Roni Gwyn It was a riddle with half the words in another language, and life was supposed to be simpler in the mountains!

Strewth it was hot; too hot for cycling - or rather pushing a bicycle — up, what had to be, the steepest road in Wales. Still, it was wonderful to feel the breeze on her bare limbs after a stifling week in the Pritchard’s rat infested barn. It was hardly the ‘healthy, happy job’ the poster promised, but infinitely preferable to the first farm where she had been sent.

Ronnie had the impression her transfer was meant to repay her complaints about that farm. After all, Land Girls were supposed to be assigned near to home, and North Wales was a long way from London. As punishments went she could not have hoped for better. Despite warnings about constant rain, and hostile natives, she had found both equally warm. Only the latter’s habit of assuming everyone could speak Welsh, so like her older, Yiddish speaking relatives, had piqued her so far.

Cresting a ridge after one final twist in the lane, Ronnie found her long climb’s reward. Gently falling away, the track wound towards a beautifully ramshackle farmhouse. Its walls, like many in the area, had been washed with a mixture of lime and ox-blood, which had faded to a pale pink. Slates hung precariously at the eaves, pushed out by the roof’s sagging ridge, while the narrow windows were half glazed, half boarded. In sharp contrast to this picturesque decay, however, was the neatly laid out garden, where a figure moved between vegetable rows with a watering-can.

Some photographs are worth the miles. Ronnie had already snapped one exposure before the solitary gardener noticed her presence, and with a shout stormed to meet her.

“Ble ti'n meddwl ti'n mynd?” she barked, brandishing the watering-can, “Aros yn fana, gei di ddim mynd ym mhellach.”

“I’m sorry I don’t...” began Ronnie, flustered by the woman’s reaction.

“Oh, Saesnes is it?” she answered her own question with a nod, “well you can go back where you came from. I don’t care much for being snooped on, thank you.”

She had to be thirty years the senior, stooped and gaunt, yet Ronnie did not imagine for one moment that she was a person to be trifled with. Scattering apologies, she retrieved her bicycle from the hedgerow, and only the boneshaker’s lack of brakes, dissuaded her from riding off. Walking briskly under a hail of irate Welsh, Ronnie raced back to the bend in the lane.

Out of sight, if not earshot, she stopped to collect herself. Ronnie was no coward - the Blitz proved that - but she hated personal confrontations. Other people always had the right words ready to make her look small. At least she had her photograph and looking down at the valley, the promise of several more.

Farmhouses dotted the slopes, each sitting in its own irregular patchwork of fields. Nestled in the valley’s heart, the village of Llangeredig defied the notion that Britain was at war. A few figures could be seen going about their unhurried way, for the large part converging on church and chapel. It seemed, as Mrs Pritchard had hinted, that most people did go to Sunday services. How very different to London, where faith was, more often than not, a badge used to identify people. Ronnie, wanting nothing to do with badges, had used ‘wanting fresh air’ to excuse herself.

The lane dipped over the rim of a shallow bowl in the mountainside which, by some quirk, amplified sounds from the village far below. At its centre Ronnie was halted by a hundred-voiced harmony, and although the hymn’s words were indistinct, the singers wove such joy from a minor key.

“Arglwydd, dyma fi ar dy alwad di,” not everyone was in chapel it seemed, for nearby a high, clear voice joined in with the refrain. High hedgerows made it difficult to pinpoint from which direction the singing was coming, but Ronnie was intrigued enough to peer through what gaps there were to find out.

Sitting in a rowan’s shade was as pretty a little girl as Ronnie had ever seen, with two strawberry-blonde pigtails, framing her freckled face. Like most wartime children she wore hand-me-downs; her blue pinafore-dress had quite obviously been cut down from a larger garment, and the white blouse beneath was at least one size too large. Unlike other children — or Ronnie herself, for that matter - she was spotlessly, almost unnaturally, clean.

Ruing her decision to wear shorts, Ronnie scrambled through a wider gap she had spotted a little farther up the hill taking care not alarm the child. Ordinarily she would have taken a photograph while the girl was still unaware, but her experience of a few minutes earlier suggested she ask first.

“Bore da,” Ronnie said, and having exhausted her Welsh vocabulary continued in English, “would you mind awfully if I took your picture?”

“Dwi methu siarad saesneg o gwbl,” she replied with a shake of her head.

“Oh dear, don’t you speak English at all?” Unsure how to proceed, Ronnie stuck her hands in her pockets, and chanced on the meagre remnant of her sweet ration.

“Would you like one of these?” she asked, holding out the crumpled paper bag. After a moment’s hesitation, the little red-head separated a pear drop from its fellows, an undisguised look of pleasure spreading over her face. With a hurried ‘diolch yn fawr’ she popped the sweet in her mouth.

