A notable event I recall

A Notable Event

Like me, Stephen Foster lived in what was known as the lower village. Dyserth was a village trapped in a time capsule. A village of myths, past industries, Roman and Druid history and the gateway to as many castles and caves, hills and dales, mansions and hovels as any teller of mythical stories could imagine. Stephen was the same age as me, and like me he was the bane of bohemian parents who cared little about the whereabouts of their offspring. Unlike me, he was not cursed with an elder sister, but, at his stone home next to the church yard of St Bridget’s he enjoyed fights with two brothers.
The school was in upper Dyserth, separated as it was from lower Dyserth by 65 steps, which wound around the great waterfall and across the middle part of the village called the Bryn.
Stephen had caught his mother, Fat Meg, as she was known in our house, secretly sneaking a small brown toadstool into the house and chopping it up with her salad. Apparently, within minutes of eating her salad, she would become as Stephen described “Doo-lally”. Wandering about the house clad only in huge voluminous bloomers, boobs bouncing from armpit to armpit, wrapping herself in a bed sheet cape, she would sing and holler and stand in the window flashing passing traffic as it negotiated the very tight double bend between their house and the church. Stephen and I had made up our minds that day, we had to try these mushrooms as well.
School let out at three thirty, with a clatter of wooden desks, a deep inhalation of chalk dust, and after stepping gingerly around Kay Piercey’s dried puddle of pee in the corridor we were out to little boy freedom. I was seven years old. It was a warm Indian summer in September, and life was good. It was Friday, and Saturday promised new expeditions into the lead mines and an early morning combing of the fields around the river by Snellie’s Mill, for horse mushrooms, exploding puff balls and sparkling galena chunks left over from the ancient and now defunct mineral industries that once abounded in the surrounding hills.
We found our toadstools in the school field during dinner break that day, and after careful inspection, we duly picked two specimens, scrutinizing them for maggot infestation, folded them up into a piece of crumpled graph paper, pocketed them and then unceremoniously trod the rest into the damp green grass. While idling beneath the sycamore tree at the end of the field, collecting their seeds for “helicopter” testing, we made plans to test out the mysterious powers that these small thin brown-capped growths provided.
In those days, not only did we believe in Santa Claus, but were equally convinced of the existence of goblins, fairies, and gnomes, who lived in various copses and tunnels, holes and mine shafts, that pitted and scarred our ancient landscape. These denizens of the wild were to be avoided at all cost, and to meet with one could cause many ills. It was rumored that some local people could communicate with them, and Emlyn Roberts, a gibbering and incoherent dropout of unknown age was known to communicate regularly with them, by a series of smoke rings and drum beats on ancient car hoods, from his personal den at the local tip. Since his liaison with the darker forces he had become a wild man, the envy of many and the scorn of others, as he continued to avoid the “do-gooders” from social services. He lived semi-permanently behind an old piano at the base of the tip, where he wailed as he ate from discarded army rations, thrown there after the demise of the Kimnel military base near Rhuddlan.
The ominous booming sound of the skeletal piano harp was often heard drifting across fields at night, as he called his friends of the woods and glens to dance with him around his campfire of old tires in the rat infested clearings on the slopes of the dump, all of this tenuously held in place by the rotting bodies of ancient Singers, Humbers, Austins and Rileys. Cars of previous generations that had fulfilled their owners’ dreams and now lay to die, slowly awaiting the crash of smashing windshields and the encroachment of unforgiving rust. Emlyn was a legend.
Running down the road, we leaped and dived. Arms wide, with our leather satchels bouncing on our backs, our rough woolen shorts chafing our inner thighs to the point of no longer being noticed, with the ragged tails of our curled collar, gray flannel shirts riding the wind behind like knight’s pennants, we weaved and dipped through the upper village. From this vantage point at the top, the lower village spread below us as we hastened on towards our secret destination, green blazers flapping, revealing the gloss of dried snot and breakfasts gobbled quickly on both sleeves. The Steps, as we called them, lay but a minute ahead of us. An ancient route, thousands of years old, that had been the original link between the people of the upper village and the industries of the lower village in medieval times and now served as a short cut past the old school house and mysterious Ivor’s, a strange gentleman and renowned amongst our gang as being a wizard of repute, said to have a bottled baby head, a selection of pickled organs and artifacts from gladiatorial Rome in his weird collection of thieved talisman. We tended to avoid his house, but seldom his garden, within which we feasted, for fear that were we to be called in, we could become the witness of ancient incantations and never emerge the same.
