Girl on a Bicycle

On the old Welsh drovers’ trail of Kerry Ridgeway, from Cider House Farm to Bishop’s Castle over the border, a flat weather-worn rock rests at the side of the path. It lies close to the Bronze Age burial mounds known as Two Tumps and is as welcome a sight to the weary traveller as any park bench.

But as I sit here again and look out over the woods and meadows of the Vale of Kerry, draped in their autumnal shades of copper and gold, I am touched by sadness. For while the sky here is clear, the storm clouds are gathering again over Europe and there is talk of a second war. And so it is with mixed feelings that my thoughts turn again to my first visit here on that unforgettable day in October, 1921.

♦ ♦ ♦

It was close to midday and I had been walking all morning, glad to have met no one on the way. What little light the sun afforded had been all but snatched away by a thick mist that lay across the path and cast a mantle over the counties of Merionethshire and Shropshire on either side. But the gloom well suited my mood and I took an odd sense of comfort from the dearth of colour, a plaintive bitter-sweet feeling of emptiness and solitude.

Then I saw the rock, lying some feet off the track. It was as good a place as any for the deed and I sat and sank my head in my hands.

Some call it an act of cowardice. All I know is that I sat staring at my feet for upwards of an hour before I found the courage to reach inside my trench coat and grip my service revolver. I was about to cock the hammer when there came the skid of a tyre and the clank of metal on the uneven surface of the path.

“Damn it!”
 
I looked up to see a girl of about twenty, staring angrily down at her bicycle lying on its side. She appeared unhurt but I could see that the chain had slipped the cog, causing her to lose control.

Then she spotted me.

“Are you just going to sit there and watch a lady struggle?” she said.

She wore a broad brimmed hat with a ribbon trailing down the back of her cream jacket and a long black skirt I thought ill-suited to cycling.
  
“Ladies do not curse,” I said.

She put her hands on her hips and thrust her nose in the air. “Is that a fact, now? Well, it’s no gentleman either who would say so.”
  
I smiled in spite of my mood and walked across the path. It was the work of a moment to replace the chain, then I bent to wipe my hands in the grass. When I turned around she was sitting on the rock, facing away into the mist.

“Do you mind me sitting here with you a while?” she asked as I joined her.
   
“Do I have a choice?”

“There are always choices,” she said. “There are wise ones, there are foolish ones…” and here she turned a withering look on me “…and there are downright idiotic ones.”

It was as if she knew what I had been about to do. But how could she? I was sure the gun had not left my pocket.

She removed her hat and laid it on the ground beside her, then shook her head to free her rich auburn locks. She wore no jewellery and I detected no perfume other than the scent of freshly shampooed hair.

“What’s your name?” she asked, though it sounded more like a command.
  
“Aled Jenkins. What’s yours?”
  
“Amynedd.”
  
“Ah-mun-eth,” I repeated slowly. “It’s an unusual name. Does it mean something?”
  
“It means patience,” she said.
  
I bit my lip to stifle a grin.

“Do you find that funny, Aled Jenkins?”

“No, not at all.”

We sat in silence a moment, then she suddenly stiffened.

“Look!”
 
“What?”

“There. A beautiful swan sailing across a lake.”

“A swan?” All I could see were the swirling vapours of the mist.

“Use your imagination, man.”

She leant close to me, her hair brushing my cheek as she tried to align my eyes with her finger, and as I turned a little towards her I saw the band of freckles across the bridge of her elfin nose.

“Ach, it’s gone now,” she said, and moved back.

“But I see something,” I lied. “Just there, an old sailing ship. A four-master with her sails filled by the wind...”

“Tell me why,” she said, cutting me off.

“Why what?”

She made no reply. She just sat waiting for me to drop my foolish pretence of not knowing what she meant.

I stared back into the mist, but I saw no swans or ships. What I saw was the unrelenting horror begin to torment me all over again.

“His name was Klaus Lehman,” I said. “And I killed him.”

In three years I’d not spoken of it to a living soul, but now, sitting beside this complete stranger, it all came out so naturally.

“When the shelling stopped,” I began, “I became lost, wandering alone for hours. Then I saw him, sitting in a crater. He was about the same age as me, nineteen or twenty. He looked up and put a hand to his pocket, grinning in a way that seemed to say You’re a dead man, Tommy. So I lifted my rifle and shot him.”

I felt her eyes on me now, but I kept mine ahead, watching my nightmare unfold to its inexorable conclusion.

“He pressed his hands to his stomach,” I went on, “watching the blood run through his fingers and spread over his tunic.”

I faltered, and she put her hand on mine.

“You should feel no guilt, Aled; there was a war on.”

“But there wasn’t. It was just after two-o’-clock on the eleventh of November, 1918, nine hours after the Armistice had been signed and three hours after hostilities had officially ended.”

My throat tightened and I swallowed painfully, seeing his eyes staring back at me, as they have done every day for almost three years.

“Dear God, the look he gave me! Both a rebuke and a plea for explanation. ‘Aber der Krieg ist doch vorbei,’ he said. But the war is over.

“When I looked in his pocket, all I found was the flask of brandy he’d wanted to share with me.”

A moment later she was cradling my head against her breast, my shoulders shaking in silence.

“That’s it,” she said softly. “Let it all out, cariad. It’s always the blameless who feel the blame.”

I don’t know how long we remained that way, but when I recovered she’d put her hat back on and was walking back to her bicycle.

“Amynedd?” I said, as I hurried to her side.

“Have you done a decent job on this machine now, or am I to break my neck at the next bend?”

“Let me see you again. Please let me see you again.”

She put her hand to my cheek then and looked at me with such tenderness it took my breath away.

“We will meet once more,” she said. “You have my word.”

Then she climbed on her bicycle and set off again along the path.

“Wait!” I cried. “Who are you?”

“Be free now, Aled Jenkins,” she called back, and rode away into the mist.   

♦ ♦ ♦

I turn up my collar and squint at the westering sun as I begin my trek back along the Ridgeway to Cider House Farm. A skittish breeze sends dead leaves swirling at my feet, and for a moment I fancy it carries the faint scent of her hair. I do not expect to find her here again, of course; that is not why I return to this place. What I find on my rock on the Ridgeway is an affirmation of faith that, in spite of all the bitterness and hatred, in spite of all the wars that have been and the wars yet to come, there is still love in the world.

And I know she will keep her promise and that I will see her once more. Amynedd. My sweet girl with the sharp tongue and the warm heart. And I think I know now when that will be. Again I’ll feel her cooling hand on my cheek and her gentle eyes on mine. Only this time her task will not be to turn me away from that bridge to the unknown, but softly to guide me across.

End