind high fences but in relationship with one another.

With such thoughts in mind (plus the promise of something sweet), I follow her outstretched arm down a narrow path towards the back of the house. The crackle of a radio sounds from around the corner. ‘Young man … cake … yes, right now.’

Waiting for me in the back garden are David and Val, a friendly retired couple decked out in matching aprons. Thick slices of coffee cake, banana bread and Victoria sponge look out invitingly from behind a glass casing. Lining up beside them are plates of bara brith and millionaire marble, homemade biscuits and the obligatory Welsh cakes. Lucretia has found her match.

I ask for a flapjack and then spot the price, a bargain at fifty pence each. ‘Make that two.’ He picks up the flapjacks with a pair of tongs and drops them into a paper bag. I hand him a pound coin.

The couple are pros. It is the cake stall’s tenth anniversary. Over the years, they’ve bought an urn, invested in some tables and chairs, developed a team of volunteer cakebakers. A few years back, David even landscaped the garden and extended the patio. I admire his handiwork, particularly the gurgling water feature.