Heaven and Home

I walked on the hills above Trefenter in the morning, and the smell of fox was so outrageous that I had to stop and laugh. The smell stayed with me all day, even after three hours in the car and the full width of Wales placed behind me.

Snow lay that evening in the graveyard of St Ellyw’s church at Llanelieu above Talgarth. In ivy and the setting sun, I walked towards the old building and recalled the smell of the morning’s fox, realising that now would be the perfect moment to hear one bark in the last week of January in the pitch of cold weather. It’s the peak of their breeding season, and the only time you’ll hear a dog fox hoarsely barking. “I don’t ask for much in prayer”, I said, “but let me hear you now”. The sound of my own voice surprised me, and I excused the brass-neck of my request because it’s hardly a favour if what you want is going to happen anyway. For heaven’s sake, the moon was rising, and I almost cupped my ear in anticipation of the guaranteed reply; three or four muttered, crowing barks; the dog fox at work.

There were footprints in the snow on a path in the brambles. I bent to look at them, but the rounded toes told only of cat, and no foxes. I looked to the sun as it set upon the scarp of Rhos Dirion; to all the white and rising pastures and the dregs of silent trees. Plenty of space, but here was a film without a star, and everything I’d gone to see was distracted by its absence. So while I have literally looked at the famous ox-blood screen of Llanelieu, I haven’t really seen it. There is certainly a sense of wonder in the old and heavy walls of that church, but my time was distracted by the cold and the sound of robins tinking for the dusk. I could hear them, so why couldn’t I hear another sound so obviously there?

I stayed too long and chilled myself, which is no laughing matter at my rising, crazy age. When I made to leave at last, I told myself that in future when I recalled or thought of this moment, I’d say I’d heard a fox, even though it would be a lie. And before I had reached the car, my anticipation began to override my reality; my wish was coming true. Less than an hour later when I walked to my lodgings through a cold mist which had fallen upon the black streets of Talgarth, the imagined truth was already bleeding into reality. It was getting hard to believe that I hadn’t heard a fox after all.

Picture: Llanelieu church interior – west windows, photographed January 24th 2023