A Bugle For The New Day

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.

Previous        Start       Next

Image by johnybes of flickr.

Chapter one, part eight.

“Mrs. Lewis,” said Geraint, breaking into the darkness of his thoughts, “waiting for us she will be. And Lowri-remember Lowri, Glyn?”

“Buck teeth and freckles,” muttered Glyn, three steps to one following his Father down the hill.

“A shock for you, boy. Soon into a fine woman that one.”

They were nearing the gates, Rhys and Ifor waiting impatiently for them.

“Half a shift behind, you two,” welcomed Rhys as they came into the yard.

“sending for the troops, me,” said Ifor.

The seven o’clock bell began to signal the closing of the gates, threatening deafness to everyone already inside, a clamour the timekeeper would continue with mounting frenzy on the clapper rope until he saw the last straggler scramble over the boundary wall and there was no one to carpet before the manager.

Geraint shouted above the din: “The Irish are with us again.”

Ifor’s brow furrowed. “Tom Gippo?” he yelled.

Rhys clenched his sack-of-coal fists, muttered something, then bellowed: “…that Irish bastard,” the timekeeper deciding to call it a day just before the last word, so that the expletive sounded out in the sudden quiet and a dozen heads turned to enquire who it was being called such a name.

The two elder brothers looked innocently at each other and slipped away, taking the path leading to B gallery, number six chamber. Geriant shepherding the latest recruit in the direction of the Barracks, having to pass the managers office, where they found the doorway entirely filled by the corpulent figure of the incumbent himself, Joshua Phillips, Quarry agent for Brynllech to give him his official title, a veritable barrel of a man, as much in circumference as in height. Ginger hair covered his face almost completely, falling on his collar and shrouding his eyes, hiding all else behind a profusion of whiskers, the only protrusions a hooked nose and cheeks puffed out like over ripe plums, giving the impression that, together with his distended shape, he was about to explode.

In his hand he swung a thick gold chain with a figured half hunter on the end of it, the flashing orbit drawing Glyn’s eyes with hypnotic power until Phillips buried his watch expertly in a waist coat pocket without looking or slackening momentum, a manoeuvre of sufficient renown to earn the Manager the incongruous nickname of “Dead-eye-Dick”

“Morning, Owen,” blustered Phillips, still fingering his chain. “This your youngest then?”

“Good morning Mr. Phillips,” Geriant dutifully touched his cap. “This is Glyn, starting with us today.”

Phillips squinted through his fiery foliage and appraised the lad before him. “Well, young feller, joining the rest of your family, eh? Another for that union of yours, Owen.”

“A worker he will be, that I can promise you.” said Geriant, firmness in the eye.

The manager looked down where his feet should be and gave a shuffle to confirm they were still there. “You know my opinion of unions,” he said gruffly. Only trouble in that direction. Anarchy is what they lead to. In the wrong hands, anarchy.”

Geriant was not being drawn and he made to move away. Phillips seemed to smirk, but it was only his whiskers twitching to make room for his voice. “You have heard the news from Bethesda?”

“Aye,” said Geriant  sadly, his shoulders drooping. “Penrhyn showing what a big man he is. But it will come. One voice it will be, Mr. Phillips. You will see.” He turned to Glyn and adjusted his pack. “On our way boy. Bellies are rumbling.”

Phillips watched them go, the man striding out with purpose, the boy scurrying along beside him, just as he himself had done so many years before. His Father had been a fighter of lost causes, and in Geriant he saw  the same beliefs, the same obstacles, and he knew in all practicality that the same fate awaited the Welshman. Apathy and suspicion would drag him down to die in despair with nothing altered, for the forces to be overcome were too powerful and too efficient at closing ranks to succumb to the demands of what would always be a little fish fighting out of it’s depth with an invincible predator. And because he had recognised this unchangeable fact early in his working life, he had joined the predators, but not entirely had he lost sight of all his Father had dreamed.

Glyn was anxious to know of Bethesda. It was a name he had heard often around the house, but to him it was an obscure place somewhere in the mountains in the North.

“Dada,” he panted. “Bethesda….what has happened?”

© Mark Pearson 2007.

 Previous       Next          Start

Chapter one, part seven.

“Brynllech!” Proclaimed Geriant with a sweep of his arm grand enough to herald their arrival in the promised land, but indicating in reality a vista of depredation and upheaval on a scale suggestive of a planet lost in space and ravaged by meteorites. The broad shallow valley below them and the lower slopes of the hills beyond had been subjected to decades of tearing at the earth in search of the blue-grey treasure of slate, resulting in a proliferation of spoil heaps, menacing mountains of waste tumbling in precarious falls of debris, ever advancing, as though the unwanted dross sought to engulf those responsible for the violation.

