CHAPTER 10
It was a hell of a do. While there were a lot of folkies along, the atmosphere was predominantly focussed on climbing. I was a little surprised at how many of said folkies were ready to engage in outdoor stuff, but Caro had nudged me early on with a very heavy hint about tradition, land, culture and, overall, being a folky. When the instruments came out, a couple of the waiters in the Royal Vic said something about music licences, until their duty manager appeared, said something more pointed about taste, and then, clearly deliberately, sat down for a listen.

The couple of days after the reception were wonderful, ours spent almost entirely at Tryfan Fach ferrying newbies up the easy slab. I really didn’t mind, because they were all our friends, and they were smiling, and that was more than enough for me—for us.

Luton had been different, and I will gloss over the interrogation I got from Dr Derek (for it was him driving that day). I gave an answer involving privacy, difficult family and other lies, and left it at that.

Fuck him.

We had the formal bit, just as with Keith and Penny’s wedding, at the Registry office in George Street, followed by a piss up that started in the Lion, ‘because tradition’, went to the usual restaurant, ‘because more tradition’, and then continued in The Two Brewers because ‘independent brewery with decent ales’. Tradition was most definitely not observed in the aftermath, which left rather a lot of us crashed on floor space offered by those of our crowd that had some available. What we had in the way of a ‘honeymoon’ followed the days in Snowdonia as Caro and I took a cheap package to the North of Mallorca and hiked and scrambled on the sharp limestone of the Serra Tramuntana, staying in the resort town of Port de Pollenca.

Caro loved the place, because it was absolutely overflowing with exotic birds, from hoopoes to a large number of gulls, including one that ambled around on top od the little breakwaters just offshore, allowing us to swim to within six or seven feet of them. There were rock pinnacles at the entrance to one little valley, where I spent a couple of our evenings soloing as Caro watched all sorts of rarities, and that same valley gave us access to one of the most wonderful of the ridges, where the crest was at the top of a natural arch that pierced the whole thing from East to West. The food, once we found our way past the ubiquitous ‘English pubs’ and other rubbish, was another delight, despite the lousy excuse for beer.

The local drink was at least rather better than the keg piss on sale in those ‘English pubs’, so we managed; besides, there was always wine. I found myself laughing happily on one scramble, and that brought a smile from my wife.

“What’s funny, Mister Rhodes? Or are you just happy?”

“Well, I am indeed happy. Mrs Rhodes, but I was actually laughing at a sort of reversal”

We were sitting on top of that same ridge just then, about fifty yards from one of the ‘windows’, and I just waved my water bottle at her.

“Here we are, with loads of things to keep water in, and if we were back in Wales, we would be more worried about keeping it out!”

She shook her head, grinning.

“You are perverse, Mike”

“Guilty, but you love me anyway”

That brought a much wider grin from her, and a “Guilty!” of her own, before she turned back to more important things.

“You having that octopus on a plank again tonight?”

“You mind?”

“No, as long as I can have one of those stuffed bream things”

Her laughter was sudden and loud.

“Those poor, stupid buggers going to that crap chippy place. Will they ever see what they’re missing?”

“No sense, no feeling, no tastebuds. Oh, and I did a sneaky for two days’ time”

“And?”

“Got hire bikes reserved for a ride down to that reserve you wanted to visit”

“On their saddles?”

“Well, I suggest you wear your cycle shorts for it”

“Yeah, I’ll just pop home, then”

“Nope. Packed them with mine, when you weren’t looking”

That was a snapshot of our honeymoon, in so many ways, almost all of them of the very best. I will gloss over her occasional kicks to my shins when, as she claimed, my snoring got excessive.

Luton was a shock in some of the worst ways, only slightly eased by our existing familiarity with the place. We took the time on our last day off to spend a silly amount of money at the ‘one hour’ photograph place, getting two sets of prints from each roll of film so that we could each get the obligatory interrogation by colleagues out of the way. I had my own little worry just then, because I was expecting a number of letters, and four days after our return, four of them had landed on my doormat.

Four of us were sitting in the Two Brewers that evening, our packets of holiday snaps doing the rounds, when I drew the letters from my coat pocket.

“Keith, Pen: Caro and I have talked about this, and we’re on the same page, so don’t worry about domestics, but it had to be done”

Pen looked sharply at my wife, and she nodded back.

“Yes, love. I’m on the same page as you here. Two can live as cheaply as one, so on and so forth, and that gives my boy here a choice. Doesn’t have to put up with that shit any more, does he?”

