The Ocarina
Jul
By Leela Dutt Attfield
A thunderous bang, broken glass splintering in my lap – who the hell put that Ford Escort in front of me?
I opened the door warily and stepped onto the slipway of the A470 – and into a stream of oily grey liquid gushing out from what had until recently been my aunt’s radiator.
This was my first introduction to Wales, over thirty years ago.
“Are you all right?” A woman was running towards me from the Escort – middle-aged, roughly my height, pleasant curly hair, wearing jeans and an anorak.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I just didn’t notice that you’d stopped. I was looking over my shoulder for a gap in the traffic…”
I guess I wasn’t supposed to admit responsibility. Presumably Aunt Ikuko’s insurance would be up to date – but what on earth was I going to tell her when she got back from her vacation in Japan?
The woman introduced herself as Meg Davies. “Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure I can still drive my car.” She shot me a perceptive glance. “You’d better come with me, son – you can ring a garage from my home. I only live five minutes from here, over in Tongwynlais. But we ought to push your car out of the way first…”
Fifteen minutes later Meg had made me a large mug of hot sweet tea and sat me at the table in her snug kitchen.
“Just what the Guides taught me to do with shock,” she laughed, and I must admit it was welcome. “You on your holidays, then, Takao?”
I explained that my uncle was a manager at the Sony factory in Bridgend. After six years as an engineering student in the States, I’d come over to see if I wanted to work with him in Wales for a time.
“Oh my goodness,” she said. “What a terrible thing to happen to you on your first day here!”
The back door opened and in walked a young woman who was taking off a motorcycle helmet and shaking loose her long sandy hair.
“What’s up, Mum? You had a bump, then?” She turned and saw me at the table. “Oh, hiya. All righ’?”
She looked slightly startled when I stood up and bowed at her.
“This is my daughter Rachel – she’s another engineering student like you. She’s at Swansea Uni.” Meg explained what had happened.
“What sort of insurance have you got?” Rachel asked me at once. “Me, I’ve only got third party – can’t afford comprehensive. Not worth it for my old bike, but…”
For the past half hour there’d been a nasty thought lurking at the back of my mind; now it swam reluctantly to the surface.
“My uncle drives a brand-new Honda,” I told them. “No way would he let me touch that! But this is just my aunt’s old runabout – I’m almost certain it’s third party only. Oh, don’t worry, Mrs Davies – it will cover your car.”
Rachel turned to her mother. “Tell you what, Mum – we’ll have to get Grampy to have a look at Takao’s car. He’s a wizard with cars is my Gramps.”
She smiled at me. “When he’s feeling well. Used to run a repair garage before he retired.”
But Meg hesitated.
“Shall I ring him, Mum? My boyfriend Simon could give you a tow up to Grampy’s house in Porth if you like,” she said to me. “Simes drives a pick-up truck for work.”
“No,” Meg said sharply. “No, best let me phone Grampy.”
Rachel was surprised.
“He can be a bit funny, your grandfather. He was a prisoner during the war, see – he worked on the Burma railway.” She seemed to assume I would know all about that.
As Meg left the room to phone, Rachel sat down and passed me the packet of chocolate digestives.
“Will your father be angry about your Ford?” I asked, tucking in.
She looked blank. “Oh! No, I haven’t got a father – he cleared off when I was about two. My brother doesn’t even remember him. Don’t worry – Mum won’t mind you smashing her Escort so long as it gets mended quickly so she can get to her precious choir.”
“In a church?”
“No, we don’t go to church! Mum’s in this Red Choir. They sing all these revolutionary songs. They’re good, mind. And nice and loud, like.”
Meg came back into the kitchen. “It’s all right, Takao. My father says he’ll have a look at it if Simon can tow it up to Porth tonight.”
“Is Gramps better, Mum? You said he was bad again last week.”
“Oh yes, he swears he’s fine.” Meg turned to me. “My father has angina but try getting him to rest…! He’s expecting us at about seven.”
