Lettuces and Cream

by John Evans

  He had reached the small area of his woodland and wandering through the trees was impressed by the size of some of them and thought that they wouldn’t be short of firewood. They were looking forward to a roaring open fire, a big change from the gas fires they were used to. Of course there was no mains gas in the area and so wood or coal would be the mainstay, for the short term anyhow. Having their own firewood would at least save them money. Still, his meandering had to come to an end; he had to get some work done.

  Mike thought that soil, earth, was an amazing substance. He had read somewhere that it takes a thousand years to create a half inch of topsoil in which plants can grow, and that a teaspoon of it has millions of micro-organisms. And some people called it dirt, eh? And, he had just dug down into fifteen inches of the stuff, and there was still plenty to spare. Marvellous.

  He had chosen the field for the poly-tunnels with care. After all their entire livelihood depended on it. It was an open site, sunlit all day long so crops had the best chance to grow well. Of course selling what he grew was to be yet another challenge, but he had found that all the salad crops in the area came in from Hereford or South Wales. He hoped to intrude upon this market.

  As he set out the markers, his mind drifted, as it does, from this to that, and memories of his father came into view. He wished he were here to help him now. He was doing what his father had always wanted to do-have some land, grow things, but he had died when Mike was aged fifteen of the dreaded, C disease. The disease, which in Mike’s childhood, was spoken of in whispers, just in case mentioning the name caused it to infect others. He still missed him, missed him a lot, and in his melodramatic mood imagined he was near to him now, watching as Mike toiled in the field. He looked over his shoulder, almost expecting to see him, and a tear ran down his face, he swallowed hard, pushing the emotion back, deep down into his gut.

  Meanwhile, Jan’s good intentions for the preparations of the temporary lavatory had been cruelly shattered. Before she could put her hands in the suds, there was a knock on the already open front door. Followed by a chorus of ‘hello’s.’

  ‘Hello? Yes, I’m coming,’ Jan called out, entering the hallway full of curiosity as to who the visitors were. She found three well-built women; all were dressed in their somewhat sombre dark coloured and old-fashioned Sunday best, complete with the seemingly compulsory mud-smeared Wellingtons. Jan guessed they were all in their fifties, their ruddy country complexions make-up free and for some reason they reminded Jan of The Three Bears. One was tall, the other less so, the third less again. Two struggled to smile and had the obvious facial signs of people used to looking on the black side of life. But middle-sized bear was the smiley one and was the first to speak.

  ‘We have just come from Chapel and thought we would walk up over the fields and come and say hello to you. You must be Janice, yes?’

  ‘Yes?’ the other two repeated in unison.

  ‘Yes, but everyone calls me Jan.’ God, they even know my name Jan thought.

  Names and places of abode were given and it turned out that the Smiley one, who appeared to be the leader of the trio, lived the nearest to Jan and said she would be a regular caller. Jan didn’t know whether to be pleased or not at the prospect. The other two Bears seemed to have been shanghaied into the visit simply as a support unit for Smiley. Jan was bemused, and a little embarrassed by their appearance on her doorstep, and wondered how they had got past the kids in the yard. Normally, their curiosity kept their senses sharp and they were as good as watchdogs. At least she would have had some warning. She had no biscuits or other hospitality nibbles for her guests and the place was in a shameful mess, but never the less, she ushered the visitors into the kitchen where they all readily sat down around the table.

  ‘Whew, its a steep walk up from the village,’ said Big Bear, slumping down onto the chair, which groaned a little under her bulk. ‘You’ve meet my husband, Idris, haven’t you?’ Big bear continued, peering out at the world through her spectacles. ‘He helped you get the van out of the ditch.’

  ‘Well I didn’t see him myself, but yes, my husband has.’

  ‘There will be a lot of work for you to do here. It’s a bit of a mess isn’t it?’ Smiley Bear said with simple candour, looking around the kitchen. ‘That’s how they were you know, never did a thing with the house.’

  ‘Well, we hope to build a new kitchen-eventually.’

  ‘Yes, well, it all takes time,’ Smiley said, to which the other Two Bears, benevolently agreed.

