by Jo Verity
The train buff had been right. They were losing more time. ‘Look on the bright side,’ he announced, ‘If we’re more than an hour late, we can claim a refund. It’s all there in the Passengers’ Charter.’ She half expected him to produce the document from his carrier bag.
They pulled in to the station fifty-four minutes late. ‘Sod’s Law,’ Fay said to him gathering up her belongings and sidling out of her seat. Her back twinged as she straightened up and her stomach felt unsettled. The hot chocolate she’d bought from the trolley, to take away the taste of the tuna sandwiches, had been a bad idea. A sweet silt coated her tongue and she longed to clean her teeth.
Ignoring Laura’s instruction to catch a number twenty-nine bus from the station – ‘It’ll drop you at the local shops and then it’s less than a ten-minute walk,’ – Fay took a taxi, happy to part with seven pounds and save the hassle. Laura had never had much money and, not wanting to embarrass her friend with what might be considered an unnecessary show of wealth, she asked the driver to stop on the main road so that she could arrive, on foot, from the direction of the bus stop.
Although this was her first visit to Laura’s present home, she was confident that she would identify it immediately. She dragged her wheeled suitcase along the uneven pavement, studying the little red brick houses. The terraced properties were modest but well cared for, their tiny front gardens jolly with sunflowers and nasturtiums; their windows sparkling. About half way down the row, a tousle of passion flowers shrouded a purple door. No net curtains obscured the bay window. A tabby cat watched her from the garden wall. That’s got to be the one. She checked the number on the wooden gate. It was, indeed, number forty-four.
Laura opened the door, releasing a smell of coffee and baking fruit cake. They hugged and laughed, whilst the cat wrapped itself around their legs, its tail upright and quivering.
‘Isabel phoned a few minutes ago. Surprise, surprise, she’s running late. I thought she was going to cry off. You know what she’s like. Never mind all that. Come in and dump your things. It’s wonderful to see you.’
They went down the narrow hall to the kitchen and, as Laura put the proffered flowers in an earthenware jug, Fay had her first chance to look at her old friend. Laura’s hair, tied loosely at the nape of her neck, was streaked with grey; she had soft jowls at her chin-line and her face looked thinner but her hands and her legs and her voice had barely altered since that first day at school. ‘You so made the right decision never to dye your hair,’ said Fay. ‘Heaven knows what colour mine would be if I let it grow out.’
‘Sheer laziness,’ said Laura. ‘Painters spend enough time agonising about colour. I just don’t have the energy to agonise over my hair too. Or my face, come to that.’
‘You’ve never needed makeup. You’re skin is such a lovely tone. I look like the living dead if I don’t slap a bit of something on.’
Laura had been the creative one. While the rest of the form giggled about boyfriends and periods, she was working in the art room. While Fay and Isabel had been in the cloakroom, back-combing each other’s hair and scratching initials on the lavatory doors, Laura was off somewhere painting or carving something. Clothes weren’t important to her, either. At home she lived in paint-spattered shirts and jeans so, by default, she appeared to have the confidence to be different. This was unusual in a girls’ grammar school during the sixties and her reputation for being ‘a weirdo’ lent their threesome certain kudos. Fay had never fathomed what Laura got out of it until, years later, Laura explained that being with them gave her an insight into contemporary youth culture, essential to inform her work. ‘I liked you, too,’ she’d added, when she saw Fay’s jaw drop.
She showed Laura the wedding photographs and the snaps she’d taken when she and Jack had spent a few days in Paris. ‘It would have been good to get away straight after the wedding, to avoid the anti-climax, but I had another week before school broke up. There was so much else to think about that we hadn’t organised anything. It was Jack’s idea to go to Paris. I’m not entirely sure why. We spent our honeymoon there so perhaps it was nostalgia. Weddings always dredge up strange emotions, don’t they?’
‘And did Paris reawaken love’s young dream?’ Laura bowed an air violin.
Fay shook her head. ‘God, no. Paris in late July is unbearably hot. And we were both exhausted. Every time we lay down, we fell asleep. I think we were both glad to get home.’
