The Heirs of Owain Glyndwr (5 page)

8

The bar was busier
now, and it took Trevor several minutes to buy two more pints and return to the table. Caradog was seated in exactly the same pose, as if he had not moved at all.

‘There are some things which are not to be talked about in the pub,' he said, acknowledging the pint with a nod. ‘Besides, I'm expecting someone to meet me here. He's coming to supper at the house. You should come as well. It will give us the chance to talk.'

‘And your friend?'

Caradog smiled. ‘Dai Bach? No need to worry about him. He's heard me talk about such things many times before.'

‘All right,' Trevor replied. ‘Thank you. As long as I'm not imposing. Are you sure Arianwen won't mind?'

‘She won't mind. There is always room for one more. And, if I'm not mistaken, here's the boy himself now.'

The boy himself was a short, heavily built man, probably mid-to-late twenties like Caradog, Trevor thought, but with chubbier cheeks and younger looking, wearing an off-the-peg brown suit, a blue shirt open at the neck, and a brown and yellow tie hanging loosely down below the top buttonhole. He had an unruly mop of black hair, and his chin showed signs of a dark late afternoon stubble. He was carrying a pint, expertly, no danger of spilling even a drop.

‘I saw you were both all right,' he said, ‘so I just got one for myself.'

‘Quite right,' Caradog said. ‘Dai, this is Trevor Hughes. He's just taken over the
Tywysog
from Madog.'

‘Nice to meet you,' Dai Bach said. ‘I've heard a lot about you, of course.'

‘This is Dai Bach.'

They shook hands.

‘Good to meet you too,' Trevor said.

‘Dafydd Prosser I am, really,' Dai said, ‘but Dai Bach they call me. It's because of my slight, lithe build, see.'

They laughed.

‘I will try to remember,' Trevor said.

‘So, how is it going at the
Tywysog
?' Dai asked. ‘It's hard to believe that Madog is gone. I remember him there from when I was a little mite.'

‘It's early days,' Trevor replied. ‘Everybody is being very nice to me. We shall see.'

‘I haven't been in there as often as I used to, lately. I live in Bangor, see. I teach chemistry there, Menai Strait Grammar School.'

‘That must be a challenge,' Trevor smiled.

‘You can say that again. I spend most of my time trying to make sure the little bastards don't blow the bloody school to smithereens. You can't turn your back for a minute when they're in the lab. If the parents had any idea how many dangerous chemicals their children have access to, I don't think they would allow them to take chemistry, or even come to school.'

‘He coaches the under-15 rugby team, as well,' Caradog said.

Dai Bach laughed. ‘I'm not sure “coach” is the right word. Stand on the touch line and swear at them, mostly, that's what I do. I can't run around as much as I used to. I'm past my playing days now. I used to be a tight-head prop, though, in my day, and I could give as good as I got.'

‘Difficult position, tight-head,' Trevor commented.

‘Did you play?'

‘Inside centre for my school, not that I made much impression. But tight-head is another story. That's a very physical position. You don't come out of that without a few cuts and bruises, do you?'

‘It's the worst of all, man,' Dai agreed.

‘What kind of level did you play?'

‘I played a few games for the university when I was at Aberystwyth, and I've played a few for the club here, but I'm a bit past my prime now. Put on a bit too much weight, see, a few too many pints.'

‘I bet you could still make a loose-head's life a misery.'

Dai smiled happily. ‘Aye, I bet I bloody could, too.'

‘You'd need to knock off the beer for a week or two,' Caradog said. ‘He needs a wife to take charge of him, keep him under control.'

‘Aye,' Dai said. ‘Perhaps I do. Anyway, I won't ever pull on the red jersey myself, I've resigned myself to that now. But I'm always there at the Arms Park for the home games, and I can still give the under-15s a few tips.'

‘I'm sure you can,' Trevor smiled.

‘Come on,' Caradog said, finishing his pint. ‘Drink up. We should go. We don't want to keep supper waiting. Trevor is coming home with us.'

