Summer's Last Retreat

patience.

Chapter One

Olwen pushed the almost empty cart up the steep hill, past the row of small cottages that stood at right angles to the seashore and grunted as the wheels stuck against a large pebble. She slithered in her soft leather shoes as she manoeuvred the cart’s wheels until she could continue, her groans an accompaniment to the squeaking of the cart.

She was small and very thin, her knees looking swollen against the stick-like legs that were revealed as she bent about her task, but there was no look of sickness to account for her waif-like thinness. Her blue eyes, large and with a hint of violet in the whites, were clear and constantly smiling. Wrinkled laughter lines already showed on the freckled and suntanned skin. She looked like a leggy seven-year-old, but was in fact approaching her fifteenth birthday.

There were fewer than a dozen small fish left to sell and she looked hopefully up at the door as she knocked on its painted surface. The door opened and before she could shout out the list of fish she had to offer, the woman shook her head and waved her away.

Olwen’s heart fell. If Mrs Baker had bought from her she would have been able to go home and wash herself free of the fishy smell that followed her like an aura and attracted the wider aura of small flies.

‘No fish tomorrow, mind,’ she shouted, ‘it’s Saturday and Dadda takes all we catch to Swansea market, remember!’ She waited hopefully for a moment but the door did not reopen and she continued slowly up the hill.

Mumbles village where Olwen and her family lived was little more than a gathering of cottages where the inhabitants made their living from the sea. The beach which she had just left at the foot of the hill formed one end of a six-mile crescent with dunes and flat ground along its length. At the other end of the crescent of sand and shingle, to the east, was the town of Swansea.

To the west of the village were steep cliffs, falling almost vertically down to jagged outcrops of rock, and small walled fields made a higgledy-piggledly pattern interspersed with narrow green lanes. In some, crops waved in the summer sun, and in others, sheep grazed contentedly on the rich grass.

Below the cliffs, narrow gullies gave the fishermen the opportunity to gather lobster and crab to add to the fish caught from the boats that went out daily from the small harbour. On days when there was no market, women and children cooked or cured what they needed for themselves and, as Olwen was doing now, tried to sell any surplus.

Olwen looked up at the sun. It was already mid-morning on a fine July day, and if she did not sell the fish soon it would be fit only for feeding to the pigs. There was always William and Dorothy Ddole of course. The wealthy Ddole House, the largest in the village, had dozens of servants and workers, and Florrie the cook usually accepted anything she had to offer. But it was such a long walk and the weather was becoming so hot.

A thin stream of water ran down the side of the lane and she gathered some in her small hands and poured it over the fish to make them look less dry and glassy-eyed, then continued upwards, calling,

‘Fresh fish, last few to sell cheap. Fish to sell cheap,’ until at last a door opened and a woman emerged, taking her purse from the pouch at her waist. She beckoned to Olwen with a scolding look on her face.

‘There’s a disgrace, your mother sending you out on such a hot day to sell fish for her! What’s she doing that she has to make you push that heavy cart? It’s work for a grown woman and there’s you hardly more than a baby!’

‘Going on fifteen I am,’ Olwen said, stretching herself up to look taller. ‘And Mam didn’t make me. It’s just that she can’t come herself, she’s going to have our new baby soon and the fish would have gone to waste. A-w-ful wicked that would be, the vicar was saying that only last Sunday in his sermon. Now, will you buy the lot for a penny, Mrs Powell?’

‘A ha’penny. I saw you trying to hide their staleness with water, my girl.’

‘All right then, a ha’penny, but Mam won’t be very pleased with me.’

‘And an extra farthing for your cheek,’ Mrs Powell laughed as she counted out the coins into the grubby hand. Olwen pocketed the money and with the cart rolling ahead of her, she ran back down the lane shouting back her thanks.

She took the cart to the beach intending to wash it in the tide before pushing it home, but instead, leaving it behind a clump of wild spinach, she went to where a crowd was gathered around Kenneth-the-Post who was sitting discussing all he had learnt on his journey around Gower. He was the Letter Carrier for Mumbles and Gower and on Fridays, his day off, he habitually sat on the bank outside his house, smoked a clay pipe, which others filled for him, and allowed neighbours to ask about distant friends and exchange local gossip.

