A Bugle For The New Day

                                            Chapter Two, part eight.

 Glyn fought to suppress a laugh as the hapless bugler stretched himself to attention with a dignity coming form nowhere obvious. He pointed his ancient instrument at the roof and produced three blasts of an intensity sufficient to make gunpowder obsolete. The sound vibrated and echoed around the caverns until it seemed that legions of buglers were out there and all answering in protest. Warning and alarm broke out everywhere, but at last the noise died away, and then it was that a change came over the little man…

He shrunk within himself as though trying to hide, his shabby clothes suddenly too big for him. His good eye took on a misty look, distant and detached, as he began to play the bugle as it was never meant to be played. Soft poignant sounds cascaded from the battered brass in an outpouring of what could only be described as emotion, for there was no shape to it, no melody, only a succession of melancholy notes, strung together in a nostalgic way that spoke of a longing  to escape from the harshness of life underground. It spoke of a yearning for gentler things, for blue skies and blossom blowing in the wind, of sunlight on water and the freedom of birds in the open sky.

“Away now, Handel.” The gruff voice of Rhys grated into the recital and put an end to the interlude. “‘Down the road the eisteddfod, man.”

Handel wiped the mouthpiece of his bugle and looked sheepish. Without a word he touched his cap, slung his battered instrument on a cord  over his shoulder, and slouched away.

They had three minutes to ignite the fuses, this being the traditional time recognised by the rockmen. Precise procedures were laid down in regulations approved by the inspector of mines. But precautions and codes of practice were considered restrictive by the workers as they interfered with money in the hand and as such they were ignored.

The charges were lit and spluttering as they sheltered behind a boulder serving as a screen; Then the first exploded, immediately followed by a mighty blast and a rush of hot air and dust. They scampered through the hanging fog, hurried to inspect the result, ignoring the possibility that one of the charges might be a slow burner and an eye or a finger could be lost. But all was well….through the dispersing cloud Glyn could see his brothers slapping their father on the back, and cries of triumph going up. The rock had fractured perfectly across the intended planes, exactly as Geriant had calculated. The week had started on the right note…

© Mark Pearson 2007.

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                                                   Chapter two, part seven.

Geriant began to speak, low and gentle and reverent. “Mother Earth,” he said with a sadness enough to make a thousand bosoms heave, “Forgive thy thieving children come to steal what is thine…Taking thy family away from thee we are and well we know it.

But the taking is not of our choosing, for forced we are to take this road and nothing proud we feel. We ask thy wrath not fall upon us, knowing as we do that terrible indeed can be thy retribution. Small we are- aye, nothing but specks of dust in the wind. We pass in the twinkling of an eye; bedside thy great power we are nothing, and we humble ourselves before thee.”

As the supplication went on Glyn had a picture of Mr. Mostyn Jones, the Minister at Chapel, droning on with his “thees” and “thous” and then he saw one of his old school books and a native on some tropical island paying homage to a hideous god carved out of stone, but there was an intimacy in his father’s voice as though he shared a joke with the obdurate rock.

The one sided conversation, to the onlookers at least, now appeared to be over and Geriant turned to look past Glyn and call to the two below; “Right now, send for Handel.”

This was the second ritual destined to remain with the impressionable Glyn for the rest of his life.

It was custom in Brynllech to sound a bugle to signify that firing was about to take place. A bell was used in the open broad vein and at many other quarries, but here a more flamboyant warning system was employed, an embellishment made incongruous by the appearance of the instruments owner.

No one knew his real name; to all he was Handel. And now, summoned by Ifor, he shuffled before them, a ragged, shrunken figure with an old army cap on a few wisps of white hair crowning a face battered and scarred from wounds he would enlarge upon with great relish. The milky sightlessness of his left eye he attributed to an unguarded moment and an Afghan sniper, the loss of a finger to a Zulu assegai when he had been fending off impossible odds. All his colourful stories were accepted by the younger men, but the older were more doubtful, saying he came from the north, or the south, and maybe his injuries came from his time in the copper mines, or working the lead.

 © Mark Pearson 2007.

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Best to leave him to his own thoughts, Geriant decided as they came to the arch of rock marking the entrance to the access tunnel. They entered quickly without a word and the memory of the rugged quarryman flew back to the time when he himself had gone underground for the first time. He knew what  must be going through his son’s mind and he saw the need to avoid fuss or encouragement.

They progressed though the tunnel on the hard walk beside the tramway, the daylight petering out and the niched candles set in the walls taking over, throwing grotesque shadows that danced to the clatter of their heavy boots, echoing and bouncing and vibrating all about them.

