10

On a fine afternoon, said Albie, towards the end of September we all went on a trip together in Michael’s car. We had the hood down and our voices fluttered like pennants in the wind. For as long as the car was moving at any rate, I enjoyed the illusion of freedom. It was wonderful to escape from the tiny office box that held me beyond the plate glass and chromium front of the garage, from the ominous hum of the grim electric clock, and Mr Bell’s regular critical glances.

Everyone believes I am happy in my new work. I say so, for the sake of my mother and my father, and in order to observe some undefined convention. Shortly, however, when I have him to myself, I shall tell Michael exactly how I feel. He has little sympathy with my Marxist point of view and I don’t understand his concern for Welsh nationalism, but, because of the strength of his character perhaps, it is in him I wish to confide. I could tell him about the whispers I hear in that tiny office, voices that remind me of Frida’s, repeating endlessly, “You’re here for good. You’ll never get out, you’ll never get out.”

O, God, to think of the time and energy I spent on the utter fantasy of loving Frida. It must have been perfectly clear, even for me, from the very beginning that she was only whiling away the time with me, to tide over a tediously long stay in an unfriendly house. I am so ashamed and so hurt, I cannot mention it to anyone, except perhaps to her, and she, I know, would not want to hear. Yet she is still in command of my imagination and I still worship her white body. Perhaps, if we could broach the subject calmly and naturally, I could say to Michael, Tell me, have you any idea why Frida wanted to destroy me?

I wish the others were not here. It’s Michael I want to talk to I know it was for my benefit that he organised this outing and my heart is full of gratitude, but I only wish that instead we could have made a short excursion together to some valley where we could enjoy a long conversation on the banks of a quiet river. I need his help to tackle my problems; even if he only sat still and listened it would help. I wish Ann were not here, sitting next to me in the back seat. She’s a very nice girl I know, but she imprisons me, just as surely as does the box-like office, inside some image she insists on calling Albie.

Oh, Albie, you played a marvellous game, you really did ... think you’re much better in the centre, I really do... I think you’re much better than Cyril Boot, I really do, seriously now ... Shall we dance, Albie, you’re such a good dancer, shall we ...? Will you come to supper, Albie, to tea, to supper, to tea, to supper. Your mother knows you’re coming ...

It’s a comfort of course, but a dangerous comfort. It would be so easy to be satisfied with a little and to be permanently linked to a pleasant and healthy girl I don’t even enjoy kissing. More dangerous still because my mother likes the idea of my being friendly with the only daughter of The Queen’s. She’s such a nice girl, my mother says, and I know that she is thinking that all my education has not been wasted. Jolly girl, my father says, good sport. Nothing big about her. They are quite right about her, and I can understand their attitude, but to me she is only a new warder in the prison. I must say to Michael as soon as I can today, Listen, Michael. I’ve got to talk to you. It’s important and it can’t wait.

I have a premonition, said Iorwerth, that today all of us are together in one company for the last time. This, therefore, is a special occasion, and for this reason I observe my friends closely and I also observe closely the country world through which we are moving. The steep path winds up through the trees to the green sward of the hilltop in the centre of which stands a ruined martello tower. From there we shall have a wonderful view of the coast. I start singing, and the others join in, one after the other. This pleases me, lifts my heart until I am suddenly overwhelmed with a feeling of affection for every one of them. “Oh, look! Look!” Dilys holds my arm, “Just look!” We all stop and look upwards. “Red ones too,” Les says very quietly. For a moment the red squirrels linger and then they disappear into the leaves that are changing colour. At the top of the hill we sit down facing the sea. Ann brings out her camera and insists on photographing us as a group. For a while to tease her, Les and Michael refuse to stand still: more than once, Michael stands on his head. Somewhere in Ann’s home there will be a picture of us which will lie in a drawer perhaps for many years: Michael stretched on the grass, his fingers locked together under his chin: Albie standing rather self-consciously with one hand in his trouser pocket: Dilys sitting up neatly her head turned a little to face the camera and Les, caught for ever with his tongue out! Youth I suppose is a brief thing like the moment in which a photograph is taken.

