The Year of Surprising Acts of Kindness

by Laura Kemp

  Pulling up at the last traffic lights before the lane on the left wound its way to Dwynwen, Ceri hovered the car at biting point and faced him.

  ‘See, no offence, Rhodri, but the local interest thing makes me care far more about the environment than statistics.’

  ‘Oh.’ He didn’t know how to feel. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, your course was … it’s your knowledge of what’s around which gets me. And if you could weave it in, it might make it seem more relevant?’

  He mulled it over as they headed west, following the sun which hung low and orange in the sky. She read his mind wrong, though.

  ‘Oh, listen to me. Flaming hell, I should just keep my gob shut. What do I know?’

  He jerked his body round and spoke to her profile.

  ‘Actually … I like it …’ he said. ‘Let me see, the national park here, well, the ages of the rocks range from late Precambrian to late Carboniferous, circa six hundred and fifty to two hundred and ninety million years old. The coastal path covers one hundred and eighty miles of stunning views of bays and-’

  ‘Nice detail, Rhodri, but it’s a bit dry.’

  ‘Right.’ She could be quite cutting.

  ‘No, wait … what about …’ She chewed her cheek in concentration. ‘Would Saint Dwynwen have travelled that path?’ Ceri used her forefingers to ‘walk’ the steering wheel.

  ‘I have no idea but—’

  ‘She could have!’ They’d said it in unison! And if he could make people care about the rich heritage of this place they might be more inclined to want to preserve it. How had she done it? It was as if she was his muse: leading him along with questions and curiosities, taking him here and there in the search for inspiration, which was coming fast now.

  ‘Love … this land has been built on love,’ he began, imagining he was the great Welsh actor Richard Burton on the stage. ‘The patron saint of love, Saint Dwynwen, laid the foundations when she trod this ground on her way to Ynys Môn, you’d know it as Anglesey, helping those in pain through passion. Her footsteps may be long gone but her spirit remains in our very soil and it is our duty as citizens of the world to keep her message alive: to love, whether one another or this blessed country … blah blah blah … reuse, recycle, reduce.’

  ‘Yes!’ Ceri said, slamming her palm on the dashboard. She might be on to something: if he tweaked his presentation, or massacred it.

  ‘She was one hell of a broad, this saint.’

  Wasn’t she just.

  ‘It’s hard to believe now but in the Middle Ages, pilgrims would walk the length and breadth of Wales to visit the church of Saint Dwynwen on Llanddwyn, the island of love. They went to see if their union was blessed. There was a well and lovers thought it was home to sacred fish that could predict if a relationship would flourish: if they saw fish swimming around it was a sign of a faithful husband.’

  ‘What? Ridiculous!’

  ‘It is in a way and yet …’ How could he explain it? ‘Barely an island really but at high tide, it’s cut off from the mainland in an area of outstanding natural beauty. Little coves, glorious blue sea, rolling sand dunes, all in the shadow of Snowdonia, the mountains some know in Welsh as Eryri from the word for eagles, which translates as the land of eagles. There’s magic there, do you see?’

  She went to talk and he clenched his jaw in advance. But out came a sigh which was sweet and long.

  Maybe she did have a soul after all.

  ‘Wow,’ she said. ‘It sounds beautiful.’

  ‘It is. Apparently. Although I haven’t been …’ He had a lump in his throat. It was the ideal place to propose. Not that he’d ever had the chance. ‘The remains are still there,’ he said, hugging the facts in comfort. ‘People go, even today. Especially on January the twenty-fifth.’

  ‘Why then?’

  ‘It’s St Dwynwen’s Day. The equivalent of February fourteenth, your Valentine’s Day.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yes. We celebrate it with cards and lovespoons.’

  ‘Love-whats?’

  ‘Ornate spoons carved out of wood. They’re decorative and given as gifts to your true love.’

  ‘Again, weird. But kind of sweet. Does everyone have one? Have you?’

