Bred of Heaven (27 page)

‘Faint o bobl oedd ar y cwrs?'

‘Chwech myfyriwr,' I answer. There were six of us on the course. I never know how to pronounce the second half of
myfyriwr
(student), so I find it's best just to commit heavily to the front bit and let the back end look after itself. We were four Gogs and two Hwntws. Nor am I sure if these slangy geographical specifications are offensive or not. On the final night –
Nos Iau
(in Welsh they like to specify if it's day or night) – we went out to dinner, I say. In a very good pub. And as we were sitting there, I continue, talking and eating and drinking with these people, I suddenly had a … I had a …

Oh shit.

I can't remember the word. I know the word and don't. I can feel it somewhere in the ether, sense its vague outline. But it refuses to come. Don't panic.

You had a …? This from the male
beirniad
.

‘Beth oedd e?' I say. What was it? I stare into space. Silence. I know it's from Greek.

‘Dw i wedi anghofio'r gair hyd yn oed yn Saesneg.' I've even forgotten the word in English. You pillock. Why does it refuse to materialise? Embarrassment. I can feel a slight moistness in the undercarriage.

‘Mae'r gair wedi diflannu,' I say. The word has disappeared.

‘Teimlad?' suggests the female
beirniad
.

Yes, I agree. A feeling. It's not the word, but it'll have to do.
Teimlad
. A feeling that we were all here together, doing our bit to help the Welsh language. To help it continue.

And that's the reason why I'm learning Welsh. I want to do what it says in the last line of the national anthem.
O bydded i'r hen iaith barhau
. It seems a remarkably hubristic statement. How dare I believe that my sclerotic Welsh stutterings, learned in London, could possibly underpin an entire language? But the
beirniaid
are all smiles. They really are.

‘Wel,' says the male
beirniad
. Suddenly everything is OK. ‘Diolch yn fawr a phob lwc.' Thank you very much and good luck. They get up. I get up. We shuffle round the table and shake hands. I thank them in return, and leave the classroom. It's over. I have competed.

Cinio
. I go downstairs. I'm suddenly famished. And parched. Competition is draining. In a big classroom quiches, salad, cheese, ham have been spread. I load my paper plate and wander back into the main room. The blonde woman from Bridgend is still in the same seat. She asks how it went. The truth is I have no idea. It happened. ‘Dw i ddim yn siwr.' I scoff my salady bits. A man in his
twenties comes over – another competitor from somewhere along the M4 corridor – and yaks camply in Welsh. How infinitely malleable is this great language, I reflect as I excuse myself and go next door to retrieve a reviving pile of Welsh cakes. Oral examinations do that to you. I must have been pumping adrenalin back there, and am now depleted. Dai, the suspiciously fluent one, slips into the seat next to me. ‘Sh'mae, Dai,' say I. We are all in this together, Welsh people talking in Welsh about competing in Welsh. We wouldn't dream of saying a word in English. Are we not Welsh? How Welsh are
we
? I feel this with sudden intensity.

There is movement. Two people, a man and a woman I've not seen before, stroll up to the front, looking official. We all know what this means. The man is very tall, with a moustache. I notice my pulse embark on its predictable acceleration – the foolish gambolling heart which should know better. He pulls himself up to his full height at the lectern. Is it really necessary to feel nervous? How tiresome. This is the hour of judgement. Who is going home? Who is staying? How Welsh in fact are you? As Welsh as the person sitting next to you?

The tall man with the moustache opens his mouth to speak. We already know the speech. The standard has been exceptionally high, he is saying. Higher than ever. I am worried by his compassionate tone. The judges have been very impressed. This is going to be a bloodbath. And we have had more competitors this year than ever before. Half of whom are about to be culled. We have had competitors from Patagonia and even Belgium. Not to mention London, I think, which he doesn't in fact mention. The judges have found it incredibly difficult to make a decision. Yeah, yeah. Get to the meat, lanky.

