by Oliver Balch
‘So the question is …?’ Andrew asks, his pen in his hand, ready to jot down her response.
She looks down at the back of her hands, which are spread out on the table, fingers splayed. Her mouth fixes in frustration, her bottom lip gripped between her teeth.
‘Have the trustees got an overall, long-term vision?’ she says eventually. ‘Not just for the next two years or ten years. But a vision for long after they’re gone.’
Andrew duly notes the petition on his pad. We can certainly try to put it to them, he promises. There’s no guarantee they’ll listen, of course. But the important thing is to be proactive. At least that way, the Chamber can ‘stake a claim’.
The meeting disbands and everyone heads home. I cadge a lift off Andrew in his hybrid Prius. We glide silently through the streets, down past the clock tower and then out over the Wye towards Clyro. He drops me at my door. I wave him goodnight. ‘Night, man,’ he says, and pulls off.
I stand on the pavement for a few seconds, looking up at the cluster of trees opposite. The sky is cloudless. In a short while, the stars will blanket the night sky. For now, the late evening light still has breath. The leaves rustle softly, their tips turning a shimmery silver in the twilight.
It may well be that Marina’s fears prove unfounded. This tiny, village-like town tucked away on the Welsh border has pedigree. Surprises are its forte. Becoming the first Town of Books; creating a literary festival miles from anywhere. A seam of creativity clearly cuts through its soil. For all we know, the castle’s restoration committee may have donned their hard hats and be mining it this very minute. I hope so.
According to Robert Golesworthy, Hay’s idiosyncratic spirit all comes down to ley lines. Perhaps he’s right. A powerful sense of the magical certainly seems to cling to the place. With it comes an energy, an aura, an ambience. Call it what you will, but it is real, it is in the ether, it exists. Breathe and you can taste it on your tongue. Walk and you can feel its mass beneath your feet.
The future can follow one of two broad forks. Residents both old and new can seek to impose their will on the town. That way lies more shouting and scuffling, more power struggles and rancour. Or they can release their grip a little. Free up the town to indulge its own predilections, to decide its own course, to speak its own mind. If that sounds fanciful, then good. More flights of fancy are what the world needs.
Up on the old castle tump, somewhere amid the cluster of branches, an owl hoots. I take my house keys from my pocket, open the door and call to Emma that I’m home.
Epilogue
The day I came to Clyro I remember fixing my eyes on a particular bough of an apple tree in the orchard opposite the school and the Vicarage and saying to myself that on the day I left Clyro I would look at that same branch. I did look for it this morning but I could not recognise it.
Kilvert’s Diary, 2 September 1872
‘You got plans for the rugby, then?’ Des asks, his accent pure Radnorshire, soft and lyrical.
The match is all everyone has been talking about for the last few days. England versus Wales, Saturday evening, group stage of the World Cup. I haven’t decided yet, I reply. ‘How about you?’
He hasn’t made up his mind either. It’s a friend’s birthday on Saturday and they’re planning to head out for a few drinks in Hay beforehand. He invites me along and I readily accept. Then I remember that I have to take Seth and Bo over to Llangorse for an indoor climbing lesson, so I might not be able to make it after all.
Let’s meet for the match instead, he suggests, looking down from the top of a stepladder, paintbrush in hand, dabbing at the chipped stonework that Emma has asked him to repaint.
Sounds good, I tell him, and we talk through the various viewing options. The Con Club has a big TV, he says, although it tends to get packed out quickly. Same with the British Legion. The Rose & Crown? I suggest. Des looks doubtful. More of a football pub in his view.
Eventually, we settle on Kilvert’s Inn, which has a large saloon bar with a widescreen television. I like the choice, partly because the idea of sitting in a pub named after a man who never frequented pubs rather appeals, and partly because it’s practically on the English border, which to me, as an Essex émigré, feels comforting.
The last time I followed English rugby with any close attention was in my teens. Among my friendship group, there was one boy, Ali Thomas, who considered himself Welsh and we would rib him mercilessly for it. That was back when England dominated among the home nations. Today, not only is the Welsh rugby team in the ascendency, but I am living on Welsh soil with children who hassle me to buy them the red, dragon-crested kit of the national team.