  He gulped. The question left him floundering: was she asking as a way of knowing if he had anyone on the go? To know his relationship history? Of course not. It was just out of conversation. Still, it felt personal and she picked up on his hesitation.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.’

  ‘No, it’s fine.’ Why be shy when she was leaving in a few days? ‘Yes … I did have one. Seren made it for me.’

  ‘You and Seren?’ she blurted out.

  ‘No! My ex got her to do it. It was the finest of craftsman … womanship. Ruth gave her a thick piece of branch we’d found on our first ever walk through Dwynwen Woods, it’d sat in my fireplace, a proof of our falling in love …’ Now it was sat in the loft: had it been downstairs, he’d have been tempted to burn it and he’d have felt as if he’d let down Seren.

  ‘Oh, Rhodri.’ Ceri spoke softly, with empathy. As if she knew what it was like to be broken by another person. But she’d never understand it, not completely. She was too worldly and wise and attractive and canny to have ever been left wanting.

  ‘Seren carved some of the traditional symbols, Ruth had chosen them: a heart for the obvious reason and a chain for the wish to be together forever. The writing was on the wall, though, when I took her for a surprise weekend away and she expected Paris but I’d booked us into a nature reserve on the Welsh island of Skomer to watch puffins. So basically, we weren’t on the same wavelength. On the surface, we should’ve been. Both into the environment and the great outdoors but I think we had different values.’

  ‘Same with me and Dave,’ Ceri said. ‘Like, we were from the same place, had the same upbringing, you know, family, Daily Mirror, Findus Crispy Pancakes, Peter Kay DVDs. But he didn’t like it when I … well, he said I put work first, there was something else important to me that wasn’t him. Like he’d moan when I’d go out dressed up with my face on for a business meeting. He just didn’t get what it was about, the image I had to project.’

  The man was a complete bell-end! ‘I can’t imagine you like that,’ he said, because she didn’t need make-up. He understood why women wore it, though – didn’t he have his hair this way to cover his ears? Talking of which, she had the nicest pair going. They were flush against her scalp as if she had been created aerodynamically for cycling.

  ‘Yeah, I kind of can’t imagine it myself anymore.’

  The drive went quiet for a while and the road began to narrow as they got closer to home.

  After a while, Ceri spoke. ‘Any news on the planning application? For the new estate?’

  Jesus, he was only just getting up to standing after pouring his heart out. She knew how to kick a man back down.

  ‘There’s a site visit coming up. I don’t know exactly when. The planning committee head honcho is going up to inspect it. I’m hoping someone in the department will tip me off. I just don’t know how we’re going to stop it. Councils these days are poor, there are so few jobs and potholes everywhere … if a developer says it will employ locals and create new roads, it’s obvious what the local authority will do. But it’s so short term. I think our best bet is to ramp up the Village of Love. Get a buzz going, invite the local paper down, get onto social media.’

  ‘Oh, definitely, you have to have a social media presence these days. It’s all about the branding.’

  ‘Plus leg work. The villagers are very enthusiastic, well, now they are, after the bunting. Not when I first brought it up, though. Not that I’m bitter! They’re all offering to help. I still haven’t a clue who’s behind it.’

  Ceri said nothing. It didn’t surprise him – it was probably going right over
her head. She hadn’t even known what St David’s Day was!

  Her phone began to ring as they reached the top of a hill. She apologised, she had to pick up – this was the last hope of any reception before the village – and he reached for her bag as she nipped into a lay-by.

  ‘Jade, love!’ Ceri shouted as Rhodri heard a detached voice reply ‘hiyaaaa!’. It was obviously a good friend, judging by the way they were gabbling and laughing. ‘Have you turned into bridezilla yet?’ Ceri got out of the car, mouthing ‘five minutes’ and he waved her off, happy to spend a while reflecting on the prospect of fighting his father not with placards and vitriol but with something far more positive. Dwynwen would need a website, a Facebook page and a Twitter account … a hashtag … all things he could do from the office at lunch … Mel could bake some of her love-heart Welshcakes, Seren could do some lovespoons … he’d ring his contact at the paper … they could sell Village of Love merchandise and print T-shirts and postcards and … the possibilities were huge. He could see it now: couples coming for romantic weekends and families feeling the love for a fortnight. The pub would be busy again, the shop might not need to be sold and he could even do guided tours of the woods and the waterfall. If he could get some money from the department, he might be able to get some recycling bins in the pub car park.

