I snapped off the light, took a sip of beer, and stepped back outside. Over the fence, in our yard, I saw movement. Somebody – a shadow – was floating down the walk. I stood still. I didn’t know who it was. Not at first. But then by the shape I could tell it was Lowri. That bulge gave her away. Her robe barely covered it. She had both hands folded across her abdomen, carrying the weight of her belly before her like a medicine ball.
I put down my beer can – tucking it in a flower pot – and called her name. It took her a moment to figure out I was in Gwilym’s yard. When she did, she came over to meet me at the fence, so that we were facing each other across it, like Gwilym and I used to – only now I was standing where he’d always stood.
‘I woke up and you weren’t there,’ she said.
‘I couldn’t sleep again.’
‘I was worried. I’d been having a dream.’
‘I thought I heard something. I tried to tell you.’
‘I don’t remember that.’
‘It was Gwilym’s shed door, banging in the breeze.’
‘He was in my dream. Gwilym was.’
The way she said it got my attention.
‘What kind of dream was it?’ I asked.
‘One of those kind.’
She started telling me about it. It was some dream. She said Gwilym had been in bed with me and her, lying between us. He was old and gnarled and yellow-skinned – like he’d been near the end – but also very small, and healthy-looking. It was as if the wrinkles were a baby’s wrinkles, and as if the yellow tinge to his skin was from the sort of jaundice that a baby gets, not the cancer.
She said, ‘He was old and young, at the same time.’
‘Like Benjamin Button,’ I said.
But Lowri didn’t get the reference, or didn’t care about it. She was unconsciously rubbing her belly, like a crystal ball, and looking past me, towards the hump-backed hills.
‘Maybe it means we’re having a boy,’ she said.
‘That’s not what the scans seemed to show.’
‘The scans aren’t always right.’
‘I know that. I read about that.’
I folded my arms, and leaned on the fence, in a pose a lot like Gwilym’s. I wasn’t sure about having a boy. I wasn’t sure about it at all. We’d been expecting a girl. I could leave most of it to Lowri, if it was a girl. If it was a boy, I’d have to teach him things. How to throw a ball. How to hold his hockey stick. How to drive and how to tie a tie. I didn’t know if I had it in me, all of that. I didn’t even know how to tie a tie.
‘It was just a dream,’ I said.
She was still gazing at the hills. I couldn’t make out her face. All I could see was her hair, in the light of the streetlamp. It formed this wild tangle around her head, thicker than it had ever been. That was because of the hormones. The pregnancy hormones, they trigger all these changes in a woman – another thing nobody had ever told me. They had made Lowri’s hair fuller, her breasts bigger, her skin sort of shiny and radiant. It was downright terrifying, all those changes. Standing there in the dark, my wife didn’t look like my wife anymore. It was as if she’d been taken away, and replaced with this other wife, like a changeling. One of the faeries, maybe. She closed her eyes and inhaled through her nostrils, taking a deep breath.
She said, ‘I haven’t been outside at night for so long.’
‘It’s a weird one. So warm and windy.’
‘Everything is different at night.’
‘Sure – you can’t see anything.’
She looked at me, an appraising look. And maybe a bit disappointed.
‘Don’t stay out too long,’ she said.
‘I’ll be up in a bit.’
She drifted back the way she’d come, fading into the shadows. I stood for a spell, hands on my hips, staring at the yard and thinking about her dream. If she’d dreamed it, it could come true. I knew all about Lowri and her dreams. We didn’t talk about these things but they were accepted. Part of the package that had come with marrying her. Maybe she really was some kind of faerie. If she’d dreamed it, we could be having a boy.
I went inside to get the mickey of Bell’s that I had stashed under the cereal cupboard. It was the last of my whisky. I’d stopped buying whisky, when we saw that blue line, when the first test came back positive. I was trying to stick to beer, as part of my plan. Beer slows you down and fills you up. With whisky, you have a few shots and you feel as if you’re just getting started. But if I was going to have a son I needed some of that whisky. I brought it outside and sat on the bench that overlooked our yard and I drank from the flask, the glass cool on my lips, the liquor hot and molten in my throat.