If Glyn felt any apprehension it was unnoticeable and he kept it well hidden, considering he had dreaded this moment for so long. He matched his father stride for stride, had the same unwavering look fixed to the same distant object, and he hoped his father would glance down with approval.

The tunnel led them into a cavern which opened out and reached up into a darkness that hid it’s height, with a glistening wall of rock facing them across a chasm that yawned almost at their feet, and here men were dangling on chains as they hacked and hammered at the rock in the spluttering light from a multitude of candles.

 Instructions, profanities, insults floated down from suspended rockmen, rolling around the hollows, coming back at them in a succession of sound.

Glyn saw it all with first a feeling of wonder and astonishment at the toil and skill employed by men like his father and his brothers, and then, as he stared at the plight of the hanging rockmen, saw the danger and the degradation. a choking sensation of horror seized him and his blood ran cold. He stood rooted to the spot, unable to tear his eyes from the grim spectacle, while Geriant called out in reply to the shouts directed at him from the rock face.

Geriant gave a final shout and wave and took a turning on their right, leading to a smaller chamber, where they found Rhys and Ifor perched on a ledge above them. They were working on a slab, preparing it for shot firing by drilling holes with a long rod. This was called a jumper and the operation of it required as much patience as vigour. They were now satisfied, straightened up and signalled to Geriant, who took off his coat and climbed up to them with an agility belying his years.

Glyn watched from below and saw for the first time evidence of his father’s affinity with the rock, the strange mystical union he had with the earth. His father’s hands were light upon the rock, almost caressing, it seemed his brothers standing back, looking on impassively, accustomed as they were to their father’s behaviour, something they tolerated but never understood or questioned.

When Geriant tore himself away, he issued gruff instructions to his sons, bringing Glyn into the proceedings, for there was fetching and carrying to be done and the newcomer was to become skilled in that direction. Above them the wall of rock glistened in the candlelight, underground seepage mustering tears for the sacrifice now dressed and ready.

© Mark Pearson 2007.

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Top image by larae. Image Slate Cavern by Stan160of flickr.

                                          Chapter two, part five.

In an effort to clear his mind and to concentrate on the important issues facing him, he closed his eyes as though shutting a book, and when he opened them again, the incident with Flora had been relegated to another page the one now before him devoted entirely to the affairs of the morning and the meeting with his landlords.

He called them the Three Crows, an understatement uncommon for Ragway: the Three Vultures would have been more apt. Individually unreasonable, collectively implacable, they had been at war with him since the day he bought the quarry two years ago. Josiah Morgan owned the land containing the broad vein, producing most of the dressed slab: Eli Humphreys held the floor of the valley where the quarry buildings spread in such disarray: and Ithel Pugh, self designated leader of the trio, he possessed the largest slice of the land, through which ran the narrow vein workings and three quarters of the quarry’s output.

The three Welshmen were as formidable, as stubborn as the land itself, their roots deep and entrenched as their opinions. Their eyes having the far away look of those who spend their lives scanning horizons in a constant vigil to repel intruders, an impression outsiders  would soon verify when confronted by their inherent prejudices.

Yet the land over which they lorded with such imperious disdain was, as they must have been aware, incapable of producing revenue until the Tudors scratched the surface and found the blue rock hiding beneath the worthless scrub. Previously, man had struggled with this land, and the ruins of their hopes testified in overgrown walls and skeletal cottages reduced to piles of stones by the merciless winds. As Ragway saw it, marauding nature would return if he failed to convince the three grasping landlords that his quarry was, in all truth, losing money and in danger of closing unless they agreed to the terms he was about to put to them.

When he bought Brynllech it was making a modest profit and he had seen the venture as a way to integrate himself with the community, and, more important, provide him with the opportunity to become a local overlord in control of lives and destinies. Slate was then in demand: there was talk of a boom. But it was not to last…

Competition was coming from overseas, building styles were changing, the industry was going into decline. Yet the quarrymen’s Union, gaining strength despite the setbacks at Bethesda, was demanding higher wages, although production was falling. It was time for cutting costs, impossible at Brynllech without an injection of capital, for more bores were needed urgently, as many of the narrow vein facings were worked out.

None of these difficulties had been given consideration by the Three Crows; they had pushed all his arguments aside and looked around covetously at the magnificence of his home, at the princely style of his living. Not only did they defend the onerous overheads with which they burdened him, they were continually seeking more. In addition to basic rents, he had to meet a royalty of one fifteenth cash value of all slate removed. He also had to limit himself to set areas of working, and deviation from agreed shaft locations and depths being pounced upon immediately.

