Chwilen yn ei ben – a beetle in his head (obsessed with some matter or a bee in his bonnet)
Iestyn arrived at Johnny’s farm at nine o’clock, as agreed. “Morning!” he shouted as he clomped straight into the kitchen, taking off his wellie boots and slinging them into the corner. “Mornin’, Nain, mornin’, Taid. How are you?”
“Good thanks, boy. You?”
“Yes, good thanks. And this must be Tansy?” he said as he settled himself at the table and reached for some toast.
“Hello,” she smiled.
“And Gwennie, we meet again!” The others laughed as Gwennie stared blankly at him.
“She’s sure she recognises you,” said Tansy, “come on, Gwen, say good morning!”
A mug of tea was pushed towards Iestyn and he took it gratefully in his large chapped hands. “Thank you, oh, it’s good to be warm again. That bloody truck of mine and its bloody window!”
“Still stuck?” asked Taid.
“Well, I did take the door apart and got it to go up, but then Dad took the bloody thing out again, met John the Cwm, wound it down for a chat and – bang – stuck again. And only the coldest winter for about forty years…”
“Yes, since 1947,” Nain muttered.
“No, 1987 was colder,” Taid replied.
“No, it was on the news, 1947.”
“Shall we go?” Johnny stood up and his chair pushed back with a scrape.
“Oh,” Iestyn said, still buttering some toast, “er, OK.” He raised his eyebrows at Nain, slurped at his tea and quickly slopped some marmalade onto his toast. Johnny grabbed his jacket from behind the door and shrugged himself into it.
“Have you got the keys?” said Tansy, half getting to her feet, “they’re in my bag…”
Johnny found her bag on a peg and brought it to her in silence. “Just get them out,” she said, “I don’t mind,” but instead Johnny handed her the bag and waited for her to find them.
“Thanks, Johnny, I really appreciate this. You too, Iestyn.” Tansy seemed unsure of herself, as if she had asked one favour too many for Johnny’s liking.
“You’re welcome,” Iestyn said, “no problem at all.”
“Yep, but we’d better get going; bloke’s coming at ten.” Johnny took the keys and headed for the door.
Iestyn followed his friend marching out into the yard, “Oi, slow down!” he called with a mouthful of toast. “What’s up?”
“We’ll go in my truck; it’ll be warmer.”
“Johnny, m’n, what’s goin’ on?”
“Forget it. Let’s just go, can we?”
They drove in silence for a few minutes, Johnny staring straight ahead, his eyebrows knitted together. Iestyn faffed about in the passenger seat, removed his rigger boot and adjusted his ruffled sock, drummed a rhythm on his knee and then started fiddling with the stereo. Eventually he couldn’t bear it any longer.
“What’s up, mate?”
“She kissed me.” They spoke together.
“Oh.” Iestyn was confused. “Isn’t that a – a good thing from someone you’re supposed to be in love with?”
“She kissed me – on a whim. On an impulse. In a sleazy, chancer kind of way. As if, well, as if she got a good response it would be a bonus and if she didn’t, well, who cares…” He turned to Iestyn, who was still struggling to understand Brechdan’s reaction, “Don’t you get it?” he said, his face full of angst, “that’s the kind of thing that I would do, if I felt it might be worth a try and wasn’t that bothered if it went wrong. Can’t you see why that makes it mean nothing?”
Iestyn digested this for a few seconds, then burst into laughter, slapping the dashboard in delight. “Johnny Brechdan! At last you’ve met your match! Your soulmate: that’s fantastic!”
At last Johnny managed a smile, “Well, not really. It’s made me realise what a cock I’ve been! Oh God, I’d have been chuffed as buns if this had happened with anyone else, but just this once, I’d wanted it to be special, y’ know?”
Iestyn was pleased to see that the frown was now gone, but he knew that his friend was still in turmoil. “Look, mate, just because you do these things in that way, it doesn’t mean that Tansy does.” Johnny looked interested, so he carried on. “She might have desperately wanted to kiss you, but didn’t know how to or just got carried away by the moment and then when it didn’t work, got all embarrassed. I think the moral here is not to judge everyone else by your dodgy standards!”
“Yeah,” Johnny said, looking brighter and nodding in agreement. “Perhaps she did want to, but didn’t know how to, so she did it badly.”
“That’ll be it. Have a chat with her when you get back; she’ll probably be feeling sick at the response you gave her this morning. Put her out of her misery and let her know you’re cool about it.”
Johnny nodded again. “Cheers, mate, I will. Anyway – did you hear about Olwen Richards turning her truck over? On her way home from Daniel Hargreaves’ place apparently? John Richards has gone mad. Said that the truck was his favourite…”
Iestyn laughed and they chattered away as they normally would until they pulled up outside Tansy’s end of terrace cottage. “OK, here we are,” Johnny said, and they jumped out and headed for the door.
Tansy was sitting in an old rocking chair by the fire. It had been brought down from Nain and Taid’s bedroom for her. “Johnny’s mother used to feed Johnny sat in this chair,” Nain had said as she whipped a duster around the base of the rails, “said it was good for her back.”
