The Inevitable Death of Saint Derwyn

Sooo, this is the start of my current novel that I'm writing. I'm about halfway through and I'm properly stuck in. Basically, the book is about a Welsh family in the twentieth century. It spans 100 years and deals with lots of internal dramas but explores how the changing world of the twentieth century effected family, village communities and people's mentality as a whole. It's very much influenced by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and also has a few supernatural elements thrown in there too for good measure. Have a read and let me know what you think.

The Inevitable Death of Saint Derwyn:

Evan Evans had been promised to Aelwen Hughes. There was nothing written to ratify the agreement, which had never even been formally declared, but it was an unspoken understanding that had been realised over eighteen years of crawling together, playing together and eventually, discovering that innate difference between being a child and adulthood together. They had shared toys, textbooks and kisses, and their parents were more than happy with the match. Evan Evans was, after all, descended from a long line of farmers, who had tilled the land surrounding Llanderwyn since Llanderwyn had sprung up centuries before. And Aelwen Hughes was the daughter of a hard-working and assiduous labourer who had proved strong of body, mind and soul. Even the Reverend Joseph Jenkins now saw the nuptials as a mere formality.

Similarly, Aelwen’s slightly younger sister, Anwen Hughes was betrothed to Bryn Rees. The match had been made by both fathers who, having shared more than a few cups of ale in the Black Swan one cold winter when the pair were no older than ten, had reached the agreement that Bryn, the son and heir of Idris Rees’ fishing boat, would be able to provide Anwen with a comfortable and happy home. And the children didn’t protest too much, but merely blushed when they passed each other in church and smiled shyly behind hymnals and creeds.

Evan Evans was from farming stock, and Bryn from fishing, and though the two primary industries in Llanderwyn had little in common, the boys grew together knowing that one day they would be kin. And the sisters grew in beauty, shedding their childish niceties and developing bosoms and curves and smiles that Reverend Jenkins thought maybe a little too saucy. But the vicar turned a blind eye when he would see the pairs skipping up the hill in summer towards the poppy field where lovers had cavorted for centuries, and who was he to stop it now? It made him feel old to remember that one summer when Bessy Cornbrook had frolicked with him in the sand dunes at Ogmore. But it had only been one summer, and it cheered him to know that the Hughes girls would be coupled with the eldest sons of those fine families that he felt proud to call his flock, for the rest of their lives.

The Evans family had lived and bred in Llanderwyn for generation upon generation. Not one had moved away and when an Evans left home, a home was built for them if there was nowhere else to go. This was the way it had always been in Llanderwyn. And sons were farmers and daughters married labourers who worked for the farm. It was a simple business. It was just the way things were.

The Rees family had moved to Llanderwyn some hundred years before. The rumour was that the first Idris Rees, Bryn’s great-great-great-grandfather had been driven from the docks of the nearby Milford Haven for sabotaging the nets of their whaling rivals, but the Reeses had always vehemently dismissed these claims as libellous and their repetition was a strict taboo. The Rees family were eminently respectable now.

Llanderwyn itself lay at the entrance to a spit of land that jutted into the sea known as the Pengelly Peninsula. To the untrained observer, Llanderwyn contains nothing of note. It’s squat rough rendered cottages are terraced into the hillside and painted pastel pinks and blues, and the church of Saint Derwyn’s leers above the roofs like a medieval blessing on the land, it’s people and it’s trade. And for centuries generations have lived and died tending the fields and hauling in the fish from the rusting trawlers that lean over the mudflats at low tide. There is nothing ostentatious about Llanderwyn. It just is, as it always has been, a sleepy Welsh village where no-one of note has ever been or will ever go. It’s mixture of bramble jelly and fish-scales are not everyone’s cup of tea, but for the Evanses and Reeses, Llanderwyn would forever be their home.

But it is only time that can ravage the traditions that span back beyond the Normans. And while Llanderwyn had ignored the industrial insurgency that had been erupting further up the coast, it would be impossible to ignore the fact that outside the village, the rumble of motorcars shook the roads and far away, in Europe, thinkers were wanting a change. And the trouble was, Evan Evans thought too much.