One last obstacle lay between where we were and the agreed site of our own hidden garden, which lay adjacent to the steps at the top of the waterfall, the pavement cracks. As we crossed the road, between the middle village chemist and the old school house there lay several hundred yards of paving slabs on the sidewalk. To slow from a run was considered fatal. This tough obstacle course had to be negotiated at the same speed as the previous run, but to step on a crack was considered an act of certain personal doom. All cracks must be avoided at all cost. It was rumored that stepping on such a crack is what had caused Leslie Dunster’s polio, Lenny Hughes to turn blue with a hole in his heart and Peter Bell’s older brother to have a permanent woody, which he was forced to regularly display to the Roberts girls while he stood on stepping stones beneath the bridge and giant beech trees of the area we called “the Arches,” where our life giving stream meandered around Stephen’s house and the vicarage.
I was traveling too fast, but could not slow. I jerked and jolted as my feet jigged on the pavement. I was OK so far, Stephen squealed as he caught up alongside. His much smaller frame was better adapted to this death-defying feat. My leather bag bounced heavily on my back, forcing me to a crouch. Bopping, hopping, jolting and pounding, I must have looked strange as my legs danced wildly, knees to the chin, all to a hidden tune in my head, and my secret coded incantations repeated time after time to ensure safe passage. My toes pressed hard in the front of my flimsy black canvas basketball boots, the right sole of which was almost separate from the rest of it and held on only by baler twine and a careful lacing each day. I could die here. All kinds of dreadful ailments could befall me. I must not tread on the cracks. The old school house loomed close.
Now a village hall, it was said that the old school house was so old that even grandmother and mother had been educated there, prior to the opening of the “new school” I attended.
Now the gateway to the steps, the only function of the old school as I could recall was to hold tombolas and village whist drives, whereupon the elderly of the village congregated to play cards and leer lasciviously at each other over past sexual conquests and argue over ancient scores still unsettled. My mother’s Uncle Arthur, my Godfather from my unceremonious christening at St. Bridget’s church, attended each function, he was after all a village council officer, but was not welcomed by most, since it was in the air that his regular winning was due to sleight of hand and not good cards. Though he was never caught, at the very ancient age of sixty three he was still a dashing old man, and aunt Ivy, his troubled wife, encouraged the dying of his great Welsh mop from gray to black and the cut of his dark suits exact, in order to tease Miss Evans the old butcher’s sister, since it was said that Ivy won his heart in a battle of matrimony, some forty years earlier, he jilting Evans, and neither he nor Ivy had ever been forgiven for the event. Old scores lasted forever in Dyserth, and family partisanship was considered the norm, forgiveness in a lifetime considered the ultimate weakness.
As we neared our pre agreed rendezvous, a late “crump” and a small shock wave shook the ground. We turned in time to see the cloud of dust and the fall of a part of the limestone cliff from the “new quarry,” which fed the cement works and was the major employer in the Very Upper Village.
The day was still warm. I sweated. The comfortable odor of my damp body percolating up from my tattered underpants, which had been clean on Monday, but were now considerably the worse for wear, and sweat and stale urine mingled with the smell of little boy and of the fennel, as I successfully negotiated the final two paving slabs. The scent of wildflowers pervaded my nostrils as I leaped the last pavement crack and escaped the trap to the freedom of the weed and blossom adorned stone path that lead to our secret spot in the fennel patch.
Foster was there before me. Even now the rituals must be maintained. Throwing ourselves to the ground panting, we rolled to our hands and knees at the agreed point and crept up through the long grass, around the patch of wild rhubarb, stopping briefly to collect wild gooseberries from the prickly protection of their unforgiving hosts, past the yellow blossomed gorse and into the long grass, now well flattened by the daily visits of the bodies of little boys. We rolled to our backs on the stone.
Breath held, we waited unseen for less ambitious school kids to creep by, and stared up at the cold blue sky, broken only by the fast scudding wisps of cumulus blowing in from the gulf stream and across the Irish sea, to water and protect our ancient and mythical land.
