by Jo Verity
Maybe that was no longer a consideration because what had initially seemed a simple (if astonishing) case of two men fancying her, had become more complex. Lenny might fancy her – or pretend he did – but if she were to believe Dafydd’s confession, he’d seen her as a means of ‘moving on’ from Gwenno. She didn’t feel offended by this, rather flattered that she was the first woman whom he thought worthy of the task. However she now had no idea how things stood between them. (He’d warned her to ‘watch out tonight’ but that, surely, was a morale-booster.) So. Did she ‘fancy’ Dafydd Jones or not? Was it possible to fancy someone’s friendship; desire their companionship?
Dafydd rejoined them, flicking shut his phone. ‘Sorted. Eight o’clock. He’s threatening to “feed us” so we’d better have a decent lunch, just in case.’
A further ten minutes walk brought them to the end of the footpath and the steep scramble down to the road. As soon as their feet touched the tarmac, the youngsters exploded in high spirits, relieved to have survived their dose of ‘nature’. But, returned to the banality of testy motorists, beach paraphernalia and gaudy advertisements, Elizabeth felt a pang of loss.
26
FRIDAY: 2.40PM
Dafydd explained that, on his numerous visits to Lenny Butler’s place, he’d never spotted so much as a crumb of solid food. On the strength of this, they tucked into a hearty lunch of steak pasty and chips (ex-vegetarian Jordan included).
‘So what’s Jay’s prize, Dad,’ Angel asked, ‘for getting to the Beacon first?’
‘Let’s have a think.’
Jordan looked out of the window, removing himself from the discussion, as though it were someone else they were talking about. Elizabeth had noticed him do this before and she wondered whether having other people making decisions about his life was the norm, and that pretending not to care was the way he dealt with it. (Although he had kicked up a fair old stink when she’d told him that he would be accompanying her to Wales.)
‘How d’you fancy a top-of-the-range pudding, Jay?’ Dafydd nodded towards the list chalked on the board above the counter.
Elizabeth expected Jordan to ask if he could have the cash instead, and he might have done had Mimi not hustled him into a Rhossili Rumpus (soft ice cream and crushed meringue, slathered with chocolate sauce and topped with nuts) … and three spoons.
Again Elizabeth was impressed by the courtesy Dafydd showed to everyone who spoke to him, chatting for a few minutes here and there, signing autographs for (what could only be) a coach-load of pensioners. When they sneaked a look at her, she felt less self-conscious than she had the other evening but, again, she wondered what they made of her. They surely wouldn’t believe that she’d never seen their Rain Man on the television yet had spent last night in his bed.
Londoners were accustomed to rubbing shoulders with celebrities. They had their own way of dealing with them. After a furtive glance (to ensure that it was who they thought it was) they feigned indifference. Afterwards they would let slip ‘I saw so-and-so at the opera last week. But I didn’t say anything. The man’s entitled to his privacy, after all. And he’s inches shorter than you’d imagine.’ Thus, in a few well-crafted sentences, they conveyed that they’d seen ‘x’ in the flesh; that they were opera goers; that they were well-mannered and considerate. Finally, and the coup de grâce, they would put ‘x’ down for daring to be famous.
A couple of weeks earlier, Elizabeth had been in the National Portrait Gallery, whiling away twenty minutes before meeting her sister to go to a matinee. A whisper had run through the place like a breeze through long grass and she felt the collective attention focusing on her. But of course they weren’t looking at her but the man standing next to her. Kevin Spacey. Side by side, they had examined a portrait of Benjamin Disraeli, and, having noted that Mr Spacey was fighting a losing battle against hair loss, she had ignored him (although American Beauty was in her top ten favourite films).
Now here they were, a million miles away from the über-coolness of London, and it was a delight to watch these people acknowledging Dafydd without sycophancy, treating him with affection and respect. (One couple went so far as to thank him for the recent run of good weather.) He might only be a regional weatherman but he was well thought of and he wore his celebrity graciously.
‘Sorry about that,’ he murmured when he caught up with them.
‘You’re very sweet with them.’
‘As I said before, it’s part of the job. A nice part, too.’
