How Gwydion Ellis came to be Born MP3
Read by David Mildon
The moon plays moth-like on the water. Three peaks on three sides hold the lake, high above the distant sea. It is quiet, bottomless and black. It is dark. At the unsheltered edge the water spills gently down through the sedges. It gathers between the folds of the mountain and begins to move towards the trees. It falls under and between them and when it beats against the rocks, the moon is there with it. It races downwards past the Williams farm, the Davies farm, past Yr Hafod until it reaches the village where it grumbles under the old bridge and away.
It is late and the fire has been allowed to die. The other seats are all empty and beer mats are drowning in the spillages on the table-tops. On the ceiling above, kettles and tankards hang from the beams like sad, brass fruit. Across from the men, the landlord of The Red Lion fills his glass. He wears a short-sleeved shirt and a tie that falls far short of his waist. He is bald and neck-less. Two eyes like spiders’ nests look up from his drink and across to the two men. The fridges hum behind him and the bottles glow under a cold light.
‘No really,’ says the first man. ‘It’s just so deep that lake up there and these cave divers are mental.’
‘And one of the divers got the bends?’ the second man asks.
‘Yeah, he had to be airlifted to hospital.’
‘Rubbish.’
‘Seriously.’
The two men stop talking and watch as the door in the far wall begins to tremble. Something heavy is coming down the stairs from the kitchen above. The thumping grows louder and the door swings open, shuddering as it strikes against a nearby table. The doorway is filled with the vast and heaving bulk of an enormous youth. He wears a stained and shabby apron the size of a bed sheet. His chunky white arms are wrapped around a large tub of what smells like old and overused frying-oil and the men watch as he waddles into the room like a bull on hind legs. His mouth is wide open as he passes the men, showing the mass of his beefy tongue behind it. The boy turns around to back through the door by the bar. There is no expression on the eyes set deep into his swollen face. The door closes behind him.
The landlord grins and comes out from behind the bar, clutching his glass as he moves towards the men. He is full of his own hospitality and knocks his hip against an empty table, a mouthful of beer leaping from his glass.
‘That’s Gwydion, that is.’ The landlord sways and smiles. ‘Works in the kitchen here. Just changing the oil in the fryers.’ He points to their boots.
‘You been up Craig Ddu today?’
‘Yes, walked the three peaks in a circle round the lake,’ says the first man.
‘Mind if I join you?’
The landlord does not wait for an answer but bends forward and gropes behind him until he finds a chair.
‘I was just talking about the lake up there,’ says the first man. ‘It’s unusual for a mountain lake to be so deep like that. Usually they’re only a few metres deep.’
‘He says some divers got the bends diving it,’ says the second man, pointing at the first.
‘They did,’ says the landlord.
‘What and they had to be airlifted to hospital?’
‘That’s right, they did.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ the second man says, drawing on his drink.
‘Why not?’ says the landlord.
‘Just rubbish isn’t it?’
‘It’s not rubbish,’ he says.
‘No, it’s not,’ says the first man. ‘It’s a good story.’
‘It’s not even a good story,’ the second man says.
‘There’s lots of good stories about the lake,’ the landlord says. ‘Two years ago they did the Craig Ddu challenge. Runners all of them, queuing up to go running round the length of the ridge and down. They do the challenge in July and we had a bright sunny day for it two years ago and three people ended up being taken away in an ambulance. They got hypothermia, in July!’
‘Well that’s not surprising,’ the second man says. ‘How many miles an hour does the wind blow up there? Your story was worse than his.’
The smile falls finally from the landlord’s face.
‘The best stories are the ones that are never told,’ the first man says.
‘You’re very philosophical after four pints of Cwrw,’ says the second man, pointing at the first man’s glass.
‘He’s right,’ says the landlord. ‘Some stories are only for certain people.’
‘You’re as bad as him,’ the second man says. ‘If you can’t tell a story then you haven’t got a story.’
‘All right, you want a good story do you?’ says the landlord. ‘I can tell you a good story.’
‘Is it true?’ the second man asks doubtfully.
‘Yeah, it’s true. I was there.’
‘Go on then,’ says the first man.
The landlord looks behind him to the door that Gwydion left through, then leans closer. The smile appears again beneath his spider-nest eyes.
‘Gwydion there, who you saw come in, he’s Iain Ellis’ boy, from the Ellis farm, halfway up the path. You’ll have passed it on your way up.’
He draws his chair closer to the table.
‘Anyway, what happens is, Iain comes in here to drink like, as a regular and one day he comes in saying his wife’s had this dream. His wife right, you should’ve seen her. Like a barn door she was.’
The landlord spreads his arms out and puffs up his cheeks.
‘And she’s not only big, she’s mental, I mean completely mental and old Ellis starts telling us about this dream she’s had. Well apparently she’s dreamt that there’s an afanc in the lake on Craig Ddu!’
