Yam Yam: A Story for Christmas by Keith Davies

Keith Davies

I loved the Jones family – and their chaotic house on Pren-Brigog’s only road: a forgotten pre-war B class which zigzagged its way in and out of the straggly village before merging with muscular, serious roads far away.

Mum was a nurse, Dad was a surveyor: round-faced, with the dark-eyed Celtic looks the children shared – little Hafwen, then a wobbly toddler; Geraint and Tedi the middle children, and Lewis, the oldest; my best friend since primary school.

Their driveway was always strewn with kids’ bicycles, never parked stiffly against the wall – you were in too much of a hurry to dash into the splendidly messy garden: a jungly tangle of exploded buddleia, mutant lavender bushes, leggy tea roses, and an uncut lawn dotted with bleached footballs.

In summer it seethed with butterflies.

There were always scones, jam tarts, sponge cakes, biscuits, buttered toast, pop – Dandelion and Burdock and Cream Soda – for ice-cream floats in deep summer – and, one day, William: a black, re-homed Labrador puppy – all huge eyes and drool. Mr Gwynn Jones adored his children – dressing up as Father Christmas, bashing, glueing together, and painting lopsided toy boxes, dolls’ houses, toboggans – and resolved that the children should have a dog.

The children wanted to call him ‘Jumble’ – after William’s co-conspirator in the Just William stories by Richmal Crompton – but compromised with William. Otherwise, corporate copyright suits would have shattered this simple account from the outset, forever consigning it to pencil notes, and you would not be reading it.

He grew quickly – flourishing on a diet of chopped tripe, Pedigree Chum, cold rice pudding – of which he was inordinately fond – toast, and ginger biscuits sneaked to him by Hafwen, who dressed young William up in assorted hats, woollen scarves and colourful pairs of mittens: his eyes beseeching anyone else passing through the room to intervene, though he withstood the indignity with commendable grace.

When you are only five, ‘William’ is a whole squish of syllables and so Hafwen called him ‘Yam Yam’.

He answered quite happily to both.

Pren-Brigog patted and fussed him: in return, he herded small children, tolerating tail -pulling and ear-tickling. He never crossed into surrounding fields near livestock, happily exploring the hedgerows – weaving and nosing blissfully through the bindweed, snowberry, vetch, cuckoo flowers and red campion. No other dogs ever snapped or snarled at William: Iago Pryce – the farmer up at Pentre Uchaf – smiled when his mad-eyed, needle-toothed collies scarcely twitched in their sleep at William’s approach: he sauntered coolly through the stockyard, while they dreamed of postman’s arses and fleeing ramblers.

Farmer Pryce would often say: ‘Why, that William’s more cow than dog!’

He was our companion on fishing expeditions, dozing under a nearby tree in the slanting light as we tried our luck for roach or tench in the slow-purling, resiny Clwyd – or charging into the shallows of the Alyn; chasing millers’ thumbs as they flicked through the weeds.

Pren-Brigog had only two bus stops back then: one, almost lost to honeysuckle near the Griffin Inn, and another across the road, opposite the Jones’ house. As school children, we met up there; jostling, swapping stuff, hurriedly scribbling out homework, until the bus came each schoolday morning. Returning in the afternoon, dishevelled and hungry, we dashed home for our teas.

William always saw the Jones’ children to the edge of the road – grinning, tongue lolling. One morning, when Hafwen had become a serious schoolgirl in her First Year,  she waved to her pals at the bus stop, and ran to the edge of the pavement. William instantly jammed himself against her legs and wouldn’t budge. He stayed rigid, despite being scolded and her attempts to push him away. She pulled his ears angrily, pointed back at the house – her friends called out encouragingly: Clear off William! You dafty! Home! Basket! The bus is coming!

William stayed rooted.

Lewis Ifans, the village Flash Boy – indulged since infancy by his Mum, who ran the bakery in Craigfechan – tore past in his brand new Ford Capri a split-second later – a loutish, two-tone blur of Arizona Gold and Sahara Beige: easily fast enough to have killed Hafwen outright or injured her terribly.

We looked on astounded: William knew.

Only when Ifans was zooming away, oblivious to our yells and rude gestures – partially obscured by large furry diced dangling in his rear window – did William gently unlock himself, yawn, lick Hafwen’s hand, and bound back down the drive to see his pal Monty, next door’s Airedale.

I can see her now, limp with astonishment, the satchel falling from her shoulder; exercise books and her fluffy David Cassidy pencil case spilling onto the pavement.

And the years cartwheeled by.

Lewis joined the Police and began his training at Hendon; Hafwen would become a nurse like her Mum. I was in my first year as a junior reporter, two hundred miles to the North; in a grim town with its dirty river and hunched terraces.

I wrote penny packets of copy, occasional features,  and covered court hearings – Magistrates’, Crown, Coroner’s and Bankruptcy. Lineage fees – paid in guineas then – bulked out my meagre weekly pay cheque, sufficiently to allow me to coax a sullen second bar out of the electric fire in my attic digs, and treat myself to Vesta for One.

At night, blue-grey flashes lit up my room: arc welding in the nearby ship yard.

I missed Pren-Brigog terribly: its sunken lanes, deep summer hush, jostling oaks – and woke to the clangs from the slipways.

