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It was at times like these, when he was alone, which was most of the time now, that he wondered what the point of it all was.
In a hundred yards, he would come to the boulder where he had first kissed Sarah, and where two years later she had accepted his proposal of marriage and made him the happiest man alive. He had never told anyone about that rock, because he was sure that his father would have told him that it had not always been there; that the army bulldozer had pushed all the rocks to the inside of the road rather than carry them down.
He would have said something to spoil the memory and the dream that that smooth rock had been there for ever, or at least since the Ice Age, which was long enough ago for him to still think of as romantic. He had never witnessed one tender moment between his grandparents, on either side, or his own parents. They had been tough, hard, no-nonsense people, suited to their times, whereas he had had the relative luxury of growing up in the post-war years when there was hope and prosperity. Not that it had affected or even reached their little hill, but it was evident in the media that a New World had dawned.
“About bloody time!” he remembered his father saying one day. “I hope it’s a bloody sight better than the old one!” His mother had scolded him for bad language and he had taken his pipe out into the back garden ‘for a bit of peace’.
He reached the boulder gratefully and sat down. Kiddy put her paws to the surface beside him, stared at him with her still-bright eyes, surrounded by white-grey hair and panted. William was almost panting too, but he stroked her hair, as he had Sarah’s all those years ago, and she was just as happy as his then future wife had been.
“There’s a good girl. You’re a good girl you are. A good girl!” and Kiddy appeared to show satisfaction with the praise by licking his forearm. He gazed out across the narrow road and wide valley before him. “My Mam and Da used to tell me that witches, fairies and pixies live in these hills and valleys… and my grandparents did! And I believed them…” he said to his dog. “Until I became all grown up and educated.
“I didn’t want to seem like a stupid farm boy then… I was a New Man in a New World and the Old World was for silly old people. Aye, and so were the witches and The Fair Family – Y Tylwyth Teg. But, it’s funny, you know, Kiddy, my girl, the older I got the more them old stories made sense to me… and now? I fair believes ‘em again.
“Are you with the Fair People, my lovely Sarah or are you back in the cottage. I would like to think that you’re sitting by me on our love seat of stone now…”
Tears did not come, but he thought that they would have in ‘normal’ people. ‘Too much of my Da in me to cry in public!’ he said aloud, but only because there was no other human being for miles around.
“I’m a silly old bugger, that’s what I am, aren’t I, Kiddy? A stupid, silly old bugger… Come on, let’s get on with it”.
He slid off the rock to his feet and the dog put her front paws on his thigh, looking for another pat and thrashing her tail because she could feel her master’s mood lightening. They set off and he checked his posture again.
Thirty-odd minutes later, they were walking across the patch of concrete on the summit of Jones’ Peak, or Bryn Teg – Fair Hill – to give it its real name. His goal was the bench in the corner of the concrete slab. In his earliest memories of the hilltop, the small shed where the army lookouts could get out of bad weather had still been there and when it had fallen into disuse, courting couples had taken it over.
After years of complaints from parents, and more than a few shotgun weddings, the council had taken it down. It still made him smile to remember a letter some wag had sent in to the readers’ opinion column. He had likened the shed to a pimple on the bald spot of a middle-aged man’s head. Well, the pimple had disappeared now and to mark its historical role was this park bench. If you sat on it with your back to the mountains, you felt as if you were sitting on top of the world and could see for miles.
As for the courting couples, they still went there but they all had cars these days, and contraception, or most of them anyway.
It was a lovely day. There was the inevitable breeze, but it was as weak as it got. It made his hair fly about, but it was exhilarating and made him feel glad to be alive again, although he knew that the effect was only temporary. As soon as they left that magical spot, he would wonder what it was all about again. He had known when he had had a family, but he couldn’t remember any longer.
“Come on, my lovely girl, let’s be heading back down”. It was a signal to her for a treat before starting for home. William usually took an apple or a bar of chocolate with him for energy for the homeward journey and he always gave his dog a biscuit as well. She came over to him wagging her tail in expectation.
