Journey to the Land of Green Chartreuse

© 2011 Dedwydd Jones. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 5/20/2011

ISBN: 978-1-4567-7964-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4567-7965-8 (e)

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Contents

JOURNEY TO THE LAND OF GREEN CHARTREUSE

FULLY PAID UP

THE CATCHER

Some Good Advice

THE LAST OF THE CABBAGES

Moving On

This collection is for the Old Guard, JT, BG, BM, RM, SJ

JOURNEY TO THE LAND OF GREEN CHARTREUSE

Selected writings

by

DEDWYDD JONES

CHAPTER 1

Huw obeyed his Chief’s command immediately. When he saw the hand signal, he sank down behind a tree trunk, drawing an arrow from his quiver and fitting it into his bow. The Chief was dressed in a poncho style tunic of buffalo skin, three eagle’s war feathers at the back of his head, upright in the head band, with notches to denote scalps taken in battle. His face was streaked with fresh war paint, his short spear and trusty tomahawk in his hand. He had insisted on authenticity. His body was brown as an Indian brave’s and glossy in the half-light. He looked around and shivered. The sun was setting, and there was a chill breeze in the shadows below. What a time to call for a shoot, thought Huw, when the light was fading and floodlights might have to be used. Never mind, it all meant money, and he really needed some of that stuff badly. He was covered with body paint like his Chief, but, unlike his Chief, looked as if a he had just fallen into a vat of gravy. Huw stood up on the lip of the ravine. A broad pathway ran down the centre, leading to the end of the shallow gulley. The last rays of the sun shot through the trees. There was a drumming of hoofs and three horsemen galloped furiously into view. They were dressed as early American Puritan Settlers, with plain jerkins and tall hats. They were pursued by whooping braves. Huw’s Chief dropped his hand. Huw let an arrow fly. It sped a few yards, slowed, then dropped to earth like a stone. Never mind. They could cut that bit out later. One of the riders gave a scream and fell from his horse, one leg still stuck in the stirrup, dragging him along - a classic pursuit technique. What corn! Huw’s Chief gave the two finger sign to the fallen horseman, who returned it with interest, Jesus curse ye, pesky redskin!

The Chief roared back, Bloody Puritans, cause of all our woes!

Speak for yourself, you rotten bastard! returned the holy one.

One more word from you, concluded the Chief, and it’ll be Sacred Thunder’s Medicine Pipe right up your arse!

After a few more prime, mocking, insults, the Extra moved off to join his laughing comrades behind him. The Chief pointed after his retiring adversary, bloody cowardy custard Puritan! he shouted, sticking his tongue out this time. This was greeted with hoots of laughter. The Chief really was the life and soul of any party.

Yes, this was the ‘brave new world’ in a pine wood in the Fair Country near the folly known as Castell Goch, outside Cardiff, in the Vale of Glamor, or Enchantment, at a time when the shadows were growing longer, tempers shorter, and a magical hue was cast by the setting sun. The whoops of the invisible tribe of extras subsided in the undergrowth. The Chief’s face was gaunt, with high cheek bones, wide black eyes, broad nose and down-turned mouth, the very picture of an outraged Indian Chief of the Comanche tribe, on the warpath. He was about five nine, muscular, quick in movement, a born fighter, sixth dan black belt. He had a three-inch scar across his upper lip. If a fight threatened, he would pop out his front dentures and wave them under his antagonists’ nose, pulling back his upper lip and challenging, ‘No gum there chum, just scar tissue, so if you’d care to step outside…’ by which time his opponent had usually backed off. Bloody lunatic. The simple fact was that Eddie was born to fisticuffs and got to use them at the drop of a hat. The knuckle bones of his right hand had been crushed so many times, they had to be removed. He now used only the side of his calloused hand, in karate chops. These proved as lethal as his traditional punching expertise. The Taffia were very chary of the threat from both naked molars and smashed fists. They knew that Eddie, basically, like his friends, didn’t give a half-penny fuck! Fists! - the primitive weapons of a native throwback, a savage. Most uncivilized! as the First Assistant to the Director, known as the Yellow Crane, had put it, must be watched at all hours! And took the precaution of informing the Police Chief, an old crony from his Freemason days, who, as it turned out, was already casting a jaundiced eye over the recently arrived former brawler. Eddie had spent half his life as a merchant seaman, getting into dangerous but exhilarating free-for-alls in a dozen ports of call, including his beloved Cardiff docks. His scars were his permanent badges of honour. He had been granted the Merchant Navy’s highest award for Indiscriminate Valour, the Hand-to-Hand In-fighting Silver Clasp with Laurel Leaves. He revelled in his real name, Eddie Mudd - I was born in mud, brought up in mud, and to mud I will return, he was fond of chanting as he fought both in the ring and out of it. He had moreover, as he was fond of asserting, eaten his way around the world as well. He had amazed every ship he had sailed on with his cast-iron digestive system and his wild menus. He had literally devoured everything on legs, from the cuddly kualas of Queensland to the red ants of the Upper Amazon. Frogs’ legs and snails he regarded as child’s play, the snobby scraps of juvenile Francophiles. He also surprised his ship-mates by his seemingly endless talent for bashing rousing tunes out of any old pub pianoforte. ‘Altogether now!’

