Peaks and Troughs

by Nick Perry

  ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘Keep bloody looking,’ he shouted. ‘If we don’t find them they will suffocate under a drift. We’ve got to keep searching.’

  ‘Look at the dogs. It’s hopeless. Let’s take them back to the Land Rover before the snow gets right over them.’

  With the dogs in the Land Rover, we came up with another plan and carved up the fields between us, who would go where. We had a whistle each, which we’d blow only if we found them.

  Just to slog through the snow was a battle in itself. The effort of walking, of lifting one foot then the other, drained us of energy, and our ears were on fire. I was coming to the point of giving up altogether when I thought I heard bleating. I stopped and listened and like a fool bleated back. What else would you do? It seemed a natural way to respond to a sheep. I heard it again, but couldn’t tell from which direction. So I blew my whistle, waiting for Jack to give a blast on his. I waited, counting the seconds. After ten, I gave another longer whistle, blowing until my lungs were empty.

  ‘Where are you, Jack?’

  Nothing; and of course he couldn’t hear me, in a howling wind that consumed every sound. Neither could I see his torchlight waving, so I went down into the snow on all fours, shining the torch. I crawled beside a stretch of wall, under a high bank of snow, feeling at last the woollen coat of a ewe, tight up against the stone. She panicked, leaping up, breaking the surface, shaking her head, drawing in deep snowy breaths, trying to run from me. But under the heavy weight of her coat and in the deepness of the snow she couldn’t. It was impossible to move quickly, but I went along that wall scooping away the snow in my arms, digging down, knowing they were there, a long line of them, queuing quietly, waiting for death to come and take them.

  At last I heard a whistle and some yards from me saw Jack’s torchlight.

  ‘They’re here!’ I shouted. ‘They’re here! What took you so long? Sorry, don’t answer that.’

  So Jack and I dug them out, he working from one end, me from the other, pulling them free one by one, their coats clagged with snowballs. Released from certain death, they stood around sniffing the white air, staring blankly at each other. We counted twenty-eight; two had not survived. They’d suffocated, their nostrils thick with snow.

  It was three a.m. and still the blizzard raged. Now we were faced with getting the ewes safely to the barn. But Jack, who knew his sheep, walked ahead knowing they would follow him, while I hung back making sure we didn’t lose any of them. That trek was long and arduous, for the snow swept into our faces. We’d been out there for over an hour. I couldn’t feel my toes and my fingers were purple with cold. My face glowed and both my ears had little furnaces burning inside them.

  By the time we had got them housed in the barn, broken up hay bales and put concentrates in the troughs it was 4.40 a.m. Deep down in a dry trouser pocket Jack found the Golden Virginia, and we smoked a couple of roll-ups.

  ‘They’re all in lamb, you know,’ he said as we watched them, none the worse for what they had been through.

  ‘Look at the colour of your fingers,’ I said.

  ‘Frostbite.’

  ‘Well, Gitto’s not going to be coming this morning.’

  ‘Suppose we’ll lose our power.’

  ‘Jack, are we crazy? What a way to earn a living!’

  ‘I don’t know myself, not any longer.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Corinna doesn’t want to stay in North Wales after she’s got her diploma.’

  ‘Now you tell me. You certainly know when to choose the moment. So you’ll be on your way?’

  ‘Probably, who knows.’

  We made our way to the house. A light still shone from the kitchen. The larch trees were buckled over, snow clinging to their branches. It was two inches over my wellingtons. There was no let-up, and after the longest drought it now seemed we were in for a long hard winter.

  Having slept for only an hour, wearing bed socks and gloves, I felt as if I had just got into bed when Lysta whispered in my ear.

  ‘Dad, wake up. It’s snowing. It’s very deep. We won’t be able to go to school.’

  It was still dark when I turned on the radio to listen to the news. The weather was bad everywhere, bringing the country to a standstill as it always did.

  From the bedroom window I watched the sun come up into a clear sky, shining over the whitest landscape; it looked as though no man had walked upon the earth. I half expected a woolly mammoth to appear. An untarnished vision as far as the eye could see. Not a sound, utter silence, not a breath of wind. Nothing moved; complete stillness, two colours visible, a brilliant blue and an unblemished whiteness. All the roads were blocked, not a vehicle moved or engine started up. The machines lay silent as the sun dispersed its buttery rays over the crisp white hills.

