The Rice Paper Diaries

by Francesca Rhydderch

  ‘Hello. Who’s this, then? Elsa’s girl, isn’t it?’

  There is a man behind one of the upside-down boats, its hull white and smooth like the underbellies of the gulls that wheel around in the sky above them. He has tiny feet and a tiny head, but an enormous middle with trousers that hang off a belt made of blue twine. He has pulled his hat down over his forehead but it doesn’t hide his nose, which is shaped like a cauliflower. Behind him is another man, facing away from Mari, who is rubbing down the tip of the hull with a metal scraper. Flecks of red paint are flying out in all directions.

  Mari slips out of sight.

  It is high tide; water reaches her feet in an upwards rush. Metal clangs against metal as the swell lifts the circular hooks embedded in the harbour wall. She listens to the rustle of the water and stares over the bay towards the cliffs on the other side, lined with trees that look as if they are about to fall onto the rocks below.

  There is a car coming in on the new road behind the collapsing row of trees above Traethgwyn. The sound of its engine travels across the water, and Mari sees a man standing at the top of the pier turn his head. There is a bang as the car engine backfires, and the man jumps and puts his hand out against the wall behind him. His face has no expression on it; neither frightened nor angry. It is a tired, dead face and she hates it. It is Tommy’s.

  ‘Hey,’ the man with the scraper shouts out to his mate. ‘Ossie, have you seen who’s up there?’

  ‘Well, I never. Tommy, mun!’

  Tommy must be able to hear the man with the purple sprouting nose, but he looks as if he hasn’t. His head is still cocked in the direction of Traethgwyn, scanning the line of trees as if he is expecting another shot to come from there.

  Mari is embarrassed. He does this all the time, ignores people when they are speaking to him, and Nannon says it is very rude, whatever you’ve been through. Her words pierce the dark of the unanswered questions in Mari’s head like the gleaming red and emerald buoys on the surface of the water, or strung up outside the houses in nets.

  ‘Tommy, boy. What you up to?’ shouts the man.

  Mari doesn’t dare look up again. The surface of the slipway under her feet has been washed over by the sea so many times that it looks as if the tide has become fossilised, its swirls worn into the stone.

  ‘Bloody hell, what’s got into him?’

  The man has turned back to the boat and started scraping again. The other man says something, too low for Mari to catch. She glances over her shoulder at Tommy, the ungainly way he climbs down, his body rocking from side to side, his big trowel-shaped hands trying to find a purchase somewhere on the wet rocks. He looks as if he might fall into the water below, but he doesn’t. Mari is afraid he might catch up with her, so she turns and runs through the mess of ropes, wires and bits of wood that fill the spaces between the boats, She darts her way in and out of the upturned hulls, between the men, and runs all the way up the hill so that by the time she reaches Gwelfor her heart is beating out of time with the rest of her and she has to stand in the porch to catch her breath before raising the latch and going in.

  ‘Look at you.’

  Her mother’s voice is amused, not angry. She doesn’t tell Mari not to come close to the bath, or to mind she doesn’t get wet. She smiles as Mari tugs at her cable-knit jumper, pulling her elbows up inside the sleeves, lifting it off over her head.

  ‘Want to warm up?’ Elsa says.

  Mari’s clothes smell of seaweed and have bits of dried paint stuck to them. She pushes them to one side with her bare heel. Elsa doesn’t say anything, like Nannon would, about learning to fold clothes away properly, or not making a mess for other people to clear up. Elsa is lying back in the bath with her head resting on one end of it, the enamel lip making a hard pillow for her head. She closes her eyes and stretches out, her toes almost touching the faucet at the other end. Then she gives a little sigh and pulls herself up in the water, bending her knees.

  ‘In you get.’

  Elsa stands up to help Mari over the side of the bath. Her hair looks long when it is wet, plastered to her shoulders. Unlike Nannon, who looks fatter without her clothes – Mari has seen her, walking back to her bedroom with her dressing gown not done up, gaping to reveal an expanse of stomach and breasts that sway to and fro – Elsa looks even thinner. The bones on her wrists and ankles stick out, and the skin on her stomach hangs down, as if there used to be more of her, like the rolls of crepe that Nannon has for sale in Bristol House in all colours: bruised purple, lemon yellow, the blood-red of crushed raspberries. She holds Mari’s hands as she gets into the bath and then they sit down together, as if they are counting to the same beat, like children on folk-dancing night up at the Memorial Hall. Elsa lets Mari’s hands drop at just the right moment, when she’s sitting in the water with it coming up to her chin.

