CHAPTER 8
Darren was partly distracted from the overt displays of affection by the view, but not much. I think he was in the time of life where the concept of such things being done by ‘oldies’ was almost disgusting. I had a sudden flash of Kelly…

We simply stood for a while, drinking it in, and Tony chuckled something about drugs, which got his arm slapped by Sarah.

“Where are we headed for, Sarah?”

“The old pub past Twynllanan, Annie”

“Still open, is it?”

“Well, they advertise it as a pukka camp site now, isn’t it?”

Tony gave Steve a look, and then a sideways glance to my darling man where he stood very obviously discussing hill climbs with Geoff.

“Eric, Geoff----do your two go all look-you as soon as you get them back here?”

Geoff just nodded, but Eric had to make the joke. “Well, see, you can take the girl out of the Valleys, look you, but you can’t take the Valleys out of the girl, isn’t it, aye?”

“Oy, Johnson, I am not a Valleys girl, aye? I can’t even speak the language, anyway”

The other three started to giggle at that, and Eric just muttered, as quietly as he could, given the company, “Thank fuck for small mercies”

We did lock the gate properly again, and it was an exhilarating run down through the hairpins before the turn back on ourselves into the close-hedged country lane. Just by a crossroads stood something hideously red. We parked up with the others, and I saw Sarah shaking her head as she stood in the car park.

“Beth ydyn nhw wedi neud? Beth wedi bod yn meddwl?”

Arris was shaking her head. “Wedi meddwi…”

That brought a laugh from Sar. “Does dim angen o’r Faner Goch, yma, ie?”

Jim surprised me, just then. “Mam, paham ydy’r dafarn wedi cael ei peintio goch?”

“Mae’n ‘yng nghoch’, cariad”

Steph caught the exchange as well. “Dim ond hanner Cymro, y bachgen ‘na?”

She turned to explain.

“They are all wondering why the pub has been painted bright red, and Arris suggested in a very bad pun that they must have been somewhat inebriated”

“Ah, probably seemed like a good idea at the time, aye? Half my work comes from ideas that seem good at the time, but…”

Sarah was staring over the road, where a grassy field held a few tents.

“I got my first proper snog over there, you know”

Arris frowned. “What about…?”

Sarah glared at her, the mood suddenly a little darker. “No, my first proper, affectionate kiss.”

She sighed. “If I had had more sense back then…never mind, it’s the now that counts. Boys, time to get our quarters up! Steph, Annie, care to do the honours with the landlord while the hired help does what we brought them for?”

Arris gathered her brood to help with the unpacking, and after some cursory directions from the site manager (“Wherever you like, aye?”) our tents started to grow as I looked at the red-grey bulk of Bannau Sá®r Gaer and tried to turn away the memories knocking at the door. That road, used so often by the wankers who glorified stupidly fast driving on telly, the ones who ended up encouraging the credulous and the over-confident, so that people like me had to turn up so often, far too often, to deal with the mangled metal, the fires, the slow drip of blood onto the tarmac.

We had our own memories of this place, we three girls, and they were linked only by common location. Stop it, Annie. Look at Darren’s face as he watches the tents go up, the kites soar overhead, and the great wave of hills to the South.

And the swell of Alison’s bottom as she bends over. Ah. I wandered over as the family tent went up.

“Where are you kipping tonight, my man?”

“Jim has a tent, yeah, with Pie in it. If I can, lahk, stay with him?”

“Missing Shan? She’d like this place, aye?”

He blushed bright pink. Oh dear, teenage boys and hormones.

“Daz…look, it’s normal, aye? Teenagers, you can’t help it, see someone good-looking, you react, aye?”

He looked truly awkward. “Yeah, lahk, but I am supposed to be Shan’s fella, yeah?

“I know, love, I know. Here’s a rule for life, aye? No lies to people you care for. Flirting, aye, is fine, but make no promises you don’t intend to keep. You like Ali, yes?”

“She really pretty, like her mum”

“Well, here’s a hint. Have a look at Jim, aye?”

We stood for a while watching as a dog ran and a boy watched, and then there was a sigh from my main man Mr Eyres.

“He’s watching her, yeah”

“Darren, my sweet man, welcome to the world of life not being at all simple. You are new to all this, aren’t you?”

