by Nick Perry
Whenever we passed she would be out in the garden at her easel, waving her paint brush.
‘Why don’t you come in, boys? My door’s always open,’ she would say, but we knew if we did, we would be there for at least an hour, time we didn’t have to spare.
However, Jack did spend the odd evening up there. Maybe it was to give Ros and me some time alone together. We didn’t talk about it; the only hint was when Rose would say, ‘Hey, did you enjoy your supper and all the rest last night?’
No matter if she was playing games, she was serious about a proposition she put to us. She had eleven acres of good grazing land and offered it to us rent free, if we would look after the cottage when she returned to California.
‘Perhaps Jack could stay up here in the winter months,’ she suggested. ‘It would stop the place becoming damp.’
It was generous, but her real concern was leaving the cottage empty for so long, especially as some Welsh activists had been putting petrol bombs through the letter boxes of holiday homes.
‘What do you say to that, Jack? A good offer, is it not?’ she said. ‘You could help me plant a few trees out back. It could be our little project.’
Gethin Hughes had given Jack the nod on a nice little collie bitch, so we drove over to Waen Fawr to take a look at her. Every time we went out in the Traveller now we kept our fingers crossed; bits of her were disappearing down farm tracks and I had lost count of how many times we had to push her out of potholes hidden in puddles. Only one windscreen wiper worked, we had lost the rear number plate and only two hubcaps remained intact. Fungi grew on the wooden framework, and when the wind was up, the back doors would suddenly burst open.
The old farmer who swayed towards us on a pair of gammy legs introduced himself as Hank. Housed in an old chicken shed on a bed of straw, four puppies were rolling around amongst chicken feathers. He scooped a large hand under one of them and held it high in the air.
‘Take a good look at it,’ he said, shoving the puppy into Jack’s chest. ‘Here, take it. It will be ready in two weeks for fifty pounds cash.’
‘Do we have a choice?’ asked Jack.
‘No. That’s the last one available, take it or leave it.’ With that said, he rolled away, poking the shed door shut with his crook, leaving us to make up our minds. Jack and I looked at each other; what did I know? This was Jack’s decision not mine. ‘What do you think?’ I said. ‘How do you know if it’s going to make a good dog at this age?’
‘I don’t, but Gethin said the mother won a county cup at the Caernarfon sheep dog trials.’ Impressive, no doubt. Maybe Gethin was in on the deal again, getting a tenner out of it.
‘If the breeding is that good, why is it only fifty pounds?’ I asked.
‘I don’t bloody know!’ Jack said, running his hand through her coat.
‘Is it the runt?’
‘No, it’s the same size as the other three.’
‘It’s up to you, brother.’
‘Let me think. Why don’t you go and have a roll-up?’
So I left him to it; this was a big decision for Jack. If he took her he would keep her for the rest of her life, beyond her working days. But after half an hour, when he hadn’t appeared and Hank, whose surname turned out to be Jones, had told me more than I needed to hear about his father’s death when a tractor had rolled over him, I went searching for him. As soon as I opened the shed door he turned and said, ‘I’ve made up my mind. I’m taking her.’
Unlike the long drawn out charade with Hughie, Hank got straight to the point. ‘I don’t haggle, so don’t even think about it. Give me ten pounds now, the rest when I deliver her in two weeks.’
It was a relief to have done the deal there and then. Hank and Jack shook on it. On the drive back to Dyffryn, as the old Traveller groaned and squeaked on its failing suspension, little passed between us, Jack staring silently out of the window, me worrying about money. We were running out of it.
As we drove past the Dorothea quarry into a greying sunlight, for the day had become overcast with darkening clouds sweeping low over the piles of slate, Jack said, ‘I’m going to call her Meg.’ Climbing up the hill out of Penygroes at a steady twenty m.p.h. as the skies opened and a torrential downpour created rivers of water down the gullies, we lost the remaining windscreen wiper, which had been flapping like an insect in its death throes for some time. I couldn’t see a thing, so for five minutes we sat outside the gate of Dyffryn waiting for the rain to ease.