He was caught in a dilemma of an asset he would be unable to sell requiring extra capital with no guarantee of any return, a position exacerbated by the intransigence of Welsh landlords determined, he was convinced, to meet and defeat the possibility of further exploitation by the English.

He heard the crunch of wheels on the drive. The carriages were arriving….

© Mark Pearson 2007

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image by aerialfroggof flickr.

 He had seen her as a distant vision in those heady days when he was setting out to conquer the world, a goddess standing aloof on an island surrounded by a lake with water lilies, sunlight filtering through the trees and falling upon her in a radiance that made her whole being glow.

He had wanted her with more than the possessiveness which would characterise the rest of his life and he had ultimately reached her island and captured it with a surprising lightness of foot on the water lilies. Women had played no part in his life before, other than his mother and her steam, and Flora had been confined to a succession of callow fledglings paraded before her with a regularity boring enough to transport Richard into the exalted realm of a knight in shining armour. He was a man who made things happen, and he proved it to her before she could catch her breath.

The Clayton downfall and the death of her father marked the point when things had begun to go wrong. The rosy glow was fading, at first by degree, then going out altogether as more and more of his time was demanded to rescue their affairs. His growing family saw little of him as he became totally committed. The children had become Mother’s province, filed by him under D for Domestic, resulting in Father being seen as an ogre figure, always scolding, admonishing, laying down the law, only in evidence when something nasty was about to happen.

It seemed to him, as he watched tiny motes playing in the cold slab of sunlight slanting onto his desk, that he was in a vacuum of his own making and he thrust out a hand attempting to stop the dust motes from dancing, for they seemed to be celebrating his discomfort, but he only succeeded in making them swirl faster and enjoy themselves more…

© Mark Pearson 2007.

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                                              Chapter two, part four.

Flora fought against her blurring vision by resorting to a lifelong habit of pressing her toes into the soles of her fashioned shoes in an effort to distract her emotions. “We were talking of John Corbett”, she said, taking a deep breath and keeping her voice as steady as she could. “But since you have brought up the subject of our coming here…” She paused, as though assembling her thoughts and considering how best to express them. “Three years it may be but another thirty and it will be no different. I shall never be at home here, you must know that. How can I be? All that I’ve ever known, all my friends, my relatives, they are an eternity away. You knew how it would be for me, yet you still went ahead, regardless of my feelings. I am locked away in a place that is alien to me.”

Richard held up a hand impatiently as though he had heard it all before and had no wish for her to carry on in the same vein.

“My dear Flora,” he drawled, as though dealing with a small petulant child, “All that gay social whirl you had up there in Lancashire, it was so meaningless.”

“To you maybe,” she retorted. “But it was my life. To do with as I pleased. Now I feel I am in a prison with no way out.”

“You are on your way out now. And looking quite smart if I may say so.”

The compliment went unheeded. “To a boring old committee meeting. That is the extent of my freedom.”

“It sounds highly desirable to me, considering what I have in store this morning. You have probably forgotten.”

“No, I have not. You are seeing the Three Crows as you call them.”

He raised an eyebrow in surprise that she had remembered his engagement. He was meeting the landlords, owners of the lands upon which his quarry sprawled.

“They will be here any time now,” he said, glancing at the Adam clock, “with that fool I have in charge of the quarry. More excuses. More demands. They really do believe I’m making a fortune out of that white elephant.”

“Why you ever bought it is beyond me…”

“Because I thought it had something. I can pull it round if it’s not too late. With co-operation and support. Talking of which, where is that son of ours? I want him to sit in on this meeting. It is time he took an interest.”

She began to pull on her gloves. “You will not see him today I am afraid,” she said, hoping that the satisfaction did not show in her voice. “Not if the light holds.”

“What?” he snapped, his brow furrowed as it had done at the mention of Crobett’s name, portending a change for the worst in his mood. “He is aware of this meeting, of it’s importance. I told him so last night. He pushed back his chair, strode to the window as though he expected to find him there. “Did he say where he was going?”

“I’m not his keeper, Richard.”

He turned on her. “You encourage him in this. You do, and that’s a fact. I put him through university, the best education it is possible to provide, the like of which I myself never dreamt of, and he walks out on it. Now this.” His lips curled distastefully. “He wants to be a painter!”

“An artist.”

