A Night In Annwn

“Have you actually seen Mum and spoken to her face to face?”

“That’s a very difficult question to answer, my dear. I was talking to you this morning, but you had your back to me and couldn’t see me. However, that didn’t prevent you from knowing that it was me behind you, did it? In answer to your question though, I have never seen her as I am looking at you now, or had a conversation like this. I think that I have caught glimpses of her though, like when the telly’s on the blink and I hear her voice in my head”.

“You see Mum on the TV? I’ve seen that in films, but I’ve never heard of it happening in real life. Are you sure?”

“No, I didn’t mean that at all! I might see an image of her in a window, the steam of the kettle or in the shadows of the house. I have a theory about that. Your mother hasn’t learned how to project herself yet, and I don’t know what I’m looking for. Do you understand?”

“I’m not sure. When you’re dead you’re dead, aren’t you?”

“People assume so, but none of us really knows, do we? Or I’ll rephrase that... nobody can prove that they know. There is a man who insists that he is God’s right hand man on the planet, but God hasn’t helped him prove it. Yet, it is blasted out to the world from Catholic media as if it is undisputed gospel. How can he or they get away with that in this day and age?”

“If there is reincarnation, we have been dead before, so what is there to learn?”

“By the same token, if there is reincarnation, we have been born before, but we still have to relearn how to walk and talk and behave. Perhaps, dead people have to relearn how to make their bodies brighter or denser so that we can see them. Same with their voices”.

“So why don’t lots of people see lots of ghosts all the time?”

“I think that they do, but we don’t hear about it. The Christian Church is very strong and supports the state in most cases, so the state supports it. They prop each other up and the establishment figures who own the press and the media have a large stake in society as it is, so they all stick up for one another. I’m sure that there are tens of millions of Indians who see and talk to ghosts every day. I bet there are millions doing it every day in every country, but they would rather tell you about some jihad or that the pope kissed some tarmac. It’s a conspiracy and one that has been going on for centuries or more like when they started persecuting witches”.

“Do you really think so, Dad? It sounds a bit far fetched, doesn’t it?”

“That is exactly what they want you to think! If they can destroy your argument by ridiculing you, not necessarily your argument itself, then they have an easy victory. I do now, yes, but I’ve only just come to this conclusion. I have a lot of time to think these days, now that your mother isn’t trying to get me to paint the door or repair the roof every time it looks as if I might be taking ten minutes rest”.

“Mum wasn’t like that!”

“She bloody well was, you know, but she’s not now. She had a very hard life, and neither of us helped her as much as we could have, so she made me work hard too. Look, I’m not saying that she was wrong to do what she did. It made all our lives better, but she did do it and sometimes, I went to the pub rather than sit here and get nagged just because I was taking a few hours off. She could not bear to see someone not working. That was old school... it was normal back then. I’m not complaining. I had a few afternoons in the pub, and that was enough, and a darn sight more than she ever had”.

“Talking about work, I’d better crack on. I’ll wash the lino in the kitchen and clean out the fridge, but I’ll have to go home then and start on my own house. Why don’t you bring a chair to the kitchen door so we can have a chat?”

“Aye, all right. I can’t get down on the floor to clean it any more, or I wouldn’t get back up”.

“You’ve never cleaned a floor in your life, but if you wanted to, you would buy a mop or a Squeegee. In fact, I’m going to get you one for Christmas for saying that!”

“You know me too well, that’s your trouble. Anyways, we had a strict division of labour, your mother and me. I worked the farm and she ran the house”.

“Yes, except that she had to run the vegetable and the herb gardens too”.

“Naturally, that was always a part of the house. It was where the wise old women’, the witches I was talking about earlier, used to grow their herbs to keep the family strong and healthy. That was not male chauvinism, they wanted and needed that herb patch. So, learn your facts before you go criticising what you don’t know nothing about”.

“OK, OK, I give up. There, that’s the floor done, and it would take half the time with a decent mop. Now for the fridge”. She looked at her father, crossed herself and opened the door.

“I’m going in”, she said. “Jeez, it’s Hell in here!”

“Don’t exaggerate”, he laughed. “Pass me a beer, leave the rest there and throw everything else out, if you like”, which was what she did.

“OK, I really do have to go now. I’ll be back tomorrow morning to change the bed and do the lounge. What are you doing this afternoon, can I drop you anywhere?”

“I’ll have to think about that... Now then, what have I got on my social calendar for this fine summer’s day. Oh, dear, I seem to have mislaid it. What on Earth am I going to do now? I can’t remember a single appointment. In that case, I’ll just have to rely on the old standby, and walk Kiddy around the hilltop until we are both hungry enough to eat again and come home again to tell Mam all about our walk - how many rabbits we saw, how many snakes, and how many people, which is usually none.

“It’s either that or get you to drop us at the village pub and hope that someone will drop us home. Decisions, decisions! It’s all go, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know, but I have to go, and that is certain. Do you want me to pick up your pension tomorrow, Dad, and food and beer?”

“Yes, please, darling. We’ll just go for a walk today. Perhaps we’ll go to the pub tomorrow. Thanks for all you’ve done. Let me walk you to your car. Give my love to all your family, won’t you? Now, where’s that dog of mine?”

“Kiddy! Kiddy! Dewch yma - Come here.” she heard him calling as she drove slowly away, watching him and his faithful dog in the rear-view mirror. She wondered how much longer he would be able to cope on his own miles from anywhere as he was.

