CHAPTER 3
I followed her down the stairs, and as I entered the kitchen she showed me a book sitting on the work surface.

“First things first, love. Put that on the table for now, and you do NOT touch it with dirty hands! Get this lot baking, and then I will talk you through it, or at least the appendices. Now, scones of biscuits?”

“Can we do the scones? I like the crumbling bit”

“Okay, but… hang on… yes, got enough. Let’s push the boat out!”

It is odd, but while shortbread and scones are so utterly different, they both start, essentially, from the same fat and flour base. Mam and I each ended up with a respectable coating of flour, before the two mixtures were installed in a flan tin and on a baking sheet, and the two of us made sure we got rid of the excess flour. Before taking fresh cups of tea to the dining table, where Mam picked up the book, turning immediately to the end papers.

“Enfys, I know you looked at this when you were little, but I don’t think you really took it in. Now, see this writing? Two different alphabets? Well, it’s all actually in English, like a code, and the key is… Here. This will tell you about Sindarin, Quenya, loads of others”

“I remember the book”

“And I remember you saying how boring it was, apart from the maps! Anyway, it was a really big thing for people a bit older than me and your father. Bit before us, really, but I had a teacher, Miss Askey she was called, and she knew I loved fantasy, as well as language, and…”

She talked me through the alphabets, and I had a go at decoding some of the inscriptions, and of course Mam had to dig out some music to help the mood along. She chose a favourite of both of ours, an album of traditional Welsh folk by Siwsann George, and we sang along every now and again, Mam reminiscing about seeing her at the Luton folk club, and, as she always did, explaining how she and Dad had chosen my name from one of the songs Ms George had given to the world before her far-too-early death. Suddenly, Mam was giggling.

“We had another band, regular visitors love, and they were a Cajun band. From Brum, to be honest, but they were fun. You could have been called Sadie Cow, or Ellie Gaiter, or…”

It was at times like that when I truly saw how lucky I was in my family. We laughed and joked, and attempted to write silly stuff in whatever the alphabet was called, until our baking was done and warm scones met butter and jam. We did manage to save some of the shortbread for Dad. Pity about the scones.

Mam managed to squeeze my bike into the back of the van for her drive to work the next morning, and I locked it up before heading into the school proper. I was looking for friendly faces, trying to avoid unfriendly ones, and hoping to see one in particular. Boys featured slightly in group one, mainly in group two, and not at all in the final selection. I waved at Elen, pulled a silly face at Lisa, gave Ifor and Ioan two fingers, and then…

“Hiya, Alys. Got some stuff from home, Mam and me were baking yesterday. You like shortbread?”

She grinned, sheepishly.

“If I eat shortbread, I will end up like a barrage balloon”

Ifor Watkins called over, “Might grow some tits then, the wether!”

I turned to face him.

“Fuck off arsehole. I know what you did with your last pet wether, so you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you? Oh, and the one before that, and…”

“Fucking Gerlan hippy, you are! Not one of us!”

“No, I’m not. My parents had to get married to be related. Does your Dad know what you did with---”

Alys grabbed my forearm.

“Enough, Enfys. Ifor, go away”

He made a couple of rude gestures, but the other boys were heading in, and he was nothing without his little gang.

“Thank you, Enfys, but you don’t have to”

So many words were logjammed in my throat, but all I could squeeze out, instead of ‘I want to’, or even ‘I need to’, was “Well, he is a knob and he deserves it”, followed immediately by “I wouldn’t eat any of their lamb if I were you”

She just shook her head, but at least she was smiling.

“Come on. Registration, and I promise I’ll try some of the shortbread at dinner time”

She led the way to our first class room, where Mrs Preece was calling the register, which meant I had to bite my tongue once more.

Always the same sexism, where she called the girls first, and by their first names, followed by the boys, in order of their surnames. She didn’t call ‘Alys’, but she did call ‘Edwards’, with the boys. I watched her wilt, and I asked myself what punishment the Heddlu Gogledd Cymru would impose if I were to strangle Mrs Preece with her own poisonous and double-ended tongue.

It seemed ages before midday came long, but I spent the time revisiting Mam’s comments about looking at boys, and the more I walked back through our chat, or rather her passing comments, the more my adolescent soul demanded that I make a declaration. Teenage passion has never exactly been associated with patience, but it is never less than incendiary.

I had a favourite spot in the playground, sitting on a low wall, and I headed there, knowing that Alys was fully aware of my habits. I had the plastic box full of shortbread with me (sorry, Dad; some bribes are more important than others). She was there, though, appearing in front of me as I tried to write something in Mam’s bloody silly but addictive ‘elvish’.

“What’s that, then?”

“Elvish”

“What?”

“Tolkien. Mam showed me how the alphabet thing works, and I sort of… No! Don’t even think about jokes about him!””

“What are you, Enfys?”

That question came out of nowhere, a complete non-sequitur, like a hospital pass to a winger. My reply was all that could reasonably be expected.

“Sorry?”

“Bollocks. Got that shortbread?”

I dug the box out of my rucksack and broke off a couple of ‘petticoat tails’, passing her one as she settled onto the wall next to me.

“Not bad!”

“Oh, thank you so much!”

She nibbled away for a minute or two, one hand cupped beneath her chin to spare her blouse from greasy crumbs, then spoke again, head tilted just a little to the right.

“Question’s still there, Enfys”

She looked over towards the main building, clearly checking for anyone who might be able to hear her words, then turned back to me, the weakest of smiles doing its best for her.

“I know what I am, and I know what Ifor bloody Watkins and his mates are, because they advertise it so well. But what are you, apart from hyperactive?”

She widened her smile, trying to ease her words’ bite with a joke, then shook her head.

“Forget that for the moment. What am I?”

For a second, I nearly lost enough control for the words ‘The air I breathe’ to break out and ruin our friendship, but I managed.

“You’re a friend, I hope. I think… My best friend, ah?”

She flushed slightly, looking down at her knees for a moment, but there was a genuine smile there.

“Thank you. But you are avoiding the issue, Enfys”

“Of, shit, Alys! How many times? Yes, I remember how you were, but that was then, and I could see how wrong it was, and I want to bloody STRANGLE Mrs Preece for what she does every fucking day! Sorry”

She sat and waited, a crumb teasing me from the right side of her lower lip, and as always, I just had to speak to fill the silence between us.

“Look, girl…”

She twitched a little at that, but the flush darkened for a second.

“See that woman gets down the Cow, ah? The one my Dad’s mate Illtyd fancied till she threatened to cut his knob off?”

“You what?”

“Folk club, Alys. I know you’ve been there. Dad gave you the lift. The fiddler, red hair”

“Oh. Yes. But what has she got to do with anything?”

I sighed. This wasn’t going the way I needed it to.

“She’s a married woman. Before that, according to Dad, HE used to come to the club”

Alys’ eyes widened.

“Shit! You saying that she is…”

“Like you? If Dad isn’t making things up, yes. See what I am getting at now?”

“But she’s so…”

Sorted? Happy? With someone who loves her, just like…?

“Yes. Happy. Married to a man who seems really nice. Dad says that when she was still pretending, she was a miserable sod. Just like you were. When she’s about, and we are at the club, there’s no doubt about her. If she can do it, why not you?”

If she can see how someone loves her, why not you? My throat clenched with the need to say what I felt, declare my need, my love. I lacked the courage, though, as always. If only Alys would let me know which way her affections lay, but her transition had left no room to do so. In between Mrs Preece and her register games, and Ifor fucking Watkins and his simple black and white bigotry, what energy could she have for the most basic of human needs?

All I really knew, deeply, with absolute certainty, was that I loved her.