“Pardon my ignorance. There is a difference, I should have realised. Painters make money, and I should know. They got enough out of me. But he wants to be the sort who starves in an attic and grovels in filth.”

“He is your son,”she said quietly. “There is a gentleness in him, a certain something I cannot fathom. Neither can you: we are not made that way. He is not cut out for your kind of world. You will have to come to terms with it, accept it.”

He clenched his fists as though preparing to strike her. “What kind of children have you given me?” he spat out bitterly. “A son who thinks like a woman and a son who behaves like a man!”

The words fell incisive as an axe cutting all between them and the ticking of the mantel clock became suddenly loud as though it meant to take over the room and it’s occupants with it.

Flora drew herself up to her full height and smoothed her gown as though sweeping away something offensive. “Have your meeting, do not fret over me or Hayden,” she said, ice crackling, turning to go, her hand on the door. “Hawkins is taking me. No doubt he will give you a full report.”

The fine mahogany door with it’s Elkington plate fittings slammed behind her with a finality that left him biting his lip in vexation at the hurtful words he had hurled at her and provoked the acrimony of her departure. He wished that he could recall the untimely taunt, but the words were out as soon as the thought was there, a habit with him these days, one he put down to frustration and his inability to manipulate others into his way of thinking. Maybe he was losing his grip….with Flora that was beyond doubt.

And it had been so different in the beginning…..

© Mark Pearson 2007.

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                                                     Chapter two, part three

The door opened and Flora caught him with a hand clutching his stomach, her grey shot silk gown edged in black velvet with white guipure lace at the throat giving her, even at that early time of day, the appearance of having just stepped out of a portrait.

He quickly took his hand from rubbing his waistcoat and she noticed but ignored it.  “Pardon the intrusion,” she said in a tight voice. “I am about to go into town and thought you would wish to know.”

“Oh,” he replied with an audible sigh, “what is it this time?”

“I am only going into Dolgelly, not Bond Street,” she stabbed back at him, blue eyes cutting glass. “The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, you must have heard of it.”

“Been invited have we?” he said with ill humour.

Flora gave him a pained look. “Since you are so occupied in other directions, it falls on me to sit on the committee. Not that I particularly enjoy it, but we do have a duty to uphold, even here.”

“I thought the matter already settled. A cottage Hospital, in Towyn or somewhere. The illustrious John Corbett, our renowned philanthropist, is he not footing the bill, throwing his money about, as he usually does?” He spoke with heavy sarcasm and she flushed.

Good man that he is,” she replied, noticing with pleasure the curl to his lip at her defence of Corbett, “he should not be expected to provide on every occasion. Particularly this.”

He flopped into the chair behind his desk with sudden indifference, looked up at her with an amused expression. “Maybe, my dear,” he said, “it is his way of easing his conscience.”

“In that case, your name should be first on the list,” she snapped, and she instantly regretted it. His face had darkened, his eyes turned to steel, but his voice when it came was steady, controlled. “I am growing tired of your little game, Flora. Three years we have been here now and still you act out this- melodrama. If it is your way of protesting, and it seems to be, do you not realise after all this time that it is getting you nowhere? This constant friction between us does you no credit and is grossly unfair to me. I should not have to put up with this sort of thing in my position. And no longer am I going to….”

“I have been patient and tolerant. I know you will think differently; I am an ogre of some sort to you, but goddamnit, woman, you are my wife and I expect you to act as such! What does the good book say? Whither thou gouest there shall also go. Any why are you any different? Countless women would count themselves lucky to be in your shoes. When I think-”

His voice failed him. He had noticed tears beginning to swim in her eyes, not yet brimming over, but causing the azure depths to quiver, and not because he had quoted the Bible to suit his own ends. He never knew how to deal with tears, especially women’s tears. They could be turned on at a strategic moment to obtain an advantage, but there was always the possibility of them being genuine. Whichever way you looked at tears they were still sings of weakness, and there was no glory in conquering weakness…

© Mark Pearson 2007

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                                                    Chapter two, part two

 Culver Hall had fallen into a pitiful state. A succession of owners had paid scant attention to it’s deteriorating condition, the gaming tables of Europe obtaining more attention over the last decade than a crumbling encumbrance in the middle of nowhere. It stood unwanted and unloved, unable to hide it’s shabbiness and it’s shame, and Ragway had looked upon his new possession determined to restore it to it’s former glory, knowing that resources beyond the reach of previous owners were available to him to make it possible. Prompting the thought that the Cavalier’s refuge had simply been waiting for him to arrive, to resurrect it and to come home.