  Mike’s job progressed, and as the hours past, tentacles of marker posts grew out across the site. But he was beginning to feel hungry and realised lunchtime was upon him. Still, he had done well; he was pleased with the mornings work and set off back to the house with a confident, jaunty stride.

  Back at the house the children were sitting expectantly at the old and large farmhouse table, the only piece of furniture the Davis’s had left that was of any use. The kids were messing about clanging their knives and forks, supposedly creating music-it wasn’t.

  ‘Will you two behave please, all that noise, I can’t hear myself think. Oh there you are Mike. I’ll have to get a bell or walkie talkies, or something, so I can call you.’

  ‘Good idea love. I’m bloomin’ starving. Yeah it’s really odd, being so far from the house and still being on your own land. Bloomin’ big garden eh?’ He laughed, and crossed to the kitchen sink to wash his hands. ‘How did you get on with the toilet room?” Mike asked, crossing the room to join the children at the table.

  ‘Don’t ask-peace of the countryside, that’s a joke. Yesterday there was that funny pigman, then today, these three women turned up out of the blue. One of them was Idris’s wife-you know, the one that pulled the van out. Oh yes, she said if you want any ploughing or jobs like that done he’ll do them for you. Anyway, they said they had just come from chapel, I thought for a minute they were here to persuade me to go as well, but they didn’t. Mind you, I did say I would go to the W.I sometime to see what its all about. And it’s not only the men around here that swear a lot, two of these women let a few, f-u-c-k’s, drop as well. Ann, the happy smiley one, wasn’t too bad, and because I didn’t, they eventually stopped doing it. Still, it was good job the kids were outside playing. But they all seemed nice enough people, it seems around here even the women accept swearing as normal.’

  They both had a thing about swearing, especially the naughty four letter ones. It wasn’t because they were snobs, they just weren’t used to it. They simply didn’t like it and didn’t want the kids going around cursing this and that.

  ‘Anyway they said they had just popped in to say hello, so I haven’t done a thing. By the time they left, it was time to feed you lot,’ Jan said cheerfully, banging saucepans about, most of which were still packed in a cardboard box, trying to find the right size for the task in hand.

  Mike watched her. He enjoyed seeing her in these energetic happy moods. But it never really seemed right for her. It appeared to him that she wasn’t all together comfortable in this busy role and some how she was acting the part, making an effort, and going against her phlegmatic, steady nature. Of course it could be a case of Mike over analysing the situation. Jan had often told him that he thought too much about things that can’t be analysed. Or perhaps she simply hadn’t had enough to do in town and got bored. Here, she would be very busy indeed. In any event, maybe this was going to be one of the changes their new life would bring. Perhaps she would change in other more intimate ways as well.

  ‘I’m starving mum,’ David moaned

  ‘And me mum,’ Mandy added in similar tone.

  ‘And me mum,’ Mike joked.

  ‘Baked beans on toast, okay?’

  ‘Oh, great,’ the kids said in hungry unity.

  FOUR

  Monday morning and another dry sunny late summer day, and a couple of miles away from the newcomers place, the daily routine had begun. Chris and Keith had moved into the area from the north of England s
ome eight years previously and now raised beef cattle on their 250-acre farm, named Penlan. Keith came from a farming family, Chris from the city, and when they were married he had wanted his own farm and had found land prices in Wales cheap. So had moved to their present place some four miles from Mike and Jan. In the converted old stone barn, now used to house cattle, Keith sat on a traditional three-legged stool hand milking their ‘house cow,’ as she happily chomped on her food. They had other cattle, but this beast was a bit of a pet and kept to provide the family with milk.

  ‘Those new people moved into the Davis’s old place last Saturday,’ Keith said, his voice somewhat muffled because his head was up against the cows’ flank as he continued the steady milking rhythm.

  ‘I know, the postman told me this morning. I suppose we should call over and say hello. Be nice to have some more English people to talk to,’ Chris replied cheerfully, busy with her task of throwing straw onto the floors of the other cattle pens.

  ‘Are you sure they’re English with a name like Jones?’ Keith asked, his Geordie accent making Jones sound more like Junes.