  Elsa sits down, her breasts white as meringue, one nipple bigger than the other, the pale pink scar across her stomach wide like a smile.

  ‘What’s that?’

  Mari points at the pink line as it reddens under the water.

  Elsa lays her hand over it.

  ‘It’s where you came from.’

  She turns sideways and props her thin legs over the side of the bath, leaving space for Mari.

  ‘Tommy says we come from Pwllbach.’

  Mari tries the word out for size again in her head. It feels like a word she isn’t supposed to say, like ‘Oscar’.

  Water drips out of the tap and echoes round the bathroom. Drops of condensation roll down the plain white tiles and into the bath, pocking the surface of the water.

  ‘Well,’ said Elsa. ‘Yes, that’s where he’s from. It’s a farm. It’s only up the road, near Capel y Wig. It’s where his mam and dad live.’

  ‘He says it’s where I’m from,’ says Mari.

  ‘Does he?’ Elsa has propped her head against the edge of the bath and closed her eyes again.

  ‘I want to see it,’ Mari says. ‘Why do Tommy and Frank go all the time, without us?’

  ‘To help out on the farm. They’re busy lambing,’ says Elsa. ‘You’ll see it soon enough. We’re going there on Sunday, after chapel.’

  She doesn’t speak to Mari any more after that, and Mari sits pulling her knees into her chest, feeling too hot, sweat gathering around the roots of her hair, but not wanting to say so, looking at the shape of her mother swelling under the water, becoming enormous, so that in the end there is no room for Mari, and she says, ‘I want to get out.’ Elsa sighs and lifts herself up again and helps Mari over the edge of the bath before clambering out herself. She reaches for a towel, looking out though the frosted glass of the window at the garden behind, although you can’t see anything apart from the shapes made by the sheets as they blow about in the wind, taking too long to dry. Nannon and Elsa will bring them in and hang them on the pulleys in the pantry and leave them there for a day or so. By the time they are put back on the beds they will smell of Nannon’s baking, and Mari will wrap herself up in them and close her eyes and dream of sweets and fluffy rice crackers that dissolve against the roof of her mouth, and Lin, who gave her fortune cookies and told her she was a lucky baby, lucky for everyone and beautiful too, and stroked her hair.

  ‘Can I write a letter?’

  Mari has seen the postman delivering up and down Lewis Terrace, after the milkman has done his morning round. You can hear him whistling from the kitchen. Elsa says, ‘Anything?’ as Nannon comes back into the kitchen, and Nannon says ‘No,’ putting the lid on the butter dish and carrying it out to the cool shelf in the pantry.

  ‘Who do you want to write a letter to?’ Elsa is silhouetted like a black paper cut-out against the light from the window.

  ‘Lin,’ Mari whispers.

  ‘Of course you can. She’ll be waiting to hear from you.’

  Elsa bends down and wraps a towel tightly around Mari, her fingers deft and light, as if she has done this a thousand times before, although they didn’t have any towe
ls in Stanley: they used to dry themselves on scratchy brown blankets that had rough, chewed edges. She puts her hands on Mari’s shoulders, and says, ‘Come on, let’s get you dressed so we can make some lunch before Nannon comes home.’

  6

  Mari is walking with Frank, behind Tommy and Elsa and Nannon. The hill is steep, and her legs are tired, and she’s glad when Frank takes her hand without waiting for her to ask. He doesn’t make her rush, and he answers all her questions, although sometimes he is quiet for a while before the answer comes.

  ‘What are those?’ she says, pointing to a row of dead moles strung up on a fence, their pink forepaws pointing to the sky. ‘Why are they there?’

  ‘They’re trouble for farmers this time of year. They’re a nuisance, digging up the earth.’

  ‘Like tigers,’ says Mari.

  ‘Tigers?’