These are the names of the twelve competitors who are going on to the semi-final. Is it my imagination or is there an entirely
synthetic and deeply irritating pause for dramatic effect? I find myself randomly cursing Simon Cowell. The grammar of his talent shows has bled across the border and into the doings of the National Eisteddfod. And then he starts reading out names. They are of course all Welsh names. Eifion this, Sioned that, Gruffudd the other. The names – twelve of them – ring out like a tolling bell. Do I hear a Dai? Chances are I do. I half listen, almost disembodied by the knowledge, the
certainty
, that I'm not on the list. I'm not going to
mynd ymlaen
(lit. to go forward, to go onward). Arwel this, Catrin that. The word
ymlaen
pings around inside my cranium like a bagatelle ball. Forwards, onwards, upwards. Out they come, name upon Welsh name. I should have prepared that opening peroration.
Mae fy nhad yn dod o Gaerfyrddin
. This is not my moment. I never truly did get my hopes up. My ticker is already slowing down. It knows something. I should never have tried speaking Greek. What a tit. That was the moment I failed.

The names stop. Mine as predicted not among them. Flunk. The bar not cleared. I look around me. There is a general sense of rabbits blinking in headlights. Of atomic aftershock. I look to my right. The face of the blonde woman from Bridgend has mysteriously elongated.

‘Dych chi'n mynd ymlaen?'

‘Nac ydw.'

‘A chi?'

‘Na.'

‘Beth am chi?' I ask the man in his twenties.

‘Na.'

They are much better speakers than me, and they've not got over the first hurdle either. The Bournemouth Welshman – I can see him shaking his head ruefully – isn't going anywhere either, other than Bournemouth. I turn to Dai on my left.

‘Dych chi'n mynd ymlaen?'

He smiles modestly. His body language says it all: don't hate me, I must have been lucky, etc.

‘Ydw,' he says. Yes I am.

‘Gwych!' I say. Great. ‘Llongyfarchiadau.' Congratulations. I really mean it. ‘A phob lwc.' Note correct deployment of aspirate mutation. These things are going in.

‘Diolch,' says Dai. He's all shy smiles. And total fluency. I hope he gets through to the final. Come the revolution, we'll be needing Welsh speakers like him.

Wel, my work here is done. I say the odd goodbye, the odd
braf cwrdd â chi
, then walk out of the room, down the corridor, out of the school building, over to my car half-blocking a fire exit, get in, gun the engine and slip out of the Ysgol Gynradd Glyncoed, up onto the road leading through unlovely Ebbw Vale and off down the valley. It's still spitting. And I am seething,
boiling
with self-hatred. Thin driplets slither across the windscreen. My misplaced self-belief really is a curse. If you're going to rain, please rain properly. My casual faith in the persuasive powers of charm is truly contemptible. Let's have a proper Welsh deluge. How could I sit there pretending I was somehow above all the business of competition? A plague on my English swagger. This mindset must be
scrapped
. The road follows the Ebbw along the valley floor. This is one of the things Project Wales is teaching me: to think of myself as part of a community that is wider, larger, deeper than one cocksure individual. The car snakes and weaves between conifered walls.
Teimlad
= a feeling. The sun is putting up a struggle. Specks flick across the glass, now irradiated by light. Who wants it more? The rain, the sun? Ebbw Vale = halfwit. Who wants to learn more? I think as I drive carefully down towards the sea plain. The Englishman or the Welshman? It's a competition, and there can be only one winner.

Little Book of Meat Facts:
Compendium of Welsh Meat and Livestock Industry Statistics 2010
(2010)

 

 

‘
TI EISIAU TYNNU?
'

The mother, a swollen bulk of wool, lies on her side, noiselessly straining. One leg is in the air, exposing a rosy undercarriage. She is primed for parturition. Her vulva gapes elastically, like a neat circular tear in a stretch of bright-pink Lycra. Through the opening peeps a foreign object, grey and glistening. Do I want to pull what exactly?

Dewi reaches out a hand and carefully pulls the stretchy membranes of flesh apart. I continue to stare. One has been present at only two previous births, and both times it was a human that popped out. That, I do believe, is a pair of feet. If you look closely you can see they are cloven.

He's a big unit, is Dewi – he plays loose-head for Dolgellau. The sense of heft is offset by a shy smile and soft enquiring eyes.

‘Pam lai?' I say. Why not? I've been on site for an hour. I sort of assumed there'd be some kind of preliminary initiation. Maybe yard-sweeping or bale-lugging or just general rope-learning before the deep end beckoned. But no. Dewi tells me to grab and tug.

