by Nick Perry
The snow did not settle on Christmas morning, so the singing of ‘White Christmas’ over lunch was abandoned. The day had cleared, the skies brightening and becoming cloudless and still. We all jumped into the Land Rover and drove to Dinas Dinlle beach. Down here as always we walked into a strong headwind, heads bowed, arms linked, all words lost to the roar of the sea. We charged like front-row forwards, pushing against an invisible scrum. Seagulls with outstretched wings were carried sideways, no more than white flecks blown like scraps of paper, before disappearing high above the beach. Over Cwm Silyn clouds poured in great rolling shapes like stampeding rhinoceroses, while waves broke upon the shore and soaked our shoes. But no one cared, all of us in our own way exhilarated, shoved together, laughing, shouting silently to each other. Then, when we turned and the wind was at our backs, we ran, stumbling over the shingle, slipping on the seaweed, clothes flapping, ears burning with the cold.
All this we shared on an elemental Christmas morning, as our turkey roasted in the Aga. The table was laid with crackers, and two expensive bottles of wine brought by my mother that Rob had decanted. With our own logs burning on the fire, we tucked into a home-raised bird surrounded by vegetables grown at Dyffryn. There is, without doubt, great satisfaction in having produced what sits before you on the table.
That evening Sam and Lysta suffered post-Christmas syndrome, their deflated little souls unable to take any more, falling asleep like two crumpled parcels amongst the gift wrapping. Ros and I carried them upstairs and as I closed the curtains I glimpsed Dave strolling past the house in the light from the downstairs windows. No sooner was I in the kitchen than I was out of the door, grabbing a torch, shouting to Rob and Jack as I ran into the night. Meg immediately sensed the excitement and rushed past me as I got into my wellingtons, taking a sharp left turn and disappearing towards the sheep grazing in the higher fields. Dave was heading in the opposite direction. How on earth had he got out of his pen? I was annoyed with him. Why didn’t he appreciate it was Christmas?
Jack went after Meg, Rob and I after our wandering boar. We turned down the winding lane that led to the lower fields, but when we got to the closed gate there was no sign of him.
‘Bugger me, where is he?’
We called for him, listened to hear him grunting. Nothing. He had disappeared.
As we made our way back to the house, I saw that the small gate that led to an overgrown garden of old blackcurrant and gooseberry bushes, an untended area that one day we would tidy up but which now lay neglected, was standing open. And there we found him, happily turning sods over, getting hold of the roots, smelling the decaying leaf mould, having his own private Christmas party. He did not like being disturbed; having come upon this treasure he now laid claim to it. Pigs have a vicious bite. I had not experienced one, but Hughie had told me he had once been bitten by a sow, who locked her jaw round his thigh and wouldn’t let go. It was agony, he said; her teeth sank so deep the wound had to be stitched, and he still bore the scars to this day. Not that I’d seen them. All this went through my mind as I approached Dave, calling him gently. He was aware of me, but was more interested in uprooting a blackcurrant bush. Rob stood below the open gate, holding a corrugated roofing sheet to stop him turning to the right and heading down the track.
As yet I had not seen a nasty side to Dave, so I got behind him and gave him a couple of pats on his back. ‘Go on, Dave,’ I kept saying as he walked slowly towards the gate, sniffing the smells that stirred his curiosity. No wonder those French truffle hunters use pigs to unearth that highly prized fungus, for Dave was certainly on the scent of something that lay hidden beneath the soil.
Jack appeared with a bucket of pig nuts. And that was all it took to move the unmovable; just rattle a bucket, sprinkle two or three nuts in front of his great bulk and he will follow wherever you want to go. So on Christmas night we got Dave back into his pen, but we never did discover how he’d made his escape.
On Boxing Day my mother and I walked to the village of Carmel. We had one of those long talks that begins in the past, going over the changes one has been through until it arrives at the present, hatching plans for the future. She was only fifty, living alone in a flat in West Hampstead, working in Leicester Square for Spotlight, the acting agency. ‘Too many years in the same routine’ was how she put it. Then we stopped on the road, as people do when deep in conversation and a significant point is about to be made. She told me how much she had enjoyed the last few days, that she had felt a sense of freedom. ‘Maybe it’s the landscape, the mountains and the sea; life is so unrestricted. And my two boys are here, and Ros and the grandchildren.’ She asked how I would feel if she were to move here and join us. ‘I can buy a little house nearby.’
