Read Online Too Close to the Sun by Sara Wheeler - Free Book Online

could still picture him in her eighties. Her mother had also been on the staff. “I remember Denys so well,” Elsie said. “He was tall, extremely handsome, witty and affectionate. He was loved by all Harlech, especially the children, for he would always stop and talk to them. He used to come into the kitchen at the Plas to amuse the staff, often picking mother up into his arms and teasing her unmercifully.” But it was not all cakes and tease. Welsh men who went to sea—and many did, working as crew on merchant schooners—were away for two or three years at a time, sometimes forever. Education for the poor was even worse here than it was in England. Although Welsh was the first language, all teaching was conducted in English. Schools were overcrowded, not least because of the large size of many families. Two households in a village near Harlech had twenty-six children between them, and they all walked into school with a package of bread and dripping and a bottle of cold tea.

    IN HARLECH, A DASHING young man named Ossie Williams hurtled into the Winchilsea orbit. Four years older than Denys, the dark-haired Ossie was tall, with full lips and eyes like blue gas jets. All junior Winchilseas adored him. Their parents were less impressed, as the Williamses were committed Liberals. Their seat, Deudraeth Castle (pronounced
Die-dreth
), occupied a wooded promontory that jutted out into the sands at Penrhyndeudraeth. *6 To get to Harlech, nine miles away, it was necessary to cross the estuary on the railway bridge and follow the serpentine road up to the town—except at low tide, when one could walk across the sandy bottom of the Dwyryd. In 1901, Ossie started soldiering, and before he turned nineteen he had served in the South African war, returning to Harlech with a DSO (Distinguished Service Order) to thrill Topsy, Toby, and Denys with stories of bivvying on the veld. The three young men careered between the Plas and Deudraeth, surging with high spirits, shooting, skating, and staying the night wherever they ended up.
    Twenty-two-year-old Topsy was not permitted to sleep away from home. (She was allowed to take her shoes off when prawning, but not her stockings.) Taller than the less-favored Toby, she had grown into a fine-featured woman with her mother’s figure and a wistful expression, and she had Denys’s cool temperament. The pair were close; both of Topsy’s children recalled, many years later, the “special bond” that existed between them. As the tragedy of Topsy’s life unfolded, she and Denys became closer still, and the tie drew him back from Africa. By 1903, Topsy’s hair had gone up and her skirts had come down, but she had few companions in Harlech and spent many hours in her room at the top of the house with her dog, a smooth-haired white fox terrier called Billy. Her cousin Essex Gunning felt sorry for her and considered that she had a “rotten social life” in Wales. But in 1906 it emerged that Topsy had not been entirely left out after all, and the consequences precipitated a family crisis: she and Ossie had fallen in love. Henry disapproved of the match on political and social grounds, considering the Williamses to be middle-class Welsh country squires as well as Liberals. It was bad enough that in February the Liberals had swept to victory in the general election. Now they were infiltrating the family. This was agonizing for the shy, sensitive Topsy, but she would not give him up. There was something introspective about the Winchilseas, whereas Ossie and his clan were extrovert, and liberal in both senses of the word. According to Topsy’s son, Michael, this was “a breath of fresh air” to his reserved mother. The year they became engaged, Ossie was obliged to retire from his regiment after a polo accident. He got a job in railway construction and spent several years in Chile and Bolivia. Topsy waited for him. At balls, she would hide under the table rather than dance with anyone else. Denys