Tansy had thanked her gratefully and rocked gently back and fore using her socked toe propped against the Rayburn door.
She felt sick to her stomach. She’d gone and arsed it all up again. Why did she do it? She couldn’t just sit back and gauge a situation like other people did, she always jumped in, did something silly, and then had to regret it later. And now she’d upset Johnny. The poor bloke was only being kind because she’d given birth right in front of him. What on earth would a bright bloke like him want with her – recently separated from her husband and with a baby that would never be his?
She’d been ridiculous – and now he was offended and although he had still gone to help with her house, it would be only because he couldn’t wait for her to get out of his bed – and his house. He’d been so kind and wonderful, he and his lovely family, and then she’d gone and thrown it all back in his face with a naff grope that was better-suited to the back of a rugby club, rather than a walk with her new baby on a crisp afternoon. All she’d been trying to do was to look all light-hearted and fun, but instead had been crass and immature, like a teenager overcome with feelings of excitement that they didn’t yet know how to contain.
What would happen now? She wouldn’t be able to stay if he were trying to avoid her – and he couldn’t have left the house any quicker that morning – it would be unfair on him and on Nain and Taid. She’d have to go home – perhaps if she could get the heating fixed, the rest could be sorted around her? It wasn’t what she had had in mind when she and Greg had first talked about starting a family. She should’ve been sat next to him on a sofa, not sat on her own in a damp house with no carpets.
A tear slid down her cheek, then another one. She wiped it from Gwennie’s sleeping face and felt in her pocket for a tissue.
“All right, lovely?” came a gentle voice from beside her and a cup of tea was placed on the edge of the Rayburn. Tansy looked up and gave a watery smile. “Thanks, Gwen. I’m sorry, I’m just a bit weepy today.”
“That’s OK, love, being a mum takes its toll on you.” Gwen senior sat on the sofa next to her and sipped at her own drink. She never did this and Tansy knew that she’d come to listen if she wanted to talk.
“Oh, Gwen,” she sobbed, “I’ve really messed up.”
“Come on, love, it can’t be that bad?”
“It is – you see, the baby, it – she – isn’t my husband’s, she isn’t Greg’s – that’s why he left me. We’d been trying for years, but nothing. I announced that I was pregnant just as he was about to read me his letter from the clinic that told him that he had no active sperm. He knew straight away, and I knew that he knew, but we carried on with the charade for a bit, but it couldn’t work and he left me a few months later. Said that he couldn’t bring up another man’s child and that…” Tansy started to sob, “…I was a whore and he could never trust me again…”
Gwen took her round the shoulders and hugged her tight. “Oh, my poor girl, you’re not the first and you certainly won’t be the last…”
“And now,” said Tansy, wiping her nose on her sleeve, “just when it all starts to look up and I’m staying with you wonderful people and Johnny’s so kind and, and lovely, I go and make a silly pass at him and mess that up too! I just can’t seem to help myself!” She buried her face in her free hand and sobbed.
“Oh dear, I thought Johnny was a little quiet today. Don’t worry, you can sort these things out. Talk to him; Johnny’s a straightforward boy, he’ll understand. And to be perfectly honest with you, I am sure that young Johnny will know exactly where you are coming from if you see what I mean… Now, dry your eyes and how about helping me peel a few potatoes for lunch?”
“Of course,” Tansy sniffed and she took a deep breath. She wasn’t so sure that Nain would think it all quite so harmless if she knew that yesterday she’d grabbed her grandson’s cock uninvited and nine months previously, well, best not to even think about that…
Iestyn came in from the garage at the side of the house with a handful of tools. “Hey, it’s bloody marvellous out there – tools to die for and all so neatly hung up. I’m going to have to get that Greg bloke to come and sort our end barn – we’ve reached the stand-at-the-door-and-throw stage!”
“Bloody Bevans… Now, what have you got?”
“I’ve got two claw hammers, one medium and one large, to pull up carpets with, a chisel in case the lino’s stuck down and one of those electronic measuring things – just because I wanted to see how it works… Look, if I point it at you, right? Now move – see? Different measurement! The ceiling to the floor is…two-metres ten and in the hallway to the upstairs is…”
The sound of a key being turned in the front door made Iestyn jump. “Shit,” he said and stuffed the measurer in the hall dresser’s drawer.
“That’s the wrong place,” sniggered Johnny, “it’s supposed to go on hook 9B!” They were giggling like schoolboys when the door was pushed open and a tall pale man with short brown hair peered in, frowning as soon as he saw them.
“Hello?” he said suspiciously. “Are you the men from the insurance company? Sorry I’m late, I got delayed by an accident on the roads. I’m Greg Shackles, I part-own the house…”
“No, no,” Johnny said, sobering up as sincerely as he could, “you’ve just missed him. I’m Johnny Harris and this is Iestyn Bevan. We’ve been looking after Tansy and came here on her behalf to let the insurance man in? I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were coming, otherwise I’d have told him to wait and let you deal with him.”
The man looked peeved, but that was probably his look, anyway, he certainly looked comfortable with it. “Well, actually, I knew nothing about any of this, but the insurance company phoned my mobile to check some details – I am still the policyholder after all – and that’s how I knew that my property had been flooded.”
