I rescued the bantam and took it down the garden path to the coop. When I returned, Rachel was standing by the table, fly swat in hand, convinced that the letter contained more wild life. I lifted the bucket, and we stared at the pale lavender envelope. It remained perfectly still but even so Rachel lunged forward and began furiously beating the envelope with her swat.
I picked it up and clipped off a little corner with the kitchen scissors. Nothing came out except the smell of eau-de-cologne. We both relaxed, though Rachel kept the swat in her hand. I slowly slit open the envelope. There was a letter inside, no spiders or puppy tails. I gingerly unfolded the single sheet of paper and read the note out loud: “Come and have coffee this evening. I should like to talk about Mr. Eliot, amongst others. Yours, Rosalind A. Hilton.”
Rosalind Hilton's welcome was warm and effusive. She insisted on giving me a tour of her cottage, at the same time reeling off the names of the talented people who had lived on the banks of the Aeron. Not just Eliot and Dylan Thomas, she said with pride, but opera singer Sir Geraint Evans at the mouth of the river. “Not to mention,” she concluded with a wink, “the new Aeron poets like Rachel Mossman.”
“My wife,” I said in what I hoped was a modest tone.
“I know,” she replied. “I like Rachel's poetry a good deal. She's Jewish, isn't she?”
“Straight out of Hackney.”
“And you?”
“No. Her toy goy.”
After pouring coffee, Rosalind sat on one side of the fire, and told me to sit opposite. I asked her if I could record our conversation, and after some hesitation, she agreed. Looking across the hearth at her, I guessed she was in her eighties, like old Eli Morgan. Her face was bright and sharp, her hair tied back in a bun. Three gold rings on her right hand gleamed brightly in the light of the fire. She rolled them between the finger and thumb of her other hand, as if she were trying to hypnotise me. Though she looked small and rather frail, when she spoke her voice was so deep and powerful that her presence filled the room.
“I'll come straight to the point, and then, no doubt, you'll want me to start at the beginning.” I said that was fine, and then she said in a matter-of-fact voice: “Eliot and I...” She paused and I saw a faint blush on her cheeks, though it might well have been the flames from the fire “...were lovers.”
And then she began at the beginning.
“I was born and brought up in the east end of London, in Copley Street, Stepney. My mother's maiden name was Shodken and my father, who was a tailor, was a Hintler. That was a double cross to bear, so to speak, to be Jewish in the 1930s and called Hintler.
“You smile, but it was no joke to be the daughter of Mr and Mrs Hitler, for that was what people called us.
“My parents could see which way things were going in Germany, so in 1935 they made two decisions which they thought would save our lives, or at least make life more tolerable. They changed the family name to Hilton, and we moved out of London to Ciliau Aeron, where I've lived ever since.”
“Why Ciliau?”
“Geraint our milkman was always going on about how pretty it was.”
“He ran the dairy in Copley Street?”
“Two cows in a tin shed behind the shop, and a churn pulled round the streets on a three-wheeled trolley.”
“Did your parents really think that Jews from London could hide in the countryside?”
“Perhaps it was naive but many families did the same. Lubetkin, for instance, who designed the penguin house at London Zoo. He took his family to Gloucestershire, didn't he?”
“But why Wales?”
“It was as far away west as you could get from Europe and the Nazis. And my father had always believed that the Celts were fond of Jews. Perhaps they are, Dylan Thomas certainly was, but I'll come to him in a minute.”
“How did you get by?”
“In the time-honoured way. My father did alterations for the bachelor and widowed farmers, my mother took in washing. And we helped out with the haymaking and other farm work. My father was also a scholar â he'd thought seriously of being a Rabbi when he was young but the Communist Party got to him first. The Welsh like scholarship so they took to him quickly.