The game is just kicking off when I turn up and Des is standing on a chair, fist pressed against his heart, singing the Welsh national anthem with uninhibited gusto. He looks well-oiled and happy. An enclave of other Welsh supporters surrounds him, several of whom are wearing the national strip and all of whom are singing in similar voice.
Among the group is Gareth, a quietly spoken man whom I met during the Hay festival, where he runs the bookshop. Originally from the Monmouthshire town of Pandy, he now lives in Clyro, in the house next door to Ty Melyn. Outside the festival period, he works as a landscape gardener. He is the possessor, as he’s proving this very minute, of a mellifluous baritone.
Sitting across the table from Des, lips sealed shut, is Danny. The two men are brothers-in-law, both married to sisters from the Golesworthy clan. Robert Golesworthy, of the Town Council, is their wives’ uncle. A close enough bond for Des to call him ‘Rob’. Both Des and Danny are strikingly good-looking, the one tall and fair, the other dark and stocky.
I first met Des at the school gates. He has two sets of twins, all four of whom go to Clyro Primary. For a while, I would take our boys along to an informal football class that he used to organise on Sunday mornings at the school. Our paths crossed again through Cherryshoes, the band that Rob from the Majestic Bus plays in. Since meeting Rob, I try to go along whenever they have a local gig. Des, who used to be a professional session musician in his younger years, is their lead guitarist.
Climbing down off his chair, Des pushes forward a seat that he has set aside for me. The saloon area is already rammed with people crowding in to watch the game and I had resigned myself to having to stand. Thanking him for his forethought, I place my jacket over the back of the chair by way of surety. Then I go in search of the bar, which is located on the other side of the room through a thicket of jostling bodies.
I plunge into the morass, eventually emerging out the other side to discover a lengthy queue for drinks. As I wait my turn, I spot Tim from my running club. Dressed in a floral, slim-fit shirt, he is standing a few feet away with his back to me. I tap him on the shoulder.
A one-time insurance executive, Tim has washed his hands of corporate life. He built himself a green-roofed studio in the garden of his house, which borders King Richard’s palace up in Cusop Dingle, and he now dedicates his days to creative pursuits. Sculpture and figurative painting, mostly.
His wife, Emma, a freelance management consultant, is a fellow runner with Hay Hotfooters. She’s on her way back from holiday, he tells me when I ask after her. In fact, he has to pick her up from the train station in the second half, a prospect he isn’t terribly amused by. ‘Drink?’ I ask him. He’s fine, he replies. ‘Got to drive, haven’t I?’ A grimace crosses his face. I order a pint for myself, and one each for Des and Danny. Holding the three drinks in a tight triangle, I venture back towards my table. Tim wishes me luck, whether for the crowd ahead or the game I’m not sure.
In truth, I’m largely indifferent about who wins. My usual bias in sporting matches is towards the underdog, although today no one seems able to agree which of the two teams that is. From Des’s nail biting, he appears to think the upper hand is with England. As the game progresses, the score reflects as much, with Wales’s larger neighbour gradually stretching ahead.
Early into the second half,
ten points separate the two sides. England looks unassailable. Choruses of ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ start breaking out.
A takeaway pizza arrives for the group of women on the next table. Des, who appears to know them all, successfully solicits a slice.
Support in the pub is split broadly half and half. Wales cling on with occasional penalties, but their supporters are growing progressively quieter. Des begins to lose some of his animation, slouching further and further back in his chair, muttering about keeping ball in hand and silly errors. ‘There’s no pace, no pace,’ he mutters repeatedly. Gareth, on the other hand, is cursing loudly at the referee.
I spot others I know among the audience. Several are Welsh. Tom, a young and serious-minded novelist, who is part of a book group I recently joined, is shaking his head. Finn, a photographer with a huge following on Instagram who joins our weekend hikes, is looking equally glum. In better spirits is Val, the gallery owner from Surrey, who is perched on the edge of her seat in front of me. Aware of the mixed emotions in the room, she is keeping a diplomatic lid on her excitement at England’s growing lead.
