Second Chance (11 page)

Of course, I was truly sorry for the young girl who'd died, and for her parents and friends, but that didn't make me any less sorry for Annabel. Yes, she was a stupid, stupid child, but she must be going through hell at the moment.

Rhydian and Grace were late because Aled, their youngest lad, aged four, had objected to being left with his grandmother. I think they'd also had something of a row coming over, so that the first half hour was rather fraught. Grace's pie had to be put in the oven for twenty minutes and by that time my dish of jacket potatoes with mushroom and garlic sauce had dried up and the avocados had, in any case, proved too hard to eat. However, the pie was good and so was the wine and by the time we were on to the pudding, we were all fairly relaxed.

‘I hope you're going to stay here for a while now that we've got to know you,' Grace said. ‘You won't be going back as soon as you've come, will you?'

‘Damn, she's got her work to think of, girl,' Rhydian said. ‘She's not going to give up her work, is she, because you and Edwina want to show her off.'

Grace glanced at him, with pity, I thought, rather than malice. ‘Are you working on anything at the moment?' she asked me.

‘Not at the moment.'

I must have looked worried; in fact, I was thinking again about Annabel and her problems. ‘But I've got to leave here very soon. On Saturday, I think.'

Not wanting to worry them with that problem, I switched to a lesser one. ‘A chap called George Williams called on me today.'

‘What did he want?' Grace asked crossly.

‘You know about him, then?'

‘Edwina's mentioned something about him, yes. But he's got no right to trouble you at this sort of time. Some people have no feelings.'

‘He didn't trouble me. I just felt very surprised about the whole thing and very sorry for him.'

‘Could one of you please tell me what you're talking about?' Rhydian asked, his voice an aggrieved drawl.

‘Pity you don't listen to me a bit more. I've told you loads of times about Edwina mentioning something about Auntie Miriam and this fellow George Williams. You never listen to a word I say. You turn round and go to sleep as soon as your head touches the pillow and then accuse me of not telling you things.'

‘My God, if I listened to every bit of gossip that passes between you and Edwina I'd be well on the downward road by this time.'

I was enjoying their bickering. Paul and I were much too civilised – or too distant – to quarrel.

‘Oh, be quiet,' Grace said. ‘Can't you see how you're upsetting Kate.'

‘You're not upsetting me. I feel envious of you. You're so obviously happy together.'

They both looked at me with some surprise. ‘Come on,' I said, ‘you
are
happy together, aren't you?'

‘I suppose I'm as happy as I can be with an ugly, bad-tempered chap who thinks I'm having another baby just to spite him.'

‘I'm happy enough about another baby and I suppose I'm fairly happy with her,' Rhydian muttered. ‘Even though she's only got bubble-wrap between the ears.'

‘I'll come down to see your new baby. I hope it's a girl this time.'

‘If it's a girl, we're going to call her Jane,' Grace said. And I realised by the way she said it, that she was making Rhydian a definite and important concession.

‘I don't mind what you call it,' he said, with so little gallantry that I was immediately annoyed with him.

‘Oh yes, you do,' I said. ‘You want her to be called Jane because that was your mother's name and she was a very wonderful woman. So you should tell Grace how pleased and thankful you are that she's agreeing to it.'

‘Well, it'll be in private if I do,' he said. His voice held out a warning to me as well as a tiny shiver of tenderness. ‘Anyway, what about this George Williams? Was he courting your mother, or what?'

‘It was more than that. He said they were going to get married. It took me completely by surprise because she'd never mentioned him to me.'

‘He's making it up,' Grace said. ‘He wants something from you.'

‘No, I believed him. He seemed totally trustworthy. Anyway, what could he want from me?'

‘I don't know,' Grace said. ‘But don't be too ready to trust him. Would a woman of Auntie Miriam's age be likely to want to get married? How old was she? She had a nice little cottage and a pension and a holiday in London twice every year. She had everything she could possibly want.'

By this time, we'd finished our meal and were sitting by the fire. ‘My father was courting your mother at one time,' Rhydian said, stretching out his long legs. ‘Did you know that?'

‘Honestly, Rhydian, you're really witless, aren't you? Poor Kate has had one shock about George Williams and now you give her another. And I don't believe this latest thing either. After all, Auntie Miriam was his sister-in-law.'

‘Just like me and Edwina,' Rhydian said, ‘so please bear that in mind and don't throw us together so often... Only she wasn't his sister-in-law. Auntie Miriam was my mother's niece. So, strictly speaking, he was her uncle-in-law. Isn't that right, Kate? Anyway, I hope I haven't shocked you. Have I?'

‘Not really. Though she never mentioned your father either. Only it doesn't entirely surprise me. He used to call here even when he was married to Madge.'

‘He never married Madge. He used to say he had, but that was only out of respect for your mother. And when Madge left him a few years later, he did his best to get your mother to marry him. Yes, he actually told me that. But she refused him. I can't say I blame her either. He was drinking like a fish by that time. And it killed him, of course. When he was only a couple of years older than I am now.'

‘Poor Uncle Ted. What year did he die? It must have been after I'd left home in 1974.'

‘1977 I think it was, the year of the drought. Or was that '76?'

‘When I was at university, do you know, my mother was younger than I am now. And I thought she was really old. I wonder if they were happy together now and then? What exactly do you mean by “courting”, Rhydian?'

‘ Now, how should I know? He didn't confide that in me, did he? I only know that I'd call at his place now and again – Madge had swanned off somewhere by this time, leaving him the council house and all the arrears of rent – I'd call, wondering why I hadn't seen him for some days, and when he eventually got to the door, he'd mumble that he'd been up staying with your mother. Perhaps she was only giving him a bed and looking after him during one of his bad spells. But I used to think it was a bit more. I used to hope so, anyway.'