  Frank looks down at her. He has dark circles round his eyes that bunch up when he smiles.

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘There was a tiger at Stanley, as big as you, and the soldiers had to hunt it down and shoot it, and they carried it round the camp for us to see.’

  ‘Did it make you frightened?’

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘It made me hungry.’ They had been standing in rows in the assembly yard. The tiger was tied upside-down to two poles and carried around the camp. Its orange-and-black fur was matted in places, and she could see the muscular surface of its skin underneath.

  ‘Did they give it to you to eat?’

  ‘No.’ She shakes her head. ‘Mammy says they gave it to a Japanese general in Hong Kong.’

  ‘Are you hungry now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We’re nearly there,’ says Frank, squeezing her hand and starting to walk more quickly. ‘Perhaps Sara will have made something good for us to eat. Maybe a tiger sandwich or two.’

  She looks up at him quickly.

  ‘Are you telling the truth?’

  ‘No.’ He smiles again, his hand firm in hers. ‘Just my little joke.’

  ‘That’s nice, to hear you laughing,’ Nannon says. ‘Is Uncle Frank making you laugh?’

  Mari laughs again, because she likes the way Nannon is looking at Frank without saying anything while she walks between them, sheltered by their smiles. The hedges on either side of the lane are as tall as trees, broken up by banks of red and yellow primroses and purple pansies too high up for Mari to pick them, and in any case, everyone is walking quickly now, as if they’ve just remembered they have somewhere they need to be, and don’t want to be late.

  Suddenly the hedges come to a stop, and they are surrounded by grey walls on all sides, and a yard full of mud turned over into slimy humps by hooves and boots. The buildings are joined together around three sides of a square, with their roofs at different levels. Windows and doors seem to have been put in anywhere, uneven and haphazard; the effect is what Nannon would call hotch potch. Through an open doorway into the barn, Mari can see rolls of damp, rotting straw that have been caught in the rain. A dank smell hangs over everything. There is rusting metal strewn around the barn’s open doors – tractors without wheels, trailers with broken catches, a car with a door missing, listing to one side.

  ‘Mawredd,’ Elsa says. ‘What’s all this?’ She looks at Frank.

  ‘Glyn won’t let us shift anything,’ Frank says, ‘I’ve offered, many times…’

  He pauses.

  ‘The war sent him mad, quite frankly,’ Nannon says quickly, as if she’s tired of waiting for someone else to say it. ‘Well, you must have seen that, Tommy.’

  ‘He’s just getting on a bit,’ Tommy says. He’s looking over at the farmhouse at the far end of the buarth. Mari sees the corner of a curtain being lifted, and a pair of eyes peering out, black as moles.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ says Nannon. ‘You’ve seen for yourself what he’s like, what’s going on here. Frank can’t do anything about it, it’s not his place, but you can.’

  A woman’s voice shouts over from the other side of the buarth.

  ‘Are you just going to stand there all day or are you going to come in? Where’ve you been? I’ve been expecting you for half an hour.’

  Mari jumps. The face from the window is at the door of the farmhouse.

  ‘It was Mr Pendry’s fault,’ says Nannon. ‘There was an awful lot of sin to get through at Towyn this morning.’

  The woman’s face softens into a nest of wrinkles as she walks over to them, her heavy boots wading through the mud, her hands out towards Mari. She is wearing a grey scarf wrapped around her hair anyhow, and an apron tied loosely over her droopy breasts. The roses on her apron have hardly any colour left in them, and there is a splash of something, gravy or soup perhaps, across the front.

  The woman grips Mari’s hands, but her fingers are greasy and she smells of lard that has been used for cooking and left to settle in the pan and then used again, until it stinks of burned gristle. Mari pulls away.

  ‘Funny little thing,’ the woman says. ‘You’re never six years old.’ She looks cross.

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘Mari,’ Elsa says.

  ‘That hair of yours, it’s a mess, all over the place.’ And then to Elsa, ‘You should cut it.’

  ‘We like it just as it is, Sara,’ Nannon says, her voice more polite than Mari has ever heard it.

  ‘Well, you’d better come in,’ says Sara. ‘Glyn’s up in Cae Melyn, planting. He’ll be back shortly.’

