‘Thank you,’ said Carys, smiling determinedly against the odds, as she paid for her magazines and placed them into her bag.
‘For your mam, are they?’ demanded Evan.
‘Yes,’ said Carys, surprised that he had recognised her after all. ‘Yes they are. She’s coming home today.’
‘Good for you,’ he muttered. ‘Never let you go, do those places, once they’ve got their hands into you.’ He reached, slightly furtively, under the counter, emerging with a paper bag of sweets. ‘Coconut Teacakes,’ he stated. ‘Mair’s favourite.’
‘I’m sure she’ll really enjoy them,’ said Carys, as he impatiently brushed away her attempt at thanks, determining never to yield to temptation and buy her newspapers and treats at Low-Price again.
Those were the last things she needed. All done. Time to get to Willow Cottage. Carys paused as she shut the door of the newsagents behind her, fishing for her car keys. As she did so, the little bell in Jones the Grocers rang out, making her look up instinctively. The dark-haired mongrel now tied to the drainpipe next to the shop door burst out into high-pitched hysterics as David Meredith emerged, loaf and a large carton of milk in hand. Carys stepped quickly back into the shadows behind the carousel of musty postcards outside Evan’s shop.
The pain was still there; the deep, twisting pain that always rose in her belly, no matter how many times they had nodded to each other over the years, briefly and wordlessly from opposite sides of Pont-ar-Eden High Street.
He was thinner than she remembered. It made him seem even longer and lankier than ever. His face appeared almost gaunt, with a deep line across his forehead she had not seen before.
‘Okay, okay Hodge,’ he was saying, bending down to release the lead. He placed the loaf and the milk in a backpack, slinging it onto one shoulder with a practiced air. ‘Heel,’ he commanded, as the mongrel took off at a hundred miles an hour towards the nearest lamppost. More sedately this time, the two set off away from her, in the direction of Plas Eden, David limping heavily, with all the determination of a man who had been told to use at least one stick at all times, and wasn’t about to, not if it killed him.
Well, they always had been a match for each other when it came to stubbornness, if nothing else, thought Carys, with just the faintest of wry smiles, as she made her way slowly back towards the car.
It was the smell of freshly-ground coffee that did for her. As Carys wedged the cake securely for its short ride, the tantalising scent came drifting down the street with a mouth-watering edge of bacon and buttered toast.
In front of her, the Boadicea Café stood newly painted and cheerful, with its striped awning and outside tables topped by the bright splash of hanging baskets still dripping from an early morning watering. Just a quick coffee wouldn’t hurt, she decided. She’d still have time to get the most necessary of preparation done before Mam arrived. And besides, wasn’t this a chance to check out whether this was somewhere she could bring Mam when she was feeling a little better?
Pont-ar-Eden didn’t do busy. It didn’t even particularly do thriving. A farmer and a couple of pensioners, that was all there would be. A few curious glances, a few questions about Mam, and she would be left in peace.
‘Sod,’ muttered Carys under her breath, as the jangling of the Boadicea’s doorbell sent an entire sea of faces turning towards her.
The Boadicea comprised of a single long room filled with round wooden tables, and lit by light streaming in from large windows to the side and a huge curve of a bay window at the far end. Every table, so it seemed, was fully occupied. Nearest the door, mothers with pushchairs gossiped over skinny lattes and custard slices. Old men, bent and shrunken, chatted over mugs of tea, or flicked through the newspapers.
The prime position of the bay window, with its comfort of a slightly faded sofa and chairs, had been commandeered by the white hair and wheeled shopping trolleys of Pont-ar-Eden’s more fearsome matriarchs – the ones with sharp elbows when it came to the monthly car boot in the church grounds, and a line in haggling that would put a Souk trader from Marrakesh to shame.
Away from the windows, along one side of the café, a further group, of both sexes this time, were gathered around a line of computer screens, deep in animated conversation.
‘There’s room here, if you care to join me.’
‘Are you sure?’ said Carys, eying the man in the leather jacket, sporting a ponytail just starting to grey at the edges. She had no intention of spending her last precious free time as a sounding board for some born-again-biker guy’s general opinion on life, the universe and everything. On the other hand, this sudden male interest had the Pont-ar-Eden matriarchs returning to their toast. Undoubtedly still watching every move, but at least not trying to get her attention.