Very little remained of the original building; Only the coach house survived from the golden age, with each successive occupant deeming it necessary to contemporise. Ragway had searched Europe for an army of specialists, hiring plasterers from Italy, carpenters from Belgium, sculptures and artists from houses of the highest repute. The antique furniture he had retained with the eye of a collector, but as he had to dress his Xanadu in the clothes of the day, he found it difficult to restrain Victorian flamboyance. All was plush, tassels and twirls, bric-a-brac and objects d’art in the highest and lowest of taste. Paintings  hung in quantity and bought by name regardless of subject, apart from works by David Cox, selected because the were landscapes of Wales, and local artist Richard Wilson.

There had been opposition from his wife Flora. The sheer loneliness of the place to which he intended to banish  her, the absence of friends, of their own class, and, it would seem, their own race. Every available argument she had used, and in the end seeing that she was making no impression, she had restored to ridiculing her husband, scoffing at his reason for buying what she saw as a gilded cage in the wilderness, She could not call on her son Hayden for support, much as he agreed with her, as his father always chose to ignore him, and Sarah, who would have been a likely ally, was away in London pursuing her Women’s Rights or whatever they were calling them now.

Flora had seen the look of conquest in his eyes many times, the unrelenting stare that frightened her, but now it contained the zeal of madness and it had compelled her to retreat into her shell and settle for the uneasy truce so often her only resort, as he showed off his adopted heritage to his business adversaries brought to the Hall so that he could crow; “Of course, we Ragway’s were here in the time of Cromwell.”

© Mark Pearson 2007

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                                                              Chapter Two, part one.

 Richard Ragway gazed through the leaded trellis of his library window, feeling nothing for the sunlight dancing on the terrace pools or the massed elegance of the daffodils banking the lawns. All he felt was a gnawing ache in his stomach, a growling from his digestive system to match the mood he faced the world with these days.

He should admit that there was a necessity for him to avoid fried foods, particularly at breakfast time, but he considered this a denial he should not have to accept when the lowest of his minions could eat with impunity; if a fried breakfast could be thought one of life’s pleasures, it’s curtailment was inconceivable to him, conditioned as he was to the maxim that money bought everything, including good health or the rapid return to it when nature turned contrary. He would have to find another doctor; this local quack knew nothing.

He turned from the window, the dazzle on the water outside causing him to blink at the inner gloom in order to adjust his vision. He saw his books, row upon row of them, reaching from floor to ceiling, like an army assembled in immaculate formation, leather bound and storing centuries of knowledge from Darwin to Virgil. If dust had been allowed to gather, it would have covered their shame, for the books were unread, unconsulted, even though he knew them every one, and catalogued them in his mind along with his other assets. They were there for display only, but not just to fill wall space; they formed a library to rival the best in private hands, a source of knowledge always available to him, providing visible proof to all who came into the room that here was a man with the greatest of intellects on his side, who, being so armed, constituted an even more formidable opponent.

The room itself spoke of authority without any help from the books. The master’s desk was finest Sheraton satinwood with a Chippendale ribband-back chair, a mantelpiece of marble held an ornamental Adam clock and a central chandelier hung down in cut glass to augment scones of gilt pinewood. Ragway frequently congratulated himself on the tasteful way he had restored Culver Hall; although he himself had elaborated here and there, he had managed to avoid the Victorian weakness for ostentation verging on the vulgarity, but that was only his opinion and future purists would view it differently.

He had travelled far, this self-made industrialist, financier, landowner-far from that squalid street in Ancoats. He often reviewed his own life, as a sort of balance sheet on himself, and he found it unbelievable that he had achieved so much, and all from nothing, although he had a notion, in his backside-out-of-his-trousers days, that his pockets were destined to jingle with money. He couldn’t explain how, or why, he just knew….

Maybe he had the feel for grandeur his Grandmother had, especially when she was drunk, which was quite often he recalled. His grandfather had been a Luddite who went around wrecking machines because they were taking away his living, and his father, he was always chasing rainbows, finally disappearing in California looking for gold. His Mother was the only one he remembered with affection and she seemed to be forever shrouded in steam, great engulfing clouds rising about her like unanswered prayers. By his reckoning, his mother must have taken in washing from every house in Manchester and in the end she washed herself away.