“Well,” started Johnny, “in fairness to Tansy, I think she’s been a bit overwhelmed with everything – you know she’s had the baby now, don’t you? She meant to tell you about the flood, I expect it slipped her mind.”
“Yes, I am sure that it did,” Greg said as he walked past Iestyn and Johnny and went to look in the lounge. “But there tends to be a lot of things that happen to slip our Tansy’s mind…” He peered quickly into the kitchen and tutted at the sight of all the rubbish in bin bags on the floor.
Iestyn could see that Johnny was about to rise to the bait and pulled at his arm with a warning glance. Johnny made do with mouthing wanker behind Greg’s back as he walked back past them and started up the stairs.
“Bit of a mess isn’t it?” said Iestyn, following him up, “but not too bad, the insurance guy said. It’ll need new electrics and all that, but luckily, as the water was clean and wasn’t sitting for too long, it shouldn’t need a complete re-furb of joists etc.” Greg grunted again, clearly not happy with Iestyn’s prattling. He made a derisory check of his old bedroom, the nursery and the bathroom.
Then he opened the door to the study and gave a cry of despair. “Bloody Tansy! I see she managed to put all her stuff up out of the way, but my stuff – oh no – let’s leave it in a puddle until it ruins!”
Iestyn was moved to one side by Johnny to see Greg standing with a pile of Practical DIY magazines in his hands that he had gathered from behind the door.
“Look, mate,” Johnny said, clearly struggling to keep his cool. “Tansy came back here four days after giving birth – in our kitchen, actually – to find her home was flooded. I don’t think the first thing on her mind was to save your wank mags…”
“They’re not wank mags, they’re …”
“She was knackered and sore and trying to make a home for her new baby – your new baby – and…”
“My new baby?”
“Yes, your…”
“Oh no. Not mine. Is that what she told you? That I abandoned her, pregnant with my child, because what? Because she couldn’t cook my eggs properly?”
Iestyn could see it was all getting a bit heated and moved between the two men. “OK both, let’s calm down shall we? Greg – Johnny didn’t mean to interfere in your and Tansy’s business, and Johnny – Greg wasn’t criticising you, now…”
However, Greg wasn’t listening to Iestyn. His pale blue eyes were fastened on Johnny and his lips had been pressed into a thin line. “No, I’m not having this,” he said. “I don’t care who you are – Tansy’s new boyfriend is it? Probably. That would be about right: I’m long gone as far as Tansy is concerned, bloody long gone.”
“OK, OK, that’s enough,” Iestyn put his arms out to keep them from making any move towards each other.
Greg butted his hands away, “It’s fine, I’m going; there’s nothing for me here any more,” he snorted and then pushed past them both. At the top of the stairs he stopped and turned. “But I’ll ask you this – if you went to a dance, against your better judgment maybe, with your wife, the woman you loved, and while you were getting her a fuckin’ burger at the end, she was off shagging some bloke behind the burger van, what would you do? Would you bring up Burger Boy’s baby? No? Well, nor would I…” and he stormed off down the stairs leaving Iestyn and Johnny staring at each other open-mouthed.
Iestyn felt the penny drop in his own mind and he could then see the exact moment on Johnny’s face when his did too.
“Burger Boy?”
“Bacon Sandwich Lil?”
“Fuck me: I’m a dad.”
They ripped up a few carpets and dumped them in the skip outside. The work was half-hearted and quiet. They decided to return and finish the upstairs another day. Then they drove home in silence, Iestyn at the wheel. Every now and then Johnny shook his head and said, “Fuck me.” Iestyn’s face was a picture. Stony, stony blank and then a little snigger would creep to the corner of his mouth, his nostrils would twitch with the effort of not bursting and then he would recover himself and carry on looking straight ahead, trying to be there for his friend if he were needed, but to keep his comments to himself if he weren’t.
As they approached Johnny’s track, Iestyn turned to his friend. “What’ya going to do?”
“Dunno. Go to bed I’spect.”
“What, forever?”
“Maybe.”
Iestyn wracked his brains. “Perhaps – perhaps it’s fate, you know, the woman you’ve fallen in love with and the baby you’ve fallen in love with, well, perhaps…”
“Iestyn?”
“Yeah?”
“Shut the fuck up, will you?”
“OK.”
“Actually, drop me here on the track can you? If anyone asks, say I’m just checking something, yeah?”
“OK.”
“Oh, and Iestyn?”
“Yeah?”
“Keep it to yourself will you? This is serious stuff; it won’t do anyone any good if this gets out – me, Tansy, Gwennie, anyone.”
“’Course, mate. Just between you and me.”
“See you.”
“Yeah, see you. And shout if you need anything – you know, a chat or something.”
“Iestyn, I shagged a woman behind a burger van. She was pissed, I was pissed. There’s a baby. What is there to chat about?”
Johnny climbed out and jumped into the slush, sending a pile of it shooting up the inside of each leg. Iestyn ground the truck off up the track, parping the feeble horn as he went. Johnny put his hand up in salute to the disappearing vehicle and then sank into the snow on the bank. He put his head into his hands and burst into tears.
