Peaks and Troughs

by Nick Perry

  Harry rang that evening, surrounded by noise and music.

  ‘I can’t hear you,’ I said.

  ‘I said it’s ours. I got it for a hundred and fifty. The sausage-making machine.’

  ‘Oh, good. Where are you?’

  ‘I’m at the left-handed charity darts match in Caernarfon. You sponsored me three quid if you remember.’

  ‘Oh, right. See you tomorrow.’

  Harry had never let go of the idea of making sausages, always convinced they would be a money spinner.

  Evan Evans, who, without fail, called at least once a week, had not informed me that he would be bringing his regional sales manager, Reg Dyer, to pay us a visit. Evan greeted me as if I were a close friend, with a familiarity I had not seen before. He even handed me a bag of sweets, saying, ‘You know who they’re for, wink, wink.’

  I shook Reg’s hand. ‘What beautiful views you have up here,’ he said, drawing in a deep breath. ‘Such wonderful clean air.’

  ‘You can’t live without it,’ said Evan, laughing loudly at his own joke.

  Reg ignored him. ‘You know, if I lived up here I’d be a happy man.’ In his late forties, he was straight out of the office, wearing the uniform of a company man: navy blue blazer, white drip-dry shirt, striped tie and grey flannel trousers. Evan had told me he had worked his way up from the milling machines.

  We ambled around the buildings looking in on the pigs, Evan speaking for me, saying how pleased I was with the service I got from Crosfields. I was also apparently impressed by the fantastic food-conversion rates, the high numbers of porkers that graded A at FMC. It became obvious then why Evan felt it so necessary to portray us as such good buddies. They were looking at his performance. It could have been to do with his sales figures, or maybe something else was going on, but it was clear that Evan had to justify certain things to his regional sales manager. Maybe I was just one of several clients they would be calling on today.

  Reg pulled out a customer information sheet from his briefcase and said he thought I could save at least £1,000 a year if I installed a silo and had my concentrates blown straight into it.

  ‘Gets you away from the tonnage rate,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll have to think about that. It’s a big chunk of capital expenditure. I’m still paying for a cold store.’

  ‘Well don’t say I didn’t tell you; it would be paid for in three years.’

  I wanted to change the subject. I had no interest in buying a silo. ‘So, what brings you here today?’

  ‘We’re looking at what’s going on out in the field, as we do from time to time.’

  ‘Some change is afoot, you mean?’ I said.

  ‘Could be . . . could be.’

  Evan, now with a wrinkled frown, had lost his joviality.

  ‘By the way,’ said Reg, ‘you are invited to the Royal Hotel in Caernarfon. It’s the annual dinner, when all our customers get together. You know, swap ideas. Your friend Josh Hummel is giving a talk on how to improve food-conversion rates.’

  What other subject could Josh talk about? ‘Are you sure I’ll fit in? I’m an outsider when it comes to these dos.’

  ‘We’ll arrange it so you’re seated next to Josh.’

  ‘No, please don’t,’ I found myself saying, ‘not for a whole evening.’

  The difficulty I had with the pig industry fraternity was my unconventional approach to it. When people share a common belief you have conformity. I lived outside the circle, hence the wide berth Josh Hummel now gave me. He wouldn’t want to be seated next to me any more than I did to him.

  Halfway up the drive Evan and Reg stopped their car and reversed back to allow an old Austin A60 van to get past them. I knew that van. It was the one I had driven to Caernarfon the day of the WH Smith incident.

  ‘I’ve got it,’ said Harry.

  I followed him into the barn, where he bolted the sausage-making machine on to a slate slab, tightening the screws that secured it while I fetched the finely chopped off cuts of meat we’d already prepared from the cold store. We bulked out the meat with sage and onion and a few secret ingredients Harry claimed were handed down from his grandmother. He then slipped on to the metal tube what looked like a huge Durex, but was in fact the hog-gut sausage casing, and began to turn the handle. So we watched Dyffryn’s first sausage come into the world. It was a moving experience even if somewhat pornographic. We decided that before we launched them for public consumption they should pass the taste test at supper that night.

