Bred of Heaven (26 page)

‘Wel,' I say, bartering for time. I've noticed I've been saying this a lot. ‘Wel.' I'm not quite sure where it came from. It seems to have sprouted in my speech like a weed between paving stones. There's no lexical reason for it to be there. It's not even Welsh. It's ‘well' but without the double
l
. Probably its function is to suggest intelligence.

‘Wel,' I say. ‘Mae fy nhad yn dod o Gaerfyrddin.' A perfect sentence, please note. Not a mutation out of place. I learned it off by heart about a year ago and have been trotting it out ever since. My father comes from Carmarthen. Not that you'd know it to meet him, I don't add. I'm all set to expand on the fascinating theme of deracination when Dai is summoned to the examiners.

It's only me now, and the two ladies who have quit flitting in and out and sat down. They have a satisfied air about them of having almost completed their morning's work. Twenty-nine contestants. Imagine how it will be next year. Who knows what geographical oddities it will produce? Lest we forget, Welsh has travelled. There must have been a Welshman on one of those voyages of exploration that discovered a flightless seabird that lives in large waddling
flocks on the rim of the southern seas. Why else would penguin –
pen gwyn
– mean white head?

Talking of the southern hemisphere, this reminds me. It's a long way to come for a ten-minute interview, I suggest. One of the jolly ladies asks me what I mean. Patagonia is hardly next door to Ebbw Vale, I volunteer.

‘Mae e'n cystadlu ar y ffon,' one of them explains. I nod. It's all being done telephonically. There's a pause. In which one of them thrusts a leaflet in my direction.

‘Beth am ddod i gwrs Cymraeg?' This time my heart really does actively sink like a stone. She's suggesting I come on a Welsh language course. Is my Welsh that bad? But I'm here competing in Dysgwr y Flwyddyn, I want to say. I've done quite enough learning, thank you very much. I've completed the second-highest course available at the National Language School in Nant Gwrtheyrn. How dare she undermine me? How dare she cut me off at the knees? It's so unfair.

I take the leaflet and pretend to study it. The ladies talk among themselves. I decide to commune with myself. To enter the zone. I used to be good at exams, I remind myself. Passed a bunch of them with flying colours. If not oral ones. I'm a writer, I think. Can't we just write the exam?
Scribo ergo sum
, as someone once nearly said. Or in Welsh:
Dw i'n ysgrifennu, felly
(
felly
= so = therefore) … And then what? Marvellous. I don't know how to translate ‘I am' into Welsh.
Dw i
? Sounds a bit incomplete.
Dw i'n bod
? But that means ‘I am being'. I am writing therefore I am being. Ridiculous. I would so like this language to unveil just a few more of its secrets, preferably in the next few minutes.

‘Jasper?'

It's time. Enough. I get up and follow her out of the anteroom. And into a classroom.

The two
beirniaid
are waiting. There's a man and a woman. The
man comes welcomingly round the table to shake my hand. I introduce myself, although needless to say I don't catch any names. I never do anyway, even in English, but on this occasion one's mind is fixed on nether things. The shallowness of one's breathing, for example, plus maybe a hint of neurosis in lower localities. They are both in their fifties, both dressed in smart Saturday casuals. As usual I am wearing my red Welsh rugby shirt, just in case it feels like bringing me some luck.

‘Braf cwrdd â chi,' I say. They have lovely Welsh faces, open with an undertow of melancholy. It is indeed nice to meet them. They smile in welcome, but without any suggestion that this is a laughing matter. We've got a language to support here.

I compose myself. They compose themselves. I notice I have crossed my legs clubbably. We are all of us composed. Without waiting for permission my body seems to have decided that this will be a cosy fireside chat. I'm projecting an image with which my bowels, for example, are not in sympathy. Placidly I look at them as they go through the business of putting on reading glasses, looking at papers, removing reading glasses. The male
beirniad
furrows his brow and speaks.

Tell us why you decided to learn Welsh, he asks me. I am able to translate fluently. A good sign. Everything should flow from here. I take a breath and …

‘Wel.' My first word of Welsh in my Learner of the Year interview is English. In a driving test this would be marked against you. But once is surely permissible. I reapply my foot to the accelerator pedal.