The actual workings in the narrow vein, where the slate rock struggled to reach a thickness of sixty feet, could only be seen as openings to tunnels honeycombing the hillsides and leading underground to chambers where the slate was mined and transported to the surface on a maze of tramway lines. Open quarrying was carried out in gaping holes staring blindly at the sky like empty eyes, these marking the run of the deep vein with a cleavage of a thousand feet and more.

Standing out among the buildings on the floor of the valley, was a large sombre structure shouldering it’s imperious bulk above a shabby collection of tin sheds and ramshackle workshops housing the machinery necessary to dress the slate to the requirements of the world outside. This dreary looking place, home for the working week to the Owens and the rest of the journeying quarrymen, presented a depressing prospect when viewed from Glyn’s vantage point, but closer inspection would reveal that attempts had been made to mitigate the impression given by the severity of it’s name, The Barracks. The slab walls, it would be found, were of dressed stone-nothing out of shape or ill-placed here- the sills planed and imposing, the roof purlins extended beyond the walls with ogee-carved ends and the windows always gay with floral curtains. Trellis-work framed the front door with climbing roses, colourful in the summer, and there was a small garden with primulas and raspberries attended by the quarrymen. But a greyness hung on everything, the quarry a pervading force not to be denied.

Rising at the far end of the valley, effectively hiding the drab scene from the rest of the world, rocky buttresses thrust against the sky and water glinted in the morning light. It was here that the Nant Sarn stream began it’s journey to the sea, forming on the lower slope a man made reservoir complete with dam and valve tower to provide the source of power for the quarry machinery. Wooden paddle wheels, stationed at points where energy was required, had the water fed to them through a system of slate lined channels, the main culvert running alongside a rough road leading from a derelict farm and a collection of cottages with walls of slate enclosing tidy gardens encouraging spring flowers and a hint of first fruit blossom.

Various places were pointed out to Glyn, including the Manager’s house and his office and the powder magazines, but nothing the young boy saw raised his spirits higher than his bootlaces. He had seen Brynllech many times, running errands for his Mam, carrying messages and tit-bits hot from the oven, but then, in the imaginative childhood he had to leave behind, the quarry seemed to have a rosy glow of an adventurous place where grown ups fought the earth and won. Now he knew differently; he saw it with new eyes and he saw it as a prison, a place of incarceration where he would spend the rest of his days going on for ever and ever.

 Clouds of dust would blot out the sun and the bowels of the earth and sky, machinery would throb to the hiss of steam and the song of the birds would be drowned and gone. For him, that really was the end of the world…..

To be continued.

© Mark Pearson 2007.

Previous

Chapter One, Part Six.

“Sore your own backside would be,” she found herself saying, “if out of it I had just pulled a thistle.”

He stared at her, his mouth open again. Before he could say a word, she was babbling: “Something to put on….for the soreness…wait now…” and she was gone in a flurry, the birds scattering, the gate now protesting behind her.

He stood motionless, as though she had turned him into a statue, until the cob neighed and seemed to call her back and the spell was broken. Startled into reality, the befuddled young man let his eyes focus on the cottage where the disturbing girl lived, and he noted the roughness of the stone walls contrasting with the geometric neatness of the tiled roof, and the parade of clothes on the washing line drawing his attention to their impoverished state. She returned and caught him staring absently at the female underwear and he quickly averted his eyes, focusing on the small bottle she was carrying.

“To take the sting away,” she said. “A bit of this, a bit of that.”

She took a piece of rag from her pocket, dabbed it with the solution from the bottle, and approached the horse with a renewal of the mystical conversation. As before, the cob listened with a cocked ear and glistening eye as she stroked him with her  dulcifying touch, but he flinched and snorted as she found the injured flesh with the curious concoction. Apparently satisfied, she corked the bottle and unhitched the reins from the tethering bush and proceeded to walk the horse a few tentative steps tp the accompaniment of murmured encouragement.

When she turned to the rider and handed him the reins, he could see that the promising light had gone from her eyes and the curtain had come down again. Had he been able to surmise from the signs available to him, he would have discovered that her armour was in place again and the resolution that had deserted her for an unguarded moment was as strong and impregnable as ever, a barrier against him and all he stood for.

