Читать книгу Testimonies - Patrick O’Brian - Страница 8

‘My reason for coming here today, Mr Lloyd,’ he said, ‘is to ask you to tell me about Pentref. We thought about it for some time and decided that there was no one else so well qualified: ministers come and go, and even if they stayed all the time, I do not know that a minister would be able to see the whole picture so well as the schoolmaster.’

Mr Lloyd did not answer at once. It was hard to know where to begin: he knew so much about the place – fifty years of his life – he knew so much that the knowledge turned in unconnected fragments in his head.

‘If you were to begin by describing the place?’

‘Yes. Yes, I will do my best to describe it.’

‘Then you might go on to the people.’

Mr Lloyd cleared his throat. ‘Well, sir, the village – as you know, perhaps – is almost the highest in Gwynedd. It stands in Cwm Bugail, the valley between the Saeth and Penmawr y Gogledd, about halfway up the valley. The village is not down in the hollow of the valley, because of the floods, but rather up on the slope of the Saeth ridge. The river, it is not more than a stream ordinarily, runs just below the village, by the school, and there is a very old bridge across it. That is the only old thing in the village, which was built for the big quarry up on Penmawr. It was built by contract in the 1860s, when the slate trade was doing well. The quarry is almost worked out now, but the village is still full – overcrowded it is, indeed: at least, that is my opinion. There are men who still work in the quarry, keeping the pumps in order, and the old quarrymen with silicosis who have pensions, and there are the grown-up children who go to work in Llanfair or Dinas – it is difficult to find houses near their work. There are twenty-one houses: there are some people who do not like the style, but I prefer things squared off and exact rather than straggling. And there is the school and the chapel. The school is large for a village school, big enough for me to have had a female teacher for the infants. It has a good asphalt yard and slate lavatories; you can see the building from far off because of the big green ventilators.

‘We were very proud of the chapel. It was built when the men were earning good money – they worked by bargains then – and it was big enough to hold everybody when we had an eisteddfod. No expense had been spared inside, and a carver had come from Liverpool for the woodwork: it is in the Gothic taste inside; the outside is plainer – it is not stucco, but a patent composition.

‘The village does lack some things. There are no shops except for the sub-post-office, and no smithy, and the bus does not come nearer than three miles. But there is the telephone, and the air is very healthy. The schoolmaster’s house has indoor sanitation and a bath in the scullery.

‘Then there are the farms. The upper farms, the ones above the bridge, make a whole with the village; the ones below, except for Cletwr, belong more to Pontyfelin, the village down on the main road. They are much older than the village, of course. Some of them are very old-fashioned, and you find the cattle under the same roof as the people and only the big open fire to cook by and the people sleeping in the half-loft, with no doors, but those farms are in the lower part. In the upper part there are three farms; Hendre on the left, nearest the village, owned by Gwilym Thomas, a little farm with not much mountain; then farther up Hendre Uchaf, John Evans. On the other side is Gelli, which is reckoned the best farm. It has not as much mountain as Hendre Uchaf, but it has more arable at the bottom of the valley, and the mountain it has is sheltered, with good enough pasture for them to run some beasts as well as the sheep.

‘There are also two cottages in the upper part of the valley, one on each side, about halfway up. The one on the left is Bwthyn-bach, Megan Bowen’s cottage. The other is Hafod; it used to be taken by people for the summer until Mr Pugh came to live there.

‘The other farms by the village and to each side in the valleys next to ours also belong to our community. There are eight – nine if you count Tyddyn Mawr.’

‘We might leave them to one side for the moment. It is Gelli that interests me particularly.’

Lloyd gave him a hesitating look and paused before he went on.

‘Well, Gelli was the best farm. It was farmed by Armin Vaughan. He came from Cwm y Glo when I was a very young man. I had known him before and we were friends, although he was older than me. I always liked him very much; even when he was young he was quiet, sober and respectable. He came of good parents; they were very poor, but they did their best for their children. He was a strong worker and a religious man: everyone liked him. But he was one of those men things go wrong for: however conscientious he was (and no man could have been more conscientious than Armin Vaughan) some accident would come to spoil his work.

‘The very first year he came to Gelli some Liverpool people made a picnic fire up by the far barn and burnt all the hay; then it was found that his cousin Ifan had forgotten to post off the insurance. It was still in the pocket of his best coat. Then another time a dog bit a man in his farmyard and he had to pay all the time the man was in hospital, as well as damages. It was always like that for him, as well as the ordinary misfortunes, like black-leg and fluke in the sheep, foxes, blight on the potatoes, rain for the hay and the corn; he had all of them worse than his neighbours.