He was still sitting there when Iestyn drove back past in his own truck.
“All right?” he called from the already-open window.
Johnny’s hand went up, but his head remained down. Iestyn would probably have managed a beep of his horn as he rumbled past, but there was instead the sound of a curse and the air stayed silent.
Eventually Johnny hauled himself to his feet, wiped the snow from his behind and started plodding home.
What was he going to say to her?
Dunno.
If Gwennie was his, should he tell her he knew?
Dunno.
Should he say nothing, let Tansy take Gwennie home and let things develop in their own way?
Dunno.
Should he propose to Tansy, formally adopt Gwennie and all live happily ever after?
Don’t-bloody-know.
As he shuffled slowly through the slushy snow, Johnny Brechdan thought back to that seemingly fateful night. It had been a good day at the Cefn Mawr Show. He, Iestyn and another lad, Dai, had been in the beer tent early then had watched the trotting races in the afternoon. They had put twenty quid on an outsider and won nearly £500 in return: it had been a fantastic day!
As the night approached, they had joined the throngs of youngsters heading to the adjoining farm and to the dance in the large barn. There, they’d drunk beer in plastic cups, danced, drunk a line of shots, danced some more and fallen over in the puddles of beer on the floor as a line of drunk young farmers shimmied across the RSJs above them. It had been the best sort of night that blokes could have. There were women around them, but not with them and they had stayed a group of lads, laughing, joking and necking drinks, all won by a twenty-pound bet.
There had been this woman near them: that much he remembered. She was tallish and wore a Viking helmet with two blonde plaits sticking out of each side, and she had been looking at him. She had been dancing with another man, but she’d been looking at him. Her face had been painted with a Welsh flag on each cheek, and she had been looking at him… Apparently, that had been the bit when he’d started doing the can-can…
The details of the rest of Johnny’s night had been filled in, with great hilarity, by the others. The band finished playing and the lights went on, huge spotlights lighting up the fact that the barn was no longer a suave night club, but was instead a big old barn, its dance floor being a concrete slab, stained by animal piss and covered in stamped on plastic glasses. Red, sweaty, shiny people stood and chanted, “More! More! More!” but the band stuck to their guns and left the stage – now recognisable as a large flatbed trailer.
Apparently the Viking had been standing next to Johnny and had tickled his pink shiny face with her plait as her companion shouted for the band to return.
Then she had pinched a sip of his drink. Then she had apparently pinched his bum. So he had pinched hers.
According to Iestyn, they had then held hands, the Viking walking in front of Johnny all the way through the crowd. She had been talking to her partner who was in front of her, whilst doing the conga with Johnny, as subtly as pissed people can do anything amongst a crowd of a thousand other hot, sweaty, drunk, horny youngsters who were also teetering on the edge of fucking their lives up.
“I wanna burger!” the Viking had shouted and her companion had grumbled something back and headed off as quickly as he could so as to beat hundreds of other hungry people to the one burger van.
As the man had disappeared into the throng, the Viking had turned and kissed Johnny, a passionate, no holds barred type of a kiss that rendered him helpless, his arms flailing behind him as he was tipped backwards.
Apparently Iestyn and Dai had then left him and his new friend and headed off in the quest for food themselves – bacon sandwiches. Out of the kindness of their hearts, they had also bought one for him and then had hunted for him, eventually stumbling across him and the Viking, courtesy of someone’s head lamps, rutting in the wet grass behind the burger van. His buttocks were apparently brilliant white and going far too fast. Her breasts were apparently magnificent. The small crowd that stood round them were cheering them on, as being sixteen-year-old drunks with little sexual finesse, they had no thoughts about quality, but were just pleased that the agricultural show was continuing even further into the night.
Iestyn and Dai had thoughtfully held onto Brechdan’s bacon sandwich until he surfaced.
The Viking disappeared quickly after the finale, and Johnny sorted his trousers out, told the crowd to fuck off or he’d kill them and then came to claim his prize. He had not been well in the back of the truck that they’d hitched a lift in that night and Iestyn said that they had made the right choice by sticking his head out of the rear door all the way. As it was often said: it had not been his finest hour.
However, it had now become clear that that particular hour had had repercussions. It had caused him embarrassment and a great deal of ribbing: that he’d known about. But far more than that, it had caused Gwennie – beautiful, innocent, tiny Gwennie. He’d been so drawn to her, so much more so than any rational explanation could have reasoned. The reason was now clear – of course he was drawn to her: Mother Nature had made it that way.
As her biological father, Mother Nature needed him to be drawn to her, to love her and protect her. It was his duty. No child would ever ask to be brought into the world thanks to two drunks shagging in the spotlights of a beat-up old Subaru. When she came to know about such things – and aside from the “Yuck, my mum had sex?” phase, she would prefer to know that she had been a planned for, much wanted baby, conceived by two people who loved each other. Not as a time-filler for two drunks as an harassed eighteen-year-old flipped cheap burgers and burned water-filled bacon.