‘I found myself standing next to Kevin Spacey the other day,’ she said thinking that it would be interesting to get Dafydd’s take on the speak/no speak issue.
‘What did he say?’ he asked before she could get any further.
She laughed. ‘Nothing.’
‘Bastard.’
‘What could Kevin Spacey have to say to me?’
‘Get off my foot?’ Diane said.
(Elizabeth would have preferred to have Dafydd to herself but she couldn’t expect Diane to tag along with the youngsters all the time. Anyway, his remarks were directed towards her. And hers to him. The both understood that, even if Diane didn’t.)
‘How about a pay rise?’ Dafydd suggested.
Elizabeth laughed again. ‘I didn’t realise I pay Kevin Spacey’s wages.’
‘What? Taxes. Tickets. Lottery Fund. You practically own Kevin.’
And they were off again on another delightful flight of fancy.
The pub’s terrace overlooked the beach. This, the southern end of the bay, was contained by a towering escarpment of rocks, sweeping on round in an undulating peninsula, reaching westward into the sea. At its extremity, the rocks rose to form what looked uncannily like the head of a serpent rearing up out of the waves.
‘Is it possible to get right to the end?’ Diane asked, pointing to the serpent’s head.
Dafydd nodded. ‘Yes. At low tide. You have to be pretty savvy though or you get stranded there for hours. It’s off limits when the sea birds are breeding. Dylan was very taken with the place.’ He paused. ‘That’d be Thomas, of course, not Bob.’
The beach lay more or less vertically below – almost three hundred feet down according to a helpful passer-by with a guide book. Access – pedestrian only – was by a concrete path, stepped in places, which snaked down and across the hillside, parallel to the shoreline.
‘Not for wimps, is it?’ Elizabeth said. ‘Look at that those two.’ She pointed at a middle-aged couple, laden with rucksacks and beach gear, edging crabwise down the path.
‘Don’t underestimate the pull of the sea, the urge to feel sand between the old toes,’ Dafydd said.
‘And don’t forget – what goes down must come up again.’ Diane inclined her head towards a frail-looking woman who was hovering at the top of the steps. She lowered her voice. ‘The morbidity rate here must be way above the national average.’
The woman – well into her seventies, clutching a walking stick in either hand and with a beach bag slung around her neck – was evidently psyching herself up for the descent.
‘Can we give you a hand?’ Dafydd asked.
She shook her head. ‘No, ta.’ She waved them past. ‘Go on, you. I’ll take it steady.’
They’d barely left the terrace when Elizabeth became aware of a sharp twinge in her knee joints as she braced her legs, putting the brakes on to stop herself from hurtling down the path. Jordan, Mimi and Angel, muscles as supple as rubber bands, were well ahead, striding down the path, untroubled by the drop and the lack of handrails. The whole structure – the path, the intermittent sections of safety rail, the irregular spacing of the uneven steps – seemed to be an improvised affair. It looked half-finished. Work in progress. As though a couple of blokes turned up and tinkered at it now and again when they had a barrow-load of concrete and an hour to spare.
‘Don’t they have Health and Safety in Wales?’ Elizabeth asked, indicating the unfenced drop.
‘Naah. Girly stuff,’ Dafydd said, grabbing
her shoulders and wrapping his leg around hers as if trying to trip her.
‘Help,’ she shouted (although she had never felt safer).
‘Look.’ Diane pointed up towards the lip of the Downs.
A gigantic leaf-like affair, red, yellow and white, was idling a few hundred feet above the ground, its shadow rippling across the hillside. A human figure hung some way beneath the graceful structure, suspended (presumably) by ropes which were invisible against the bright sky. Others paused too, hands raised to shield eyes, gazing at the dangling man – person – as he traced a slow figure in the sky. Then a second ‘leaf’ – this one blue and orange – drifted off the hill to join the first, twisting and twirling, their shadows chasing each other across the bracken.
‘Would you fancy doing that?’ Elizabeth asked.
‘God, yes.’ Diane said.
‘But how d’you find out whether you’re any good at it? There must come a moment when you have to stop theorising and throw yourself off the edge. There’s no second chance if you get it wrong.’