“Take him now.”she said tersely. “And that leg-see to it. A dose of weed and really lame he will be.” He climbed gingerly into the saddle, fully expecting to be thrown over the wall, but the horse accepted him and he had no doubt that this was due to the girl intervening on his behalf.

He could linger no longer; she was already moving towards the cottage. “Your name,” he called out to her. “I do not know your name.”

At the gate she paused and turned to him slowly. “Rowena,” she said simply, with a lift to her chin, and with that she went inside.

Realising that he had been dismissed, he cried out: “Sultan, he thanks you, too,” and hesitating for a moment as though expecting an answer, he turned the horse and began a gentle trot down the lane in the opposite direction to that taken by the quarrymen, soon becoming lost amid the huddle of houses.

Rowena put up a hand to test her washing and listened to the hoof-beats retreating into the distance. Sultan, she thought, suits him that.

“Keeping company at last, is it?” Her Mam was beside her, flour up to her elbows, curiosity twitching her ears.

“A horse…gone lame,” said Rowena, innocently.

“On it’s own, was it?”

“Had an eyeful, eh, Mam?”

“Some eyeful. Know who that was, girl?”

“No. A stranger to me.”

The breath went out of Mam and the flour on her hands gave a puff of exasperation with her. “Haden Ragway-that is who it was. No Less!”

Rowena showed only a disdainful curl of her lip. ” A curtsy I should have dropped then?” Another feel of her washing, strangling it this time. “And and how would you be knowing it was he-Mister High and Mighty?”

“Saw him with my own eyes did I not? When he came home from that university. With his Mother he was.”

Rowena gave a scornful laugh and went into the house, her Mother following her with little urgent steps. “Despair I do with you,” panted Megan. “Tell gentry, you can do that surely?”

“So, Richard Ragway is his Father.” Rowena turned on her Mother with her cheeks flaming. “And it is he who owns the quarry where my family sweat their lives away. That gives him the right to be heartless, does it now? Well, it’s sorry I am. For the horse-for having that jumped up-popinjay on his back.”

“Told him that did you? No doubt you did, knowing you. Forgetting it is his Father who puts the bread on our table, and can take it off again.” Megan’s lips were as tight as her principles.

Rowena’s eyes had grown large and wild, fire scorching through the mists, but cutting no ice with Megan, who was accustomed to her daughter’s fancies.

“It is my own Da who puts the food on our table,” stormed Rowena. Forgotten that have you, Mam? Up there he is now, in that God-forsaken hole in the ground. Breaking his back, and my brothers with him. And another taken this day.”

Tears were coming down now and she hurried from the house, anxious that the weakness should not be seen, pausing only to cry over her shoulder: “A jumped-up-popinjay he is. I say it again. That is what I think of him and that old goat he can tell.”

Dearie me, thought Mam, touched something that boy has….

© Mark Pearson 2007.

Home    Previous    Next  

Another extract from the novel “A Bugle For The New Day” by Frank Pearson.

Chapter One, Part Five.

 The wind had freshened in the valley, bringing with it a hint of brine from the sea, and Rowena gratefully pushed the prop under her line of washing, hoisting it into welcoming breeze, her eyes roving over the rooftops and over the hills and her mind with them to her younger brother. She had attempted to channel her thoughts into her directions but the dull ache would not go away; A picture of Glyn was too clear before her, and agonizing it was, for she had seen the misery in his face as she bade him farewell, not that she needed such tangible proof to realise he would be unable to cope with the roughness of the life into which he had been thrown. Acceptance of the fact that it was Glyn’s destiny to follow his brothers into the quarry was all the harder to bear now the fateful day was upon her.

Uppermost in the catalogue of issues which should be able to divert her thinking, was her own position, fast approaching crisis point according to her Mam, for here was she, nigh on twenty-three, and no sign of matrimony. Busy indeed were the needles in the village, clicking away, knitting her a shawl of spinster hood, and she apparently unmindful of it. Opportunities to end her single status had been there many times, but hopeful suitors were put off and always turning tail and fleeing with dented ego’s. “Too fussy you are, my girl.” her Mam constantly chided her, “too high and mighty” and there was no denying that was the impression she gave with her strange aloofness, her refusal to conform to what was accepted as the natural progression of life.

Rowena could not be considered beautiful, although her hair was a source of pride, cascading about her shoulders black as winter night when all others were short and bobbed, but she carried an air of mystery that intrigued and bewildered and finally reduced crestfallen gallants to a state of utter confusion, so that they had to make light of their defeat by calling her a teaser. If a key to the enigma of Rowena existed, it was in her eyes; Smoky grey pools forever changing, as though moody and concealing layers beneath, lit on occasions with darts of light that danced and transformed them as though a stone had been tossed into shrouded water, but the mists would close in again and nothing would be revealed.

