New Welsh Short Stories (3 page)

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 lawnmower 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 ahead 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.

‘That's not going to happen,' Carly says in a businesslike way
.
‘Anyway, Chris, however is that relevant? It's our
Jarvis
I'm concerned for.'

What can Chris say? Bella rolls round here wasted, all bullshit and bluster, and there's no knowing what substances might be found in her flat.

Chris sees not only
her
in his daughter, but himself, and it's harrowing. Meanwhile a perfect, heart
-
shaped, half
-
submerged face peers out through the flab. Bella's mint
-
green eyes pierce him. Chris doesn't court that stare. He's been afraid of Bella since she hit her teens. She's had him shit
-
scared and running.

He looks past Carly into the garden where, after the night's rain, everything's lustrous. He should walk Daisy.

‘And anyway,' Carly bursts out, ‘I love Jarvis – I love him! No baby would ever take his place.'