The grass in our yard was even longer than in Gwilym’s. It had grown so long it had taken to flopping over under its own weight. There weren’t just dandelions, but buttercup and dock weed and forget-me-not. The flower beds were tangled up with shrubs and plants that I couldn’t even name. A writer had lived in the house before us, and she’d planted all that stuff. Our side of the fence was overrun by Russian vine. And at the back of the yard, if you can believe it, was a poison tree. Some kind of oleander. It was all twisted and gnarled, with a few brittle leaves, and looked as if it carried a curse. I was supposed to uproot it and get rid of it before the baby arrived. If a little kid got up close to that tree, and ate one of the leaves, he would die. That’s what the estate agent had told us, with a solemn expression, on the day we signed the mortgage contract. But I’d never gotten around to digging the damned thing up, or tending the garden, or starting on any of the other jobs I’d been meaning to do.
Even the sidewalk, right where I was sitting, was a job. The concrete was all cracked and buckled. I’d been meaning to repair it, and had asked Gwilym the best way to go about it. He knew, and he offered to help me, too. He’d even booked a cement mixer for us, and ordered supplies. But then he got sick. He got too sick to do that, or anything else, either.
On the sidewalk at my feet, a snail was crawling along, leaving a trail behind it that glistened in the dimness. I watched it curl and stretch, inch by inch, with its feelers out, quivering and sensing for a way forward, groping blindly. I didn’t know what it was looking for, that snail. I didn’t even know what snails like to eat. Leaves, maybe. Or minerals in the dirt. I splashed a little whisky in its path, and waited to see what would happen. It came up to the dribble of liquid, which must have been as big as a pond to it, and stopped. Its feelers quavered. Then it turned and began to navigate around. I held out the bottle, over the snail, and tilted it until the liquid reached the neck, near the top. I knew what would happen. Or I thought I knew. It would be like acid, or poison. But I didn’t have it in me to do that.
I poured more poison in my mouth instead, and stood up. I started patrolling the yard, looking for things to do. Gwilym, when he was around, had always been doing, doing, doing. He’d never hurried, but he was never idle, either. Diligent. He was diligent, which I guess is how he’d managed to get so much done, and stay on top of things. I’d never been like that. I’d always put things off, let them slide. I’d just have a hard time getting started, is all. But maybe it was about time. Without Gwilym around, the whole damned terrace was going to seed. That was a phrase he was fond of using: going to seed. Better take care of that, he would say, before it goes to seed. Or, a man can’t let his house go to seed, now, can he?
‘Damn straight,’ I said, as if he was right there. ‘We can’t let this place go to seed.’
Then I did something crazy. I marched to the back of the garden and started kicking at that poisonous tree, that goddamned oleander, again and again, until it cracked and went over. And I tore tangles of Russian vine off the fence, and grabbed big fistfuls of dandelions from the lawn. It was a start. Our yard already looked a little better. What really got to me, though, was seeing Gwilym’s yard. The state of it, I mean. I knew how the old guy would have felt about that. So I went around to his side, to the shed. The door was still open. His law
nmower was an old-fashioned push mower, with a cylinder of blades that twirled on the axel. I’d seen him pushing it around his yard, and around our yard, too. I wheeled it out. Then I knocked back the rest of the Bell’s and set the flask carefully on the patio.
I’d never used a push mower before, but there wasn’t much to it. I released the catch on the safety lock, lined the front up with the edge of the lawn, and guided it along. Like all of Gwilym’s tools the mower was well-kept, the wheels oiled, the blades clean. As they spun around, they flashed and made a soft snick-snick sound, like a barber’s scissors. Bits of grass fluttered up and caught in the breeze. The smell was really something: sweet and fresh, like corn on the cob when you’re stripping the husks. I walked the mower the full length of his lawn, pirouetted it on the spot, and pushed it back. I kept on doing that.