“I say.” A voice broke into her reverie and she turned to see a young man at the gate. “My horse has gone lame. I wonder if you could help.”

The man was a stranger and he spoke with the refinement of gentry. She pushed her hair away, her voice at once anxious as an animal appeared to be in trouble. “Your- your horse?” she stammered.

“He is in the lane.” replied the man. “I’ve tethered him to a tree. I don’t want to risk-”

She was past him before he could offer further explanation, pushing him into the wall in her haste to reach the stricken horse, a flurry of apron and petticoats that left him with mouth open for any interested flies.

A four-year Welsh Cob stallion stood in the lane, well bred and finely groomed, with bold and prominent eyes, filled now with fear and pain. Tossing his head and pawing the ground, he viewed Rowena with suspicion until she put out a hand, soothing and conciliatory, and began to speak to him in a soft musical tone. He shook his head and cocked an ear as though listening to something comforting, and his rider took a step nearer as though to overhear what the strange girl was saying, removing his cap and wiping his brow more in consternation than to remove perspiration. “All I need is an outhouse, a barn, somewhere I can keep him.” said the young man defensively. My stable lad will know what to do.”

She had now taken the horses cheek piece and pulled down the stallion’s head so that she could whisper directly into his ear. What she was saying was incomprehensible to the bemused rider and he began to look uneasy. “I think he trod on a stone.” he said lamely.

Rowena flashed him a look of daggers. “Quiet now. Enough you have done.”

He stepped back quickly as though she has slapped his face and he watched her now examining the Cob’s body with hands that were gentle and caressing and obviously experienced, moving with tenderness to the hind quarters, where she seemed to find something amiss. Back to the horse’s ear for more weird talk and the young rider wondering for a moment whether he was watching witchcraft; there was a lot of it in these hills, so he had been told. Her words could be Welsh, or maybe some heathen tongue, but whatever their origin, there was no denying that the horse understood and found comfort there, until she returned to the place where she had made her discovery, braced herself and gave a sudden tug. The horse screamed and bucked, but she was talking to him once more in that reassuring voice and the enraged Cob was soon calm again, and nuzzling her in obvious gratitude.

The rider fingered his cap nervously as she strode up to him, her face taut and dark as her hair. She thrust out her hand to him, opening it to reveal a nasty looking bur.

“Look you at this.” she snapped harshly.

“Poor devil. He must have got that when we came through the wood.” he replied meekly. “I really am most grateful.”

“Grateful? Grateful is it, and that all? For you, and what of the horse? Torture for him a thing like that would be. Could you not see with those uncaring eyes you have got.”

He looked into her resentful face, into her eyes smoldering with the threat of fire, and felt like an erring schoolboy. Replacing his cap and drawing himself up to his full height, he summoned his remaining dignity.

“I didn’t know where to look, dam it.” he retorted. “I don’t need to know. We have stable people for that sort of thing.”

“A clothes horse is it then you are riding?” she stormed. “Flesh and blood is there and you know nothing of it. This poor beauty is ailing for the weed. And his feet are a shame upon him.”

“The-what?” he stammered. “And what is wrong with his feet?”

“Nothing do you know, is that not a fact, fancy boy? Out they should be in your stables, for it is sure not horses they have in their heads-or in their hearts.”

He could not face her eyes; they were accusing him and at the same time mocking him, destroying him. Shimmering with solicitude for the horse, they showed no sympathy for him; only contempt could he see there, filling him with the desire to run away, his composure completely demolished, but he was unable to take another step, for there was a strange bewildering fascination that held him prisoner and reduced him to the size of the bur she had tossed contemptuously away.

“Can I take him now?” he asked timidly.

“No you cannot. A little longer he will need, and then…” Her voice failed her as she noted his discomfort for the first time. A wave of forbearance swept from her innermost depths and stilled her tongue, surprising her with it’s insistence to wrought change in her and bathing the stranger in a warm glow far transformed from the image of a pampered wastrel she had of him. For so long her resolution had been as a suit of armour about her, protecting her from the weaknesses she saw in other women, but now she found it of no avail, powerless to prevent that imp from dancing out of the mist clouding her eyes and the brazen smile from parting her lips and lighting her face with radiance…

To be continued..

Previous      Next       

© Mark Pearson 2007.

Chapter One, Part Four.

Glyn squinted and saw, even at that distance, the shabbiness of the riders. “They are not of us?” he asked uneasily.

