Gradually the three women became like some kind of art collective in the way Philomena had wanted, and they developed an informal routine. They did their art in the day and they cooked together in the evening and if the weather was good, we all ate outside ‘al fresco’. I hadn’t known what that expression meant but my mum told me. They seemed to get on well and sometimes as it got late they drank lots of wine and they’d get noisier and noisier and more and more argumentative, but they were never nasty with each other. Amazing really. They were so enthusiastic. They showed their art to each other, talked about it and compared it with other women artists’ work.
As for me, I was just left to get on with it and nobody bothered me or asked what I was doing. Neither did they ask Gareth for that matter. As the sole man he was an outsider but he didn’t seem to mind. He kept out of their way most of the time and so did I. As the only child I was also an outsider, but because my mum was a single parent and we lived together in London I’d been used to her talking to me as if I was grown up. She’d also expected me to look after myself so I thought of myself as older than I really was. Consequently, sometimes I thought I knew it all. But I didn’t. I had a lot to learn.
I was thirteen and it was the fourth summer we’d holidayed in Wales. I’d taken to visiting the creek almost every day, but I never saw anyone there. I didn’t mind, because I thought of it as my personal property and if I didn’t go at least three times a week, I suffered withdrawal symptoms. I went whether it was sunny, raining or windy, but as we were always there in August the weather was never bad enough to stop me completely.
I’d cycle the two or three miles down the back lanes and leave my bike under a particular tree. It was old, with a huge branch which had partially collapsed and lay close to the ground. It was perfect as a hiding place. Then I’d walk down the one and only path to the creek to check out if there was anything new. I was looking for interesting-looking stuff washed up by the tide, or dropped by the birds or the wind. The women at the farm photographed or painted what they called ‘found objects’. They saw all kinds of abstract shapes and creatures in pieces of driftwood and what to a normal person looked ordinary and boring would become a piece of sculpture or a picture in their hands.
Entering that wood for me was like entering a mysterious other world. It was a place for dreaming and I loved its solitude. I spent long hours just messing about, not doing anything in particular. But one day I met a boy called Ifan and from then on things changed in a big way.
The day had been beautiful and it was late in the evening. It was still warm and the trees were filled with birdsong, the fire of the falling sun lit up their leaves and tiny insects swirled and moved like clouds of golden dust between them. The tide had been up and the water was pulling back from the reed beds to begin the long journey to the sea. As I got nearer to the river I heard someone singing in Welsh. I didn’t know the song or understand the words, but I was astonished because this was what they called border country and it was rare to hear Welsh.
I stopped and listened. The song was hauntingly sung, almost as if it might be a poem. I was used to the frantic noise and pop music of London and this was so different, I was entranced. Then I saw him. A boy a little older than me, kneeling over a pool formed by a submerged tree root with a stick in one hand. He’d made a little raft and put a frog on the raft and courtesy of this boy, the little creature was being pushed along on the water and having a free ride. I stared at him.
Although I’d thought I was totally silent as I approached him, he must have heard me or sensed my presence. He stood up, looked straight at me, but before I could speak, he ran off. There was just enough time for me to see him. He looked old-fashioned, almost as if he didn’t belong round there. His hair was blond and straight. It fell into his eyes, and looked as if someone had put a bowl on his head and cut his hair all round it. His eyes were grey-green. He reminded me of a Viking, or a Russian, the type I’ve seen since in a Tarkovsky film. He was well dressed in jeans and a check shirt with short sleeves and was taller than me. The speed of his disappearance left me feeling bewildered. I must look scary, I thought. I even wondered whether I’d imagined him, but because it was so rare to meet anyone, I wanted to see him again and find out more.
There was something different about him and that attracted me. Only the raft with the frog drifting away on the tide showed he was real.
Following that chance meeting, I made sure to be at the same place at the same time the next day, but there was no sign of him. I searched the estuary in case he was hiding somewhere and one day I found his den. It was in the middle of a group of bushes, hidden in the undergrowth and I felt sure it was his. I had to crawl past prickly blackberry bushes to reach the hollowed-out centre and inside, resting on the grass, was an old square tin with a picture of a boy with round red cheeks eating a biscuit. I opened the tin and found a bar of chocolate wrapped in a plastic bag and sellotaped down.
I sat for a moment wondering if he’d put it there. I wanted it to be a present for me and that was why he’d wrapped it so carefully, to stop foraging animals eating it. I waited for him until dusk hoping he’d come but he didn’t appear, so I decided to eat some of the chocolate, so he’d know I’d been there. Then I cycled back to the farm. I was so happy I’d found his den.
When I got back to the farm the women were sitting outside in the garden with some visitors. Gareth was there too. They’d put a long table out on the grass. There was loads of food and wine and they seemed slightly drunk because they were laughing uproariously at everything. Philomena briefly said ‘Hello,’ and my mother told me there was food in the kitchen, but other than that, they took no notice of me.