Olwen approached the group but she had eyes only for Barrass. She watched his eyes, waiting for him to see her and smile. He was standing near the cottage, already at eighteen a tall young man but odd-looking with his ill-fitting linen shirt, baggy, half-rolled trousers, and bare feet. His appearance was further impaired by his shaved head and the patches of angry spots around his head and neck and on the exposed part of his legs. He was strongly built, with the gleam of intelligence in his dark brown eyes, but although many people spoke to him in a friendly way, he stood alone.

Olwen called to him and clambered across the springy turf to stand beside him. She was rewarded with a smile.

‘What have you been doing – as if I can’t guess,’ he smiled. ‘Smell the fish before you come into sight I can.’

The other young people, standing apart from him but near enough to hear, all wrinkled their noses in exaggerated dismay and she butted a few of them with her fair head before Barrass held her still, which was what she had hoped for. There was a wonderfully safe and contented feeling when Barrass held her, even if her mother did constantly warn her about standing too close to him. The fact that she defied the warnings gave her a certain notoriety and importance within the group of friends. She smiled around at the circle of faces and hugged Barrass even tighter.

She dreamed of him being her special friend, although, as she was three years younger and looked half her age that was unlikely. Still, he didn’t tease her too much and he rarely ignored her, and for the moment that was enough. His strange appearance troubled her not at all. She looked into his eyes and saw the person, the outside trappings becoming unimportant, invisible, the reason for them forgotten – until she was harshly reminded of them.

Kenneth-the-Post sat puffing on the long white pipe, looking important in spite of his lack of height. He wore the red waistcoat and tall black hat that was the unofficial uniform of the King’s Letter Carriers, even on this day when he had no official duties apart from entering in his books any letters that were handed in for forwarding to Swansea sorting office. The horn which he blew to announce his arrival at the places where he stopped was at his side, a badge of his calling and a boost to his ego. The Letter Carrier was an important man in the small village where he lived and he never missed an opportunity to display his position.

‘An ale if you please, Ceinwen,’ he said to his wife, sharing a look of superiority among his admirers like an actor on a stage, ‘then I will rest ready for my early start in the morning.’

Ceinwen, his plump, dull-looking wife who had been leaning out of the window of the white cottage listening to the chatter, disappeared inside to reappear in the doorway with a foaming pewter mug in her hand, a bored look in her brown eyes.

‘Can I come with you tomorrow?’ Barrass asked him. The young man stepped towards Kenneth as he asked the question and the crowd leaned away from him, some running with exaggerated fear and giggling at each other in shared amusement.

Barrass appeared not to notice and he looked at Kenneth, his eyes liquid and pleading as he willed the older man to agree. ‘I have no work to do for Pitcher at the alehouse until the evening. I’ll carry your bag for you.’

‘You know I can’t do that, boy!’ Kenneth looked pompously outraged at the idea. ‘I alone have responsibility for that bag and its contents, you know that! But, all right, you can come. I’ll be glad of your company for part of the way. I have two letters for the Reverend Benjamin Hill, Rector of Rhosili, and it’s a long way. But keep your distance, mind!’

When Kenneth stood and bade goodbye to his audience, Barrass rejoined Olwen.

‘Where have you left the cart?’ he asked. ‘Would you like me to push it up the cliff path for you?’

‘No, I’ll leave it by Dadda’s boat, it’ll be safe enough there, but you can help me scrub it,’ she said, and taking hold of his strong arm near the frayed end of his too short sleeve, she pulled him towards the beach while he mockingly laughed at her puny strength.

Together they washed the wooden cart, scrubbing it with bunches of the reeds that grew around the earthen path, then she filled her arms with the rich green sea spinach for the family’s evening meal and set off home, parting from the tall, peculiar-looking boy with undisguised regret.

The cottage where she lived with her parents, Peter – known to all as Spider – and Mary, and her brother Dan, was high on the cliffs above the beach and the village that huddled around it. Built of hardened, firmly pressed earth, it had been whitewashed at the beginning of every summer for many years and was a dazzling sight in the afternoon sun as she approached it. Spider was in the yard and she called as she ran towards him, chattering almost as soon as she was within hearing.

‘All the fish is sold’ she shouted, ‘and I’ve brought spinach for Mam to cook for tonight. Can I have a farthing for a bit of ribbon for my hair?’