“Good girl, Kiddy”, he soothed stroking her head with one hand while she ate the biscuits out of the other. “That’s the lot, off we go”.
As William was getting up, a car appeared on the concrete and it flashed its lights. A man of William’s age got out and so did a young girl.
“Hello, Bill. The number of times I come up yer and don’t see anyone. Anyway, I’m glad I’ve bumped into you actually. It’s my birthday today and I’m having a little do in the village pub. I’m just showing my granddaughter the magnificent view from our hill, then I’ll take her home and go on down. Do you fancy it?”
“I don’t know, Dai. Happy Birthday by the way”. He waved at the girl who remained the other side of the car stroking the dog.
“Come on, I’ll take you and your dog down in the car. Better than watching daytime TV, surely?”
“It is that without a doubt. Yes, go on then. My daughter asked me if I wanted to go down this morning. I said ‘No, I’ll leave it till tomorrow’, but this is a good reason to change my mind. You’re on!”
“Good man! Good man! If you’d been on the phone I would have rung you to give you an invite, but you won’t have one will you?”
“No fear! Bloody waste of money up yer, man… nothing works. No signal, no bloody electric half the time neither”.
“No, the world that time forgot, that’s where you live. It’s like going back a hundred years up yer… maybe two hundred…”
“If it wasn’t for this concrete slab, nothing has changed for thousands of years, Dai, thousands and thousands”.
When Dai had shown his granddaughter around the hilltop, he promised her an ice cream and they all got into the car to start their descent.
That old dog of yours pongs a bit, doesn’t she, Bill? Don’t you think it’s time she had a bath?”
“No, I do not! She is a farm working girl, not some floozy. She wants to smell like a dog so other dogs will find her attractive, not like some city girl. You won’t find another dog readier to jump into a stream than old Kiddy, but I ain’t putting no powders and perfumes on her so’s people thinks she smells nice. I don’t believe in poncifying dogs.
“She’s a dog, and if you wants a dog, you ‘as to accept that dogs don’t smell like us”.
Dai looked at his friend and agreed, but wondered whether his friend didn’t need a little ‘poncifying’ himself.
Dai drove past a shop near the village, bought his granddaughter an ice cream and took her home, then they walked a little further on down the hill to the ‘Bryn Teg’, the village public house. It was nearly four o’ clock.
William entered the pub first, but turned to hold the door open for his friend without looking inside. As Dai walked through the door, the sound of ‘Happy Birthday’ erupted. They both looked around the bar in amazement at the decorations and trimmings. The landlord and landlady, Harry and Joyce, led the birthday song accompanied by ten or twelve men and women, all of about retirement age.
“Well I never!” he said to everyone as he and William took stools at the bar and Kiddy lay down in her usual spot under a table by the door.
“Pint of bitter, Dai?” asked Harry.
“Yes, please, Harry. Who did all this?”
“It was Joyce’s idea, but a few of your friends here helped us decorate the place. Bitter for you too, Bill?”
“Aye, thanks, Harry. I’ll get these”.
“Happy Birthday, mate!” he said clinking glasses with his friend when their pints had arrived, “and many more of them”.
“Thanks, Bill. All the best, mate. I’m glad you could come. I wasn’t expecting all this though and that’s for sure. Thanks for all the trouble you’ve gone to for my birthday, everyone”, he said standing up and raising his glass to everyone. “I don’t think I’ve had a birthday party since the kids left home. It was a very kind thought. Thank you, Joyce”.
When the initial excitement caused by Dai’s entrance had died down, most of the men went back to watching a rerun of a recent football game, while others exchanged anecdotes about village life and hill farming in general.
“Fancy a game of Crib, Dai?”
“Sure. Usual stakes?”
“Aye, penny a point. Harry, the cards, please”.
Harry nodded and reached for the set. He knew what they were talking about because they had been playing Crib together for all of the nineteen years he had been the landlord of the Bryn Teg, and he had been told that they had been playing it for just as long before he had taken over.
“Shall I give Kiddy her usual as well?” asked Harry.
William looked over his shoulder to see his dog panting back at him, her tail wagging as usual whenever he paid her attention.