For some reason a heated argument arises between Albie and Les. They do not get on at all well these days, they argue about such trivial things.

“That’s not the Town Hall at all.” Les says, most uncharacteristically impatient and heated. “That’s St John’s spire.”

“It’s so far away,” says Michael. “Easy to be mistaken from here.”

“I’m not mistaken,” says Albie, “I know every stone of the old Sodom only too well.”

Bit by bit it becomes a political wrangle.

“People have got a perfect right to enjoy themselves if they want to,” Les says. “People have got a perfect right to earn a living by entertaining the public.”

“To make money from the people who can least afford to part with it!”

“Everybody’s got a perfect right to make money.” Les calls himself a pragmatic rationalist. He seems to know quite a lot of philosophy and he must read a lot, but I’ve no idea when. He seems to me to be always enjoying himself. He’s going to be a doctor. Michael says he’ll make a very good one. I only wish I knew what exactly I was going to be. “Let’s face it!” Les uses one of his favourite phrases, “in the cold light of reason!”This seems to me a reaction from being the son of a vague and emotional mother, and a capricious, hasty-tempered father.

“From fire and brimstone, from the doomed city, fly!” Michael sings extempore. I join in and an open quarrel is averted. But as soon as we stop, they start arguing again.

“Come on,” I say. “Come on. Don’t let’s row on such a fine afternoon. It may be...”

“Blessed are the Peacemakers!” Michael places his hand on my head in a mock episcopal gesture. “Iorwerth is against rowing.”

“Well, it is a waste of time on a fine day like this.”

“Quite right,” says Michael. “Shadows of the evening will soon be falling across our sky! Come on, chaps, on with the motley! What about some tea? Or is it too early?”

“Oh, no!” Dilys laughs happily. “It’s never too early for tea.”

“Where’s this cafe you were telling us about, Michael?” Les asks.

Beneath the hill, inland, among the trees, we find a small river and near it two mills, one of them now a ruin, and beyond them a small farmhouse converted into a cafe. We have our tea on the uneven lawn in front of the house. Bara brith⁴⁷ and flat scones loaded with butter. Harmony reigns and everyone is in a merry mood. “Isn’t there a game we can play?” says Les. “What about hide and seek?”

“Bit childish isn’t it?” Albie lights a cigarette.

“Who cares? Just the place for a game on a big scale. I like the idea. What about it?”

“Oh, yes. Let’s.” Dilys and Ann are enthusiastic.

“Town-bred, you see.” Michael points at Les with mock solemnity. “Gets excited at the sight of trees. Releases the animal in him.”

“Good start for a psycho-analysis.” Albie looks knowing. I blame Frida for the enmity that flares up so easily between Albie and Les. Les used to be so outspoken about her although she was his cousin, or is it that Les has turned out to be so successfully clever at examinations? In any case, I wish they could be good friends again, as they used to be in the old days.

Michael now imitates a child counting out. The lot of searcher falls to me. I borrow Les’s wrist-watch, and I sit down comfortably to give them all five minutes to disappear. The entire wooded valley is so peaceful and the sounds of peace so soothing to listen to I wait longer than is necessary and get to my feet almost reluctantly.

I walk very slowly in the direction of the old mill. The solitude of my surroundings moves me strangely, and at the same time releases me from my preoccupation with myself. I identify myself with the eccentric shape of an old, isolated thorn tree near the bright green ground with its wet indentations that lies between me and the shallow race of the river as it approaches the mill. Inside the ruined shell of the mill the earth floor has been churned up by the feet of sheltering cattle. Of the second floor, there remains only one stout joist. Hundreds of initials and names are scrawled over the patches of whitewashed plaster that remain on the stone walls. Some must have climbed up to the joist to write their names in bold illiterate letters on the highest parts of the wall. Alongside the mill, the rotting moss-covered wooden wheel suffets the endless attack of the white foamed eager millrace.

