Firstly The Foundation makes no apologies for the gradual development of this part of the web-site. Each story has to be meticulously transcribed from typed pages, pencilled corrections and annotations, and the many piles of of papers and notebooks the author left behind. The Foundation is determined to present these stories in as authentic to the author’s wishes and debate over a single word or phrase may take weeks to reach a satisfactory decision.

NEW    The Caru Foundation is pleased to release more of the Master’s stories.

Darts and Dominoes is a mysterious piece in terms of the ending, its history and possible real life social interaction. It is presented here with a background preface, a postscript, and for easier reading split into the three sections on separate pages

The Apple Tree was something of a challenge, being in three different parts, stored apart and each written from a different perspective. The Foundation had been aware of the three pieces for some time and had assumed that they were sections of three different stories. Piecing these together was not made easier by Caru’s habit of writing stories sometimes on loose sheets and sometimes in notebooks. He would open any such notebook and start writing at the first empty page. Hence any form of chronological order is lost. However during a reassessment of another tale it was realised that the preceding notes in the book provided a link between the two other apparently incomplete segments. When put together it was discovered that the writing style, pen and ink all indicated that these were parts of the same work.  This was confirmed by spectrographic analysis and by graphology experts at the University of Bangor. There is also the apple tree theme to link them; hence this story is referred to as The Apple Tree. Caru seems to have experimented with some word invention, which we have not altered. They are not spelling mistakes. We sincerely hope that by publishing stories such as these, those words may find there way into the OED, and subsequently into common usage.
The more pedantic students of Caru’s work will often point out that the author never used titles for his tales, but the Foundation stresses that The Apple Tree is not a title but is used purely for easy reference. The Foundation could have just as easily referred to it by a filing code, such as AT748/1-3 but one would have expected Caru to have abhorred such naming as it would appear more like correspondence from  a legal or government source, to be condemned to the flames.
 

The story referred to as The Rescuers was the subject of several rewrites and revisions by Caru. It is believed his original draft was written in 1959, but only finalised in 1965, and so may be considered one of his later works. The Foundation has restored what it believes to be the last version of the story. However, in some later versions there is an alternate additional final paragraph. We include this additional ending [A Few Minutes Later], and so allow the reader to decide, if they are unsatisfied with the first ending, that they can proceed onto that paragraph. The Foundation does wish to highlight the undeniable fact that the additional ending is quite un-Caru-like, Perhaps he was requested to supply a more palliative conclusion to the story for a younger readership perhaps. We have not located any correspondence to back up this theory.
It is rather unusual for Caru to write a story set on the coast. He was more at home in the woodlands and on the hills. He was never known to have taken a boat trip at sea, not even the ferry across the Dyfi estuary to Fairborne. His boating experiences may be limited to the events which occurred when planning a longer story entitled Three Men in a Coracle, and now chronicled for publication at a later date in The River Teifi Incidents. It was during this escapade that it became apparent that Caru could not swim – several times – and perhaps it was these experiences that provided the damp tinder for this tale. We are also able to add, from some of his early letters, that he also hated bath nights as a child. His aversion to water is also evidenced by his reluctance to drink it, unless there was nothing else available.
The story is also unusual in that it is written from an uncommon viewpoint, that of an intimate observer of the events who is unable to. Or willing to, participate; what the Foundation terms the ‘detached third-person progressive present indicative’ tense. Rather like watching a film, as opposed to seeing oneself as a member of the cast. But more than that, it is written so that the reader should not identify with any one character, in order to arouse sympathetic emotions or imagine themselves in that situation. Cold, but not analytical; just bold statements of facts. At the conclusion (or this case either conclusion) the reader is not invited to draw any judgements. It is a case of ‘this is what happened’.

“Mortimer” was written in 1937. It was never published, or indeed submitted for publication. This may explain why the typed pages had so few corrections, and therefore little preparation was needed for it to be presented here.
“Mortimer” is clearly set in Caru’s adopted village. Though written in the first person, the narrator is not intended to be the author himself. However Caru may have identified with some aspects of Mortimer. Many of the characters in the story can be identified as those living in the village at the time, though this is unlikely to have been the reason why Caru did not attempt to publish the story. More likely it was because the person believed to have been the model for Mrs Gwydir had written the pencilled note that simply said “Publish and be darned” (sic). Caru would have taken this seriously and literally The note was stapled to the pages. Read “His name was Mortimer”