Rhag bod annwyd ar fy mab / If my son should find it cold
Rhoddwch arno gôb ei dad / Wrap him in his father’s coat
Rhag bod annwyd ar liw’r can / If the fair one feels the cold
Rhoddwch arni bais ei mam / Wrap her in my petticoat.
When the levels rise the plants around the edge find themselves under water. Tiny yellow four-petalled tormentil. Buttercups and rusty sphagnum moss and even the reeds, even the grass. And they do look strange held there, more significant somehow, breathing in the wrong element for a while at least, until the levels drop again and release them. The space she inhabits works something like that. There are days driving home when I can tell our village has gone under. Days when it spills down from the lake up on the hill, and floods over the cattlegrids so that you pass into it about halfway up the back lane. The familiar skyline expresses it too, but really it is the quality of the air that changes. There are days when it happens, days when it doesn’t. It may be something to do with the light.
The children, hers and mine, are down by the edge of the lake, and the older ones are lunging optimistically with nets and the smaller ones are playing a game that involves jumping off stones and frightening the shoals of tiny bright fish out of their senses, and although it is early afternoon on the hottest day of the year so far, my feet are grey and cold from standing in the lake and I have withdrawn to a dryish hummock of grass to try and remove my boots which are suddenly unbearable. I know I am keeping a perfectly adequate half an eye on them, but half is clearly not enough as she appears from somewhere and hovers around making concerned noises; it’s mine she’s worried about, as ever. I tell her not to be. I tell her to come and sit down and stop being so restless; the kids, I say, are all right.
And in truth it is one of those days when I feel gratified and triumphant at having engineered a perfect childhood moment. Look, not a screen in sight, not even a phone, there being no signal, and all electronic equipment stashed safe in a rucksack perched on a stone wall, and everyone getting on a treat – adding hers, that much older, to mine, always did result in outbreaks of harmony. Look at that, I say, and then, entirely without irony: don’t you wish we had a camera?
Then she does settle at last and I grin at her and say if I’d known you were joining us I’d have packed a nice bottle of white. Another time, she says. I’ll come up on my own one evening perhaps, I say, and bring one then. I don’t drink much now, she says. Of course she doesn’t.
Springwater?
Raindrops, she says, and/or dew.
Et avec ça?
Oh, she says, vaguely, just scraps and strands. Lichen, sorrel, new hawthorn leaves, and the inevitable llus bach duon.
Bilberries. And there was me blaming the sheep.
All the smart Cardiff folks, I said, at your funeral, I don’t know what they made of the bilberry-picking after the fourth or fifth mention; they must think, us being so far from Tescos and all, that we live from hand to mouth up here, foraging; they must think the whole tribe’s survival depends on it.
It does, in a way, she says, after some consideration.
Rowan berries? I ask quickly.
She pulls a face. Sour, but yes in small doses. What else do I like now? Watermint, honeysuckle, cake.
Cake?
Even in death, she says enigmatically, there is cake.
We were proud as queens, I say, that day at the summer fête, do you remember, manning the cake stall…?
Womanning the cake stall, she says, wrinkling her nose.
Indeed. I made at least five myself, though I can’t rememember what they all were, apple I expect, and lemon, and a bara brith, the usual. And you would have done teisen lap and that plain one the boys like with chocolate on top.
There must have been more, she says.
There were, it was epic.
Homeric.
Like the Tractor Run this year. When they massed up here on the hill against the skyline with the whole of the bay before them. From all over the county they came. That really was the stuff of epic; there should have been someone standing up at Hafod Ithel twanging a traditional three-stringed instrument and calling them in: naming each and every one as they came trundling over the hill in their ancient glory and reciting their various virtues – oh, but you missed them, you were gone by then.
Not really, she says mildly. Go and rescue that child.
I clamber off my tussock and pick my way clumsily across the boggy land back down to the shingle beach of the lake, but by the time I get there the child has been picked up and comforted by an older one, one of hers.
You see, I say, they self-regulate.
Needs a dry top, she says, he’ll catch cold.
Woman it is the hottest day of the year and he’s more likely to catch an octopus than a cold, but I know from your expression how worried you get about this, how deeply anxious it makes you to think that any of them might ever be cold, and I stumble over to the rucksacks, grazing my legs gently on nettles, and pull out an oversize t-shirt with which I manage to bag him from behind, like a little fish. Twtyn, she says tenderly.
In a matter of seconds, I say very gravely, that t-shirt will be soaking wet.
I find a flattish rock on the slope above the nettles and take in a different view of the lake, the ruined folly in the far reeds, the collapsed cottages, the beeches that used to be somebody’s hedge now a row of grey-limbed giants; one of them housing a raggedy nest, a buzzard or a kite, I can’t remember, her eldest knows which. An RAF jet smashes through the lot, leaves us quivering.