Finally we risked an upright position, and giggled quietly to each other. We had successfully avoided our respective brothers, avoided the cracks, beaten the rest and our secret glade lay undetected by the world. Peering over the long and fragrant stems of wild fennel, and pungent wild garlic, we scanned the horizon, like cheetahs of the Serengeti eyeing herds of antelope. Black and purple beetles hummed and hovered, crawled and poked at the fennel flowers. Before any other ritual could take place, we had but one last ceremonial task to perform before we could embark upon our quest. We had to eat three grass stems, one daisy each and catch a bug. The bugs were called devil’s coach horses, and they seemed only to be resident at this particular spot in the entire village. As small grasshoppers chirped and left, we each caught our bug, carefully pocketed them in the upper left pockets of our green snot encrusted blazers, for later repatriation in the church yard on the way home, where upon we hoped to encourage a new colony to develop, closer to our homes, beneath the spreading yew trees that protected my ancestors’ graves from the many demons that manifest themselves there at various times.
With his interim task completed, Stephen carefully withdrew the piece of graph paper from his trousers’ pocket. With even greater care he expelled the rather too well gnawed Bazooka Joe bubble gum from his mouth, squeezing it between his grimy fingers, he then folded it carefully into the grease paper cartoon, that came with it when he purchased it two days previously. It was lined with pocket fluff for flavor, as he secreted it into the hidden recess of yet another pocket of his copious hand me down wool serge trousers, distinguished by a missing fly button and the only pair he owned suitable for school attendance and observance of dress code, it was tucked away for future mastication.
I still struggled to get my breath after the near-death experience of the pavement crack avoidance. By now our small toadstools limped sadly in the paper as we unfolded it and spread it on a worn area of exposed rock hillside between us in the grassy retreat.
Stephen’s wisdom in these matters was without question, it was after all his Mam who had discovered the mysterious powers that these offerings of the wild afforded us mortals. So we lay out our tart gooseberries, plucked dandelion and ‘vinegar’ leaves from around us, for good measure and the addition of some green bulk, a single dock leaf was shared between us, and three soft grass stems were plucked and sucked grudgingly from their silent swaying to accompany our feast.
We looked at each other. Foster was the first to go. He carefully folded the dock leaf around the grass stems and a single large wild gooseberry, made the vinegar leaf into a square and added this to the salad, he then rolled all of this into the dandelion leaf. On this he carefully placed the entire cap of his now forlorn toadstool, and not unlike a lord eating a canapé of caviar and cracker, he opened his mouth and placed the green weeping mass onto his tongue.
His eyes watered, and his throat heaved, he closed his mouth and with just two brief chewing motions followed by a ragged gulp, his feast was consumed.
I watched him carefully for signs of illness. He simply sat there, the same as before, his cross-toothed smile egging me to undertake my part of the ritual.
Not to do it myself would have meant certain problems I knew. The breaking of such a code would wreak demons and dragons into my life. I would be caused to repent in terrible ways, and the recurring dream of being chased wearing only a tattered vest, barely good enough to cover my balls and willy as I ran from Rhiannon Roberts and her gang, would most certainly become a reality if I did not follow Stephen’s lead.
Ritualistically, and so as not to be outdone, I too ceremoniously folded my feast together in the same fashion, but unlike Stephen, and since my eyes told me he lived, even though he was now lying flat on his back panting beside me, I would eat the entire larger of the two toadstools with my salad, and thereby totally avoid bad luck, goblin encounters and even whippings with the studded belt from my Dad for several days to come. Life would be good from now on.
The combination was bitter, and in spite of the strong “mushroom” smell emanating from my toadstool, its taste was decidedly peppery and burned my tongue, and that, with the mouth puckering, eye watering flavor of the vinegar leaf, and the strong smell of wild fennel around our makeshift den, made for a truly gagging, spleen jerking experience. I chewed once on my mouthful, and hastened to swallow as much as I could of it whole.