He looked up at me, and there was pain in his eyes. Naomi’s intonation came from him, just then.

“One was never really left to develop personal relationships, don’t you know, yeah”

I pulled him to me, noticing how he was actually growing, and laid my arm around his shoulder, not a hug, just being there for him.

“Well, that’s two of us, aye? I could hardly chase blokes, could I? Took Eric and myself a long while to sort out where we stood. Look, Darren, life isn’t a story, it doesn’t always have a simple answer, or even a right one. Sometimes, sometimes it just IS, aye? But it’s better than the alternative!”

A question I had faced for so many years, only truly answered thanks to Ginny. Yes, it is so much better than the alternative.

“Look, this is what you do. You smile at Jim, you mention you think Ali’s pretty, see how he reacts. Then you decide what is important to you. I won’t tell you that, but if you are growing up you will know, and I think, Mr Darren Eyres, that you are really becoming a man now, and all I will say is make me proud of you, aye?”

He turned, and kissed my cheek. His eyes were damp as he looked into mine.

“Always, Annie, always and forever”

“Then go and chase a dog for a while, aye? We are expecting visitors in a couple of hours”

Off he ran, and Sarah wandered over. “Touch of the teenage lusts, aye?”

“Oh yes. Your Jim in the same boat?”

She smiled, ruefully. “He’s an odd one. With adults, he is so self-assured, so happy in himself, but put him next to a girl and he has no idea what to do with himself. Boys, eh?”

I had to laugh at that one. “Sar, think about it, even with our history, what the hell do we know about how boys think?”

A minute later, “Annie, if you have made me wet myself…”

Tents up, we laid out the bedding and kitchen facilities while the children were packed off to fly a kite of a different kind, which had the dog excited beyond belief as he tried to jump for the tail as it rose. As things were sorted tent by tent, I saw Steve casting odd glances at Tony. Sarah noticed.

“OK, yes, aye, permission granted, off you go”

She looked over at me and shrugged. “Look, they might have painted the thing bright red, but it’s still a pub, isn’t it, and these two like their ale. Speaking of which…”

The sneaky bastards. While I had been attending to the needs of love’s young dream, two other boys were off out the gate on their bikes. So it was me, three other women, five kids and a hyperactive canine that were left to sort the tents out when the people carrier arrived. Jim was the first to notice.

“Ewi Arwel!”

The old man had Alice with him, of course, and his son, and another woman. I was nearest the gate, so he greeted me first.

“Sh’mae, Annie! Brought the boy, and the young trout as well as the old one, aye. This is Suzy, my daughter in law. Suzy, Annie, and that’s Darren over there with my other boy. Annie, where’s your man to?”

“Off on his bloody bike with Geoff, of course”

A rumble of laughter. “And Tony and Steve in the pub, aye? Boy, shall we join them? Oh, aye, Annie, we’ve taken a caravan by the pub, can’t come all this way and not have a pint, aye?”

Alice laughed. “A?”

“Bloody nagging, is all I get these days, dunno why I married you”

“Cause I said yes, wasn’t it?”

They made the round of greetings, the dog going absolutely mad with excitement at Arwel’s arrival, and then man, boy and old trout ambled over to the pub for their refreshments. Suzy stopped by me.

“Arwel’s been telling me about you, Annie. Bit of a shitty time recently”

I smiled. “Over now, and time to look onwards and upwards, aye? You coming next year?”

“When? To what?”

I had to laugh at that one, and all I had said to Sar came back.

“Hywel didn’t mention my wedding? Bloody men!”

I filled her in on the work he had done for my family, and she smiled.

“One thing about my beloved, he is reliable in a number of ways. One is that he will do what he sees as the decent thing, but the other is that he will keep very quiet about it, just in case anyone thinks he’s a soft touch. Seriously, Annie, he doesn’t believe what others see in him.”

“Well, from what I have seen of his dad, he has a hard act to follow, aye? Now, I have a cousin coming over tonight as well, so we shall be able to let the boys get raucous while we stay genteel and ladylike!”

Her laughter told me how well she knew the others.

“Ladylike? Sar and that ginger sod?”

Fair point, fairly made.

Merry ended up in our tent with a spare sleeping bag I had packed, just in case. Her hangover was almost as bad as Eric’s.