‘Jack, the old girl’s giving up on us.’
When we eventually walked into the house, Ros handed me an official-looking letter in a brown windowed envelope. I had a date for my driving test, 28 June; it was about time. I needed to pass that test, get legal. Also we needed two cars, or rather one Land Rover and a runaround for Ros, who was forever on her way to Gwyn and Eryl, or out to tea with friends scattered between Penygroes and Bangor. It had never dawned on me that she would have such a busy social life, but then of course why not? She was born and brought up here, educated here. She was Welsh, amongst her own. I just hadn’t thought about it, being completely wrapped up in the plans we were making for the farm. Then Ros gave me the good news that Eryl was buying a new car, and offering us her Hillman Imp.
Harry was putting a corrugated iron roof on a stone outhouse, which would hold six pens for the first gilts (young female pigs who have never had piglets). I’d taken the advice of a successful pig farmer called Josh Hummel, who had a state-of-the-art set-up over in Bethesda. He was a man with modern ideas far removed from my own, certainly knew his stuff, and was more than happy to pass on his knowledge to this long-haired rookie.
He had built up an intensive factory farm. All his breeding sows were hemmed in metal farrowing crates under one huge roof, lying on slatted floors. He was extremely proud of his automatic systems, which were operated by the touch of a button. He had a giant squeegee that pushed all the slurry along the length of the building, out into a holding tank, and a contract with local farmers who took it away to spread on their fields as fertiliser. He sold breeding stock and was in no doubt that I should purchase Large White Landrace cross gilts to get my enterprise up and running.
Josh was an Englishman from Shropshire who had married a Welsh girl, and because property was so much cheaper here had moved to North Wales. In his office, which was full of wall charts and coloured drawing pins denoting where every single pig was in its breeding cycle, he spoke as a man obsessed with systems. But every time he worked up his enthusiasm to explain them to me, I clouded over and stopped listening. He employed two people to run this 300-sow unit and had a reputation for ground-breaking ideas and making money.
Much more interesting at this time was my correspondence with Deirdre Wainwright. We met through the personal ads in the back of Pig Farmers Monthly, a magazine aimed at the whole industry, including those who had smallholdings and just a few pigs. Deirdre had organic farming forced on her, rather than following a philosophy. She simply did not have the financial means to use chemicals or fertilisers on her eight acres near Skelmersdale. She had five Tamworth sows living rough in a pig ark, who foraged around ploughing up the scrubby land. Very efficient and natural, and although she did supplement their food with small amounts of concentrates, most of it came from the dustbins of a hotel and two village pubs. Swill, as it’s called.
She sent me a photograph of herself, a woman of unattractive contours; she looked like a Russian shot-putter. On the back of the photo she had written You can see why the men stay away. She was wearing a knee-length skirt and a pair of wellingtons. She was at the other end of the spectrum from Josh Hummel. Yet within her farming methods was a wisdom, a naturalness that was of benefit to an animal’s way of life and kind to the earth. It couldn’t have been simpler. She moved the sows around her smallholding to break up the sods, and planted vegetables that fed both her and her beloved pigs. The surplus she sold from a market stall to the local community. She grew swedes and turnips that she boile
d up to add to the swill. Who was the richer, I asked myself, Josh or Deirdre? We had a lot in common. Then I told her I was married and she backed off.
I had never had a single driving lesson in my life, so the day before my actual test I had agreed with Ros to go on a dummy run with a local driving instructor. I was, after all, self-taught and Ros was concerned that I did not have the correct technique, as she called it. It was a calm summer’s day. I’d put on a decent pair of trousers and a tie and shaved, and Ros said if I looked like that every day instead of dressing like a hillbilly she could fancy me again.
