The Meifod Claw

Four

Four

Before seven o’clock the next morning, there had been an idea, and that idea had led the three of them outside the house and to the edge of the courtyard, the sky above them still caught in the underworld of pre-dawn. Birdsong called for daybreak, but the hills and peaks of North Wales are not entertained so early in March; rather, the first rays of day look to the east where low-lying sandlings welcome the light amongst the shorelines. Ever old guardsmen, the hills that surrounded Tangwhin Farmhouse would withstand a further turn along the disc before gifting the morning to those who would dwell at their footings.

‘It won’t be until seven twenty-five at least,’ Benjamin remarked of sunrise while he forced his right arm into a beige popper jacket. The clouds had kept the ground from freezing, but the air carried a chill that was pervasive, and feeling that his comment had gone unheard or roundly ignored, he said it again, looking around as he popped his final jacket button to see the other two already halfway down the drive and involved in staccato mutterings between themselves. Benjamin sniffed, grimaced down the back of his throat and set about catching them up.

The cobblestones of the courtyard quickly faltered once he strode onto the driveway, a place where striding ought not to be done on a wet morning. Pools of water fought to gather around peaks and troughs of grass at the verge of the track, and Benjamin would have thoroughly whined and moaned at the conditions had he not been met with the similar appearance of Derek and Herbert as he approached them, all three seeming to have forgotten what had driven them this far. The driveway ahead dropped down a little to a gate opposite the small back road that met their drive. Past the gate, a hill loomed before them that had no discernible track to speak of. Herbert jumped up to the top bar of aluminium, feet swamped and dripping, a poor-quality dye-and-weave jacket pulled over his jumper. Sitting in his chair and feeling at many angles, Derek tucked a blanket further around his legs and looked over the side of the wheelchair to inspect its new creaks and shudders. Leaning his forearms onto the top bar of the gate, Benjamin squinted to the top of the hill before them.

‘That’s a long f*****g way with a wheelchair,’ he said, still looking up.

Herbert looked at him and then craned his head around to check for himself. He was craning further and further when his left hand slipped on the wet aluminium bar and he went crashing head first into the field. The quick volley of concerns from Derek and Benjamin were drowned by groaning and Herbert’s own volley of cuss words in return. He sloshed about and finally reached for the gate and pulled himself up.

‘Are you quite finished?’ asked Derek, looking between the bars at him.

Herbert began to wipe away at the cold, wet clods of earth that clung to his jacket and everywhere else. Mania set in his eyes and he looked back at his uncle.

‘f**k it,’ he told Derek. ‘In for a penny, in for a pound . . . Right, ramblers at the ready?’ His filthy fingers grabbed at the gate and pulled it open to welcome them into the field. ‘No locks on gates, I love Wales,’ he added with a smile.

Benjamin cautiously stepped behind Derek and inched his wheelchair into the field. The small front wheels of Derek’s chair ploughed into the sodden earth then, and Herbert launched himself forward to catch Derek before he was posted into the hillside. They both fell back into the chair, and for a moment, Herbert felt his face and breath mesh within the curtain of his uncle’s beard.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked from within Derek’s chest.

‘I think so. I’m covered in scraps of your filth but otherwise . . .’

‘I’m sorry but I had to act quickly. When in Rome . . .’

‘We’re in Wales, Herbert, but I see the point,’ Benjamin said and began to paw at the tiredness around his neck and shoulders.

Derek shuffled into relative comfort and thought to himself that it wasn’t so much that he had let slip the dignity of his life, but rather that its foundations had been pulled away entirely without his consent. Otherwise, he knew he had been in worse situations.

The three then gathered themselves together and looked up again to the top of the hill, unaware because of recent calamity that daylight was beginning to cast itself readily upon them.

Solemn and imposing had the hill been an hour ago when, urinating outside against the kitchen wall, Herbert had looked up at her: an immoveable silhouette upon the landscape. Reaching the top would be a hell of a way to come down as the sun rose, he had thought, and somehow managed to convince the other two with him that it would be a keen idea.

Now by some measure revealed the hill was grey about her seams, beaten by the weather – unsociable. Fools she would not suffer at this hour, but fools would not know this.

‘It’s got to be ninety feet up there,’ Benjamin declared as they stared from the bottom.

Herbert looked at him calmly and then to Derek. ‘I think we’ll have to take you up in reverse,’ he said. ‘Looks like more snakes than ladders up there.’