Eddie had linked up with Huw and Trevor in London where they had formed the London Noble Rot Guild of Welsh Writers, which they had cut down to a simple ‘Noble Rot’ - which was, basically, what they were permanently engaged in. Now they had come home, hopefully to join the momentous new wave of Kultur in Wales. Its forces were gathering in the capital, bringing a tsunami of native, onrushing talent. The three had deserted remunerative posts in the capital and abroad to return to Wales, to the homeland where every miner sang the exiles’ anthem, ‘We’ll keep a welcome …’ or so they had been led to believe, since birth, and where they would find terrific solace and comfort in the shared renaissance of their fellow Taff artists. The evening winds rustled the leaves and the distant coming moon shone faintly. God, would they have to stay all night? Never mind, thought Huw, there’s money in all this muck. He trotted over to Eddie. Bless Eddie, he thought, a real tough little wheeler-dealer who never forgets his mates and shared his writers’ earnings, large and small, with them. His wife Nia was never phased by this, she admired his big-hearted generosity. She had a good private teaching job and her own money. Independence was the backbone of their love and it ran both ways. Eddie adored her and whatever happened or wherever he was, he was always on the way back to her, a long distance fidelity for which she loved him all the more, although she, too, had had her little lapses, which Eddie took in the same way, with a mutual sense of forgiveness and affection. Eddie was shagging the casting director, Marian, so he had been able to get Huw a bit part, and have the third of the triumvirate, Trevor, appointed ‘writer of additional dialogue’ as well as being a brave of the Comanche tribe.

Where’s our Trev? asked Huw.

Search me, Eddie replied, I saw him shinning up a tree, over there up to the romantic turret in the sky. Perhaps he was pursuing the grey lady, she’s said to be quite sexy although she’s just a ghost. He was our lookout, but he seemed pissed to me. Can I borrow your car, Eddie, got to visit my Mam and Dad tomorrow, I can make it if I leave early.

Eddie handed over the keys.

Help yourself, I’ll use Nia’s. Give my love to them, especially Phoebe, your seer and sister!

I think I love her best of all, really, she’s mad as me.

You’re not mad, boy, just crazy! You going to call in on our King Arthur’s Seat?

I might, on the way back.

Best piss up since we arrived here…

…lots of phantoms, they say, the wind sighing through the trees, the strange distant night cries, the blazing campfire, stacks of booze, almost holy it was. Must do it again.

Dead right there.

Need a few quid for the petrol? Here. Huw looked away. No, take it. I just re-mortgaged the house. And I got the payment from the film.

Ta, Eddie. Where would we be without you?

We’d all be in London, rolling in it, and eating our hearts out we hadn’t given it a go down here. We could still make it over the seas and far away, if need be, but Trev, seems doubled up most of the time, I mean, skinny as a bean-pole, his aching gut…

…and his aching heart.

Saddest of all.

You still going to put on that show of yours day after tomorrow?

Well, yes…

…rehearsals, technical run-throughs...give yourself time. You’ve had a few…well…

…disasters! No matter. That’s the way of the play! Press on! Eddie, I just want to get back into the fray.

Got my blessing there.

My tart observations on the state of play in the press don’t seem to have made much difference either. I mean, I got that second grant and a promise of a final one for the show, a guarantee of overdraft. Just panto, I told them, a sort of Xmas offering. The White Slug seemed quite amenable.

Then be bloody well even more careful, Huw. Our Trev’s last book of poems had them tearing their hair. I mean, ‘The Arts Dome rose - like an anus!’ What a laugh! And Trev now signs his poems ‘The Great Worm,’ Now that to me is crystal clear, but they call him ‘a heathen and atheist’ for it. And look here, in today’s paper, Trev again suggests we should, Abolish the Afterlife! so there’s no fear of punishment and man can finally be free of the shackles of bloody J.C. and his Twelve Enforcers. Makes them froth at the mouth.