I wasn’t apprehensive; the only slight doubt I had was that I was taking it in the Hillman Imp, a car I had only driven a few times to Penygroes. I tied the L plates to the front and rear bumpers, cleaned the windscreen and sprayed the dashboard with air freshener. I was ready, firmly focused on what I had to do. The thought of failure never entered my head.
I shook hands with the instructor, Dafydd Rowlands, who graced the world with an immaculate neatness. Everything about him was well trimmed: his moustache, his eyebrows, no doubt his nasal hair. There was the air of an ex-military man about him as he walked around inspecting the car. On his tie were little pictures of people playing golf. He had obviously spit-and-polished the front of his shoes, but I did notice a spot of dandruff on his navy blue jacket. He held a clipboard in his right hand and had four biros in his breast pocket, seemingly lined up ready for inspection.
‘Now, I understand you wish this lesson to be a mock driving test, Mr Perry.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Fine. Let me explain a few things before we proceed.’
He told me that the test consisted of two parts. The first would be driving in traffic around Penygroes, and then we would go into the country to carry out particular manoeuvres.
‘Do you understand, Mr Perry?’
‘I do.’
As he sat down beside me, I adjusted the rear-view mirror, something I knew examiners noticed, and slid my seat forward an inch or two. Turning to me, he said, ‘Don’t I know this car?’
I was nonplussed, concerned that he had found fault with something.
‘It belongs to my wife. Is there a problem?’
‘It used to belong to Mrs Gwyn Griffith, my golfing partner,’ he said.
‘That’s my mother-in-law,’ I said.
‘Well, well, what a coincidence. I was speaking to her just last night. We are playing over in Harlech this weekend.’
I didn’t want to say isn’t it a small world, so instead told him I’d heard Eryl was a wonderful player and how much she adored her grandchildren. He laughed and said, ‘Of course, you are married to Ros. Remember me to her.’ And at last, after looking at his watch, he said, ‘We’re running ten minutes late.’
We set off through the streets of Penygroes, he with his clipboard on his lap making notes, me changing gear as smoothly as possible, keeping the correct distance from the car in front, staying under thirty m.p.h.
I stopped in plenty of time to let a lollipop lady usher schoolchildren across the zebra crossing. He didn’t acknowledge the girl with pigtails shouting to him ‘Uncle Dafydd’, pointedly ignored a chap who stood to attention and saluted him as we went past. We eventually turned into Tram Road, a quiet backstreet, where he asked me to pull over to carry out a three-point turn. This I did without too much difficulty. He gave me a red tick in a little box.
‘Now I want you to reverse in here, park between the blue Volvo and the Rover please.’
That seemed to go OK. I glanced over at his clipboard. I now had three ticks.
He told me to turn right into the high street, and immediately we were confronted by a tractor and trailer stacked high with hay, its load leaning precariously to the right. It stopped the traffic as people stood staring up at it. We were stuck in a side road next to the post office for several minutes. I made no attempt to converse, well aware that my every move was being scrutinised. Then eventually we drove around the broken bales, through the hay being blown down the high street and headed up the hill towards Carmel. He spoke only when giving instructions, but occasionally smiled to himself and shook his head gently from side to side.
Some five hundred yards after passing the track into Dyffryn, I pulled into a lay-by and turned off the engine as instructed. It had suddenly got very windy, which was often the case up here, even though the day was bright and sunny.
‘In your own time, Mr Perry, I require you to carry out the statutory hill start. Do you understand?’
‘Yes I do.’
This, I suspected from the emphasis he had put upon it, was when most people failed their test. We were on an extremely steep incline, making me somewhat nervous, as he stared straight ahead with the wind whistling through the car windows.
‘In your own time, Mr Perry.’
So I turned on the ignition, put her into first and, increasing the revs, slowly released the clutch and then the handbrake, and pulled away without a stutter.
‘Bravo,’ he said. ‘That’s where they come a cropper, up here, you know. Some plead with the examiner to have another go. But he has to stand firm. He can’t show favour.’