‘I would be more than happy,’ I told her, ‘and everybody else would be too.’
When we got to Carmel I showed her the village school, the kindergarten that Sam and Lysta would go to, the bakery where Ros bought our bread, the newsagent’s. These villages, I told her, didn’t have a lot to offer, just the basics, something I reminded her she should bear in mind if she was going to be living here.
She couldn’t drive, and Caernarfon, the nearest town to Penygroes, was seven miles away. She would have to rely on the bus service. It made me think about the practicalities of her decision. But Ros had a much better idea of these things than I did.
‘Tonight,’ I said, for she was leaving in a couple of days, ‘you should have a talk with Ros about it all.’
With Dave having proved his potency and our gilts now all in pig, I ordered another five from Josh Hummel. The plan, allowing for the vagaries of Mother Nature, was to have a continuous flow of porkers to go once a month to the abattoir in Caernarfon. Our first farrowing was due within a week, and now the gilt looked close. I squeezed her distended teats each morning, to see if she had that pre-milk oozing from her. She seemed uncomfortable, and even though she lay on her side she could not settle. Last thing at night after I’d done the rounds I would go and check on her. There were so many things that could go wrong, especially with a first litter. I started to leave the infrared light on in her pen just in case she farrowed early. It was not uncommon for a sow to stand up and tidy her bedding after giving birth, only to lie down on a piglet unawares and suffocate it. The infrared light was to attract the piglets away from the mother to where they could lie in warmth behind diagonal planks that they could crawl under but the sow could not. Also, piglets can stagger around, disoriented, until they collapse in some dark corner of the pen and die before they’re discovered. Sometimes, the worst thing of all, a gilt would eat her litter. All these things I needed to keep an eye on. Even if you have done everything to reduce the risks, the farrowing pen is still fraught with danger; and in the winter, with our set-up, the cold weather was another threat.
I had another sleepless night and at three a.m. got out of bed, found a torch and went up to look in on her. The light shone in the corner of the pen, but she was up chewing the wooden boards that separated her from the piglet area. She began turning in circles, trying to catch her rear end, obviously uncomfortable. I gave her a scoop of pig nuts and she scoffed them down, but then she resumed her pacing. I didn’t enter, she was too agitated, so I leant over the pen door and spoke to her softly, but I couldn’t comfort her. Time crept by, and after an hour there was still no sign of her lying down and giving birth.
I went back to bed, managing not to wake Ros, and lay in the darkness unable to sleep. At seven a.m. I was back in the farrowing shed and when Rob joined me for the early morning feed I told him of the night I’d been through. He thought we should ring Barry Evans, our vet. All sorts of things were going through my head: maybe a piglet lying in the breech position, or the litter dead inside her. Hughie was of the opinion that you only called the vet out as a last resort. Hill farmers were tight with their money, thought that you paid through the nose for vets to come out in their expensive cars to stick a syringe full of drugs into the suffering beas
t. ‘They talk arrogant and don’t know the animal.’ I decided to wait; she wasn’t due for another three days. Her appetite was normal. As she ate I squeezed a teat again, and a yellowy milk dripped from her.
It was a Saturday morning, and after I’d milked Frieda Ros and I drove down to do the weekly shop at the Co-op. She bought the ingredients to make bara brith, a kind of Welsh fruit cake that she and the twins were going to bake in the afternoon. We shopped only for the necessities, never exceeding our ten-pound budget. In the Paragon garage, as I filled up the Land Rover, Tom Felce came over and gave me six mackerel. ‘That’ll put me in credit,’ he said. ‘I’ll come by next week to square up with vegetables.’