November came – lashing, freezing rain, then snow. There were national strikes, terrorist alerts; then bludgeoning weather, closed city stations, buried roads and snapped power lines. The prospects of going home for Christmas looked slim. I began to sink into a kind of numbness – troubled sleep; fatigue, sluggishness; anxiety surges:  I fought to snap out of the torpor, but found myself frequently biting back tears.

I wouldn’t have been familiar with ‘Depression’ or ‘Issues’ then, but there is a Welsh word, digalon, which I knew – disconsolate, despondent; soul-sick.

I had Thomas Hood’s lines thrumming through my head, walking to work through rain-slicked streets:‘No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease…No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees. No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds – November.’

I needed family, laughter, warmth; good food.

At lunchtime on Christmas Eve, I clattered out my last piece of the day on a newsroom  sit-up-and-beg Olivetti – clipped it to the carbon and filed it; pulled my suitcase from under the desk, and left the fag-fug.

The station was thankfully close by – past the big department stores with their shimmering tinsel and fronds of coloured lights; I zig-zagged through glum-looking crowds, and caught the last through train as temperatures plummeted, and points froze, stranding thousands.

I recall standing in the old corridor stock for the first two hours, losing three coat buttons and a glove in the crush. Between Thirsk and Northallerton I managed to sit on my suitcase, knees under my chin. At Leeds, I saw a corner seat become free in a nearby compartment and sank into it – the old sprung horsehair stuffing and fabric seats had a headrest flush with the corridor window, and you could loll cosily as you dozed between halts and lurches.

It would have been dusk by three, then icily black by four, and it began snowing hard by five – just as we clattered into Chester, and I dashed for the last available bus to Pren-Brigog: still another hour away in the murk.

Now it would be a rationalised, profitable twelve-seater, but then, it was a green and gold Crossville Routemaster – warm and roomy. We swished along, snow slanting outside: pockets of total darkness between splotches of buttery light – Penyfordd, Llong, Maeshafn, and finally, the long downhill run to my village and the bus stop at Lon Rhosyn – Rose Lane – where I crunched onto the snow, mindful that the wet would quickly seep through my shoes.

The snow had paused, and the village seemed coiled cat-like under a blaze of stars – they made me reel dizzily: I had to re-adjust after months of sodium underlit grey. There was the Jones’ house, lit invitingly like its neighbours, and I filled my lungs with pure air – no city petrol and chip-fat reek.

I turned to the path home – now only minutes away, and became aware of swishing and soft thumping – and there, grinning, his tail sending up flutters of snow, was William.

I recall him trotting on ahead of me, looking back now and then, and, once, he circled round and nudged the back of my knee gently with his muzzle.

I think you always recall, usually uninvited, all your darts and jolts of pain – wrongs unanswered; hurts; terrifying close scrapes, blows, assorted injuries, dentistry – but not always the moments when you were utterly at peace.

I was then, as I walked home under those stars.

I decided, as I turned into the lane, that I would call on the Jones on Christmas morning, with my – rather crumpled – gifts: now was the time for hugs and supper; thawing out by the fire, and a glass of something.

William stayed with me in his easy, unfussy way up to the front gate where he gave me one last lopsided grin; I fussed his ears – and off he went into the snow: I saw him turn and look back at me under a street lamp, and he was gone. I hoped he would spend Christmas napping between treats – and join in the festivities as he always did – tinsel in his collar and investigating his bowl for leftover turkey, greens and spuds while the family watched the Morecambe and Wise Christmas Special.

I still felt a child’s surge of boundless excitement as I kicked aside snow on my way – a little groggily – round to the Jones’ that crisp, bright morning. Hafwen opened the door: tea and mince pies were pressed on me – the entire family in pyjamas and dressing gowns: all talk and laughter as we exchanged presents, with me mindful to only stay briefly because Mrs Jones was up early and busy with lunch: chopping, stirring, attending to saucepans and roasting trays.

‘Is William out chasing rabbits with Monty?’ I asked – seeing his basket empty but for his tartan rug. ‘ Or has he gone up to Pentre to see old Pryce and his collies to wish them a Happy Christmas?’

Hafwen took away my finished teacup and plate and looked suddenly across the Lewis, busy encircling programmes in the Radio Times with a pink crayon.

‘Oh – M’ae’n wir ddrwg gen i – I didn’t put it in my last letter,’ he said slowly.

‘Hafwen found him in his basket one morning around four days ago – he simply fell asleep after his supper and didn’t wake up. Owens the vet says it was heart failure – he was eight or nine at least – we had him as a pup for twelve years. We’ve cleared away his bowls, but can’t quite bear to chuck out his basket and blanket.’

Oh, I know the raw mathematics insists there were other black labradors about on Christmas Eve; then there is the possibility of some full sensory hallucination induced by seven straight hours’ travelling hours sustained only by a packet of Cheesy Wotsits.

I could never quite bring myself to tell the Jones’ family – and this, fifty years later, is my first and only written account.

To me, it all seemed, and seems yet, perfectly natural.

Copyright, Keith James Davies, 2024

Keith Davies is a retired teacher and former journalist who spent his early years in rural North Wales, and who now lives in Northumberland, England. His short stories have been published by a number of periodicals.