“Yes, please, Harry. It’s her wages for having to wait for me, and she’s come to expect them now”.
“How long has she been coming here? Ten years?”
“Twelve, but she wasn’t what you would call a regular until I sold the flock five years ago”.
“Twelve years, is it? Doesn’t time fly?” he said pouring a half a bitter into the bowl that William left behind the bar for her, and topping it up with water. He put that and a packet of Smokey-Bacon flavoured crisps on the bar and walked around the counter.
“There you are, old girl”, he said putting the bowl on yesterday’s newspaper and emptying the crisps onto it. Kiddy waited patiently, her tail wagging and her tongue hanging out. The moment that Harry had finished patting her head, she tucked into her treat.
“I love to do that for her. I actually look forward to it”, said the kind-hearted landlord.
The afternoon passed quickly, and after several games, most of which Dai won for a change, William made ready to go.
“Not going already are you, Bill?”
“Aye, I’ve had my three pints and two hours and you’ve had my money - birthday boy’s luck, so it’s time to hit the road”.
“Aw, come on, I’m enjoying winning for a change. I’ll tell you what, stay another hour and not only will I buy you a pint, but I’ll give you double stakes”.
“Oh, I don’t know”, he said but he was considering the proposition. His friend had not had to buy a drink all afternoon and he had ninety-eight pence of William’s money.
“All right, but I got to take the dog outside for a Gypsy’s first. Her bladder’s not as strong as it used to be”.
“You could say that about all of us”, replied Dai. “You do that and I’ll nip to the gents’ as well”.
Kiddy coupied down in the car park and looked away from William shyly as she always did when going about her business and then started to walk home. William whistled and held the door open for her. She hurried inside and they both resumed their places.
“I needed that”, said Dai holding the deck of cards out for William to cut them, “and it looked as if she did too”.
“She thought she was going home for her dinner, so I’ll only stay another hour. Cheers, Dai. Thanks for the pint”.
“My pleasure”, he replied.
“I’ll get my money back out of you now”.
“Never! I’m going to whip your arse. I’m on a roll, I can feel it”.
Ninety minutes and two pints later, William got up to go again, and Dai didn’t try to stop him.
“A quick visit to the bog, and then we’re off. I won’t get home until eight o’clock now. I’m not as fleet of foot as I used to be you know. Oh, and a packet of peanuts, Harry, please”.
“None of us are, mate. Thanks for the lesson in Crib, but I nearly had you this time. You’re a jammy sod, you get some incredible luck, you do!”
“That’s skill, my boy! I’ve been trying to teach you the game for forty years. Don’t you think it’s time you packed it in and tried snooker instead?”
“I’ll have you next time”.
“In your dreams. Enjoy the rest of your birthday. Bye everyone, time to get up that hill and home”. He looked around the room, but already knew that no-one could give him a lift even part the way home. When he opened the door, Kiddy was in front of him.
Kiddy usually led the way out of the village, and he would follow on two and a half yards behind her. He had never been sure why she liked to walk like that, but he suspected that she was trying to force the pace. When they got onto the hill road, she wandered more freely ahead, behind and to the right of him.
Five pints was more than William was accustomed to these days and it made him sing to himself quietly as he tried not to trudge up the hill. He liked to sing the hymns that he had learned in school and chapel. He didn’t know a single modern song, except for some Max Boyce that they sang in the pub during a rugby international, and he was proud of it. Most of the hymns he could sing in Welsh and English, but preferred the Welsh versions.
Forty minutes later, William was approaching a corner which would reveal another rock that they always rested at on the downhill side of his house. He felt his jacket pocket for the packet of peanuts he would share with Kiddy before they tackled the last short leg home. It was more of a treat to stop there than a necessity. They both enjoyed their breaks, their snacks and taking their time in their new lives of retirement. As he rounded the corner, he was wondering where Kiddy had got to. It wasn’t like her not to check up on him every few minutes.
Then he saw her. She was lying on the ground just before the rock. It immediately struck him as strange that she wasn’t sitting in her usual place on the right-hand side of it.