“No by God. I thought them gone, but back they are, may the saints preserve us. ”

“Bad men, Dada?”

“The worst. Irish.”

“From over the sea?”

“Under it I am thinking. Gypsies…rogues…vagabonds. Cheat Jesus Christ himself and smile while they are doing it. Undercutting good Welsh, dayworkers they are, watching the old clock go round. With us payment by sweat of the brow, slate off the mountain and shares all round, but they are trouble, boy. Bad trouble.”

The Irishmen were obviously waiting for Geriant, their horses nosing the ground and looking in dire need of any nourishment they could forage. The tallest of the three, gaunt and so thin Glyn expected to hear his bones creak, was dressed in a frock coat that had seen better days, a battered top hat with a goose feather and fine boots of patent leather ridiculously out of place. He was the only one who sat a saddle and he was clearly the leader. One clutched an ancient banjo with multi-coloured ribbons, his face not unlike a clown, with ears pointed as a pixie, cheeks glowing like a winter fire and a mop of sandy hair that had receded in the middle leaving a tuft each side of his head.

The leader doffed his hat in a mocking sweep and the clown struck his banjo wildy in a discordant salute. “What have we here, me lads? A boy you’ve got for fetchin’ your tea, eh, Owen?”

“No business of yours, Tom Gippo.” snapped Geriant, pushing past, prickly as a hedgehog.

“Now is that nice?” grinned the banjo man. “Only being neighbourly. Isn’t that so Thomas?”

“Words out of me mough, banjo.” said the leader.

The third man, older than the others, with half open eyes and a ravaged grey face beneath an askew bowler, crouched over his horse’s neck with the reek of stale whiskey on his breath. “Late today, Welshman.” he grated. “Not let you go, that Megan of yours? Fiery they are, Welsh women, fiery. And legs…break the back of a man.”

Geriant whirled round. “Bide your tongue, Paddy. Wash out that foreign mouth you are cursed with. Carbloic you will be needing.”

Tom Gippo gave a sickly smile. “Shirt on now. Only foolin’ we are, Owen.” The smile went as quickly as it came. “Time enough for serious things.”

“I was thinking you gone from here.” growled Geriant.

“Help you’ll be needin’.” said Gippo meaningfully. “All that slate. How could we go back to the land of the little people now, knowin’ these poor hands could be helpin’ when it’s help you’ll be needin’.”

Banjo leaned over to Glyn, almost falling off. “And what might your name be, me bucko?”

Geriant pulled his son roughly to him as though he had seen a snake. “Keep away from him. Do you hear me now?”

Banjo threw a protective hand. “All right, all right. Just a friendly word. No harm meant.” He offered his banjo to Glyn as though trying to sell it. “Like this lad?”

Glyn looked apprehensively at his Father, then the instrument.

“Been in my family for generations it has. Handed down from the prince of Donegal himself. How’d you like to play it? Bet you would, eh? Show you how, I could that.”

Geriant gave him a look fit to draw teeth. “Away I said.” Cold as ice and a heat between them.

Gippo laughed, but without humour. “On our way, lads.” he cried. “There’s gold a-waitin’.”

With a digging of heels, clicking sounds all round, and much bumping up and down, they finally found a flicker of life in their bony mounts and ambled off with the dignity of impoverished royalty. Banjo called back over his shoulder: “Remember, whatever-your-name-is, lessons any time.”

Geriant spat his disgust into their hoof prints and tightened his hold on his pack. “May they rot in hell. Enough to start a war that lot, and quick with their bullets.”

They went on their way, with greater urgency now, as though the Irish were indeed beating them to something….

Previous        Next       

© Mark Pearson 2007.

 Image “The gypsy camp” by Elizabeth Eden, Interpretation of Vincent van Gogh.

Chapter One, Part Three.

Time to go, with talk down to hushed tones and last minute instructions and bags being hoisted with much looking around as though they never expected to see the place again. Out into the welcoming sunshine, greeting them like warriors off to war. Men were coming from all directions, filling the lane beside the house with a sudden swell of sound. The tramp of hobnails on the stony path assailed the still air with the authority of a marching army, whistles and catcalls going up for those late in joining the thong as it wound it’s way in the usual Monday morning exodus out of the village and over the hills to the quarry. There was almost a carnival atmosphere, something the women folk were quick to seize upon, for the men appeared to be actually looking forward to their five day exile away from the family hearth. Women probably said the same on the eve of Waterloo, such is the perversity of separation.