In front of her is Simon, who owns a pottery shop in town. He went to art college with Bernie from the market. They both moved to Hay years ago. Another incomer from across the border, Simon keeps his celebrations equally restrained, marking each new point with a clenched fist and a wry smile.
Far less sensitive is a heavy-set gobby Englishman on the sofa directly in front of the television screen. Legs splayed, lager in hand, he’s been offering an ongoing obnoxious commentary since the beginning of the game. ‘Way-yals,’ he keeps saying in what he thinks is an amusing Welsh accent. No one laughs, not even the pub’s English contingent.
I look over to Des, who is scowling. I nod towards the back of the man’s head and raise my eyebrows. One of the women on the next door table catches my gesture and says someone should shut him up. Des tells her not to fret. Just ignore him, he says. ‘He’s not from round here.’
The words stick with me as the game plays out. Des, whose mum owns the newsagent’s in Hay, knows almost everyone in town. This man’s face isn’t one that he recognises. He’ll be a weekend tourist most likely. Maybe even staying at Kilvert’s itself.
What hits me about Des’s comment is the weight of implication that it carries. The man is from off, he’s saying. Not that he isn’t welcome, in principle. Not that he doesn’t have as much right to be here as anyone else. But he’s an outsider, an alien, parachuted in, oblivious to the cultural dynamics of the room, indifferent to who he might be offending. His behaviour may well be accepted, even approved of, wherever it is he’s from, but here it jars. Yet because he knows no one in the room and because he has nothing of himself invested here, he doesn’t care.
Best to just let him be, is Des’s verdict. It’s no good reasoning with a man like this. Anyway, tomorrow morning he’ll be gone, back to wherever he calls home.
On the screen, the game is beginning to show signs of turning. The Welsh convert a succession of penalties, pulling back to within four points of England. They are back in it, the momentum all theirs. The red shirts in the pub find their voices once more. The fat-necked Englishman is still sounding off, but his confidence is shakier than before.
Ambivalent until now, I feel myself silently willing Wales on, my allegiances won over by the red team’s courageous fightback on the pitch as well as by Des’s desperate muffled prayers on the seat beside me (‘Just one try, please. Come on. Just one, just one’). A darker side of me would also like to see the big-mouthed Englishman get his comeuppance.
I realise this second sentiment is petty and spiteful, two traits that are never attractive whatever the motive. In this respect, Kilvert was a better man than I. Rarely in his diary does he express ill feeling towards his fellow man. Not that he’s without cause. Behind the lush romanticism of his prose, life in Clyro was not all burnished sunsets and neighbourly conviviality.
On the few occasions a barbed remark does slip into the Diary, the effect is deafening. One such clangorous example appears during his final days in Clyro. It is his penultimate Sunday in the parish and he is describing his walk across the hills to the isolated chapel of Bettws. Mr Irvine, his replacement as curate, is strolling at his side. The new man is due to preach from the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the Philippians in the morning service. Kilvert is down to read prayers.
Back in his lodgings that night, the diarist dips his pen in the inkstand on his desk. I picture him sitting there a moment, looking out towards the Swan for almost the last time, summoning up images of that final walk, savouring the summer smells in the fields and the sun on his back. ‘Every tree and hill and hollow and glimpse of the mountains was precious to me.’ He is there, retracing his steps, his sentimental spirit half a pace ahead.
Then, all of a sudden, lurching uninvited into the shot, spoiling this halcyon scene, comes an impostor. The ‘stranger’ Mr Irvine, for whom none of this makes any sense, from whose perspective the contours of the valley and the twists in the path are but ‘nought’, empty of significance, devoid of meaning.
Even if he appreciates the inherent beauty of the landscape, as a newcomer, he has ‘no dear associations with the place’, no memory bank on which to draw, no recollection of walking that same route in a snowstorm or on a sultry spring day with thunder clouds rolling around the sky and the ‘green and pink of the trees thickening with bursting buds’.
Kilvert’s caustic tone is perhaps not surprising. During these last days of August 1872, a whirlwind of emotions is coursing through him. His decision to take up the curacy at his father’s parish represents the subject of much conjecture. Was it a broken heart? A career move? A earlier promise to his family? We may never know the true reason, although part of him manifestly desires to stay. That morning in Bettws Chapel he would burst into floods of tears.