A text message bleeped and Johnny instinctively reached for his phone. Hannah: what did she want? Hi, I’m rd yr parts later and wd love 2 b round yr parts 
. He clicked it off, annoyed at the distraction – yet, this was the life that he’d be giving up. The happy life of a single man, looked after at home, self-employed, good friends and women, women everywhere!
He could simply take Tansy and Gwen home, tell Iestyn that Tansy said her dates meant Gwen belonged to a guy she’d been having an affair with for years and quietly shut the door on the responsibility of it all. Then he could text Hannah and get her back round his parts and return to the easy, uncomplicated, orgasmic existence that had been so simple before Tansy Shackles had shouted across his yard on that cold dark night.
He looked up and could see the farm in the distance – only a field and a half’s worth of track to go: he needed to slow down…
Right. Tansy, what of Tansy?
Two days ago, he’d been telling everyone how much he loved Tansy. He loved her strength, her beautiful blue eyes, her uninhibited laugh and the way her face lit up when he walked into the room. He loved to sit next to her and just absorb her contentment when she was feeding Gwennie and playing with her tiny fingers. Need that change simply because of what he knew?
Her kiss the day before had rocked him, but only because it wasn’t exactly how he wanted it and precisely the time of his choosing; he considered that he did know best when it came to timing in seduction, and that had been a poor choice. However, he felt he was over that. Iestyn had actually been right for once. It may not have happened with a beautiful sun setting over a distant hill, or as a precursor to making delicious love in fields of wild flowers on a summer’s day, but he was fine with it: he was a big boy now and had to accept that women did these things when they wanted to too.
So, it was back to the love that was Burger Boy and Bacon Sandwich Lil. There was no doubt that it was karma for all the times that he had planned, chivvied and manipulated situations to give his happy-go-lucky penis a good work-out. Any one of those women might well have the right to feel a bit miffed to know how they had been primed and moulded until spontaneous things happened.
When they had gotten a bit keen, they would have been upset to know that he hadn’t really been busy, or that his truck hadn’t been off the road. Then, when they were called back for a final curtain call, it hadn’t been because Johnny still loved them after all, it would have been because he felt enough water had gone under the bridge for them to have mainly gotten over him – and he fancied another shag.
It was therefore right and proper that the woman he actually had fallen for was the kind of woman whom he hadn’t needed to manipulate and indeed, if anything, she had grabbed his bottom first. Yes, he had spent his whole adult life yearning for tall Vikings to drag him off into the night, and now that it had happened, it couldn’t be right to claim the twisted moral high ground and object.
However, he thought, if he did the decent thing, the possibility of future dalliances behind burger vans, in wild flower meadows, whatever, were over. On cue, his phone bleeped again, Hey! Bob’s away & I need someone to lay my carpet – fancy? Ah, Harri, beautiful, beautiful Harri, short, round and full of surprises!
Nain and Taid were always on at him to find a nice girl and settle down. “You’re missing out, love,” Nain would say. “Your cock’ll go septic and fall off,” Taid would warn. He knew that they would be more than happy to move out of the farmhouse and into a nice new bungalow somewhere on the land and let him run the farm, but he didn’t feel ready for such responsibility yet; he was too busy enjoying himself, wasn’t he?
He smiled at a few memories and his step perked up as he reached the farm gate. He knew what to do. He’d made his decision and as he wriggled with the catch on the gate and shouldered it open, he knew that, for him, it was the right one.
Louisa climbed the stairs proudly holding the keys, attached to a shiny new key ring, to her flat. However, she was a bit worried that she wouldn’t know which door to go through. Esther had insisted on seeing the place that her daughter was now supposedly “living” in, but in which she’d only ever spent about half an hour. Louisa, in a fit of trying to improve her relationship with her mother, had offered to give her a tour.
Louisa put her key into the door of 40B and gave it a twist. And then another one. She gave the door a shove. She could feel her father behind her itching to get involved, but that made her more determined to get it right herself. After another couple of attempts, she gave up in frustration. “Oh, this is ridiculous. The agents must have given me the wrong key.”
“Well it’s always let me in,” said David and took the keys from her and reached past her scowling face to open it smoothly and with only a hint of smugness.
“Right,” said Louisa, trying to regain control of the tour, “we’ll start in the lounge, I think,” and she motioned her mother to the lounge door.
“Very nice, Louisa,” said her mother, peering in, “very nice.”
“What? It’s horrible! Needs a good lick of paint before anyone could say that about it!” Louisa laughed, still in the hallway.
“Well, it looks lovely to me,” said Esther.
“Yes, well, I think that this wall here will probably need another coat, but the rest have had two and I think it’s made a real difference,” David said as he walked past his daughter. “Look here, Esther, it’s got those curtain rails that we used to have – you remember? In our first flat?”
“Oh yes, so it does! And, I do like that fireplace – you said that the landlord will put a new fire in there didn’t you?”
