by Hilary Green
Barney said, “I found them down on the main road. They’ve got nowhere to go.”
The young man moved forward. He carried himself very erect, like a dancer, so that I was surprised when he came up to me to find that he was only a few inches taller than I was. His eyes were very large, hazel in colour, and defined by a line of thick dark lashes. He extended his hand.
“Hallo. I’m Hal. Welcome to Brynwcws.” The voice was carefully classless but unmistakeably cultured. The hand clasp was warm and firm.
“My name’s Nell Fairing,” I said. How many times had I been through all this in the last week? “These are my children, Simon and Tim.”
Barney had helped the boys down off the horse and they stood close to me on either side.
Hal said, “Come on in. I expect you’re tired.”
The farm kitchen was long and low, with a stone floor and massive wooden beams. The deal table in the centre was littered with what I assumed was the remains of lunch for several people and the primitive sink in one comer was stacked with dirty dishes and pans. Muddy wellingtons and discarded coats lay about. Hal cleared three chairs, displacing a pile of books, a guitar and a sleepy tabby cat, and we sat down.
An interior door opened and an amazingly beautiful girl drifted through it. Part of her long fair hair was plaited and twisted around her head to hold the rest in place and she wore a long soft cotton skirt in subtle colourings which could only have come from India and a peasant blouse with wide loose sleeves. She could have stepped straight off the pages of a book of fairy tales. Huge violet blue eyes, wide open like a doll’s so that the lids disappeared completely, gazed at us in mild surprise.
Hal said, “This is Jinny. Love, do you know where the boys are?”
She transferred her gaze to him and said softly, “I’ll go and get them.”
When the door closed behind her there was a silence. Barney had gone off with the horse. Hal drew up a chair, sat down astride it, leaned on the back and gave me a slow smile; but he said nothing.
“Are there many of you here?” I asked at length.
“Six,” he replied. “You’ll meet the others in a minute —except for Old Bill. He’s out in his garden. We shan’t see him till dark.”
“Do you live here?” I was not sure how to phrase my inquiries without offence.
He nodded with the same slow smile. “At the moment. I expect I’ll stay. I don’t know about the others.”
The door opened again and Jinny returned followed by two more young men. Hal said,
“Meet Alexis and Paul. This is Nell, and these are Simon and Tim.”
Jinny drifted over to the window and sat on the deep sill, leaning her head against the wall. The two men stood together a moment in the doorway, murmuring conventional greetings. Then Alexis, the older of the two, came forward.
“Have you come far?”
It was a relief, after Hal’s silent acceptance, to be questioned. I began to tell my story. While I did so Paul moved quietly to a big larder leading off the kitchen and came back with a jug of milk. He took three glasses from the table and rinsed them at the sink before setting one in front of each of us. The milk tasted so good!
When I had finished my tale there was another silence. I had grown used to being eagerly questioned and cross-questioned and was surprised by my new hosts’ apparent lack of curiosity.
Hal said, “You’re welcome to stay here, as long as you like. But I’m afraid we can’t get you any further.”
I sighed wearily. “I don’t see how we are ever going to get there unless we can get hold of a car and some petrol.”
“Not much chance of that, I’m afraid,” Alexis said. “That’s why we want the horse.”
“Just a minute,” Paul put in, speaking for the first time. “Couldn’t they come with us?”
Alexis looked at him sharply and then at us. “I don’t know. I don’t think there would be room.”
Paul perched on the edge of the table. “We’re actors, you see. That is, Alexis and I and Jinny. We tour round with our own show. We’ve been here for the winter but we’ll be off again soon. I’m sure we could squeeze you in somehow.” He was fair haired, slender and loose limbed as a colt, with a wide mobile mouth and lively eyes half hidden under thick, sandy lashes. I guessed he could not be much more than twenty. He lifted his head and looked at the older man. “Come on, Lexi, you know we could.”
