“Oh, yeah!” he grinned, “I’ll go and get it, see if I can find the other one!” He made to go back to cross by the tree, but Menna grabbed him.
“No! Don’t,” she said, “you can’t.” The look of terror came back to her face and he walked straight back to her and resumed his position at her side.
“Sorry – of course I won’t,” he said quietly to her. Menna had started trembling again, tears welling into her eyes and rolling down her cheeks. Everyone could see how upset she was and called a halt to the event. “Come on,” said Jean, “everyone fancy a cup of something hot and a piece of cake at the farm?” Apart from Johnny and Tansy who said they’d join them after Gwennie had finished, the others all mumbled too right and shuffled off towards the big house.
“Joe – your truck…” started Iestyn as they drew parallel to it.
“Don’t worry about it, mate,” said Joe immediately, “whatever has been damaged can be repaired. We’ll pull it back up the track later. Don’t even think about it; the important thing is that Menna – and you – are safe.”
“Thanks,” mumbled Iestyn and Menna in unison. Everyone knew that Joe loved his truck, but to see him barely look sideways at it as they walked away, parked on the opposite side of the river, splattered in mud with its flickering headlights sucking the last of the power from the battery, was quite an acknowledgement of the risks they’d taken.
“Well, it’s only a vehicle after all, isn’t it…” started Sima.
“Oi, easy now,” growled Joe, “there’s no need to get carried away…”
Menna cried off the tea and cakes invite and Iestyn said he’d accompany her back to her bungalow. They waved goodbye to the others and set off slowly to Menna’s home, Iestyn hobbling on his battered feet and Menna slow and subdued. The tea and cakes fraternity watched them going, all trying to hide their desperate interest as to what was really going on with those two, but knowing that things were too traumatic to enquire or joke about, even in a light-hearted way. Sima looked as if she was about to explode and Jean was biting her lip and looking very uncomfortable.
Eventually, Jean broke away from the crowd, tapping her husband’s arm and muttering, “Bill, I’ll catch you up,” as she went, trotting along with her collar turned up and her hands dug deeply into her pockets. “Menna! Menna, love, wait please…” and she scooted around to the front of Iestyn and Menna who had been walking back in silence.
“Menna …” she said, trying to get her breath back, as much for her nerves as from trotting fifty yards. “Menna, love …” She looked at Iestyn with a little embarrassment.
“Do you want me to go on?” he asked. “So that you can, er, have a word?”
“No, it’s fine‚” said Menna, looking directly at her mother.
Jean looked uncomfortable, but desperate to speak, “Menna, love – all those things you said last night – to Paul – were they, were they true?”
“Of course.”
“I didn’t know.”
“No. You didn’t ask.”
“Menna…”
“Mum, you were so disappointed that I wasn’t going to be part of the Neuadd that you didn’t stop to think whether there might be a good reason for it.”
“I know, Menna, love, I know and I’m so—”
“You gave me a hard time when I’d been dumped, pregnant, because you wanted me to live at a bigger farm. How do you think that made me feel?”
“Oh, Menna, I’m sorry, so sorry, cariad…” Jean looked close to tears and it was the first time that Iestyn had seen her anything other than strong and in control.
“But, actually,” Menna shrugged, “it’s OK now. I think I got a little of my own back last night – I didn’t mean for anyone else to hear, mind, but, well, these things usually happen for a reason, eh?” Then Menna seemed to have a change of heart and patted her mother’s arm. “Anyway, Mum, you weren’t to know, were you? After all, I didn’t tell you, so how could you have guessed?”
“A mother should know, Menna, a mother should know. Your Dad and I, well, you should have been able to tell us. Next time, you tell us OK? Promise?”
“Hopefully there won’t be a next time, but yes, OK, Mum!”