Her rescuer, catching the quick slide of her eyes towards the window, grinned. ‘I’d quit while you’re ahead,’ he said, just quietly enough to be covered by the conversation around them.
A fellow traveller amongst the gossips of Pont-ar-Eden, then. Carys smiled, grabbed the free chair folded up against the wall for emergencies, and pulled it across to the little table. ‘Okay. Thanks.’
‘It’s their history day,’ remarked her new companion, as the waitress finished taking their orders. ‘Professor Humphries will be along in a bit to give them a hand. They all get terribly excited about it. They’ll soon forget all about you.’
‘I didn’t know the Historical Society met here,’ said Carys, torn between not entering into conversation and not appearing rude.
‘Not just the Historical Society,’ he replied. ‘It seems everyone is getting in on the act, since the computers arrived. I’d never have thought the village was so proud of its past. I suppose it’s like everything: you never really appreciate what you have until you think you might lose it.’
‘I suppose.’ She was itching to ask what the village might be losing, but that would have led to a more permanent state of conversation, and one for which she was seriously not in the mood. As it was, Mr Biker-man had already returned to the pages of his novel, placed next to an almost emptied coffee cup.
With her companion deep in his book and the matriarchs returned to their previous conversation, Carys let her eyes wander around the café again. While the walls nearest the counter were adorned with a selection of framed paintings, those nearest the computers were lined with boards of old photographs. Undoubtedly scans, rather than originals, the originals being clearly irreplaceable. They had been pinned up carefully, but in haphazard fashion, as if anyone could join in.
Faded 1970s colour, and black-and-white photographs gazed out at her, interspersed with sepia, and even older, almost black with age. Family groups smiling at cottage doors, or under apple blossom in a garden. A man in 1930s loose trousers and cap standing proudly next to a row of broad beans. A Victorian family, stiff, eyes distant, grouped next to a pedestal overflowing with ivy. And a little further away, she could just make out the pale facade glimpsed between trees, that was unmistakably Plas Eden. It was as if the past was there, crowding in on her, making it hard to breathe.
‘You’re Carys.’
Carys started. ‘I beg your pardon?’
The man with the ponytail was watching her. ‘You’re Carys Evans.’
‘Yes,’ admitted Carys.
‘You’re back in Pont-ar-Eden to look after your mam.’
‘That’s right.’
‘I remember you.’
Carys’ mind scurried frantically. ‘You do?’
‘I tried to chat you up once.’
Oh dear. Here we go. So much for a relaxing coffee. ‘Really.’
‘Mmm. You must only have been seventeen or so at the time. You weren’t interested.’
‘And I should hope not, too,’ came the tart remark from behind them. Carys looked up to find a tray being wielded above her. The next moment three cappuccinos were being placed in the free space in the middle of the table, followed by the owner herself pulling up a stool.
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‘Five minutes,’ said Buddug. ‘Before the next rush comes in.’ She pushed a cup in front of Carys. ‘On the house, cariad. Your mam’s been a good friend to me when I needed it most. Least I can do.’
‘Thank you,’ said Carys, feeling herself unexpectedly welling up inside. It had been a long day. She must be more tired that she thought.
‘Besides, I can’t leave you to Merlin to drive you witless, now, can I?’
‘Oh,’ said Carys. She should have known. Just before her fall, Mam had been full of the return of Merlin Gwyn, the only international rock-god to emerge from Pont-ar-Eden. Not quite as big as the Manic Street Preachers or Duffy mind, but he’d once appeared with Bryn Terfel, and that was quite big enough for Pont-ar-Eden.
Carys looked at him, trying to make out in the rounded face before her the lean, Heathcliff spectre in skin-tight leather trousers and jacket, with his statement of stubble and hungry eyes, that had confronted her in the ‘Taliesin’ pub that night, sixteen years ago.
Merlin sighed. ‘Yes, that’s just the look you gave me.’
‘Look?’
