The Welsh Marches – May 1955

A small lorry was perched on the rim of the wide concrete bowl. Two hundred yards across, it sat in the green countryside like a giant saucer. Fields sloped down on one side and woods rose on the other. The purple mass of the Black Mountains loomed on the horizon, beyond the fertile undulations of the borderland between England and Wales. Away on the left, the Skirrid could be seen, its profile split by the earthquake said to have occurred on the day of the Crucifixion.

Three men sat in the cab of the Austin one-tonner, squeezed together in the comfortable manner of workmen who have a legitimate reason to do nothing and still get paid for it. The driver had a copy of the News Chronicle spread over the steering wheel, while the older man in the middle was marking a folded copy of the Sporting Times with the stub of a pencil. On the nearside, the youngest member of the trio, an acne-scarred youth waiting to be called-up for National Service, stared down into the bowl of the small reservoir, where the steel-grey surface reflected the clouds.

‘They’re a ’ell of long time coming, in’t they?’ he complained in a nasal version of a Forest of Dean accent.

The driver raised his head from his paper. ‘You did tell ’em it was urgent, din’t you?’

‘Course I did! But the copper on the other end was as thick as two short planks. I hope he passed it on, after me walking best part of mile to the bloody phone box.’

As if to allay his concern, there was the sound of an engine labouring up the steep slope of the lane from the main road and a moment later, a black Ford Consul, with a ‘Police’ sign on the roof, appeared through the open gateway on the other side of the reservoir.