Though he had already become a powerful man, he needed to acquire respectability, and this was when he saw the opportunity to marry Flora Clayton. They were high among the elite families of Lancashire, the Claytons, and they would give him the standing denied him by a society always seeing him as a snotty-nosed kid who had climbed his particular heap with a bit of luck. So he had pursued the doll-like Flora, who was ten years younger, with an ardour and a determination sufficient to persuade the girl’s father that he was the right man to provide for her in the manner to which she was accustomed. The fact that she was three months pregnant with Hayden may also have had something to do with it.

The union had produced, two years later, a girl, Sarah, but her grandfather hardly had time to bounce her on his knee before the Clayton empire collapsed in ruins and the old man himself shot himself. Richard Ragway could have been mortified, resentful that Clayton had been aware of the state of affairs and needed his jumped-up-son-in-law as much as the pretended sought social influence. But he had accepted the downfall in true Ragway style, seeing it as yet another fight on his hands and taking up the Clayton reins with a refusal to admit defeat. Sacrificing all else with a single-mindedness of purpose, he worked ceaselessly to salvage and rebuild from the ashes, and he had triumphed in the end, emerging from the adversity stronger than ever, with woolen mills, foundries and steelworks among the industries under his control.

He had, it seemed, reached the pinnacle; no more did he have to prove anything. His running nose had been wiped clean by his achievements but, although he had to be accepted now, if grudgingly, by his one-time superiors, he still imagined that people whispered darkly behind his back and he knew that he would never know peace of mind, not truly, until he found reassurence that he had sprung from somewhere higher than the gutter.

Relief had come for him through one of those happenings called more predestined than fortuitous. He had been about to toss away a newspaper when an advertisment caught his eye and in particular a name:Radway, sufficiently close to his own to cause his heart to miss a beat. It belonged to a Cavelier who had fled the battlefield at Nasby and sought refuse from Puritan persecution in an Elizabethan manor, Culver Hall, now up for sale somewhere in Wales. His inebriate grandmother had often babbled about connections in Wales and her vague references to nobility had always raised a laugh. Now at last he had an ancestor to fit his image….

  © Mark Pearson 2007.

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 ”Window” image by tree_climberof flickr, “Library”  by MelanieSchmidt of flickr.

Chapter one, part nine.

Geriant looked at his son, saw an eagerness in his face he had only known when the natural world was involved, and he took it as a sign that his youngest was growing up at last and accepting the less romantic side of life.

“At Bethesda,” recounted Geriant, “a battle is going on. For years now. Between the men at the quarry and this Lord Penrhyn. Twenty years  and more now the men have had the union, but this Lord he refuses to recognise it. The same union it is for us and a Penrhyn of our own have we got. For six months now this god almighty has shut the gates on men who want to work-locked them out. Starving them to their knees he is. And succeeding, too, for going back they are under Penrhyn’s terms, a trickle turning into a flood with the union nowhere. In tatters, it is, and running.”

They had reached the Barracks and fatigue came on Geriant suddenly, sounding in his voice. “Not Diogel maybe, but home it is till Friday night.”

The front door, stout enough for a fortress, opened into a small hallway with a staircase leading to the sleeping quarters at the end of it. Through an open doorway beside them came the smell of polish and the crackle of fire with it’s welcome warmth reaching out to them.

A girl of about sixteen was dusting a long table surrounded by straight backed chairs standing at attention as though awaiting orders. She looked up and gave them a smile. “Mam’s upstairs. Good morning,” she said, strangely, thought Glyn, like Miss Tranter, the school mistress.

“Morning, Lowri,” replied Geriant, off with his cap. “This is my son, Glyn. Starting today.”

The girl flashed another smile and went back to her dusting. Glyn looked in vain for the buck teeth and the freckles; she had indeed grown up since the last time he had seen her, but that had been some years ago, and he viewed girls differently then. She was tall now, drawn up like a bean and he had to look up to her. Hair was dark, but not as intense as his sister’s, and more under control, caught up in a bob and comb in the way of older girls. Although her face was pale and thin, as though the extent of her growth had drained her, she had high cheek bones that gave her a touch of regality and her chin spoke of authority; If not achieving it, at least trying.

Lowri dusted her way nearer to them, extending a thin arm to shake the newcomer’s hand. “Glyn, is it?” she said, again with the smile, her teeth mysteriously even. “Late today, Mr. Owen. I’ll be taking your things up if you like. Just drop them down there.”

Glyn felt all of six inches tall, thankful for his new corduroys standing up on their own and betraying nothing of what went on underneath. Lost he was already, a prisoner of that porcelain face, the harsh reality of the quarry forgotten. He even managed to smile.

© Mark Pearson 2007.

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