Summer’s Last Retreat Read online

  He rose to a crouch and held out a hand for her to go with him. She kissed his fingers in silent thanks and he stifled a laugh. What a funny little thing she was.

  They walked cautiously, stepping on tilted, pointed toes through the swathes of tall grasses, hardly disturbing them and making very little sound. Gradually they moved lower, avoiding the clearly defined paths and instead, pushing gently past bushes, along narrow animal tracks until they could look down on the cove that was a beach only for the lowest hour of the tide.

  ‘Not a sound, not a movement now, or we’re dead,’ he whispered in her ear.

  She pulled his hairless head close to her and whispered back, ‘And cover your head then, or we’ll be spotted for sure. There’ll be too many moons in the sky!’

  Again he stifled a laugh. But he took a battered old hat from his pocket and pulled it over his shining head.

  They watched the scene below them and marvelled at the efficiency of the men involved. Small boats were emptied and rowed silently away, while others were dragged to the side of the rocky plateau and held securely by ropes wound round a rock by brawny arms. Already there was a procession of men and donkeys making their way across the cliffs and heading inland with heavy loads. One of the men walking to and from the boats was exceptionally tall. Both knew it was Spider, but neither mentioned the fact. Olwen knew that, unlike the rest of the villagers, Barrass did not believe that those who could avoid paying revenue to the king should do so. It was the only thing about which they disagreed.

  An hour passed and they lost count of the number of journeys made from the now faintly discernible ship outside the bay. They could only guess at the cargoes being illegally landed, and did not move until birdsong was the only sound disturbing the dawn.

  ‘A lot of them were strangers to me,’ Olwen remarked. ‘Do you think one of them might be your father, Barrass?’

  ‘Who knows? But I doubt it. He wouldn’t be involved in anything that broke the king’s law.’

  ‘Oh Barrass, bringing in a few packets of tea and some tobacco isn’t serious. We all buy things from the smugglers that we couldn’t otherwise afford. Mam and Dadda aren’t “lawbreakers”.’

  ‘I don’t know very much about my father, only the little my mother told me before she died, but I do know he carried the King’s Mail. Imagine that, Olwen, being responsible for carrying letters for King George III! Whoever he was, my father wouldn’t have done anything to risk losing that trusted and honourable role. I want to follow him one day, so I too have to avoid anything less than legal. Tall, broad of the shoulders and very strong he was, and so noble and honest. Head and shoulders above other men, and people looked up to him because of his admirable example as well as his exceptional height.’

  Olwen knew his fine eyes would be glowing, as they always did when he spoke of the father he had never known. He had moved closer to her as the need for quiet was still imperative, with watchers on the cliffs likely to stay until the processions of men and donkeys had gone from the area. She snuggled against him, wishing the moment could go on for ever, not wanting to talk, content for once to listen, knowing that talking about the mysterious man who had fathered him would keep him with her longer than anything else.

  When he left her, she did not go back to the house. The events of the night and the thrill of sharing them with Barrass had sent all possibility of sleep from her. She sat with her arms around her knees, continuing to watch the sea changing colour as the sun rose and the day began. Then gradually she became aware that her fingers were busy in her hair and on her back, and that something was tickling her in unexpected places, and she sighed.

  Once again she regretted her defiance of the unwritten rule not to stand too close to Barrass. Without a doubt she had caught some of Barrass’s army of fleas. That meant a scrub – and a clout from Mam. Still, it had been worth it. Glowing with happiness, remembering the feel of his body curled close to hers, she stretched, yawned and prepared to leave the area of flattened grass where they had sat and talked like the friends they were.

  One day, she promised herself, they would be much, much more. The few hours she had spent with Barrass were hers to be savoured over and over again, long after the sting of the clouting had been forgotten. Sighing again, this time with the accompaniment of a smile, she stood and wandered back home for a few hours’ sleep.

  It was a Saturday and Spider needed Olwen to help him take the fish to market and sell his catch. She had hardly reached her bed, it seemed, when he shook her and told her it was time to rise. The morning was warm and she could see from the sun that he had allowed her to sleep well past her usual time.