Her father stood up, tall and unbelievably thin, and shaded his eyes.

‘Damn me, girl. I don’t know where you get the strength from that little body of yours to make such a row! Hush for the sake of the people within the five miles that can hear you!’

‘Food will shut me up, Dadda. Will we cook the spinach for supper? Has the baby come yet?’

Spider held out his long arms and lifted her up to hold her high against his chest.

‘Come you and see.’ He bent his head and lowered her carefully as they entered the small, dark room which was insulated from the sun by walls two feet thick and tiny windows covered with curtains of sacking tied back with cheerful ribbons.

‘Mam?’ Olwen whispered fearfully, the mysteries of child-birth making her tremble and cling more tightly to her father. He carried her up the ladder set on a bank of earth against the back wall that took them up to the two small bedrooms, one of which was divided with a curtain and shared by Olwen and Dan.

Her mother lay on the bed on the floor near the small window. Her face, half hidden by shadows, looked tired and old, and Olwen felt fear tighten in her stomach. Then her mother’s eyes lit up and her face widened into a smile, and Olwen slid down from her father’s arms as the bed covers were lowered and the head of her new brother was revealed.

She stared down, marvelling at the perfection of the tiny being.

‘What will we call him, Mam?’

‘How d’you know it’s a boy?’ Peter laughed.

‘Granny Hughes told Mam it would be a brother for me.’

‘She was right, and we thought to call him Dic.’

Olwen savoured the name for a moment, frowning in concentration.

‘Yes, baby Dic. That will do fine. Where will he sleep? Will he come in with me or share with Dan?’ Olwen asked. ‘It’s a bit of a squash for us isn’t it?’

‘Always room for another cariad,’ her mother replied.

‘Then if there’s always room for another, couldn’t we ask Barrass to live with us until he finds a place?’ Olwen poured the words out, knowing it was the wrong time but unable to wait. ‘He’s been thrown out by Mrs Baker after only two weeks. Sleeping under a pile of old wood he is.’

‘You know we can’t, Olwen,’ her father said patiently. ‘He’s never free of fleas and your mother wouldn’t like the house overrun, now would she?’

‘I’ll scrub him myself, Mam, honest. I’ll go over every inch of him I will. I promise.’

‘No, Olwen. Until Barrass manages to stay free of those things he won’t find a place with any decent family, nice as the boy is,’ he added as Olwen began to pout. ‘Fond of him we are, and sorry indeed for his predicament, but we can’t give him a home.’

Olwen couldn’t sleep that night – partly because of the heat close under the thatched roof, and also because of the tiny baby, mewing occasionally, in her mother’s bed. It was an exciting thought, having a new brother to look after, and she gave up all attempts to sleep. Dressing quickly she went stealthily down the ladder and out of the house. She would sit on the cliffs and look down at the sea and think about Dic – and Barrass.

The sea was so smooth she imagined she could walk across its dark blue surface all the way to the distant coastline of Devon, seen so often and looking so temptingly near. The fishing boats went across there often, she knew that, and had listened with envy to tales told by her father and Dan, and all the other men who earned their living from the sea. One day she too would leave the Village and travel to new places. For a while she daydreamed about setting off with Barrass carrying their possessions on his broad back to seek what adventures they could. Oh, if only her body would grow, so that such dreams were not so ridiculous.

There was a quarter moon and its strange light did little to display the scene. Gradually her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness and she could make out the rocks around her and the shape of the cottage behind her, only the thin edge of the thatch caught by the moon’s glow, a black silhouette huddled against black trees and bushes in contrast to the lighter sky.

She lay back on the cool grass and thought about baby Dic and wondered if he too would be small like the rest of the family. He might be very tall, like her father and Dan, but without flesh on his bones to fill him out. Her brother Gareth, who had died while serving as a soldier, had also been thin, but not very tall. What chance had she of ever becoming rounded and shapely? She took in a deep breath and blew it out noisily in a sigh.