Ifor and Rhys went on ahead to join friends calling out to them and Geriant stood at the gate, looking down at his youngest. “Well Glyn, my spring lamb from the fold.” he said, placing a rough hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Afraid, lad?”

“A bit, Dada.”

“Nothing to be ashamed of. It is good to be afraid. I know I was.”

For Megan, this was one of a thousand farewells, different now from all the others in taking the last of her men, and she faced it with the outward acceptance of the hard way of life she always showed, but as they lingered at the gate, she found it difficult to control her feelings. The river of emotion within her, held in check by years of practice, was threatening to burst it’s banks and Geriant became aware of it in the twitching of her lips, the furrowing of her brow, the fluttering of her hands. Before he could try to assuage her fears, futile as it would be, she saw his concern and stood on her toes and brushed his cheek with a kiss, gripping his arm to speak volumes.

“Cold as it gets at night up there,” she said softly, a break in her voice. “An extra woolen in your bag.” “Stop fussing, woman.” Geriant forced a laugh. “Back there you were saying how hot it gets in Brynllech.”

She fixed him with the stare wives keep specially for their husbands. “You have heard me. Now go and take care of my little one. On your head it is.”

Her finger wagged to stress the point and then she turned to Glyn, embraced him in a hug that left him breathless, before turning on her heel and rushing away in a whiff of starch. Rownea had been watching in silence, her eyes misting. With sudden determination, she ran to her brother, threw her arms around him with a sob. “Friday night then.” she choked “Waiting I shall be.”

“What about your old Da then?” Geriant ventured hopefully, but the gate was swinging, the cottage door slamming behind her. He shook his head and tut-tutted, and hitched his pack into a more comfortable position on his shoulder, an action emulated by Glyn as though intent to start on the right side of his Dada. They turned away from the house and stepped off briskly, for the last quarryman was now out of sight and it would never do for the leader donkey, even if he was hand  holding along the way.

Where the path left the last of the village behind, it ran alongside a gulley with a gentle stream, now a tide of rushing water swollen by the early spring rain, sweeping past in a hurry to reach the sea. Here a sign defied the years to welcome travelers to Diogel and leaning against it the scarecrow figure of Billy Peg, who was always there when the quarrymen went out, his patched eye and ornately carved stump for a leg a grim reminder, if any were needed, of the perils in the rock.

Billy received a nod of acknowledgment from Geriant with a raised stump and a rasping cackle, the derisive and sinister sound following them until it was mercifully swallowed by the roar of the water.

Geriant bit his lip, muttered, “Pay no heed, son. Rocks in the head that one.”

“Why was he laughing?” asked Glyn.

“Laughing? Fooled me he did.”

“What happened to Billy Peg…”

“…Will not happen to you. Watch and learn. Never underestimate the mountain.”

“Is that what Billy did?”

“Not looking when he should have been. And fatal that is. Robbing the mountain we are, see. Think about it now. For millions of years Mother Earth has been treasuring up what we take from her. Nestling it to her bosom. Family to her it is. Try to break up families, you know what happens. Sore heads and broken bones all round and no sympathy in sight.”

Trees now crowded about them, blanketing the end of the valley and the lower slopes. Sweet chestnut and oak, gnarled and ancient, weeping willow jostling with alder beside the water, Daphne in the depths, dog’s mercury and lesser celandine at their feet. This was the woodland of Nant Sarn, Glyn’s very own domain. His enchanted place, his own exclusive world, where he had walked hand in hand with nature for as long as he could remember. The children in the village called him “Mow”, which was short for Mogli from Mr. Kipling’s new jungle book recently introduced into the school with great popularity by Miss Tranter. There was nothing malicious in the nickname; it identified him with a favourite character also given to talking to animals as human beings and the community had come to accept him as strange and remote.

They walked on in silence, each with his own thoughts. Rabbits darted from thickets of buckler fern; a water vole washed it’s face, unconcerned, beside a pool of it’s own where a fallen tree had dammed the torrent; overhead, nesting birds cried out to foraging mates and impatient beaks were open in anticipation. Life was stirring and Glyn felt forlorn. He was leaving all this, walking away from it with legs already growing weak. He was deserting his childhood and all that mattered to him.

Geriant strode purposefully with head erect, but aware that his son’s step was faltering. To be expected, he thought, despite the hardness of him, feeling a pang of sympathy for the youngster. He also confessed to a touch of pride in Glyn’s knowledge of the wild. Right from his earliest years, he could identify birds, know their habits and become their friend, and he could pick out a yew, knowing instinctively that it would produce a bow more pliant than the others. When Mr and Mrs Corncrake were visiting in the summer, Glyn was the first to know, and he was the only one to make money out of crabby Win the Gin for gathering the most mature sloes, much to Mam’s disgust. And the time when chicken feathers were thick as snow on the ground, it was Glyn who tracked the polecat.