  We all agreed we had another success on our hands. Sam and Lysta covered theirs with baked beans, soon asking for more. There was a succulence to a Dyffryn sausage you would not find in a commercial brand.

  ‘Maybe a little less salt,’ Harry thought.

  When I drove up to the Nichollses’ bungalow in Bontnewydd, with its manicured lawn, clipped box hedges and a topiary of what I assumed to be a heron, I was impressed by an overwhelming neatness and the effort required to keep it just so. And Gwenda too, opening the front door, was immaculate and well fronted, with rounded breasts under a Bri-Nylon pullover. She liked gold, a glittering light coming from her necklace and earrings. A bracelet of leaping deer encircled her wrist. She stood on the ‘Welcome’ mat inside the conservatory, beside an umbrella stand full of walking sticks with carved handles. Above her a bright plastic parrot swayed on a brass perch. I was holding two polythene bags of jointed lamb that I placed on a glass table.

  We sat amongst the pot plants beneath an old, leafless vine fastened by loops of wire to the white beams. As was often the case with first meetings, I listened to anecdotes of a long-standing friendship between the Nichollses and my in-laws. That done with, she talked of her own life, her work with the Women’s Institute, the Rotary Club. Here I sniffed another business opportunity, as I spelled out what we were doing at Dyffryn. How modern farming methods, through the over-use of chemicals, would turn the earth into a dust bowl. That we couldn’t go on taking from the planet, we had to give back. She listened intently, seemed to be interested in my ideas. I even said how important it was to educate our children about these things too, that schools should have at least a bit of land where pupils could connect with the earth and get their hands dirty. She was so enthused she suggested I give a talk on the subject to the WI, which I agreed to without a second thought.

  ‘There will be about twenty of us; can you stretch it out for half an hour?’

  ‘Of course. It’s a big subject.’

  I was rather pleased with myself as I drove back to Dyffryn. I could see the WI of Caernarfonshire spreading the message, converting to organic produce. But Ros pointed out that to speak for half an hour I was going to have to write a lot of words, pages of them, and not repeat myself. I usually made things up as I went along.

  Seeing Jack approaching me with a black eye, my first thought was that he had been head-butted by the ram. It was the tupping season, and the testosterone was raging. But that was not the case; far from it. He’d been on the receiving end of a well-aimed punch, bestowed upon him by a ruffian shepherd over in Rhyd-Ddu. The man had been beating his dog, and Jack couldn’t tolerate it. They fought together in a pen full of sheep, swinging punches at each other, whilst the dog fled and the sheep panicked, breaking down the hurdles and scattering across the fields. Idris Owen was the shepherd’s name, and he had a reputation for burning a short fuse, spending more than the odd night in a police cell.

  After the fracas they lay breathless, their faces caked in mud. But Idris Owen had thrown the first punch and knew he was in trouble. There were no witnesses, and they were out in the wild with the light fading. Owen went on cursing Jack, spitting blood from a cut lip, saying it would be Jack’s word against his. But Jack’s only care was for the dog, a young collie bitch who had suffered a merciless thrashing. Little did I know, as Jack described her condition, that what followed would have such an effect on my own life. For out there, as darkness gathered around them, Jack and Idris Owen did their own deal
. They agreed that if Jack was given the dog, nothing further would be said.

  ‘So you’ve got another dog,’ I said.

  ‘No. I want you to have her. She’s traumatised. She can’t work; she needs a home.’

  I didn’t know what to say. A shocked silence followed.

  ‘Where is she now?’ I asked at last.

  ‘In the back of the van, shaking, scared out of her life.’

  I wanted to say well of course, bring her in, but Ros was over at Trefanai and it needed to be a joint decision. I asked Jack how on earth he’d caught her. It turned out it was Meg who had brought her back; Jack had seen them coming down from the hills together in the falling darkness.

  When Rob heard the story he said she could live in the caravan with him. But Ros’s heart went out to her straight away, while Sam wanted to hit Idris Owen over the head with a shovel.

  Jack carried her into the sitting room. From then on we spoke only in whispers. She never stopped shivering, although not from the cold. Ros fetched blankets, and we made a bed in a corner behind the sofa. She hid herself away as animals do when they’re ill.