  Spider had put down nightlines and with the falling tide, he had walked along the shore with Dan, gathering in the lines and the fish they had caught, and now had the catch loaded ready for the walk into Swansea Market. When Olwen stepped out into the sun she saw her brother staggering back with a basket filled with mackerel caught from the boat just outside the bay. The silver and black fish gleamed in the early morning sun, their beauty not yet fading.

  Loading their fish on the pannier baskets of a borrowed pony, along with one of the blankets Mary had made on her tall loom, they all set off across the sands, heading for St Helens where they would leave the sands and walk the further mile into the town’s market, at Island House in Wind Street. They had to hurry, both because of the tide already on the turn and because the first to arrive made the best sales; they were already late due to the time of the tide and the recovery of the nightlines.

  The market was on three sides of Island House, whose overhanging roof, supported by wooden pillars, formed a veranda that gave shelter to the butchers already stripping the carcasses hung on hooks above their wooden chopping tables. Local farmers shouted against each other, all insisting that their eggs were still warm from the hens, their cheeses and butter the most tasty in the whole kingdom, and that their root vegetables were still crying their earth tears at being pulled from their beds.

  Olwen loved the market with the hordes of people all either looking for a bargain or trying to convince others that they offered one. Performers fooled around the shoppers, depending on the good humour of the day to persuade a few coins from limited pockets, and music vied with the shouts of the vendors to the same aim. The smells were a symphony of such variety that Olwen gave up trying to recognize any individually, accepting the whole as The Smell of the Market.

  She begged a penny from her father and bought herself a drink of lemonade from a stall, smiling at the notice displayed by the man selling pure and health-giving mineral water, warning customers who sent servants for their supplies to demand a receipt, ‘for they might be tempted to fill up your containers elsewhere and pocket your money and bring you an inferior product’.

  In spite of their late arrival, the fish was quickly sold and they prepared to walk back, this time overland, the road turning inland at St Helens to pass through Sketty and, crossing the Clyne stream at Rhyd-y-Defaid, Sheep’s Crossing. They were all a little reluctant to go; there was still plenty to see and the crowds were in a good humour, some dancing accompanied by an old gypsy with a fiddle who had been playing for most of the day without any sign of tiring.

  Olwen turned and saw that Spider and Dan were already moving off. Clicking to the pony, she hurried after them.

  * * *

  On the following day she found herself in Swansea again. Emma Palmer, whose husband Pitcher owned and ran the alehouse close to the shore, wanted a message taken to their twin daughters’ school, and Olwen offered to go. There was little to do and the prospect of a trip into the town was too tempting to refuse. She looked for Barrass, then Arthur, Pitcher’s fourteen-year-old pot-boy, to go with her but could find neither, so she went alone.

  The message delivered and the reply pushed safely into her deep pocket, she wandered around the houses, absorbing the sights, so different from the usual market-day hubbub. It was after six when she saw the post-boy, his horn raised
ready to blow and announce his arrival with the ‘Swanzey Bag’. Olwen stared at him, as Barrass and his quest for his post-carrying father made the man of more than usual interest.

  The man was quite old, grey hairs falling about his shoulders from under his hat like a collar of dirty lace. She stared at the dust-covered features, wondering if this was the man for whom Barrass was searching, whether this long-nosed, wild-eyed and drab individual was the father Barrass dreamed of finding. He looked so unlike the sturdy, dark-eyed Barrass that she doubted it.

  Then she squeezed her eyes tightly shut and tried to see her father as the boy he had once been, comparing his face with Dan’s. Spider and Dan both had brown hair and a serious expression that belied their sense of fun. But would she recognize Spider as the father of Dan if she had never seen him before? She shrugged and gave up the puzzle. How could anyone see in a complete stranger something to tell them he was their long-lost father?

  ‘There goes Ben Gammon,’ Olwen heard someone say. ‘Been travelling the same route for almost thirty years and hardly missed a day.’