‘Mae fy nhad yn dod o Gaerfyrddin.'

They raise their judging eyebrows in a show of interest. I have embarked on the familiar narrative. But now what? Very occasionally my staggering arrogance is revealed to me with the utmost clarity. My reports at school always parroted the word. Clever, they said, but
arrogant. Report after report, term after term. Thinks a lot of himself. It's a function of your arrogance that of course you don't believe them – they really don't know what they're talking about – and then suddenly thirty years later you realise that they knew all too well. Ever since I decided to enter this competition many months ago, I knew that this would be the first question. What else do you ask the adult learner of a minority language? The slight bummer – no, the miserable truth – is that I never quite got round to composing the answer. I could have filled the next minute or two with a beautifully crafted peroration, full of charming tangents and persuasive digressions. The chance was there to scatter complex polysyllabic words about the place, like throw cushions. I have after all swallowed a dictionary. ‘Ti wedi llyncu geiriadur,' they said back at the Nant.
Llyncu
is a lovely word for swallowing: you can hear the gulp in it. There are an awful lot of words in my little red book: consumed hook, line and sinker, learned and laboriously relearned. But somehow I've never quite got round to arranging them into the speech needed right here, right now. And now it's too late. Here's one I didn't prepare earlier. I am having to rely instead on something I've always relied on: my belief, embedded and enhanced over many years of professionally winging it, that I'm sufficiently bright that all will be fine. That theory has occasionally held water.

Not in Welsh.

My opening statement isn't entire hogwash. But I speak Welsh at a slow ramble – the correct grammar won't gush forth any quicker – and as I listen to myself I can still hear the tentative toddler taking its first steps, bumping directionlessly into things. Out the relevant facts stammer, the building blocks of my story, but the whole speech is full of false starts, hesitations, culs-de-sac. I mention, for example, that I have two brothers, and then find that I have nothing extra to add. The bit about celebrating as we crossed
the Severn Bridge would have gone down a treat, but I suddenly realise that I never learned the word for ‘to cheer'. On the hoof I have to make do with
mwynhau
, to enjoy. I tail off with something about wanting to rediscover –
ailddarganfod
, though I've no idea if such a word exists – my roots.

The
beirniaid
nod inscrutably. They're thinking either there's no such word or he's swallowed a dictionary. Next question: does anyone in my family speak Welsh? Ah, I know this one.

‘Mae fy ewythr yn siarad Cymraeg.' My uncle is always helpful here, a great icebreaker. Though I never quite know how to pronounce
ewythr
. He's a monk, I explain. Not a lot of families can boast one of those. You can't get a lot more Welsh than a Welsh-speaking Cistercian monk for an uncle. He lives on Ynys Byˆr, I expand. I hope they notice that my mastery of Welsh place-names is confident. It's off the coast near Dinbych-y-Pysgod. They nod. They don't need me to tell them that Caldey's next to Tenby. His Welsh is rather formal, I explain.
Ffurfiol
.

I remember to tell them that my grandparents spoke Welsh, albeit not to each other. Albeit I don't use the Welsh for albeit. It's good to reflect on these things, I think, as I launch on a discursive socio-historical tour of the forces which governed such choices between the wars (
rhwng y rhyfeloedd
= between the wars). English was simply the language of the house – the parents, the children, the widowed grandmother who lived under her son-in-law's roof for a quarter of a century, the, er, servants. Damn, I wish I didn't know the Welsh for servant. But I do. Everyone sees the word
gwasanaethau
on the M4. Services. Servant is
gwas
. I might get marked down for having elitist forebears.

Across the table and through their bifocals the
beirniaid
consult my supporting document, photocopied in duplicate. The sight is unnerving. I suddenly can't remember what I wrote. Was it all
complete crap? The possibility distracts. How much grammar did I cock up? It's not natural submitting your conversation to examiners, I think, however lovely their melancholy Welsh faces. The consensus around the table is that we're all adults. The accepted pretence is that this is a chat among equals. I am second to none in adopting an air of breezy social confidence. But we all know the truth.

I suddenly remember what I wanted to say about my brothers. I want to say that one of them is a chip off the old block. Although how do you actually say that? Important to divest oneself of this anglicised lexicon, this Saxon persiflage.