Huw, don’t you ever lose your temper?

Only when I pick up a pen.

Their beady eyes are upon us and they are sharpening their knives. Sara the Sec of White Slug, says she loves ‘a real poet,’ our Trev in this case, but I bet it’s a set up. I tell you, it’s open war now, but still underground.

Trev said he wanted to marry Sara in his Officers’ Blues uniform.

God, she’s still the White Slug’s prime secretary. Love in the lion’s den. Not safe. He could take his pick. The girls love a roarin’ boy.

That ‘directors’ caravan’s’ a mobile shagging shop, in use twenty-four hours a day, day and night. And at yesterday’s shoot, Trev was spotted in there with Sara, bouncing up and own.

You know, our Marian fancies you.

And I fancy her back.

Help yourself.

You mean it?

Of course, we’re mates, aren’t we? A few weeks back, she shagged the entire Pontypridd rugby team.

All of them!?

And the reserves. It was a home match. Mind you, Marian has a heart of gold, help you out if you were ever in a tight corner.

Why she work for the Yellow One?

Same reason everyone does - money. Here’s her telephone number. Say I gave it, give her an even bigger thrill. Don’t worry, it’s only what the lady wants.

True. Ta.

OK, mate. I’m married too, don’t forget. Got to be faithful sometimes.

"How does anyone forget your Nia?’

I’ll take that as a compliment.

Meant as such.

Then ta again.

Our Trev went a bit bonkers after his Mam died. Still there. ‘Like it was yesterday,’ he told me."

And his Dad, both. I mean, they demolish his old Dad’s forge to make way for a motorway. Every penny of Trev’s goes on the case. He loses. ‘Broke but not broken’ as he put it. Blames himself, being absent at the time. Comes back when it’s too late. Fucking fate. No one’s fault. Buggers still after the house, money for the funeral, probating the will, accountants and solicitors, I thought they were supposed to be Christians but they turned out to be vultures. Who wouldn’t go a bit bonkers?

And their damned bailiffs.

At least, he was acquitted of setting fire to the Council’s JCB’s.

So were we! Bloody life, that’s our big mistake, and that’s not our fault either!

Christ, it’s gone dark. Listen to those extras, still hanging around, singing like holy ghosts, high as kites by the sound if it. Look, in the trees, they’ve got torches, I mean, burning torches. Jesus, the smoke, can’t see…Listen! Bloody ‘Men of Harlech’ again…

…no, not quite ‘Men of Harlech…

…Men of Somewhere Else, then.

Listen…waves of glory, I hear, tones of hiraeth…the melancholy of unquenchable yearning…there’s sylvan poetry in them there hills…

…put down thy pen, naughty boy! Just piss artists on the piss, they are, like us! And after the back-stabbings and the humiliations, we ourselves decided to chuck it up and come back. We chose this! We can’t blame anyone around here. Where in the hell has Trev got to?

Trevor Cernow, a former Press Officer at the Javanese Embassy, had been well paid, deeply respected, recognized as the brilliant lunatic he was, before he returned to his native Cardiff. It was his old mate, Eddie, whose racy novel they were now filming, who had encouraged him ‘to come home and try bloody well everything Welsh again,’ including ‘acting,’ Eddie had added, which Trev did most of the time. Regret, longing, outrage, bitterness, all the blacker emotions, were his forté. And he meant each one! Eddie made sure the filming was faithful to the plot, action, and character of his book, warts and all. But the whole production scene seemed to have turned into a sort of old fashioned struggle between good and evil, friendship versus enmity, with hypocrisy thrown in as the guiding light - plus many other local versions of virtue versus vice, the unspotted Chapel elders versus the tainted dissidents. The First Assistant Director of the Opposition, the champion of the baddies, was expressed in the vile body of Hefin Jones, aka ‘the Yellow Crane.’ He was still thoroughly alarmed that the ‘ex-pats’ had dared intrude into his sacred, profitable, little patch, the ‘Principality’s’ film industry, and, as he put it, ‘mine!’ It was only Eddie’s publishing success in overseas London that had induced his fellow arts directors ‘to give Eddie a try,’ even if it was just to shut him up. But it had been necessary for Eddie to flash his naked gums a number of times even on the first day. This caused some consternation, and, later, vows of vengeance, but Eddie nearly always got his way. Huw knew that Eddie was a tribal throwback who loved Wales and his soiled roots in the slums of Cardiff, notably Splott, his ‘Avallon-by-Taff,’ as he called it, and that Eddie was prepared to go to war on the least pretext to protect this sacred spot.