How she longed to grow tall and womanly like Blodwen, the daughter of Ivor-the-Builder, who she frequently caught Barrass staring at with an adoring light in his eyes. Blodwen had always looked grown up and womanly, while she, Olwen-the-Fish still remained a child. Skinny legs that refused to show any curves, a body so thin she was often mistaken for a boy. Even the fringe of her hair was scrappy and uneven where she had tried to fashion it into curls and burnt it off with an over-hot poker. The rest of her fair hair was long and straight, but that did not seem to make any difference to her boyish appearance. She thought: Small, thin and looking so young, how am I ever going to make Barrass notice me?

A chill breeze disturbed the grasses around her and she was about to return to the house and her warm bed when she heard feet scuffling through the long grass behind her. She tensed, wanting to move but held by fear. Perhaps she would not be noticed if she kept very still – her frightened mind spared time to think that there was some consolation in being so small. The footsteps came closer and stopped, not far from where she sat trying to sink into the grasses and wild flowers. She held her breath, then a voice she knew said,

‘Olwen. What are you doing out so late?‘

‘Early more like, Barrass,’ she said, her voice trembling with relief. ‘There’s glad I am it’s you. I thought it might be robbers.‘

‘And what would you have to steal?’ He slithered down beside her and stared out across the glassy sea. There were still no white wave-edges to be seen in the milky darkness, the waves, even with the rising morning breeze, hardly making a sound as they touched and then left the rocks below them, the tide gently reaching fullness.

She remembered her news and hugged his arm. ‘Barrass, I have a new baby brother and his name is Dic! What d’you think of that, then?’

‘Good news. Will you give your mother my best wishes? When it’s light I’ll gather some flowers for her.’

‘Pity it’s not a sister, mind,’ Olwen sighed. ‘It would be nice to boss a sister around. A brother will ignore me after a while and—’

‘Hush!’ He put a hand on her mouth to stop her chatter and they both sat straining their ears until the sound of a small boat, oars lightly touching the surface of the calm sea, reached them. Olwen nodded to tell him she understood and he removed his hand. They sat looking into the pearly light of the incipient dawn until their eyes gradually made out a small fleet of boats, shipping their oars as they reached the rocky cove below them.

‘Can we move closer to see?’ she whispered close to his ear.

‘No! It’s far too dangerous! Foolish girl!’

‘Please, Barrass. I can be so quiet I make a fish sound like a fairground, honest.’

He rose to a crouch and held out a hand for her to go with him. She kissed his fingers in silent thanks and he stifled a laugh. What a funny little thing she was.

They walked cautiously, stepping on tilted, pointed toes through the swathes of tall grasses, hardly disturbing them and making very little sound. Gradually they moved lower, avoiding the clearly defined paths and instead, pushing gently past bushes, along narrow animal tracks until they could look down on the cove that was a beach only for the lowest hour of the tide.

‘Not a sound, not a movement now, or we’re dead,’ he whispered in her ear.

She pulled his hairless head close to her and whispered back, ‘And cover your head then, or we’ll be spotted for sure. There’ll be too many moons in the sky!’

Again he stifled a laugh. But he took a battered old hat from his pocket and pulled it over his shining head.

They watched the scene below them and marvelled at the efficiency of the men involved. Small boats were emptied and rowed silently away, while others were dragged to the side of the rocky plateau and held securely by ropes wound round a rock by brawny arms. Already there was a procession of men and donkeys making their way across the cliffs and heading inland with heavy loads. One of the men walking to and from the boats was exceptionally tall. Both knew it was Spider, but neither mentioned the fact. Olwen knew that, unlike the rest of the villagers, Barrass did not believe that those who could avoid paying revenue to the king should do so. It was the only thing about which they disagreed.

An hour passed and they lost count of the number of journeys made from the now faintly discernible ship outside the bay. They could only guess at the cargoes being illegally landed, and did not move until birdsong was the only sound disturbing the dawn.

‘A lot of them were strangers to me,’ Olwen remarked. ‘Do you think one of them might be your father, Barrass?’

‘Who knows? But I doubt it. He wouldn’t be involved in anything that broke the king’s law.’

‘Oh Barrass, bringing in a few packets of tea and some tobacco isn’t serious. We all buy things from the smugglers that we couldn’t otherwise afford. Mam and Dadda aren’t lawbreakers.’

