The Life of Rebecca Jones

by Angharad Price, Lloyd Jones

Genres: Literary Fiction; Small Town & Rural; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

In the early years of the last century, Rebecca is born into a rural community in the Maesglasau valley in Wales; her family have been working the land for a thousand years, but the changes brought about by modernity threaten the survival of her language, and her family's way of life. Rebecca's reflections on the century are delivered with haunting dignity and a simple intimacy, while her evocation of the changing seasons and a life that is so in tune with its surroundings is rich and poignant. The Life of Rebecca Jones has all the makings of a classic, fixing on a vanishing period of rural history, and the novel's final, unexpected revelation remains unforgettable and utterly moving.

Release date: March 29, 2012

Publisher: MacLehose Press

Print pages: 105

Sample

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 tranquillity? 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.

Tranquillity 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 tranquillity was the guardian of paradox.

From the moment of conception until the moment of death, tranquillity 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 tranquillity 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 tranquillity amid the ruined homesteads of Cwm Maesglasau. I have idolised 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 fulfilment of this valley’s tranquillity.

My obliteration will be its completion.

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 towards 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 mesmerising beat of hooves and the lingering smell of hawthorn. Gold and silver flowers shine from the hedge. They pass Ffridd Gulcwm without noticing the neighbours 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 towards the parlour 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. Rumour 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, towards 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 smoulders behind a shiny brass fender, filling the room with its bittersweet 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 demand. . .