The Mind's Eye

The Mind's Eye - Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Ty Gwyn

The doctor’s private car took us an awfully long way from the station, over sparse grassy hills and down little brown roads that led to yet more hills. We had gone over so many bumps that I could feel the restraints on my chair starting to loosen, but just as I began to worry that I’d be flung out of my seat at the next bend, the car finally stopped. Out of one window I saw a mass of misty fields with the vague shadow of mountains in the background. From the other I just caught sight of a lot of out buildings ranging in shape and size. Barns and things, I supposed.

Ty Gwyn was straight ahead of us, so I didn’t see the huge white building until I was properly out of the car. Officer Lewis started to wheel me up to it over the bumpy gravel path, jarring my spine with every pebble. I tried to keep smiling and made sure my clothes and hair were neat as we approached. When Lewis rang the doorbell the ancient sound echoed out of the cracks in the wood around the window panes. A few birds roosting in the eaves of the big white farm house suddenly took flight, making Leighton jump. He shuffled from foot to foot, biting his little pink lip.

The tiniest girl I had ever seen answered the door. She was short and willowy with huge blue eyes and tawny brown hair sticking up at funny angles. Her plain little dress was stained with something that looked like blueberries. She clung to its hem as she looked up at Officer Lewis, then she suddenly broke into a great beaming smile, showing off her stumpy white teeth.

“Ble mae Mam?” Lewis asked the little girl.

I tried to pick out the English as usual, but this time I couldn’t. Leighton gave me a wide eyed look, scrunching his nose.

“Yn y gegin yn paratoi cinio,” the little girl replied. I marvelled at the complex language falling out of such a tiny mouth.

“Dod â Mam yma!” Lewis added with a flick of his hand.

The little girl scampered away, leaving the door wide open. I would have waited, but Lewis seemed to take that as the invitation to go inside. He wheeled me in over the bumpy threshold of the wide farmhouse door and into a big reception space, adjusting Leighton until he stood up straight beside me. Everything in this part of the house was either black or white. Black tiles lined the cold stone floor. White lacy doilies covered the shelves of an old black dresser in the corner, next to an even older metal coat stand that was ready to fall over with the amount of coats flung upon it.

I looked at the steep, black stairs fearfully. If I was expected to climb them every day and night, I would surely die before I even reached breakfast tomorrow. My joints ached at the very prospect of it.

“Nawr te, who do we have yur then?”

The woman’s accent echoing down the corridor was thankfully much clearer than Lewis’s. She almost sang the words as she appeared from under a white doorway right in front of us. The woman had a rosy face and the same tawny hair as the little girl, though hers was pulled back into a more practical style. She was older than Mum but younger than Granny, with a cooking apron tied over her broad, rounded figure. She had the kindest smile in the world as she approached, rubbing her coarse hands together excitedly.

“Oh aren’t you just lovely, the pair of you!”

She dropped to her knees before us and pulled my shoulder forward for a hug. My chair gave me a little space at least from her lovingly iron grip, but Leighton had no such luck. He was pulled straight into her ample chest where he could hardly breathe from the warmth of her embrace. He emerged red-faced a moment later, stumbling backwards.

“Leighton, Catherine,” Officer Lewis explained, “This is Mrs Gladys Price, your new guardian.”

“Call me Mam if you like,” she added, “Everyone does round yur.”