4

The walls of Llanrhos County School, said Michael, are eloquent with its short history. This is Mr Longwind James, first Chairman of the Governors, senior deacon at Moriah, a prominent tradesman, chairman of the Chamber of Commerce, town and county councillor, died 1917 (in bed). May the dust on the picture frame rest in peace. This still and silent group still displays the original pupils of the school, solemn unsmiling boys and girls of another century, in old clothes with young faces. The first headmaster sits in the middle, wearing a mortar-board and gown, a high, stiff collar and a drooping black moustache. This is a photograph taken at the opening ceremony; Lady M – key in hand, half turns to face the cameras, her smile lost in the shade of her immense wide hat. Her skirt brushes the steps leading to the front door. Aldermen, clergymen, unknown officials and their wives are also captured in the same frame. And here in faded sepia are the pupils of the school who were killed during the war of 1914-18, boys in uniform, with sad surprised faces.

In the Assembly Hall there is a Roll of Honour, said Albie, a black wooden image, stretching like a totem pole from the ceiling to the floor. Upon it there are names inscribed in gilt lettering, thus – JOHN ED. JONES, Burton School, U.C.N.W.,²⁶ 1899. This is the first name, at the top of the list; the last, almost on the floor, is FLORENCE HAYES, Cohen Exhibition, Liver. University, 1927; and after her honourable pupils such as myself must pass without mention.

On either side of the dais at the end of the Assembly Hall are two large portraits; on the left, O.M. Edwards;²⁷ on the right, Sir Herbert Lewis.²⁸ The ruling headmaster stands between them, still liable to the law of change. We grow under his feet.

Michael, Albie and I, said Iorwerth, stand in the very front during morning prayers, on the male side of the Hall. Heads ascend behind us from form to form like the marks on the door-post which my father has made, makes and will make to register my growth. Exceptions break through the ranks like cocksfoot grass in the hayfield, and Albie is the exception in our row. The hall is filled in the morning by one form after another, as a granary floor is covered by emptying sack after sack of corn. Prefects marshal us, authoritative sixth-form boys who make our row straight and prevent us from turning round as the hall fills up behind us. Girl prefects wearing blazers, their strong grown-up legs covered by black stockings, order the small girls across the aisle made by the wide gap between us. When all are assembled, the headmaster emerges from his room at the back of the hall, and as he advances down the aisle he draws complete silence after him as though silence were the wide wake of his gown.

The short service is in English. We sing a familiar tune to unfamiliar English words. The headmaster reads a portion of the Scriptures and then reads a prayer out of a small blue book which he opens on the open Bible. This is the first time for me to see a prayer read; no one in our Chapel reads his prayer. Now it is clear that I am on the threshold of a new world.

My first day at school, said Michael, began with a scramble for seats. I was pushed fiercely by a thick-set boy wearing long trousers. I turned to face him with anger on my lips, but the hot words turned cold on my tongue as I saw his large clenched fist and ugly look, and my face broke out into a false engaging smile.

“All right,” I said, “let us sit together. We may as well.”

This had a good effect because he, too, smiled and asked my name.

“Michael Edwards,” I said. “What’s yours?”

“Jac Owen,” he answered. And so I came to sit with Jac who proved to be a bit of a bully, but fortunately also easily influenced. I took care to understand him, and this was not difficult. I had only to make fun of teachers and people he disliked, and he was delighted. Also I brought my back numbers of The Schoolboy’s Own for him to read in prep, and I let him copy my homework. He was impressed by my knowledge of schoolboy literature, and of the science of escapading, the execution of which he always enjoyed no matter how simple or how safe the trick.

At the far end of the playing fields there was a clump of bushes, and behind them we made a hollow where in the dinner time we shared Woodbines²⁹ together, or called meetings of Jac’s gang. Jac had learnt to swallow, and like Wil Ifor he gave exhibitions, drawing tobacco smoke down, it seemed, to the very bottom of his lungs, and then driving out the smoke through his distended nostrils. He claimed to have put a slug in his sister’s tea and to have urinated on the parlour fire and I for one believed him. We broke bounds together in the dinner hour too, going down to the railway line to put nails on the rails, and then retrieving them flattened out after the Irish Mail had passed at one o’clock; or we went to the football ground across the road to the school where we explored under the grandstand among empty bottles and cigarette cartons and the excrement of wandering dogs, for pennies and sixpences and even half-crowns. Most daring of all, we cut across the playing fields after dinner, having stuffed our school caps in our pockets, to the promenade.

“Iorwerth,” I whisper to him across the desk.

“Yes.”

“Jac and me are going to Pleasureland in the dinner hour. Coming?”

“It’s out of bounds.”

Jac made a growling noise. “Granny’s baby,” he said.

So instead of Iorwerth, Les came with us. Les’s father was managing director of the Steam Laundry and Leslie, the only son, always wore new suits that were grubby with the stains of the sweets he always carried, and creased by the weight of Les’s plump bulging body. But Les was a good sport all the same and was always sharing sweets.

