Happy

It was one of those bright blue summer days in August with the clean dry heat that made our Marches valley shimmer.

Mikey and Jess were staying with us – me, and Jamie, my brother - for the holidays. They were our cousins, children of our (hushed tone) unmarried aunt. She worked as a secretary in a factory at Barry, and she struggled in the long breaks - so they came to us every summer. We collected them at the end of term, making the round trip in two days in our old mint green Austin Cambridge. We’d get taken to the fun fair at Butlins, and one of us would always be sick after the toffee apples candy floss and whirling rides. On our way back, the four of us would sit in the boot, with all the luggage and our I-Spy books, spotting birds and trees, fighting over the pencil.

Mikey and Jess were younger than us, but lived in the city, and their street-smarts made them feel older. They brought cigarettes - that none of us actually smoked - and they swore, and told us where babies came from. We didn’t care, and they joined in with what we did easily enough.

Most days then, we would bike from village to village; fetching up at different houses to see our schoolmates; coming in for dinner and tea, and begging pop.

Most summers were stages for our Olympic tournaments, we didn’t wait for four years of training. We had the down- hill marathon – which was probably about a mile down a steep bank, through 5 ft ferns. Jamie told them there were adders in the undergrowth, and as the leaves were way over all our heads it was a battle of nerves as much as stamina to take the plunge.

Then there was the triathlon. I don’t know if we called it that then, but we ran and biked and swam the river. We did it in that order, because the river was nearer home and we would leave our cycles on the swingbridge, and not have too far to get back for tea if we got cold.

Jamie was taller than the rest of us, and he always won. If we were in teams, me and Jamie would always be England (or Brazil, because he had the football shirt). Mikey and Jess would always be Wales or Australia. Mikey’s dad was Australian he’d been told. Our Mam said he was a criminal, but we never met him and we weren’t allowed to speak of him. In these teams Jamie would cheat to make sure I’d come second, and rig the games to my strengths – balance and flair rather than power, so we’d have the ‘stunt bike balance’, the log walking and the mudpie beauty parade. So England (or Brazil) and Jamie always took all the golds. We had a winners ceremony too, where we made up a national anthem which we played by making farting noises with our hands under our armpits whilst Jamie stood on a tree stump conducting us.

That day, that bright blue day, we’d finished our sporting heroics, the brook was dry and the river too shallow to swim in.

We scrambled up to the Devil’s Pikestaff. The ascent was steep, rising up through a pine wood. The ground was rock and moss, and carpeted with needles, softened with moisture and decay. At the top we were always captivated by the dizzying views over the river basin, edged with forest. The Pikestaff was a tower of hard red sandstone boulders, a perfect climbing frame, but which held too much respect to be treated as a place for sport. Not twenty feet from the Pikestaff, the ground dropped almost sheer away - 200 feet at least Jamie told us. Before the most precipitous descent the cliff also yielded a series of narrow terraced ledges, with a wider outcropping below. There was space enough for all of us to lie on our bellies and peek over the rim. We hunted for old peregrine nests. We found some desiccated shells - mottled brown, and in pieces. We found strips of rabbit skins and small fragments of bones along the ledges, and we knew that they’d been here this year. We never came in spring, we knew better

Lying on the exposed stone we dropped sticks and pebbles down, and watched as they skipped and rebounded, clicking and cracking into the empty air. Then Mikey got up and stood back against the rock face.

“I’m bored.” he said “What’s over there?”.

We all turned over looked at him. He was shielding his eyes from the sun with his left hand and his right pointed down and east along the valley, where a tributary gushed out into the main river.

Jamie jumped up and slapped him on the shoulder,

“Brilliant!” he was almost laughing as he said it. “C’mon, I’ll show you”

Jamie scuttled up the ledges to the top and leaned back over stretching out his arm to haul us up.

We all followed Jamie as he ran across the woodland, jumping over roots and dead branches, trying to focus on him, to see where he went, and to watch our own steps. Once in a while he’d stop and look back to see his troops were falling in behind him, but he was always off again as soon as we caught up, so we couldn’t still our breath.

We stayed on the level at first, so the sun was dappling through the trees, blinding us with its glare in one stride, and in the next plunging us to darkness before our eyes could adjust. We were hot. It felt almost tropical now. Jamie had some pop in his bike bag, but that was left down at the stile. I was thirsty, and starting to wonder where Jamie was taking us.

Up ahead of us Jamie had stopped. We could hear a rushing sound, we recognised it as a water fall. We reached him, me next – I was used to running after Jamie – then Mikey holding Jess’s hand. It was like a postcard; the water started somewhere above us, and fell in three steps to level out in front of us. Jamie hadn’t brought me here before. He told me later he came with his friends when I stayed home. We stood looking in wonder and the chandelier of crystals flooding across the dingle, and making the rocks glisten.

Jess was the first. She ran straight across the stream and squealed and slithered to the far bank. Then she came back. Her hair was plastered against her face and her daps were sodden, but she was giggling and yelping and she dragged Mikey into the middle of the generous chute. After an age of kicking and spraying each other with the water we sank onto the fern pillows which bordered the far side of the brook. One after the other we shouted out words, engaging in naming rites to harness our feelings and the things around us. “yellow!” “’cited!” “wet!” “wetter!” – each one more hilarious to us than the last. We exhausted ourselves with laughter and hollering, and then quieted ourselves again, as slowly, one by one we got up and explored the bank. We picked up beech nuts and pine cones and threw them into the water. We skipped stones through the arcing water, and poked twigs into the rock pools forming at the limits of the stream.