Pen shook her head.

“Two shits. One body, but two shits, and there are others there as well. Not as shitty, though”

Caro shrugged.

“Toilet’s a toilet, however many turds are in it. Can’t flush that one, though. Want to show them what we’ve got, lover mine?”

That warmed my heart beyond words, for she could have argued in so many ways, about steadiness of income, stability, financial risk, and all she had said after I had revealed my plan had been “Bastards, all of them, except Keith, of course. You need out. How are we doing it?”

‘We’.

I pulled the letters out, fanning them on the pub table.

“I put in ten applications. Six never replied. These four are one rejection due to ‘the economic climate’, one ‘please ask again in two months’, and two offers of a contract. One’s as a sort of peripatetic rescue service for people who’ve got their accounts into shit state, and the other’s a settled post in the company HQ, working in market development”

Penny looked up at that.

“Which means?”

“Place has a lot of irons in a lot of fires. I would overlook the various accounts, look at profitability, suggest where the best opportunities lie”

Keith put his glass down, looking at mine to see if I wanted a refill. I nodded, and as he rose, he pointed at the first letter.

“My tuppence worth is that if you are forever out and about sorting other people’s crap, you won’t actually be going anywhere in the job. SOS?”

“Could I have a SOD instead? Fancy something a bit chunkier after all that lager”

Penny waited till he had gathered the empties and left for the bar before passing her own comment.

“Not spoken to him yet, but, well, I’m in the same boat here. Or rather, we are. Don’t know what to do, though, cause Keith hasn’t got your qualifications”

I shook my head.

“He’s a solid worker, Pen”

“Yeah, but he doesn’t… Look, it’s a warzone out there, finding jobs right now. He’s not got the ammunition he needs”

“Want me to see what’s about?”

She looked over her shoulder towards the bar, then back towards me and Caro.

“No, ta. For those reasons only, not slapping you down. I’m working on it, trying to think of a way to sort it. You two with us on that one?”

Caro reached out for her hand, giving it a squeeze.

“I can answer for both of us here, and it’s a simple one: don’t be silly. Of course we are. Hi, Keith--- we’re talking about the best way to wind up your boss-stroke-bosses when my darling here jumps ship. Any fun ideas? The nastier and more perverse the better”

Penny raised her fresh glass of Shefford Old Strong, to clink it in turn against each of ours, starting with my pint of Old Dark.

“We likes perverse, we does!”

I started to draft an acceptance letter for the better job as soon as we were home. I left the planning of perverse exits to my wife; she was ever a mile ahead of me in such matters. In the end, we kept it low key, Penny’s suggestion of inviting Simes and Derek to a leaving do in a pub we would be nowhere near being dismissed as too complicated. I simply did the standard thing of paying some money to the nearest pub to the office, for sandwiches and a few drinks ‘behind the bar’, before handing back all my keys, pass, date stamp and so on.

The real do, of course, was held in the Lion as part of the Folk Club, and our journey home was by taxi.

I was free

I will admit that the new job was a challenge, but it was a refreshing change in management style. Derek/Simes Farrell had always concentrated on what could be called ‘process’, whereas the new place was clearly focussed on ‘outcome’. Harry Bartholomew, my new boss, or rather immediate manager, spent quite a while explaining what he wanted me to achieve, only leaving what he called signposts for the method, and as long as I could demonstrate appropriate results, it would be down to me how I got them. I was almost in shock at the change.

When I say Farrell concentrated on ‘process’, of course, I really mean nitpicking. His attitude was that whatever good result had been achieved, there had to be a thread he could find to tug that would unravel it all to demonstrate how only he was in any way competent, and that everyone else was useless. I was definitely well out of there, and as I was now settling into a more normal pattern of working hours, Caro and I were able to spend more evenings and mornings with the Hiatts exploring how well the pubs in Sundon kept their ale. Ride the bike there, lay out the bedding, put the world to rights, and chuckle over Caro’s idea of a ‘perverse’ departure.

It was simple, in the end. Once my feet were properly under the table at my new job, she had taken some of the photos from our honeymoon to a printer we knew through the folk club, and prepared a postcard. The idea was that a card would pass through the mailroom, where it could be read by anyone, and the gossip machine set going.

The picture showed me and Caro in the Los Faroles restaurant, smiling over a collection of wonderful seafood as a friendly waiter took a snap. The card was addressed to both Derek and Simes, and read “Bloody glad you weren’t here. Even happier you’ll never be anywhere near us again!”