  Ben Gammon heard the remark and called out, ‘Thirty-six year no less and, I says to myself – why, I hopes to go on for a few more yet.’ He grinned as be slowed his horse to walk through the crowded street, blowing a kiss or giving a nod to faces he recognized, like a royal procession, aware of his importance. Olwen, intending to tell Barrass about him, stared at the man, determined to take in every detail.

  Ben Gammon’s eyes were bright in the dust-rimed face but they were blue, not the deep brown she would expect Barrass’s father to have. The skin on his face was loose and flabby and he slouched as he rode past to the sorting office. He was dusty and brown as the end of a hot, dry summer, and the only thing that shone was the horn tucked in his belt. From Barrass’s description she doubted if this was the man, but she would tell him anyway; best to humour him, she thought, copying a constantly repeated remark of her mother’s.

  She turned her face towards the sun and headed for home, her thoughts dwelling on the news she had for Barrass. She was very tired, having walked twelve miles two days in succession, but as soon as she had helped to prepare the evening meal, she went to find him.

  Barrass was sitting near a small fire over which he was baking a couple of fish. Wrapped in mud and green leaves they were beginning to send out a delicious smell. Behind him, set against a tree jutting out of a steep bank, was a precarious-looking lean-to. Made mostly of timbers gathered from the beach below, it seemed likely to collapse at the first strong breeze. She sat beside him, chattering non-stop as usual.

  She told him at once of the arrival of Ben Gammon, and described him.

  ‘Dirty you wouldn’t believe! Hardly an inch of him clean enough to see if he was a man or one of those monkeys we saw at last year’s fair!’

  ‘And you think a man like a monkey could be my father?’ In mock anger he rolled her over and over on the summer grass until she warned him that his fish would burn, to be free of his tickling.

  ‘What do you remember about your father, Barrass?’ she asked. ‘Really remember.’

  ‘Nothing, I suppose, although the stories my mother told and which were repeated by others to entertain me when I was small are so real I know I’ll recognize him when we meet. He was taller than most men, and broader. Upright in behaviour too,’ he assured her with utmost faith and conviction. ‘He had large, brown, soulful eyes. Too much red hair, not bright red mind, more with a hint of red, like some fine polished wood. That much my mother told me.’

  ‘That man I saw today, his hair was grey so there’s no telling what it might have been once. Oh, Barrass, how can you hope to ever find him after such a long time? Sixteen years, longer than I’ve been alive.’

  ‘I just know that I’ll find him.’ He spoke quietly and Olwen did not argue. Everyone was entitled to their dream.

  ‘Shall we go down to the beach to cool our feet after this?’ she asked as he carefully unwrapped the food and began to share it between them.

  ‘No, I have someone to see,’ he said, and no matter how she pleaded, he refused to tell her where he was going.

  ‘I don’t care. And that fish was not as good as if I’d cooked it!’ She glared at him and ran off.

  She didn’t go home but waited until he had washed his hands, face and prickling bald head under a small stream sprouting from the rocks close by and set off for the village, then she followed him.

  * * *

  Barrass had something to be proud of. For several weeks he had been building himself a home. A derelict stone barn, used occasionally by sheep sheltering from a storm, had become, after several weeks of work, a rainproof dwelling. A piece of tarpaulin given to him by a sailor had become the roof, and the walls, shored up with baulks of timber dragged up from the beach, were whitewashed and clean. Local people, while refusing to invite him into their clean homes because of his fleas, were willing to help in any other way they could, and he had been given oddments of unwanted furniture. He already had a table, a straw-filled cushion on which to sit, a jug and plates and a cup from which to drink. He had made a hearth for his fire and a wooden platform for his most precious possession, his feather-filled mattress.

  Before she had become too ill to work, his mother, whom he only vaguely remembered, had worked on farms, doing seasonal work throughout the year, travelling great distances to find fresh employment as one season’s work finished.