On closer inspection she was not as young as her clothes might have indicated. She certainly filled out the pinafore in a way that suggested she was either in her mid-teens, or exceptionally precocious.

“I’d love hair like that”, Ronnie said with a sigh, then pointing at herself in true Tarzan fashion added, “my name’s Ronnie.”

“Llinos,” her companion replied, gesturing in a similar manner. They sat together silently until another hymn swelled from the valley below. Llinos began softly humming the melody, her eyes closed as she assumed an air of serenity that Ronnie felt compelled to capture. Slowly she reached for her camera afraid that she might break the spell that had come over Llinos, which is exactly what happened when the focussing hood sprang open with a harsh, metallic grate.

“Oh bugger!” cursed Ronnie, and not merely for the lost photograph, as Llinos darted away pigtails streaming after.

Standing outside ‘Siriol Jones a fab’ Ronnie regretted using her last exposure on Llangeredig’s post-office; its dusty windows and faded signage would have delighted her father, who loved pictures of other people’s shops. It was unlikely to change, however, before she had another chance to photograph it, which could be only a matter of minutes. A bell rang when she opened the door, summoning an elderly man who shuffled out from a back room.

“Now who might you be?” Ronnie had grown accustomed to this habitual curiosity of the Welsh.

“My name’s Veronica White,” she smiled, adding, “I’m the Pritchards’ Land Girl.”

“Ah, the famous Roni Gwyn, we meet at last”, Mr Jones said, pushing his spectacles farther up his nose to take a better look at her, “the twins told me you were a beauty.” Blood rushed to Ronnie’s cheeks, she wondered what else the Pritchards’ daughters had been telling people. ‘Gwyn’ was their little joke, not only a translation of her surname, but a reference to her light blonde hair. Ronnie was very fond of the girls, who treated her as an honorary older sister.

“They tell me you develop film Mr Jones,” she said quickly, before he could embarrass her further and popped open her camera case.

“What’s a slip of a thing like you doing with a Rolleiflex?” he sounded quite peeved, as though she did not deserve to have such a fine camera, “I suppose you’ll want me to take the film out for you.”

“I’ll be fine,” she snapped, deftly removing the camera from its case and extracting the film, “it’s panchromatic, so you’ll need to send it away if you don’t have a tank.” She laid the roll of film on the counter in front of him.

“So it is, and yes I do”, he said, his voice softer and almost apologetic, “I notice you have a yellow filter on the lens, very wise.” The two of them fell into a conversation about photography; for a man of his age, Mr Jones was able to surprise
Ronnie with his knowledge of the latest technology. He suggested a few places locally she might like to visit with her camera, and she told him about the woman at the dilapidated farmhouse.

“So you had a run in with Mari Prosser, Nantceredig did you?” Siriol — as he insisted she call him — laughed, “She likes her privacy that one, but then she’s had a time of it, poor dab.” Without trying to appear nosey, Ronnie prompted the shopkeeper for more details, and despite his protestations that he was ‘gossiping like a cocklewoman’, she winkled the story from him.

She had been widowed only a few weeks before war broke out, when her husband and son had been helping a neighbour gather hay. Idris, her husband, had asked the boy to throw a pitchfork up to him on the rick, a foolhardy but not unusual practice. Tragically, he had lost his footing attempting to catch the pitchfork, and it had pierced his throat. Although no one blamed Iestyn Prosser for his father’s death, the boy had run away from home a few days later and had not been heard of since. With no relatives in the area, alone and with a farm to manage, Mari had sold much of Nantceredig’s land to neighbouring farmers. She was seldom seen in the village, only coming down from the mountain every few weeks for groceries, and had resisted all attempts at charity.

Ronnie felt a surge of pity for Mrs Prosser, imagining how she must have looked standing there taking pictures, and quickly changed the subject back to cameras. As they chatted she tried out some of the Welsh phrases she had learned so far.

“Very good, iawn even,” Siriol said in an avuncular tone, “but you’ll find everyone round here speaks English, so you should be all right.”

“Everyone?” she queried, “I met a girl not far from Nantceredig who didn’t.”

“Sounds like one of the children was having you on. Did you get her name?”

“Llinos”, Ronnie said, proud of her effort to pronounce the initial ‘lle’, “she said her name was Llinos.”

“Then she was playing a cruel trick,” he said soberly, explaining that Mari had a niece of that name that visited her aunt several times, but who had died of scarlet fever while still a child. Ronnie felt a moment of anger for being tricked, but then rather sad. She had liked the idea of a friend who could not speak English, who would not judge her, or carry tales. Oh well.

“Roni! Roni! Hold-it-Jones has done your pictures!” the twins burst into the kitchen waving an envelope.

“You’ll get no peace until you show them,” Mrs Pritchard said, laughing at her daughters’ antics.

Ronnie flicked through the prints until she found the photograph of the two girls feeding their chickens, which they excitedly showed their mother. All the other prints were of local places they saw every day, and would probably be bored stiff with.

