The Life of Rebecca Jones Read online

  THE LIFE OF REBECCA JONES

  THE LIFE OF REBECCA JONES

  ANGHARAD PRICE

  A NOVEL

  Translated from the Welsh by Lloyd Jones

  with an Introduction by Jane Aaron

  An imprint of Quercus

  New York • London

  © 2002 by Angharad Price

  Translation © 2010 by Lloyd Jones

  Introduction © 2010 by Jane Aaron

  Photographs © Angharad Price and family

  Originally published in Welsh as O! Tyn y Gorchudd by Gomer Press in 2002

  First published in the United States by Quercus in 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by reviewers, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of the same without the permission of the publisher is prohibited.

  Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use or anthology should send inquiries to Permissions c/o Quercus Publishing Inc., 31 West 57th Street, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10019, or to [email protected].

  ISBN 978-1-62365-291-3

  Distributed in the United States and Canada by Random House Publisher Services

  c/o Random House, 1745 Broadway

  New York, NY 10019

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, institutions, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons—living or dead—events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  www.quercus.com

  This volume is dedicated to Lewis Jones, and in memory of Olwen Jones (1917–99)

  Heartfelt thanks to all family members of Tynybraich, and to Dafydd Wyn Jones, Blaen Plwyf, Mallwyd, for their willing cooperation

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  INTRODUCTION

  What makes a novel a classic? Usually it’s a lengthy process, involving a sustained period of critical and popular acclaim, but O! Tyn y Gorchudd was hailed as a classic on its first appearance and promptly awarded the National Eisteddfod Prose Medal in 2002, and the Welsh-language Book of the Year Award in 2003. Abroad it made its author the first Welsh-language writer to be promoted by Scritture Giovani, an E.U.-sponsored initiative; at home it has been adapted for radio and discussed by bloggers as the “first masterpiece of the twenty-first century,” while passages from it have been chosen as competitive “recitation pieces”—the mark of a popularly acknowledged classic if ever there was one. What is it about this novel, then, which gained for it such rapid and widespread recognition as a “classic”?

  The answer lies perhaps in the relation between the lyrically evoked rural Welsh lifestyle portrayed in the body of the text and the startling twist to the whole narrative given in the final few sentences. Throughout her story the narrator presents herself as embedded within her family—farmers in the Maesglasau valley for a thousand years—and within the history of that valley and its Welsh-speaking community: she saw her own continuation in the valley’s continuation. Consequently, her sudden dissolution at the close seems to eradicate more than herself alone. Momentarily it is as if the continuation of Welsh-language culture in the twentieth century has abruptly been exposed as a mirage, a dream that never was; it all ended back in 1916, during those corrosive First World War years. The reader flounders in a strange vacuum, before recognizing that only one voice has in fact been lost in this instance, and the relief makes the actual reality of twentieth-century Welsh rural culture as it has been represented throughout the rest of the text by contrast all the more precious, as well as all the more vulnerable. In this context, the very title of the novel—“O! Tyn y Gorchudd” (“O! pull aside the veil”)—seems to refer not only to the physical blindness of the narrator’s brothers but also to the psychological blindness of those who remain unaware of the value of their linguistic culture and its peril. It is because it manages thus to awaken once again, in a manner which is unexpected and new, the sense of combined celebration and dread in relation to Welsh-language culture that this novel seems so straightforwardly a successor to those earlier twentieth-century classics which struck similar chords, Kate Roberts’ Traed Mewn Cyffion (Feet in Chains, 1936), for example, Islwyn Ffowc Elis’ Wythnos yng Nghymru Fydd (A Week in the Wales of the Future, 1957), or Angharad Tomos’ Yma o Hyd (Still Here, 1985).

  The way in which its subject is its language has, however, led some of its readers to view this novel as untranslatable. “This is the strongest argument I’ve seen for a while for securing the survival of the Welsh language—after all, O! Tyn y Gorchudd wouldn’t work in another language” comments one blogger on the maes-e.com website. Yet its translator Lloyd Jones, himself a master of the novelist’s craft, succeeds in that difficult task of conveying the poetry of the original while adhering at the same time very closely to its literal meaning. Many of the finest qualities of the text—the poignancy of the brothers’ blindness, the evocation of the landscape and its seasons, the accuracy and freshness of the metaphors—the hawk “a steel bullet sheathed in feathers” (“bwled dur o blu”), for example—are very effectively transposed.

  One aspect of the book in translation may, however, not “work” for its English readers, and yet the very difficulty reveals all the more tellingly the nature of the culture represented in the original. The text’s narrative voice is very erudite: Rebecca has a wealth of Welsh- and English-language culture at her command and makes passing reference to an array of literary and historical sources, from W. B. Yeats to Taliesin and R. T. Jenkins. Given that she is by profession a seamstress, with no education beyond that of the village school, it’s likely that her tone will strike readers who tend to think stereotypically of the connections between culture, class and material wealth as unexpected. In fact the text discloses in some detail how Rebecca acquired her learning: her Sunday School teacher, who was also her uncle, made his class learn Welsh and English poems, “not all of them Christian,” by rote every week; her grandfather was too voracious a reader to be a successful farmer, but left a rich store of books to be inherited by Rebecca and her brothers, along with an appetite for reading to be satisfied later by the local public library; throughout her life she took great pleasure in talking to her brothers about books, on the telephone if not face to face. All the same her voice is likely to sound too highbrow to be readily credible to an English-language reader as that of a seamstress in straitened circumstances, but the same difficulty is not evident in Welsh.

