Peaks and Troughs by Nick Perry

Author:Nick Perry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Birlinn

9

A New Arrival

Jack and I came down out of the clouds above Cesarea with the Land Rover crammed with ewes and entered the blue October morning, past the barbed wire fencing glistening with frost, knotted fleeces freezing in the biting wind. Neil Young was singing ‘Out On The Weekend’ and we were bringing down the last of the stock for the winter. Jack told me he’d heard that Gethin Hughes’ dog Don had been shot and dumped out on the Carmel road. He thought we should protect ourselves, meaning I shouldn’t let Moss out of my sight. Again Mrs Musto’s words came back to me.

I was sure it must have been Arfon taking his revenge, but I wasn’t going to let the pristine beauty of the day be tarnished by the act of a callous heart. We descended into the autumn light of soft blues washing over the metallic-grey sea as the white foaming waves broke along the shoreline of Dinas. The heat from the woollen throng behind us wafted over the back of our necks.

Floating up over Cwm Silyn a flock of birds emerged from the spilling cloud, speeding away towards the Wicklow Mountains.

I told Jack, as I had the previous week, that we needed to sort our mother out, that we should say something. She had read me a letter from her Cypriot fisherman Stavros in which he asked her again to give up her life in Wales, to come and sit on a beach helping him mend his nets. He was ten years younger than she was, and I dared not tell her he was only after her money. Dinah was prone to falling in love; Stavros was not the first. She was attractive, though not in a Rose Tobias way, flirty and leading from the front. My mother had a girlishness about her, and a sensitivity that appealed to men with an extrovert nature who would take on the world, then cry like a child when defeated. To this type my mother offered sympathy and a listening ear.

‘She’ll be unhappy in six months,’ I said. ‘We’ve got to say something.’

‘Hatch a plan, you mean, to keep her here?’

‘Yes, so she doesn’t make a fool of herself.’

‘Well, we need to think about it.’

I could tell by that remark it was the last thing Jack wanted to do. It would be me who would have to talk her out of it. I doubted whether she would listen, especially as I had told her once that holding back will get you nowhere in life.

Rob certainly wasn’t, now disappearing every Saturday to be with Kate in Chorley. I couldn’t let him have the Land Rover at the weekends so Ros gave him the Hillman Imp whenever she could. Now I was really waiting for a change to come; not only might my mother disappear, but Rob as well.

Meanwhile, our four geese patrolled the farm, hardly goose-stepping, but certainly with a threat about them. They were constantly out on manoeuvres, hassling everyone who came to Dyffryn.

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