Alexis turned to look at him. He had what, to me, was the typical actor’s face; long, straight nose, high cheek bones, strong arched eyebrows above hooded eyes, lines beginning to be etched about the eyes and from the wide nostrils to the corners of the lips. As he looked at Paul I saw a flicker of movement about his mouth that suggested some inner conflict. Then he said, “There won’t be any show to take out if we don’t get on. We’re supposed to be rehearsing, remember?” He turned to the door and then glanced back at me. “Excuse us.”
He went out. Paul said, “See you later,” and followed him and Jinny rose in silence and trailed after them both.
I looked at Hal. He grinned. “I’m afraid they live in a world of their own, like most actors.”
“What about you?” I asked. “You don’t belong here, either. Do you?”
He stretched his arms and then relaxed again. “While I’m here I do. It’s O.K. I like it here.”
“But what do you do?” I persisted. “How do you come to be here in the first place?”
Tim had got up and gone to the window. “Can we go outside and look round, Mum?”
“Is that all right?” I said to Hal.
He nodded. “Sure. Go where you like. Barney’ll be out there somewhere.”
The boys slipped out into the yard. I returned my attention to Hal.
“I’m sorry if I’m asking too many questions, but I can’t help being curious.”
“Fair enough,” he replied. “You’ve told us your story.”
He got up and went to lean in the doorway which the boys had left open, his back against the door post. For a moment he looked out, then he turned his head back to me.
“I came here last summer. I’d been up for a free festival on top of Cader Idris.” He nodded towards the guitar. “I sing, see. Afterwards I was hitching back towards London, just bumming along you know, and I was right out of bread. I asked a bloke in the village for a job. He told me the old man up here might want a hand. He was a rum old devil. Hated people. Lived all by himself up here, never went off the place unless he had to. But he’d got to the stage where he couldn’t manage any longer on his own. We got along O.K. Doesn’t bother me if a bloke doesn’t speak all day. He was no fool, though. He’d got ideas. That’s one of them, out there.”
He nodded to something beyond the range of my vision. I got up and went to the door. Beyond the grey humps of barns and outhouses a sloping field was seamed with neat rows of low green bushes.
“Know what those are?” Hal asked.
I shook my head.
“Vines,” he said. “That’s a south facing slope. Ideal position. The old man put them in four years ago. Last Autumn we made our first vintage. He never lived to taste it, poor old sod. They were the only thing he really cared about, those vines.”
“But surely you can’t grow wine here?” I said.
“Why not?” He looked at me. “The Romans did. They’re making wine already in other parts of South Wales —good wine, too.”
“Did you say the old man was dead?” I pursued, picking up another thread from his story.
He nodded. “About a month ago. Caught a bad cold, wouldn’t stay in bed. Obstinate old devil, he was. One morning he didn’t get up. When I went to look he was in a bad way. Only lasted a couple of hours longer.”
“Couldn’t you get him into hospital, or get a doctor or something?” I asked.
He shrugged and shook his head. “He wouldn’t have wanted it. He’d rather have died here, in his own bed.”
“But if he’s dead,” I said slowly, “how is it you
’re still here?”
He looked at me, the large dark eyes brooding on my face.
“Why not? He didn’t have any children. No-one wants the farm. If I went who’d look after it?”
“But who owns it now? Surely there must have been a will, some sort of legal . . . arrangements . . . .” I felt completely lost.
He smiled the slow smile. “Legally, the old man’s still alive.”
“You mean you never told anyone?”
He moved past me, back to his chair and sat down.
“Look. By the time he died this government was in. O.K? That meant identity cards, direction of labour, all that hassle. I don’t have an identity card, I don’t have a permanent address. With the old man dead I don’t have a job or a home. We buried him in the orchard. He never went near anyone if he could help it. No-one will miss him.” I sat down on the window seat and stared at him.
“So you’re just squatting here.”
He spread his hands. “You could call it that.”
“But how do you manage? I mean what about food —ration books and so on?”
