Moel y Golfa

by Faye Windsor-Smith

Alwyn crouches, sifting through the fallen shale. Around him, tall yellow wildflowers force their way through the ground cover and skirt huge boulders, hunched and lonely. The quarry’s long abandoned, but small rockfalls occasionally skitter, chittering, down its face. Each time Alwyn hears the noise, he cranes upward, a hand shielding his tired eyes, scanning the line of grass and trees fifty metres above.

This time, nothing. Alwyn returns to his work, testing the heft of two chunks of flat rock, one in each hand. He selects the left-hand piece, skims the right away to a discard pile at his side, and walks the chosen stone to a listing wheelbarrow parked by the overgrown path to the peak.

Another chittering. Alwyn scans and sees his brother Gethin’s face above.

“Found a spot,” Gethin says, expressionless as ever.

“Great! First wheelbarrow load is ready to go.”

Alwyn smiles wide and hopes his brother can see it. Gethin’s face disappears.

Alwyn clambers atop a boulder and unwraps a squashed sandwich from his pocket. He chews thoughtfully and listens to Gethin blundering his way down the overgrown path. It’s not far; his brother soon appears and grabs the barrow.

“Hang on,” Alwyn says. He pats the rock beside him and produces another sandwich. “Join me?”

Gethin grunts and takes the sandwich. He unwraps it standing. Alwyn perseveres.

“Cheese and onion. Bit of lettuce, mayo. That okay?”

Gethin nods and takes a bite. “Fair bit of salt, too,” he says through a mouthful. “Like Llew’s.”

Alwyn nods. “For years I stopped using it. Bad for you and all. But then I tried it again and it’s so much better.”

Alwyn’s jaw works and his mind wanders. Llew making sandwiches in the farmhouse kitchen, back to them both as they slurped cornflakes at the kitchen table, kicking at each other underneath it, periodically eliciting a yelp or accusation. Llew’s low shoulders and thick neck, craning round to fix them with a dark stare whenever they got too loud. The smell of the kitchen, subtly changed since mum died, still warm and thick and edible, but with less of the fragrance of herbs and flowers, heavier on the roasted meat and sweating cabbage. Llew had done his best, perhaps, but didn’t have their mother’s flair for cooking. The same five plain dishes had become less staples in rotation and more a cyclical, funereal procession.

Of course, a man cooking for his stepsons was lauded no matter the quality of his cuisine. The local mothers’ deluge of foil-wrapped casserole dishes dried up fairly quickly, replaced with compliments on Llew’s ability to fend for himself in taking care of ‘the boys’... regardless of what those boys would have preferred to eat.

The brothers finish the sandwiches in silence. Gethin picks up the wheelbarrow.

“Not a lot of people at the funeral, you know,” he fires over his shoulder. “I’d have thought you’d have made the time. Guess you were too busy.”

Alwyn’s not immediately sure what to say, and before he can reply, Gethin’s away up the path. Frustrated, Alwyn turns back to the stones, and tries to focus on his task.

He’s not quite sure what he’s looking for – what makes some rocks acceptable and others not. He’s looking for flatness, and nothing too small, but other than that, it’s down to feel. If he focuses on his hands as he holds them, some give him a certain frisson, a shy tingle in the fingertips. These are the ones he picks.

Alwyn creeps a little closer to the cliff face, checking for sketchy-looking overhangs to avoid, and spots a whitish protuberance amidst the green-grey rocks, papery and whorled. He steps closer.

Not a rock – a wasps’ nest. Clearly abandoned, only just clinging to the cliff face. Alwyn reaches up and gingerly pulls it away.

He turns it over in his hands. Bits of the outer shell are worn away, revealing the honeycomb structure inside; each little hexagon a self-sufficient cell. A few are filled with tufts of a cotton-wool-like material. He pulls at one, revealing a half-formed wasp, desiccated in the cell underneath. Sealed in and left to reform itself, emerging whole and new in adulthood. Usually.

Alwyn would have killed for his own room as a teenager. As kids, he and Gethin’s shared space was a blessing, a setting for adventure. They’d whisper stories to each other from their single beds, giggling loud enough to summon mum with soft blandishments. But they were already growing apart by the time the cancer killed her – awkward young adults intent on building whole identities around schoolyard cliques and social circles: Alwyn a punk rock artiste, Gethin a stolid and sporty Young Farmer. When she died, they drew further apart, grew adept at pretending they were each alone on their separate sides of the room, Alwyn’s papered with sketches of wildlife, landscapes, hands, and Gethin’s festooned with rosettes and trophies.