He hurried his pace. Fifty yards from her, she gave a kick, arched her back and was still. He started to run and called her name, but she made no attempt to respond.
He dropped to his knees hurting them on the hard surface, but the tears were not because of that. He could see that his friend had suffered a heart attack and not survived it.
William drew her up onto his lap and wept like a child. Some thirty or forty minutes later, he scooped her up with his right hand and tried to stand up, but he could not. His knees were too weak, so he crawled to their rock and used his left hand to help him up. He sat on the rock with his dog on his lap and the tears started again. ‘She hadn’t even had her peanuts!’ he was thinking as a pain grew in his left arm. The iron grip of a vice squeezed his chest and he was groaning as he and Kiddy slipped off the rock onto the sparse grass below it.
(back to top)
3 SARAH
“Where am I?” asked William of the people standing around him. “Am I in hospital?”
“Yes, you can call it that. You are very sick, but you have recovered a great deal since we found you, so there is every reason to believe that you will make a total recovery”.
“Thank you, doctor. My mind is a little foggy. I think I must have a hangover. I had a little more than usual to drink... It was a friend’s birthday...”
“Yes, we know, but don’t worry about anything like that now you need rest more than anything”.
“Kiddy, my dog, died, didn’t she?”
“Don’t worry about her either. She is in good hands. We are taking good care of her too. You will be able to see her again shortly”.
“I don’t understand… who found me? Nobody goes up on the hill at that time of night. I must have been very lucky... Oh, unless it was a courting couple...”
“Please”, said the doctor “try to rest. You will learn everything you want to know in good time, but not now”.
“All right, doctor, you know best. I am very tired. So long as my Kiddy is all right I’m happy... I don’t know what I would do without her...”
William drifted off into a deep sleep in which he felt warm and comfortable. Kiddy was at his feet with her head on his knee.
When he awoke he felt a lot better.
“I had a great sleep”, he said to the woman at his bedside. “I’ll know better than to drink that much again... my head has cleared though. Did I have a heart attack? Is that what landed me in here?”
The woman drew closer allowing him to see her clearly for the first time. “Hello, Willy. Yes, you would call it a heart attack”.
He scrutinised her face and figure. “You look very much like my wife did at your age. She was the only person who ever called me Willy. It was her pet name for me, her private joke. She never once used it in public, because of its, er, connotations, if you know what I mean. In those days, women were a lot more modest in public”.
“Yes, the good old, bad old days, eh, Willy?”
“It’s amazing, the likeness, I mean, it’s amazing. You could be my wife’s daughter or younger sister. Do you have any relatives in Bryn Teg?”
“We are a big family, I have relatives almost everywhere”. Her smile broadened as if she had told a cryptic joke.
“What is it? Come on, you can tell me. Have I got food stuck in my teeth? You know, the more we talk, the more I feel that we have met before”.
“Do you really not recognize me, Willy? I can assure you that we have done a lot more than just meet. That would be some euphemism!” This time she laughed out loud.
“Sarah? But how can it be you? I mean if you’re Sarah, doesn’t that mean that I am dead as well?”
“Does it, Willy? You tell me. You were telling Becky only this morning that we have spoken many times in the cottage”.
“Yes, all right, but this is different... I can see and talk to you now as if you were really here...”
“I am really here. I never really left. Oh, I could have gone away... many people do, perhaps even most, but I couldn’t leave you all on your own. Did you think that I would?”
“No, I just thought that we probably had to learn how to communicate again...”
“Yes, there is a lot of truth in that, but people have to want to do it as well, which is why most people only see friends and relatives”.
“So, er, can we really be together?”
“We are together...”
“Yes, but I mean really together..., er, like man and wife... like we used to?”
“No, I am afraid not, not yet, Willy. For the time being, there is a barrier between us that neither of us can cross, but one day that barrier will come down. I promise you that”.
“You mean when I’m dead?”
“If you want to put it like that, yes, but we don’t like to use that word. It is so full of negative content, don’t you think? ‘Dead’ - there, I’ve said it, but it’s like the ‘N-word’ or the ‘C-word’ is for others. It’s unpleasant, unnecessary and there are better ways of expressing the concept. Do you see what I mean? Do I look dead to you? Is the flesh falling from my bones? Are my eyes hanging out of their sockets? Do I look like a zombie from the Walking Dead?”