‘I hope so, too. I'd like to think she had something in her life.'

‘Even if it was only Rhydian's broken-down father,' Grace said.

‘Did you know him?' I asked, hurt by this dismissive reference to Uncle Ted.

‘No. He'd already passed away by the time Rhydian and I first met. Rhydian was nearly forty, you know, when we got married. No one would have him when he was young and wild.'

‘I was too busy to think of girls when I was young. I had a farm to run single-handed – or single-handed except for the occasional day when my father turned up. I worked like a slave every day including Sunday and saw to the books at night. Everything had been neglected ever since my mother's illness. I was years getting it to rights. Did I have any time to run after girls?'

He looked at me and smiled, as though I wasn't to take him absolutely seriously. His smile was slightly one-sided and his eyes were dark; sometimes brown, sometimes ash-black.

‘You know, I admire you, Rhydian. You stayed on and made a success of life here. While all the rest of us felt the need to escape to a different life and a different culture where we don't really fit in. At least, I don't feel I fit in anywhere. I seem an outsider now, wherever I am.'

‘I'm not sure that I fit in too well, either. I can't get worked up about politics, for instance. I usually vote Welsh Nationalist in elections, but it's only to avoid having to vote for one of the other parties. I voted for the Welsh Assembly, of course I did. But I don't feel really positive about anything.'

‘But you don't need to be particularly positive. You and Grace are part of the Welsh community, you live the Welsh life, attend Welsh functions, talk Welsh as a matter of course, so you don't have to get worked up about it. It's people who don't quite fit in who feel the need to go on and on about what we once had and what we're losing. You don't feel so much nostalgia for that past if you actually lived through it.'

‘You may be right. Bleddyn, for instance, is far more fervently Welsh than I am because he's lived in Oxford most of his life. And what is this great Welsh Culture that everyone gets worked up about? Yes, we've got some good singers and some good poets, but they're not world class. Well, perhaps R. S. Thomas is world class, but luckily he writes in English, otherwise we'd be boasting that he's the greatest poet of all time. I can't bear it when people say that Saunders Lewis is as great as Pinter and David Hare, because he's definitely not, and Kate Roberts is not a patch on Elizabeth Bowen and Katherine Mansfield and it doesn't help us to pretend she is. Why should we be so defensive? I think Nationalism has had its day. It's time for us just to be people and good neighbours, it seems to me. Do you feel particularly Welsh?'

‘I do when I'm in England. At least, I never feel English. One certainly has a deep, almost unaccountable love for one's place of birth. But on the other hand, I like what London has to offer and I'm grateful for it.'

‘You've had a great career,' Grace said.

‘No, I haven't, Grace. I've been moderately successful some of the time, but it certainly hasn't been a great career. You wouldn't have heard of me except that I'm family. Well, perhaps I'm fairly well known in Wales because of this endearing Welsh preoccupation with anyone Welsh. But that's all.'

‘I've only seen you in a few things on the telly,' Rhydian said, ‘so I can't really judge. Bleddyn went to see you as Lady Macduff at Stratford and he thought you were very good. I should have gone with him. He wanted me to, but the weather was bad and we were lambing.'

He's a farmer, this cousin of mine. Why should that suddenly surprise me? Why shouldn't farmers be interested in politics and literature and music? On stage and on television, farmers are usually rough, tough men with sideburns and gaiters who grumble about droughts and bad harvests. And come to that, actors are always flamboyant and vainglorious. People are more than stereotypes, I know that. All the same, Uncle Ted was the farmer, in my eyes. ‘You don't seem a typical farmer,' I said.

‘He isn't,' Grace muttered. ‘He doesn't care enough about his property. He lets people get away with things, and it's his children will suffer.'

Rhydian looked at me and sighed. ‘I won't fight over trifles. I won't take someone to court for a few feet of ground, especially when it's old Abraham Williams who was my Sunday School teacher years ago. If the poor old boy gets any pleasure from pilfering a few feet of upland grazing he's welcome to it.'

‘All the same,' I said, ‘you'd think a former Sunday School teacher would have some notion of moral principles.'

‘He's eighty-three, though, and having a lot of trouble with his teeth.'

Rhydian has lovely teeth, a lovely smile. Rather abruptly, I turned to Grace. ‘Are any of your boys interested in farming?'

‘They'll all have to have other jobs, as far as I can see. Farmers are all doing badly these days.
W
e certainly are. Gwyn says he wants to be a vet, but I suppose it's only because of the telly. All the best programmes are about vets.'

‘You're lucky to have children,' I said. ‘Stepchildren are the most I can boast.'

Rhydian looked over at me. ‘Everyone wants what they don't have,' he said. ‘That's a fact of life, it seems to me.'

I was getting more and more attracted to Rhydian. The previous day I'd been able to tell myself that I was interested in him because he reminded me of Auntie Jane, by this time I knew I was drawn to him because he was the most sexually disturbing man I'd come across in years. I hadn't had this ache for anyone for years and years, and it was for someone I could do nothing about. If only we'd met in London, with Grace a wife mentioned only in passing! Just one night, I'd say. Life is short, and we're bound together by family ties and our common inheritance. Oh my dear heart. Cariad annwyl.

‘No, I won't have any more wine, Rhydian, thank you.' My mouth was swollen with desire; I was finding it difficult to talk normally.

‘And I don't think you should have any more, either,' Grace said. ‘You've got three children, don't forget, and another on the way.'

It was as if she'd been tuned in to my thoughts. ‘I'll make us some coffee,' I said.