Benjamin looked back to the farmhouse. ‘Maybe we ought to leave it. It’s got to be my turn to make a cup of tea, right, Derek?’

‘Correct,’ Derek agreed. ‘Let’s see what sort of quantum-astro brew you could make for us. Can you make a tea bag go for three rounds of cups?’

‘Probably not, but I’ll put as much sugar in the cup as you like.’

Derek thought that a positive step, and Benjamin began to turn the wheelchair out of its rut and towards the gate. Herbert then reached out and grabbed at the nearest handle.

‘C’mon,’ he said with a glance back up the hill. ‘It was my idea to take Derek up this hill and I’m certain that it was a good one. I should drag him up there, though, and once you get to the top you’ll agree it was a good plan. Are you in tight, Uncle?’

‘We’ll see.’ Derek stared up the hill.

‘It’s almost light already,’ Benjamin said, in a final attempt to steer the course. It didn’t work, and Herbert was already turning the chair around and beginning to take Derek upwards.

‘Let’s manifest destiny,’ he said, looking backwards for his course. Herbert then began to pull and drag his uncle backwards up the hill in a manner somewhere between neglect and persistent caution. Even as daybreak was wrapping around them, the pair and the man in the wheelchair found drops, rocks, small gullies and other freeform natural sluices sent to mock and discomfort. Footwear that was ill-befitting the task fell begotten, drowned in mud and sodden to pulp. Benjamin had never thought before, much less wished, that a disabled man be tossed out of his chair and crashed into a hillside. Yet with every fresh plunge of his step upwards, the frayed edges and participatory elements of his mind gathered to realise the need of some catastrophic incident that would render this situation a memory; Derek crashing out of his chair largely unharmed should be enough, he imagined. Instead of that, Benjamin lost his own footing entirely and fell, wet and ruined, into the grass. Coughing and spitting up expletives, he pushed himself up on his elbows and saw Derek a few feet further up, his head rolling about in time with the rocking of his chair. Their eyes met.

‘Wet patch there, Benjamin,’ Derek told him ‘Careful.’

Herbert looked over his uncle to see what was going on and quickly fell to laughter, leaning himself on the back of the wheelchair to calm down.

‘Oh dear, Ben, you look worse than me!’ he said, catching his breath. ‘A variant of your own species no less. Well, we’re nearly there and we’re all a bit of a mess, so there’s no point in stopping now. How are you holding together, Derek?’

Derek remained silent to the question, but he put his hand up in a gesture of goodwill – or something close enough to it. Benjamin slowly pulled himself upright and wiped the sludge from his face and jacket. This accomplished, he stood silent and closed his eyes. Suddenly he laughed, and with such heart that it cleaved the final pieces of darkness away to remote shadows. When he opened his eyes again, the morning was breaking rapidly about them. Though it was grey, dampened and chill, something had ignited in Benjamin’s heart, and he strode ahead until he was standing next to the wheelchair. He applied the brakes and was quickly on his haunches, grasping at Derek’s footrests. Looking at Herbert, he prepared a great effort.

‘Yo, you ready for this?’ Benjamin yelled and lifted up the wheelchair from the front, with Herbert quickly following suit on the rear wheels before Derek went violently crashing starboard. The boys steadied themselves and did their best with Derek’s nerves and protests while he was balanced up top.

‘You’re f*****g idiots, boys! Steady!’ he cautioned before looking down to Benjamin and seeing the better side of the situation. He smiled. ‘Take me to the very top of this hill!’

Step by step, by tumble, they struggled until they had, with scant grace, as good as reached the top. Then, with a crash, they set Derek down and clutched at their knees, gasping for breath. Derek checked himself over and began to sense disquiet siphon through his bones like gravel. He did not air grievances, but took his own long breaths.

Pulling himself up, Herbert slapped Benjamin on the back and grinned. ‘Good thinking.’

Benjamin caught his breath and stood up. ‘Seemed a good one.’

‘Never ignore that, Ben.’

‘I didn’t . . . is Derek alright?’

They both turned about and rushed a few paces over to him while he was sitting in silence. Herbert went to his left and sat himself down on the sodden grass. Rifling about in his jacket, he pulled out a long joint and held it up.

‘Fancy that?’ he asked gently.

Derek looked from the joint to Herbert’s jacket pocket. ‘Got a Thermos of tea in there as well?’

‘I’ve got another one of these . . .’

‘A canny move, young man, let’s not be picky. It is as good a view as you promised, even if those are rain clouds coming across over there.’

