Fate Twister

1 WAYNE GAMM-1

1 WAYNE GAMMThe screams coming from the secluded, old stone farmhouse sounded inhuman, which was just as well, because the only red-blooded creatures that could hear them were four-legged, although they fully realised what was going on inside. Mrs. Gwynedd Gamm was having her first baby and her mother was helping her deliver it. The ewes in the field understood the pain Gwynedd was going through, even if her husband, Samuel Gamm and his drinking companions in the pub in the local village of Dremaelgwn did not.

“Mam! Get this baby out of me right now! Arghhh!”

“Try to relax, dear, and push… keep up the pressure…”

“Maybe I should have gone to the hospital to have him… we knew he was going to be a big, arghhh, baby!”

“Now, Gwynnie, we discussed that, didn’t we, love? It was just not possible… far too dangerous. Just keep up the pressure, you’re doing a great job, for a first-timer”.

“Arghhh, oh, arghhh… uh, uh, uh, arghhh… Oh, Mum, he’s huge! Arghhh, go in the kitchen, get the carving knife and cut me open… Go on, I don’t care if you make a mess of it! Mam, I can’t bear this any longer…”

“Yes, you can, Gwynnie, you have to, and you know that I can’t help you like that as well… no-one can… That’s why you have to have the baby here at home with no outsiders present.

“It was written, Gwynnie, you know that as well as I do. Hush now, Gwyn and concentrate, all women go through this and I promise you, that, one day, maybe in years to come, you will look back on this day with great pleasure”.

“I’m, uh, arghhh, never going to have another one and that’s for sure!”

“You say that now, my dear, but we’ll see what happens, won’t we, one day”.

She had tried squatting in a warm bath, straddling a camping toilet seat, going on all fours and sitting on her haunches, but it was all the same, so she just lay on her back on her bed and tried to concentrate on moving her big baby boy out of her, millimetre by agonising millimetre. Gwynedd could feel his progress, but it was not fast enough for her.

“Give me some more of those tablets the doctor said I could take, Mam, please”.

Her mother complied and then held a glass of cold water to her lips. Her face was dripping with perspiration.

Mother and daughter looked so alike that they could have been sisters, although on this day, it would have been a toss up, which one would have been guessed to be the older of them. There was only eighteen years gap between them and Gwynedd’s mother, Rhiannon, kept herself looking very young for her age, as all women would if they had the choice, like she did.

The cottage and its lands had been in the family for longer than anyone could remember and they had a family Bible with everyone’s name and the address of the farm in it that was 324 years old. Rhiannon, Rhiannon Phillips, owned it now and her daughter and new son-in-law lived with her, as was the local tradition. Mr. Phillips had long since passed away.

When asked what religion they belonged to, both Rhiannon and Gwynedd would say ‘Chapel’ automatically, and they didn’t feel that they were being hypocritical. After all, it wasn’t a bad religion, as religions went. It just didn’t go far enough for them, because Rhiannon, her daughter and most people they knew, believed in a lot more.

Not only believed, but knew.

However, saying that they were ‘Chapel’ kept everybody happy and made the census forms easier to fill in. They even did go to Chapel whenever they could, even if it was only for the hymn-singing, but then so did everyone else as well. Even the Minister believed in more than he would admit to everyone, especially his superiors.

Rhiannon and her daughter were both gifted with ‘second sight’, as it was called, meaning that they could see into the future, and sometimes even into the past as well. It gave them a different perspective on time.

They both believed in Y Tylwyth Teg, or the Fairies in English, and regularly talked to the ones they believed were tending their garden and mountain they lived on; and they believed in Fate, a pre-ordained future, which was why Gwynedd’s baby was being born at home rather than in the hospital. They had both seen, in separate visions, that the baby, who would be called Wayne, would be ‘large and special’.

They knew that Wayne would be special in a fashion that could go either way. They had seen that he could be dangerous – a handful in more ways than one.

They weren’t sure of the details yet, but they had seen some awesome scenes, scenes that they did not want to become déjà vu. That was the last thing they wanted. They just could not be sure what would happen and that frightened them more than not having doctors or midwives around, to say nothing of the epidural painkillers.

“That’s the way, Gwynnie, come on, girl… I can see the top of little Wayne’s head! Keep pushing!”

“Arghhh, arghhh, he… is not ‘little’ Wayne, his head feels the size of a rugby ball… arghhh, and that’s not even the biggest part of him, is, uh, it? There’s another two feet to go after that as well! I hope his shoulders aren’t too broad yet. Oh, arghhh, never again, cut my tubes after this, Mam, phone up tomorrow, promise?”

“Come on, Wayne, help your mother to get you out, there’s a good boy. Work with your son, Gwyn, come on both of you, work together, you’re nearly there…”

“I’ve got him! Gwyn, I’ve got him! He’s beautiful, he’s perfect! Here, take your handsome son. Well done, both of you. My beautiful daughter and her handsome baby son”.

Gwyn said a few words to Wayne and cwtched him close, though no-one except Wayne knew what she had said, but he answered with a cry. After a few minutes, Rhiannon took him back, cut the umbilical cord, cleaned him up, wrapped him in a blanket and handed him back to his mother. Then she went outside to get better reception and phoned Wayne’s father.