In Pleasureland we borrowed many pennies from Les and I don’t remember that we paid them back. The machines of chance were lovely and inviting, their noise was enchanting like the all-pervading smell of rock and candy-floss, coconuts, engine oil, and the chemical used by the Indian chief to cloud his Vision Bowl.

“What time is it, boys?”

“Hell!” said Jac, and started to run at once. A breathless race across the town it was, avoiding people on the pavement, dodging the traffic in the busy streets, and bathed in sweat, being shouted at by a policeman happily chained to point duty. As we passed the church clock, Les looked up and gasping made his famous jerking joke.

“It’s ten to two, too.”

Jac left school at the end of our second year having sunk to the bottom of IIIB. He became apprenticed to an electrician in town, and we continued to meet. Sometimes we went to the pictures together, Jac, Les and I. Jac told us things about girls we never knew before. He was still the boss, but as time went on we found we grew less eager to make the effort to meet him on a Saturday afternoon, and Jac became less important.

I sit with Albie in the front desk, said Iorwerth, happy under the eye of a teacher, attentive to the lesson, my intelligence aided by my nearness to them. They are real and human; if I put out my hand I can touch them for they are made of the same stuff as I, and belong to my world; they are not enemies observed over a ditch or across a stretch of water. Therefore what they say is real to me and convincing, and since they have entered my world and are real like my father and mother and the animals on our farm and Miss Roberts, and the preachers at Capel Bach on Sunday, the knowledge they impart is real and of my world also. Albie too helps my understanding, by grasping at once the new facts that are to be understood. Between Albie and the teacher I am in the direct line of communication, and all my efforts to understand are pleasurable labour.

When we are doing some written work, out of the corner of my eye I glance at Albie. He does not bend over the paper with his tongue sticking out and following his pen like a dog following his master. He sits upright, eyes only cast downwards, his pen held firmly in his hand moving steadily over the paper.

Equally confident and capable on the football field he is the undisputed captain of the football team. He coolly plans out tactics, commanding his team with quiet authority which has to be obeyed.

“Albie Jones!” Jac Owen shouts.

“Yes?”

Jac advances ominously in the cloakroom.

“My name isn’t down to play against IIB.”

“I know it isn’t.” I look nervously at Jac’s big fists, but Albie does not flinch.

“Well, it had better be, see?”

Jac looks wild with anger. Albie is pale. Oh, I tremble with concern for my friend.

“Are you trying to say that I’m not good enough, Albie Jones?”

Everyone in the cloakroom is watching. The air between the rows of coats is unbearably still.

“Yes, I am.”

There is nothing else for it. Jac must attack him now. After a moment of hesitation that seems an age Jac suddenly swings a blow at Albie’s head. But Albie side-steps and Jac lands face forward among the coats. Everyone laughs. Enraged, Jac turns to attack wildly but Albie is cool and his arms are long and he seems able to keep Jac’s flailings out of range.

“Smash him up, Jac!”

“Down him, Albie! Knock him for six!”

“Look out, chaps. The slobs are coming.”

Slobs is the school word for prefects. The fight comes to an inconclusive end, but Albie keeps his authority over the football team.

And yet he is not popular. His accomplishments are too many; his superiority too definite. The others envy him too much. Among all the school, only I think the world of him. But although he is unfailingly kind to me, careful never to slight me, not pulling a face at the stump of a finger on my right hand, always giving me my fair chance, I know he does not love me, or feel any great attachment towards me. To him I am strange and foreign; he does not understand my excited talk of farm or Chapel. I cannot bring with me to school fresh news to excite him. My father buys a new horse; twin calves are born to the cow ‘Seren Wen’;³⁰ the fox is about again; such things do not interest him. I cannot recount to him stories of missionaries I have read in Y Cenhadwr³¹ or Y Trysorfa Fach,³² nor can I explain to him my ambition to preach, to make long speeches woven from beautiful words, to see the light of heaven descend upon my hearers’ upturned faces. Albie’s talk is all of wireless and motor cars, the mysteries of engines, also the exploits of famous footballers, and cricketers. His world is a swiftly moving pageant that never leaves the main streets of towns, always hedged between tall buildings, moving through crowds and congested traffic.

During the summer holidays I spent a week at Albie’s home, and his mother was very kind to me. This was the first time for me to sleep in a town. The electric light, so easily and neatly switched on or off, the bathroom and the water closet so clean and convenient, impressed me greatly, and these brilliant assets led me to ignore the smallness of the rooms and the inadequate backyards, ranged side by side, the washing of various households almost touching each other, one man’s wet shirt rubbing against his neighbour’s vest.

I slept with Albie, and this too was a brilliant experience. My head lying on the same bolster as that of my greatest friend, our bare feet sometimes touching as we turned over in bed.

“Albie.”