‘You asked me whether I fancied it,’ Diane said. ‘Fancying something is a world away from actually doing it.’
Isn’t it just?
‘Dafydd?’ Elizabeth prompted.
‘A tandem flight might be fun. Assuming you’re with someone who knows what they’re doing.’
He had the gall to wink at her.
A little way in front of them, the path passed through a gate set in a wooden fence which ran straight down the hillside. The gate was propped open with a large stone. Immediately through it, the land fell away steeply and the path here descended in a run of, perhaps ten, steps. At the bottom of these steps, it stopped tracking across the hillside and made a right-angled turn, continuing down, heading directly towards the beach.
They were almost at the gate when they heard a commotion coming from lower down the hill. The lie of the land was such that, without venturing on to the vertiginous hillside, it was impossible to see beyond the point where the path changed direction. Later, when Elizabeth tried to recall the exact sequence of events, she thought she remembered hearing a scream, then Dafydd muttering something about ‘the kids’ before he took off down the path. She and Diane followed, taking care not to slip on the friable concrete.
At first it was impossible to make sense of what was going on. Jordan, Mimi and Dafydd were standing with half-a-dozen people, including an overweight young woman who was clutching a baby in her arms. Both woman and baby (who was perhaps five or six months old and wearing a very pink dress) were crying, as was a toddler who was squatting on the steps above the spot where whatever it was had taken place. A pushchair lay on its side further down the path and Angel was gathering up the assortment of carrier bags and baby equipment strewn around it.
A man slapped Jordan on the back. ‘Well done, son.’
‘What happened?’ Elizabeth asked.
‘Jay was brilliant,’ Mimi said. ‘He saved that baby’s life.’
A woman in a sombrero nodded. ‘Moved like greased lightning, he did. Grabbed the buggy. Stopped it going down there.’ She pointed to the right of the path where the land fell steeply into a fissure which looked as if it might, in wet weather, run with water. She rolled her eyes, jerking her head towards the crying woman and lowered her voice. ‘What was she thinking of? Mind, you only have to look at her arms. It’s not right, is it?’
Elizabeth tried to correlate the haphazard information. It appeared that Jordan had stopped a runaway pushchair. But it was hard to see where the mother’s tattooed arms came into it.
A crowd was congregating on the path, eager to find out what the hullabaloo was about. The story of Jordan’s heroic act circulated rapidly. The excitement increased when Dafydd Jones was spotted, and increased further when it was revealed that the young hero was actually with Dafydd. Cameras and phones came out and before long, the baby, calmer now and seemingly none the worse for her adventure, was thrust towards Jordan. He held her awkwardly, slightly clear of his body and facing away from him, his hands beneath her arms so that her chubby legs peddled the air.
‘Poor Jordan,’ Diane whispered as mother and toddler, still snivelling, posed with Jordan and the baby.
‘Poor Dafydd,’ Elizabeth whispered as he was roped in for a second round of photos.
After ten minutes, when every ounce of entertainment had been wrung out of the drama, the crowd dispersed, some down to the beach, others up to the car park. The mother, her baby now strapped securely in the pushchair, the toddler clinging to her denim skirt, stood hesitantly on the path.
Dafydd smiled. ‘Sorry, I didn’t catch your name.’
‘Tanya.’
‘Hi, Tanya. Were you on your way up or down?’
‘Up. My boyfriend’s waiting in the car.’ She placed the palm of one hand on the waistband of her skirt. ‘God, I feel sick.’
‘You’ve had a shock,’ Elizabeth said.
‘Down was easy. But coming up. I had to go backwards. Then the fuckin’ wasp.’
Tanya extended her right arm exposing the pendulous flesh between elbow and armpit. A crimson dot surrounded by a raised area the size of a fifty-pence piece explained ‘the fuckin’ wasp’.
‘It fuckin’ hurts.’
Displaying the sting necessitated her taking one hand off the pushchair and Dafydd reached out to steady it. ‘Why don’t we give you a hand up? Jay’ll help,’ he looked towards Jordan, ‘won’t you?’