“Sam, your beautiful son has arrived. Come on up and see him. He’s perfect and Gwyn is well too”.

He was more than a little drunk, but he did want to see his son.

“OK, Mam, I’ll be there now”. He clinked his glass with his two friends, finished his whisky and got in the van.

“We’ll be off now too then, Sammy, congratulations, we’ll call you tomorrow”.

“All right, lads, thanks for keeping me company. See you tomorrow. Goodnight, be careful on those mountain roads now”.

When he got home, which by pure chance was without having had an accident, he parked the car perilously close to the cottage and rushed inside.

“Oh, my dearest, Gwyn, you look a picture there, propped up in bed with our little shon, er… our Wayne. I’m sho proud of you both. Thanks, Mam, for getting them both through thish. You can’t guesh what I was thinking might be happening up here, you know, under the shircumshtances”.

“Let me try to enlighten you then, Sammy, have you ever tried to pass anything this big on the toilet? I thought not, so, be a good boy and say no more… But, he is a lovely boy, isn’t he? Mam, you were right, I don’t regret any of that pain anymore already”.

“Can I get you anything, my darling, I am yoursh to command?”

“No, I don’t want any more than I already have. Come and sit by us and put your arm around me, Sammy, but don’t breathe over us. I don’t want Wayne drunk on his first day out in the open”.

Samuel moved his stool to the top of the bed, reached over and put his arm around his wife’s shoulder. He held his breath, gazed into his son’s face and thought that he had to be the happiest man on the whole of God’s green Earth.

∞

Samuel was not from Wales, he had gone there from Cornwall one summer, four years before, in answer to an advertisement placed by the local sheep farmers for shearers. He had turned up on Rhiannon’s farm and he and her daughter had fallen in love. Both Rhiannon and Gwyneth could see that it had been inevitable. There weren’t many single people about, and certainly not within a twenty-minute ride, so when the handsome young man had stayed on the farm for a fortnight’s shearing, it was, well, predictable, Fate.

Rhiannon approved of him too. He was a knowledgeable sheep farmer, from sheep farming stock. He was tall and strong, and seemed besotted with Gwynedd. What more could a mother want for herself and her daughter? And Gwyn was too in love to care. She had led a lonely life on the mountain since leaving school and her mother understood that.

His only problem had been that he did not speak Welsh, but he was trying and the locals were giving him chance to learn, because he was a sheep farmer and because they all respected Rhiannon so much. There wasn’t a family within fifty miles that had not had call to ask a favour of her at some time or another, and she never turned anyone away.

She was bringing Gwynedd up the same way, as her mother had done to her – ad infinitum, as far as anyone knew.

Samuel mixed and fitted in. He never argued about his workload, and seemed to relish being with the flock. The only thing was that he was used to drinking in his village public house in Cornwall after work, whereas where he was now was twenty minutes from Y Ddraig Goch – The Red Dragon, the nearest pub, and it did get him down sometimes.

Gwynedd had only ever been in a pub in Wales once and that was on her wedding day and she hadn’t liked it much, even though she had been to school with most of the people in there. She had also had a drink with Samuel’s mates in their village, but she had been happy to get out as soon as possible, although she did like his parents and phoned them more often than he did.

At twenty-two and twenty-five, Gwynedd and Samuel were a fairly typical, happy couple for the area with their first child and, being the offspring of farmers, they didn’t think it unusual to live in their parent’s house. In fact, Samuel appreciated Rhiannon being around and even enjoyed her company, and the feeling was mutual. The only thing that they did not quite ‘see eye to eye on’ was the supernatural, although Sam had said that his parents believed the same as Gwynedd’s. However, Sam thought it ‘old fashioned and stupid’.

He had said that to them both one night with a supercilious smile, that told both of the women that he was only giving the opinion of someone else, someone he admired. In other words, that he was talking through his hat. They both thought that he would grow out of it, when confronted with reality – the reality as they experienced it every day.

He hadn’t learned anything yet though that he could quantify that was not particular to hillside sheep farming in north Wales, but they still thought that he would come round eventually.

Rhiannon thought of herself as a white witch, that is a witch who would not harm anyone purely for self gain and Gwynedd liked to think that she was the same, but without the experience because of their ages. Rhiannon’s mother had been a white witch and so had all the other matriarchs in their family, for ever, and every girl had been given the chance to learn.

Gwynedd had jumped at the opportunity to follow in their footsteps, as had her mother before her.

They didn’t meet many people during the course of a typical week and most of them were known to them, but when they did meet strangers, or anyone for that matter, they would ‘give them the once over’ to see if they were on the level. Local people knew better than to try to cheat them, but the occasional travelling salesman might treat them like hicks, and they in their turn, considered them fair game to be taught a lesson.

Gwynedd remembered her father pleading with her once not to tell her mother that someone had sworn at him in a fit of road-rage when he was giving her a lift home from school one afternoon. She had been very young and not heeded the warning. She had related the incident to Rhiannon that night before going to bed and two days later the same man had skidded into a lamppost and was in a coma for months, although he did pull out of it.