‘Searching. As if you could see right through me. And were not impressed. I wasn’t used to such a thing. Well, not at that time, anyhow. Sadly, age has taught me a touch of humility.’
‘I was a child,’ returned Carys, frowning.
He raised his eyebrows. ‘A child.’
‘You know what I mean. You were years older than me. And you belonged to a world I knew nothing about. Apart from noticing that girls seemed to be either groupies or backing singers, and definitely didn’t call the shots. You frightened me.’
‘Ouch,’ said Merlin, with a rueful grimace.
Buddug paused in stirring her cappuccino. Her grin was mischievous. ‘Good for you, Carys. You always did have style, as I remember. Merlin Wyn, sitting with a woman who turned him down, eh? Now that must be a first.’
‘Two,’ sighed Merlin, gloomily.
Buddug chuckled. ‘Very gallant of you, cariad. But to be absolutely truthful, you never gave me the chance.’ She gave a quick grunt. ‘Not that I ever did have eyes for anyone else, once I met Gareth.’ She stirred the cappuccino viciously. ‘Love, eh? It all seems so simple, when you’re that age.’
There was a moment’s silence. No one, it appeared, was about to disagree.
‘Well, it’s outrageous.’ Carys looked up at the indignant cry from the far end of the room. Conversation in the Boadicea died to a murmur. The cyclists tucking into bacon butties with gusto paused and turned in faint alarm at the direction of this outburst. The natives, it seemed, were growing restless.
‘So it is, Nesta,’ came a reply from Edna Williams, once Headmistress of Pont-ar-Eden primary and leader (self-elected) of the matriarchs. ‘But what is there to be done about it?’
‘Well something should be,’ retorted Nesta Pugh, chairwoman of the local Women’s Institute, and close rival for Edna’s coveted leadership position. ‘My mam was right: it was my ancestors who made the bricks that built Plas Eden. Look, see. There are bills showing my great-grandfather was still doing the repairs. The Merediths have no right to sell Plas Eden. Private land: that’s what it’ll be, you mark my words. And we’ll all be shut out like a load of peasants, as if we’d never had anything to do with the place at all.’
‘Plas Eden is being sold?’ said Carys, putting down her cup with a jolt.
‘Maybe,’ said Buddug. ‘If Huw gets his way.’
‘You don’t know that we’ll be shut out if someone else takes it over,’ Nesta’s sister Haf was protesting gently, as the outrage in the far corner threatened to spill over into the rest of the cafe. But, all the same, she sighed. ‘We used to have such fun in Eden woods, when we were kids, remember?’
‘Remember the swing over the lake?’ put in one of the older men.
‘Duw, yes.’ Edna’s white head nodded, sharp grey eyes softening. ‘I’d forgotten about that. It was a log on a piece of rope, if I remember rightly. Old Mrs Meredith put it there for the boys’ father, when he was only a boy himself. He was a friendly sort, was Paul. We’d spend half our summers playing with him. You’d swing out, with that swing, right over the lake, and go down with a splash.’
‘Remember the tree house?’ called a stout, rosy-cheeked matriarch sitting next to her. ‘The one old Mr Meredith made like a ship? It even had sails. We used to spend hours and hours in there.’ Nods and murmurs showed that the tree house still had the power to stir fond memories.
‘I had my first kiss in Blodeuwedd’s Garden,’ remarked Haf, wistfully.
‘You never told me that,’ snapped her sister. ‘Who was it?’
‘Next to King Arthur,’ said Haf, with just a twitch of mischief in her wrinkled little face. ‘It was so romantic.’
Nesta scowled.
‘It’s our memories they’re taking away,’ said Edna, frowning severely at this straying from the subject at hand. ‘That’s what they’re destroying. It’s not right.’
‘Something ought to be done,’ added Nesta, not to be outdone in the leadership stakes.
The cowbell chimed once more, letting in a group of walkers, complete with walking poles and a small posse of two black Labradors and a terrier noisily lapping up the water in an old ice cream carton just outside the Boadicea’s door. The walkers made their way purposefully to the counter, while outside a second wave could be seen finding tables and settling dogs in the shade.