  Then it all came back, my life, pigs waiting to be fed, and I hurried and got dressed. There was no sign of Harry and of course there wouldn’t be. I laughed at the thought, imagining him trying to cycle up from Penygroes.

  Ros was worried about my fingers, and when I showed her my toes she said I should go to the doctor.

  ‘I don’t think I’ll be going today.’

  I told her about our night, that Jack was sleeping in the back bedroom.

  ‘You really need to get your hands and feet looked at.’

  But I was out of the house, needing to see how the pigs were after the night of the blizzard. Why we hadn’t lost our electricity was beyond me. Having fed the pigs, I checked the litters. They had all survived; not a single loss. I always feared the worst after extreme weather, rain, wind or snow.

  I walked Dave from his pen. Snow up to his shoulders, he ate mouthfuls of the stuff, burying his head in it as I threw snowballs at him. I left him to amuse himself and went down to get Frieda, who had spent the night in a sheltered corner, where the larch trees leant over, creating a protective canopy. She stood alone in a patch of green, an oasis in a white desert. She followed me reluctantly; it must have been uncomfortable to feel her udder swaying in the snow. I wondered if it would stop her milk flowing. Maybe I should wash her teats with warm water.

  We were completely snowed in, and would be for days. We cleared the drive by reversing the Land Rover up and down, compacting the snow. We drove the Fergie along the track to the Carmel road. The virgin snow was smooth and sparkled in the sun; nothing had come this far, neither up nor down, not a footprint from man or animal. Across the fields a breeze blew transparent powdery clouds like icing sugar, glittering against the blue background of the day. The only birdsong came from a blackbird. Overwhelmed by the whiteness, even she knew there would be no worms on the menu today through a foot of snow.

  The children loved it, building snowmen from huge balls the size of large boulders that they rolled down the drive. They threw handfuls of bird seed down in front of the house, only to watch the geese scoff the lot. Jack couldn’t get to Hendy, but telephoned Corinna to say we were cut off from the world. She told him snowploughs were already clearing the Caernarfon road, and those who lived above their shops had opened for business. Teams of people were sweeping the pavements. That old spirit of rallying round in times of trouble was alive and well in Penygroes.

  Harry rang, Lysta answering in her impeccable telephone voice. ‘Hello, Penygroes 441, how can I help you?’ They were well trained by Ros, always speaking professionally in case it was a customer wishing to place an order.

  ‘I’m not going to get up there today,’ said Harry.

  ‘Nor tomorrow,’ I told him.

  ‘I could come in by hot-air balloon.’

  ‘It’s all right, Jack’s here. We can cope.’

  Three days later the thaw set in, and everything began to melt. The sound of constant dripping could be heard everywhere, from gutters and trees. Great swathes of snow slid down roofs and gradually the grass appeared across the fields. The temperature continued to rise; only in the shadows did the snow remain.

&nb
sp; At last, a week after the blizzard, Gitto managed to get his lorry up the hill to pick up the porkers. The school reopened, and life got back into its old routine. Ros left at nine every morning to go down to Tom and Agnetta. It felt strange to see her leaving; a gap had certainly opened up between us. Now no one tended the vegetable garden, and when spring came we would plough it up, put it back to grass. It felt as if life was shrinking, that some of the energy had gone from the place.

  Our fingers and toes recovered. I never went to the doctor, but after two days they itched incessantly. It was worse in the night, lying in bed. I kept it hidden from Ros, who was annoyed with me for not getting medication. I had to do all my scratching out on the landing. I did get some cream from Owen Bethel, the chemist, who was more interested in my mother than in listening to my symptoms. His assistant, Maimee, who had once told me I stank to high heaven, suggested I put some ‘oinkment’ on my toes, which greatly amused her, astonishing Owen who was taken completely by surprise. ‘Well, Maimee, in all the years I have known you that is the very first time I’ve heard you make a joke of something.’