Jean managed a hint of a smile and made to go. Then she turned back and gave Menna a desperate hug. “Oh, cariad, seeing that truck, oh…you’re so important to us, we do love you so much, so so much…” Somehow Iestyn got sucked into the embrace, “and you, Iestyn, you saved her life, I don’t doubt that. Thank you, thank you…” She planted an out-of-practice kiss on each of their cheeks and then gave a nervous shrug and scuttled off. “We’ll see you later, OK?” she called over her shoulder and headed off after the others.
“Bloody hell! I’ll have to have a near-death experience more often!” Menna said, obviously pleased by her mother’s unexpected outburst. “I don’t think she’s said anything more personal to me than take your shoes off in years!”
Tansy and Johnny sat on their rock in silence, save for the noise of the water swirling around the truck and Gwennie’s occasional snuffles. “You warm enough?” asked Johnny.
“Yes, thank you,” smiled Tansy, “I don’t think anyone could feel cold when they have as many coats on as you made me wear!”
“Just to make sure – you can always take one off…”
“I bet Nain used to say that to you?”
Johnny smiled sheepishly. “Funny isn’t it, how the things that you let wash over you for years and years suddenly become relevant. I’ll be saying that a hat keeps in 70 per cent of your body heat next, or get your feet warm and the rest will follow…Hear that, Gwennie? Keep your feet warm and the rest will follow! And when you’re five, I’ll be saying, Listen to your teacher… and then when you’re sixteen, I’ll be saying, You can always phone me and I will pick you up wherever you are…”
Tansy leant back into him and smiled as his arms wrapped around her and little Gwen. “And I’ll be saying, Hey listen to your father…don’t take that tone of voice with me, and You are not going out in that, if anything my parents said to me still stands!”
“Nah, we’ll be great parents, won’t we? I’ll show Gwennie how to race quad bikes and you can tell her, I don’t know, about fish or hamsters or something!”
“Johnny, my love, I think you still have a few things to find out about me if you think I am going to spend my time teaching our daughter about hamsters… Come on, she’s finished now. Can you pull me up and let’s go and get a piece of that cake Jean was on about: I’m starving!”
After tea and cakes had turned into a hearty lunch, Joe, Sima and Bill took the tractor and tow rope out and headed for the truck. Bill drove the tractor and Joe and Sima sat either side of him, leaning against the doors. Joe was amazed that Sima had wanted to come, but she had been quite stirred by what had happened the night before. “Menna is just so strong,” she’d said, “I don’t know what I’d have done in the same situation.”
“Probably talked the truck into reversing back up the river and onto dry land…”
“Don’t be silly, Joe. It just makes me think – Menna’s got a real life up here. Mine is all smoke and mirrors really. Getting paid an awful lot of money to just spout nonsense to people…”
“Sounds bloody marvellous to me,” grunted Bill. “Joe, get out and open the gate will you, please?”
Just as Joe was about to climb down, Sima called, “I’ll do it!” and started fiddling with the door, then took an age to scramble down from the tractor. She slipped and slid over the muddy bits in her flowery wellies, rather than sticking to the stones, fiddled with the gate catch and then made a huge show about lugging the gate round as it had dropped on its hinges.
“F’Christ’s sake, Joe, you do the next one, will you?” Bill mumbled, and he waved kindly to Sima as he bumped the tractor through the gateway and then watched in disbelief as the process was reversed and Sima closed the gate, then hauled herself and her white mac with black stitching and a couple of mud
splashes back into the cab.
“Quite hard work all those gates, aren’t they?” she gushed, rubbing a mark on her hand.
“S’pose so,” he said, “especially when you add them to three hundred sheep, a hundred and fifty cows, hens, ducks and the Ministry…”
They spent the rest of the afternoon hitching up the rope onto Joe’s Jeep and dragging it back up the track, manoeuvring it round and then towing it back along to the road, slipping and sliding through the mud, its wheels thick with clay. Sima insisted on driving it and seemed to be quite enjoying herself as it occasionally bounced off a hedge or clonked over a rock.
The truck left muddy tyre tracks the length of the tarmacadamed road with clods of earth being flung off it as it went. It then got dragged back along the proper farm track, with the tractor picking up speed and Sima concentrating hard as she tried to avoid the drops into potholes and the worst of the ruts.