Buddug rose, gathering empty cups on the way back to relieve her beleaguered assistant at the counter. ‘You could always go and talk to them. I’m sure, given the option, David would prefer to see the place remain as part of the village. And I’m certain Rhiannon wouldn’t object at all.’
A wave of mutterings rose amongst the tables of the Boadicea as Buddug resumed her place and began taking orders with her usual calm efficiency.
Carys exchanged glances with Merlin. As one, they finished their cappuccinos. Neither of them were children of Pont-ar-Eden for nothing: time to beat a hasty retreat.
As in, now.
‘It would certainly be worth a try,’ Nesta was saying. ‘I’d assist in any way I could, of course. But what with my responsibilities with the WI, not to mention the Guides and the Inner Wheel and the school Eisteddfod…’
With Nesta’s abdication of any pretention to be queen of this proposed uprising, all eyes turned, as if one, towards Edna.
‘No time for hanging around,’ muttered Merlin, under his breath. Carys reached for her bag. ‘Edna has a great reputation in the village for getting things done,’ he added, rising and shoving his book in his back pocket. ‘From what I can see, that usually involves delegating –’
But the time for escape was long gone.
‘You know David and Huw better than any of us,’ came Edna’s voice, shooting straight towards them. Her eyes had fixed themselves purposefully on Carys.
‘That was a long time ago,’ murmured Carys, dismayed.
‘But you were up there at Plas Eden all the time, at one time,’ persisted Edna. ‘You were such a comfort to them all, Rhiannon used to say.’
Which was a very un-Rhiannon thing to say and a load of flummery. Not that you could exactly say that out loud.
‘And besides,’ added Haf, an alarmingly (as far as Carys was concerned, anyhow) sentimental look in her eyes, ‘weren’t you once engaged to David Meredith?’
‘No!’ said Carys, louder than she had intended, her face growing hotter by the minute. ‘You must be thinking of someone else.’
‘Broke his heart,’ Haf was already adding, oblivious, in confidential tones to her neighbour. ‘No wonder it never came to anything with any of those girls Rhiannon was hoping he’d marry and bring the joyful patter of tiny feet to Plas Eden. Broken heart. Too afraid of having it broken again to try. That’s what always does it.’
‘That’s nothing to do with me!’ Carys stared at her, aghast. Trust the gossips of Pont-ar-Eden to make a mountain out of a molehill and end u
p blaming her for the lack of a new generation of young Merediths. Maybe it wasn’t too late to phone the nursing home and inform Gwenan it was all a mistake and she couldn’t do this after all, and rush back to Joe. Who’d undoubtedly receive her with forgiveness and more than a little triumph.
Which was possibly worse.
‘Don’t you think you’re being just a little unfair, putting all the responsibility on Carys for talking to the Merediths?’ demanded Merlin, gallantly abandoning his own proposed flight, and turning to face Edna. ‘I rather imagine she has quite enough on her plate at the moment.’
Edna snorted loudly. Around her, however, several heads were nodding (not too obviously, especially those closest to the matriarch herself).
Edna’s eyes narrowed. ‘You’ve got money, Merlin,’ she stated, with unashamed bluntness. ‘And weren’t you saying in an interview not so long ago that you owed everything you had ever done to Pont-ar-Eden?’
‘Sunday Times,’ provided Haf’s bird-like little voice, helpfully.
Merlin groaned.
‘And really,’ said Edna, pressing home her advantage, ‘I’m certain you are one of the few people well able to afford to buy Plas Eden. And wouldn’t that be rather fitting?’
‘Why on earth would I want to buy a place like Plas Eden?’ demanded Merlin, his voice echoing in the sudden stilling of every conversation in the room.
‘And would you like a jacket potato or chips with that?’ came Buddug’s voice from the counter.
‘Well, isn’t it what pop stars do?’ put in Nesta, not to be outdone.
‘Rubbish,’ came Buddug’s voice loudly, and clearly not referring to her customers’ choice of saturated fat on their potatoes. ‘You’ve been reading too many OKs, Nesta. Not every pop star is as rich as sin, or wants to throw their money around. I’m sure if Merlin had wanted that kind of lifestyle he could have found a castle to retire to long before now.’
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