“Yes, it’s going in next Thursday; I’ve asked for one of those real-flame effect ones? And look, these shelves will be really handy; I’ve firmed them up a bit – some of them were a bit ropey, but they’re nice and strong now…”
Louisa, slightly confused, followed them in and was amazed by the transformation. “Yes, yes they are, aren’t they? That’s what I thought it would be best to do,” she said, trying to get back into the action, “anyway, come and look out here, Mum.”
“Hang on, let me see the view from your lounge. Oh, look, David, you can see the park from here; it’s nice isn’t it?”
“Yes, and the market place – that’ll be nice to watch on market day?”
“What, cows?” said Louisa, obviously now bored, “lovely.” She left the room and called her mother after her to see the bedrooms. “It’s a bit cold in here,” she said, rubbing her arms with her gloved hands, “shall we go and get that coffee we were talking about?”
“Hold on!” Esther said. “Let me see the kitchen; it’ll be where you’ll be spending most of your time, believe me!”
Louisa rolled her eyes. She doubted it.
“Well, this is nice enough, isn’t it, Louisa? Bit small, but plenty big enough for one, or for a couple?”
Louisa shrugged. “Dunno really, bit of a state still. Look at the cupboard doors – they’re all on the gimp, and see, they didn’t even bother to clean up after the last person – chips all over the floor! It looks like someone was rolling round in their chips, rather than eating them. Urgh!”
David dropped to his knees and gathered them up. “Sorry, they were mine. I had some the other night when I was painting – hungry work!” He scuttled to the bin and dropped them in, sheepishly wiping his hands on his jeans to a frown from Esther. “But, anyway, Louisa,” he said, “never mind a few chips, surely you’re pleased with the work that I’ve done? Surely it looks a hundred times better than it did at first?”
Louisa could feel them both looking at her. Her father had spent night after night in the place and she was grateful, but she just, well, she just wasn’t that interested. However, she knew that a wrong move at this point could mean the work grinding to a close. She smiled. “Course it is! Thanks, Dad, you’ve done a great job. Come on, let me say thank you by treating you to that coffee…”
Johnny walked into the kitchen with a big smile on his face. However, it was soon replaced with concern as Nain came scuttling across the room with a pile of washing in her arms, to meet him.
“Have you seen her?” she said, puffing with the exertion of her trot.
“Who?”
“Tansy, of course. She’s gone home!”
“Home? What home?”
“Hers. I hoped that she’d found you still there, or that you’d pass her on the way. I saw Iestyn drop the truck off and assumed that she was with you?”
“No, we had to detour via the shop for more pasties for Iestyn; she must have passed us then. How can she go home – there’s no water or heating?”
Nain was looking close to tears, “Oh, I know, I know. I tried to stop her, but she wouldn’t have it…”
“Greg?”
“Yes, he phoned and she got all upset and said that she would leave straightaway and that it would all be fine – apparently she told him that they would start again and be a proper family – that’s what she said, a proper family.”
Johnny opened the door and started running towards his truck, “Open the gate, Nain, I’ll go and get her!”
“Good boy, love, you bring her back. She can’t last without clean water with a baby, they’ll get ill, if they don’t freeze first…”
Johnny crunched the truck into reverse and with a frown of concentration, he bumped through the gate held open by his waving grandmother. He looked in the rear-view mirror and saw her wiping a tear from her eye with her cuff; poor Nain, she’d grown so fond of Tansy and Gwennie, it’d be awful if it ended like this.
For the second time that day, he pulled up outside Tansy’s house. Good, her car was there – she was still in the house. He saw a very clean Focus parked perfectly parallel to the pavement – that must be Greg’s. Damn, what should he do? Be calm? Forceful? Reasonable?
He knocked tentatively at the door: there was no answer.
He could hear raised voices inside, then the sound of Gwennie crying. He knocked again, louder this time. Still nothing.
He ran to the window and peered in, the curtains still being tied in a knot. He could see Gwennie sitting, howling, in her car seat on the sitting room floor, but there was no sign of Tansy or Greg.
Panic rose within him – that was his baby. If no one else was going to protect her, then he must. He tried the door, but it was locked. Johnny searched for something to smash through the pane of glass next to the Yale lock when he remembered – he had a key!
He grabbed it from his jacket pocket in the truck and crashed in through the door. “Tansy!” he cried, “Tansy, it’s me!”
The shouting stopped and two faces peered, confused, out of the kitchen door. Tansy’s was swollen with crying and Greg’s was white with rage. “What the hell are you doing back here?” he roared. “Get out of my house!”
“Johnny?” shouted Tansy, then she made a break and ran to get Gwennie from the lounge.
“Tansy, you can’t stay here – come home with me!” He walked towards Tansy, who now stood by the lounge door, swinging Gwen gently in her car seat to soothe her.
“Whoa – hang on,” shouted Greg, his face now contorted with anger, but neither Johnny nor Tansy were paying any attention.
“Come home,” Johnny said as gently as he could, “come and live with us… Come on, we’ll take care of you – you and Gwennie…”
“Now, hang on, hang on,” Greg stormed between them. “What’s Lover Boy doing here – in my house? Geddout you tosser!” He strode towards Johnny and started pushing him towards the door, but the eleven-stone quantity surveyor wasn’t a match for the fifteen-stone farmer. Big cows sometimes tried to shove Johnny, but never if he didn’t want them to…
Johnny was being inconvenienced by the man, but was looking over Greg’s shoulder at Tansy, standing sobbing with the baby. “Please, Tansy, come home; we miss you, we want you back. I want you back!”