Alwyn’s sketches are long gone, but Gethin’s side of the room remains largely unchanged. Alwyn is both surprised and utterly unsurprised that the house is so similar to when he lived there. Llew’s oxygen rig is gone, but his easy chair remains parked at the window, still positioned to take in the view of the birds in the rose bushes, then sweeping on down through the valley to end at the ridge on the other side. The kitchen is still set with the same tablecloth, placemats, and crockery that mum had picked out forty years ago or more. And Gethin still sleeps in the same room – the master bedroom still crammed with grey plastic and metal medical equipment.

Not for the first time, Alwyn wonders if Gethin is lonely. He surely can’t be bringing anyone back to that bedroom - the twin beds still against the walls, old trophies still crowding the shelves. Well, Gethin had never shown interest in romance; even at the height of his sporting fame, the captain of the rugby team had never been seen with a girlfriend on his arm. Llew, in contrast, seemed to use Gethin’s rugby matches as an excuse to meet like-minded divorcees, most of whom fawned over the poor man who’d lost his wife so young.

The brothers had almost looked forward to Llew’s short-lived romances. These were the only times they really broke out of the three-way holding pattern that was their norm; Llew’s dates were often family-friendly affairs, with both boys and the latest lady’s own spawn brought along to parks, pub lunches, private functions. Normally Llew was content to sit in silence over dinner, and for the boys to disappear quietly to their room afterwards. When a girlfriend was over, though, he’d ask about their days and actually listen to the answers, would occasionally even chuckle at their cheek. Despite themselves, they brightened at this treatment, playing along for the occasion, not really understanding why.

But Llew never kept them for long. They realised quite quickly that he just wasn’t that interesting, and the tragic backstory wasn’t enough to keep them entertained. They didn’t really see themselves in the functional, uninspiring farmhouse, and that they perhaps had enough on their hands with their own children, without taking on another couple of sullen and awkward youths. When they left, the holding pattern set in just as before. Gethin spent more and more time out in the barn and cowsheds, and Alwyn lay in their room with headphones on, drawing images from the glossy, expensive nature journals he pilfered from school. Each of them in their own little cell.

#

Alwyn hears Gethin trundling the wheelbarrow back down the mountain path. The pile of acceptable rocks is smaller this time. Gethin shrugs.

“It’ll need more than that. I’ve got the base of it all laid out. What’ve you found?”

Alwyn offers up the wasps’ nest. Gethin examines it, then hands it back.

“It’s light,” he says.

Alwyn nods. Gethin begins loading the wheelbarrow again. Alwyn puts down the nest and helps.

“I guess a cairn doesn’t have a set size, exactly. It doesn’t have to be huge, right?” He glances sidelong at Gethin.

“It’ll be about shin-height, I reckon.”

“Well, I guess there’s no one to complain.”

They finish loading the rocks, and Gethin seems about ready to get going again.

“Gethin,” Alwyn starts, stops, starts again. “I thought about it. The funeral. I agonised about it, actually. I ended up thinking it might be best if I stayed away. I, ah, I brought it up with my therapist... he didn’t really say anything conclusive, but, you know... they never do, really.”

“I know that, do I, Al? You think I know a lot about therapists?”

Alwyn gapes, tries to figure out which direction the offence is coming from.

“Sorry, I... I mean, do you? I guess they’re not really much of a thing out here?”

“Fuck’s sake, Al. We have therapists ‘out here.’ You don’t have the monopoly on fucking therapy.”

Alwyn steps back, hands up.

“Okay, Gethin, okay. Sorry, man, no offence meant. You... have you been seeing one yourself?”

Gethin huffs and hefts the wheelbarrow, turning his back.

“No. Just been thinking about it. That’s all.”

He starts up the path, calls back.

“Gonna need about half again of this in the next load, and then we’re done.”

Alwyn watches him go, then turns to search for more rocks. Prickle, no prickle, prickle, prickle, prickle. Alwyn’s on a roll, now Gethin’s set the quota.

When they were kids, little kids, Gethin always took the lead. Whatever he was doing, Alwyn had to do it too. There were videos, filmed in their mum’s signature shaky hand, of Alwyn stomping around after Gethin, laughing and clapping, and Gethin clearly delighted, happy to play the piper. If Gethin’s considering therapy, maybe he’s been thinking about the same things Alwyn has.

Like, that this story Alwyn tells about his teenage years being free and easy, with no rules and no one to answer to, might not be the only one. That after the drama of their mum’s death petered out, the everyday became oppressive. That care isn’t only about being fed and clothed, it’s about being listened to, or even allowed to speak.