Upon achieving this, I poked Stephen, he rolled over beside me grinning and then chortling, he poked me back. We had done it. This surely had ensured our future success in all things. We had created the ultimate luck potion and consumed it. We rolled and wrestled and laughed loudly. I rolled to my back. My leg warmed. I had peed my pants. Normally a source of considerable embarrassment, this time it was such a laugh, that I peed even more as I struggled to contain my merriment. I wiped my grimy hand on my wet steaming leg, clutched my groin then smeared my wet hand on Foster’s face. We laughed even more. Foster too wanted to urinate, but his control was greater than mine, and extracting his willy through his button less trouser fly he staggered to his feet and rained the fetid steaming contents of his bladder on several busy bugs that hovered and crawled industriously about their business on the fennel flowers. They reluctantly fell from their perches on the hairy stems, and angrily buzzed their way to more distant blooms. Even the ever present bumblebee was fair game and the bright yellow leg joints, full of pollen were washed clean of their load.
Everything was now so much easier to view. I could actually see the millions of eyes of each insect. The clarity of the chirping grasshopper calls were deafening, I heard the distant rush of the waterfall as though I rode upon it. A car horn on the bend of the hill below us caused me to flinch as though it were about to enter our verdant haven and run us down. A sickly liquid drooling of my upper jaws commenced to engage my senses, and behind my still developing molars, it heralded the onset of a good puke. I swallowed, being no stranger to the experience. My ambition was not to throw up before Foster did. He lay beside me, eyes half closed, his lungs lifting and falling rhythmically to shallow pants, a sickly grin on his flushed face. That’s all I recall up to the moment She came.
From my lifeless and immobile position, flat on my back, blue sky above and wet rock below, I sensed the presence of another. I turned my head to the left. Foster was gone. In his place she simply sat there, looking down at me. Neither approval nor disapproval in her eyes, she blinked, the blue gimlets of her irises flashing from behind long lashes. She smiled at me pleasantly and she was beautiful. She continued to gaze upon me, her blond clean tresses falling to her shoulders and across her gray tunic so perfectly I could separate hair from hair on her head as I gazed curiously upon her. She remained in that position, immobile, watching, blinking at me languidly, communicating, yet not talking, chastising yet not hurting, caring but not intruding. I felt a great warmth over come me, the sky disappeared behind a haze of white static, and ear splitting crackles.
Suddenly I was carried to the depths of the great river Clwyd, I was filled with fear and then elation, I flowed around it and through it, it did the same to me. Then suddenly I was above the river. People scurried along the bank, poking a lifeless body with sticks, a woman was crying. I recognized Bob Mac the gamekeeper, fussing on the bank, as a policeman parked his bike. I could see him, but nobody could see me. I wafted around the branches of an ancient oak tree, laden with acorns and adorned with hidden mistletoes. I tried to call, but nobody heard. Their attention lay upon the body of the child in the stream. By now the voluminous and cold, river soaked, duffel coat of the lifeless floating corpse had been successfully snagged by a brittle branch beneath an overhanging tree trunk. I saw the fussing crowd pulling it to the bank. It rolled over, the face looked vaguely familiar to me.
In a flash it was gone. I felt the stab in my back as my body landed hard on a rock. I opened my eyes, she was still there, I was back, but this time her face was close to mine, scorn on her countenance. In a thrice gunfire sounded and I was caught in a fetid trench, my foot squishing on dead corpses of horses, rats were running around me. Again a crack and a jolt, I was above a trench of desperate dirty men in round hats. They were crying and screaming as they tugged at their tunics caught on barbed wire, A body in pieces lay below me. I screamed, but nothing emerged, I cried and struggled in the air above the hell below. Again, the spine-smashing jolt, and I came to. Her face by now had turned from angelic to a hard cold scowl. She was inches from me, examining me, her hands caressing me, but without personal sensation. Her mouth never opened, yet she spoke. “Not this time my little one, not this time”. A tear welled in her eye, I felt a warm hand on my forehead, a glow surrounded her. I jerked my head convulsively, I cried and screamed, I turned again to her but she was gone.
It was dark, I was cold, my stomach heaved, tears ran down my face, I smelled pee, my inside leg was chafed and sore.