‘Mae fy mhrawd' – excellent use of nasal mutation, though one says so oneself – ‘yn bod Sais go iawn.' He's a real Englishman. For example, I add, he supports England –
cefnogi Lloegr
.

‘A chi?' They want to know who I support.

‘Does dim dwywaith,' I say – there is no doubt. My first colloquialism. Tick. ‘Dw i'n mynd i'r Stadiwm Mileniwm trwy'r amser.' I'm always at the Millennium, me. Oh yes, practically live there,
dw i
. It's important to impress these
beirniaid
that there's a broad span to my Welshness. It's not all aspirate mutations and periphrastic verbs. I have met my rugby uncle Elgan Rees, I want to say, but it seems improper to boast. Plus they're probably his personal friends. Everyone in Wales knows everyone else.

‘A ble dych chi'n dysgu Cymraeg?' This from the female
beirniad
, who, without wishing to stereotype anyone, may not wish to dwell on rugby. She wants to know where I learn my Welsh.

‘Wel …' This tick is losing its charm. ‘Dw i ddim yn siwr.' I'm not sure. I can't believe I've just said that. Where on earth did that come from? I know
exactly
where I started learning Welsh. I wonder if I'm trying to sound enigmatic. For some reason. Not a good idea in Welsh; there are no two ways. What I mean, I tell them, is that I did learn for a term at City Lit, but then I stopped.

‘Pam?' Why? Suspicion in their voices.

Because I was getting ahead of the rest of the class, I explain. Turns out I am boasting after all. I was learning on compact disc –
cryno ddisg
– and hoovering up a lot of vocabulary and so decided to have private lessons. They weren't really lessons, I add, more like conversations. The
beirniaid
's faces are illegible. Behind the masks I feel certain they're thinking, who is this joker? But it's been very hard learning in London (
anodd iawn iawn
), I make sure to stress again. London has its Welsh speakers, but there's not much chance to practise. And even when I come to Wales, I say, you can never be sure that the person in the shop or the pub you address in Welsh will understand you.

This is shameless fishing for sympathy. It seems the utterest folly to imagine the
beirniaid
won't see clean through it. But there's just a chance they won't.

They want to know where I meet for conversation.

‘Y Canolfan Llundain Cymraeg,' I say confidently, wondering if they know it, ‘yn Gray's Inn Road.'

‘Y Canolfan Cymry Llundain.' The male
beirniad
corrects me. They do know it. Then I suddenly remember Nant Gwrtheyrn. Amazing what you forget to say in these situations, until you remember them. I mention my week in the national language school, and now they smile. It turns out that the female
beirniad
knows the teachers there. Everyone really does know everyone.

‘Fwynhewch chi'r profiad?' Did I enjoy my experience at the Nant? Oh yes, I tell them, I loved it. From Sunday night to Friday afternoon, not a sentence of English was spoken by any of us. It really was quite the Welshest of weeks. Maybe we didn't sound that intelligent, but we didn't sound very English either. Plus it didn't rain, I add. Much. And I spotted Jan Morris. I'm collecting famous Welsh people, I tell them.

Who else have I met?

‘Wel …' That's definitely the last one. ‘Bryn Terfel.' The
beirniaid
rearrange their eyebrows approvingly. ‘Dafydd Iwan,' I add. This is definitely scoring me points. ‘The Culture Minister. He's Dafydd Iwan's brother.' They know who Alun Ffred is. It suddenly occurs to me they're all men. And mostly related. Apart from Jan Morris, that is. The Clwb Rygbi Cymry Caerdydd are also all men. ‘Plus I've joined the Pendyrus Choir,' I say. That's another eighty men right there. Why are all my Welsh acquaintances men? Furthermore my grandfather was one of eight brothers and one sister. My father has one brother, who lives in an all-male monastery. I have two brothers. Not a lot of women down the pit either. Apart from two teachers and two pupils at the Nant, it would appear that my grandmother is the only Welsh woman I have ever properly known. Perhaps finding my inner Welshman is no more than finding my inner man. An effete member of the urban metrosexual intelligentsia is getting in touch with his masculine side, the suppressed daredevil within who yomps up hills and down mineshafts and rugby-tackles men built like rhinos and brazenly sits oral exams despite inadequate preparation.