After lunch I wanted to listen to the rugby match from Cardiff Arms Park. Wales were playing England, and I decided to sit with the expectant gilt rather than watch the game with Rob on TV. It was a cold, clear February afternoon. She was up and about again, restless, snorting heavily. I put in fresh bedding to occupy her. She continually pushed the straw into heaps, tossing it all over the place, eventually making a bed that resembled a large bird’s nest.
I put my transistor radio on top of the breeze block wall and sat in the pen with her. Not the most comfortable way to listen to the game, but the pig came first. I opened a thermos of tea and ate a Kit Kat. Wales were hot favourites to win, and took an early lead through a penalty.
For a minute or two she seemed to have settled down, but then she was up again, walking around the pen. Whether it was the noise of the crowd or the singing that annoyed her I don’t know, but in one frightful moment she leapt forward and closed her teeth tightly round the radio. All that remained visible was the leather strap. I could still hear the commentary, the sound coming in waves as she paced about. Then I noticed the tip of the aerial protruding between the loose flabby skin of her mouth and managed with two fingers to extend it, picking up a much clearer signal. By this time England had scored and converted the try. At last, twenty minutes later, she lay down. I knelt close to her, listening to the match. Then it began. She pushed, she gasped, she groaned, and she opened her mouth, allowing me to grab the radio. What a relief when the first piglet arrived.
Rob appeared at half time and asked what I thought of the game so far.
‘If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me,’ I said, wiping the radio with my handkerchief, trying to straighten the aerial.
‘Don’t tell me you lost reception!’
‘No. Even inside her mouth the match came through loud and clear.’
‘Inside her mouth!’
‘Yes, she grabbed the thing in the tenth minute. Look at the state of it. What will Ros say tomorrow morning when she listens to her beloved Archers?’
‘Thank goodness she didn’t swallow it.’
By six o’clock that evening she had ten piglets lined up along her, all feeding vigorously. Wales had beaten England 22-6, but we still had something to celebrate after what had been a long and eventful day.
We all went to the Quarryman’s Arms in Llanllyfni, the first time we’d eaten out. Harry was playing darts with the barmaid and, strangely for him, didn’t come over, acknowledging us only with a wink as he raised his glass of beer. In the corner two old timers were arm wrestling, surrounded by a crowd of rowdy locals. The money was down and both were soaked in sweat, their faces looking as if they were about to explode. We ate steak and kidney pie with a bowl of chips, trying to have a conversation, but I couldn’t hear a word Ros was saying.
‘Tomorrow is a dry day. That’s why they’re going at it hammer and tongs tonight,’ she shouted across at me.
Dewi came in, dressed in shirt and tie, with an elderly lady on his arm.
‘This is me ma,’ he yelled. ‘We come in here for our Saturday night rave-up. She puts her long life down to a pint of Mackeson and a pickled egg, don’t you, Ma?’
She couldn’t hear a word he was saying. They sat down at a table obviously reserved for them, the lure of Mackeson and a pickled egg too much to resist even amongst the hullaballoo.
I put my mouth close to Ros’s ear. ‘Is there any point in staying any longer?’ She shook her head. Sam and Lysta seemed not the slightest bit bothered by the din. Then all suddenly went quiet as the lights were switched on and off. Coming from behind the bar, the landlord had a special announcement to make.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please. First of all, I’d like to say I know of no other person in Llanllyfni who has ever reached the staggering age of seventy-five. It is quite remarkable, the longevity one can achieve after forty years on the Mackeson and a pickled egg. Or is it, I ask myself, a clean mind, because I hate to think what her insides are like. Ladies and gentlemen, please stand and raise your glasses for Glynnis, and let us sing to the most beautiful lady in the village Penblwydd hapus i chi . . .’ (Happy birthday to you).
When we got back to Dyffryn, I went to check on the piglets. They had found their way under the warm infrared light and were sleeping, a little contented heap of them. In the sitting room Rob and Jack were bemoaning the fact that there was a sad lack of good-looking women in Penygroes. Ros said they would have to cruise the nightlife of Caernarfon, or better still go to Bangor; at least that was a university town. ‘You don’t come to these parts looking for a girl,’ she told them.
‘It’s not that I’m getting desperate, but I’m beginning to find sheep attractive,’ said Rob.