Derek took the smoke from Herbert and set to lighting it, but the free winds of the peaks took the flame away again and again until Benjamin loomed over Derek and cupped his hands close to Derek’s mouth, taming the wind to a flicker against the flame. Still crouched low next to his uncle, Herbert gazed along the landscape. Wrought in the grey hues of morning, the rolling hilltops spread out to heathland and the whole effect seemed to wrench at his sense of space while threatening to swallow him whole; at once, he felt himself a guest to something older than civilisation, something passed to folklore only to be forgotten as myth. When he turned his head around, Herbert saw his company equally busy about the view.

‘In the heart of it here, boys,’ remarked Derek to agreeing nods.

‘That’s why I choose Cerrigydrudion,’ Herbert told them. ‘Some quiet open spaces around here . . . That’s Llandrillo that way.’ He pointed south-east. ‘Little red people are said to live underground there. Apparently some men once caught one in a sack. The little beastie was climbing through the very roots of a tree.’

‘Recently?’ asked Benjamin, staring in that direction.

‘No, no,’ batted away Herbert with a wave of his hand. ‘Time gone by . . . waters that have long passed . . . that sort of thing.’

The three continued to peer across to the peaks and valleys of mid-Wales.

Benjamin pointed roughly in the direction that Herbert had first drawn attention to. ‘And they, whoever the little people were, they lived out over that way?’ he asked.

Herbert nodded his head side to side with some uncertainty. ‘I think Llandrillo is about that way, not really my lands yet, though, so it’s a bit of a guess.’

Derek drew smoke and rolled his eyes. ‘You’re making a bloody poor show of that story, Herbert!’ he said, with some experience in the matter. He passed Herbert back the smoke so that he might elaborate further. ‘You learn to weave a story at sea, Herbert . . . Well, I did at least. But I can see from up here why Wales is so rooted in herself, and it feels similar. I can’t work out why yet, boys.’

Scratching about the beard at his chin, he thought some more on this. ‘I knew a couple who pitched up in Wales for many years. What were their names? Edith. Edith and . . . Ah, anyway, that wasn’t the point. They always said that . . . something . . . that Wales was very real in its sense of place, yet they both spoke of it in a sense that was unreal, apparent and yet elusive. Of course, there was also a lot of LSD being produced around here at that time, too. Even so, sat here now with you both, I can see what would lead them to think like that. You imagine Wales as so remote as to be insignificant, but perhaps it just doesn’t need affection or provocations from the outside.’

In the time that Derek had been speaking, the boys had noticed the wind pick up pace, and tufts of grass began to press south-east while flecks of rain fell to meet them. Derek turned towards the north and the rain began to smack about his face. He stared past it, out as far as his eyes could reach.

‘I have been to more accessible places,’ he began. ‘And seen a lot more of the sunrise at the same time, but I don’t believe I have ever felt a place more whole before . . . at least on land. It is much like the seas here.’

From far and low, the gentle throb of a tractor could be heard, and soon other engines and sounds could be picked up around the edges of the landscape. It was now close to eight o’clock on a Monday morning. Uncertainty was weaving into the winds around them, and again Benjamin set to wiping mud away from his clothing. Derek settled himself into a sustained groan and Herbert passed the joint to what he could see of Benjamin’s hand. Then, unbounded, the rain crashed down upon them, drilling itself cold and damp through their clothes and into the marrow of their bodies. The three of them had played the game of night watch, but now was the time of grey, new light. It seemed to all three that the hill wished to shake them off her spine.

‘You’ve written the weather into your plans, I hope?’ asked Derek, looking at Benjamin. ‘Not much point in being in Wales if you can’t play flying games in the wet.’

Benjamin looked back at him while Herbert took a few steps away from the pair, apparently lost in his own thoughts.

‘I don’t think it will be too much of a problem,’ Benjamin said. ‘I’m going to make the joins of the craft super tight, especially when we make the full-sized model. Plus, I hate to get wet so we’ll be belt and braces.’

‘You’re enjoying all this, then,’ Derek replied, looking up to the grey, declamatory roof of the world.

‘Yes, it’s lovely, Derek, but it shouldn’t be too much of a problem for our plans in terms of physics. Once Herbert does some dowsing and mapping, and we know where the energy lines are running around here, we can hopefully fly in some of the dense electromagnetism that’s out there. Or we end up entirely inside the vacuum that we create.’