Uwch llonyddwch… I quote wryly, and scramble down to reassure the most frightened, and to say something flattening to one of the older ones who is unashamedly impressed, and then I stand in the shallow water and wait for the world to subside, for the lake to stop shivering. When I can see the underwater plants and the flash of a stickleback I go back up to my rock and hope that she will come back.
I pick up a sharp slate and pretend to feel its edge. Thought I might go up and deface the Poets’ Stone in your honour, I say loudly, you’re one of them now aren’t you, Beirdd y Mynydd, you and Beti both:
I gofio’r gwyˆr – (a’r gwragedd!!)
Fu’n nyddu llên [In memory of the men (and the women!!)
who crafted verse
Uwch llonyddwch above the tranquility
Llyn …. of Lake….]
Another plane screams through, but this time I don’t go back down: see, how quickly they get used to it, even the little ones, a smile is enough this time.
Do they stick together? I wonder. The poets, I mean.
They do, she says, sitting down on the turfy grazed patch beside me.
Cliquey?
Well; you know.
Are they here too? I ask. It’s always only you.
Matter of time, matter of perspective, she says. But it’s busy enough, yes. Put your foot on my foot if you want to see.
My feet are still cold but they have a bit more life in them by now and I stretch out a tentative leg in wet, rolled-up jeans towards her. She is sitting with her arms wrapped round her knees, looking like a girl. Her hair shines copper. There are tiny flecks of paint on her forearms. I can’t feel her foot of course, but I feel a lurch, like being downstairs on a big ferry, and then I start to see various groups of people walking around the lake. They are blurry, and somehow faded, but I can see them, mostly wearing black, with smudges of white shirts, white collars, white aprons. Calvinist revivalists, farmers, labourers, talking away quietly, absorbed in their groups. I think I see Beti, walking more easily than she has done for years, and probably, from the look of her at this distance, telling jokes. And further up there are two or three old-fashioned-looking children, bizarrely pulling a sledge through the reeds. I take my foot away quickly then as a forgotten local half-story surfaces; I don’t want to see the children with their sledge.
A small cloud briefly turns the lake a steely grey. I try to describe how some days it feels as if the village is flooded with neither light nor water, and she nods.
I get past the grids on those days, she says.
The cattlegrids?
Mm. Supposed to keep us to the uplands. Can’t touch the metal. But I come and go a lot, really, especially on those days.
I know you do, I say.
Then I see that the sun has slipped, and that there is a haze coming slowly in from the sea. It will be a trek back down the hill with this lot. I can see that the smallest one has had enough, and is bravely making his way towards me, struggling for balance over the mounds of moss and reeds.
Aros funud! I call, and in a single predictable movement he looks up to my voice and falls over on his face at the edge of the spreading stream, where the peat is rich and black and the water is like stewed tea. She is already bending over him, all helpless concern: o twtyn, she says, o cariad bach. And I heave him upright and pull his sopping t-shirt up over his head and wipe the worst of the peat off his face, and laugh at how yellow he is already, all over, a little Tollund Man, perfectly preserved.
Dewch, you lot; ni’n mynd! They gather strewn clothing, buckets, nets. I strip the little peaty one and find the last dry t-shirt, which comes down to his knees, and carry him laboriously up to the road where I set him down on his feet and kiss him, and go down to collect a forgotten bucket and help the other two smaller ones, and chivvy the rest. Dewch ymlaen. She stands patiently on guard up on the road but she is stooping now and I can tell she’s starting to fret.
I can manage, I say, don’t worry, they’ll be home soon, and dry and fed. Look how strong they are, how full of energy. It’s a lovely evening. They’ll be fine. Come on, now, don’t fuss.
But there is a flicker of panic about her now, and I can hear her insisting, not to me, or to anyone else, but over and over, how cold it is, how they need their fleeces, to make sure they wear them, bydden nhw’n oer ac yn wlyb. She isn’t thinking about the little ones.
They’re not cold, I say. Look at them. They know when they’re cold. And you know that by now I can’t make them any more than you can, none of us can, now come on, they’ll be fine, they’ve had a lovely day, let them go, they’ll be home and dry in no time.
But they need…
I summon all my strength to be firm with her.
It’s getting late, I say. Let me deal with this lot. You go and call your cattle in.
And she tears herself away at last to look anxiously around the slopes.
God yes, she says. There’s always something.
And she heads off through the heather and the gorse for the higher ground, calling in a language I don’t understand.
I turn towards the children straggled out along the narrow mountain road, and consider the various permutations for piggy-backs. The mist will meet us about halfway down the hill, I think, but that’s fine, we still have plenty of time. We go very slowly, as if exhausted, like explorers in a strange land. As we reach the crest a line of calling geese fly over us, heading back towards the lake.