  ‘It’s not of my own making, Mr Bethel. I read it in a Christmas cracker.’

  ‘Humorous, none the less, and very appropriate.’

  On the day before Valentine’s Day I was in Caernarfon for two appointments. Before the dentist I went to the FMC offices to talk about the state of the British pig industry. It was under threat from the invading Danes, who were flooding the UK with their vacuum-packed bacon. They had a huge marketing budget, taking prime slots on TV, in the middle of Coronation Street, gaining an ever-increasing market share. Bacon producers were worried and needed to respond quickly. A ‘Buy British’ campaign was launched, everything labelled with Union Jacks. My grandfather once said the most effective way to invade a country is through its stomach, and he was right.

  However, none of that was on my mind as I stood outside the newsagent’s in Castle Street looking at the Valentine’s cards. It was a miserable day, the blah of relentless drizzle, the kind that weeps over you without a breeze to carry it away, dampening the soul.

  I had never sent Ros a Valentine’s card before, nor had she sent me one, sharing the view that the whole thing was a commercial racket, invented by the greetings card companies, florists and chocolate makers. But today I wanted to. I thought it might stir up some romantic emotions that had sadly fallen by the wayside. As I looked through the cards, I suddenly remembered that Gwyn had sent Ros Valentine’s cards. What was going through his mind, pretending to his daughter that he was her secret admirer? Maybe the psychotherapists would have something to say about that.

  In the post office with my pen poised over the card, wondering what I could write that wasn’t sentimental or corny, I asked the old-timer with the fox terrier standing next to me if he would write it for me. He took it in his stride, asking if it was for a girlfriend.

  ‘No, no . . . but can you write this message for me?’

  ‘Yes, boy, tell me.’

  ‘Just . . . I want us back the way we were.’

  And he did, not in small shrunken writing, which is often the case with old folk, but in scrawling florid lettering that rose and fell like waves upon the sea. Ros would never have a clue whose hand had written it. He wrote the address on the envelope and I thanked him. It was one of those little encounters with a complete stranger that makes you ponder on its significance. As we shook hands, our eyes meeting, I asked him how he had made his living.

  ‘A sailor for thirty years, a life on the ocean wave.’

  So in Castle Street I posted my Valentine’s card to Ros, probably from where Gwyn had sent his for so many years. Since Gwyn’s death, I no longer went to Trefanai for Sunday lunches. There was no point in my being there, and it was easier for Eryl to relax with her grandchildren. All I ever did was sit in an armchair reading a Sunday newspaper. It was a pity, for Ros more than anyone. In her exasperation I once heard her telling Eryl, ‘He’s not a bad man. Why don’t you give him a chance?’

  I had half an hour to kill before my dental appointment, a curious half hour, aimlessly wandering the Caernarfon streets. I walked around the castle and along the quayside through the murk, the seagulls screeching on the masts. This wasn’t my town, I didn’t have any connection with it or its history, didn’t speak the language. I was there because it was Ros’s home, not mine. I don’t know why all this came rising up in me. Then I remembered Gwyn’s words: ‘You’re not a Welshman.’ Probably it was stirred by the dreariness of the day, finding myself at a loose end, in a vacuous state of mind.

  I went into Jim Breen Turner’s dental surgery and sitting in the waiting room pulled out a magazine at random from the pile on the table. Distracted, I escaped into the pages of Hidden Greece, unknown places away from tourists where the traditional way of life was still alive. The old windmills on the hillside, the bearded priest going down to his church on a donkey, followed by a herd of goats. The making of olive oil, the olives carried in baskets by the villagers who had harvested them together. The old monastery built up on the cliffs above the blue, blue sea. I had transported myself to this nameless island when the nurse called me in. ‘Mr Breen Turner will see you now.’ I asked if I could take the magazine. She looked at the front cover and said, ‘Of course. It’s over two years old.’ So I stuffed it in my jacket pocket and went in and had a tooth filled.

  When Lysta answered the phone and said, ‘Mum it’s for you. I think he said his name is Phil Antler, or Adler,’ Ros rushed from the table.

  ‘Phil, how are you? What news?’

