Chapter 7 - One Last Spring

It was late afternoon by the time Gwen finally finished the last of the dusting and was able to escape to the mountain. Despite a day of sunshine, the waterlogged path remained muddy, and she had to catch herself more than once as her boots slipped on the wet grass. Her favorite boulder, however, was dry, so she sat on it to survey the scene before her.

In the valley, the rivers were still running high, their water murky with displaced soil from the riverbanks. The fields were vivid green and dotted with white spring lambs. The trees were in full leaf and the hedgerows thick and lush. Patches of color—the yellow of gorse, the pinkish-white of hawthorn, and the blue of bluebells—stood out amidst the array of greens. She could see a few people walking the main road through the village, and others were on the narrow road that led toward the cluster of buildings put up to house the ever-increasing number of navvies at the dam.

The cranes at the dam remained motionless. Even from her distant vantage point, Gwen could see the large pools of water gathered around the base of the machinery. Three men walked the length of the partially built retaining wall, and a few more stood in a small cluster at the far side of the dam, obviously conferring with one another.

Gwen opened her sketchbook, drew a freshly sharpened pencil out of her pocket, and started to draw. Her eyes moved quickly from the paper to the scene in front of her and back again. It didn’t take long before she was completely absorbed and the village, the distant farmhouses, the dam construction—everything that was distinctly Llanwddyn—came to life beneath her fingers.

“I had no idea you were such a talented artist, Gwennie.”

With a small shriek, she leapt to her feet. Clutching her sketchbook to her chest, she took a deep, shuddering breath.

“Lewis! You can’t keep sneaking up on me like that.”

Lewis frowned. “I just walked up the path like anyone else would.”

“No.” Gwen shook her head vehemently. “Other people make noise. They break twigs, slip on shale, clomp their boots, something that others can hear!”

“Well, I don’t especially want to tromp up here like a one-man herd of cows.”

Gwen’s heart was still racing. “You don’t have to tromp.”

“What, then? You want me to shout or whistle?”

It was Gwen’s turn to frown. “You make it sound like you’re calling for a dog.” She paused for a moment as a recent memory surfaced. It was Lewis’s tuneful whistle that had alerted her to his presence at the smithy when the navvies had her cornered. “What about a tune? Yes, you could whistle a tune. I’d hear that.”

Lewis gave an amused shrug. “A tune. All right. Do you have anything particular in mind?”

Gwen tilted her head to one side as she thought. “What about ‘Dau Gi Bach’?”

He chuckled. “‘Dau Gi Bach’ it is.”

“Right, then.” Gwen smiled, relieved that the children’s nursery rhyme was an acceptable solution. “No more giving me heart attacks.”

She moved back to take her seat on the boulder. Lewis hovered nearby, suddenly acting uncertain. Gwen pointed to the flattened surface of the large rock.

“Since you’re up here, you may as well sit down,” she said.

Leaving as much space as possible between them, he took a seat. After a few moments of awkward silence, he pointed to her sketchbook. “Will you show me what you’ve drawn?”

Somewhat reluctantly, Gwen lowered the sketchbook so it lay open on her knee. “It’s the valley,” she said.

“I can see that,” Lewis said, and she thought she heard a hint of admiration in his voice.

He pointed at the rough outline of the distant buildings she’d added to the hillside. “You’ve even put in Dai Williams’s farmhouse and milking parlor.” He gave her an encouraging smile. “This is so accurate you could probably keep track of how many new lambs he has this year.”

Gwen shook her head slightly, embarrassed yet unaccountably pleased that he seemed to genuinely like her drawing. “The sheep move around too much. I really don’t have any idea how many are out at any given time.”

Lewis nodded his understanding, then pointed at her rendering of the partially completed dam. “This is another part of your picture that will be different the next time you look at it.”

“I know,” she said. “That’s why I started drawing the valley; I wanted a record of what it used to be like and how it changes.”

She began turning back the pages in her sketchbook. Almost every sheet displayed the same scene, but each picture had subtle differences. Winter scenes showed bare trees and mounding snow. A few pages later, the same barren branches were covered in fat buds, and then they were hidden by blossoms and dense foliage. Dying, curling leaves indicated the return of winter, along with the buildup of ice along the rivers. Sheep and cattle came and went. The sky varied from dark and stormy to cloudless and clear. And even though the old stone buildings that comprised the center of the village remained unchanged, the difference in the construction all around them made each drawing truly unique.

From the steady trickle of men pouring into the valley along the narrow mountain road to the construction of their bunkhouses; from the introduction of the initial rail lines to the arrival of the first mechanical crane; from the digging of the dam’s foundations to the appearance of the first blocks of granite. Each milestone in Llanwddyn’s rapidly changing history was pictorially recorded in Gwen’s sketchbook.

Lewis studied each picture in silence as Gwen slowly flipped from one to the next. When she reached the picture she’d been working on minutes before, she hesitated for only a second before closing the book.

“I daresay that’s all the drawing I’ll do today,” she said quietly.

“Gwennie.” Lewis’s voice sounded strained. “Those are amazing.”

She glanced over at him and was startled by the intensity in his eyes.

“I mean it,” he said. “I know we’re supposed to ooh and ah over the paintings of the masters in our textbooks at school, but none of them ever really meant anything to me.” He pointed at her sketchbook. “Those do. They’re important. For you, for me, for all the people in Llanwddyn, not to mention the ones who’ll come here years from now and have no idea what it was once like.”

Gwen looked back at the village. “I probably shouldn’t resent the dam construction the way I do,” she said. “But with each change that comes to the valley, I feel like another part of me is lost.”

“I don’t like the changes either,” Lewis told her. “But even though we may not be able to stop the development, we can make sure people don’t forget the price the villagers of Llanwddyn paid so Liverpool could have their dam; the loss of our homes, our farmland, and our community as it once was. That’s why you mustn’t stop drawing. Keep a record of this for your children and for mine.”

Slowly Gwen nodded.

“You promise?” Lewis asked.

She nodded again, this time a little more vigorously.

Lewis seemed satisfied. “Is that why you come up here so much? To draw?”

“I always bring my sketchbook but don’t always draw. I suppose there are times when I just need to be alone, to be somewhere quiet, where I can think. It’s a good place for that. Not many people come up this way.”

At her words, the awkwardness between them returned.

“I should leave you be, then,” he said, coming to his feet. “I’m sorry if I disturbed you.”

“It’s all right.” Gwen stood up too. “After yesterday . . .” She paused. “I understand why you came. Thank you.”

He stuck his hands in his pockets. “Robert would skin me alive if anything bad happened . . .”

Gwen gasped. “Oh, Lewis! How could I have forgotten to tell you? A letter came today from Robert.”

Lewis’s eyes lit up. “Was it good news?”

Gwen pulled the envelope from her pocket and drew out the four sheets of paper. Already, the creases were looking worn from being unfolded and folded again. She offered them to him. “You can read it,” she said. Surprise crossed his face, followed almost immediately by hesitation. Gwen extended her arm farther. “He mentions you.”

Lewis took the letter, and when she met his quizzical look with a smile, he began to read.

“Well,” he said a few minutes later as he handed the letter back to her. “It seems to me that you and I are in big trouble.”

At his words, Gwen experienced a pang of misgiving. “What do you mean?”

“If we thought his stories of sailing ships and foreign lands were bad before, there’ll be no stopping him once he’s experienced them himself,” Lewis said, trying hard to hold back a grin. “He’s going to talk our ears off when he gets back.”

Gwen laughed. “He will, won’t he?”

Lewis rolled his eyes. “It will be awful!”