“We manage. There are two cows, and some chickens. Last summer the old man had all the wheat we harvested ground into flour and stored away in the barn. He could see what was coming. Then we killed a pig before Christmas. He knew about preserving hams and all that stuff. And we have vegetables. Old Bill sees to them. And I still have the old man’s ration book, of course. We get a bit on that —sugar and things, when there’s any about. They’re used to me getting his stuff for him down in the village and they don’t ask questions.”
“Just a minute,” I exclaimed. “Who’s Old Bill?”
He laughed softly at my confusion. “He’s an old fellow who turned up here a couple of months ago. He came down from Bradford. Used to work in a factory that produced dyes but it closed down years ago. He’s had odd jobs of one kind and another since then but he'd been unemployed for three years, so he set off south, looking for work. I don’t know how he ended up here but he came trudging up the lane asking if we had any odd jobs. He’s as happy as a sandboy out there with his veges. His allotment was the only thing that made life in Bradford bearable, he reckons.”
“So,” I said slowly, sorting out what I had heard, “That’s the six of you. Old Bill and the three actors and Barney—and you.”
“That’s right.” He grinned. “And now there’s you and the two kids.”
“But can we all . . . manage here?” I asked. “I mean, can the farm feed us all?”
“Have you got ration books?” he asked suddenly.
“Yes,” I said, “but I daren’t show them to anyone. We’ve no permit to be so far from home.”
“Oh, you don’t want to worry about that,” he replied. “I told you. They don’t ask questions in the village. I’ll take your books in along with the old man’s and the woman in the shop will give us what she can.” He got up and then, seeing my anxious look, stopped and smiled down at me. “No problem. Honestly. You’ll be O.K. here. Come on, I’ll find you a room.”
The next morning I came downstairs to find the stack of dirty dishes in the kitchen roughly the same size as it had been yesterday. Apparently the normal routine was only to wash something when you could find nothing else to use instead. At one end of the littered table Jinny was desultorily kneading a grey-looking mass in a basin.
“Good morning.” I said. “Baking?”
She poked the unyielding dough gloomily. “It’s supposed to be bread, but I don’t know how to make it properly. Just because I’m a woman. ...”
“Have you got any yeast?” I asked.
She looked at me, pushing back a long curtain of pale hair which she had not yet bound up.
“Yeast? No.”
One of the sudden flushes of happiness which were becoming a familiar part of my repeated emotional cycle swept over me. I went to the bag I had brought with me and rummaged in it.
“There!” I said triumphantly, producing Mrs Fumiss’s packet of dried yeast.
Jinny put the back of her hand across her face, leaving a white smudge of flour.
“What do I do with it?”
I laughed. “Leave it to me, Jinny. I’ll see to it. I expect you’ve got some rehearsing to do, haven’t you?”
Her face brightened like a child let off a disagreeable chore. “Oh great! Thanks Nell. You’re super!”
A moment later she was gone.
I turned the unappetizing mess out of the bowl and started again. Then, while the dough proved, I started on the kitchen. There was no running hot water but the big range was alight. With a zest I had not felt for months I boiled up water, and scoured dishes and pans. When I had finished with them I attacked the kitchen table, the thick grease on the top of the range, and finally the floor.
By the time I had finished the smell of fresh bread was stealing out of the oven. I washed my hands and poured myself a glass of milk—preferable to the ersatz coffee. In the bottom of my bag there was still half a jar of jam, and someone apparently knew how to make butter for there was a dish in the larder. Ten minutes later I was sitting relaxed at the table eating fresh rolls and listening to Simon and Tim shouting somewhere outside when Hal came in. He stopped in the doorway and gazed round.
“Hey! What’s happened here?”
I smiled at him. “It’s called cleaning up. It’s an improvement, don’t you think?”
He came over to the table. “It’s great. But are you sure you wanted to do it?”
I laughed. “I enjoyed it —really!”
He looked relieved. “That’s all right then. Hey man! That looks like real bread!”
“The edible kind,” I agreed. “I just made it.”