‘I don’t know very much about my father, only the little my mother told me before she died, but I do know he carried the King’s Mail. Imagine that, Olwen, being responsible for carrying letters for King George III! Whoever he was, my father wouldn’t have done anything to risk losing that trusted and honourable role. I want to follow him one day, so I too have to avoid anything less than legal. Tall, broad of the shoulders and very strong he was, and so noble and honest. Head and shoulders above other men, and people looked up to him because of his admirable example as well as his exceptional height.’

Olwen knew his fine eyes would be glowing, as they always did when he spoke of the father he had never known. He had moved closer to her as the need for quiet was still imperative, with watchers on the cliffs likely to stay until the processions of men and donkeys had gone from the area. She snuggled against him, wishing the moment could go on for ever, not wanting to talk, content for once to listen, knowing that talking about the mysterious man who had fathered him would keep him with her longer than anything else.

When he left her, she did not go back to the house. The events of the night and the thrill of sharing them with Barrass had sent all possibility of sleep from her. She sat with her arms around her knees, continuing to watch the sea changing colour as the sun rose and the day began. Then gradually she became aware that her fingers were busy in her hair and on her back, and that something was tickling her in unexpected places, and she sighed.

Once again she regretted her defiance of the unwritten rule not to stand too close to Barrass. Without a doubt she had caught some of Barrass’s army of fleas. That meant a scrub – and a clout from Mam. Still, it had been worth it. Glowing with happiness, remembering the feel of his body curled close to hers, she stretched, yawned and prepared to leave the area of flattened grass where they had sat and talked like the friends they were.

One day, she promised herself, they would be much, much more. The few hours she had spent with Barrass were hers to be savoured over and over again, long after the sting of the clouting had been forgotten. Sighing again, this time with the accompaniment of a smile, she stood and wandered back home for a few hours’ sleep.

It was a Saturday and Spider needed Olwen to help him take the fish to market and sell his catch. She had hardly reached her bed, it seemed, when he shook her and told her it was time to rise. The morning was warm and she could see from the sun that he had allowed her to sleep well past her usual time.

Spider had put down nightlines and with the falling tide, he had walked along the shore with Dan, gathering in the lines and the fish they had caught, and now had the catch loaded ready for the walk into Swansea Market. When Olwen stepped out into the sun she saw her brother staggering back with a basket filled with mackerel caught from the boat just outside the bay. The silver and black fish gleamed in the early morning sun, their beauty not yet fading.

Loading their fish on the pannier baskets of a borrowed pony, along with one of the blankets Mary had made on her tall loom, they all set off across the sands, heading for St Helens where they would leave the sands and walk the further mile into the town’s market, at Island House in Wind Street. They had to hurry, both because of the tide already on the turn and because the first to arrive made the best sales; they were already late due to the time of the tide and the recovery of the nightlines.

The market was on three sides of Island House, whose overhanging roof, supported by wooden pillars, formed a veranda that gave shelter to the butchers already stripping the carcasses hung on hooks above their wooden chopping tables. Local farmers shouted against each other, all insisting that their eggs were still warm from the hens, their cheeses and butter the most tasty in the whole kingdom, and that their root vegetables were still crying their earth tears at being pulled from their beds.

Olwen loved the market with the hordes of people all either looking for a bargain or trying to convince others that they offered one. Performers fooled around the shoppers, depending on the good humour of the day to persuade a few coins from limited pockets, and music vied with the shouts of the vendors to the same aim. The smells were a symphony of such variety that Olwen gave up trying to recognize any individually, accepting the whole as The Smell of the Market.

She begged a penny from her father and bought herself a drink of lemonade from a stall, smiling at the notice displayed by the man selling pure and health-giving mineral water, warning customers who sent servants for their supplies to demand a receipt, ‘for they might be tempted to fill up your containers elsewhere and pocket your money and bring you an inferior product’.

In spite of their late arrival, the fish was quickly sold and they prepared to walk back, this time overland, the road turning inland at St Helens to pass through Sketty and, crossing the Clyne stream at Rhyd-y-Defaid, Sheep’s Crossing. They were all a little reluctant to go; there was still plenty to see and the crowds were in a good humour, some dancing accompanied by an old gypsy with a fiddle who had been playing for most of the day without any sign of tiring.

Olwen turned and saw that Spider and Dan were already moving off. Clicking to the pony, she hurried after them.

