“I’m not sc-” I tried again.
“No wonder he can’t wait to leave, poor thing.”
“Mair said you were from different parts,” the man replied, jumping in while Mair took a breath. “Long way from home, aren’t you?”
“London,” Mair added.
“Not London,” I countered. “Cambridge. I’m just passing through and got a bit turned around.”
“So, he’ll be on his way again soon, I hope?” he asked, staring at Mair with a look that demanded she reply with an affirmative.
“He’s getting the train to Shrewsbury on Monday,” she replied.
“And where’s he staying until then?” he asked, his voice suddenly rising in tone and volume. I was beginning to feel like they’d forgotten I was in the room.
“He can stay here,” she said, folding her arms across her chest. “We’ve got the room.”
“I don’t think so, young lady,” he bellowed back, taking a step towards us both. “Your father would die all over again, his unmarried daughter letting a strange man sleep under his roof. I’ll not have it.”
He stared at Mair as though she were a deer and he was going in for the kill shot. Not willing to be an easy target for him she burst into a tirade of Welsh, flapping her arms and spitting out words at an alarming rate. Mr Hopkin responded with significantly fewer but whatever they were they managed to bring her to silence.
“You’ll come with me, son,” he said, his voice returning to normal. “It’s not far.”
“Really, I don’t want to be any trouble,” I said, hoping my subtle protest might help to change his mind. He had been no less than polite to me but his cold and direct demeanour had left me with little desire to spend more time with him than I had to. I looked to Mair with pleading eyes hoping she had more battle in her.
“It’s ok,” Mair said as she forced out a smile, “Mrs Hopkin will see you right. She’ll have you earning your keep in no time. And she’s a far better cook than me. You’ll be fine.”
I tried to feel reassured but I had little desire to go. One look at the stern face of Mr Hopkin, however, told me there’d be no use protesting so I nodded in defeated agreement.
“I’ll come down first thing in the morning and see that you’re doing ok,” Mair continued, “and I’ll bring those wet clothes down once I’ve given them a good scrub.”
“Keep them,” I said, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to wear them without drawing attention to myself.
“Well, I’ll be down anyway to make sure you’re keeping out of trouble.”
I was tempted to give her a hug as I stood up from the armchair but I decided against it, unsure of whether or not it would be appropriate. As if reading my apprehension, she grabbed hold of me and threw her arms around my neck bringing me close to her. Mr Hopkin, perhaps unapproving of the gesture, cast his eyes away and stared at the window.
“You’ll be fine,” she whispered. “Now go on.”
With nothing to take with me other than the clothes that I was wearing and the items in my pocket, I made my way to the door. Mr Hopkin uttered something in Welsh to Mair and then followed me outside, shutting the door behind him.
The walk was mostly silent with my efforts to engage in conversation going mostly ignored apart from a few grunts and nods, so I decided instead to use the opportunity to try and get my bearings and make a mental note of the area.
When we reached the bottom of the lane I spotted the pub that I could see earlier. The sign above the door indicated that it was called The Farmers Arms which surprised me given the fact that it was in English while everyone I’d met so far preferred to speak in their native tongue.
The village itself was fairly pretty, the kind you might see on a postcard, and I was struck by just how small and secluded it was, surrounded by hills on all sides with a single road that came down one side and then up and out of the village on the other. In the centre stood a beautiful old church with a huge square tower. The crumbling stone walls that surrounded it were tall enough that I could only just see the tops of the headstones that were dotted around the churchyard. There was even a little school but it didn’t look big enough to hold many children.
Mr Hopkin had no interest in being a tour guide and kept his pace straight and quick. We hurried along the main road on the only bit of the street that seemed to have any pavement and I peered through the windows of the row of small terraced cottages, maybe eight in number, that lined the road. They all looked much the same on the inside with everything they needed seemingly piled into one small living room. My nosiness came to an abrupt end, however, when I peered through one of the windows and found an angry-looking woman staring back at me.
Two men shouted a greeting to Mr Hopkin from outside a large white building with the words ‘post office’ written on it in big black letters. He glanced over but made no effort to return their greeting, leaving me to flash a nervous smile in their direction as they stared on.
We’d caught the attention of quite a few of the locals as we walked. Some made fleeting glances while others turned their heads to watch as we went from one end of the street to the other. Perhaps it was the sight of someone new that caught their eye, or maybe Arthur had already informed the whole village that a stranger lurked among them. I couldn’t be sure, but when I offered friendly smiles to some of them I received only suspicious glances in return.
“It’s just up by there,” Mr Hopkin spoke for the first time, pointing at a little farmhouse sitting on a hill. The road we were walking along carried on beyond his property, up the hill and out of the village again, but we took a small path to the left that took us to the gate.
Throughout our walk, I’d kept anticipating that I would turn a corner onto more rows of houses and shops but it appeared I’d already seen everything there was to see. The place really was quite isolated in its own little valley and I could see why a strange face turning up would make for such exciting gossip. When there are only about a hundred people living nearby you probably become very aware of outsiders.
We approached the house and Mr Hopkin pushed through the gate, turning to hold it open for me. A sign on the post read ‘Pen Castell Far’, the ‘m’ having gone missing at some point previous to my arrival. The house was larger than the cottages in the village, though not by much, and was set amongst a patchwork of fields that stretched beyond it and up the hill. He led us around the side of the building, avoiding the front door, and came to a stop in a yard filled with outbuildings.