  Another feature which underlines the authenticity of the text is the fact that Rebecca’s family is the novelist’s: the grandniece Angharad, fleetingly referred to in chapter five, is the same Angharad as the one on the title page. Apart from the single exception exposed at the close, the details of the family history are fact not fiction. And yet this book is a novel, and a fine one too: to write one’s family history in such a way that it is instantly hailed as a literary classic is a remarkable achievement. In the pages which follow, a rich reading experience awaits those who have not previously made the acquaintance of Rebecca Jones of Maesglasau.

  JANE AARON

  Where there is scarcity and deficiency
in these meditations, let the considerate reader enlarge upon them according to his own mind.

  Hugh Jones (Maesglasau),

  Cydymaith yr Hwsmon (The Companion to Husbandry), 1774

  To this he replied, that there was a book wherein he was in the habit of reading constantly, which contained in it three pages: Heaven, Earth and water; and the creatures therein were merely letters, signifying things unseen.

  Hugh Jones, Cydymaith yr Hwsmon, 1774

  Who created tranquility? Who formed that which is unheard, unseen and untouched, that which cannot be tasted nor smelled?

  This was a reversal of creation. The perfection of an absence.

  Tranquility can belong to one place, yet it ranges the world. It is tied to every passing hour, yet everlasting. It encompasses the exceptional and the commonplace. It connects interior with exterior.

  The creator of tranquility was the guardian of paradox.

  From the moment of conception until the moment of death, tranquility is within and without us. But in the tumult of life it is not easily felt. It shies away from our inflamed senses and all physical excitement; it recoils from our birth cries, from the rush of light to the eye and from the fond indulgence of our loved ones, salty tears and sweet kisses, our earth-bound corruption and putrescence, the ghastly grunt of death …

  When our senses are spent we seek tranquility again. And as we age, our search for it becomes more passionate, though never easier.

  I too have sought peace throughout my life. I’ve encountered it, many times—a transparency between myself and the world—only to lose it again. But now I feel myself closing in on a more lasting silence; and I will find it before I die. My eyesight dwindles and my hearing fails. What else should I expect, at my age? But neither blindness nor deafness can perfect the quietness which is about to fall on this valley.

  I have raised a temple to tranquility amid the ruined homesteads of Cwm Maesglasau. I have idolized it in the valley’s stream as it whispers past, and as the flow disappears into the bend beneath the big field.

  Who could imagine that this place was formed by volcanic fire? And that the bare slopes, the sheer cliffs and uneven pasturelands were worn to the bone by the gouging and scraping of ice?

  After the commotion of its creation, the cwm is a peaceful place nowadays, a vessel for silence. “Cwm Maesglasau is a small valley far from the merriment of mankind,” observed J. Breese Davies. “The silence inclines a man to think he has left the ordinary world far behind and it comes as no surprise that religious hermits lived here once.”

  I too have lived in this valley’s quietness all my life: the first half in its mouth, the second half in its tail; the first half with my family, the second half without them. Cwm Maesglasau is my world. Its boundaries are my boundaries. To leave it will be unbearably painful. But this I know: when I move on, and when my remains are scattered on the land at Maesglasau, I will have given my life to the fulfillment of this valley’s tranquility.

  My obliteration will be its completion.

  1

  At Springtide, when the weather is more temperate, and the earth begins to warm, and though a fine skin of snow may sometimes fall, it will not last long, and though frost may harden the ground overnight, it is seemly for the sun’s warmth to soften the day.

  Hugh Jones, 1774

  I see my mother beside her husband in the cart, a handsome couple on their way to their new home at Tynybraich. They have just left the chapel at Dinas Mawddwy, a small village in Merioneth which lies between two mountain passes.

  June’s golden sun warms them. Behind them a wedding—and the echo of wheel and hoof on road. Ahead of them a new life: the pull of a mare toward a green and empty valley.

  Evan has no need to prompt her; the mare turns left, instinctively, off the turnpike road into a smaller lane. There is a crimson tunnel of foxgloves and a sparkling dome of elderflower: the same intricate design, Evan notices, as the lace on his wife’s bodice. Sunshine streaming through the canopy spangles her hair with stars.

  He puts an arm around her waist and draws her closer.

  There is the mesmerizing beat of hooves and the lingering smell of hawthorn. Gold and silver flowers shine from the hedge. They pass Ffridd Gulcwm without noticing the neighbors who wait to greet them, framed in the doorway. They pass the barn and go through the open gate.

  The mare is slowed by the hill’s sharp incline. But Evan is impatient; wanting to get home, he whispers a word, loosening the reins with a flick of his wrist.