When Becky had driven off, William went back into the house, locked the back door and took his stick from the corner where it rested and a lightweight jacket from the hook on the front door.

“Bye-bye, my lovely Sarah. I won’t be long”, he whispered, and locked that behind him too

He didn’t need a lead for his dog because she had been a working sheep dog all her life and was always at William’s beck and call. They loved each other as much as any two different species can and set off on one of their daily routes which would have taken them near most of their sheep five years before, but now only led to empty grassland. He checked the sky again out of habit, but concluded that it would be a lovely day for the third time that morning.

(back to top)

2 WILLY’S WALK

William bent over despite a twinge of back pain to inspect the soil. There had been a little rain the day before and he didn’t want to have to cope with wet grass or slippery mud. It was still soft to the touch, so he chose to walk along the road that day and head upwards towards the summit of the hill that they lived on. His was not the only farm on this hill, but there was none higher than his, so from here on up, he considered it to be ‘Jones Peak’, although only by default, not by law.

His family had lived in that farm for at least eight generations according to the family Bible, the earliest date in which was 1742. All Joneses and all shepherds. The only change that had taken place in thousands of years was the road, which the government had paid for during the early years of the Second World War so that they could drive a spotter team to the summit to look out for sneaky incoming German planes.

It had been a complete waste of time and money and seemed symbolic of the whole war itself. The only people who had benefitted from the road were his own family, although at the time, his grandfather and grandmother had not wanted it there in case it encouraged tourists and other unwelcome outsiders. They need not have worried. William rarely encountered more than one or two cars a month and they were always owned by villagers wanting to take their dogs for a walk or their family for a picnic.

He and his wife, Sarah, had done that with their Becky when she was still in school too. They had tried to find the time for an outing, for that was their euphemism for it, at least once a month. He had never owned a car though, so a lot depended on the weather which was as unpredictable as the sea.

The mountains formed an efficient windbreak against the worst of the Atlantic weather, but the wind, mist and drizzle that got over them landed on Jones’ Peak, from where they would descend down the hill to envelope the village, which he would be able to see in thirty minutes as they rounded that side on their corkscrew journey upwards.

He checked his bearing and stood up straight. He had been finding recently that he had a tendency to stoop if he didn’t keep take care. He didn’t want that. He used a staff, but he always had done, ever since he was a boy. You could not be a proper shepherd or even an amateur hill walker without a decent staff. In the old days, he had used it to frighten off the occasional snake and tap a dawdling sheep, but he had never used it to help him walk, not like he did these days.

He watched Kiddy race on ahead on the other side of the road – the safer side, away from the edge. She didn’t care for the view down like he did and preferred the soft grass beneath her pads. She had caught the smell of something and was looking for its source behind the rocks and boulders that lay scattered about. She was twelve years old, and so was technically older than he was by nearly twenty years, but she could still manage a turn of speed. A short burst when the excitement of the chase took her. This would probably be a rabbit or a hare, but she would chase off snakes too.

It was a darn sight more than he could do these days, he thought sadly. He couldn’t even chase a pretty girl nowadays, but worse still, he wouldn’t even want to.. Where had all his energy gone? He had been able to run up and down this hill as much as he had wanted to for decades and now he was having trouble walking up the last section with a straight back and a stick.

It was at times like these, when he was alone, which was most of the time now, that he wondered what the point of it all was.

In a hundred yards, he would come to the boulder where he had first kissed Sarah, and where two years later she had accepted his proposal of marriage and made him the happiest man alive. He had never told anyone about that rock, because he was sure that his father would have told him that it had not always been there; that the army bulldozer had pushed all the rocks to the inside of the road rather than carry them down.

He would have said something to spoil the memory and the dream that that smooth rock had been there for ever, or at least since the Ice Age, which was long enough ago for him to still think of as romantic. He had never witnessed one tender moment between his grandparents, on either side, or his own parents. They had been tough, hard, no-nonsense people, suited to their times, whereas he had had the relative luxury of growing up in the post-war years when there was hope and prosperity. Not that it had affected or even reached their little hill, but it was evident in the media that a New World had dawned.

“About bloody time!” he remembered his father saying one day. “I hope it’s a bloody sight better than the old one!” His mother had scolded him for bad language and he had taken his pipe out into the back garden ‘for a bit of peace’.

He reached the boulder gratefully and sat down. Kiddy put her paws to the surface beside him, stared at him with her still-bright eyes, surrounded by white-grey hair and panted. William was almost panting too, but he stroked her hair, as he had Sarah’s all those years ago, and she was just as happy as his then future wife had been.

“There’s a good girl. You’re a good girl you are. A good girl!” and Kiddy appeared to show satisfaction with the praise by licking his forearm. He gazed out across the narrow road and wide valley before him. “My Mam and Da used to tell me that witches, fairies and pixies live in these hills and valleys… and my grandparents did! And I believed them…” he said to his dog. “Until I became all grown up and educated.

“I didn’t want to seem like a stupid farm boy then… I was a New Man in a New World and the Old World was for silly old people. Aye, and so were the witches and The Fair Family – Y Tylwyth Teg. But, it’s funny, you know, Kiddy, my girl, the older I got the more them old stories made sense to me… and now? I fair believes ‘em again.

“Are you with the Fair People, my lovely Sarah or are you back in the cottage. I would like to think that you’re sitting by me on our love seat of stone now…”