Later, Ronnie spread the photographs over her bed picking out those she would send her father, to show she was making good use of his camera. He had given her the Rolleiflex just before she came to Wales, to replace a Brownie stolen at the other farm. London was too sad to photograph, he had maintained. The print of Nantceredig she kept for herself, it did not seem right for others to see it. Stuffing it back in the envelope she realised there was another print inside, and a note from Siriol.

Dear Roni Gwyn,

Siriol

Surely, someone was playing a trick on Ronnie. Siriol’s bromide which - going by the pencilled date on the back - had been taken ten years before, showed a freckle faced girl of six, maybe seven. Its sepia monochrome gave no clue to colouring, but her face shared many similarities with the ‘Llinos’ she had met on the mountain; too many for them not to be one and the same person. Ronnie did not believe in ghosts, particularly those who eat pear drops, which meant either that she had stumbled across a mystery, or it was a hoax.

Siriol could have easily substituted a photograph of the village girl who had tricked her. Ronnie cursed herself for letting that thought creep in, for always thinking the worst of everyone. She could not forget the winter; the series of vindictive pranks that left her in hospital. There was a war on, everyone was supposed to put away old bigotries and pull together. Ronnie, who hated the Nazis with more reason than most, had been shocked to find their prejudices echoed in the fields of Kent. Although no one she had met in Llangeredig - with the understandable exception of Mari Prosser — had been anything other than nice to her, she could not bring herself to trust any of them fully. Siriol Jones, however, had seemed genuine enough.

It was a riddle with half the words in another language, but one which Ronnie felt compelled to solve. Somehow Llinos was alive and hiding on the mountain. Putting aside the letter to her father, Ronnie lay back on the coverlet, trying to suppress the picture of ‘Mandy’ Mendel that kept coming to mind. Jake Mendel’s mother so wanted a daughter she had kept her son in dresses long after she should. Ronnie smiled, recalling poor Jake at the window, pretty ribbons in his hair. She sat up with a jerk, what if Mari Prosser had wanted a daughter too?

Mari’s niece had been an occasional visitor from outside the area; could it simply have been Iestyn Prosser in girls’ clothes? Jake’s father had eventually stopped his wife dressing up their son, might Mari’s husband have done the same, telling everyone that ‘Llinos’ had died to make it final? ‘She’ would have been easy enough to resurrect after Mr Prosser’s death, a perfect disguise for the fugitive Iestyn. The only flaw Ronnie could see in this theory was why Iestyn was still hiding when he had been exonerated four years before. She could not imagine the put upon Jake staying in dresses any longer than he had to, but perhaps Iestyn liked being ‘Llinos’.

The thought amused Ronnie, and appalled her. Britain needed every man she had for the war effort, even sissy boys. She doubted the services would have any use for a little poove like Iestyn, but he could work in a factory, or any number of jobs, and free up a real man to fight. If Iestyn wanted to be a woman so much he might even - Ronnie giggled to think of it - join her in the Women’s Land Army - if the uniform was not too masculine for him. Of course, it was all conjecture, and Ronnie would have to prove ‘Llinos’ was Iestyn before she told anyone else. She would give him a chance to come clean too, but if he refused she would report him to the authorities.

Weeks would pass before Ronnie could return to the mountain. The Pritchards finally accepted that their city-born Land Girl was no china doll, and put her to work in earnest. Double summer-time meant that Ronnie laboured from five o’clock in the morning to ten at night, with left little time for mysteries. Farm work was a wonderful subject for photography, however, and Ronnie’s camera often accompanied her into the fields. Uncle Siriol, as she had come to think of him, kept her supplied with film from his personal supply, and she spent what free time she had in his darkroom.

Siriol was also a mine of information on the Prosser family. Iestyn had indeed been a mammy’s boy, preferring girls’ company in the schoolyard to other boys’, and so sickly he spent more time out of school than in. His father Idris, on the other hand, had been very much the opposite, more at home on the mountain than anywhere else. Everything she heard supported Ronnie’s suspicions that Iestyn had hidden himself away in skirts at Nantceredig; all she lacked was an opportunity to prove it.

Ronnie glanced back to where she had left the bicycle, back home in London it would have been stolen in very short order, but she had to trust to country honesty; it would only encumber her in the lane to Nantceredig, where there were few sections suitable for cycling. She was banking on Iestyn being a creature of habit, returning to the hollow to listen to the singing every Sunday morning. Quite what Ronnie planned to do if she found him there, she had not yet decided. Anger propelled her forward nevertheless; he could not be allowed to shirk any longer.

