the word Parcels, and he pointed down to the farm. I went down and found that the kind people had taken in a number of things that I had sent to Hafod – household things and books, gramophone, records and so on – and had carefully stored them out of the rain. They were as welcoming as if I had been a native returning – how very pleasant it is to be made cordially welcome – and they insisted on giving me breakfast, ham of their own curing, eggs, a mountain of butter, and their own bread. Afterwards young Vaughan picked up my cases as though they were empty (I can think of nothing heavier nor more awkward than a box of gramophone records) and carried them up the hill to Hafod.
For the next week I hardly stirred from the cottage. It is unusual, perhaps, for a man to reach middle age without ever having set up house; but I had not. It was terribly hard work: when one is naturally unhandy and has to learn all the techniques for the first time the putting up of a single shelf is a day’s labour; but Lord, the satisfaction of putting the books on it, clearing the floor of them and their packing, stowing away the boxes and reducing the place to something like order. There is a wonderful satisfaction, a feeling of accomplishment when you sit down for the first time in a neat room and look at the straight rows, one above another to the ceiling, all standing square on solid bases. Without being a bibliomaniac it has always seemed to me that books are the supreme decoration of a room, and I took the liveliest pleasure in arranging them according to their height and colour.
I had a great disappointment, however; it was the defection of Mrs Bowen, who was to do for me. It was a blow, for I had based my assumptions, my projected way of life on somebody else doing the cooking and the work of the household. She was a savage old creature, with rather less notion than myself about the running of a house, but I had taken a liking to her in the autumn, and I had hoped that she might get better with practice. It was an extravagant hope, as I should have known from the visits I paid her: her place was spick and span outside (she was a great gardener) but the interior, as much as could be seen of it in the gloom, was a congestion of huge vases, rococo furniture and tin trunks ajar. Most of these objects still had their lot numbers: the old lady had a passion for auctions, and attended every sale within twenty miles. She knew the mountain paths like a shepherd, and she could be seen in the wild desolation of the Diffwys creeping along bowed under a crimson pouffe or even, as I found her once, recruiting her strength on an Empire buffet, poised on the black crag above the silent, menacing Llyn Du.
She was quite well off, with pensions for her two men who had been killed in the quarry. It was surprising to hear that she had been married; I had supposed her to be one of those strong-minded, masculine women who do not marry but live alone, self-contained and formidable, to the end of their days. Her needs were few; twenty pounds would probably have covered her yearly expenditure apart from the auctions, and people gave her things, mutton and pork after a slaughtering, black pudding, corn for her hens. In the season she went to every farm for the shearing, where she was an expert roller of fleeces. She worked hard when she chose to work, but it was more from habit than from interest in the wages, and to satisfy her curiosity and her need for conversation. I know it was not for money that she threaded the mountains at shearing time, because she always took a fleece as her day’s pay, as they used to do in former times; but instead of having it made into flannel as the old people did she stored the wool in her loft, where it mounted and mounted, the home of innumerable rats and mice. Mouldering wool was the chief of the smells in her cottage; the next in strength was her goat, her companion and pet.
The first time I went to ask why she had not come she gave me a cup of tea with her goat’s milk in it; even in that dim light I could see the encrusted grime on the mug. There was something soft at the bottom, which my spoon encountered but did not entirely dislodge.
It was conversation that proved the downfall of our relation; that and wounded pride. She was the most garrulous old woman I have ever heard. She knew very little English, but that did not prevent her from starting to talk as soon as she opened my door, a flood of words that did not stop until she closed the door behind her. As far as I could make out they were mostly anecdotes of her young days, or the history of families living in the valley, diseases, catastrophe, anger and death. It was impossible to follow her. Most of the farming people had some trouble with English pronouns (hi in Welsh is she in English, which starts them off on the wrong foot) but none was so wild as this old lady.
I used to listen with strained attention to such phrases as ‘Then it went off with the hwnna [this took the place of any unknown English word] with Dai to the sheeps; and tomorning I say “Men: the damned things.”’ It was a pity that I could not understand her, for I am sure she would have been most interesting: I tried, but the difficulty of language was far from being the greatest barrier. Her mental processes were tortuous and involved; she was the victim of association. She would plunge into a vast series of parentheses and never come out. An account of Criccieth fair thirty years ago would become the history of Mr Williams, Moelgwyn, and then by some fresh association, dark to me, it would turn to a tale of obscure injustice.
In the end I stopped trying, and she resented it. Once, during an inordinately tedious speech I got up at the end of a paragraph, hoping to be allowed to get on with the book that lay open on the table, but she said, ‘Sit down. I am not finishing …’ so firmly that I had no choice.
She grew more and more irregular in her attendance as I listened to her less, although I tried to make up for it by paying her more than our bargain. I wrote to her once or twice, to ask her to order coal if she were going down to Dinas, or to come on Thursday instead of Friday. She never acted on these notes, and answered evasively if I asked her about them: it occurred to me that she might not understand written English, so one day I wrote to her in Welsh. She never came again after that. She was quite illiterate (I wish I had known: I would not have humiliated her for the world) and she could make nothing of any of the notes; but when she learned that the last was in Welsh she found it wounding and insulting. She forgave me in the end, and we were quite friendly, but she said she was too old to go out any more.
I looked everywhere for another woman; I advertised and made inquiries as far as Llanfair and Dinas, but there was none to be found. There was no middling gentry in this part of the country, and no local tradition of going out to service.
I was obliged to keep house for myself. I did not do so badly after a while, though the ordinary mechanical operations like washing up, or making a bed always took me very much longer than they would have taken a woman. In a way it was a good thing: it opened a new perspective to me. Formerly I had used what I now found to be an unreasonable number of plates, cups and saucers, knives and forks: when each of these things has to be washed up, dried and put away, things take on a different aspect. Now I grew careful of my saucer (a triumph if it remained unslopped), never put butter or marmalade on the edge of my plate, so that the plate might get by with no more than a few crumbs, which could be blown off, and I learned that one course to each meal was enough.
My simple diet appeared to suit me. That, the change, the excitement, the unwonted exercise and the mountain air combined in the first few months to make me feel better than I had felt for years. I ate when I chose and as much or as little as I chose – a great change from the set, unvarying meals of my former life. I rather insist upon this point, because I am convinced that a man’s diet and his surroundings have a deep effect on him. Before this time I had tended to coddle myself: I was hagridden by an ignominious and painful digestive trouble, and in an exactly ordered life I had spent much too much time watching my symptoms and worrying about them. My new way of eating did not have the permanent good effect that I had hoped (I write like a hypochondriac) but the vast country opened and strengthened my being in ways that I had never imagined. Many things that had appeared all-important dwindled to trifles, and other values rose. It is difficult to explain because it is difficult to seize; but I know that I began to feel more of a man – more complete and masculine – and less like a neutral creature in an unsatisfactory body.
The strength of the country; that was a new concept for me. I had known the Cotswolds fairly well, and the Sussex downs; they are very beautiful,