‘Death stirs up strange emotions, too.’ Laura handed Fay a mug of coffee. ‘I mean apart from the obvious ones.’
Fay reached out and touched her friend’s hand. ‘I was desperately sorry about your dad.’
‘Thanks. You wrote me such a brilliant letter. I love the idea that other people, besides me, remember what fun he was.’
‘I know how close you two were and I really envy you that. I don’t have a clue what my father was like, under that three-piece suit. I’m not sure he cared much for me.’ She patted her hand. ‘Anyway, how are you coping?’
Laura shrugged. ‘Oh, it’s easier than it was in the beginning. But now that the grief and anger are subsiding, other things are surfacing.’
Fay raised her eyebrows. ‘D’you want to talk about it?’
‘Maybe later. Let me have another look at those photos.’
They drank coffee and ate warm fruit cake, waiting for Isabel to arrive.
*
Jack’s day wasn’t going well. After dropping Fay at the station, he’d gone home to collect his kit. He needed to be in Llandrindod Wells by eleven-thirty for the Trans-Wales Morris Dancing Championships and, from past experience, he knew that anywhere in Wales was further away than it should be. Normally his ‘side’ – the Wicker Men – packed into two or three cars to travel to a venue but, on this occasion, Jack had found himself without a lift. He’d set off once, then been forced to turn back when he realised that he was without his buckled shoes. Fay couldn’t bear the smell of shoe-polish in the house and he’d taken them down to the shed to clean them and left them there. Anything else he could manage without, but his shoes were essential.
He headed north for the second time. It wasn’t often that he found himself making a journey on his own. Had Fay been with him, she would have a packet of soft-mints or a bar of chocolate at the ready, and no sooner did the thought of Fruit-and-Nut cross his mind, than he craved something to suck. He switched on the radio and prodded his way through the pre-set channels, looking for some distraction. The selection of music was unappealing and a gloomy item on the hole in the ozone layer depressed him. He switched off and resorted to tuneless whistling.
The road climbed up, past valley towns synonymous with coalmining, choirs and tragedies. After half an hour, the scarred landscape and the marching ranks of terraced houses gave way to round-topped mountains, sheep grazing on their lower slopes and streams gathering into tiny waterfalls. He opened the car windows, allowing the rarefied air to blow away the city staleness.
It was perfect dancing weather – dry and fresh. Soon he would be slipping on pleated shirt and white breeches, woolly socks and shiny black shoes, and strapping on the bright little bells. He would abandon himself – dentistry left little room for abandon – to the rhythms and hypnotic music, setting Jack Waterfield free. He would connect with the world through his senses, by-passing his brain – the cause of so many problems. Great stuff. Why would anyone pay money to lie on a psychiatrist’s couch, when they could dance their way out of discontentment – at least for a few hours?
The needle on the petrol gauge was edging into the red sector and he pulled into a garage, on the outskirts of a small village. He filled the tank and bought a selection of snacks and a fruit drink to leave in the car for later. Before setting off on the last leg of his trip, he checked his mobile for messages. There was nothing from Fay, which he took as a sign that all was well. There was, however, a rambling message from Stan Colley, bagman for the Wicker Men. The upshot was that three of the team who were driving up tog
ether had been ‘involved in a minor prang’ before they’d even left Cardiff. Prang for God’s sake? Nothing serious, but they were in Casualty, waiting for X-rays, and they would have to pull out of the competition. The message had been left an hour or so earlier.
Jack phoned a couple of the others and established that he was the last one to hear the news. The rest had turned around and were already back at home, whilst he was somewhere in mid-Wales. He sat in the car, eating a Mars Bar and wondering what to do. Fay was in Nottingham for the weekend so there was no need to rush back. Out of the blue, he had this glorious day to himself. Added to that he was in a place where he wouldn’t normally be. It was the most exciting thing that had happened to him for ages and an opportunity not to be wasted.
His initial impulse was to pinpoint his location on the map and make a plan for the rest of the day. Maybe he should let someone know where he was and what he was up to. But who? And what was the point? Bugger it. He tossed the road atlas onto the back seat. Good grief, how lost could anyone be in such a small country?