Marian, the casting director, now appeared, the usual clip-board in hand. She made a bee-line for Eddie. Behind her, trotted Thelma, the make up lady, carrying the cosmetics box. Both also doubled as extras and were dressed in Mini-ha-ha costumes, short skirts with slits down the side, luscious brown skin revealed underneath. Marian, the senior player of the group, motioned them back, seized an air-brush from the cosmetics box and knelt before Eddie. It was as if the others did not exist. With slow sensuous strokes, she began applying toner to the inside of Eddie’s thighs. She looked up fondly at him, through slant black eyes, moistening her brush, wetting her lips, brushing on his tan. Eddie bared his teeth in appreciation. Huw wondered if she’d go as far as giving Eddie a fully-blown blow-job in plain view of the birds, let alone the extras. God, how he fancied her himself, never mind her past, or her present, come to that. She turned towards him as if sensing his desire, and smiled, flashing her green eyes. But at that climactic moment, the First Assistant Director himself, the well named ‘Yellow Crane,’ strode out of the underbrush. He was one of the new Welsh Arts Top Model Men to Watch, as the local paper had it. He was about fifty, bald, eye-bagged, lean and lank, with a yellowish complexion due to a liver complaint. His eyes, a muddy black, were too small for his lantern-jaw face. He was known as ‘The Crane’ because he preyed on at least twenty-two official bodies and quangos, especially those related to investments in ‘his’ film industry’ – ‘yellow’ because he was just that. He also sat on innumerable arts and crafts committees, collecting mountains of attendance fees, especially when he wasn’t there. He ignored the furtive scufflings and movements in the dusky undergrowth as numerous members of the extras tribe moved up wind. Marian rose to her feet, assuming a posture of outraged dignity, hands on hips, as if she had been interrupted in vital war work.

Hefin Jones, his real name, was a bullying peculator, grasping of power at every turn, a nepotist extraordinaire, an addle-pated mediocrity of vaulting vanity and self-importance, a totally talentless creature of the Big Wheel, aka the White Slug, who had recently been installed as Number One in the newly launched Central Dome of Aesthetic Excellence, home of the tremendous new Welsh Arts Agency. The Crane was universally detested by the hoi polloi, the ‘gwerin,’ the people - which, to his equally ghastly cronies, was his best qualification for the job. His thick, suppurating layers of ego made him blind to anyone’s feelings, and allowed him to crush, insult or ignore the most highly gifted and the most genuinely talented, without a second thought. He also suffered from a few terminal defilements – advanced gangrenous fame-envy, putrefied power-jealousy, and a decomposed craze for eminence. These qualities were representative of the minor, despised colony of Wales. The Crane glanced with distaste at Eddie and Huw. He moved a little distance away and beckoned to Thelma, Piss off now and don’t come back, he hissed in her ear, expecting instant acquiescence. Bollocks! responded Thelma spiritedly, then in a whisper, or I’ll tell on you, and flounced off, leaving her large cosmetics box behind, winking at Eddie and Huw. The discomfited Crane paused, ‘and she would too, the cow,’ he thought nervously. Yes, his reputation was at stake again. He’d have to award her a grant to visit Canada and the scrimshaws of the Inuit or some such scam. That should keep her big mouth shut. He motioned for Marian to join him. The two walked a little apart, engaging in what soon became an acrimonious ding-dong altercation, in which, once again, Hefin seemed to be on the losing side. ‘Bollocks to you, too, snot-head!’ Marian finally snarled at him. Abruptly, she seized the cosmetics box and aimed it at Hefin and threw. He ducked. Exploding compacts, bursting moisturizers, the roller-ball applicators (for the reduction of cellulite), leg paint, spilled foundation creams, handfuls of mascara brushes, lashes, cuticles, spot killers, lipsticks, beauty serums scattered into the bushes, soiling the pleasant greenery with different shades of shit-coloured face powder. Miriam laughed in the Crane’s outraged face and stamped off, her Indian skirt flaring out, revealing her shapely butt. She would have given Eddie a blow job, too, she loved his base origins, his violent streak, his lurid novels and huge cock, and wasn’t shy about displaying her expertise with it, to the world either. She would have given them all a thrill for the greater glory of Eddie! Huw had looked tasty too. In exasperation, the Yellow Crane lost his cool and leapt onto the scattered beauty serums, kicking out at the myriad hydrating pots, and finally assaulted the velvet box itself so splinters flew in all directions. These women, he muttered through gritted teeth, sell their bodies for a penny, then betray their souls for a farthing. What deals! Greedy whores! Throw these filthy cosmetics at him, would she? He’d soon show her and her gruesome sidekicks! He booted another jar of glop into the leaves.