“No, we told no-one we were Jewish because we were convinced the Germans would eventually invade. We were simply regarded as Londoners who had fled the city for a quiet country life. We were treated politely and kindly, if a little suspiciously. Within a month of being here, my parents were going to church. It caused them some pain but not much. They were both atheists and hadn't been religious Jews since their early teens. Going to church was part of the new identity, like going to the agricultural shows and the
eisteddfodau
. The worst thing was getting rid of our duvets â
deks
, we called them â and learning to sleep with blankets. Only Jews had duvets at that time, and my parents didn't want to keep anything that would give us away.”
“Didn't you miss London?”
“Strangely enough, no. I already knew that I had a little talent for painting and that blossomed here in the countryside. I loved the sea, which I had only ever seen once or twice before. I could wear lipstick without being hissed at by the neighbours, some of whom were very
frum
. Here we had our own little cottage, but in Copley Street we all lived upstairs in three rooms, with Mrs Presse and her children downstairs. The lavatory was at the bottom of the garden, and we had to go through Mrs Presse's kitchen to reach it. I didn't miss that, I can tell you, and besides, I felt at home here.”
“Really?”
“Wales is Old Testament country â the men were Isaac and Jacob and Esau, and the villages Carmel, Hebron and Bethlehem, even a Sodom or two. You see, Wales is Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia rolled up into one. It was
heimisher
.
“Social life? I had little of that in London. I was more interested in books and painting, and, besides, not many wanted to date the daughter of Mr Hitler. Down here it was better. I went on rambles with the theology students from Lampeter, and that helped both my painting and my Welsh. And on Friday evenings there was always a dance in Aberaeron. I used to catch the train in with the two Oaten girls and we had a wonderful time.
“Within a year of arriving, I was helping out at Tyglyn when the Fabers were down. I was just a general handy girl. Sometimes I looked after the children when the nanny was ill. If there were guests for dinner, I helped in the kitchen or prepared the tables for auction bridge. And that is how I first met Eliot. I was sitting on a bench in the garden sketching. Eliot came out of his shed and walked down the path towards me. He stood behind me for a while, watching as I sketched. Then he sat down. I noticed how fastidiously he arranged his plus fours, which he always wore at Tyglyn. He sat with me for about twenty minutes. We talked mainly of painting and he wanted to know what I thought of the Surrealists. I knew nothing of them, I'm afraid, and he gave me a little lecture on Salvador Dali. That was to be the first of many conversations. And the next year, I met Dylan Thomas. Such things could not have happened to me in Stepney.
“I'll tell you a bit about Dylan and then go back to Eliot. It was in July 1936, in the evening. I was alone in Tyglyn baby-sitting â I think the nanny had been got rid of by then. The Fabers were at a poetry reading at another mansion just up the road. Eliot was upstairs in his room writing. There was a hammering on the door. I opened it and this young man with tousled hair stood there, looking slightly unkempt in corduroy trousers and a black polo-neck sweater. I noticed a two-seater sports car in the drive with an older man with flaming red hair behind the driving wheel. The young man came into the hall, looked about and said: “Where's Vernon hiding?” I replied that he had come to the wrong house, and that if he wished to hear Mr Watkins read then I could re-direct him.
“He gave me a huge smile and said he'd much prefer to read some poetry to me. He stretched out his hand and said âI'm Dylan Thomas.' Well, of course I'd heard of him. Eliot had mentioned him. And my father was always talking about him, too.
“I invited him into the Drawing Room, and he fell back into the red leather sofa and almost disappeared between the cushions, he was quite slim, really, at least he was then. I asked him if he'd like a drink and he said yes, but nothing alcoholic. I had the impression that he was recovering from an illness and he'd been told to stay off alcohol for a while.”
“I suppose he wanted sweets,” I said.
“No, he asked for a glass of milk and cake, so I went to the kitchen and brought some for him. There was a certain chemistry between us straight away. After all, I was twenty-one at the time and he was only a year older. I told him that Eliot was writing upstairs and asked if he would like to meet him. âWhat, and play altar boy to his Pope?'