Greg gave up on Johnny as his daps were sliding about on the damp chipboard floor and he turned back to Tansy.
“Tell him, Tansy, tell him to get lost! I thought we were going to be a family – that’s what we said, wasn’t it? Tell Lover Boy to fuck off back to the shit-hole that he came from…”
Johnny took a deep breath – shit-hole? Lover Boy? He could feel his fist beginning to clench. He hadn’t hit anyone properly since fifth form when Del Roberts had called him a sheepshagger with a small cock, but he was beginning to feel that it might happen pretty soon.
However, then he saw Tansy’s eyes, desperately trying to decide what to do, looking from man to man, as if clocking them both and weighing up the situation. Some wisdom inside Johnny’s guts which had never really made an appearance before, told him that if he laid out Greg, then he, Johnny, would become the bad guy and Tansy would have to choose Greg, if only to stop the bleeding.
Instead, he took a deep breath and tried to calm down. “OK, OK, this has all gotten a bit out of hand, yeah?” Greg turned to him – he’d obviously been expecting a punch rather than a chat. “I think we need to hear what Tansy has to say?” Tansy looked up, she’d taken Gwennie out of the car seat and the crying had stopped as she cuddled her to her shoulder as if for a buffer between her own sanity and the insanity that had erupted around her. Johnny could see that she was in no state to be making such decisions or sorting anything out.
“Tansy,” barked Greg, “can we just get this twat out of here? He comes barging into our house, shouting the odds – and for your information, Lover Boy, she is at home. Look, it was very good of you to help her, but we’re OK now – we can sort ourselves out, we don’t need you sticking your oar, or your penis, in.”
Johnny saw Tansy looking a little miffed at what Greg had just said, and so he took his chance. “Tansy,” he said as gently as he could, “I came here this afternoon to take you back to us – to me. We miss you, I miss you and little Gwennie…”
“Gwennie? That’ll be changing, that’s for sure…” snorted Greg.
“…you see, I love you, I have done since I first clapped eyes on you – you’re so strong, so beautiful and little Gwennie – and she’s fuckin’ staying Gwennie,” Johnny spat as an aside to Greg – “well, I’ll treat her as my own. I don’t care who the father really is, or how she was conceived, if you’ll let me, I’ll treat her as my own – I love her as if she was mine already…”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Greg cried, his hands up in the air. “What the hell is going on? What’s this, bloody Jerry Springer? What – you give birth on this bloke’s carpet to God only knows whose child, and three weeks later he loves you and wants to bring up baby as his own? Give me strength!” Greg laughed slightly manically, as if it were all getting a bit much for him. “Go home, Lover Boy, save yourself the worry – by the weekend, you’ll be back out drinking with your silly friend and breathing a sigh of relief that no one believed you. Go on, do yourself and everyone else a favour and fuck off…”
Johnny stared at Tansy and Tansy stared at Johnny.
“Well,” he said quietly, “what do you want to do? I meant what I said, I promise. If you want me to, I can go now and leave you in peace, but all you have to do is get in my truck with Gwen and I’ll sort everything else out, I promise. You won’t owe me anything – you can come back here when everything is fixed up and you won’t ever need to see me again, or, well, we can live happily ever after – you, me and Gwennie. It would be up to you.”
Greg dropped to his knees and groaned. “I can’t believe this is happening! Happily ever after? What the fuck is going on – Cinderella? Did Cinderella get up the duff by a big bad wolf or something and I haven’t realised?” He took his hands from over his head and then looked at something on the floor beside the hall dresser. “Hang on, isn’t that my claw hammer? Yes, it bloody is, and my chisel! Tansy – did you get these out of the garage and not put them away again?”
“What? What are you going on about?”
“This hammer and this chisel – they’re supposed to be on hooks in the garage, not scattered about the place willy-nilly. I left these here because I had no place to store them. I trusted you to look after them, Tansy, I trusted you. And besides, what were you doing with a hammer and a chisel anyway? You use a mallet with a chisel, a mallet – stops it denting the handle…”
Suddenly, Tansy seemed to make a decision and from the look on her face it was as easy as choosing to have the tea and not the coffee, thanks. She picked up Gwennie’s car seat, swept her bag off the door handle, hitched Gwen up a little higher on her shoulder and walked past Greg, still on his knees holding his tools up at her with an incredulous look on his face.
She planted a kiss on Johnny’s cheek. “Thank you, Johnny, thank you for coming to rescue me – us,” she smiled. “Come on, let’s go home.” She swung the door open, turning at the last minute to address Greg. “Greg, I’m really sorry that it’s worked out the way it has. I never meant to be a crap wife and I’m sorry for what I did, but, well – I think if you have another relationship with another woman at any point in your life, make sure she builds dolls’ houses or makes matchstick boats or something, otherwise she’ll be ignored and bored shitless as well… Y’know, I think the mistake we made was buying a house that needed work, and a garage. If we’d just stayed in the flat, we could have been happy. We used to have fun, me and you: lately it was as if Jewson’s was the third person in our marriage – no wonder it was crowded… Come on, Johnny, let’s get out of here.”