I move further into the wood, following a sheep track upwards towards the hilltop. Lost in my delicious reverie I have almost forgotten my companions, when suddenly through the bushes I hear a murmur of voices. I stand quite still and listen. The glow of happiness begins to drain from me before I am certain that it is Michael and Dilys that I can hear. Two voices that are intimate, that have come to some understanding. They draw me on like a spy who creeps up to see and remain unseen. They disturb me into new forms of shame and disgust. Dilys lies on the grass and Michael lies at her side, his hand lying on her breast. As I watch, Dilys lifts a hand to stroke his hair and Michael leans down to kiss her, his body weighing against hers. I tremble with hatred and disgust. My best friend and the girl whom I respected and adored. For the first time in my life I feel the hatred that can kill.

When I turn away I no longer care whether they become aware of my presence, or whether she sits up suddenly, smoothing her hair with her hands to ask him did he hear someone approach. All I know is that I am unbearably unhappy and wretchedly betrayed by one whom I considered my most admirable friend and a girl whom I believed I loved: the two who stood between me and complete isolation. Now I know as certainly as if I were already dead that I am for ever alone.

In my agony, I lose all count of time, and when at last I return to our rendezvous on the wooden bridge near the cafe-farm house, everyone has reappeared, and Michael is the first to ask, “Where on earth have you been all this time?” How is it possible for them all not to observe the change that has taken place in me? Is my suffering not visible? I myself, while the others are talking, cannot help looking at Dilys and Michael; looking for some traces of their sin, some evidence of their guilt. How could they ever be the same again? And yet they seem no different. They laugh like everyone else, and for the same reasons.

As I drew her head down to mine, said Michael, my fingers buried in her silky, yellow hair, I knew, as I studied with pleasure her beautiful and desirable face, that she looked at me with a puzzled curiosity, and her eyes seemed to be staring with frank inquisitiveness even when our lips were pressed together, as though, if she looked long enough, whatever my lips were saying she would find some signal of my secret on my face. Holding her body in my arms, I was swept with the heresy of the five senses as I thought surely in this shapely girl lies ultimate bliss. She drew away from me suddenly as if she had heard someone approaching, beginning to talk rapidly but unsteadily, and she would not allow me to kiss her again. Apart from her, to my great relief, the spell was broken and I was able to regard her dispassionately.

She would never be my Galatea.⁴⁸ In spite of her beauty and attractiveness the horizon of her mind was as limited and as rigid as the polished wooden rail that hemmed in the deacon’s dais in her father’s chapel. As I listened to her trivial chatter, I knew that in a few years time she would marry some chartered accountant, sing the usual hymns in Chapel on Sundays, and on most mornings meet her married friends for morning coffee at Ronnie’s or the Kardomah.

As for me, I need the time to lay the foundations of my plans and to mature. In years to come perhaps, I shall find a beautiful eager girl to whom my purposes will become the breath of living. But not yet.

The meantime belongs to discipline, to preparation for my tasks. I shall dedicate myself to the country whose beauties about me I always linger over now, with loyal eyes. And to people like Iorwerth who among us all is its most direct heir. In reality he is a potent symbol, because with all his naïve innocence, he represents the soul of Wales for me. He must be saved from the new Nineveh that skins the innocent sands. He must not be among the crowd I once saw in a dream, streaming into Llanelw on the eve of its destruction, in pursuit of green money rolling. As they entered the city they were consumed in a green fire. It is for you, my friend, and for your unborn children and their children after them, I shall work, and, if need be, die.

When we paused at the summit of the hill on our way home, said Albie, and I looked back to see our grassy path lose itself among the trees below us, where the river and the mill and the farmhouse lay hidden, all I had left to say to myself was, “For God’s sake, will you never learn? Will you never learn?” After tea, as we separated to find our hiding places, I tried to go in the same direction as Michael, thinking perhaps that at last my chance had come for private talk with him, the long chat alongside a river that I had been hoping for. But his mind was already fixed on Dilys Maurice. She was never a girl I liked and in any case, it’s rather unfair on Iorwerth. I don’t know whether they had any previous understanding, of course, but she dawdled until we had caught her up and then Michael turned to me and said:

“Look, Albie. Ann’s over there, waiting for you. Over there, by the ruined mill. Go on, old chap. Don’t keep a lady waiting.”