About halfway through, I heard a clap of thunder. Then came the rain – this warm spring rain, the drops fat and heavy as marbles. I didn’t stop, even when it really started to hammer down. Pretty soon my shirt was drenched, my jeans were soaked, and my shoes were covered in bits of soggy grass. Rainwater ran down my face, got in my eyes, drizzled off my nose. It was like being in the shower. The next time I manoeuvred the mower around, I looked up and saw Lowri standing at the bedroom window, watching me, her face pale as a moonstone behind the glass. She didn’t wave or smile. But she didn’t tell me to stop, either.
GROUND-NESTER
Stevie Davies
When Daisy noses out the mother bird, bloody meat and scrambled eggs is what she’ll be, Chris says. But the labrador – speeding down the lawn, nostrils flown with rich scents – lollops past the ground-nester into the poppied wilderness thronged with field mice and hedgehogs, where their garden joins the common.
‘Blinded poor Daisy’s nose she has,’ Carly says, on tiptoe at the kitchen window. ‘Noses are eyes, aren’t they, in the doggy world?’
The mother bird has shrunk to a dapple of shadow, hardly visible. The earth’s tremor as her enemy swept by must have registered in her belly, jostling the yolks in their shells.
‘Daisy’s daft but not that daft,’ Chris says. Only a suicidal quirk of nature could have brought the ground-nester to the edge of a Glamorgan housing estate, a tasty come-hither to predators.
‘But I’ve heard about this on the radio. Snipe, was it? – and quail – they switch off something smelly in their glands and that camouflages them. Nature’s so clever.’
The ground-nester’s a nondescript sort of bird, dun and puny: no snipe or quail. I can’t lose Carly, thinks Chris, even as he sees how naive she is. She has never surrendered that childhood capacity for wonder. What she sees in him, he’ll never know. But whatever it is, he thanks his stars. Not that Chris believes in stars or gods or any powers except Sod’s Law. Again he keeps this to himself. Carly’s rooted in a way he’ll never be, except through her. It scares him, his dependency, but what can you do?
Chris never names his ex, even to himself. Always two sides? I don’t think so. Never mind: she’s history.
Carly doesn’t care for his bitter moods. Chris understands that and bites his tongue. She stands at the sink in skinny jeans and long grey sweater, all five foot nothing of her, swaying, arms folded, watching the mother bird, and he’d do anything for her. He folds his arms about his partner’s slight body; they rock gently, observing the scene in the garden. Daisy, loping back, again misses the scent of prey, the dope.
‘I’m off,’ he says. ‘When’s Bella dropping Jarvis off?’ He tries not to see her in their daughter’s slutty clothes and slovenly walk and her willingness to dump his grandson on them. On benefits, nil ambition, going nowhere. Cheap rings crowd Bella’s fingers, looking as if they’d dropped out of Christmas crackers. Clogs to clogs in three generations.
‘She didn’t say.’
Though not Jarvis’ biological grandmother, Carly dotes on the toddler. She cooks him healthy food, worrying about the takeaways Bella feeds him. You can’t broach this without Bella exploding – stomping around in her skimpy clothes, thong showing when she bends over, teeth nicotine-stained. Older than her years Bella looks and somehow bewildered in a way that gnaws at Chris: crap dad he was. Carly tries to support Bella. She insists there’s good in her; it’s just that Bella conceals this in case it’s seen as weakness. And Jarvis is a sweetheart. The way Carly sees it, at least he gets a couple of decent meals in the week and perhaps he’ll ask his mam for broccoli of his own accord. Doesn’t Chris think so?
In … your … dreams, darling! But Chris admires his partner’s caring ways and is grateful. More of a mam and nan to his family than her, that’s for sure.
*
Nobody’s in when Chris gets home. Carly’s on the lawn with Jarvis straddling one hip. Hallo, you! Chris taps on the window and she beckons him out. Bampi’s coming, Jarvis! Look! Jarvis in a rapture of welcome leans out, calling Chris close. Here he is! Give Bampi a lovely cwtch! Securing his grandfather with the free arm, Jarvis locks the two adults to one another and himself. Kisses all round.
They’re keeping a distance from the bird, so as not to alarm her. Carly plants one foot in front of Daisy, whose baffled nose twitches. She takes the foreign body for a toy perhaps: but not her toy. The ground-nester, sunk into herself, is motionless, oily secretions shut down, glands closed. Nothing helps Daisy identify prey.