Johnny held the door open for her, and then looked back towards Greg. A little malicious thing inside him made him whisper, “Oh, and I took the lid off your wood glue and didn’t put it back – sorry!”
Tansy was shaking by the time she was sitting in the passenger seat of the truck and Johnny had to sort the straps of Gwennie’s seat, aware that Greg was standing in the doorway, looking shell-shocked, but also slightly menacing, with two hammers and a chisel in his hand. What would he do when he discovered that when Iestyn had stuffed the measuring device into the drawer, he had left it on…the battery wouldn’t half have run low.
The truck pulled away, Tansy looking straight ahead and Johnny staring blackly at Greg. As soon as they got around the corner, Tansy burst into tears. “It’s OK, it’s OK,” said Johnny, patting her arm, “let’s just get a bit further away and then we can stop, yeah?”
Johnny was aware that for Tansy, it wasn’t all about coming to him, she was also leaving her husband at the same time. He’d left her, now she’d been the decisive one and was leaving him. Also, she’d just had a baby, so everything hurt, her hormones were running riot, her house was a damp shit-hole, her hair was greasy and her backside was huge – yep, perhaps they’d better drive a bit further away than round the corner before they stopped and chatted…
Eventually, Tansy’s sobs subsided and she gathered her composure and blew her nose on an old scrap of tissue from her pocket. “I’m sorry, Johnny, I really am. I’ve caused nothing but trouble since the moment you met me and I’m so sorry. I used to think that I was quite an uncomplicated person who had a straightforward life, but these last few months – Jesus! They’ve taken their toll and you’ve had the brunt! And, sorry also – you shouldn’t have had to see that…”
“Tansy, don’t worry, really. You’re not trouble, and you’re a pleasure to have around. It’s just tough for you that these things all came together.”
Tansy sniffed again. “Actually, can we stop a moment? I just need to sort a few more things out with you before we get back to the farm and then we’ll have a clean slate.”
Johnny pulled over into a gateway and turned the engine off. They were facing out over a spectacular view of the fields coated in snow, with bare trees poking up through. The sun was setting over the far hill, a glorious red orange ball sitting on top of the crest. For a while, they both just sat and watched, Gwennie sleeping soundly in her seat between them. Tansy seemed nervous, Johnny was content and at ease.
“Johnny,” she began, “about all that you said earlier…”
“I meant it.”
“Well, even if you did, perhaps you need to know a few things about me, about Gwennie…”
“If you are even remotely considering taking Gwennie on as your own, you probably need to know who the father is and how it – happened? She’s not Greg’s you know.”
“Tansy…” Johnny grabbed her hand, leaning over Gwennie. “Actually, get out a minute – perhaps Gwen shouldn’t hear this!”
They both jumped out into the snow and met again at the front of the truck. Johnny held out his hand and Tansy took it and they trampled over to the field gate, Johnny rejoicing in how soft and gentle her hand was against his own rough skin, and they looked out across the valley, neither seeming keen to break the spell.
Tansy shivered, so Johnny stood behind her and wrapped his arms around her, his chin gently resting on her shoulder. “Tansy, I don’t need to know about Gwennie’s father or how it happened or why it happened – unless you want him to be a proper dad? I do know how these things happen, believe me! Since meeting you, I’ve thought a lot about what I used to do and it wasn’t always pleasant, to say the least! So, I don’t need to know and it wouldn’t help me to know and it wouldn’t help you if I knew and it wouldn’t help Gwennie. But, you need to know that I meant what I said. I love you, Tansy; I’ve never felt as strongly about anything and I know that I will feel like this forever,” and he leant around and kissed her gently on the cheek, then she turned her face and their lips met.
There was no grabbing of crotches, no squeezing of breasts. No teenagers watching and no smell of burgers. Neither grabbed the other’s hand and leapt into the field to finish the job, nor did they feel the need to act the innocent, nervous about being corrupted. It was just a beautiful first kiss on top of a mountain with the sun going down and their daughter sleeping contentedly a few feet away from them.
As they traipsed back to the truck, Johnny did wonder whether he was being fair by not confessing that he knew the truth about Gwennie’s conception, and Tansy questioned whether she’d been fair selling Greg’s chop saw to pay for an electricity bill…
It was just getting dark when they returned to Cwmtwrch. Nain gave Tansy a kiss and a quick, “All right, bach? Good to have you back,” and Gwennie got carried around in a very non-Nain way. Taid squeezed Tansy’s shoulder and smiled at her as he walked past her chair. Nain and Taid feigned tiredness just after nine o’clock and the younger couple were left to make their own arrangements.
There were no spoken debates, but Johnny and Tansy had an early night too and slept together with a lot of hugs, giggles and kisses, but nothing else. Gwennie woke them both up three times, but neither really minded: it was just another excuse to fall asleep in each other’s arms again.