6

On a wet Sunday afternoon in early November, said Albie, my father snoring in front of the fire, a page of the News of the World covering his face, I sat at the table doing my homework, Chemistry and French. I heard my mother making her way slowly downstairs. She had begun to suffer from arthritis and her condition often troubled me. I sat staring at my homework book and thinking of a long letter I wanted to write to Michael.

Dear M, dear M, my father is snoring ... Dear M, I am rather worried about my mother. She does not complain, but ... oh, Michael, could you come and stay with us next week, or if not convenient the week after. Oh, sooner or later come and stay for as long as you like or for ever.

But, alas, not here. My father is snoring under the newspaper. The council houses of the cul-de-sac seem like rabbit hutches in the rain. I should be somewhere better than this and yet I should not think of it so disloyally.

“Dic! Dic! Get shaved before tea, Dic bach, or we’ll be late for church.”

“Ah-h-h!” My father yawns and then belches loudly. “Don’t feel like going tonight, Nel. Stomach isn’t half right.” He belches again but not so loudly. “Got wind around the heart!”

“Twt lol!”³⁷ My mother laughs. She often laughs at my father, but laughs a little crossly, I think, as if he were a pet that never behaved as well as it should and had to be continually forgiven.

“You go and get shaved, Dic Jones, and we’ll see how bad your stomach is when tea is ready. Harvest Thanksgiving tonight, so hurry up.”

“Thanks for what?”

“Thanks for a lot of things, Dic Jones. Now you know that as well as I do. Thanks for being in health, my boy, and for having a job. That’s something to be thankful for these days.”

As usual, my father does as he’s told. In the big, ugly church I sit neatly between them. It is true that there is rather a bad smell from the decaying flowers in the over-heated church, but there is no need for my father to pull such a vulgar face and wrinkle up his nose. My mother lifts a stiff, grey gloved hand to her mouth and coughs over-discreetly to signal my father to behave himself. Dear M, In fact there isn’t really enough room in our house but if convenient I would love to come up to the Rectory for a few days. As you know I haven’t had the pleasure yet of meeting your mother ... It is terrible to be ashamed of one’s father, especially when he is such a kind and unselfish man. My mother of course does her level best to make him presentable, but in fact she herself, poor thing, is not without fault in this matter. I hate the servile way she has of talking to people better off than us, and even with Griffiths the curate, she is so ingratiating it embarrasses me unbearably. The other day as she was scrubbing the floor of the passage with the front door open to see better, she was literally on her knees in front of the pompous little man with his perpetual catarrh and the dandruff thick on his narrow black shoulders.

“Oh, Mr Griffiths bach.”

“Good morning, Mrs Jones. And how are you to-day?”

“You’ll come in for a minute, Mr Griffiths, now won’t you... Don’t look at all these newspapers on the floor ... always scrubbing I am, but I never seem to keep it tidy, small as it is ... now you’ll have a cup of tea, won’t you, Mr Griffiths, just to please me ... Don’t mind this chair, if you’ll sit in it please ... It is so very kind of you to come and see us I’m sorry about this tablecloth don’t look at it please ...”

Oh, mother, my mother, don’t ever apologize for anything again. In any case, can’t you see you’re better than he is? I glance at my father again as she coughs discreetly behind her grey glove, but this time it is nothing more than a tickle in her throat.

The special preacher this evening is a young parson from the country, the Reverend J.P.K. Lewis, M.A.,(Oxon.)

“Duwch!”³⁸ my father whispers to me. “I remember this chap. He used to play outside left for the Nomads, Albie! This chap used to play outside left for the Nomads. Good player, too!”

My mother puts her grey, gloved hand to her mouth and clears her throat loudly and frowns. I sit between them, a pillar of correct behaviour, staring straight ahead.

The special preacher is a youthful-looking fair-haired man. A long, intelligent face. It occurs to me quite suddenly that he rather resembles Michael. I wish that my father would restrain himself over the Amens at the end of the hymns. The sermon is easy to follow, simple and sincere. A comparison between a grain of wheat and a human soul. The wheat needs deep soil so as to keep its roots alive and moist even in times of great drought. The deeper the roots, the greater the fruit. So in every respect the soul. Improved strains, clean well-tilled soil; the comparison went on. My father nudges me ... Albie! This is a botany lesson, not a sermon!” Then he winks at me which I find intolerable. Christ, said the preacher, Christ was the deep nourishing earth in which the soul can grow. And it is of this that I think as the congregation flows slowly out of the heated church into the damp, foggy night outside. I try to go home ahead of my mother and father. I want to write to Michael at once.

