Too Cold For Snow

was pinioned up against the window. Go down there and I’ll go to telephone for help.’
    Kenny had rushed down to the house and shoulder-barged his way in, only to find her naked in a tin bath, caught in mid act as she sluiced down some water on her back from a small tin pail. She’d washed her habit and hung it up to dry in the window. Flustered, Kenny made some embarrassed noises and retreated, carefully closing the door behind him. He ran as fast as he could back to Cristin where he just managed to stop Ryan calling up the air ambulance as he was making the connection on the radio telephone.
    The next time Kenny saw Sister Briony he averted his eyes, but she strode purposefully towards him and said in her feathery voice:
    ‘It’s alright,’ which was a double shock as Kenny thought she represented a silent order. ‘It’s alright.’
     
    As summer unfurled along with the fronds of verdant bracken Kenny really took to Twm’s company. He was fearless and funny and Kenny loved their climbing trips across to the steeper side of the island where they counted seabird nests. Twm, for his part, loved Kenny’s tales of being in a street gang. Kenny told one in which his best friend was deliberately blinded.
    One afternoon they found an old tennis ball washed up on the shore and Kenny cut it in half, ready to show Twm how to open the central locking on a car by placing it over the lock and hitting it hard. Another sultry day they wormed their way into a cave where they came eye to eye with an enormous bull seal, which snorted its annoyance, an interruption to its dreams of unending mackerel shoals.
    When they took a break from their seabird surveying, Twm would untwine a fishing line and send a weighted, baited hook out into the waves. As if he were a conjurer it would be no time at all before he hauled in two thrashing pollack. It was a trick he could repeat with consummate ease, getting up a rhythm of deftly placing the bait in the water and then pulling the fish out. He used mackerel tails as lure, pollack attracting mackerel but never pollack to attract pollack. It was all a tad too cannibalistic.
    They would often return from these expeditions garlanded with fish, which they’d barter with visitors to the observatory who would often swap something tasty in return. They got apple pies, tinned stuff, tobacco sometimes. Once they got a whole wedding cake, which had its own story.
    Before each and every climbing trip Ryan proved his worth by checking all their climbing kit with an attentive eye. He checked the carabineers and tugged at key lengths of rope. He was their guardian for these months, and he proved it.
    At the beginning of August Ifor Magnus, the farmer who worked the island during the summer, asked the three men if they could help him with some tasks, bringing in the hay and rounding up the sheep. Haymaking was a trip back in time. They worked alongside some of the holidaymakers, under a burning sun, until their muscles wilted. After they finished every last bale and piled them high on the back of the tractor-trailer, Ifor and his wife Petula slaked their thirsts with flagon after flagon of delicious perry which had been left to cool in one of the deepest wells.
    It was as much as they could do to get up the next day, let alone form a human cordon around the island and walk in tandem rounding up sheep. All of the visitors helped with this task. All the visitors, even the ones with young children, worked the flat parts of the island while the observatory staff worked the sides of the mountain over Talcen Mynydd and Briw Gerrig.
    It was cooler than the day before but Twm and Kenny still pumped sweat as they climbed over the scree and followed precarious sheep routes. It took three hours to get the sheep down to the pens near the harbour and from there it was just a short operation to get them into the yellow Second World War landing craft that would transport them. Ifor asked if Kenny and Twm would be happy to come over to the mainland to help him disgorge the animals. Ryan gave his blessing and the lads beamed.
    The craft was low in the water as they left Y Cafn, chugging along under great plumes of diesel smoke, past Trwyn y Fynwent, Traeth Ffynnon and Pen Cristin. The sequestered animals were restless and fidgety and Kenny and Twm kept out of the way by hunkering down in the corner and smoking roll-your-owns despite the thin spray that drenched everything in the boat. Then, with a rolling movement