The men do not react.
‘An afanc: a lake monster!’
The second man shuffles in his seat.
‘And this lake monster, she’s dreamt that it’s leaving the lake at night and coming down the mountain. Well we all laughed of course and so did Ellis at first. But she kept having these dreams. More and more bonkers they were. Says the afanc is coming for them; says he’s prowling round the farm at night. Ellis ends up clouting her of course, get her to shut up but she won’t let go of this afanc thing, says it’s started sniffing at the front door. She even starts going off up Craig Ddu for hours, collecting these flowers she says will keep it away.
The landlord is in full-swing and jabs a gesture at them with each sentence.
‘Anyway, Ellis is coming in here every night now just to get away from how bonkers Mrs Ellis is. But one night he comes in here asking for her. Says she’s not at the farm, he can’t find her anywhere. No-one’s interested like ‘cos she’s so mental and he goes off again. Late on near closing time though, he’s back again, looking really worried. He says to the lads in here that Mrs Williams saw her going up the mountain earlier and he thinks she’s still up there.’
The door behind them opens and Gwydion shambles up to the bar. The landlord barks something angrily at him in Welsh. He goes behind the bar and pulls a packet of nuts from the display hanging there. The landlord grabs one of the sodden beer mats and flings it at Gwydion. It misses him but he comes out from behind the bar, leaving the way he came with his packet of nuts. The landlord continues with his story.
‘So a group of us lads gets together with Ellis and we get some torches and Davies fetches his dogs and we all go out, up the path. It was a pitch-black night it was and cold up there. We went up through the trees and onto the mountain, all calling for Mrs Ellis; shining torches and the dogs running round. All of a sudden we hear this scream, blown towards us on the wind.’
He pauses and his spider eyes move from the first man to the second and back.
‘We went on up further until we could see the lake in the distance and we hear more of these screams so we get closer. Suddenly Davies calls out that he’s found her and we all come over. Well, she’s lying there against this big boulder by the lake screaming. Horrible it was, looking at her and hearing her. Then Davies shouts “Christ, she’s having a baby!”’ We all crowd round and she is, she’s right in the middle of it, making a terrible noise. The woman’s screaming and pulling at her hair; pulling great tufts of it out in her hands. We can’t move her or get her off the mountain and we don’t know what to do about this baby coming, then Ellis, he gets to his knees and gets between her legs and he starts getting this baby out while she’s screaming. Ellis doesn’t know a thing about it but he knows about lambing and eventually he’s got this baby out. Huge it was, nearly split her in two, though she wasn't a small woman. Slick with blood that baby was, all black in the moonlight, and blinking out of the mess two black eyes like coals.'
The landlord slumps against the back of his chair.
‘We got her off the mountain but she died in the hospital a day or two later. Baby Gwydion, well...’
He points over his shoulder with his thumb. The men are silent.
‘What d’you think of that then boys?’
*****
It is later now and the inn is dark. The one cold light still glows behind the bar and the fridges are still humming as the landlord leaves. He steps out into the courtyard. Above him, a single orange lantern gives a feeble light. It shows the fine rain now falling gently onto him. In the distance the stream cries as it falls under the bridge. The door to the outhouse is open.
‘Gwydion?’
The landlord moves towards the open door and calls into the blackness of the outhouse.
‘Gwydion?’
He moves forward into the darkness and paws the stone wall for the light switch. He holds his other hand out in front of him. It touches something soft and clammy. He pulls his hand back but something grasps his wrist. He cries out and is shoved against the wall. He feels a great weight pressing against him and shrieks as his face is crushed against the stone.
‘You know you shouldn’t tell,’ says the voice in his ear.
The landlord grunts and bleats. He feels himself being dragged backwards and the great weight presses on him again, until his knees give way and he bends forwards. His head plunges into the drum of stinking oil. He kicks and quivers and his arms wave helplessly above him like searching antennae. The oil sloshes violently and bubbles as his breath escapes. He draws it deep into his mouth and nose. It fills his lungs and his limbs shudder. The struggling subsides and the body, now limp, is released and falls heavily to the floor. The tub of oil upturns and the liquid oozes out. It flows away from the landlord’s body, out of the open door and begins to settle in the courtyard. The door to the outhouse closes and the moon swims across the oil.
(c) Morgan Davies, 2015
Morgan Davies is a writer of fiction and lives in Mid Wales. He has recently returned home, having spent many years away. Morgan’s work is inspired by the landscape around him and its people. He has just begun working on his first novel.
David Mildon is an actor and playwright and was a founding member of Liars' League. His stories “Worms’ Feast” and “Red” were performed here and appeared in Arachne Press anthologies London Lies and Weird Lies. His play The Flood was produced at the Hope Theatre Islington and his short play Second Skin was performed at Theatre 503.
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