When I remember the journey we made up to Porth that evening, words like “contra-flow”, “roundabout”, “tow rope” and “nightmare” spring readily to mind. Luckily Meg offered to sit next to me in Aunt Ikuko’s poor little car after we had retrieved it from the slipway and fastened it securely to Simon’s truck. I think she was worried about her father’s reaction to me.
Simon turned out to be a well-built cheerful young man in a grubby white cap advertising the National Lottery. He’d clicked his tongue sympathetically when he saw the Micra’s stove-in front, and offered his opinion that if anyone could deal with that, Rachel’s Grampy was the man.
“Old Ted Roberts has been mending cars for sixty years,” he said.
“There’s always a lot of traffic in Ponty,” Meg warned me. “Watch out, Takao – he’s going to turn right at the next lights – it’s the new one-way system.”
The driver in the red Ferrari next to us turned and glared at me as I swung dangerously round, the Micra barely under my control. Porth was an endless sequence of steep narrow streets of terraced houses, most of which Simon was apparently obliged to drive up. When we finally came to rest in an alleyway running along the back of Grampy’s road, I put the brake on and took a deep breath.
“You’ll need a new radiator of course,” Mr Roberts said some half an hour later. “A mate of mine can get one cheap. It’s not as bad as it looks, the damage, like. Shouldn’t cost you too much.”
He showed me in some detail what was wrong. He was a slightly-built, short man – shorter than me. His hair was white. I had the impression that he hadn’t shaved for a day or two, and his eyes were slightly bloodshot.
I gathered he was a widower living alone, but with Meg’s brother’s large family living in the next street. He’d nodded briefly at me when we all arrived, making no comment when his daughter introduced me. I felt that he didn’t want to talk to me more than courtesy demanded, but when it came to showing me how he proposed to mend the Micra, then his eyes lit up in spite of himself.
“Come back after the weekend,” he said, “and I’ll sort something out. I likes a challenge. Can’t promise anything, mind…”
As I thanked him profusely, Meg declared that they had not eaten yet and she was sending Rachel down the chippie straight away. “We’re going to make sure you have something with us this time, Dad. I know what you’re like when you’re on your own!”
The old man’s living room was so small and crowded with furniture that it reminded me of my own family home. I squeezed in next to Simon on the sofa, newspaper balanced on our laps, sprinkling extra vinegar onto my cod.
As I looked around the room, I noticed several photographs: an ancient sepia wedding picture of Meg’s parents, a recent portrait of one of her nieces getting her degree – and there, tucked away behind a vase of flowers, I saw a faded grey photo of a dozen soldiers in tropical gear, grinning out from under a palm tree. Mr Roberts noticed me examining it, and I looked away swiftly.
I caught the train up to Porth the following week.
“I’ve done my best with this, Takao. I took it up to my workshop. Well, I say mine, but of course I had to sell out years ago. My old partners still let me use it. We’ve put in a new bonnet – here, have a look for yourself, then we’ll take her out for a test run.”
Lovingly he opened it up. I was impressed, and asked him how much I owed. Most of the parts he’d been able to get from a scrap yard, apparently. He quoted a price which sounded absurdly cheap to me, and I said so.
“To be honest with you, I’ve enjoyed doing it. It’s a long time since…” The old man gave me a sharp look. “Have you got time to come in for a cup of tea? I’ve got something I want to show you.”
I agreed at once. In the living room he went straight to the top drawer of the chest and took out a battered cardboard shoebox. I could tell from the string around the bundle of letters and faded photographs that it had not been disturbed for many years. There, tucked away under them was a little round hollow object with a stem and four holes in the top. I guessed it was some kind of whistle, and indeed the old man gave it a brief rub, took a deep breath and then, putting the stem in his mouth and arranging his fingers over the holes, he began to play a slow, lingering Welsh folksong on it. It was beautiful.
“Know what this is? It’s an ocarina.”
“Yes?”
“It belonged to a mate of mine. An Australian. Josh taught me to play it; we shared a hut – us and a couple of dozen other prisoners. Meg told you I was on the Burma Railway?”