‘Right you are, then,' Dai Bach said.

9

She was genuinely pleased
to see him. Trevor noticed that at once. He made an apology for taking her by surprise, but she waved it aside. She had made a lamb stew, and she always made enough to have some left over. Caradog brought Dai Bach home often enough without warning, she explained, and she was used to having to cook for at least one more than expected.

The house on
Rhês Pretoria
– Pretoria Terrace – was the last in a row of terraced houses. Pretoria Terrace itself was just outside the town wall, a comfortable five-minute stroll from the
Tywysog
. It was set above the main road leading from the town to Victoria Dock, and each of the well-kept houses had a small garden in front, on an incline leading down to the road. He noticed that the rooms seemed heavy in tone, dark wallpapers, dimly lit by floor lamps covered with grey shades with tassels, and cumbersome old furniture. On the mantelpiece stood china figurines, a motley collection of people and animals with no obvious theme. A Welsh grandmother clock, eighteenth century by John Roberts of Wrexham, gave the house its heartbeat with its soothing rhythmic tick, and chimed lightly on the hour.

‘We have three bedrooms upstairs,' she said. ‘This is the living and dining room, and the room at the back is my music room.'

He had heard music playing, a fugue for cello, when they had entered the house.

‘Oh, was that you? Do you play cello?'

‘Does she play?' Dai Bach asked. ‘That's like asking Cliff Morgan whether he played rugby.'

She laughed. ‘Hardly.'

‘She's played for an orchestra, man. You should hear her. Marvellous, she is.'

‘I played with the orchestra when I was at University at Bangor,' she said, ‘and for a short while with an orchestra in Cardiff after I graduated. But the travelling was too much. I teach now. I have my own pupils, cello and piano. They come to the house. School children, mostly, but some adults as well.'

‘But do you still play?' he asked. ‘Publicly, I mean?'

‘Not much any more,' she replied, and he sensed a sadness in the reply. ‘I play for the children's carol services and things like that, but there's not much call for it in Caernarfon.'

‘I've encouraged her to audition,' Caradog said. ‘We have other good orchestras in Wales. You don't have to go all the way to Cardiff. But she won't, and she's as good on the cello as anyone I've ever heard.'

‘He hasn't heard many people,' she was saying in a stage whisper, smiling.

She placed Trevor on her left during supper, and he noticed that the beautiful formal Welsh in which she had spoken to him in the shop came naturally to her. If it was for his benefit, she was prepared to continue for as long as he wished. After they had eaten, she excused herself, saying that it was time for her nightly practice. After a few moments, the soft sound of scales and arpeggios on the cello, and then a suite for solo cello, percolated into the dining room. Caradog had produced a bottle of whisky.

‘I will answer your question about the basement, Trevor,' Caradog said, pouring for everyone. ‘But please try to understand, I may go around the houses a bit. It's not as simple as you might think.'

‘Ask him the time,' Dai Bach said, ‘and he will give you the history of clock-making. Born lecturer, he is. At the university he should be, not the Ancient Monuments.'

Caradog laughed indulgently.

‘Take your time,' Trevor said, smiling.

Caradog finished his pouring of whisky.

‘Nationalism in Wales,' he began, ‘is a unique creature. It is very different from nationalism elsewhere. Take Ireland, for example. Ireland is a divided nation. So nationalism in Ireland has a tangible goal – the uniting, or re-uniting of the country.'

‘A rather unlikely one,' Trevor suggested.

‘Do you think so? The Irish Free State was a compromise, a temporary solution at best. It got the British Government out of a difficulty at the time, but it was no basis for a permanent solution. The Government can never be quite sure how far the Free State supports nationalists in the Six Counties, or how far they would go in that support if push came to shove. That was all the doing of our local MP, as you know – dear old David Lloyd George. Not his finest hour.'

They were sitting close together at the end of the table by the front window, Caradog at the top of the table, Dai Bach to his right and Trevor to his left. Caradog had placed the open bottle in the middle between them.