By the time Isabel turned up, Fay and Laura had almost finished the bottle of Chardonnay that Fay had packed in her overnight bag. It was tepid but effective and they were flushed and giggly. Isabel, keen to catch up, produced a bottle of vodka and they spent an hour or so settling into each other’s company.
Little had changed in Fay’s situation since they last met. She was teaching in the same school; Jack was still working in his own practice; her older son was married and her daughter looked like becoming an old maid. And her younger son? Kingsley was still on the other side of the world.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Fay,’ said Laura, ‘Caitlin won’t be an “old maid”. She may choose not to marry but what’s so terrible about that? Look at the mess Sadie’s making of her marriage.’ Laura had two children by different fathers. Sadie, the younger one, had married when she was barely twenty and the relationship had been on and off several times. ‘It’s on at the moment, thanks to Joe’s refusal to give up on her,’ Laura crossed her fingers, ‘But I don’t hold my breath.’
‘What about Cassidy?’ asked Isabel. ‘How old is he now?’
‘Getting on for thirty-four. Scary, isn’t it?’
‘He’s a lot better looking than he used to be,’ said Fay, holding up a photograph of a young man with a ponytail. ‘Or is my eyesight deteriorating? Where does the blonde hair come from? David was dark, wasn’t he?’
‘That was in Australia. The sun had bleached it. Cass worked out there for a couple of years. He wears it short now.’
‘What’s he doing? Didn’t you mention carpentry, or something?’ asked Isabel. She took the photograph and whistled. ‘I bet he’s broken a few hearts.’
Isabel had been the glamorous, giddy member of the trio but Fay wasn’t sure she deserved her nickname Dizzy Izzy. After a string of handsome boyfriends, she had ended up marrying a rather plain barrister, Geoffrey Lauderdale, and living in a huge house in Chelsea. She’d driven up to Nottingham – although Isabel insisted on saying ‘down’ – in a very flash car. The jacket hanging on the back of the kitchen chair had an Armani label. It seemed to Fay that Isabel had been very shrewd indeed.
‘How on earth d’you keep your figure, Izzy?’ asked Laura. ‘You’ve had four children and you can’t be more than a ten. I don’t want to know what size I am. I just put a big shirt over everything and hope for the best.’
Fay glanced across at Isabel’s flat front and pulled in her own stomach.‘I watch what I eat, and I go to the gym or swim most days,’ said Isabel, who had the time and the money for such things.
The conversation progressed from diets to health to old age to death and, inevitably, they ran through the lengthening list of contemporaries that had suffered dreadful illnesses and untimely deaths.
‘Would you want Geoffrey to marry again if you died?’ asked Fay. ‘I wouldn’t like Jack to be lonely, but I can’t quite picture him with another woman. Who’d want an ageing dentist, anyway?’
‘Geoffrey can do what the hell he likes when I’ve gone,’ said Isabel. ‘We hardly see each other now, so he might not even notice I wasn’t there.’
‘Let’s talk about something else,’ said Laura, picking up the empty glasses and taking them to the sink. Fay shot a glance at Isabel and grimaced. Laura’s beloved husband, David, had died a long while ago and she had never remarried. Laura had always been a private person and it hadn’t seemed right to press her on the question of Sadie’s father. She had once told them that he wasn’t around for long, adding, ‘But I had a choice, didn’t I, and chose to go through with it.’
Jack tucked in to his teacake. It was not yet five o’clock but the mellowness of the afternoon had evaporated and he’d fancied something warm to eat. He was the only customer in the place. He’d spent the afternoon roaming through mid-Wales, stopping to browse in bookshops or sort through the bargain boxes outside junk shops. As a result, he now owned a first edition of a Cecil Sharp biography, a garden fork and a vase in the shape of Nelson’s Column – a little gift for Fay.
The waitress wandered around with a J-cloth, sweeping crumbs from the table onto the vinyl flooring.
‘Anything else?’ she asked, glancing at the clock above the counter.
‘No thanks,’ said Jack, ‘But perhaps you could tell me where I am.’