As we climbed on up the hill I noticed a lamb with its head stuck in the fence on the other side of the road, bleating in distress, frantically turning and twisting in the wire mesh. It was one of our store lambs; I recognised the blue dye on its rump. We were about half a mile from the land we rented from Rose Tobias.
‘Dafydd – do you mind if I call you Dafydd?’
‘Well, test etiquette would require you to address me as Mr Rowlands, but, you know, because of who your mother-in-law is . . .’
‘Dafydd,’ I said, ‘you see that lamb over there?’
‘Well, there’re a lot of them.’
‘It’s one of mine, the one that’s strangling itself to death. I’m sorry, but I’ve got to rescue the poor blighter.’ I didn’t wait for his reply. I got out and started running against the wind.
‘Mr Perry,’ he shouted after me. ‘This is most improper, you’re meant to be behaving as though you were taking your driving test!’ But I lost his words in the gale howling in my ears. I could guess what he was saying. If I would fail the test, so be it. I reached the poor thing and began to turn its head this way and that, trying to release it. How on earth did it get itself stuck so tightly? Its head seemed too big to have got through the wire in the first place. I climbed over the fence into the field and put my hand over its face, pushing it gently, trying to reverse it through the square mesh. I called over to Dafydd.
‘Can you get hold of it from behind?’
‘This is completely out of order. I’m a civil servant.’
‘Please grab a handful of wool on its neck and ease it towards you.’
Eventually we managed to manoeuvre the lamb free and I carried it over to the Hillman. I could feel its heart throbbing against my chest. I opened the door, pushed the seat forward and put it in the back. There was a wet patch on the front of my shirt. Well, the poor thing was terrified. What would you expect?
I sat down in the driver’s seat, Dafydd was next to me running a comb through his hair, brushing grass from his jacket, checking his appearance in the mirror.
‘Sorry about that. Now where were we?’ I said.
‘Well, we can’t possibly continue the lesson, not with a bloody sheep in the car. It contravenes all the Ministry of Transport regulations.’
‘Surely we can? No one knows about it. There are no witnesses. It was an act of human kindness; we have rescued an animal in distress.’
‘This has never happened to me before, not once in twenty years.’ The lamb, behind me on the back seat, started nibbling my earlobe. It managed to find a hidden erogenous zone of which I’d been completely unaware, and I found it quite a pleasant sensation. However, I was trying to save a situation that was getting completely out of hand. That’s when I appealed to Dafydd’s better nature.
‘Can we just
drive on for half a mile so I can put it back in the field?’
I held my breath. Dafydd was clearly the type of man who did everything by the book. I could see he was wrestling with his conscience, and then his face gradually softened.
‘Well, I’ll turn a blind eye this time. But not a word to a soul.’
I did another perfect hill start, which went completely unnoticed.
‘I’m doing this for Eryl, you know that.’
Distracted by events, I was somewhat surprised when Dafydd told me the next requirement for the test was the emergency stop. He suddenly hit the dashboard with the palm of his hand and I slammed on everything, pulling up the handbrake. The lamb somersaulted into the front of the car, landing between the two of us.
‘Oh dear,’ I said. ‘It’s not having a very good day.’
‘It’s not the only one,’ said Dafydd.
I drove as fast as I could, keeping my eye on the speedometer.
Pulling up outside Rose’s cottage, I let the lamb back into the field. It was over. I told Dafyyd I would be eternally grateful.
The lesson was completed without further incident. We returned to Penygroes and Dafydd turned to me with a look of resignation.
‘Well, to be honest with you there was nothing wrong with your driving, in fact you seemed to drive like a man with vast experience. But in reality the whole thing was a farce, and any examiner would have failed you. There is no provision in the Ministry of Transport regulations that allows for livestock to be in a vehicle during a driving test.’
‘I appreciate that, Mr Rowlands, but an animal’s welfare comes first.’
‘I would also respectfully ask you not to mention the trauma you have put me through today. I do not wish to become associated with what some would see as a comical incident.’