Leaving is made harder by the depth of affection lavished upon him by his parishioners. The old school house next to Pottery Cottage ‘thronged with people gentle and simple’ for his farewell party. Speeches were made and gifts presented. The diarist struggled to find the words to respond. ‘My heart was full and I could not speak what I would.’
None of this fully explains his abject dismissal of Mr Irvine. Maybe he was a city man with disdain for country ways. Perhaps he was disdainful of Kilvert’s precious Wordsworth. The distant hills / Into the tumult sent an alien sound / Of melancholy. Even so, to write so disparagingly of the man seems highly out of character. Irvine is not the problem, I’d wager. It’s Kilvert. The prospect of these mountainous borderlands so soon being lost to him fills him with an intense despondency. Its vistas, its people, its ‘sky a cloudless deep wonderful blue’, all gone. There’s envy there too. Envy that so much beauty awaits Irvine, a beauty the new man is too blind to see but which, over time, may come to beguile and overwhelm him as completely as it did Kilvert.
If Irvine is at fault, it is primarily by virtue of his newness. The giveaway is there in the phrase ‘dear associations’. I feel I know what the diarist is getting at. Consider the Begwyns. The first time we walked with the boys to the peak of the moor above Clyro, where Kilvert would watch the lapwings ‘wheeling about the hill in their scores’ and where the gorse ‘flamed fiery gold’, we thought it a beautiful picnic spot. Nothing more.
Now when I picture it, I call to mind Seth dangling from the branch of a tree after he slipped when climbing. I remember Bo’s fourth birthday, with all his friends playing hide-and-seek in the evergreens. I think of getting hopelessly lost in a snowstorm with my friend Chris when out for a night run. I recall the boys’ excitement the first time they flew a kite. Places have layers, undercoats. The longer you’re in a place, the deeper and thicker they run. The truth of this occurred to me recently. We had B&B guests staying and, being a Thursday, I urged them to go along to the weekly market. ‘Oh,’ the woman responded, ‘we have a market where we live too.’ I wanted to counter her. Tell her that she h
adn’t tried Bernie’s sausage rolls yet or tasted Lucretia’s fruit cake.
But I didn’t. Commendable though they are, the market’s gastronomic virtues aren’t the reason I have become a weekly regular. Sharing a word with the stallholders I’ve come to know. Bumping into friends. Trading gossip. These are my chief motivations for going.
None of this our B&B guests would compute. Where we live too. I could visualise it through their eyes, as visitors, as people attached to their own place somewhere else. Hay’s market may not quite be as ‘nought’ to them, but it’s unlikely to be very much more.
Which is why I let it drop. After all, it wasn’t so long ago that I viewed it the way. It was only yesterday that I was Irvine.
*
We had arrived in Kilvert’s old stomping ground wondering if it was a place we could one day call home. I had assumed this would be a decision of my own making. Was it somewhere that I liked? Did it suit my needs? Would its residents be people we could relate to? Would we find friends? In all these respects, we struck lucky. The boys are happy in school and now have an army of little buddies in the village. Emma is almost impossible to keep up with, always finding new projects to develop and new people to meet.
I love it too. My runs in the hills. My shed. The changing colours of the mountains. Sharing smiles in the street. The bookshops. The festival on our doorstep. Having our own king, a permanent Lord of Misrule. I even love the weather; gnarly and rain-soaked one minute, dazzling and cloudless the next.
What I hadn’t contemplated was the reverse. Would this place accept me? Would it allow me to call it home? As an adult, I have lived in plenty of places that have met my needs and desires. London, most obviously. Buenos Aires too. Yet none felt like home.
Cities can spurn you, turn on you, spit you out without a care. That wasn’t my issue though. Passing through was. Working, studying, playing, that’s what drew me. Not finding a home. My big-city experiences have all essentially been flings, one-night stands dragged out over years. Perhaps the cities guessed that. Accustomed to movers and takers, maybe they are wise to my type. I kept my true self hidden from them. What’s to say they didn’t do the same in return?