Since making the decision to let destiny direct him, Jack had done everything he could to avoid establishing his location. Obviously the settlements along his route had all sported signs but fortunately he’d never heard of any of them. He’d had a smashing day and the time had come for him to be heading home.
‘The Corner Café.’ She pronounced it ‘caffee’.
‘That’s in…?’ he prompted.
‘Bridge Street.’
‘Which is in…?’
‘Llangwm,’ she said, giving him, what his mother would have called, an ‘old fashioned look’ and scurrying back to the kitchen before he could push her further. He tucked payment for his snack under his plate and left.
Llangwm was more than a village, yet didn’t seem big enough to be called a town. It straddled a meandering river, and the criss-crossing streets, meeting at odd angles, made for a quaintness more often found in England than in rural Wales. He passed a row of shops and a pub on his way back to the moss-covered car park, where his car was still the only one in sight. He turned the key in the ignition. Nothing. He tried again. More nothing. It had been running perfectly, without a hint of trouble, which made diagnosis of the problem impossible. Anyway, he was useless with cars. His time was better spent earning the money to pay someone who knew what they were doing – a perfectly sound decision. Where he’d made the mistake was to let his AA membership lapse.
He locked the car and traipsed back to the café. By this time ‘Closed’ dangled on the door and there were no signs of life. The street was deserted. Whistling to convey nonchalance, he began walking, hoping that he’d come across a garage or someone who could direct him to one.
At the far end of the street, standing out amongst the row of stone-built houses, he spotted an Italianate villa, bedecked with hanging baskets. The Welcome Stranger Guesthouse in jaunty yellow lettering on a dark green board, hung over the central entrance. After no more than a second’s hesitation, he climbed the three steps up from the pavement and pounded on the door.
A young woman opened it and smiled at him. She was, he thought, a few years older than Caitlin, mid-thirties perhaps, and not as tall. Her long, blue-black hair was gathered in a ponytail. She wore a tee-shirt and ankle-length cotton skirt, printed with a hectic pattern of butterflies.
‘I hope you do.’ He grinned back at her and pointed up at the sign. ‘Welcome strangers, I mean.’
‘That’s the general idea. The stranger the better,’ she laughed, ushering Jack past the reception desk and into the untidy sitting room, where a fire, cheery but not too hot, crackled in the grate and a ginger cat snoozed on the rug.
They introduced themselves, ‘Jack Waterfield.’
‘Non. Non Evans.’
He explained his predicament – a non-functioning car; no AA membership; no phone number for a garage; no sign of life in the village; no idea where he was; no plan of campaign. No mention, either, of a wife and grown-up children. But, sitting by the fire, cat purring at his feet, none of it was a problem. He was immediately and sublimely at peace, as if he’d arrived home after a long and difficult journey; as if he had found the person to whom he could relate his brightest hopes and darkest fears.
He felt even more at home after he’d eaten a supper of lamb stew followed by creamy rice pudding. Non had insisted that, as the other guests were out, he should have a meal with her, in the kitchen and, while they were eating, she made a suggestion. The car couldn’t be fixed before the morning, when Non would contact her cousin, Gareth: ‘He’s a dab hand with motors.’ It was futile trying to get back to Cardiff by public transport because the daily bus had passed through Llangwm at noon. Anyway, he would only have to come back for the car and face a similar problem in reverse. Jack agreed that the sensible thing would be to spend the night at The Welcome Stranger and Non went off to prepare a room for him.
There were two other guests in residence. Melvin and Bonnie Meredith were over from Boston, hot on the trail of their forefathers. They arrived back at nine o’clock after a fruitful day touring the churchyards in the area. Non opened a bottle of wine and suggested a game of Scrabble by the fire. There was dissent over the spelling of a word, here and there, but they agreed to adopt the indigenous dictionary, on the understanding that this ruling would apply when they played a return match in the United States. By the time they’d had a night-cap of hot chocolate laced with rum, they were the best of butties and buddies.
It was only as Jack was slipping into bed that he wondered whether he ought to phone someone and tell them where he was. He checked his mobile but there were no messages and it was well past midnight. There seemed little point in causing a fuss.