‘Yeah. Sure.’ Suddenly Jordan seemed self-assured, as if he’d been waiting all week for this moment. ‘If you take the handles, I’ll grab the footrest.’
It was unlikely that, if the baby had been strapped in correctly (by no means a certainty), the accident would have proved as bad as Mimi and the sombrero woman suggested. The pushchair might have tipped onto its side, and the baby might have suffered grazing to her face and limbs, but the scrubby heather would have halted it well before it plummeted into the fissure. Nevertheless Jordan’s quick thinking had prevented any of that.
‘Why don’t you phone your boyfriend?’ Dafydd said. ‘Let him know what happened. Tell him you’ll be there in five minutes.’
‘He’ll kill me,’ Tanya whined. She held out her hand again. ‘Look at that. I’m all shaky. You haven’t got a fag, have you?’
Mimi and Angel insisted on helping too, each taking a carrier bag.
The ‘up’ party started its climb whilst Elizabeth and Diane continued down to the beach.
‘Poor little kids,’ Diane murmured. ‘They don’t stand a chance.’
Diane seldom showed empathy for anyone. It was part of her tough-guy act – or perhaps it wasn’t an act at all – and Elizabeth wondered whether something about Tanya and the ‘poor little kids’ had breached her friend’s defences, sparking a memory of her own inept mother and precarious childhood.
It was getting on for four o’clock and the beach, which earlier in the day had been so sparsely populated, was almost crowded. The incoming tide raced across the flat, damp sand, driving people ahead of it, dumping them, like jetsam, above the line of seaweed that marked high water.
‘Let’s paddle,’ Diane said.
They shucked off their sandals and walked into the sea, gasping as the chilly water swallowed their feet. Wading out beyond the breaking wavelets, they rolled their trouser legs higher and higher, rising on tiptoe to accommodate the gentle swell.
‘I wish I had my bathers,’ Diane said.
‘But it’s freezing.’
‘Wimp. And it’ll feel so warm when we get back in to the shallows.’
‘Isn’t that a bit like beating your head against a wall because it’ll be great when you stop?’
‘Never fails.’
Diane cuffed a wave and Elizabeth gasped as cold water hit the sunburnt skin of her cheek and upper arm. Laughing, she retaliated and soon they were both thoroughly wet, hair dripping and T-shirts clinging. They waded back towards the shore, through the warm shallows – ‘See, Lizzie
, I was right’ – examining the hillside for signs of the others.
‘That could be them.’ Elizabeth pointed up at the terrace where a group of people were waving.
They stood knee deep in the water, the sun on their backs warming their sea-cooled skin, watching the figures moving steadily down the path, waving when they became recognisable. Mimi and Jordan and Angel and Dafydd.
Elizabeth closed her eyes. Her heels sank into the sand and she felt agreeably off balance, slightly but pleasantly dizzy, as the sea, retreating momentarily to gather itself for the next wave, dredged sand from beneath her feet.
The trek back along the beach took longer than Elizabeth expected. For much of the time they walked on the dry sand. This made for slow going but they weren’t in a hurry and there was plenty to talk about. Mimi and Angel re-enacted the runaway pushchair incident several times. Jordan said little but it was interesting to note that he made no effort to play down his role in the drama. He was enjoying his new status as folk hero.
‘So what was the boyfriend like?’ Elizabeth asked when the youngsters, who were collecting shells, had dropped behind. Dafydd grimaced. ‘Neanderthal.’
‘Was he appreciative?’
‘Not so as you’d notice.’
‘Why not? Jordan saved his baby.’
Diane shook her head. ‘Men like him—’
‘You didn’t see him,’ Elizabeth pointed out.
‘No but I know what sort of blokes go for the Tanyas of this world. They don’t like anyone to muscle in on their territory. They take it as criticism. It undermines their machismo.’
‘He did look a trifle pissed off,’ Dafydd agreed.
‘That’s so unfair. After all you did.’
Diane shrugged. ‘Way of the world, kiddo. Always has been.’
Elizabeth didn’t need to be told that the world was an ugly, unjust place. But they were having such a good time that she refused to let Diane’s condescension get to her.