“He stayed for more than an hour. He asked to see the Library, and he sniffed along the shelves like a truffle hound. He found some Hardy, which he read to me, and then Rilke,
das Stündenbuch,
I think, which I read to him, translating as I went along. Then a quick tour of the house, avoiding upstairs. We talked a lot about London, and he asked me about Copley Street and all the goings-on. He said he was fascinated by neighbours because his father hated them so much. He soon picked up it was a mainly Jewish street, so I told him, rather cleverly I thought, that we used to give our Jewish neighbours a box of Matzos at Passover, and they would give us a pudding at Christmas.
“Copley Street felt like thin ice so I changed the subject and told him about the Faber's home-made electricity. There was a waterwheel in the farmyard linked to a generator, which fed into a very large bank of lead accumulators in a room next to the kitchen. He wanted to see it for himself, and that's how we spent the time. And, of course, to the kitchen for more milk and some widgeon pie that had been left out for Eliot's supper. Dylan ate it all. On the way out, he took Eliot's scarf, only for a borrow, he said, but he never returned it. He asked me to help him put on his jumper, which I did, though I thought it rather odd. And off he went to find Vernon.”
I felt buoyant and pleased with myself. It had been a good interview, and Rosalind Hilton had asked me to come back to talk some more. Maybe I should have gone straight home but I didn't, and in retrospect that may have been a mistake. I drove, without really thinking much about it, to Fern Hill. Perhaps I was taking myself too seriously, but I wanted to know why we were being sent unsolicited spiders and puppy tails.
It took only a few minutes to get there. I parked the car, and got the torch from the boot. Not that there was much use for it because the moon was full and shining brightly. I padded cautiously up to the farmhouse. I stopped at the edge of the yard. I could hear owls, and no doubt they were watching me as I watched the house. Something was whimpering in the barn but I couldn't make out what it was. The vinegar scent of burning oak disinfected the air, which stank of rotting flesh, perhaps a sheep somewhere in the trees at the back of the house.
One of the downstairs windows was lit up, and cast a yellow light onto the cobbles of the yard. I moved slowly and quietly forwards. I could see him in the square of the window, as if I had chanced upon a portrait in a secluded part of a gallery. He was crouched over the desk, his chin cupped in both hands. His two index fingers were behind his ear lobes which he pushed absent-mindedly back and forth. He was looking at a notebook in front of him, and once or twice he would take a pencil from the pot, try to write something, and then put it back again. As he did this, he would glance at one of the photographs on the desk, and then at the other, shaking his head as he did so.
I found myself thinking of paintings I knew but I couldn't quite conjure them up. A Rembrandt, perhaps, a man huddled over a kitchen table...Van Gogh looking at his face in the mirror...and then, without warning, I was taken over by a vision of myself sitting at a table. I wasn't outside the farmhouse at all, I was inside another room, in another house. In front of me was a plate, with four fat sausages on it, at which I picked with my fork. I heard a great whooshing noise behind me. I looked round just as the fishing rod peeled into my back.
“Eat those sausages,” thundered my father.
I jumped to my feet in shock. “I hate fat sausages,” I cried out.
“They're just the same as thin ones.”
“In that case, why can't I have thin ones?” I retorted, and this time the rod came down across the side of my face.
I felt angry but also disappointed. I rushed forward and hit him. He fell back into the armchair, sprawled like a boxer on his stool, waiting for the trainer's sponge. Blood spurted from his nose and drenched the front of the white shirt that I had ironed for him before going to school.
He stood up from the chair...and I was outside the farmhouse window again. I saw him cross the room, and heard the door open. I crouched so low that I could feel the cool of the ground on my face. He stood in the doorway looking across the yard, sniffed the air several times, and then fumbled with his trouser zip.
“Do not come, gentile, into my good night,” he whispered. A stream of water splashed onto the cobbles with such force that it sprayed sideways across my hands and face. He went back inside and bolted the door.