“I think we’ll leave Menna’s truck for the time being,” Bill said, looking done in by the events of the night. “It’ll be knackered anyway, so there’ll be nothing to be gained from struggling with it now.”
Joe nodded and thanked Bill as he put the battery on charge. “We’d better go and see if Iestyn wants to come home.”
“Yes, definitely!” Sima said, setting off across the yard, desperate to know what was going on in the little bungalow.
What was going on in the little bungalow was that Iestyn and Menna were pretty much in the same position that they had been the night before. The sofa was still in front of the fire and the fire was stoked up high. There were a few cups and a plate of half-eaten sandwiches lying on the floor beside the sofa, but basically there were two people entwined and chatting quietly.
“Who was Lulu? Well, Lulu was someone I suppose I met over the Internet!”
“Over the Internet!” laughed Menna, stroking one of the sore and swollen feet draped over her lap.
“Well, I don’t know why I arranged it, really. I wasn’t really wanting to, you know, meet someone else – I suppose it was after something that Sima said.”
“Sima?”
“Yes, she was always on about me and the lack of women around me, and she suggested that I look under my nose a bit more – so I typed Tan-y-Bryn into the internet and that’s how it started!”
Menna laughed, “I’ve got a feeling that I know what she really meant! But, why weren’t you – er – ‘wanting to meet someone else’?”
“Because of you, silly!”
“Why did you go through with it then? Why not just ask me?”
“Because you didn’t seem interested.”
“But I was…”
“But I didn’t know that, did I…”
It was the kind of conversations that lovers have when they have first let their guard down and are desperate to know how much the other one is in love with them and to know that they always have been, preferably to the exclusion of all others.
Iestyn had another pair of ballet tights on; this time some of Menna’s white pyjama bottoms with red checks on. They were stretched across him and were the reason that Menna kept dissolving into giggles. Menna had a stretchy vest and a pair of contrasting red pyjama bottoms with white checks on that fitted her much better – and very nicely too, in Iestyn’s eyes.
“And I cannot believe this place,” said Iestyn, looking around.
“Do you like it?” Menna asked nervously.
“I love it! It’s so, well, it’s so you, when I think about it.”
“Really?”
“Yeah – I knew that you wouldn’t be rugby shirts and wellies all the time – you always smelt so wonderful you see!” Menna smiled, very glad that he hadn’t teased her or made a big thing out of her domesticity.
Sima and Joe arrived, made them more tea, fed them with Jean’s cake and then left them in peace. Sima had loved the bungalow, with Roberta Flack playing throughout and the warm glow of the furnishings. “Just the thing to be wrapped in on a cold winter’s day,” she’d enthused. “Come on, Joe, let’s book into a hotel for the afternoon…”
After Joe and Sima had left, Joe promising to bring new clothes later that evening, Iestyn and Menna sat on the sofa for the remainder of the afternoon. They’d snuggled, dozed, whispered nonsense and drunk tea. Menna was emotional and occasionally she would shed a few tears as she thought about the rescue or the event in the Lamp and Iestyn would relish the act of pulling her back deep into his lap and wrapping her in a bear hug that would always be there for her.
Epilogue
Nefi blw! Navy blue! (goodness gracious!)
Eighteen months later…
It was a beautiful June day and the sun baked down on the gathering as they lounged on a couple of blankets under an old lime tree.
“It’s hard to imagine how this tree got to be blown into this shape when the day is as still as today, isn’t it?” said Tansy as she scooped together a pile of little stones and watched as Gwennie painstakingly put them into her bucket, then toddled over and emptied them into the brook nearby.
“Gwennie, you’ll divert the course of the river if you carry on,” yawned Iestyn as he stretched back and closed his eyes.
“You used to do that,” smiled Isla as she passed around the glasses of squash – a nice clear tall glass for Sima first, then in worsening degrees until eventually Iestyn was thrust a faded blue beaker with the remains of a Bambi sticker on the side. “I’ll just go and get yours, Menna, love, the kettle was only now coming to the boil.”