It's hard to get a purchase on a lamb's foot copiously slimed in amniotic slick. Between the little knobble of hoof and the tiny ankle there's a handhold of sorts, but it's a smeary grip. I'm reminded of pulling on a wishbone dripping with chicken lubricants. My hand slithers clear off the foot. I'm reluctant to impart too much pressure. I don't want to snap this thing's leg before it's even been born.

‘Mae'n llithro,' I say. It's slipping. (Am rather proud of knowing this word. Picked it up in
Harri Potter
.) This lamb appears to be stuck, possibly for good. Dewi indicates that I can afford to pull a little harder, so I do. The owner of these legs won't thank me for this assertion but, begrudgingly, something budges. I yank again. No, there's a bottleneck in there. Dewi leans in again and slips a hand inside the rim of the vulva, pulls it clear to reveal another form poking indistinctly into the light. As I suspected. There's too much lamb trying to get out all at once. It's some sort of snout. Dewi slides a few fingers in and pulls a head clear of the cervical tunnel.

That's it, I'm out of here. I'm not pulling on a head. Dewi clamps a firm fist around the legs and pulls properly. A small form slides gloopily forth, soaked in sludge, till it is entirely free. And after the birth, the afterbirth, a little sacklet of bright-red gristle, follows it onto the floor of the concrete yard.

‘Rhaid siecio'r ceg,' says Dewi. You have to check the mouth.
Siecio
, pronounced ‘checkio': one of those verbs that has wandered across the border and snaked its way along the alleyways of Wales as far as this isolated valley. Dewi shoves an unceremonious finger
into the creature's mouth and rummages around at the back of the throat to clear any blockage. A new-born lamb is now free to take its first breath.

It's hard not to feel a bit biblical as this scene unfolds, but I master the urge as I crouch over the fresh life lying in a pool of spilt fluid, rippled in blood. Its tiny head nudges up off the hard floor. Dewi has stood and now the mother follows suit, struggling to her feet to prod an inquisitive nose at the newly delivered package. She sniffs, then speculatively licks. Dewi touches my elbow. It's time to step back, he indicates, so mother and lamb can bond. Otherwise she might reject the fruit of her womb. He uses the word
gwrthod
: to refuse. We edge backwards to the corner of the enclosure.

After ten seconds or so, Dewi says something in Welsh that I don't quite catch. There's another one coming within ten or fifteen minutes, he repeats. Another lamb showed up on the scan. Can I stay and watch and if she needs help,
tynnwch
– pull. If there's a problem, he says, come and get him in the shed. And he ambles off in the direction of a big ugly barn with corrugated walls.

It's just me and the ewe and the lamb now. If ever there were a Welsh test and a half, this is it. I watch with adamantine intent. She licks and nuzzles and generally cossets her first-born, which bleats feebly. Its legs buckle after all that time folded tightly into the uterus. I hoist myself onto a low wall and look around. Straight ahead is a mountain. The only way ahead is up. It feels as if I've come to the very epicentre of Wales.

At the top of Cwm Cywarch is a hill farm where I am to spend a working Welsh week. Blaencywarch –
blaen
meaning head – is only a slight misnomer. From the farmhouse, the valley in fact turns sharp right up into a vast amphitheatrical
cwm
of near perfect symmetry, a glaciated spoon-scoop. Somewhere out of its flanks is where the Cywarch spurts forth. It tra-la-las along the valley floor,
turns left at the farmhouse, then tumbles down the cleft between the high walls until two or so miles downstream it flows into the river Dyfi, which itself eventually fans out into the famous estuary before debouching into Cardigan Bay at Aberdyfi. That feels like a long way off from here.

A balmy hint of sun warms the hilly air. The odd puff of cloud drifts lazily across, casting mobile shadows on the surrounding ramparts of this astonishing place. It's been a good nine minutes now. No sign of urgency from the expectant ewe. I wish she'd hurry up. A faint roar overhead growing louder. Flitting across the blue heavens is a dark silhouette which disappears at warp speed over the brow of the hill just as the roar swells to an ear-splitting climax. NATO is on manoeuvres. My ewe doesn't bat an eyelid. Sixteen minutes. Dewi reappears from round the corner of the barn and saunters towards me.