On the following day she found herself in Swansea again. Emma Palmer, whose husband Pitcher owned and ran the alehouse close to the shore, wanted a message taken to their twin daughters’ school, and Olwen offered to go. There was little to do and the prospect of a trip into the town was too tempting to refuse. She looked for Barrass, then Arthur, Pitcher’s fourteen-year-old pot-boy, to go with her but could find neither, so she went alone.

The message delivered and the reply pushed safely into her deep pocket, she wandered around the houses, absorbing the sights, so different from the usual market-day hubbub. It was after six when she saw the post-boy, his horn raised ready to blow and announce his arrival with the ‘Swanzey Bag’. Olwen stared at him, as Barrass and his quest for his post-carrying father made the man of more than usual interest.

The man was quite old, grey hairs falling about his shoulders from under his hat like a collar of dirty lace. She stared at the dust-covered features, wondering if this was the man for whom Barrass was searching, whether this long-nosed, wild-eyed and drab individual was the father Barrass dreamed of finding. He looked so unlike the sturdy, dark-eyed Barrass that she doubted it.

Then she squeezed her eyes tightly shut and tried to see her father as the boy he had once been, comparing his face with Dan’s. Spider and Dan both had brown hair and a serious expression that belied their sense of fun. But would she recognize Spider as the father of Dan if she had never seen him before? She shrugged and gave up the puzzle. How could anyone see in a complete stranger something to tell them he was their long-lost father?

‘There goes Ben Gammon,’ Olwen heard someone say. ‘Been travelling the same route for almost thirty years and hardly missed a day.’

Ben Gammon heard the remark and called out, ‘Thirty-six year no less and, I says to myself – why, I hopes to go on for a few more yet.’ He grinned as be slowed his horse to walk through the crowded street, blowing a kiss or giving a nod to faces he recognized, like a royal procession, aware of his importance. Olwen, intending to tell Barrass about him, stared at the man, determined to take in every detail.

Ben Gammon’s eyes were bright in the dust-rimed face but they were blue, not the deep brown she would expect Barrass’s father to have. The skin on his face was loose and flabby and he slouched as he rode past to the sorting office. He was dusty and brown as the end of a hot, dry summer, and the only thing that shone was the horn tucked in his belt. From Barrass’s description she doubted if this was the man, but she would tell him anyway; best to humour him, she thought, copying a constantly repeated remark of her mother’s.

She turned her face towards the sun and headed for home, her thoughts dwelling on the news she had for Barrass. She was very tired, having walked twelve miles two days in succession, but as soon as she had helped to prepare the evening meal, she went to find him.

Barrass was sitting near a small fire over which he was baking a couple of fish. Wrapped in mud and green leaves they were beginning to send out a delicious smell. Behind him, set against a tree jutting out of a steep bank, was a precarious-looking lean-to. Made mostly of timbers gathered from the beach below, it seemed likely to collapse at the first strong breeze. She sat beside him, chattering non-stop as usual.

She told him at once of the arrival of Ben Gammon, and described him.

‘Dirty you wouldn’t believe! Hardly an inch of him clean enough to see if he was a man or one of those monkeys we saw at last year’s fair!’

‘And you think a man like a monkey could be my father?’ In mock anger he rolled her over and over on the summer grass until she warned him that his fish would burn, to be free of his tickling.

‘What do you remember about your father, Barrass?’ she asked. ‘Really remember.’

‘Nothing, I suppose, although the stories my mother told and which were repeated by others to entertain me when I was small are so real I know I’ll recognize him when we meet. He was taller than most men, and broader. Upright in behaviour too,’ he assured her with utmost faith and conviction. ‘He had large, brown, soulful eyes. Too much red hair, not bright red mind, more with a hint of red, like some fine polished wood. That much my mother told me.’

‘That man I saw today, his hair was grey so there’s no telling what it might have been once. Oh, Barrass, how can you hope to ever find him after such a long time? Sixteen years, longer than I’ve been alive.’

‘I just know that I’ll find him.’ He spoke quietly and Olwen did not argue. Everyone was entitled to their dream.

‘Shall we go down to the beach to cool our feet after this?’ she asked as he carefully unwrapped the food and began to share it between them.

‘No, I have someone to see,’ he said, and no matter how she pleaded, he refused to tell her where he was going.