‘He had taken a big farm with almost no money at all after he had paid for the sheep (the sheep were high the year he came, and they have to be paid for, the ewes on the mountain, as soon as you come in) and he needed two or three good years to put him on his feet. He did not have them, though he worked so hard. The sheep went down; it was terrible for all the farmers, even those with money behind them. But he worked and worked and kept going somehow. He was a good man. He was very much respected in the valley.

‘His wife was a big help to him. She was very pretty when she was young; she came from the same part of the country as he did, but I had not known her before she came to our valley.

‘They said she was not very great as a housekeeper: however that may be, she was a great help to him. I have seen her early and late, working before the light and after it.

‘They did not have a good year until Emyr was born. He was their only child that lived. You would have thought no one had ever had a child before, they were so pleased with him. Things began to go a little better for them after that; not well, but a little better, so they could wind the year round.

‘Armin Vaughan worked even harder, with a son to work for. He was a good boy, Emyr; I was fond of him from the start. He came to me at school, of course, and from the beginning he was a good pupil – he was good at Sunday school too, like his father. He was a great improver: I mean he took his lessons with intelligence – I could tell him the principle of things when other boys could only learn examples by rote. There were some boys I liked more although they were not so good, rougher boys like Moses Gwyn and poor John Davies Ty-bach, but I was proud of Emyr when the inspector came. Emyr liked me too, and I can give a proof of it: it is a very hard thing to break a boy of the vices that may come on him, and I do not know how it can be done at all unless there is affection on both sides and good spirit in the boy. By break I do not mean just driving the trouble out of sight. Often with my boys I did no more than that, I know, but with Emyr I was more successful. Twice I had to talk to him; once it was about cruelty to a captured bird (it surprised me in him, so tender usually) and once it was about some habits – it is difficult to explain, but they might have grown very unpleasant and dangerous if they had not been corrected before they grew strong and established. I mention this because it shows the confidence between us: he turned from the beginning of this bad way and I never saw any backsliding.

‘He was serious as a young fellow; no larking about down to Llan or going with the factory girls at Dinas – indeed I thought that perhaps he was not the marrying kind. The same thought came to his father and mother, and it grieved them; for of course they wanted grandchildren.

‘He did marry, however, and at the beginning I was almost sorry when I heard he was keeping company because he had had the idea of following the Institute’s agricultural courses, and now it would be all out of his head.

‘His young lady was not from our valley; she lived over in Cwm Priddlyd, behind Llanfihangel. It would be a good thing for Emyr, everybody said, because her father owned the farm of Cwm Priddlyd, and even if her brother Meurig married, Bronwen would still have an interest in it. Armin Vaughan was all for it, and so was old Mrs Vaughan. They both wanted the very best for Emyr (it was a pity for him they loved him quite so much, I thought) and Armin Vaughan’s father had worked at Cwm Priddlyd, so they knew everything about the land there – a small farm; but very good, and with fine buildings. And Bronwen was the only girl Emyr had ever looked at, so they wanted to close it quickly. Then Bronwen was very well brought up and a good worker: she was Church, like her mother, but thinking of the farm and of Emyr they did not mind that. Most of all they wanted grandchildren, soon.

‘It was not my place to say anything against it, in any sort of way, and when they asked me about him I gave him the best character I have ever given a young man.

‘Well, they were married and he brought her home to Cwm Bugail. I was going down to stay with my cousin William Edwards at Swansea, so I only saw her arrive and then I was away. By the time I was back she was quite established. I had taken away what you might call a neutral impression: everybody was happy, there was singing and laughing, and Bronwen was very pretty, but still I was not altogether pleased with the marriage, and I never have approved of living two generations together. And there was something about the girl – she was not our sort. I do not know how I decided it, or what I disliked about her, but there it was.

‘When I came back they told me in the village that Bronwen Vaughan, Gelli, was proud. I do not know how she had made herself unpopular; she was always pleasant to the women who went there as far as I could learn, but unpopular she was with most of the village people. Her not coming to chapel had something to do with it, no doubt, and I think there was something in what I shall try to explain. The Vaughans were doing quite well now and some other people were not; Emyr had much better luck as a farmer than his father, and he had a better head. There was a certain amount of jealousy because of that, and people not liking to say anything against Emyr or Armin Vaughan said it, or felt it, against Bronwen.

‘In a little while too I heard many other unfavourable things: I do not remember them in detail, but the sum was that Bronwen had brought too many fine things with her, and she was too high to talk in the shop at Pentref, and she was not as kind as she should be to the old people. I do not know how much there was to all this at that time, and I must say that whenever I saw Mrs Emyr she was always polite to me in her way, and whenever I went there she made me welcome.