The kitchen was like the rest of the farm, cluttered, only even more so. The walls were painted golden yellow so it always looked bright and the cupboards and shelves were burnt orange except where they were pale turquoise. As well as the usual cooking utensils you find in kitchens, everywhere you looked there was interesting stuff. Ornamental cockerels and pottery pigs and one of the walls had been painted with a dazzling mural of strutting peacocks. But pride of place, which you couldn’t miss, was a life-sized ostrich with a human face, made out of straw. Philomena had put bead necklaces round its neck and a notice which said ‘this is not an ostrich’ which apparently was some sort of surrealist in-joke, and then Gareth put a trilby hat on its head.
The kitchen table still had the debris remains of their supper and I noticed a plate of food left out for me by my mum, but I didn’t fancy it. I opened the fridge door to see what else was there and saw she’d cooked one of her specialities: Florentine biscuits.
However critical I became of my mother, I’ll give her this, she was an inspired cook. I ate three of them, then helped myself to a bowl of Greek yoghurt sprinkled with sesame seeds, stirred in honey that smelt and tasted of thyme, and drank some pomegranate juice. It was all delicious. I picked out four of the best-looking remaining Florentines and wrapped them in foil for my secret friend in the estuary. I planned to leave them in the den first thing with a note saying I hoped my new friend liked them, and they were from me, Echo.
The thought of returning to the den was so exciting that, to make sure I arrived early, I set my alarm for five o’clock. Everyone was still asleep when I left the farm and there was no one to stop me so I didn’t even have breakfast before I left. I just upped and went.
By the time I got to the creek the sun had risen. I hid my bike under a bush and looked around for the path. The estuary that morning was magical. It radiated with a mysterious otherworldly light, and I felt very happy, even though I had trouble finding the den again. It was hidden away from the path and in a particular clump of undergrowth but once I’d found it this second time, I saw there was a way of always locating it. Standing like a sentinel on the path was a twisted old hawthorn tree with grey-green lichen growing on its higher branches and this marked the place where you had to crawl thro
ugh the bushes. I bent down and ducked underneath. It didn’t occur to me that anyone might be around already because I was so early, but suddenly I heard someone crashing through the bushes in the opposite direction to me.
It could only be him. I shouted out, ‘Hey, it’s me. The girl you saw yesterday.’ There was no response. ‘I took some of your chocolate from your tin but I’ve got some biscuits in exchange. My mum made them. They’re delicious.’
I stopped to listen for a reply but there was total silence so I guessed that’s what he was doing too. Listening. Then I shouted, ‘My name’s Echo. What’s yours?’
Nothing. I began to think perhaps it was an animal I’d heard but there was no way of knowing for sure so I decided to leave the Florentine biscuits in his tin anyway and I got out the note I’d written for him. It just said they were for him from me and I put that in the tin too.
I was so fed up and disappointed I hadn’t seen him. I wanted to talk to him. It was then I realised how lonely I was. I didn’t like being on my own all the time and I’d been looking forward to today. I felt restless and I didn’t know what to do with myself. It wasn’t worth going back to the farm because the women would be busy with their art so I wandered through the woods for hours in the hope of seeing him.
Eventually I found myself back at the den. It was mid-afternoon by then and I was hungry so I thought to open the tin again and eat one of the biscuits I’d left for him. After all, he wouldn’t know I’d left four and three was enough anyway. I prised open the tin thinking I hadn’t remembered it as being so tight.
My note was still there but all the biscuits had gone. I turned the note over and written in a neat hand was, ‘Thank you very much for the biscuits. They were lovely. Ifan.’
Reading that note made me feel really, really happy, especially now I knew his name. I was full of hope. Soon I’d see him and we could talk. I stood holding the note and walked back to the path, but as I made my way something hit me on the back of the head.
I rubbed my head and looked on the ground to see what it was. A conker. I’d been hit with a conker. I looked around wondering if it had dropped off a tree but there were no conker trees, and besides it wasn’t the conker season. It could only be Ifan, or perhaps, I thought, a squirrel had dropped it on my head by mistake. I bent down to pick it up and as I did another two hit me on the head. The sky was raining conkers. I began giggling.
I picked one up and I called out to no one in particular, ‘Don’t you know people can get knocked out with conkers?’
I heard a suppressed laugh and looked up into the trees. I could see him. Ifan. He was high up, standing in one of the branches close to the trunk and laughing. When he saw he’d been spotted he began climbing down, but this time he didn’t run away, but stood in front of me grinning. He spoke first.
‘You’ve got a funny name,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s my mother. I don’t know why she called me Echo.’
‘What’s your surname?’
‘Morgan.’ I put my hand out and said, ‘Nice to meet you. I thought I was the only one here.’
Ifan said, ‘Well, you’re not. There’s me. Where do you live?’
‘In a farmhouse at a place called Ffridd, it’s about three miles from here, but I’m only here in August. The rest of the time I live in London.’