He remembers the time he sat on Llew’s glasses, flinging himself down on the sofa after school without looking. It was an accident, but Llew didn’t speak to either him or Gethin at all for thirteen days. The time Gethin gave ‘a look’ when Llew asked him whether one of his teachers was married, and Llew laid into him for a straight hour, threatening to throw him out the house. The time Alwyn had had friends over when Llew was away, and stashed their empties in the wardrobe in their bedroom, and how when Llew found them and blew his top, Gethin took the blame and never even mentioned it after.

Gethin had always been the sporty, sensible one and Alwyn the arty, clever type. People didn’t give Gethin enough credit; Alwyn had long known Gethin was as smart as they come. Llew certainly wasn’t the brains behind the farm staying afloat through an agricultural crisis, and Gethin had a way of getting the knack of people that’d won him various unlikely favours through the years. It was Gethin who’d convinced the landlord at the Three Horse Shoes to cut Llew off in time for him to sober up for their mum’s funeral.

It’s not like Llew had been an alcoholic - he drank some, but mostly socially, and rarely to any great excess. But that week between her death and her funeral, the brothers had got the impression that Llew would rather be anywhere but home. The pub just happened to be open late. But then of course, you can’t sit in the pub without a glass in front of you, and Llew had taken to getting pretty pissed before getting up the courage to come home.

Alwyn had turned a blind eye. He drew detailed pictures of the sympathy bouquets clogging up the lounge and hallways, and pulled from his own jumbo bottles of cider, now in a more secure hiding place below a loose floorboard under the bed. Gethin had raged, trying to draw Alwyn along with him in his tirades on Llew’s selfishness, the state of the house, the farmyard tasks undone. Alwyn shrugged him off and Gethin took his anger outdoors, not down to town but up onto the hill. With the window open, Alwyn heard his yelling bouncing off the quarry walls, echoing through the valley.

And then it was gone, carried away on the winds, and Gethin had returned to clean the house and milk the cows and reply to the undertaker. And he had walked on down to town and quietly prevailed on old Dougie to send Llew home.

When Alwyn got the message Llew had died, he didn’t draw flowers. He drew Gethin, standing in the quarry, bellowing his head off.

But here Gethin is, standing in the quarry, quiet.

The two load up the final stones in silence. Gethin takes the barrow and, with no complaint, Alwyn brings the wasps’ nest. The path is narrow and green, fringed with fern. They emerge onto the hilltop, suddenly treeless, and turn off the path to trudge over mossy rock. Gethin leads them into a secluded hollow, a small, rough-hewn amphitheatre in the rock. In the centre is an almost perfectly regular ring of stones.

“Figured it’s less likely to get kicked or blown about here.” Gethin looks nervous, but Alwyn approves. They dump out the rocks and start the final portion of the cairn, closing the top of the ring. Every stone makes Alwyn’s fingertips thrum.

“Shoulda known you’d be a pro at something like this,” Alwyn says. “It’s perfect.”

Gethin smiles.

“Repaired a few walls in my time, you know. It’s satisfying.”

Alwyn presses a stone in the mid section, increasing the pressure slowly to see when it might give. He stops before he feels it move.

“Gethin. Would you want to come back with me? Get out of this place?”

Gethin stiffens. He keeps his head down.

“I don’t think so, Al. I got enough here. I don’t need a life like yours.”

“Like mine?” Alwyn’s genuinely curious, a bit shocked. “What do you think my life is like?”

“What do you think mine’s like, Al? Sheep-shagging and crying over spilt milk? Do you think I’m bored, without theatres and museums to traipse around, or lonely, without colleagues and neighbours crowding me all the time? Or am I just dull, without spilling my guts to some gobshite PHD to tell me my dreams are all drowning ‘cause I hate my mum, or some such?”

“Gethin - that’s a lot, I–”

“I don’t need to be a victim, Al; you’ve got that down.”

“I... what?”

“Llew raised us. He kept us. No one else fucking wanted us. We owe him.”

Alwyn shook his head. “I don’t think so. Not you, at least. You’ve been here how many years, taking care of him and the farm? Longer than he took care of us. If you can call it taking care. We lived in silence, Gethin. I’m sick of everyone saying how good he was to us. He barely spoke to us!”

“We barely spoke to each other.”

“I know that.” Alwyn deflates. “I know and I’m sorry. If you came back with me I–”

“I don’t need your protection, Al! I don’t need you to figure this all out for me. Llew didn’t abuse us, he didn’t hurt us, he didn’t fuck us up!”

Gethin kicks the cairn. A couple of stones fall in but the structure doesn’t cave.

“I’m not fucked up.”

Gethin stalks away, and Alwyn watches him go. He stoops, picks up the wasps’ nest, and places it inside the cairn. Then he leaves it, top unsealed, and wheels the barrow down the path after his brother.