  ‘Yeah, think so, it said in the local paper last week they were from South Wales but it was written in English so they must be.’

  ‘Oh aye, but I still think it’s bloody funny, you know, the way its written in English if you’re English, or in Welsh if you’re Welsh.’

  ‘Well, yeah I know what you mean, but if it was in Welsh they wouldn’t know they were being written about would they. And we couldn’t read it either,’ Chris said with a little laugh.

  ‘ Aye, Okay we’ll go over some time.’

  ‘Oh yeah, did you hear Cindy barking last night? Something was outside again, about midnight’

  ‘A fox, I expect.’

  ‘It’s funny how the fox is usually here when you’re away.’

  ‘Just a coincidence I expect.’

  ‘Does seem a bit odd, though. Perhaps we should stay up and watch out for what ever it is that upsets Cindy,’ Chris suggested.

  ‘Rather you than me -I like my sleep,’ Keith replied.

  ‘Typical, though if I remember, you didn’t worry about getting to sleep last night,’ retorted Chris, and stomped off with half-hearted annoyance.

  Keith watched her-and her neat, bouncy rump, as she headed back to the house, and he grinned at the salacious memory of his exertions of the previous night.

  Shopping in the tiny Market town of Porth was proving an interesting experience for Mike, Jan and the kids. It was so very different from the familiar city of Aberdod, to which they used to travel the eight miles to do their major shopping. It wasn’t that they missed the variety of large shops or the grand Victorian civic centre, they didn’t. In fact they were enjoying the quiet relaxed old-fashioned atmosphere of the place. Here, there was no Marks and Spencer, Woolworth or the like. Come to that there were very few people, well not on this Monday morning anyway. But they supposed on market days it would be a different story with the busy cattle mart on the outskirts of the tiny town, and various stalls cramming the narrow main street.

  Most of the shops were local one-man affairs, and the tiny post office, the butcher and general grocery shop, seemed from another age altogether. The problem was that they just didn’t know where to look for what they wanted. But soon their meanderings lead them past a railway station shut by Mr Beeching, and there, amongst the disused sidings, stood a Farmers co-op store. Well, really a middle sized wooden shed with a roof of corrugated iron, and they cautiously ventured inside. And caution was indeed needed because as they stepped through the battered doorway the first surprise was the wooden floor of the place. It had seen much better days and customers and staff had to step over holes and areas patched, either with flattened pieces of old biscuit tins, or ill-fitting bits of wood, and the rest of the old planking wheezed and groaned with old age.

  The counters themselves were old-fashioned slabs of wood, polished smooth and glossy with years of use. Goods were stacked everywhere and even hung from hooks hanging from the rafters. There, they espied the much-needed Wellington boots nestling between shiny new stainless steel milking pails, and lethal looking billhooks, all dangling dangerously at head height. This hazard, together with the patched floor meant that everyone moved at a careful pace having to watch feet and head at the same time, and perhaps accounted for the seemingly steady nature of the locals which they had had mistaken for bucolic indifference. More tools, spades, pitchforks, picks and axes were heaped haphazardly along the walls, and on shelves behind the counters, various animal drenches and unguents seeped a pungent unfamiliar odour into the building. David and Mandy gazed with bewilderment at the unfamiliar miscellany and were unusually speechless.

  Whilst they waited to be served, Mike and Jan took in the local ambiance and it’s endless Welsh chatter and felt somewhat out of place. Particularly when friendly chat was directed at them, at which they stared back, apologetically, ashamed at their very limited knowledge of the language. David translated for them what he could, but even he couldn’t follow all of the conversation for all of the time. Eventually, they made their essential purchases of the Wellingtons, a small axe that Mike needed to chop sticks for the fire, and, of course a new chemical toilet - sophistication would be theirs…

  By the time they reached home it was lunchtime and Janice busied herself feeding the starving hordes. Mike headed for the ‘lavatory room’ and set up the new toilet. The chemicals ponged a bit, and reminded Mike of the factory where he had worked, but they all agreed it was better than the dark and spidery horror of the shed in the yard. All in all a very successful morning.

