Under The Archways

Visiting my Uncle Tom was always an occasion to remember. My earliest memories date back to when I suppose I was about four years old, I can only judge this by the fact that I was too young to get out and push the car. It was back in the late 1950's when my dad proudly brought home a dilapidated piece of junk that passed as an Austin van. I remember my mother covering her face with her flowery pinny and vowing never to get inside that 'death-trap' as she called it. Some months later we all piled into the van, my mum, dad, my two sisters and my brother, (my younger brother wouldn't join the family yet for another two years.)

The advantage of having a van was obvious, with a large family (often accompanied by various cousins) it needed space to jam us all in and when it broke down, which occurred often and frequently going uphill, the added occupants were just about able to get it to the brow of the hill. Getting back in was a different matter entirely and I often found myself squashed against the rear window, still, it did give me a wonderful view over the Dowlas mountainside. We would set out straight after breakfast, taking the valley road from N¦.. and climbing in a long twisting route over the mountains down into Bargoed where Uncle Tom lived. Nowadays the journey would be less than an hour, but that old van wouldn't go above thirty miles an hour (unless it was freewheeling down the mountainside.) So it was a full day's journey there and back.

My first view of Uncle Tom's cottage enchanted me. It was set squarely underneath the last arch of a viaduct, sadly now long gone. It reminded me then and in years to come of that old music hall song, "Underneath the Archways, which my gran loved to sing at special occasions with a few bottles of stout inside her. The cottage had a sprawling garden that rose up the side of the mountain, no good for growing things but ideal for Tom's old horse. My uncle had been a miner for many years but when his wife died he started a coal-round with part of the insurance policy from her death. I don't know what the "lady from the Prudential thought of that but it must have been a sound investment, as he never seemed to be without a bob or two to spare.

Old Rosie had plenty of room to wander about and spent the cold winter's nights in uncle's coal shed; she never seemed to mind it I guess she was used to the smell and feel of coal dust. If the outside privy had been big enough I think she may have been stabled there, Uncle Tom certainly found it comfortable enough. Although the cottage had it's own appeal, it was the viaduct that captured my imagination and got me a few good hidings from my mother. It was fenced off in a rough sort of way, but what good is that to an inquisitive child? It may have been a big dark and certainly it was damp and smelly, but what adventures could be had with a little bit of imagination?
It became a fort, a castle, a wizard's keep, even a barges tunnel when I found out one of my dad's family had steered the old coal barge's down the valley's to the docks. In short it was where my imagination first took flight.

There were other distractions; of course, uncle had a parrot that could swear like a trooper. Many a time mum tried to stop our ears up but to no avail, that parrot had heard enough over the years to put a fishwife to shame. 'Get up those !!!!!!!!!! stairs you drunken old !!!!! ' She mimicked my aunties voice to perfection. Uncle Tom was fond of relating several stories about Rosie, she could find her own way home in the blizzards that appeared seemingly out of nowhere in the Welsh mountains. He'd get up early to do his rounds and be first in the pub before the miners could wipe the coal dust off their faces. On payday he'd be out collecting his money before it disappeared down the thirsty throats of his customers and by early evening he'd be climbing drunkenly into the empty cart as Rosie hot-footed it home.
I've told that story many times over the years and still nobody believes me, but that old horse had many tricks to play on the unwary and I've no doubt the stories were true.

It broke his old heart when she died and he followed not long after, but there were still many years of adventures before me until that happened. The "archways, as I always thought of them, became the focus of the stories I started to write even before I went to school. My mother taught all her five children to read and write by the age of four, she had only a little education but her love of knowledge was fierce and she instilled it into all her children. The "archways became for me a byword for the family stories I collected and the deep love I have always felt for my country. To be "welsh is not just a nationality, it's a way of thinking and feeling that only another Welshman or woman can feel. If we exaggerate occasionally it's because words are sacred to us, the old tradition used by the druids and bards were a way of life and with a lack of proper education stories were handed down through generations.

We were lucky living in a town with a Carnegie library close at hand; I was using my older sister's library card as soon as I could wheedle it out of her. The books I read far surpassed the motley collection at my infant's school and took me to places in my imagination that I could only dream of at that time. We were solidly working-class people and expected to stay that way, but every one of us went on to grammar school and most of us now write in some fashion or another.

Unfortunately for me I was a bit of a dreamer and although my school essays always got me a lot of praise from my teachers, my mother had other ideas for me. Those stories I wrote were often a bone of contention between us and I learnt at an early age to hide them away before they ended up in the dustbin. "The Archways took on another meaning in later life, it came to stand for the things that I had to hide away in order to please my mother, who expected all her children to go to university. I suppressed the part of me that longed to become a writer and left school at sixteen against my mother's wishes to become just another pen pusher, a clerk and jack-of-all-trades, master of none. My father had little say in the matter, his education ended at the age of 13 when he, too, went down the mines. In later years we came to share the tradition of verbal communication and all those old stories venerated by generations of old Welsh families were stored away in my memory, later to emerge as fiction or poetry.

Of course it wasn't just my Uncle Tom who was slightly eccentric, I had other uncles and aunties living in the valleys and they too had tales to tell. Uncle Pete and Aunty Kate were favourites of all the family; they lived in tied accommodation and my aunty helped out at the local store so their table was always piled high with food. It was an effort to try to remember our manners, we were supposed to eat only one serving but those home-baked cakes and fresh bread with jam were just too good to pass up on a second helping. When we finished eating we were sent outside to play, but my older sister soon discovered that we had been sent off so the adults could catch up on the family gossip. She soon learnt how to eavesdrop and so we came to know about the "black sheep of the family.

On my mother's side of the family we had my Gran, who played the piano and sung dirty ditties when she thought we couldn't hear her. My great-aunt was also a real character who frequently showed off her large bloomers when dancing around the room. Through it all my mother kept her own stories to herself until much later on in life. We knew our parents had both been married before and my mum had been widowed during the 2nd world war, what I didn't find out until my mother was elderly was the sheer grinding poverty she lived through as a child and the heartache caused by losing her two first babies as well as her husband before she was 21 years of age. I tried to remember as many of the details as possible before she died and they are stored away for when I have the time to put them all in some sort of order.

It wasn't just my relative's stories I collected though; there were older neighbours and friends of both my grandparents who remembered the hardship of losing loved ones in pit accidents and during both the world wars. One of my great-aunts brought up an entire family of nine children after both her parents died young. I know that many families share similar stories but if they are not kept by someone then gradually they fade away, along with memories of happier days and simpler lives. It's these, which taught me that sometimes truth is stranger than fiction and I'm always eager to listen to older people as they reminisce over their youth.

It's many years now since that young child played out her games on the side of a mountain, weaving stories to take home to thrill her childhood friends. I see her still in my dreams, poling a raft through jungles full of cannibals, helping prisoners escape from the slimy dungeons, or running across the mountainside in the form of a large cat. In dreams there are no aching joints, overdue bills to pay, her soul flies free as a bird, catching the thermals and souring high above the petty troubles of this blighted world. As she wades through streams searching for the source of a waterfall she turns her head and with a cheeky grin she beckons to me to come play again, spin a story or two and keep the magic alive for all time.

Lisa Fuller. February 2006.