Dear M. dear M. I heard an exciting sermon this evening. You as a parson’s son will know this already, but the fact is, the soul of a man is like a grain of wheat ...

I read the other day, said Michael, that the world was a stage; and, in my opinion, every good actor needs a bit of peace and quiet to learn his part. A good place to rest is the big leather armchair in my father’s study on a Saturday afternoon, especially when everyone is out and I have the house to myself. I am free to brood, a large book open across my knees, and to stare out of the french window from time to time at the silent fields below the house. At home an actor has the right to set aside his part, to be the core of himself, to remain for hours in a sulky silence of self-contemplation, like Narcissus staring at his own image in the motionless pool. I am an eternal actor, characterless until the occasion calls for a character, until a second person calls the cue, requires the suitable answer from a suitable part. I sit motionless until my shoulders are cold and I shiver involuntarily.

Between the high bookshelves on the study wall is a door leading to a small room which my father calls his workshop. It is my habit to go in when the house is empty, for it is full of interesting things; a two-speed bike without tyres; an ancient typewriter; a toolbox, old lamps from Church without glasses or wicks, pieces of the old Church organ in the process of being converted into a wardrobe. Officially, I have been told not to enter this room, since the day when I used it as a photographer’s dark room. Iorwerth was with me that day too, but that did not save me from punishment. I spilled hydrochloride over a pile of books my father had just bought at a sale. By now, of course, these bundles of books are the most interesting things in the room. They lie here and there in untidy piles, bought by my father at different sales, in the hope of discovering something worthwhile among them. He goes through them at his leisure, moving those of value on to the shelves and throwing the rest out into the stable loft. He rarely burns any, as my mother and Mary the maid would wish. As an historian he says he finds it difficult to burn anything on paper.

This afternoon alone in the house, alone in this small room, I come across a small blue book called A Ritual for Married Lovers, translated from the French. I take it back with me to the study and sit reading it before the fire, trembling with anxious curiosity; the saliva dries in my mouth, and then suddenly flows again. When I hear the front door open, I hastily put it in my pocket and take up the other open book I have ready by me. My imagination is troubled, I know that I am on the threshold of a world governed by inscrutable forces and in the deepest forest of this new continent lies a bright fountain, the source of beauty and horror, of a new joy and new sadness, of perpetual unrest.

What can I do to save my friends, said Iorwerth. It is obvious to me that they do not have the joy and certainty of the true faith. I would do much for Albie, if only for the sake of the innocent love I once bore for him, in the days before I turned my back on the funfairs of Llanelw and the vanities of this world. For now I must declare that every hymn I hear has a personal message for me and that my one ambition in life is to follow in the footsteps of Pantycelyn, unworthy though I may be. I know that there is a verse and hymn appropriate to every possible occasion and one day I may add my modest song to the collection. I wish I were less diffident and fearful and then I would quote something suitable to Michael or Albie, as the greatest tokens of my true concern for them.

But I must wait for my chance to approach them and for the time being keep my hopes locked in my heart. One day I shall help Albie in his personal difficulties and I shall give poor frivolous Michael invaluable advice. They are, of course, both Anglicans, I suppose, dazzled with the pomp of empty ritual and ceremony, things alien and English that have no place in the true Welsh heart.

Yes, I would like to take Michael to one side and say to him frankly but with sympathy: “Michael, put away your pride and abase yourself before your Maker. Give up your idle flippancies, your self-confidence, your urge for popularity and power, put aside your sinful interest in girls and all the ungovernable lusts which assail you. Throw yourself on the inexhaustible mercy of God.”

But how can I approach him? He is always distant and unapproachable on these matters: his real self is never revealed. It moves me greatly to think that he is daily hardening the shell which surrounds him. When he sits beside me on the bus, and we talk about our homework, I seem to feel the hardness of this armour which will prevent any salvation approaching his isolated soul.