IN THE BLOOD

IN THE BLOOD

 

The candle flickered in the silver-plated candlestick in the Giant Tipi filled with family and friends celebrating my daughter’s wedding. As we waited for her and her father to arrive, I looked into the flame and had a sudden flashback to my husband’s Modryb Anne and the story of the candlesticks and the Polecat.

       It was the late 1940s, and Modryb Anne lived on a farm in rural Wales. On Saturdays my in-laws would visit for tea. While the adults gossiped, their young son sat transfixed in front of a glass box,staring at a stuffed polecat devouring a blooded blackbird. Modryb Anne promised Rhys that ‘after she had gone’ she’d leave it to him. When she became ill, his parents visited more frequently and cared for her. No other relatives visited.  She died in her cottage, surrounded by her beautiful Welsh oak furniture. At the reading of the will, indeed Modryb Anne had kept to her word, and left Rhys her beloved polecat. To his parents who’d spent so much time caring for her in her dying months, she left two candlesticks. To the family who never visited she left the oak dresser and the other valuable items of her small estate.

       Fast forward thirty years. Rhys and I met in the Barry Summer School and a few months later were married in a registry office in Pontypridd with just four guests. We had both been travelling and had little savings. Soon into our marriage we were scratching around for items we might sell to help pay the bills. The polecat and the blackbird sat in their fixed tableau in the corner of our cottage. ‘It’s going to have to go,’ Rhys said.  And off it went to London  under his arm, doing the rounds of the Portobello Road market. But Londoners weren’t interested in stuffed animals from rural Wales, and Rhys came back, with mixed feelings.

     ‘You don’t have to sell it,’ I said. I’m sure we can find something else.’ But he was adamant. Off he went to Cardiff, to do the rounds of the antique shops. After a morning of rejections, he found himself in a shop in Pontcanna.

       ‘It’s the blood. People don’t like blood on their taxidermy,’ the owner told him.’

       ‘But it’s nature. It’s real,’ replied Rhys. ‘

       ‘It may be real to you, but the average punter likes their stuffed animals, bloodless. Owls. Owls are popular.’

        ‘I don’t have an owl.’

         ‘Sorry, mate. Then I can’t help you.’

As Rhys got to the door of the shop he bumped into another customer.

         ‘Oh no. You’ve beaten me to it. I’ve been looking everywhere for a polecat.’

         ‘I haven’t bought it, I’m selling it.’

         ‘You can’t do that.’ The owner said. ‘I want a cut.’

         ‘Stuff you!’ said Rhys, handing the glass box over to the buyer in exchange for cash.

 There was a roar in the Tipi and I came back to the present as Rhys entered, not with a polecat, but with our beautiful daughter on his arm. The candle in the silver-plated candlestick holder gave me a giant wink.

 

Janet Daniel

October 6 2014.