Derek gave a quiet nod of his head, at least appearing to understand while rain smacked at his face. He continued to think on what Benjamin had told him.

‘You’re a curious one, Ben . . . but then as my friend Greasy Keith would have said, “Strangeness gets it done”. Where’s Herbert gone?’

Derek gripped the side of his chair and arched himself around, looking for his nephew.

‘Did you see that?’ Herbert’s voice sounded before he appeared from around the bend of the hill, stomping towards them.

‘See what?’ Benjamin asked.

‘Those little lights in the grass, they were there!’ Herbert pointed some twenty feet to the left of Derek. ‘They zipped away just after I saw them, sort of pirouetting through the grass down that way.’

‘Perhaps that’s the way down?’ wondered Derek.

‘It might be, Derek, but . . .’ Herbert looked back over to what he thought he’d seen. ‘You didn’t see that, either of you?’

‘No,’ they both said.

‘No?’

‘No,’ Benjamin said again, hoping to lay the matter to rest.

‘That definitely just happened,’ said Herbert, hoping to give the matter another shot.

‘Well, that puts it rationally,’ Benjamin told him. ‘Shall we get down from here?’

Herbert stood in disbelief and continued to point where the lights had led him, where he’d lost sight of them. After another couple of seconds, he looked away, though his finger continued to point until, saturated with defeat, he dropped his arm and placed his palms together.

‘Bendith y mamau.’ He spoke in a quiet tone before turning away and scanning the route that had brought them uphill. It looked exposed and sodden all the way down.

‘We’re going to have to run you down this hill, Derek,’ Herbert declared calmly.

‘What?’ Derek said and stared up at his nephew. ‘No, let’s be cautious and remember it’s wetter than when we came up. Take me down backwards and very slowly. Then you can get me some tea and put me to bed.’

‘Fair enough, Uncle,’ Herbert said, but his words frayed at the end and he turned his head to look straight at Benjamin, his eyes filled with danger and mischief. He pulled a fearsomely broad grin that, in a flash, was gone.

‘See you at the bottom in my blue suede shoes,’ Herbert said and pushed Derek over the side of the hill, holding on to the handles and going with him.

Immediately, the wheelchair gained considerable speed and Herbert fought for control, grasping to hold on while screaming and thrashing for breath amongst the rain. His legs began to lunge wildly in all directions, panicked feet stomping and slipping away beneath and behind him. Further and faster they whipped, snapping like a young wyrm clutching at flight. Herbert’s scream turned to a wail as they tore through furrow and mound and then made for a final steep drop towards the gate, which hit a sudden small rise that sent Herbert, Derek and the wheelchair flying.

Benjamin took off after them, slipping unbearably before he stopped and trudged downwards at a thorough pace to the bottom, where he saw Derek was back in his chair. Between gulps of air, he and Herbert were laughing with the cries of those lucky enough to tempt fate and bewitch her en route. Herbert was an iridescent blend of filth and drench, his hands on the armrests of the wheelchair and the rest of him largely collapsed onto Derek’s right shoulder. Their heads knocked and Derek clasped Herbert’s in his hands, making stuttered sounds of laughter before he stared into his nephew’s eyes.

‘You’re a silly f*****g bastard, aren’t you?’

‘Well, I have a go,’ Herbert told him, with a burnt glow around his broken smile.

Derek tapped at the side of Herbert’s head with his finger and saw Benjamin on the approach. ‘Can’t find any sense in there, Ben!’ he said, with another tap.

Finally reaching them, Benjamin shook his head then stooped to check that Derek and the chair were in one piece before standing back upright and staring at Herbert.

‘I cannot f*****g believe you just got away with that.’

‘Manifest destiny,’ Herbert assured him. ‘Well . . . two parts manifest to the one-part descent.’

‘Just the one-part descent. Interesting.’

‘And who says that I got away with it?’ asked Derek, casting an eye over his rattled and beleaguered body. ‘When we get back inside, and after I’ve had a cup of tea and some hibernation . . . after that, when I wake up, then we’ll know if I got away with that. Let’s reserve judgement and let Benjamin take me back from here.’

The three of them sloped towards the gate, which Herbert then yanked open. As he was pulling Derek through in reverse, Benjamin remembered something.

‘Your sister, Herb. Does she drive a green car?’

‘She does, yes.’

‘Then that must have been her car I saw for a moment just as you were barrelling down the hill.’

‘Oh,’ Herbert said and shot a look towards the farmhouse. ‘So we didn’t get away with it . . .’