Glyn became interested in his new hobnails.

“New horizons.” his Father boomed. “New worlds. That’s what you are needing now.”

“Yes Dada.” said Glyn sadly, with eyes fit to strip paint.

“Thirteen you are now. A man you are getting, with a man’s responsibilities. Time to start making your own way in the world.”

“With the rock…that is the way?”

“For you it is something else then? Look about you, boy. See anything do you? All right is it for your old Dada and your two brothers? Break our backs and not another thought.”

Glyn shook his head and looked miserable.

“When I first took this road I was scarce twelve, and glad to be going. A good year on me you are.”

Glyn took a deep breath and seemed to stretch out of his corduroys, but before he could answer, his Father had strode as though he intended to go on alone and he had to scurry after him. They were now out of the trees and on the open hillside with a flood of gorse in full glory about them, and as they looked up at the track winding ahead, they could make out three figures on horseback against the sky at the top of the hill. Geriant spat viciously, his eyes narrowing. “Devil’s spawn!”

Previous     Next     

 © Mark Pearson 2007

Chapter 1 Part 2

“Megan; My shirt, woman! On the scarecrow is it?”

His Father’s voice. The Monday morning one.

“Under your big nose. Follow it to your drawer and bite you, it will.”

The sound of his Father’s back row bass was like a bucket of water over his Brothers, Ifor and Rhys, in the next room. Snorts and groans and creaking bed springs and voices deep with sleep rising octaves in alarm. No secrets in this old house; Newspaper thin walls, and that with the print off.

Rowena, his sister, would be out in the yard now, talking to the chickens. Better with the Chickens, Rowena. Considered strange and wistful, given to secret retreats and contrary opinions, she slept downstaris in a partitioned part of what was grandly called the “best” room, a distinction of no particular merit, as the parlour was the only room downstairs apart from the kitchen. Mam said they were kissed by the same angel, Glyn and Rowena. Find a stricken bird with a broken wing and it was out with splints and tears to wash away the sins of the world. A tile missing was the opinion of Ifor and Rhys, with Dada neutral if he knew what was good for him, but they were hard and insensitive, and Glyn put that down to working in the rock. And today he would be joining them.

When he came downstairs, self conscious in his brand new corduroys, bought for the occasion off the market in town and top price with no haggling, they were all waiting for him, the men in their places at the table. As he appeared, the treacherous step announcing his arrival, his brothers beat a tatoo on the table with their spoons.

“The conquering hero!” cried Ifor.

A man’s trousers you’ve got there, boy,” grinned Rhys.

Rowena swept in like a Mother hen. “Enough, you two. By me today, Glyn. Upstairs their brains.”

Mam pushed away a wisp of hair and sighed. “Glyn, my little one, come soon enough it has, this day.”

“More time you’ll be having now, eh, Mam?” laughed Ifor.

“I still have to wipe yours, our Ifor. And yours, Rhyn Owen, so away with that grin on your face.” retorted Mam, flashing Glyn a smile to raise daisies. “Away now, to the water, my lovely, then it’s double ham and eggs for you.”

A howl of protest went up from the ever-hungry side of the table as Glyn left without enthusiasm, returning to face the heaped plate thrust before him with a load of dumplings already weighing him down. He saw the mountainous breakfast as a sacrificial offering; The last time this happened it was down to Jones butcher and three teeth out.

“I’m not hungry.” he said weakly.

“Good food that is, boy.” growled his Da, mouth full and pointing with his knife. “Keep a family in China that would for a month.”

Rhys leaned over. “In there, Glyn. All this strength you can get you’ll be needing.” he said darkly.

Mam’s hands were on her hips. “And not just for digging in the mountain either. Sodom and Gomorrah, that is what you have got up there.”

Forks froze in mid air. “And what is that supposed to mean?” said the head of the house, eyebrows meeting his hair-line.

The three quarrymen looked at each other, choir boys having nothing on them.

Rowena fluttered like a down-cast butterfly. “People are talking, Dada.”

“Just the barracks, girl. Nothing that shouldn’t be.” soothed her Father.

“You can sit there.” snapped Mam, thunder looming, “and pretend nothing is happening up there? Born yesterday was I?”

Geraint shuffled in his seat. “Welcome you are to come anytime. See for yourself.”