‘There is the religious question, too, of course. I don't see any permanent solution until someone finds a way to make the Catholics and Protestants at least tolerate each other.'

‘I don't think they'll ever do that,' Dai Bach observed, with a shake of his head. ‘Too extreme about it, they are, that's the problem. No sense of compromise about them at all.'

‘Then you have the social structure. The English have spent centuries taking land away from the Catholics and giving it to the Protestants, so the Protestants see themselves as a different social class, and look down on the Catholics accordingly.'

Trevor smiled. ‘The legacy of Oliver Cromwell.'

‘It started long before Cromwell,' Caradog replied. ‘The only Englishman ever to be Pope – Adrian, his name was – purported to give Ireland to the English 500 years or more before Cromwell, and that shaped the English attitude. The idea that England owned Ireland lock, stock and barrel, was firmly entrenched long before Cromwell. No, it's an historic grievance, and from time to time it spills over into violence. It has before, and it will again.'

He poured himself another large glass of whisky and pushed the bottle across the table to Dai Bach.

‘But my point is that Wales is different. We are not a divided nation, and there is no religious divide between us and the English. We have an historic grievance, of course. Edward I invaded our country and annexed England in the thirteenth century, and ever since then Wales has been part of England, politically speaking.'

‘He bloody deceived us too,' Dai Bach jumped in. ‘Told us that he would never make a man Prince of Wales who spoke English, didn't he? Then he shows off his infant son at our own Castle here in Caernarfon, before he's old enough to speak any language at all, and says, “Look, here's your Prince. I kept my word. He doesn't speak a word of English.” He didn't speak a word of anything. In our own castle, right under our bloody noses. Duplicitous bastard.'

Caradog smiled tolerantly.

‘Yes, Dai Bach, as you say: a duplicitous bastard. But he was also a powerful bastard, and there was nothing we could do to stop him. Much later, there was Owain Glyndŵr.'

‘Aye, we had a leader in those days,' Dai Bach said.

‘Yes,' Caradog agreed. ‘But what you have to understand about Glyndŵr is that he didn't set out to be a rebel.'

He paused to refill his glass.

‘He was a country gentleman, a prosperous farmer, and a soldier who had served in an English army. He had no enmity towards the English. He lived among the English. He had English family. He even went to London to study at the Inns of Court. I don't think he wanted conflict. But his blood was his undoing, you see. He had the blood of the two princely houses in his veins – Gwynedd and Powys. He was a lightning rod. There were those who did want conflict, and Glyndŵr was forced into the role of leader because of who he was, and what he represented. Once his hand was forced, he did his best to throw off the English yoke. To no avail. Henry IV was too strong for him, just as Edward I had been too strong for us in his day. But anyway… since then we have never tried to take up arms, and now there has been so much inter-marriage, so much day-to-day commerce, so many Welsh men like Lloyd George taking up important positions in public life, that people don't even think about it. We have become one country.'

Trevor smiled.

‘And the basement?'

Caradog returned the smile. ‘I'm coming to the basement. I told you we would go round the houses, but I am coming to it.'

It had started to rain earlier. The rain was beating more persistently on the windows now. Caradog turned round briefly, looked out of the window, and turned back.

‘The fact that there has been no violence in Wales in modern times doesn't mean that there is no Welsh nationalism. But the roots of Welsh nationalism have never been in political independence. If you look back to 1925, when Plaid Cymru was founded, they weren't concerned with that. They were concerned with preserving the language, cultural questions. They knew that it's cultural independence that makes sense for Wales.'

‘Plaid Cymru backs political independence now,' Trevor pointed out.

‘Yes, now they do, and there have always been those who have advocated it. But they know it's not going to happen – not unless there is a shake-up of Great Britain as a whole, and there's no sign of that. On the other hand, they also know that the survival of the language, the survival of our culture, is possible. That's what Madog always believed.'

The whisky bottle made another circuit.