  All of us, curious to know who was ringing Ros, sat in silence not saying a word, just listening as a smile grew ever wider across her face.

  ‘Wonderful, wonderful. I’ll speak to Celia and ring you tomorrow.’ Then we watched Ros run around the room, her arms raised, shouting, ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’

  ‘What’s happened?’ I asked.

  ‘That was Phil Adler, the guy selling our sheepskins in the Portobello Road. He’s sold out, and wants to order some more!’

  ‘How much money have we made?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t you mean “How much have you made”?’

  That evening Tom and Agnetta came to supper, talking with the energy and excitement that comes at the beginning of a new cycle, when everything is on an upward curve. Ros was animated too, putting forward ideas, talking about homoeopathic herbs, the cultivation of Russian comfrey, long held by the anthroposophists to be a medicinal plant. The architectural drawings for the school were rolled out on the table. They had sixteen families all prepared to sell their properties and join the community, mostly from England, but also three from Scandinavia whom Agnetta knew, all putting money in, giving up good well-paid jobs to buy into the dream. Tom was thinking of quitting his fish round to devote himself full time to working the land.

  ‘What about you, Nick? How goes everything at Dyffryn?’

  For the first time I found myself struggling to find anything positive to say about the place. How dull it must have sounded when I said, ‘We labour on.’

  He just smiled, sensing my flat mood. Ros’s life seemed far removed from mine. Every morning now we kissed one another on the cheek, almost politely, saying no more to each other than ‘See you this evening’.

  Neither Sam nor Lysta ever said anything, unaware of what was happening between their mother and father. I kept it all to myself, while I watched Jack and Corinna’s relationship flourishing. They went away at weekends, sometimes leaving Meg at Dyffryn if they were going to stay in a guesthouse that didn’t accept dogs. The first time Jack asked me to look after Meg, I knew a big change was taking place in my brother. He and Meg had always been inseparable. They had slept out in the wild, in huts during lambing, under the stars in the summertime. Jack’s days walking the bleak landscapes of North Wales were coming to an end. The hard times without a razor, carrying dirt under his fingernails, the smell of lanolin and formaldehyde hanging about him. The solit
ude, sitting in the bracken and damp heather, drinking from a thermos. Maybe now he could do without it, being up here in this stony landscape, amongst the elements, the raw features of a winter’s day. In every step there is one’s inner silence. That’s the life of a shepherd: words a scarce commodity, just his own mutterings. I wondered if Jack in some way had been rescued; not from himself, but from a gradual withdrawal that befalls all who work alone, gathering sheep above the tree line. Who would not change their whole life for the comfort to be found in a loving heart and a cooked breakfast?

  One Tuesday afternoon in the spring of ’77, driving back from Bryncir market, I stopped to pick up a hitchhiker sitting on a boulder beside the road, his head down, thumb out. I had no idea it was Bryn, Hughie’s belligerent son. He smelled of alcohol. If I had recognised him I would not have stopped. In all the years I’d known him, he had given me nothing but filthy looks and a curled lip. But he was next to me now in the Land Rover, so I asked him why he wasn’t working at the Firestone factory instead of on the road hitching.

  ‘I’ve quit the job,’ he said. ‘Not my choice, but for the sake of the old man.’

  ‘You’re working the farm?’

  ‘I promised him one year, and if he can’t take it on again we sell it.’

  ‘How’s your father doing? Has he got the use of his arm back?’

  ‘No, he can’t do anything. Can’t lift a bale, can’t put a cluster on an udder. He’s a cripple.’

  ‘Lucky he’s got you to fall back on.’

  As he put his feet up on the dashboard, I opened my window to clear the alcohol fumes. And because I resented his being there, found myself asking a question I’d wanted to ask for years.

  ‘What makes you such an unpleasant human being?’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Well, I don’t think I have ever heard you say a good word about anything.’

  ‘Bollocks.’

  ‘That’s what I mean.’

  I dropped him at the track down to Llwyndu Canol. Grabbing the two empty churns by the gate, he rolled them down the drive, both hands in his pockets, an arrogant swagger in his step. I shouted after him, ‘Thanks for letting me give you a lift home.’