I nodded. “I’m afraid I know very little about that period.”
“That’s a pity. They should teach you, you kids. After all, they’re always going on to the German youngsters about Belsen an’ that. You weren’t born then. I suppose your parents weren’t even born?”
“No.”
He was silent for a moment. “They weren’t all bad. The guards. There was this one chap I remember – very young, he was. Looked a bit like you. You suddenly reminded me of him, last week when Meg brought you here.”
“Did I really?”
“He was terrified of the officers above him, mind. Used to skulk around our hut… That’s how he heard Josh teach me to play this little thing. It was Josh that saved my life, you know.”
“Yes?”
“He was a doctor, see. Back in Melbourne. So he knew which of the local grasses it was safe to eat. Many of the other lads died of starvation – thousands of them – but Josh would pick out the shoots that weren’t poisonous, growing on the edge of the camp, and get us to eat them.”
“What happened to Josh?” I asked after a pause.
“Oh, he got into some sort of trouble – I forget what. He was taken off for punishment. When he – died – this young guard who looked like you, he had to search Josh’s things. He came up to me next day with this ocarina in his hands and gave a quaint little bow – just like you did yourself, when you came last week! And he asked me if I wanted to keep it, to remember my friend by. I haven’t played it in years.”
I took it from him and turned it over gently in my hand.
“I don’t suppose… Could you show me how to play it?”
He gave a slow smile. “I could have a go.”
A couple of hours later we took the Micra up the valley to Treorchy and then, because Mr Roberts wanted to see how it would cope with a good steep hill, we went up over the Bwlch. The view across the open mountainside was marvellous, and the tune Ted had taught me to play echoed in my head all the way.
“She handles all right, don’t she?” he said.
“Oh yes! My aunt won’t know the difference.” I was delighted.
“She’ll know it’s been sprayed. It’s always difficult matching the colour. Meg says the insurance have sorted out her car so she’s happy.”
That was a relief, I can tell you.
“She says she’s going to invite you to one of her Red Choir concerts,” he went on with a grin. “Something big at the end of the month – now what did she say it was for? Palestine, I think it was.”
I told him I enjoy a good choir.
“Well you can go, then. She wanted me to go too of course, but I told her I couldn’t be bothered going down to Cardiff on my own just for that.”
“Oh, but now you’ve mended my car, I could pick you up,” I said, “if you like.”
He turned to me. “You serious, boy?”
“Certainly. You could give me another lesson on your ocarina – would you?”
The concert was fantastic. I didn’t know the music, but it seemed to come from all over the world. South African songs of protest, Latin American sugar planters’ ballads, and lots more.
Meg was there in the front row, wearing a bright red jersey like the rest. Ted listened intently to the singing, his face bright and sparkling, and he stood up to clap.
“Thanks, Takao,” Meg said to me in the interval.
“Whatever for?”
“For bringing my dad down for the concert. I can’t remember when I last saw him enjoy himself so much!”
As I drove him back to Porth afterwards, I asked Ted if he had ever sung in choirs himself. Apparently he had sung a lot when he was younger, and enjoyed it.
“Why don’t you sing anymore?” I asked. “You’ve got time now, surely?”
He looked at me. “Time, yes. Plenty of time, Takao. But no more puff! Can’t get my breath properly now, see…”
I didn’t know what to say to that, and I drove in silence up the A470.
Ted had a fatal heart attack that night.
“He probably didn’t even wake up,” Meg told me the next day. “Oh no, don’t you start crying, Takao – you’ll set me off again! But there was just one thing: he seems to have written you a note last night. We found an envelope by his bed with your name on it and a small lump inside it – I can’t think what it is.”
“Oh!” I opened it and took out the ocarina. The scrap of paper simply read, Thought you might care to have this to remember me by.
The Ocarina was published in Fresh Beginnings, a collection of short stories by Rhiwbina resident Leela Dutt and is available here
Main photo: John Bulpin