‘I don’t care. And that fish was not as good as if I’d cooked it!’ She glared at him and ran off.

She didn’t go home but waited until he had washed his hands, face and prickling bald head under a small stream sprouting from the rocks close by and set off for the village, then she followed him.

Barrass had something to be proud of. For several weeks he had been building himself a home. A derelict stone barn, used occasionally by sheep sheltering from a storm, had become, after several weeks of work, a rainproof dwelling. A piece of tarpaulin given to him by a sailor had become the roof, and the walls, shored up with baulks of timber dragged up from the beach, were whitewashed and clean. Local people, while refusing to invite him into their clean homes because of his fleas, were willing to help in any other way they could, and he had been given oddments of unwanted furniture. He already had a table, a straw-filled cushion on which to sit, a jug and plates and a cup from which to drink. He had made a hearth for his fire and a wooden platform for his most precious possession, his feather-filled mattress.

Before she had become too ill to work, his mother, whom he only vaguely remembered, had worked on farms, doing seasonal work throughout the year, travelling great distances to find fresh employment as one season’s work finished.

At the last place where she had been able to earn a few shillings to keep them in food, she had been given a few pieces of ticking, which she had patiently sewn together. With Barrass helping her, she had filled it with feathers and down gathered from the farmyard ducks, geese and hens. It was this, his only possession, that Barrass had managed to drag from one home to another as he was passed around the village by people willing, then unwilling, to feed and clothe him.

The cause of his constant moves had always been his fleas. No one at any time associated the problem with his mattress. Or if they had, they were unwilling to take from him the one thing he had to remind him of a mother who had died before he was two years old.

He had been shaved of his hair at an early age, the dark curls dropping around him as he sat, frightened and unable to complain, utterly dependent on the perpetrators. His clothes had been burnt on more occasions than he could count in attempts to solve the problem, and he had been given an odd assortment of both boys’ and girls’ clothes to cover himself.

All through the summer, when he had been living with a family on the estate of William and Dorothy Ddole, he had worn nothing but a girl’s dress that was short and hid very little of what showed the incongruity of the pretty pink, lace-trimmed garment. This had led to the nickname Bare Arse, which had gradually become Barrass, the name by which everyone knew him. His real name had been forgotten years ago and Barrass he remained. The fleas remained also.

On the day Olwen followed him, he went to the house of Ivor Baker the builder and his wife Winifred, and asked to see their daughter Blodwen. She came out and leaned against the door post, looking at him with utter disdain.

‘What do you want?’ she asked.

‘I have something to show you. Will you come and see?’

Without answering him, she closed the door and watched from a window to see how patiently he would wait for her. Then, when she thought she had tormented him enough, she wrapped a black shawl around her shoulders and stepped out to join him.

‘Keep your distance, mind,’ she warned. ‘Fleas I can do without.’

He walked ahead of her, smiling his delight that she had agreed to come, leading her up to the top of the cliffs by a path through the steep woodland where a stream filtered through rocky ground and wild flowers abounded, fed by water, nurtured by the rich leafy soil and the sun that found its way through the parasol of leaves. Birds sang all around them, quieter now that summer was well under way, but rich still with the melodious blackbirds and thrushes who nested within the rarely visited wood.

‘Lovely isn’t it, Blodwen?’ Barrass called back, but she only complained,

‘What d’you think I am, a goat? Fancy making me walk through this steep wilderness. I’m almost persuaded to turn and walk back down!’ She stopped for a rest and looked back at the slope behind her. But curiosity urged her on.

‘Not much further,’ Barrass promised, and he offered his hand to help her up the last few yards.

‘Move away,’ she said rudely. ‘I can manage without you touching me.’ She flinched slightly at the look of embarrassment that crossed his face. But it’s best he keeps his place, she thought. She didn’t want anyone to think she was a friend of the homeless, flea-ridden orphan! Why she had come was a mystery to her. She usually avoided him and, apart from an opportunity for rudeness and a giggle with her friends, ignored him completely. What could he have that would interest her?

Barrass took her through a field that had been cut for hay, and on to where the barn stood, near the edge of the cliffs looking down on the one- and two-masted boats that lay at anchor along the shore.

‘I have a home of my own now,’ he