  It was an unusual Saturday night. There was no music, and we said just the minimum to each other. At midnight she had not reappeared, showing no interest in the bowls of food and water we’d put down. Jack slept on the sofa, believing she would take some comfort from Meg’s being in the room. In the morning we tiptoed around the kitchen and ate a quiet breakfast. We grimaced at each other if we suddenly raised our voices, and left the house hoping for the best.

  As we walked along the footpath beside the Menai Strait, a low mist floating over the still waters, Gwyn told me that the long goodbye was beginning in his life. He said there was a hook on the back of his surgery door where in less than six months he would hang his white coat for the last time. I was never to use the word retirement, or dare suggest that he should be looking forward to it. The thought of holding his last clinic on the last day of his working life depressed him. He’d already heard of the big farewell that was being planned, the local health authority organising an evening when he would be presented with an award. He was a self-effacing man and loathed the idea of having to make a farewell speech. Eryl, who basked in her husband’s reputation, was not holding back, dismissing his sensitivities, saying that his lifetime’s work should be recognised and applauded.

  ‘The paediatric world will be a poorer place without him,’ she said, miffed he had not been considered for an MBE.

  That Sunday morning, watching the sea birds floating on the strait, disturbed only by the weekend rowers, he told me things he would never have said in the library, where we spent most of our time together. About his work, the struggle to eradicate tuberculosis from the villages of North Wales. He was a doctor of the people, wanting no accolades for what he had achieved. We walked for another hour, turning back too late to arrive at Trefanai for a one o’clock lunch. Eryl complained that the roast had dried out, and although Ros calmed her down she still scolded us. ‘Thoughtless, the two of you, just thoughtless.’

  She banged plates down on the table, kicked the oven door shut. As she put the meat in front of Gwyn for him to carve she said, ‘Don’t blame me if it tastes awful.’

  ‘Nan’s so grumpy,’ Lysta whispered to Ros. But Sam lightened the mood by reciting his six times table in Welsh and Lysta, not to be outdone, played ‘Greensleeves’ on her recorder after lunch.

  When we returned to Dyffryn the vet, Barry Evans, was just leaving. Jack had got him over to look at the dog, who still lay unmoving on her bed. He had given her a shot of adrenalin, telling Jack it was in the lap of the gods whether she was going to make it.

  ‘Let’s give her a name,’ said Lysta, suggesting immediately that Poppy would suit her. Ros thought Bryony, while Sam liked Lulu. Later that evening Lysta handed everyone a piece of paper, making us write down the name of our choice. She put them all into a basket and asked Ros to shut her eyes and pull one out. Jack did a drum roll to add to the suspense.

  Ros unrolled a piece of paper. ‘And the winner is . . . Moss.’

  ‘Moss!’

  ‘Who chose that?’

  ‘I did,’ I said. ‘It’s a lovely name for her, in keeping with Dyffryn. We’ve got moss everywhere.’

  ‘I like it,’ said Jack.

  In the days that followed she gradually improved. At first it was no more than tiny things: an ear would prick up when anyone entered or left the room. We hand fed her little bits of chicken; she wouldn’t eat from her bowl. She lifted her head whenever Meg came near and they touched noses. She let the children stroke her gently. She wasn’t shaking any more, and sometimes she would look out at us from behind the sofa.

  I knew for certain that the worst was over when she barked for the first time. She had heard Dewi pull up in his van outside the house. Although she remained hidden, I knew then she would survive. We’d had her for nearly three weeks, and when I told Jack he agreed she was on the way to making a full recovery. We needed to get her outside; she wasn’t house-trained, and the sitting room smelled like an old kennel. Ros wanted to open the windows and disinfect the whole place.

  So Jack and I walked her on a lead with Meg across the field to the boundary wall with Llwyndu Canol. There we sat with Moss at my feet sniffing the air, her coat ruffled in the breeze. Only a small circle of bluish purple remained on Jack’s eyelid, and a scab on his knuckle, where his fist had connected with Idris Owen.

  ‘I feel we have lived a bit of life now,’ I said.

  ‘I suppose we have.’

  ‘Would you want to live any of it again?’ I asked.

  ‘No. What about you?’