  The car door opened slowly and he couldn’t wait to share his vision with Ceri but oh dear, the way she moved slowly into her seat indicated her fizz had gone flat. She was quiet except for the odd sniff, and motionless, her head bowed.

  ‘Okay?’ he said, feeling his own excitement fade as concern took over.

  ‘Yes … no,’ she whispered. ‘News from home. Nothing major.’

  ‘From a town called Bruce?’

  She turned to him, her eyes heavy with hurt, and nodded. ‘It’s fine, though.’

  ‘Right.’

  But she didn’t turn the ignition.

  ‘No pressure at all. But if you like, I’ll sit here all night if you want to talk,’ he said. ‘Sometimes it helps if you tell someone uninvolved.’

  She looked beyond him towards the hedgerow, her face glazed as she considered his offer.

  ‘That was Jade, we work together,’ she announced. ‘She wanted to know when I was coming back. People are asking after me, where I am.’ Ceri raised both hands in desperation. ‘Flamin’ hell, am I not allowed a holiday?’

  ‘Course you are.’

  ‘There’s a new line that she wants feedback on. But I’m not sure about it. It doesn’t feel me anymore. Things have changed …’

  This meant nothing to him in detail yet he got the impression she was questioning things on a deeper level.

  ‘I don’t feel the same as I did. And yes it may be foolish to say this because I’m away from it but I haven’t woken up once wanting to go back to the business. Not once. I used to live and breathe it.’

  He understood about having a passion: the natural world was his and it would take something momentous to make him fall out of love with it.

  ‘It must be hard, your mum gone.’

  ‘It is, it’s horrible.’ She squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her fists to show how horrible. ‘I miss her so much. Maybe you’re right, maybe it is the grief,’ she said, focusing on him now, ‘but I’m wondering if it’s made me see what little else there is in my life.’

  ‘Oh, I can’t imagine that’s true. You must have lots of people around you, you seem the type.’

  ‘You reckon? Jade’s my only friend. The others stuck by my ex when we split up. I don’t trust anyone anymore. My work is … was my support network, it never let me down. It was everything to me, helped me when my mum was dying of dementia. But now, I don’t want to be there anymore …’

  ‘What about family? I mean, I know about your mum and dad, but is there …?’

  ‘Only my sister now.’

  She burst into tears and once again she was cuddling up to him. This time, though, there was no swift recovery. Bawling, she was, big dollops of it: his handkerchief was a write-off.

  What he gathered when she’d managed to speak was Jade had seen the ‘sold’ on the ‘for sale’ sign outside Ceri’s mother’s house, but Ceri’s sister hadn’t told her. He tried to suggest that perhaps she’d missed a call; but it turned out Ceri had tried to ring three times this week to explain she was staying on. The upshot was Ceri believed her last remaining flesh and blood didn’t care about her: unlike the people here, who’d welcomed her without question, who, in ten days, had made her feel more treasured than anyone had in a long time. She wasn’t going to rush back: she felt closer to her mum here. And despite thinking at first Dwynwen had been a frontier village on the edge of civilisation, she’d started to love it and it was beginning to feel more like home than home. Therefore, she would be staying another week. She also mentioned keeping a promise to Mel but he didn’t probe – he was now ready to eat not a horse but an entire stable.

  It wasn’t what he would’ve done – he believed in negotiation and reconciliation, he’d had to because falling out and fisticuffs with his father would have killed his mother. But he didn’t know what pressures Ceri was under: not really, beneath what she’d told him. And he was glad she would be around. Ceri brightened his days. He loved cuddles too, even when a handbrake was sticking into his right thigh. These feelings for her were only a crush: nothing would come of it. She floated in and she would float off again when her journey took her away.