As she had hoped Ronnie spotted ‘Llinos’ through a gap, and crept up to where she could slip through the hedgerow. Mindful of the thorns, so she had taken the precaution of wearing her Land Army issue breeches and knee socks, this time passing without a scratch into the rough meadow. The chapel choir was singing at full tilt as Ronnie closed from behind on a rapt ‘Llinos’. Still unsure of what exactly to do, Ronnie plumped herself down beside the girl.

“Beautiful isn’t it?” she smiled at her companion, “I was hoping I’d find you here.” ‘Llinos’ shot back a blank, uncomprehending smile of her own.

“Beth?”

Ronnie ignored the question, holding out a very small bag of sweets, which she hoped would keep ‘Llinos’ from running away again. What she would do next was still unclear. How could she coax a confession from the sissy?

“Would you like one of these?”

The red-head’s eyes lit up as they had before, and she reached eagerly for the offered sweets. As she did Ronnie grabbed her wrist, gripping it tightly enough to further whiten the already pale skin of the other girl’s forearm.

“Why did you lie to me about not speaking English?” Ronnie hissed, her temper flaring, “why are you still hiding up here Iestyn? Triumph blazed in her eyes, “Yes, I know who you are.”

Rather than trying to break free ‘Llinos’ began to laugh; a tripping, bell-like laugh that further infuriated Ronnie, tying up her tongue in knots. With a rapid flick of her free hand ‘Llinos’ batted the bag of sweets way, and dragged Ronnie’s now empty hand to her chest.

“See? I’m not Iestyn, Iestyn was me,” she giggled, as Ronnie’s fingers closed numbly around the firm, but yielding flesh of Llinos’s breast.

“How?” was all Ronnie could reply, as she stared at the hand she had snatched back. Llinos had just undermined everything she had grown to believe over the past few weeks; the cleverly constructed theory, the motives she had assigned to all the parties, all dashed down in an instant.

“Mam couldn’t have any more babies, and Dad didn’t want a daughter,” Llinos said flatly,” so when I came along he just told everyone I was a boy.” She smoothed out her dress as if what she was saying was the most normal thing in the world.

“But why didn’t you tell anyone after he died?” Ronnie cried, “You’ve been hiding for years!”

“We were going to wait a couple of weeks,” Llinos continued, her eyes straying to the boiled sweets scattered over the grass, “but war broke out, and then there were ration books and identity cards. Can I have this?” She had picked up a pear drop and was cleaning it off on her dress. Ronnie nodded, still dumb. “Anyway, Mam said I could hide for a few months until the war was over, when all those cards were ripped up, and I could go back to being her niece. We didn’t think it would go on for so long.”

No wonder she craved sweets, Ronnie thought, even with what they could grow, sharing a single ration book with her mother must have meant going hungry some of the time. She felt a surge of pity for mother and daughter, eking out a living on their lonely farm, not even receiving their fair share...

“I’m so sorry,” tears welled in Ronnie’s eyes, “I’ve been so obsessed with my secret that I’ve being seeing them everywhere.” She bowed her head, tears freely streaking her cheeks. Llinos laid a consoling arm around Ronnie’s shoulders.

“Beth syn bod?” she asked softly, “sorry, I mean what’s the...”

“I know that one already,” Ronnie flashed a wan smile, “I’m Jewish - I’m not ashamed of it, though some people think I should be, and I’ve been too afraid to tell anyone in Llangeredig, even my friends.”

“Like Moses? In the Bible?” it was difficult believe that Llinos’ innocence was entirely without guile, but her face radiated honesty from pigtail to pigtail. “He always seemed a tidy fellow to me,” she added, giving Ronnie’s shoulders a squeeze.

“Not everyone’s like you,” the idiocy of the remark struck Ronnie immediately, no one was quite like Llinos, forced to be a boy, to ‘masquerade’ occasionally as a girl and then hide for years because of it. “Though I wish they were” Ronnie added, as far below the congregation struck up another hymn, a rousing anthem that Ronnie vaguely knew.

“Cwm Rhondda — I’ve never been there,” murmured Llinos, humming along. “Are you going to tell anyone about me?”

“Not if you don’t want me to,” Ronnie pressed her hand to the Llinos’s cheek, “but what will you do up here? You could be stuck in Nantceredig for years to come.”

“But now,” Llinos held Ronnie tightly, “at least I’ve got a friend.”

acknowledgements:

Firstly, many thanks to Geoff for his advice (honestly, I avoid them like the plague) - I however am solely responsible for the ending.

I have to mention my mother who told me the stories of a boy on a farm near hers which inspired this, and the grisly death of one of their farmhands which is recast here as Idris's end. Also Llinos's hairstyle was taken from a picture of my mother aged thirteen in 1942, though she would be at pains to point out that she's 'auburn' not 'ginger'.

Finally, the story's set in North Wales, and I'm from the South, so the longer lines of Welsh dialogue were translated into 'gog' Welsh for me by my friend TTS, the shorter bits of Welsh are my 'hwntw' contributions, and probably wrong.