  ‘Some of it, but only the nice bits.’

  Frieda walked towards us, nosy as always, curious to find out what was going on. When she saw Moss she picked up speed, even at her age, her udder swinging from side to side. This aggression was out of character.

  ‘Pick her up,’ said Jack. ‘Quickly! I’ll deal with Frieda. Walk away, or we’ll be back to square one.’

  So I scooped Moss up into my arms, and turned my back on the stampeding Frieda, while Jack, flailing his arms, managed to stop her just a few feet from us. Moss was calm, completely unaware that half a ton of cow had been charging down on her. It goes to show that even the sweetest creatures will not tolerate an intruder on their territory. You wouldn’t have expected it from Frieda, who ambled round the place as a pet. But no harm was done. Walking Moss quietly to the gate I came across Hughie, giving Bryn a dressing down. I might just as well not have been there for all the notice they took of me. But Moss panicked at the raised voices, pulling on the lead, terrified. It was going to take a long time for her to forget the beating she’d received. Idris Owen had a lot to answer for when his day of reckoning came.

  Ros’s head was thick with cold, giving her the perfect excuse not to accompany me to the Crosfields dinner at the Royal Hotel. I wanted to cry off myself, but Evan Evans had rung the day before, saying how much he was looking forward to seeing us there.

  I owned one suit that I’d bought in Kensington High Street years ago. It had flared trousers, with faint stripes running through the cloth. It still fitted me well, but I looked as if I belonged to a bygone era. I’d never mastered the art of fastening a tie, but I didn’t want Ros leaning over me with her germs so Rob, who claimed to know what he was doing, half throttled me with a Windsor knot.

  My first impression, walking into the dining room under the crystal chandeliers, was that everyone around me was overdressed. There was no mistaking the fact that I stood out, when I would have preferred to be anonymous. To those who filled the glittering room, I must have looked like someone who had just come from a jumble sale wearing second-hand clothes.

  I looked for a face I knew, but there wasn’t one. I walked around the circular tables searching out the place names, wanting to know who I would be sitting next to. A girl with teenage spots, wearing a flowery apron, offered me a glass of sparkling w
ine, which I sipped as I stood alone. In a gold-leaf mirror I came face to face with myself and saw just how out of place I looked.

  A hand came on my shoulder. ‘Perry, good to see you. Where is your wife?’ It was Evan Evans, and after I told him Ros was unwell he took me into the throng, introducing me one after another to the valued Crosfields customers.

  These weren’t real farmers, I could tell by their soft handshakes. No dirt had ever got under these fingernails. They were factory farmers, no more than businessmen, with huge intensive units far removed from my world. After ‘Pleased to meet you’ no dialogue followed. Having scanned me with indifferent eyes, they turned back to whoever they were talking to. Only the wives smiled, but none would break away and talk to a total stranger. Especially one dressed the way I was.

  I noticed Reg Dyer walking towards me, on his arm a redheaded woman, wearing a low cut dress revealing freckled breasts. ‘My wife, Rebecca,’ he said. She looked at me quizzically.

  ‘You remind me of the singer in Fleetwood Mac.’ Nobody had ever said that to me before.

  ‘It’s the suit.’

  ‘I love “Albatross”. You can float away on that guitar,’ swaying as she spoke, closing her eyes dreamily. But Reg took hold of the conversation, keen to get my reaction to the evening.

  ‘It’s marvellous.’ What else could I have said?

  I told them of Ros’s head cold, and when Rebecca Dyer realised I was on my own she said, ‘There’s a band playing later. You can dance with me after we have eaten.’

  ‘No thank you,’ I said. ‘I have absolutely no rhythm.’

  Sitting next to me as we ate our prawn cocktail was a turkey farmer called Hywel Thomas from Criccieth. He reared three thousand birds in air-conditioned sheds with automatic feeders.

  ‘Most people are ignorant about turkeys,’ he told me. ‘They think they’re only ready to eat at Christmas. Nothing could be further from the truth. If I ruled the world turkeys would be on school menus, part of a good hospital meal. As an industry, we don’t advertise enough. One day I’ll dress as a turkey myself, stand outside the Co-op, see if that improves awareness.’