“Over here” I heard, and with it the rustling of the grass, I came to my knees and threw up the contents of my stomach uncontrollably just as Selwyn Roberts, a teenage son of the local bobby came running up through the gorse to our secret hiding place. My diaphragm heaved, my teeth ached, the sour contents of my stomach burned my epiglottis as it rushed from my little body. He grabbed me, backing off as he saw my vomit. My mother ran behind him, teary and tense, she negotiated the slope on all fours. She flew to my side and rushed her arms around me. My elder sister stood below, expressionless and angry. More people came. I was cold. They spoke but I did not hear. As I turned to the small crowd gathered on the steps below, I saw her again, expressionless but seemingly satisfied that I had survived my ordeal. For whatever reason I knew that only I could see her, I turned, bawling, to face my Mam. She embraced me, and I heard sounds of relief sighing from the small crowd below. I turned again and my Angel was gone.
The journey home was one of much confusion. It was past nine o’clock at night. Although we only lived but a mile from the fennel patch, I was ceremoniously collected into the arms of Gittins the farmer, whose countenance screwed as he placed his hands upon my urine soaked buttocks. I was carried to a waiting car. A black Morris Minor, owned by my mother’s uncle, “Tommy One Leg.” He was a village war hero, who resided in one of the new bungalows across from my grandparents. The front passenger seat was tilted forward and Mam climbed in behind, along with Douglas Jones. Mrs. Tweddle placed newspaper on the passenger seat and Mr. Gittins lowered me into it. With a clang of the door, Uncle Tom leaned across and flipped the fly window open and backwards to let in air. I was transported down the hill, and passed a relieved crowd of searchers who trudged eagerly towards the Red Lion to discuss the drama of the missing Price boy. At home, I was able to exit the car by my own means, and wrapped in Mom’s coat went in to face the family. My brother was in front of the fire, a scared look on his face. My younger sister, still a baby, was crying in the arms of my grandmother, my older sister still yet to arrive from the hunt.
I trembled, Mam was talking wildly but I heard her not. I felt ill. There was a clatter of steel on rock, the violent revving of an engine and a squeal of worn brakes. A thud of a car door and pounding steps on the earthen path signaled the arrival of my Dad. He was wild eyed and wary. The whole village had been trying to find him. By all later accounts, wrought from indignant villagers, he had been hiding in a brew house in St. Asaph, drinking, oblivious to the drama unfolding at his home. When he had been discovered and was confronted by a local from our village, and had been told of his missing son, his had ire surfaced, and the well rounded bar maid he had been rubbing against and enticing, had pulled away and told him to get on with it. He had had to come home early from his amorous infidelity and face the family. All because “that bloody kid” as he called me had “done it again.”
By now, and feeling somewhat better, I was naked in front of the fire, Mam was wiping me down with an old wet flannel, which had been soaped and scented. A warm and welcome towel was thrown around my pale little body, and kisses were then rained upon me by Mam.
Upon his entry, my brother’s body visibly stiffened to Dad’s presence. He reeked of stale beer and cigarette smoke. His steel gray eyes flashed wildly, my sister finally arrived back, but seeing Dad as she peered through the window, she had decided only to enter as far as the meager kitchen, where she pretended to busy herself with dirty dishes.
My grandma settled into the front room with my baby sister, pulling the door closed behind her, lowering herself into an old leather chair rescued from the dump, and which had been placed in front of a cold fireless grate. She sat quietly in the dark, rocking and humming, my baby sister upon her lap, wrapped in a thin cotton blanket. My brother rolled from the small and uncomfortable couch, and at age six, he had already developed the good sense to crawl behind Mam and over to the stairs, where he pretended to busy himself with scant parts of an old erector set, he then sidled quietly up the stairs and to our room, where he seemingly melted into his little bed, like warm cheese into damp toast.
The shouting in the middle room was loud, I never recall what was said, only the fear pressing again on my bladder. Mam grabbed me to her bosom, Dad pulled on my arm. He lashed out, striking Mam, and she released me. I heard my big sister whimper from the kitchen. She would surely blame me yet again for this problem, and our relationship would be further soured.
I recall only the ringing in my ears, accompanied by the dazing, as my head struck the wall, hard enough to release pungent odors of arsenic from the ancient green wallpaper. My back hurt, I coiled to the familiar fetal position, the towel falling away around me, my small body naked against the wall as my feet hit my rib cage, amid rabid screaming and the stinging of his open palm rasping my small bare buttocks.