“Yes, but listen, Michael...”

“Dilys!” He had already begun to walk in her direction. “Dilys! There’s something I wanted to tell you...”

And she stood, waiting to welcome him. I went back slowly in Ann’s direction. Together we walked without talking along the river bank. I had absolutely nothing to say to her, but she kept looking as if I was about to empty the entire contents of my mind at her feet any minute. Her mouth was fixed in a small expectant smile. But I was determined to say nothing. Here in the neutral quiet of the countryside she walked at my side as the representative of my enemies, like a jailer in an open prison. She watched me on behalf of Mr Bell and the office, and the electric clock, on behalf of Cambrian Avenue in particular and Llanelw in general, so that I could not escape, no not even for one afternoon. This valley and hill were, anyway, no escape. From here all roads led back to Llanelw.

“Albie.” Ann spoke at last, in an extra-sweet voice, “Albie. Do you still hear from Frida Langan? You used to, didn’t you?”

“No.” I tried to sound discouraging.

“She was an odd girl, wasn’t she?”

“Suppose so, in a way.”

“Michael told me once that she had a sort of influence over you.” Her effort to sound kind was unbearable. “A spell, he said.”

“Did he?” I could hear Michael’s patronizing voice at it, expounding my failure, a light topic of conversation for anyone who cared to listen. But what does he or anyone else know of my bitter experience? I could have killed Frida for her indifference and yet I longed for her and I still dream of her.

“Albie,” Ann went on talking. “You know if I were you, I wouldn’t go telling Michael everything. I’m not trying to say that he’s untrustworthy or anything like that. He wouldn’t deliberately try to hurt you I know. But really you know, deep down, he’s a very cold person. He treats people as if they were all the same, all objects, all... oh, I don’t know how to put it. I’m not clever. But you understand what I mean.”

I nodded and in a moment she had got what she wanted. We were both flowing with talk as fast as the river flowed with water, and I was busy trying to demonstrate how I had most things under control and how well satisfied I was with my world. And eventually, of course, there was nothing for it but to take her in my arms and to start talking about love. I dropped like a witless fly into the web. How shall I ever get out?

From the top of the hill we saw the sun setting in the west behind the unchanging mountains; an unusually beautiful sunset, but it brought no solace to my despondent heart. Michael and Les were discussing the latest crisis.

“The sooner the better,” I said savagely.

“What?” They had not been aware that I was listening.

“War,” I said. “It’s got to come. There’s no avoiding it. So, I say, the sooner the better. Liberty and all that, they have to be fought for. That’s the only hope for progress.”

“Good old Albie!” Michael was laughing. I could have hit him. He had no right to laugh at me. What I was saying was true.

“None of this freedom for Wales nonsense,” I said, “I mean real freedom. For the workers, for all the oppressed classes. For every individual. If you want liberty you’ve got to fight for it. And you’ve got to fight to keep it.”

“Oh, Albie!” Ann said this in such a reproachful tone that everyone started laughing. But I still tried to be serious.

“For the workers,” I said, “the ordinary people of every country...”

But before I could finish the sentence, Les had begun to sing the Red Flag in his funny squeaky voice. I had to hit him or laugh. I laughed. Oh, what an ass I’ve been today! Will I never learn?

As the sun set, said Michael, I was alone for a moment on a step of the ruined tower facing westward. Somewhere in the quiet evening air about me, between me and the voices of my friends going homeward, there was a vision. They were calling me and I could not stop them calling. I stood still enough to hear sheep forty yards away cropping the hill turf, and the individual wings of a flock of migrating starlings beating high up in the coloured air. I waited, but perhaps not long enough. They were calling me. I waited no longer, but yet as I ran on to join the others, I knew it would come again.