“No, you look as beautiful as ever you did”.
“Thank you, and why would I choose to look any other way to my darling husband?”
“I can’t imagine”.
“No, nor can I. So, why do people think that that’s what ghosts do? Really, it is quite beyond me - all of us, in fact”.
“Yes, well, when you put it like that... I shalln’t use that word again”.
“Good, thank you, my dear”.
“So, Sarah, if we can’t do, er, anything together, what can we do? Oh, where are we first?”
“We are in a place that people in this part of the world used to call Annwn. You have heard that name before, haven’t you?”
“Hell, isn’t it? Jesus, I didn’t think that you or I would be going there!”
“No, it is not Hell. When the early Christians heard that we Celts believed that Annwn was under the ground, they tried to convince us that it was the same as their Hell, but it is not true. In fact, Hell doesn’t exist either. As for an exact location, we are under and within the mountains and hills that surround our lovely cottage. However, in a way that is only an illusion too. We could be anywhere we wanted to be. Is that any clearer?”
“As clear as ditch water, my love”.
“I am afraid that it takes some people longer than others to grasp the concept. It is extraordinary how long it takes some, you know. Do you remember the one they called King Henry VIII when he was last on Earth? Well, he’s been here for about four hundred and fifty years, I think - history was never my strong point, as you know. Anyway, he has a Welsh connection so we took him in long before I got here, yet he is still wandering around shouting at people, and ordering them about. ‘I’m the King of England,’ he screams, ‘and I will be obeyed!’ I shouldn’t laugh really, but it is so funny. Most people either ignore him or avoid him, but sometimes someone will bow or curtsey to him just for a laugh. We’ve got a few nutters like him.
“Most people get the gist of things after a while though. Would you like me to show you around later?”
“Yes, Sarah. I would like that. Will I be able to get up and walk around so soon after a heart attack?”
“You did ought to have more rest first, but nobody here would do anything to further endanger your health. Trust me on that”.
“Oh, I trust you, Sarah, I always have. You are the best friend I have ever had, which reminds me. The doctor said that I could see Kiddy later. Is that now?”
“Yes, if you want. You are well enough for her. One second, please”.
Sarah stood up and opened a door that he had not noticed up until that moment. Kiddy bounded in wagging her tail.
“Hello, girl, how are you?” She jumped up onto the bed and lay alongside his body.. William wanted to stroke her head, but could not seem to make his hands do it.
“She has been such a comfort to me, since you, er, passed over”.
“I know, but you were never truly alone for long and after my return to here, there has always been someone with you”.
“I was sure that you were there, but I didn’t feel anyone else”.
“Oh, there were many... your parents, your grandparents on both sides, that girl who fancied you in school - I forget her name now...”
“Gwladys...”
“That’s the one... and many, many more besides”.
“I didn’t notice them, I only had eyes for you, my love”.
“You always were a smooth talker, but thanks for saying it. It still feels nice. We are supposed to try to lose those Earthly pleasures, but everyone agrees that it takes ages…. which reminds me. How on Earth could you allow our lovely home to look and smell like it does? Becky is an absolute saint for taking care of you the way she does. Don’t you realise that she has her own family to take care of? I try not to feel shame and embarrassment any more, but you have managed to make me feel them. I didn’t know what to say when I saw other people like me going to check up on you. Really, William, you must make more of an effort to take good care of yourself! And poor old Kiddy had to live in that mess as well. You should be ashamed of yourself, William, for subjecting your friend to those conditions”.
“I’m sorry, old girl”, he said trying again to stroke her head. “The dog, I mean, not you, Sarah. I just never thought about her minding, or that my friends and relatives would see how I was living. I am ashamed to think of it now though”.
“And so you should be, but don’t dwell on it too much, just live and learn. That’s the name of the game”.
“Does that mean that my parents are here?”
“Yes, somewhere, but I’m not sure where. I can find out though, if you want”.