  She takes them round to the back of the farmhouse. Inside it is dark and too hot. Mari blinks, trying to get her bearings, but there is only one window, the size of Tommy’s hand, and the fire throws a pale light over everything, giving the room a shape, but no definition. The bubbled-up paper on the wall looks wet.

  ‘Come and sit down,’ Sara says, pulling Mari towards the fire.

  Mari takes her coat off as Sara presses her down on a wooden settle with a high back. Sara pushes Tommy down next to her, but he only stays still for a moment before getting up again. He makes his way through the smoky air towards a door that leads out into a passage. The door is open. Tommy stands by it for a moment, like a hare about to leap up on his hind legs. Then he dives towards it and slams it shut. No one says anything, but Mari sees Sara looking at him, her black eyes glistening. Tommy comes back towards the settle and sits back between Mari and Elsa. Nannon and Frank sit at a low bench next to a trestle table.

  There are two plates on the table, one loaded up with sandwiches, and the other one with a fruit loaf. It has already been cut into, and looks dry, apart from the glacé cherries.

  Sara goes over to a dresser that fills the wall next to the window. It isn’t like Nannon’s dresser at home, decorated with tea services dipped in gold lacquer, and a doll from the Galapagos Islands made out of shells, and a wooden figurine from Japan with one hand bent up to hold her pointed hat straight on her head. Sara’s dresser is laid with mismatching, chipped plates banged down any old how, and bundles of letters stuffed behind other bundles.

  Sara sits down on a chair with a high, spoked back next to the dresser. She groans with relief, as if she’s forgotten that the rest of them are there.

  The back door opens and an old man comes in. He is holding a stick and wearing a cap flat on his head. His body bends over the stick like a crumpled-up piece of paper.

  ‘Shw mae,’ he says.

  Everyone murmurs in return, apart from Mari. It’s like being in chapel and not knowing what to say, and sitting there feeling stupid while everyone else speaks together, looking at the wall above the seiat. The fire is making her hot and dizzy and she’s tempted to make a run for it out into the buarth while the door is open. Sara gets up slowly, leaning one hand against the arm of the chair.

  The man shuts the door and takes off his coat before sitting down in an armchair close to the fire with a shiny patch on the back. Elsa and Nannon start moving around the room with Sara, slicing into the bara brith, pouring hot water into the teapot and letting it draw, taking plates
and cups round to the men before sitting down themselves to eat.

  ‘Diolch,’ Frank says.

  ‘You took your time,’ Sara says, settling down in her chair again.

  Mari wonders who she’s talking to, but everyone else turns to Elsa. She seems young, sitting back on the low settle with her legs bent up. She looks as if she would bolt too if someone opened the door.

  ‘Well?’ Sara says.

  Frank reaches out to the cake dish.

  ‘This is good, Sara. Mind if I have some more?’

  Sara nods, a sour look on her face.

  Nannon draws herself up to the table.

  ‘Don’t you like Frank sharing your kitchen, Sara? After everything he’s done for you? Keeping the place going?’

  Glyn coughs, sending a spittled arc of crumbs and chewed fruit over Mari.

  Nannon turns to him.

  ‘Why are you all being like this to my sister? She’s home isn’t she? She and Tommy are here aren’t they? Together? With Frank and me.’

  ‘Oh yes, indeed,’ says Sara. ‘No wonder I don’t come down to the village no more. Bloody Germans making themselves at home. And you.’ She points at Elsa. Glyn is staring into the fire, chewing his food painfully, as if even the cherries hurt his teeth. ‘Fashion plate. Some help you are. Poor Tommy.’

  Sara sniffs loudly, ending with a snort.

  Mari puts her plate down on the shelf next to the grate, spilling crumbs. She gets up, relief running through her as she moves away from the heat of the fire. She walks past everyone, straight to the table. She turns the sandwiches over first, tipping the bread and butter and loosely cut ham onto the floor, and then she up-ends the plate holding the bara brith, sinking her fist into it as it rolls over and hits the table, pummelling at it until its dry surface breaks, scattering fruit and crumbs over the tablecloth. She turns to Sara, stares into her moleskin eyes, and says in English, ‘I don’t want you to be my mam-gu.’