  Here, the road becomes uneven, the stream falling from Foel Dinas hindering them further. There is a panic of rabbits at each bend in the road; patterns of birdsong on the fringe of their consciousness.

  And then—as the crunch of the wheel sharpens on the road’s surface; as the heat increases suddenly; as a flash of sunshine blinds them—the newlyweds are flushed from their scented tunnel into the wide open valley of Maesglasau.

  And here they are. Evan draws the reins. The mare comes to a halt at the top of the hill. The valley lies below them, around them, everywhere.

  Tynybraich and the road to Cwm Maesglasau

  This will be the vessel of their marriage. A valley between three mountains and a distant waterfall. The sheep and the cattle are black-and-white gems on a cushion of green grass. The old stone-built farmhouse at Tynybraich sits in the crook of the mountain.

  I see my mother stirring, then steadying herself as she sits between her husband and the flank of the cart. My father turns to her. She smiles.

  Encouraged, he flicks the reins. The mare trots faster, downhill, over the bridge spanning the stream, and rising again up the slope of Tynybraich mountain to face the walls of married life.

  It is a handsome house. Three centuries old, says Evan as he helps her from the cart. Two windows on each side of a big wooden door, with the three windows above creating triangles in the roof. On one side the tŷ ffwrn, an outhouse with an oven, where the bread is baked. On the other side a shippon and stable, encircling the farmyard. Smoke drifts from a chimney. A sign that Evan’s family awaits them.

  I imagine my mother bracing herself.

  She is drawn by Evan through the oak door of Tynybraich, not toward the parlor on the right, nor the little room straight ahead. Their first duty is to step inside the large front room. Three women are sitting around the fire. Of the three, only two raise their expectant eyes to meet those of my mother. The third, the oldest, fixes her gaze on the hearthstone, dousing the fire with her cold stare.

  These three were Evan’s two sisters and his mother.

  I imagine my mother averting her gaze to the dark oak furniture; the corner cupboard, the dresser, the grandfather clock, and the big red chest with iron clasps, where the family’s treasured old books are kept.

  One of the sisters rises and introduces herself. She is Sarah, who then walks to the kitchen to put the kettle on the fire. The other is Annie. She approaches and kisses them both. The villagers had said that Annie was “not quite like everyone else.” She’d wander around on her own, talking to trees and flowers. Rumor had it she’d eaten some poison from a hedge. No, said Evan, Annie had been different from birth.

  Old Catrin Jones is still staring into the fireplace. She was known as a bit of a dragon, unlike her husband—God rest his soul—who’d been a gentle and astute man, fond of books and music.

  What a pity Robert Jones wasn’t still alive to temper his wife’s scorn.

  Her bridal dress digs into my mother’s flesh. Tears prick her eyes. As she moves through the house, she recalls her own warm hearth at Coed Ladur: her parents, her brothers and sisters.

  Evan ignores his mother’s scowl. He pulls his wife after him, past the buttery with all its tackle, toward the back kitchen.

  This is a warmer hearth. It has an oven and a griddle, and a black kettle hanging from a chain. It has a slate slab for baking and a smoothing iron. A peat fire smolders behind a shiny brass fender, filling the room with its bitters
weet aroma.

  There is a long oak table with a settle, a bench, and two chairs at each end. Hanging from hooks in the low ceiling are a flitch of bacon, two jugs and two large pans. At the far end of the room: a cupboard full of white dishes, two rolling pins, a crook-backed flour caddy, a large earthenware bowl for the washing up, and then the back door opening onto the wide expanse of the valley.

  Halfway through the wedding repast Evan’s mother comes to join her children. She leaves her bread and butter half eaten; she picks at the fruit bread and the pancakes, and barely touches the milky tea though her mouth is parched.

  She did not attend her son’s wedding. Nor did she let her two daughters go. Why should she bless that which took everything away from her? Her only son? Her own home? Tradition demanded that she made way for Evan and his new wife. She would have to move from the farmhouse at Tynybraich to a smaller house at the far end of the cwm.

  Her farewell is sulky too. And while Evan is joking with his sisters, she quietly hisses in her daughter-in-law’s ear:

  “We shan’t get used to you around this place. The three of us used to get along like the three legs of a milking stool. Now you’ve come to change that.”

  I can see my mother staring at her. Her response is quiet:

  “I’ve never quarreled with anyone in my life, Catrin Jones, and I’m not going to start now.”

  As men come in waves to conquer new lands, so came three young women from three neighboring valleys to inhabit the cwm at Maesglasau. My mother—Rebecca Jones from Cwm Cynllwyd—was the last of three generations of women to cross the pass of Bwlch y Groes to live at the end of the world.

  It was early Spring 1903 when she left her home near Llanuwchllyn to visit her relatives at Bwlch farm in Dinas Mawddwy.

  Crossing over the steep pass at Bwlch y Groes, little did she know she’d never return. She was carrying water from the well to the wash-house when a young man came to Bwlch. He was seeking a copy of The Shepherd’s Companion, a handbook written by her grandfather listing the earmarks of sheep in the Mawddwy valley.