I think we’re just getting the sack, Eddie, said Huw, surveying the Yellow Crane’s antics.

Hang on in there, boy, Eddie called out at the disheveled Crane.

He is the White Slug’s top Rejector, Eddie, we won’t be called for tomorrow.

Huw, we’ll make it yet in this new artistic wonderland of Wales, you’ll see. Hefin’s just frightened of losing his grip on the arts film funds, that’s all.

Isn’t he jealous over you and Marian, then?

You don’t know the half of it, replied Eddie with a grin, but moldy old Hefin there knows which side his bread is buttered and Marian knows how he spreads it. He’s a cowardly little prick, you’ll see. And this is my film, added Eddie, "from my book, under my contract. Marian warned we’ve got to watch our backs at all times now we’re home," he said, smacking his fist into the palm of his hand.

True.

I’d feel safer in a brothel in a bar in a Jamaican slum,’ added Eddie, looking dispassionately at the crazed Yellow Crane. But don’t let this arsehole worry you for the moment, OK?"

OK. Your party day soon, Eddie, anything I can do?

Leave it to the ladies, Nia’s taken over.

Your lady wife know about Marian?

She knows about everyone of them, that’s why we get on so well. Come up with the cast after your show’s finished. The Crane will have his spies there, you know.

Part of the invited audience, I assure you, Eddie. Curtain up early, at five.

They will never forgive you for your public spleens and pamphlets. All in Rebecca’s Daughters. Lovely journal while it lasted. And don’t forget, you first introduced the scandal of fees and ex-gratia payments, although they managed to sweep it under the carpet.

I know.

I mean it.

I got you! Honest, Eddie. Don’t worry. I like the way our Trev signs every poem now as ‘The Great Worm.’

Just right. Look. Over there.

The Crane paused in his depradations on the beauty products, stared in frozen dislike at the calmly chatting duo, then thrust his way out of sight into the bushes. Eddie and Huw looked indifferently at the appalling, expensive mess he had left behind. What a buffoon! Huw grinned. Another story for the extras to spread abroad.

Dammo, thought The Crane in confusion, as he pushed his way through the foliage, that rebellious cow Marian - fuck those two - they were really responsible for this, but, on reflection, had he been too precipitate? He had been shagging Marian too, but she was refusing to give any more now, shoving him off like a dog, and he liked a bit on the job like everyone else, although his public morals were as strict the ‘Puritans’ he was currently slaughtering. Marian had better come to heel, he thought, if she wanted to keep her job, whoever she was shagging, or threatening with her stupid ‘revelations.’ Dammo, he’d have to placate her, though, even promote her. But how? He stopped. Yes! Get her a new box of splendid cosmetics from Monmartre, the heart of gay Paree, that would do the trick, and a fully paid up two-week holiday for more indigenous conquests in sunny Tenerife, bugger the eskimos! The fact she shagged around never phased him - just as long as she was discreet about his own and didn’t do it in public, especially with mad sods like that Eddie Mudd. Bugger all troublemakers, he thought, bloody interlopers, bully Eddie and his acts of violence against the perfectly innocent; Huw and his assault on a well-respected establishment, in lying articles for the national newspapers! All that stuff and nonsense about fees. Pure invention! Why did they bother to publish rot like that? And what about Trevor’s manic verbal assaults at his poetry readings on perfectly decent civil servants at the top, upsetting everyone! Them and their bolshie ideas! And now they were stirring up the women, Marian, Thelma, even trying it on Sara, but not that lady, Miss Wales herself five years previously, never forgotten, incorruptible, never an untouchable, and she knew the accounts better than any of them, but other women had been taken in, even wives, he had heard, and once they had aroused the female of the species, you had a veritable nest of harpies up your jacksie - why, the women were the most atavistic of all the furies, and more shameless than all the pale male chauvinists put together. Why, the bloody banshees, they’d even blackmail the highest ups, the most respected ‘crach,’ the long-established solicitors, bankers, Accountants, Regulators, Accountants’ Regulators, Regulators’ Accountants, Lord Mayors, Aldermen, Chairmen of many committees, such as himself, with no compunction - all of whom were actually putting up the funds for these disgusting ‘arts’ events of theirs, including this smutty film of Eddie’s, for example, a veritable catalogue of violent invective, degenerate sex, over-excited red Indians, and masturbatory fantasies. The fact that the money for it came from the tax payer was beneath the Crane’s notice. What in the hell had the dispensation of public monies got to do with the public anyway? Christ, all he had asked the three prats to do was just not