‘What I don’t get,’ says Carly, ‘is how she can feed while she’s stuck here. And when the chicks are born, how’ll she cope then?’
‘Maybe they don’t feed when they’re brooding, maybe they’ve laid down fat or something?’
‘Could be. Watch this space.’
A force-field surrounds the creature in a bubble of safety. Daisy, bored, slopes off to track foreign urine in the wilderness.
*
Jarvis is staying the weekend. Bella’s estranged partner, Taylor, that sordid waste of space, comes round – egging Jarvis on to play rugby in the house. It takes time to calm the lad after all the excitement: cheeks flaring with eczema, Jarvis grizzles as Carly washes his hair in the bath, singing Row, row, row your boat. He’s gone blond overnight, she exclaims – look, Chris. Gently down the stream. Were you blond as a child? Merrily merrily merrily merrily. Perched on the toilet seat with a can, Chris watches his grandson melt into Carly’s loving kindness. Life is but a dream. She hoists him out to be cuddled in a warmed towel. Her face then: there’s something so beautiful in its expression. Jarvis, calmed, slips his thumb in his mouth.
‘Can I ask you something, Chris?’
‘’Course you can.’
‘It’s a big ask.’
‘Ask.’
‘Could Jarvie stay more of the time, Chris? Pretty much live with us even? I love him as my own. I know she has her problems and I do sympathise … but honest-to-God Bella can be neglectful, there’s no other word for it. Take your time, don’t answer now.’
‘Well, cariad…’
‘No, love, don’t answer now…’
‘It’s not that I…’
‘Don’t, please. Just think about it.’
Chris defers the answer.
‘Oh and by the way,’ Carly adds. ‘I rang the RSPB. A young guy came round – eyes on stalks. He reckons it looks like a common sparrow but sparrows don’t act like this. The area boss’ll be round tomorrow. Meanwhile, we’ve to give the bird space – and see off cats. Daisy’s doing a great job at that.’
*
He’s working on the loft conversion when his mobile rings. ‘Come home, Chris, will you? If you can.’
She’s been crying. What, love? Tell me. He rushes to her, wraps his arms round her.
‘It’s Bella.’
‘What about Bella?’
‘The way she was today when she picked him up. Shouldn’t have been driving, honest-to-God. Her eyes weren’t right. Did you ever take stuff?’
‘No way,’ Chris says, his heart in his mouth, not wanting to hear about Bella’s antics – but your mind charges ahe
ad of itself imagining bad things, the worst. And thinking defensively, Not my fault, she’s grown up now, it’s her mam, her scummy pals, not my responsibility.
But it is his responsibility, with Jarvis in the equation.
‘Why – you think…?’
‘She wasn’t right. That’s all I can say.’
‘But you let her take him?’
Carly flushes. Hastily Chris backtracks. He knows exactly what Bella’s like. The small, sad eyes peeping, alert for ambush. The shrieking laugh when nothing’s funny. Coming with me he is, I’m his mam, ta for having him, say tara, good boy, and stop that fucken racket. Something like that.
‘I couldn’t stop her, Chris.’
‘’Course not. Sorry.’
‘Worst thing was, the poor dab didn’t want to go. Howling he was – and it hurts her when he prefers us, how wouldn’t it? That’s why she smacked him – not hard but still – I told her straight and she flared up. Nothing you can say, is there? I didn’t ask straight out about drugs – didn’t want her to go off on one.’ Carly rubs away tears with the heels of her hands. ‘We need to consider taking him.’
Chris hears himself saying, ‘We might still have our own baby, cariad.’
There he goes again, foot in mouth, opening up her wound. Unsure he wants a baby at his time of life, mind. Broken sleep and a bellyaching teenager when he’s in his sixties. Carly’s not forty: she has every right to want children. Whenever they discuss it, her antennae quiver, intuiting his selfish thought: Been there, done that. Which is only part of the truth, for another part of Chris would love a child with Carly and would do it differently this time, because she’s made – he hopes and trusts – a better man of him.
New Welsh Short Stories Page 2
