Category: BWGS

I spent the next few days exploring the old place and spending as much time with Bitte, as possible. I was going to fall in love with her.

When you are a child you don’t pay as much attention to your surroundings as you do as an adult. As a child, I never thought about ‘feeling at home’ but now I realized that I felt very much at home. Almost as though it was made for me.

Most everything was wood and finished with exquisite hand carving. There were paintings in the entry way and along the stairs and large leather couches and furniture throughout the house. And a wonderful library with my old books on entomology and some I didn’t even know were there.

The house and estate seemed smaller than it did when I was a kid but I guess things are always that way when you grow up.

There was an old woodchopper with a salt and pepper beard he kept patting, “Got ta keep the snits out o’ it”. And a couple other men who handled the stable, barn and did most of the heavy work out in the yard. There was a horse, an old trap and a truck. The horse seemed to have a lot of free time.

In the house, Bitte was queen with two women helping her keep it the way she wanted it.

In the mornings when I came down the stairs, the bright sun was always streaming in through an open rear door lighting the front of the house.

At night, Bitte set a fire in the fire place.

Fortunately, her mother didn’t come back.

At the end of that first week, Bitte drove us both to town in the truck, so I could deposit a letter of credit at the bank and she could do some shopping for the house.

On the way to town, I worked up the courage and asked Bitte about her boy friend.

Her mouth opened slightly. She paused, and she said that she did have a boyfriend once but god took him. And then she smiled. “And sent you in his place.”, with what I took as the sound of triumph in her voice.

I hardly knew this girl, but hearing those words and seeing her smile at me became the happiest moment in my life.

She was beautiful. A little shorter than me, with very light colored skin, flaming red hair and light green eyes and a small child-like face. Those dreams of my childhood housemaids disappeared.

Her petite figure fit her apron and dark skirt perfectly and fixed my attention as she fluttered around the room dressing this, adjusting that, putting my freshly laundered clothes away.

The moment she left, I jumped up and got a pair of pants out of the drawer I saw her put them in, then found a shirt.

Soon, there was another knock at the door.

This time, I said, “please come in.”

And there she was again. Her smile sweet and inviting, like she knew me. She was both familiar and deferential . This time she brought a silver salver with a cup of tea and toast. With a raised finger and a sideways glance, she said that breakfast was ready whenever I got downstairs. She said, “You look like your father,” and left.

The tea had just a touch of lemon and honey. It fixed me right up. The headache disappeared and so did the mush mouth. I felt great and, for the first time I could recall in my young years, I was actually aware of being eager. It felt good.

I wanted to know more about Bitte; she certainly knew me. I searched my memory for all the little girls that I knew from back when I lived at the house but none of them looked like her. Of course, I had changed too.

She had me feeling all kinds of different ways and I liked it. I hoped her mother didn’t come back.

I woke in a large bed with black wooden posts and a thick bed cover. The sun was coming up, filling the light cotton draperies like a wind and biting my head.

The drink the old woman had given me must’ve been pretty powerful. I couldn’t remember going to bed, let alone taking off my clothes. I checked myself beneath the covers.

I was still intact, but I had to pee really bad, I was naked and I didn’t know where the bathroom was.

The bedroom I was in was bright and very spacious, all wood paneled. There were cupboards, dressers, a wash basin and three doors. I could see my trunks at the foot of the bed.

Tiptoeing to the first door, I found a closet. The second opened onto a hallway and thankfully the third was a toilet.

After washing, I looked around for some clothes but all my clothes were all gone.

That was when there was a knock at the hallway door and I got back into the bed.

Bitte came in.

I don’t like flying. I can’t sleep. The seats are downright uncomfortable.

From New York to Cardiff, I drank those little bottles of wine one after another. And I did finally fall asleep. Then felt miserable when the stewardess woke me after landing.

From Cardiff to Wrexham, I took a train and sat in lounge the whole way adjusting to the change in hours and trying to heal my headache with local beer.

It was late afternoon when I arrived in Wrexham and my childhood memories were failing me. I couldn’t remember anything and nothing looked familiar. I gave a cabby instructions and fell asleep on the road.

It seemed like it was the very next moment that the cabby woke me demanding his money.

I paid him and he left before I realized that the house was still some distance off across land that rolled like a crumpled sparse carpet covered with closely cropped plants and grasses, some with narrow blades, others with wide and rounded leaves. Much of it strangled for nutrition.

An old woman met me at the door. She wore a white apron with an frill trim that was beginning to separate and a white dust cap tied with a blue ribbon that she used to hold most of her gray hair.

I can tell you that I was disappointed to see her, I was hoping for one of the cute housemaids that always seemed to be around when I was a kid. But there was only this old woman.

And she was ill-tempered, fat and smelled of mildew. I unpacked my few things and sat before the fire to eat her mutton and cakes- which were good enough and did cheer my mood some. That and her own brewed beer.

But I was sick and I was tired. The old woman brought me a soporific drink she made and told me her daughter would be there when I woke up to take care of me.

The drink was almost as thick as a syrup and very very pleasant, warm as I was before the fire. I slept, straight away, trying to imagine what I might be doing the next day.

I loved my dad and I knew it would break his heart when I quit business school to study entomology. But business school did not work on me. I couldn’t live in a suit all day.

To be honest, I was afraid of what might happen smelling of cologne and manicured, it felt like some sort of death to me.

So I dropped my business administration courses and switched to entomology. I expected it would be bad between my father and myself for a while but I thought he would see that I could be good at something and it would work out. I made plans to tell him about it. We were going to meet.

But I didn’t get the chance to tell him. He died, he was killed when an airplane landed wrong. It is one of those accidents in which hundreds of people are involved but only 20 or so are hurt and 3 are killed and you read about it in the news and you’re just glad it wasn’t so bad.

But three died and one of them was my dad. No matter how remote or small the detail in whatever adventure- well, things happen and they happen to someone and, in this case, it happened to me. Or, rather to him. But to me, too.

I didn’t expect him to die that is all; I didn’t think he was old.

 

My mother died soon after I was born and my father grieved, but he went on living. He became very successful in business. Rich, successful maybe even famous; there have been pictures of him dating movie stars in the newspapers. Whispered trysts, but nothing you could call serious. I knew him, I think he did have a love but I never met her.

 

While we lived in Wales, he would go with me out on the moors bugging and told me stories of some of the creatures he has seen there. I wanted to stay but he sent me to school in the US when I was eight, he felt I could get better education there.

He kept his home in Wales but he was so often in the US that sometimes it was difficult to tell. But I never saw the estate again.

But his death changed things.

I was on my way back from the US to London and then to Wales to re-visit my childhood home. I couldn’t be a business man like him but maybe I could bring a whole new series of insects to the world’s attention, put his name on them and publish a big fat book.

This is the story of an young American entomology student who meets sudden wealth and decides to return to his family home in Wales and make a name for himself writing bugs he heard about as a child.