“No self respecting woman would set foot in that place.” Mam rattled the pot as though she held it responsible. “Shut your ears, Glyn, my precious. And your mouth is open wide enough to take all this nice breakfast your Mam has cooked for you. No more like that you will see until you are safe under your own roof again.”

Geraint pushed his plate away. “Idle gossip you have been listening to. There is no room for common sense in that head of yours when it has been nodding away over the wall with the others.”

“Oh, nodding, is it? Like a donkey I am now? You think that is all I do while you are away up there with your fancy women?”

Poachers caught with salmon down their trousers must look as the three men did now. Ifor was the first to recover his voice, and then not all of it. “Fancy women? he echoed. “In Brynllech?”

“There is only Mrs. Lewis.” ventured Rhys thoughtfully. “She is the housekeeper at the barracks. And her daughter Lowri. Only sixteen she is, Mam.”

“The name of Ida Evans comes to me.” said Mam ice forming. And the likes of her.”

“Ida-?” queried Rhys.

“Gareth’s sister.” said Ifor.

“Saints preserve us, woman.” spluttered Geriant. “She brings her brother a bite of food, a flagon of ale.”

“And it takes all night does it?” said Megan, dropping another five degrees.”Feeding more than her brother I am thinking. Lili Thomas and Mair Hughes, two more for the catering trade. Is that the way of it?”

A falling pin would have been thunder in the sudden silence and the kettle spluttered on the hob as though seeking an answer of it’s own.

“Not believing all that rubbish, are you, Mam?” said Ifor at last.

“Oh, Mam,” said Rhys.

Geriant rose from the table, his face serious and dark with concern.”Other women and what they say does not surprise me. But you, Megan, shame on you. For bringing such things up in front of the boy, and on his first day. Gone thirteen he has, I know, and time enough, but only looked at his good breakfast now. I hope you are satisfied.”

A breath of lavender and Rowena was leaning over her young brother. “Into sandwiches with it, eh, Glyn?” she whispered. “Plenty of room for it later.”

Glyn nodded mutely and wished he could take her with him…

Previous     Next   

© Mark Pearson 2007.

A Bugle For The New Day

by

Frank Pearson

BOOK ONE

CHAPTER ONE

1897

Wild and chilling to the blood, the cry of the great bird echoed down from the rocky heights into that enclosed upland valley, and lesser creatures scurried for cover in the first probing light. Predatory eyes sought the unaware and little sounds of alarm soon filled the bleak air. Somewhere a horse whimpered and stamped it’s feet and a dog barked, adding to the growing concern as it aroused others, and from the sleeping huddle of grey stone cottages a disturbed baby bawled out in futile protest.

Glyn had been awake for hours, waiting for the creeping light to discover the cracks in the ceiling of his tiny room, and now he lay listening to the morning chorus with ears that were, being Welsh, attuned to harmonising them all into a choir gathering outside his window: first the soprano’s, shrill, insistent, and up with the angels on pins; then the alto’s, mellowing and all serious; in coming the bass, all breath and bluster and standing no nonsense; finally the tenors, bringing a promise of heaven and tears to the eyes, completing the grand overture. To the day he was dreading.

He sat up, a sick feeling of apprehension in his stomach, peered through the gloom at his Grandfather’s ancient clock, with it’s yellowed face and it’s giant fingers for the purblind, and there it originated, for Grandfather Owen, his irascible Taid, had spent so much of his life in “The Wayward Son” it had been given to him as a going-away present by the departing landlord, passing on to the youngest of the Owens when the old man couldn’t bear looking at it a moment longer.

The creaking mechanism went into motion to strike the hour, but there was no heart-stopping clang; Glyn had stuffed it with strips of rag and tied back the hammer, effectively stifling the voice that had cried for decades and sent sheep into premature labour.

He lay back and listened to movements inside the house. Always first was Mam. Away with the old poker as though arguing with the ashes and the thought of another day, then coaxing gently in that way of hers, getting old misery fire to surrender in the end. Soon her magic smells would be wafting up the stairs and into every room and up every nose with better results than old Haggerty, the knocker-up before the drink took him.

A stair creaked. It would be the bottom one, that old traitor; he knew it well from Blackberry pie raids in the small hours. Never repaired in all these years that old nuisance of a step. He always suspected Mam kept it that way to check the comings and goings of her brood. Again with the poker. On overtime this morning, in and out like a gossip’s tongue after Chapel on Sunday. Mister fire wasn’t keep to meet the day either…

Next

 © Mark Pearson 2007.