“Urn?”

“You sleeping?”

“No.”

“What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing. What are you thinking about?”

“About stars. Do you think there are people living on other planets?”

“Shouldn’t be surprised.”

“I had an awful dream last night. I dreamt I was sitting on the horn of the moon. I didn’t mind it at first until I looked down and saw that the moon was on fire. I didn’t know what to do. What could I have done, Albie? What would you have done?”

“Die of course.”

“But ...?”

“Go to sleep now will you, there’s a good chap. Good night.” It was indeed happiness to sleep with my friend and to share, first thing in the morning, a drowsy awakening, looking at each other, raised on our elbows, laughing with half-opened eyes.

At breakfast Albie’s father talked Welsh to me, and seemed to enjoy it, but Mrs Jones said:

“Don’t talk Welsh, Dic. Albie doesn’t understand. Iorwerth doesn’t mind, do you, Iorwerth?”

But whenever we were alone, Mr Jones and I spoke Welsh. He was a small, lively man with thin, greying hair brushed across his head to cover his baldness. He was always cheerful and kind, but it was difficult to see any resemblance to Albie.

After breakfast we walked through the bright morning air, making for the wide, empty promenade. The sea was sharply blue, and beautifully clean. We played on the smooth sand, until a small company of Seaside Evangelists came to conduct a service on a small platform. I listened attentively. After all, although it was English, they were doing the Lord’s work, and everyone who failed to listen was rather at fault. ‘Suffer little children to come unto me’ they said was their theme. At the end of the service the man on the tiny platform asked those who had been saved to come and stand behind him. I who wanted so much to be saved was anxious to oblige, but Albie said the Pleasure ground was open and that we must hurry away. I saw for a moment the picture in my aunt’s parlour – ‘The broad and narrow way’, and my heart was torn with a painful dissension. In the end I followed Albie. We both changed sixpenny pieces for seven coppers, and tried to win money on several machines. Albie won 1s. 3d. but I lost all mine. Was it punishment for me to lose, I thought? Albie paid for me to go in the bumper-cars. But as soon as we were beginning to enjoy the sport, the machine stopped and we had to get off. We stood watching the cars for a long time and tried to win enough money to be able to ride in them again. But in the end we had left only 2d. each.

We called in a paper shop on our way home. Albie bought a paper on wireless, and I bought The Boys’ Own Paper, and we read these papers until dinner was ready. Potatoes, mutton and green peas on willow pattern plates, followed by rhubarb and custard. Then we lay back on the sofa and read a little more until it was time for the pictures. There was a serial, and I remember the ending, a motor-car flying over a precipice – ‘To be continued next week’ – and then a big picture. My eyes burnt when we came out of the darkness into the harsh light of the afternoon.

We had tea in a cafe. This too was unusual. We sat by the window and watched people passing on the street below. A double-decker bus passed the window, and I thought, if I put my hand out I could touch it. Custard tarts for me, blackberry tarts for Albie. My stomach was full, and my eyes still ached. The fumes of petrol from the streets seemed to invade my senses. I felt sick. I vomited in the lavatory. Albie was kind, and I was hot with shame.

In the evening we went to the Pleasure Lake outside the town and having ridden the Figure Eight, and gone through the Cave of Mystery in a paddle-boat we watched people try things until supper time. For supper we had fish and chips from the saloon at the end of the street.

One hot afternoon, the last afternoon of my holiday, we were returning to No.15 from the centre of the town. The street was full of traffic and the pavement was crowded with people, mostly trippers, carrying oddments in paper bags and children’s sand spades. A boy came cycling in our direction, and tried to take the corner in front of us without slowing, but the bonnet of a car caught him on the turn and knocked him through the air against a stationary car by the opposite pavement. At the precise moment my eyes were intent on a pyramid of glistening bottles of jam in a grocer’s window, and only my ears were pierced by the screeching of brakes and horrified female voices. When I turned round I could see only a crowd around the boy who lay crumpled and silent on the street, made visible to me through a wall of backs by my startled, quivering imagination. A policeman blew his whistle several times, an ambulance pulled up and things happened beyond the thick crowd which I could not see nor imagine. Albie had left me, pushed his way into the crowd, but he saw nothing. A woman standing near me said,

“He’ll drown in his own blood.”

In the twinkling of an eye, I was in the boy’s dying place and I saw the blood rising inside me like quick-silver in a thermometer, welling up like spring water, but red and thick, in order to rise over my mouth, my nose, my eyes. I drown, I swirl like seaweed in my own thick red blood.

I lost all taste for my holiday in the town and I was not happy until I opened the gate into the home field. The setting sun was gilding the welcoming map of ivy above the drawing room window. I greeted my parents with loving gladness and after tea I went upstairs, breathing familiar smells with unutterable pleasure, and having unpacked and put on old clothes, I ran out into the freedom of the yard, and went with Llew to turn the cows out after milking.