‘Me too,’ replied Jack. ‘Maybe I’ll ask one home for the night.’
‘Shampoo its fleece, put on some lipstick. There must be some accommodating ewe out there in the field who wouldn’t say no to a one-night stand,’ Rob carried on.
‘There is one, actually. Very friendly, called Nibbles.’
‘Yes, I’ve come across her. A bit like mutton dressed as lamb, though.’
Their expressions said it all, and I wondered how long they would tolerate a life of forced celibacy.
Then we did what we always did: rolled a joint, put on some Pink Floyd and watched the fire burn and fade. Jack and Rob were certainly hanging on in quiet desperation.
6
The Great Escape
Every couple of weeks Jack, Rob and I would go to Bryncir market, five miles away, to keep up with what was going on. Everything passed through there: fat cattle, stores, barren cows, lambs to be sold on for fattening, ewes at the end of their breeding life and bought by the butchers for mutton, even old sows, whose meat would fill pork pies for Roberts of Port Dinorwic. All had a hammer price that showed the level of demand for livestock in Caernarfonshire.
In plumes of smoke the bedraggled hill farmers gathered together in a huddle of flat caps and torn coats, downcast as the weather. The auctioneer’s voice gabbled faster than the repeated rhythm of a train over the tracks, ‘Who’ll give me forty, forty, forty-five, forty-five, do I hear fifty, fifty, fifty-five.’ Or so we guessed in this world of theatre, always fascinated by these weekly rituals acted out in such a strange atmosphere. Choreographed by whom, I asked myself, for all were playing their part, shuffling from leg to leg. A word of English rarely rose from this great sea of wagging tongues in toothless mouths. The unknown language buffeted our ears like waves breaking over rocks, animated with fingers and fists and growling faces. Here all the deals, the buying and selling, were sealed with no more than the raising of an eyebrow. It was a mystery, grotesque yet balletic, a dance of its own making amongst the nodding and shaking of heads. Swollen knuckles, dirty scarred hands clasping crooks, men leaning towards each other, swaying to and fro, haggling, offering a spat-upon palm to show a price had been agreed. No more than bystanders, never acknowledged, we moved through them without a sign of recognition, although they knew who we were all right. We were ignored as outsiders within the crowd.
Gethin Hughes cast glances our way but turned his back, never greeting us or introducing us to anyone. Hughie too showed no friendship, despite all the weeks we had come to Bryncir. We were not part of them, excluded not only becaus
e we didn’t speak Welsh, but because we were English. Or maybe they saw us as no more than fools playing at farming. Gethin’s response to my suggestion of bartering had been a tut tut, a look of disdain and just one sentence: ‘I deal only in hard cash, my boy.’ I almost said ‘Well, why don’t you pay my brother with some of it?’ but thought better of it, fearing the consequences of falling out with a neighbour. Mrs Musto’s words were never far from my thoughts, a constant reminder that a step too far would leave us ostracised in a community that despite Ros’s family connections had never embraced us. Anti-English feeling was running high at this time, hitting the headlines; the buying up of Welsh properties as second homes was bitterly resented.
As the lots were sold, the farmers wandered across the road to the County Inn to down pints and meat pies and feed the flames of local gossip. Then, with beer heavy on their breaths, they drove off in tractors, lorries and vans. Gradually the car park emptied, the pens were hosed down and the place became deserted.
Usually, following these visits to Bryncir, we would drive to Dinas and give Meg a run. We’d sit in the Beach Café, eating a bacon sandwich, squirting ketchup from a plastic tomato, drinking tea and smoking, talking about what we had seen at the market. The bay window would visibly vibrate, while outside the advertising boards spun chaotically before they toppled over in the high wind. Why Gwyneth Thomas kept the place open out of season, I had no idea. She busied herself behind the counter, the tea urn letting off so much steam that the windows misted over with condensation. She allowed Meg inside no matter how irritated she must have felt when the dog shook out her coat on the clean floor. She was a kind woman and brought Meg titbits from the fridge. In the winter months we never saw anyone else in there and we always left a generous tip, which she would sometimes gather up and slip back into our pockets.