of the sea and sky. The beach was grey and littered with dead penguins. Halfway along was a concrete monument in memory of the Welsh. It looked like the entrance to a bunker. Let into its sides were bronze reliefs representing Barbarism and Civilization. Barbarism showed a group of Tehuelche Indians, naked, with slabby back muscles in the Soviet style. The Welsh were on the side of Civilizationâgreybeards, young men with scythes, and big-breasted girls with babies.
At dinner the waiter wore white gloves and served a lump of burnt lamb that bounced on the plate. Spread over the restaurant wall was an immense canvas of gauchos herding cattle into an orange sunset. An old-fashioned blonde gave up on the lamb and sat painting her nails. An Indian came in drunk and drank through three jugs of wine. His eyes were glittering slits in the red leather shield of his face. The jugs were of green plastic in the shape of penguins.
10
I TOOK the night bus on to the Chubut Valley. By next morning I was in the village of Gaimán, the centre of Welsh Patagonia today. The valley was about five miles wide, a net of irrigated fields and poplar windbreaks, set between the white cliffs of the barrancaâa Nile Valley in miniature.
The older houses in Gaimán were of red brick, with sash windows and neat vegetable gardens and ivy trained to grow over the porches. The name of one house was Nith-y-dryw, the Wrenâs Nest. Inside, the rooms were whitewashed and had brown painted doors, polished brass handles and grandfather clocks. The colonists came with few possessions but they clung to their family clocks.
Mrs Jonesâs teashop lay at the far end of the village where the bridge crossed over to the Bethel. Her plums were ripe and her garden full of roses.
âI canât move, my dear,â she called through. âYouâll have to come and talk to me in the kitchen.â
She was a squat old lady in her eighties. She sat propped up at a scrubbed deal table filling lemon-curd tarts.
âI canât move an inch, my darling. Iâm crippled. Iâve had arthritis since the flood and have to be carried everywhere.â
Mrs Jones pointed to the line where the floodwater came, above the blue-painted dado, on the kitchen wall.
âStuck in here I was, with the water up to my neck.â
She came out nearly sixty years ago from Bangor in North Wales. She had not left the valley since. She remembered a family I knew in Bangor and said: âFancy, itâs a small world.â
âYou wonât believe it,â she said. âNot to look at me now you wonât. But I was a beauty in my day.â And she talked about a laddie from Manchester and his bouquet of flowers and the quarrel and the parting and the ship.
âAnd how are the morals back home?â she asked. âDown?â
âDown.â
âAnd theyâre down here too. All this killing. You canât tell where itâll end.â
Mrs Jonesâs grandson helped run the teashop. He ate too much cake for his own good. He called his grandmother âGrannyâ but otherwise he did not speak English or Welsh.
I slept in the Draigoch Guest House. It was owned by Italians who played Neapolitan songs on the juke box late into the night.
11
I N THE morning I. walked to Bethesda along a white road lined with poplars. A farmer was walking in my direction and he took me to call on his brother Alun Powell. We turned up a track into a farmyard shaded by willows. A Welsh sheepdog barked and then licked our faces. There was a low mudbrick house with sash windows and a tin roof, and in the yard a horsedrawn buggy and some old machinery.
Alun Powell was a small man, crinkled by the sun and wind. His wife had shiny cheeks and was always laughing. Their living room was blue and had a Welsh dresser with postcards from Wales on it. Mrs Powellâs first cousin had left Patagonia and gone back home to Wales.
âHe has done
At dinner the waiter wore white gloves and served a lump of burnt lamb that bounced on the plate. Spread over the restaurant wall was an immense canvas of gauchos herding cattle into an orange sunset. An old-fashioned blonde gave up on the lamb and sat painting her nails. An Indian came in drunk and drank through three jugs of wine. His eyes were glittering slits in the red leather shield of his face. The jugs were of green plastic in the shape of penguins.
10
I TOOK the night bus on to the Chubut Valley. By next morning I was in the village of Gaimán, the centre of Welsh Patagonia today. The valley was about five miles wide, a net of irrigated fields and poplar windbreaks, set between the white cliffs of the barrancaâa Nile Valley in miniature.
The older houses in Gaimán were of red brick, with sash windows and neat vegetable gardens and ivy trained to grow over the porches. The name of one house was Nith-y-dryw, the Wrenâs Nest. Inside, the rooms were whitewashed and had brown painted doors, polished brass handles and grandfather clocks. The colonists came with few possessions but they clung to their family clocks.
Mrs Jonesâs teashop lay at the far end of the village where the bridge crossed over to the Bethel. Her plums were ripe and her garden full of roses.
âI canât move, my dear,â she called through. âYouâll have to come and talk to me in the kitchen.â
She was a squat old lady in her eighties. She sat propped up at a scrubbed deal table filling lemon-curd tarts.
âI canât move an inch, my darling. Iâm crippled. Iâve had arthritis since the flood and have to be carried everywhere.â
Mrs Jones pointed to the line where the floodwater came, above the blue-painted dado, on the kitchen wall.
âStuck in here I was, with the water up to my neck.â
She came out nearly sixty years ago from Bangor in North Wales. She had not left the valley since. She remembered a family I knew in Bangor and said: âFancy, itâs a small world.â
âYou wonât believe it,â she said. âNot to look at me now you wonât. But I was a beauty in my day.â And she talked about a laddie from Manchester and his bouquet of flowers and the quarrel and the parting and the ship.
âAnd how are the morals back home?â she asked. âDown?â
âDown.â
âAnd theyâre down here too. All this killing. You canât tell where itâll end.â
Mrs Jonesâs grandson helped run the teashop. He ate too much cake for his own good. He called his grandmother âGrannyâ but otherwise he did not speak English or Welsh.
I slept in the Draigoch Guest House. It was owned by Italians who played Neapolitan songs on the juke box late into the night.
11
I N THE morning I. walked to Bethesda along a white road lined with poplars. A farmer was walking in my direction and he took me to call on his brother Alun Powell. We turned up a track into a farmyard shaded by willows. A Welsh sheepdog barked and then licked our faces. There was a low mudbrick house with sash windows and a tin roof, and in the yard a horsedrawn buggy and some old machinery.
Alun Powell was a small man, crinkled by the sun and wind. His wife had shiny cheeks and was always laughing. Their living room was blue and had a Welsh dresser with postcards from Wales on it. Mrs Powellâs first cousin had left Patagonia and gone back home to Wales.
âHe has done
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