  At the last place where she had been able to earn a few shillings to keep them in food, she had been given a few pieces of ticking, which she had patiently sewn together. With Barrass helping her, she had filled it with feathers and down gathered from the farmyard ducks, geese and hens. It was this, his only possession, that Barrass had managed to drag from one home to another as he was passed around the village by people willing, then unwilling, to feed and clothe him.

  The cause of his constant moves had always been his fleas. No one at any time associated the problem with his mattress. Or if they had, they were unwilling to take from him the one thing he had to remind him of a mother who had died before he was two years old.

  He had been shaved of his hair at an early age, the dark curls dropping around him as he sat, frightened and unable to complain, utterly dependent on the perpetrators. His clothes had been burnt on more occasions than he could count in attempts to solve the problem, and he had been given an odd assortment of both boys’ and girls’ clothes to cover himself.

  All through the summer, when he had been living with a family on the estate of William and Dorothy Ddole, he had worn nothing but a girl’s dress that was short and hid very little of what showed the incongruity of the pretty pink, lace-trimmed garment. This had led to the nickname Bare Arse, which had gradually become Barrass, the name by which everyone knew him. His real name had been forgotten years ago and Barrass he remained. The fleas remained also.

  On the day Olwen followed him, he went to the house of Ivor Baker the builder and his wife Winifred, and asked to see their daughter Blodwen. She came out and leaned against the door post, looking at him with utter disdain.

  ‘What do you want?’ she asked.

  ‘I have something to show you. Will you come and see?’

  Without answering him, she closed the door and watched from a window to see how patiently he would wait for her. Then, when she thought she had tormented him enough, she wrapped a black shawl around her shoulders and stepped out to join him.

  ‘Keep your distance, mind,’ she warned. ‘Fleas I can do without.’

  He walked ahead of her, smiling his delight that she had agreed to come, leading her up to the top of the cliffs by a path through the steep woodland where a stream filtered through rocky ground and wild flowers abounded, fed by water, nurtured by the rich leafy soil and the sun that found its way through the parasol of leaves. Birds sang all around them, quieter now that summer was well under way, but rich still with the melodious blackbirds and thrushes who nested within the rarely visited wo
od.

  ‘Lovely isn’t it, Blodwen?’ Barrass called back, but she only complained,

  ‘What d’you think I am, a goat? Fancy making me walk through this steep wilderness. I’m almost persuaded to turn and walk back down!’ She stopped for a rest and looked back at the slope behind her. But curiosity urged her on.

  ‘Not much further,’ Barrass promised, and he offered his hand to help her up the last few yards.

  ‘Move away,’ she said rudely. ‘I can manage without you touching me.’ She flinched slightly at the look of embarrassment that crossed his face. But it’s best he keeps his place, she thought. She didn’t want anyone to think she was a friend of the homeless, flea-ridden orphan! Why she had come was a mystery to her. She usually avoided him and, apart from an opportunity for rudeness and a giggle with her friends, ignored him completely. What could he have that would interest her?

  Barrass took her through a field that had been cut for hay, and on to where the barn stood, near the edge of the cliffs looking down on the one- and two-masted boats that lay at anchor along the shore.

  ‘I have a home of my own now,’ he said proudly. ‘Still an orphan of course – until I find my father. But no longer homeless and dependent on others for shelter.’ He stood well back for her to look inside.

  ‘Call this a home?’ Blodwen laughed. ‘My dadda’s pigs are better housed.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ he said, his fine eyes clouded with disappointment. ‘It’s a place of my own, I don’t have to ask for someone to give me a place to sleep any more. When winter comes and the storms begin, I’ll have my own place.’ He hesitated at the doorway, which she had not entered. The door was a frame on which pieces of tarpaulin had been nailed. He pushed it to one side.

  ‘Look and see what I’ve done inside,’ he pleaded.

  Gesturing for him to stand well back, she went in.

  It was surprisingly light, with three windows on the landward side open to the summer air. He had framed the windows with wood but they lacked glass. The whitewashed walls gave it a certain orderliness and she saw that wood was piled ready to burn near the roughly hewn stones of the hearth.