I saw the bus, said Albie, generating its own light, moving like an electric toy along the narrow undulating road. I remember thinking at the time of the driver, a man like my father, gripping the big wheel tightly with both hands, thinking of his supper and pressing down his hunger by pressing his right foot harder on the accelerator. Just like my father! Anyway the bus went down out of sight into the hollow, and so it passed out of my mind. I was in no mood for singing with the others. Ann kept nudging me to join in and I noticed she kept on nudging Iorwerth, too. At the wheel, Michael sang loudly enough, in spite of the difficulties we had had starting the old car, pushing it up one incline in the road to the other.

The great bus came suddenly into view, a roaring monster with its wicked headlamps pointing straight at us. Michael failed to slow down the car and to avoid the oncoming bus he drove into the wide ditch on our left. The car lurched on for a while on one side, but before the girls had had a chance to scream, it turned over and emptied us all into the hedge.

Mercifully, said Iorwerth, in spite of the wreck in which the car was, none of us was really hurt, except Michael. His left cheek and the backs of his hands were split open by splinters of the windscreen glass. Albie and Les dragged him out of the car. He stood, dazed, in the middle of the road, his hand on his cheek. Dilys was the first to collect her wits and to start thinking of a light and bandages and such things. The bus had gone on, unaware of our fate, but in a few minutes another bus came from our direction and in its dazzling lights we saw all the blood over Michael’s face and arms. Dilys was again in full command. She behaved as if her whole life had been a rigorous training for this one occasion. She found material for bandages and attended to Michael’s wounds, telling everyone, including the disapproving bus-driver, exactly what to do. She found out the whereabouts of the nearest doctor’s surgery. Les of course did his best, but since his spectacles had been smashed he could do but little. When I had recovered from the shock of seeing so much blood, and struggled not to be sick on the bumpy journey down to the village, I was not displeased with my own behaviour. I began to wonder what message the incident had for me. Was it even possible for me to become a doctor? In those few seconds of crises, had I found a new vocation?

Michael lay on the couch in the doctor’s surgery, said Albie, I sat by his head and Dilys Maurice sat on the other side. He kept trying to say something, but we told him not to talk. I realized this was Fate. Somewhere all over the world, from one second to another a heart stops beating, somewhere a man is killed. We are like ants. I want to say to Michael, doesn’t this prove to you, Michael, that we are like ants with the hob-nailed boot of Fate always hovering just above our heads as we crawl over the ant-heap of History? All we need then is strength to face the guns of chance here at home or, when the war comes, on another continent. But all I say to him is, don’t try to talk.

What I tried to say, said Michael, was to tell them to go home. All of them could go home, each his own way. This was the parting of our ways. I am the only one who needs to lie still on the couch under the glaring light, waiting for the doctor to stitch the wound in my cheek. Alone one learns best to wait in uncomplaining patience. Comrades, we no longer have anything at all to do with each other. Or at least you have nothing further to do with me. I prefer to ponder my first encounter with the thing called Fate alone. I want to believe that I belong to the few among men who are chosen to battle with Fate and I can believe this better when I am alone. I want to welcome this accident as the first fall in a long wrestle. What I’m trying to say, said Michael, is, go home now. I’m better alone.

When I get home, said lorwerth, the first thing I shall do is to run upstairs to my father’s bedroom. I shall speak out clearly and I shall say, father, father, I think life is cruel. When you were young, like I am, how was it with you? And now, my father, in your sick bed and the shadow of Death at the door, what is the purpose of living? What does life mean? I want my life to mean something, but have we any freedom at all, except the freedom to pretend to take death as a free choice, or to choose to be resigned to what in any case is outside our power? My father, I am coming home to be with you. I shall never be far away from you again as long as we live. So you must be ready, when I come, to answer my questions.

From a hilltop, I have seen night advance from the east across the face of the earth like the shadow of God, neutralizing contours, making hill and valley, town and country one. When it reaches the western sea its movement quickens and finally blots out the horizon. The earth, bearing continents and seas, shows another hemisphere the sun, and another the outer darkness.