After what seemed like forever the beating stopped and I went to all fours, my back hurt, my eyes stung, my shoulder ached. I was able to crawl to the stairs whimpering, giddy with confusion and fear. I had made it. My bed was disheveled, the sheets and blankets pulled back to allow the previous night’s pee stain to dry. I crawled onto the familiar brown stain and pulled the sheets over me, huddled in fear. I heard my Mam cry below, I heard my Dad bellow, and the final slap of assault as he blamed her for the intrusion to his hard working life that had been caused by her sloppiness as a parent. He could not trust her to even look after the kids. With my grandmother forgotten, and my sister having dodged bullets behind the beating of my Mam, she rescued grandma by taking the little one, and I heard grandma slide quietly out through the seldom used front door for the walk up the village to the sanctuary of her bungalow.
The noise below subsided. I relaxed my body, and to the quiet whimpering of Mam and Dad’s snores I peeked out over the blankets.
My brother sniffled quietly across the room in his small bed, I turned my head, and there she was again. Her blond hair seemingly glowed, her face wrought into a noncommittal smile reminiscent of the Mona Lisa. She emanated warmth. Looking down upon me I saw her hand extend towards me, her gray tunic falling short at the wrist. I did not feel her touch, but my small hurt body filled with her warmth. My aches subsided and I fell into a deep sleep.
The next day was a Saturday. I heard Dad, he was already up, chopping wood by the old shed. He was cutting sticks for kindling our simple grate in the middle room. I snuck downstairs and Mam was frying bacon on the ancient electric stove, which lived on a plywood stand in the kitchen. The over-used and never cleaned greasy frying pan was throwing up a glorious scent, in crackles and pops, as juicy rinds writhed to brown deliciousness. My Dad came in, a picture of good will and male bonhomie; he winked at me and said something. I smiled back. Mam turned to the grate and plucked from its rack, clean underwear, a shirt and socks for me. She turned to pass them my way. The sadness she felt was written hard on her face, with the emotional scars of her beating by her husband of twelve years. Her head was swollen and both eyes wore the purple blue rings of battle, one of them almost closed. Her hair was disheveled. Apparently, or so the story goes, she had slipped very badly on the wet grass of the hill when looking for me and struck her head heavily on exposed rock. I had caused this, of course. Dad fluttered around her, and they hugged, Mam tried hard not to flinch. He went to the middle room and rustled with the fire, placing the kindling over the newspaper and delicately positioning coal ritualistically around it.
He struck a match and flames brought the small grate to life. He cackled and rubbed his blackened hands, reaching out to embrace me, I flinched, but gave in to his hug. He was my Dad after all. Nothing was ever said again, the village kept its secrets, it was not the first time Mam had fallen over, by all accounts it had happened before, and life carried on pretty much as usual. Dad went to work, the village kept on going and I returned to school that following Monday to a hero’s welcome. That is from all but a very sheepish Stephen Foster. By all accounts, my Mam had gone up to Fat Meg’s to find me when I had not come home. She informed Mam that Stephen had come home some time ago. He had developed what could only be interpreted as a very severe stomach bug that had caused him to throw up violently, and he had gone to bed, Meg having pumped him with syrup of figs and milk of magnesia. He denied ever seeing me or even walking home with me. In fact, he did not even travel home via the steps according to his version of his journey home from school. Relationships were cold to begin with, but since our secret was safe, we soon teamed up again, and no more was said. After all, it was a very secretive village, and we had been as close as anyone could come to meeting the creatures of the earth. I decided to say nothing of my Angel. At last I had finally made contact with the other beings of our verdant vale. I was special, and nothing now could change it. I glowed inside, suffered the bullying and scorn of my sister and even became quite used to Mam falling over some nights and bumping her head, Dad was Dad, a former sailor, the son of a butcher, a dreadful ladies’ man. It would take many years to discover who he really was, but that is another book entirely, this book is mine.
Allow me to share with you further incidents. Not always was it quite so dramatic, but it was Wales, my Wales, land of my fathers, forever mine. I was a child, and the world around was about to change forever, but not our valley, our village or our people. I have returned many times since and they are still there, slow to accept me to their bosom until they learn who I am, and old secrets are shared again, brown foaming pints exchanged before glowing pub fires. There is no place on earth as sacred, as mysterious, or as warm or as forgiving as The Village, and I am a part of it, its earth is my body, its mysteries my soul and the demons of its hidden places my story.