He seized a roll and a knife and began to spread butter thickly. Then he saw the jar.
“Jam! I haven’t seen jam in months!”
With his mouth full of roll he ran to the door and shouted, “Barney! Alex! Everyone — come here!”
Within minutes they descended on the kitchen and fell on the bread with cries of delight. I watched them demolish at one sitting nearly half my baking and all the jam. I could only make sure that Simon and Tim got their share. Everyone was full of compliments; there was a lot of laughter and warm camaraderie; but when they finally drifted off again the table was littered with crumbs and dirty plates. Slowly I got up and put another kettle on the range.
When the kitchen was straight again I wandered out into the yard. The weather was beginning to settle into the pattern of one of the finest, warmest springs for years and the sun caressed my face. I could hear a great tit’s insistent, piercing double note from the patch of woodland below the farm. Lambs bleated up on the hills. I wondered if they belonged to the farm too.
The days slipped past. I wandered the farm, talking, listening, watching, slowly beginning to piece together the jig-saw of different stories, different backgrounds, and fit them into the present routine of the farm. Routine was hardly the word, for there was no formal pattern, no precise division of responsibility. Each did, in the current language, his own thing. Barney, the Birmingham factory worker who had abandoned his home to escape the fighting and the imminent threat of starvation, cared for the animals and declared that, whatever happened, he was never going back to the production line. Old Bill disappeared immediately after breakfast to his vegetable patch. I watched his small wiry form tirelessly digging and hoeing, his stubby fingers weeding and planting. At work he was taciturn, inclined to be grumpy. In the evenings he would sit sucking his empty pipe by the range and could sometimes be persuaded to talk of his past life.
It was a sad story. Born at a time when the industries that had sustained his community for generations were in decline, educated after a fashion in a tough comprehensive school were a large proportion of the pupils did not speak English; then a period of relative prosperity as the area underwent regeneration and new industries moved in; but unequipped to take advantage of the technological revolution he soon found him
self unemployed and that was the beginning of a steady decline in living standards and his own self-esteem. His wife had died two years back. His children had emigrated. To spend his days pursuing his hobby, which at the same time made him useful to this community, however alien, was a kind of happiness.
Hal worked around the farm when the mood took him. Certain jobs, like keeping the kitchen range alight, he did as a matter of habit and he would sometimes work for hours among the young vines on the hill, but he had no overall plan for the farm as a whole. No land was ploughed, no grain planted. I began to see that when the natural resources he had, in a manner of speaking, inherited ran out he would simply move on. When he was not working he would sit in the sun and strum his guitar or talk lengthily, discursively, to anyone who was free to listen. At such times he had a quietude, a quality of repose, that drew me strongly. I found myself seeking his company, enjoying the slow smile, the gentle brooding of his dark eyes; enjoying too the sight of the thick dark locks on the back of his neck and his poised, graceful movements. I noticed that, in spite of his unkempt appearance, he was always scrupulously clean.
I learned that he had dropped out of his second year at Oxford. He had spent a year wandering round Europe, coming to rest for a while in Greece; then returned to try and make a living from the songs which he wrote and sang. They were ironic, quirky, clever lyrics with complex melodies, haunting yet hard to remember. I could see why he had never penetrated further than the fringes of the pop world. Yet until last summer those fringes had supported him, together with unemployment benefit and the occasional odd job. He was twenty-four.
The three actors were the most intriguing and mysterious of the group to me. Exquisite, self-absorbed, they wandered about the house, exercising, arguing, sometimes loudly high-spirited, sometimes moody and depressed. Alexis was the dominant character. It had been his theory that the chronic lack of employment for actors could only be solved by taking theatre to the people. Accordingly they had pooled their resources to buy a caravan and had spent the previous summer touring Wales, setting up on village greens and in pub forecourts and passing round the hat afterwards. Their last show of the summer had been in Hay. It was there that Hal had seen them and had persuaded the old farmer to give them winter accommodation on the farm.