‘That is what the
Tywysog
has always been about. Madog believed that if the language and culture are to survive, two things have to happen. One, our language, literature and history must be taught in our schools, and two, there must be book shops and libraries which make them available to the people. He saw the
Tywysog
as part of that.'

‘All right, I see that,' Trevor said. ‘But, as I said before, most of the stuff Madog had in the basement ought to be upstairs on public display. I mean, if you want to reach the people, why not have it out on the shelves, where the people can see it? That's what I would do. In fact, that's what I'm going to do. I'm not sure quite where I will put it all. I may have to squeeze another bookcase in upstairs somehow, but that's just a detail.'

He paused.

‘But the other stuff…'

‘The other stuff is there,' Caradog said, ‘because there are some people who haven't totally rejected the idea of armed resistance.'

There was a silence for some time.

‘Bunch of bloody comedians, most of them, if you ask me,' Dai Bach said. ‘No idea what they're doing. Bloody fools.'

‘Bloody fools they may be,' Caradog replied, ‘but they have to be reckoned with. Madog knew that. Every once in a while, one or two of them would come into the
Tywysog
and start asking for materials – the kind of materials that would be useful for violent resistance. Madog had no interest in getting that kind of material for them and he had no way of getting his hands on it even if he wanted to. But after a while, something rather strange happened. People started coming in, not to buy, but to
donate
materials.'

Trevor raised his eyebrows.

‘You've seen it for yourself. Some of it is idiotic nationalist ranting. Some of it is smuggled military output – there have always been members of the military with nationalist sympathies. Some of it is – well, God only knows where it comes from – but it gives home-made designs for bombs.'

‘You're saying they
brought
this stuff
to
Madog?' Trevor asked.

‘Exactly. They asked Madog to store it for them, and he did. And no doubt other people would come in from time to time and look at it. Perhaps he shouldn't have done it, but he did. Perhaps he was afraid of them, or perhaps he agreed against his better judgement. Or perhaps there is a part of Madog that believes that the day may come when the culture is so threatened that violence becomes justifiable, or even inevitable. I don't know the answer to that, Trevor. I'm speculating. But that was what happened.'

‘So, the
Tywysog
became an information exchange, as well as a book shop?'

‘Yes, that's one way of putting it. And now you have to decide what to do with it all, because it is not going to go away, and neither are the people who brought it.'

‘He might have warned me,' Trevor mused.

‘He may have thought you would run a mile, and the deal would fall through, if he did. In any case, you were bound to find out for yourself at some point. I'm glad you have had the sense to ask me before one of them turns up at the shop one fine day.'

‘I could just make a bonfire of it all,' Trevor suggested. ‘Then, when the nationalists come calling, I can just say I have no idea what they are talking about.'

‘That would be one way,' Caradog agreed. ‘But whatever you do, don't forget one important thing. The urge to resort to violence is getting stronger, not weaker. It's going to become an issue.'

‘Look around you, Trevor. We're in the sixties now. We've stopped looking backwards to the War, and we've started to look forward to the kind of world we want to inhabit in the future. The War was a great leveller. A lot of people who were ignored and looked down on and discriminated against before the War suddenly became indispensable to the War effort, and now it's over, those people want recognition. They want the rights they were denied before their country needed them. It was a fight they postponed in the interests of winning the War. But how long do you think black people in America will put up with being treated as second class citizens now? And in Europe, the students – the new generation of students who weren't part of the War and who resent the political system that could inflict two world wars on their continent, and want to bring it down – what about them? They are the people you really need to watch, if you're the government. They're the ones with new visions, who will carry the fight forward. They have causes of their own, and some of those causes are to do with changing the political landscape forever, and some of that landscape will have to do with nationalism.'

‘Oh. Come on,' Trevor replied. ‘Students are always protesting about something or other. It's a right of passage for students to give the authorities a hard time. Then they graduate and join the club, as we all do. It's a fad; it will pass, like everything else.'