  ‘I’m sorry, I seem to be making a habit out of crying over you.’ Finally, she pulled away and wiped her eyes with her sleeves.

  ‘I didn’t like to say anything but now you mention it, I am thinking of charging you for the use of my hankies.’

  ‘You’re a lovely person, Rhodri, do you know that?’

  ‘Yes. The loveliest. My mother tells me all the time. Go on, out you get, I’ll drive us home. You’ll never find the way with those puffy eyes.’

  She was so drained she didn’t even bother to put up a fight.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, as they passed each other by the bonnet. As much as he wished he could be more to Ceri than a shoulder to cry on, he accepted that was how it would be: he’d been with an English woman once and it’d done him no favours. He wasn’t going to do it again.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Rhodri said, belting up, the clunk and click underlining his resolve. ‘Just don’t tell anyone I’ve been driving a vehicle with such low fuel economy.’

  13

  Mel pressed her fingertips onto her eyelids, seeking the blackest black in the universe.

  It was a hard ask because she was in the Pink House and not a black hole light years away in the Milky Way. She wanted to disappear, to not exist. But no such luck. Even with the pressure on her eyeballs, she could still see dots the colour of dandelion seeds and parma violets jiggling around, reminding her she had no escape.

  She was on her knees, having fallen at the first hurdle of her clear-up. The recommended books and printouts she’d kept from counselling years ago when this problem had first reared its head were beside her, dug out from a box at the very bottom of Dad’s wardrobe, highlighted in neon, instructing her to focus on small, achievable goals, such as sorting through an area of a room in short bursts. Make decisions on an object’s worth within twenty seconds, thereby reducing your physical attachment: a straightforward instruction of either keep or let go. Keep if it is regularly used or needed, let go if not. Set it free – either by throwing it away or donating it to somebody for them to enjoy – and set yourself free. But all she’d managed to do was move things between piles: churning, it was called, summing up the feeling in her tummy, and the classic symptom of avoidance, sabotaging her attempt to move forward.

  A creak from the second-to-top stair set off an adrenaline rush of panic which tumbled like a messy wave down, down into shame. She should’ve locked the front door, but she’d assu
med everyone else would be enjoying their Sunday morning coffee. Who had come in? Who was catching her red-handed, guilty of inaction and self-hate?

  ‘I’m not one of those stinking hoarders, I’m not,’ Mel said, defensively, her breath quick on her palms, ‘the ones who’ve got fifty-five cats and have relationships with their possessions.’

  ‘I know.’

  Ceri’s voice was low and kind, absent of any criticism. Thank God it was her. Dear Ceri, who was on her side. Mel exhaled slowly, removing her hands, seeing gold rushing towards her from her new friend. It was like the sun coming up on fast-forward, a vision of faith itself.

  ‘Been up long?’ Ceri unwound her eucalyptus-leaf scarf and hung it on the bannister, a sign that she was intending to stay for some time.

  ‘A while. I wanted to do this … I haven’t got very far.’

  Ceri’s eyes drifted across the mounds of memories of happier days and people and places. Mel winced instinctively, afraid that Ceri wouldn’t be able to keep up her show of support, that underneath it all, she was repulsed by what she would see as the mess both in the room and in Mel’s head. But she remained neutral, coming to kneel beside Mel on the floor.

  ‘I’ve been reading up on it and they say to tackle it in fifteen-minute periods,’ she said. ‘So I can go through it with you, if you like?’

  Mel nodded, still frightened of letting her in. Whenever Mam had arrived with rubber gloves and bin bags, it was as if she was performing a caesarean section, raking around inside of her, disposing of her babies.

  ‘Then we could go for a walk. To the woods? I’m not ready to go on the beach yet.’

  Bringing her own sadness into it touched Mel deeply: Ceri was telling her she was on Mel’s level, they shared a bond and they would find their way through their troubles together.

  ‘You take the lead, Mel. I’m right here.’