‘I saw you last year but you disappeared. I thought you must have been here just for the day, then a few days ago I saw you again. You were hiding your bike, but I didn’t want to speak to you, not until I knew you were okay.’
‘Oh,’ I said and because I didn’t know what else to say, I added, ‘I heard you singing.’
‘What about it?’ He smiled. He looked pleased.
‘I liked it and so did the frog. What’s it called?’
He gave me a look. ‘Calon Lân.’ Then he grinned, ‘Shall
I sing it again?’
‘No, no thank you. Where did you learn it?’
‘At school and with my dad, when we go to the rugby.’
‘It’s nice. Have you got a bike?’
‘Yes, I live in the opposite direction so I cycle here too. I liked your biscuits.’
‘My mum made them. I’m glad you liked them and you think I’m okay.’
We looked at each other. He was standing quite close to me and that made me feel shy.
‘Do you want to see the best trees in this wood? There’s some good climbing ones near here and you’ve got jeans on, and there’s places to mess about along the river.’
‘A tree. I’ve never climbed one. I don’t know what to do.’
‘Never climbed a tree?’
‘No, there’s not many where I live, not in Stroud Green.’
‘I’ll show you, it’s easy, follow me, do what I do. Ready?’
I was ready. We became friends. Looking back to that time, we were both lonely and neither of us felt we fitted in although it was a while before Ifan told me about himself. Left alone by the women at the farm, I came and went as I wanted. I was happy with Ifan. We’d go for bike rides, paddle in the shallows of the river, climb trees and I’d bring food from the farmhouse for our picnics. We were good together and the estuary became our playground. Ifan was a year older than me but sometimes he seemed a lot older, although in those early days I didn’t know why, nor anything about his past.
At the end of that summer, and after I’d returned to London, I missed him. He’d become my best friend. I’d find myself thinking about him and I wished he lived in London like me. I knew very little about him and I wanted to know more, like where he lived, who his parents were, and if he was an only child. I’d not told him anything about myself either. He’d never asked so I’d never said. It was as if we lived in some kind of bubble and the world outside was of no consequence.
The following summer I couldn’t wait to meet up again. As soon as I saw him I told him I’d missed him and I wanted to know more about him. It was a bit in his face but he didn’t seem to mind. He said he’d tell me later but it was late summer before he trusted me enough.
It turned out that even though he could speak Welsh, he wasn’t really Welsh. Not only that, he hadn’t come from a normal family. I remember clearly what he said and how he said it and how I felt. We were sitting in the den eating our sandwiches when he told me. I’d said to him, ‘When are you going to tell me all about yourself?’
He looked hard at me. Then he said, ‘I was born in Russia. My mother was single and she had a vivid imagination, she dreamt about leaving Russia and coming to live in the West. She’d learnt English at school and she especially liked English novels. Her favourite writer was Thomas Hardy and she saw herself as a kind of Sue Bridehead.’
I said, ‘Who’s Sue Bridehead?’
‘She’s a character from one of his books, it’s called Jude the Obscure and she wanted to be like her. She wanted to be educated, and study Victorian literature in England, in London. So she found a way to get herself and me to the UK so she could do that.’
‘She sounds very clever.’
‘Not so clever that she could look after me.’
I didn’t know what to say when he said that. I looked at him but he was staring at the ground. ‘What do you mean?’
‘She just disappeared. Left me with a neighbour and never returned. That’s what I was told.’
‘So she left you in London. What happened then?’
‘Social Services got involved, I had a social worker and she found new parents for me.’
‘Is that how you know what happened, through the social worker?’
‘Yes.’
Now I understood why he looked and seemed so different. It was because of his past. It was something about how he looked, and his colouring and his intensity. I leant over and took his hand. I wanted to kiss him like you would a small baby, but I didn’t. It wou
ld have embarrassed him. I could see he was upset, so all I did was squeeze his hand and say that it had been tough for him. I didn’t bring it up again for a while, not until I’d read the Thomas Hardy book.
When I read it, I felt sad. I tried to think what his mum might be like. I didn’t understand what had driven her to abandon Ifan, except she must have been unhappy. I saw her as a tragic person, someone who felt out of time and place.
I asked, ‘What do you know about your mother?’
‘Not much. I can’t remember her. I was still a baby when she went so everything I know is from a file in an office… I’ve got no family of my own.’
‘But you have, you have the family who adopted you.’
‘It’s not the same. They’re different from me. They’re kind but…’
He didn’t finish his sentence.
‘Do you have a photo of your mother? If you have, I want to see it.’
He pulled out a photo from a leather wallet and passed it over. It was of a very young woman. She had blonde hair like Ifan and was sitting on a rug by the sea and laughing at who was taking the picture. I looked at it carefully and then at him. ‘She’s very young. She’s pretty and I can see a family resemblance between the two of you. Who do you think took the photo? Could it be your father?’
‘I don’t know who he is.’
My Name Is Echo Page 2
