XIX

A SHEPHERD SWIMS

When our Mother had set us on our way, she had casually mentioned that she had no cash on her and that we would have to charge things we needed, such as grazing and food for ourselves. Since credit cards did not yet exist, we would have to ask vendors to give us credit, to send our Mother a bill and she would pay it. Such a request would have been perfectly normal in those days.

Few people carried much cash – nowadays, armed with a small plastic card, things can be easier – though they may encourage profligacy!

We went straight to the village shop, but of course it was closed (it must have been after 8 pm). The only other business that might have any food was ‘Yr Ring’, the pub. We were much too young to be allowed in and Mother disapproved of such places, but we went around to the kitchen door at the back. The English called it The Brondanw Arms, after the large house (or ‘Plâs’) where Clough and Amabel Williams-Ellis lived, but it was a hotbed of Welsh Nationalism, and they stubbornly called it ‘Yr Ring’ and only Welsh was spoken at the bar.

The back door was opened by the publican’s wife and my sister explained our predicament. She told us to wait a moment while she talked to her husband, and soon came back and ushered us into her kitchen, sat us down with beer mugs full of milk and started cooking a feast for hungry children: fried bangers (sausages), eggs, bubble-and-squeak (fried potato and cabbage) and fried bread. She was making us ‘tea’ and that was probably what anyone nearby with enough money would be eating. Not that they were fat, they walked everywhere and most were manual labourers. As we ate, she gently asked us a few questions and from time to time went out to the bar – from which came the sound of hymns being sung in Welsh, telling us that a good time was being had out there. Once one has reached that degree of inebriation, the morose stage, there’s nothing like a good hymn sung in four-part harmony to drown the soul in melancholy. She would come back with beer mugs to wash at the kitchen sink, then she would wipe her hands on her apron and chat a little more.

After a while, the publican came in and sat at the kitchen table with us. My sister at once repeated what she had already told his wife: that he should send a bill to our mother and she would pay by cheque. He was a big man with a florid face. Though his size was intimidating, he was not unkind. He stopped her in mid-sentence and said: “Now then, nippers, I’m wanting to tell you a tale…”

We rested our knives and forks and looked at him.

“I was about your ages back then. Living on a hill sheep farm with me dad, me mam and nain [grandmother]. I was walking to school in Croesor and helping out on the farm before and after, like. Well, one summer, there’s this tall young Englishman with a beard comes to live up here from time to time. Was it Garreg Fawr he was to living at? Well, doesn’t matter. So this fellow gets to talking to us nippers and he says it’s hot, how about we all go down to the beach to swim with him? Well some of us says yes and others says no, but I went along. He had this big Bentley car and he loads us in like sheep, all on top of each other. Five in the dickey, four in the seat beside him. I’d never been down to the beach. What would a sheep farmer be doing on the beach? Well he starts to teach us to swim.

“After that, when it was hot and we could get away, some of us would go down there again with him and he’d teach us some more. He used to lie under water and we’d all sit on him to stop him coming up, but he was strong and sooner or later he would always come back up to breathe. After that summer, I never did run into him again, though they say he married and was living in Plas Parc for a while. Then the War came and I was called up. Then I was at Dunkirk. The boats couldn’t come in too close for the Jerries’ bombing and strafing at them, like. Hell’s inferno, it was – Diawchedig [devilish]. I must ‘a swum a mile out and was picked up by this little pleasure boat. He’d come over with the fishing boats and Navy boats and all. He took me out to a troop carrier that brought me home. Then he went right back inshore for more chaps. I often wonder to this day: did he make it home? Plucky fellow, that one.” He paused with the innate Welsh instinct for drama and drew on the cigarette we had not seen him light.

“A sheep farmer, on the hills, me, what would I be having with the sea and with swimming if it wasn’t for that Englishman? Nothing! Nothing, I tell you! Never would I have learned to swim without your father to teach me. I owe him my life. So finish up your tea, nippers, and don’t be bothering me with no payments…” With that he was gone back to his customers, leaving us reeling with thought.

“Well,” breathed his wife as the door closed, “and he never told me nothing about the War and all that. Probably wants to forget it all, I expect.”

We thanked her profusely and she told us not to forget what her husband had told us. I, for one, never have. We walked back to the farm in the gathering dusk and by the time we had crept into our sleeping bags, replete and exhausted, it was dark and we had found a new respect for our Father. We learned much of our Father from the tales of others.

Next day, we rode back up to the Roman Road and continued on north, meeting our Mother at the next river crossing where we had to come down to the road for its bridge. She had forgotten our clean clothes (not that we noticed) but brought us some urgently-needed cash! She drove behind us as we crossed the bridge and followed the road up the side of a spectacular gorge with a raging torrent at the bottom (the River Glaslyn, that fed the other, reclaimed, branch of the estuary, the Traeth Mawr or Big Beach). Traffic was a nightmare, with noisy tourist buses belching smoke at us and practically shaving our legs off as they passed. Even the tourist cars were no better. Nancy was cool as a cucumber, but my sister’s mount became so crazed, she had to jump off and lead him, her legs stiff from riding for hours.

After the gorge, we soon left the road and our Mother, and followed the disused track of a narrow gauge slate railway. The rails had been pulled up during the War for scrap metal, but many of the sleepers were still there and the ponies kept tripping on them. Nancy managed better and I just gave her her head and let her work it out. I was dreaming of being somewhere else – probably driving a car!

That night (we left the abandoned railway as soon as we could), we camped at another farm and offered to pay for our grazing. Two such young children, alone on horseback, were sufficiently unusual in those days for the farmer to refuse any payment. His wife even brought us some scones she had just baked. We ate the provisions we had bought before leaving the road… probably canned sausages and beans, if I remember.

The next day was another long ride. There was no more Roman Road and we juggled tracks and short pieces of small road. Here, the hills were lower, rounder, more tamed. The sunny weather held, but nothing much interested me and I sat watching Nancy’s furry ears, nodding with her paces, just awake enough to grab the reins when she went for a tuft of grass. That evening, we arrived at the farm of some friends and they showed us a good camping spot. Our Mother arrived just as we were pitching the tent. She busied herself with setting up a plate-drying rack made of sticks in the ground. There was a water trough nearby which we shared with the ponies.

I was getting anxious now. All along I had known that the son of our friend the farmer had a home-made sports car that looked like a cigar on wheels. I couldn’t wait to ride in it. Next day, we learned that he was away and his car with him. Mother spent time with the farmer’s wife, my sister with her daughter Diana and I sulked. Finally, the farmer announced that he was taking a cattle truck down south to get some sheep and he could give the ponies a ride back. My sister and I rode with him. I was thankful and relieved not to be riding all the way back! Travel in one direction opens new horizons; return along your own footsteps and you see it all again. I have always tried to travel in some kind of loop.