‘People grew more used to her in time, and liked her more I believe: at least I did not hear the remarks that had been so frequent. The women took to her more when she had her baby, and then, when she was more tied, I suppose, she left off going all the way down to the church and came to our chapel sometimes, which brought her more into the ordinary life of the valley. But then again, as the boy began to grow she offended people once more by wanting to bring him up in her own fashion. She had strong ideas. People said they were fancy. They may have been very well, for all I know, but they were not her mother-in-law’s ideas, nor the ideas of our valley.

‘Nothing that was ever said against her came from the old people. Nobody heard Emyr’s mother say a word until the beginning of the disagreement about the child, and even then it was only a very little to a close friend.

‘Emyr, as far as I could see, was quite happy. He was working very hard on the farm now that his father was older, and I saw less of him than I used to, by far, so I cannot speak very well of that time.

‘Another reason that comes to my mind for her unpopularity at the beginning was her sister-in-law, Meurig’s wife. They had no children, and they were well-off for mountain farmers, with no rent to pay and the good land they had. She was a little, sharp, black sparking woman, fond of dress: her voice, a high, loud soprano, had been trained when she was young (she was rather older than Meurig, and quite fifteen years older than Bronwen) and in chapel she sang half a note in front of the other women. She had lived with her parents in Liverpool, and although she spoke perfectly good Welsh (an ugly South Caernarfon accent she had) she pretended not to know a word every now and then, and used an English one instead. She had a way of looking round when she got into a house, looking sharply at the furniture and other things; and at Mary Owen’s she dusted her seat before she sat down. Anyone could see that she and Bronwen did not like one another, but there were many people who blamed the family, and Bronwen as one of them.’

‘I see,’ said the other. ‘Thank you very much; now I have a clearer picture of the background. This brings us up to the time with which I am principally concerned. I should be glad if you would tell me about the cottage you have mentioned, and Mr Pugh, who took it.’

‘Hafod, the cottage, is on the quarry road, above Gelli. It is only a very small, old-fashioned place, but summer visitors liked it and took it almost every year. Mr Pugh took it at the end of one summer. I heard that he was an English gentleman from Oxford; I did not learn exactly what he did there, but I understood he was a tutor at the university. At that time I did not see him, except in the village, but I heard all about him.

‘I was surprised to hear that he had taken it permanently the next year and that he was going to live there all the time, winter and summer.’

‘Why were you surprised?’

‘He seemed too young to retire, and anyhow, it was only a summer place for his sort. It seemed a queer thing for a man to do. I thought perhaps there was something funny about him, but Armin Vaughan said he thought he was a good man. That was at the beginning.

‘I met him there one evening – at Gelli, I mean – and we had some talk. I invited him to my house, and I went to his; but I am afraid I was not grand enough for him, and I did not see very much of him. I thought he was quite a respectable gentleman, but I did not like his airs. I know I am only a plain man, but I am B.A. and I know something about my country, so I do not like to be told I am wrong when I am right. Oxford is a very fine place, and a very respectable place, I am sure, but that is not to say that every man who comes from there knows everything. A village schoolmaster may know better sometimes indeed.

‘Yes, I must say I did not like his airs, though I did not take it seriously then, and it was always Good day, Mr Lloyd, Good day, Mr Pugh, when we met in the village or in Llan. But I did not go and push myself on him; it would not have been right, even if I had liked his airs, me being so much an older man, and with a certain position in the neighbourhood, and he did not come to see me. It was not until he fell ill in the autumn and was taken down to Gelli that I saw much of him. I visited him when he was ill, and when my cousin Pritchard Ellis, the well-known preacher, came to stay there I often went in the evenings to hear them talk. This was when Mr Pugh was better again but was still lodging at Gelli.

‘It was a real pleasure to hear them talk. I did not like him very much then, but I admired the flow of language he had, and certainly he was very well informed: of course, he had no chance with Pritchard Ellis, the best talker I have ever heard, in Welsh or English. It did give me a kind of satisfaction, too, to hear him worsted: it showed we could stand up for ourselves in Wales, even without all the advantages. Once or twice he seemed to get the better of it, but Pritchard explained to me afterwards why this was; and once he became really violent about some political argument – I was not attending – and the discussion had to be stopped. No; in general he had no chance against Pritchard Ellis.

‘Well, that was my opinion of Mr Pugh at that time. I did not care for him, nor did Pritchard, but he seemed to be an honest, respectable, quiet man, though proud and conceited.’