We were a large group crammed around the table—six of the Nicholson clan, the four of us, and Diccon. We feasted on roast lamb and creamed potatoes, and blackberry compote. We drank quite a lot of wine. The talk turned to poetry and literature. Francesco could quote anyone—Donne, Dante, Paine, Petrarch. . . . But Diccon was nearly as good at that game, and William and I were not so bad, either, so there was a good deal of touché-ing going on, and lots of glasses clinking. Pamela and Cecco were quite merry, too, raising their small tumblers of wine diluted with water.
Diccon was a natural storyteller, and he gestured wildly in his enthusiasm. When he got excited, color crept into his face and he seemed a small boy. But he was changeable. Sometimes when he grinned he looked all innocence, sometimes he looked wicked. Pamela could not pull her eyes away from him.
Ah, first love, I thought, smiling to myself. It seemed a very natural thing to me, a young girl’s first crush. Soon, naturally, to be replaced by the next boy who took her fancy.
I didn’t know it yet, but nothing was “naturally,” when it came to Pamela. Who would have thought that there would be no next boy at all?
Still, it was a magical, merry evening, in the way you wish all dinner parties would be but rarely are—lovely food and drink, and the conversation unpredictable, and a feeling of warmth running like cognac through your veins all night long. It had to end, of course, but before it did, Francesco declared that we must all recite “The Fiddler of Dooney.” We stood with glasses held high, and shouted out the lines.
For the good are always the merry,
Save by an evil chance,
And the merry love the fiddle,
And the merry love to dance:
And when the folk there spy me,
They will all come up to me,
With “Here is the fiddler of Dooney!”
And dance like a wave of the sea.
“Once more!” Diccon insisted.
And we all shouted even louder and tapped our feet on the floor, and Diccon grabbed Pamela and danced with her round the table. She only came up to the middle of his chest, and she was laughing, her head tilted back so that she could look at his face. I see them flashing by in the candlelight, Diccon hopping about like a great crow and Pamela with her braids flying every which way.
pamela
It’s always the same, the first memory that rushes back. I hold it a while, cupped in my hands. It pours out like liquid. But it always comes back.
We are standing on the windswept hillside of Harlech. It’s summer. I’m thirteen, and I’m wearing a muslin dress Mam made for me and it’s whipping against my legs. We stand gazing over the hillside, past the zigzag of slate-roofed cottages, all the way to the sea.
“This is it, Pammy, the very breath of Wales! And I shall breathe her in and make her mine! Watch me!”
Diccon’s waving his cap over his head, and his dark hair blows every which way in the wind. His voice is a man’s voice, but he’s so excited he sounds like a child. Again and again he takes huge gulps of Welsh air, then blows it out. And grins at me. I am familiar with this Diccon by now—his fierce exuberance, his playfulness. Always saying whatever enters his mind.
And always coming up with ideas that you couldn’t resist. Like the hotcakes.
I was hungry, though I would have followed him anyway.
I woke early that day, the day of the apple tree and the hotcakes. I was determined to draw the apple tree at dawn, if only the weather was right.
I threw on my dress and tied up my shoes and stood by the window, watching as the sky slowly lightened. Soon I knew the weather was cooperating—it was neither clear nor threatening rain. I grabbed my pencils and charcoals and sketchpad and ran up to my “sitting rock” high on the hill behind our cottage. Mists still clung to the earth, shrouding the low fruit-laden tree. I’d drawn the tree in midday, the sun dappling the ground through the gnarled branches. And at sunset, the yellow-red apples reachable against the orange-streaked sky. But never in the mystery of dawn.
There was a familiar music in the air. An intermittent, tinkling tune, as if perhaps angels, or fairies, hidden in the mists, were singing as the sun rose. But I knew what it was. Someone—it could have been a tramp, it could have been William—had fashioned a sort of wind chime made of bits of glass and shells—scallops and razor clams—and nailed it to the branch of one of the trees in the copse behind me. Soft breezes blew the music across the hillside.
I drew quickly, and the tilting tree hovered on the page, fantastical, like a troll’s gnarled umbrella. Or an ancient ballerina, ghostly on the hillside.
The music changed. Much louder, faster.
I was perplexed; the wind had not picked up. I turned round.
Diccon!
“Sorry, Pamela!” He waved his walking stick. “I was announcing my presence, didn’t want to frighten you!”
I was almost finished with my tree, and Diccon sat down next to me to watch.
Diccon admired my drawing—superb, Pamela, lovely—then, impulsively, he invited me to Ysgol Fach. His cottage.
“I’ll make you hotcakes, I’m quite good at it, you know.”
Diccon poured me a glass of buttermilk and set the pitcher on the table. While he made the batter he told me more tales of his long journey by foot from London to Harlech. He said he’d just finished a poem about one of the scenes he had witnessed along the way: gypsy girls dancing in the moonlight. And he told me about the cottage. He was allowed to live there in exchange for three days’ work, two pots of honey, and four pennies per year. The rent was fair, he said, as the 150-year-old cottage had been neglected for years. When he’d first taken over, great mounds of dirt, mud, and leaves had accumulated throughout, the roof was leaky, and there were giant holes in the floor—spring water gurgled up from beneath the fireplace, traveling unchecked over the stones. He’d spent all of the previous spring fixing up the place. Diccon’s little home was still crude, but the fireplace was working and the roof was patched. Now, when it rained, the water that seeped up through the stone floor was just a trickle.
My eye went to what was clearly a letter on the makeshift desk by the window.
“Who are you writing to, Diccon?” I asked with the utter impertinence of youth.
“Nosey little brat, aren’t you?”
He picked up the letter, though, and said, “It’s to my mother, since you show such interest, and I’ll even read you what I’ve written, you’ll be pleased—
‘The Biancos leave on Tuesday, for Chelsea, and I am very sorry to lose them: I have seldom met people I liked so much, or folk so informal and sensible in their ways. Mrs. B especially is wonderfully nice. . . .’ Now what do you make of that?”
He looked at me with that mischievous look I’d seen so often.