  ‘What you going to do this afternoon Mike?’ Jan asked, as she began clearing up the lunchtime table.

  ‘I suppose I’d better get on with the marking out in the tunnel field, this dry weather won’t last for ever,’ Mike gulped down the last dregs of his coffee. ‘Are you still off the fags, Jan?’ Mike said as he stubbed out his own cigarette.

  ‘Yep, none today, not one.’

  ‘Who’s a brave girl then,’ Mike mocked, Jan ignored him, feeling rather superior about her nicotine abstinence.

  ‘I think I’ll have a go at getting rid of that old toilet shed this afternoon.’

  ‘That’s a big job Jan, get the kids to help knocking the thing down. But be careful, those old sheets of corrugated iron are sharp and heavy.’

  ‘I’ll just do what I can love, don’t worry I’ll take care. I just want to see the dammed thing out of the way, and you’ve got so much else to do it will help a bit.’

  ‘Mum, Dad, there’s a van coming down the track,’ David stormed into the kitchen shouting breathlessly, obviously excited at the prospect of callers.

  ‘Oh no, not more visitors,’ Jan groaned.

  ‘Not much peace out here is there? We had far less callers than this when we were in town,’ Mike said somewhat dolefully, ‘I suppose we’d better go out and see who it is.’

  Outside in the yard Mike and Jan stood waiting rather uncomfortably, not knowing who or what to expect. The kids dashed about showing off as kids’ do, while at the same time keeping a watch out for the strangers. They didn’t have long to wait. An old, battered, red ex G.P.O van skittered into the yard, scattering the squawking ragged old hens, in all directions. Out of the small van a man and a woman emerged, smiling broadly, the man approached, one hand held out in greeting, in the other a bottle of wine.

  ‘Hello, I’m Keith, Keith Bowen and this is Chris, my wife. Welcome to Llanbeth’ Mike and Jan quickly relaxed at the visitors’ cheerful and friendly manner.

  ‘Thanks, pleased to meet you too, it’s very nice of you to bother to call. How did you know we just moved in?’ Mike was intrigued as how news travelled so fast.

  ‘Well that’s another story,’ Keith said with an air of mystery, ‘we know all about you, but I cannot tell a lie, it’s not magic, it was in the local newspaper.’

  ‘The local paper, really?’

  ‘Aye I kno
w, God knows where they get it from, they must have spies in every village. I’ll tell you all about it.’

  ‘Anyway, Keith, I’m Mike, Mike Jones and this is Janice.’

  ‘Everyone calls me Jan,’ Jan said shaking hands with Chris.

  ‘I know what you mean, Jan, hardly anyone nobody calls me Christine either,’ she spoke with a soft gentle voice, which belied her business like nature.

  ‘Well the place is a mess but come in anyway,’ Jan said leading the way.

  ‘This is home-made Damson wine- it’s good stuff, make your hair curl,’ Keith said, laughing, as they all followed Jan indoors.

  In the kitchen glasses were filled, and Mike and Jan began to take in their visitors. What they found the most fascinating were the rich Geordie accents. Jan and Mike had lead quite sheltered lives and had travelled hardly at all, so these foreign voices intrigued them greatly. Keith, with his mop of curly black hair was a tall, strong and muscular chap, and with a pleasing weather tanned face - Mike was a string bean in comparison.

  Mike found Chris very attractive. A little taller, and smaller breasted than Jan and with short blonde hair, which Mike thought a little too blonde for it to be real-and he could tell she wasn’t wearing a bra. She had a cheeky sexy glint in her brown eyes, and whether it was intentional or not, kept glancing at Mike with what he thought was a bit of a come on. Jan surprised herself by finding Keith equally attractive, and found the movements of his large strong hands, sensual and very appealing. Jan had a thing about men’s hands; they had to be ‘nice’.

  ‘So what are you going to be doing here Mike? We’re beef farming, and just started with some pigs.’

  ‘Is that with that bloke from the village?’

  ‘So you’ve met the mad pig man, Josh, already, bloody hell, man, he didn’t waste much time did he?’

  ‘Yeah, he was here first thing Sunday morning, and he is a bit odd.’