“I’ll do it,” said Iestyn, getting up. “You sit here, Mam, and try and get a suntan on the gap between your skirt and your wellies… What’ll it be this time, Menna? Broccoli and banana tea? Grapefruit and sausage?”
“Eugh, don’t,” groaned Menna, rubbing her swelling belly. “No, I’ll have elderflower and lemon. No, lemon and ginger.”
“Not camomile anymore?” asked Sima. “It’s good for settling the stomach.”
“No, I must have overdosed on the stuff; now it just makes me feel worse.”
“When I was pregnant, all I wanted was crisps and lemonade!” said Tansy.
“Mother just craved scones,” smiled Joe.
“Oh, and Iestyn, now I think of it, there’s a plate of them on the side; bring them out too, will you?”
“Just make sure you don’t give them to the workmen, won’t you,” said Sima, “it’s hard enough getting them to do anything anyway, without them – er – sitting down to enjoy them too!” she added diplomatically.
The others laughed, “OK, lemon and ginger tea and the scones it is, then,” said Iestyn as he walked away from the group and headed back towards the kitchen.
The lace on his boot came undone and he dropped down to tie it up. Then with the sun shining down on his neck, he had one of those rare moments where one takes a few seconds to consider things.
Ahead of him, the old barn was shrouded in scaffolding and several workmen, their backs the colour of hazelnuts, worked in the sun as the radio blasted around them. The re-pointing of the stone on the north wall was nearly complete and the first of the windows was being fitted. The whole project was a credit to Sima’s organisational skills as she walked around the site with a clipboard, immaculately presented and the only one wearing a hard hat.
It wouldn’t be long before her studio was finished. She and Joe had already moved into their barn conversion half a mile up the lane and it was a shrine to careful interior design: sensitive to the vernacular yet complemented by the most modern of fittings.
Once the studio was finished, work would begin on the old farmhouse, the clutter of rooms on the top floor being converted into four en-suite bedrooms, perfect for a small group of clients to come on her courses and stay in a traditional working farmhouse. Sima wasn’t entirely convinced that Isla would cope with the portion sizes required by genteel ladies but, as Joe kept reassuring her, they could always leave some…
Joe had loved being back on the farm and, under the guid
ance of Tomos and Iestyn, he’d dived into the work, relishing the hard slog and bringing new ideas and practices to a slightly stale business. Mind, he hadn’t been there for a winter yet, but he had a few more months before the real weather struck and the last of his sushi lifestyle was whipped away by a cow skidding on his foot in a minus-twenty wind chill.
It was all change on the Brechdan farm too. Nain and Taid had finally been persuaded to retire, although they both came to the farm every day and put in a full day’s graft. In the evening, however, they returned to Tansy’s old house in Cefn Mawr where they were lodging whilst their new bungalow was being built at the end of the Cwmtwrch track. Tansy had, with Nain and Taid’s financial help, bought Greg out of the house and this had allowed Nain and Taid to move out of the farm and for Johnny and Tansy to – notionally, anyway – take over the reins.
Nain loved being in a more modern house, being near her sister and within walking distance of a couple of shops. “Mind, not that I’m ever there during shop hours, but it is nice to think that I could walk to them if I wanted to,” she would say. Taid enjoyed his power shower at the end of each day and apparently sat down with his pre-bed cocoa like a fledgling, his face bright red, with his dressing gown on and his grey hair all fluffed out at the sides.
Iestyn knew, however, that they were looking forward to being back on the farm and that Johnny and Tansy would feel better then, too – Nain and Taid would probably have a more restful time being on the doorstep where they could pop in and out, rather than feeling that they had to finish all the jobs they wanted to do before they made a move to go home. The bungalow was almost finished with its two large bedrooms – one for Nain and Taid and one for Gwennie and the rest of the future great-grandchildren when they come to stay!
Cold Enough to Freeze Cows Page 38