Jamie was the first to get restless. Then, Jess complained she was hungry, so we picked our way back across the paths and returned to our bikes.

Mam had given us sandwiches, so we wouldn’t have to break off and go home half day. There were two types; meat paste with lettuce, and cheese and pickle. The boys undid the saddle bags and started eating almost before they’d unwrapped them from the greaseproof paper. We had Corona Dandelion and Burdock, and lemon barley water in big glass bottles with bubbles on the neck. They were warm, but revived us.

We had two sandwiches each, and we tucked in sitting on the grass in a cow field, elbow deep in buttercups. The pollen dusted us with a golden halo all over our legs and the bottoms of our shorts.

Jess left her crusts and Jamie and Mikey ate them.

The sun was still high in the sky, and we knew we could be out until it started to go down if we wanted to. Thing was, we always needed our tea before then, and it was sausages that night so Jamie wouldn’t have wanted to miss it.

“Lets go to the farm” Mikey said.

“No we can’t, anyway I want to go swimming” Jamie replied

“there’s not enough water to swim in” Jess said.

“Not in the river, somewhere much better” Jamie smiled as he said this.

“Where?” Jess eyed him with a frown

“You’ll see”

The boys packed the bottles and the paper back into their bags and we pushed our bikes back to the road. Jamie was getting excited, but then looked at us all seriously.

“If I show you this you can’t tell”

“Why not Jamie?” I asked him

“Mam wouldn’t let us come if she knew, so you better not tell, or you can’t go.”

“I won’t - promise I won’t”

We were all a bit scared because he looked so stern, but we all promised not to tell, and he softened.

“Ok, it’s a long way, so we better go now” he relented.

We all got on our bikes and started off over the lanes. There were potholes on every corner, and Jamie’s bike didn’t have very good brakes, but he’d still take them at full speed, and we didn’t want to get left behind. I’d seen him fall a lot. The first time, he’d had deep grazes all up his right side and caught his leg in a barbed wire fence, so he was bleeding and limping when he got home. He was proud of his scars, but Mam used to scold him and threaten to take his bike away unless he was more careful. She might as well have threatened to take his legs away. He took to hiding his wounds, washing off the red and purple with the sparkling river water, and threatening me with frogs and snails if I told.

We rode up slowly past Rock Farm, and the Folly with the grain silos and the smell of slurry, past Archer’s Pond and then freewheeled down Caple Tump.

Then, we started to climb again.

Jess and I had to get off after 5 minutes and push our bikes up. Mikey and Jamie had a race to see who could stay on the longest. They agreed to call it a draw when they collided. Jamie was quite impressed that Mikey had matched him.

It felt like the hill went on forever. We hadn’t reached the top or even half way when Jamie told us we’d have to leave the bikes and walk now.

“There’s nowhere to swim up here Jamie” I said. “This is where the badgers are”

Jamie smiled at me, then turned away, “all right then, go home if you don’t want to come”. I shook my head quickly and followed him.

We ditched the bikes at a gate, and broke through the bramble hedge into the bottom of a field.

To our left was a track; overgrown, full of nettles and briars. We saw Jamie looking at it. We looked at each other and down at our bare legs and daps. He searched along the hedgerow and drew out a long, thick branch fallen from one of the oaks. He snapped off some of the side shoots, put one end on the ground and placed his foot against the middle. It took some pressure but he broke it in two, and threw away the shorter half.

Wielding his scythe, he hacked and trampled a path for us to follow. It was rocky uneven and difficult ground to cover. Despite his efforts all of us got stung and scratched, but we all wanted to keep on going, driven by a desire to keep up with Jamie, and to find out what this secret was.

It was still burning hot, and there were bees and butterflies breezing up with every step. We reached the margins of a beech wood, and turned round to look where we’d come. We had climbed much further than we realised, and could just see the road where we’d left our bikes, snaking down sharply past the farms.

Jamie kept the pole with him, but he didn’t need to beat a path now. The wood was thick and dark. It was cooler, and refreshed us. We were still going up, and we were getting tired for the first time that day.

Gradually, more light was reaching us and we knew we were coming to a clearing. We’d come right though the wood and as high as we were, we’d not reached the peak. Once clear of the trees, Jamie began to run.

“it’s just over the top” he shouted back at us.

His fervour was infectious and inspired our tired limbs to move. He was ahead of us again, right at the top. Then he let out a huge whoop, and jumped high. We couldn’t see what had happened, or where he landed - but we heard it. We sped on, throwing off our lethargy.

Spread out before us, underneath the eternal indigo sky, was the lough. It was so clear, so dazzling, - a brand new colour, one I’d never seen before. We could hear only our hearts beating, the cry of a buzzard up in the heavens, and Jamie. Jamie exploded from the surface of the lough, as he shot up and threw himself back into the water. That broke all our stillness. We took hands and leapt as one. The chill took our breath, and pressed our chests to bursting, until - after thrashing and spinning, righting ourselves - we floated calm, on our backs, staring at the sky.

*

And now, I’m sitting looking out of my window, watching the clouds gather and streak the pane with angel-hair raindrops refracting the light. Even now the scents of wet hair and warm pop take me back to that day; that wild hot day. That first baptism coloured us as brilliantly as the pasture coloured Bryn Lough. Now as night, and winter, creeps to the door, that burnished memory glistens; even now.