CHAPTER 59
Alys was waiting for us at the Uni, along with both of our mothers, which was a surprise. Mam, my Mam, of course, was straight to the point, as well as to a hands-on inspection of my nose, after a chuckled comment to Alys.

“Put Enfys down, love!”

She was as tender as my lover in that inspection, but seemed satisfied with the paramedic’s work.

“Bit softer on the head than rockfall?”

“Didn’t feel like it, Mam. Hurt like hell. You know Lee, here: he dug us both out”

She stepped forward, offering her arms for a hug, and he took it with a slightly pink face.

“I mean, I was digging meself out as well…”

“Oh, shut up, son. Anyway… ah. We got an extra for your house, then?”

Two of my friends were now blushing properly, so I took the lead.

“Mam, this is Kitzy. Her Dad’s dropping her stuff off in a few days for start of term, so she’s stopping with us for a while”

Mam’s eyes flicked to those of Alys, and I was thankful I had prepared the ground over the phone. My mother simply smiled to me, and then confirmed what I had expected.

“Got in a shop for you, basics like milk and bread. Left it at your place, but what are you planning tonight?”

I was surprised to hear Kitzy’s snort of laughter.

“Mrs Hiatt, that’s the first thing Enfys said after agreeing I could stay—curry, Chinese or pizza?”

“I would expect no less. Enfys, just one thing: we have a visitor for a few days. Would you mind if we all came out with you, parents’ treat?”

“Not a problem, Mam, not for me anyway. Sorry: keep forgetting there’s more than myself and Alys involved. Who’s the visitor?”

“Mike”

I was stunned.

“Uncle Mike?”

“The very same. He’s back in the UK for six weeks, so you’ve got time to see him later, if you’d prefer”

I looked quickly round our group, and there was a sequence of sharp nods. I turned back to our parents.

“Where were you thinking of, Mam? For tonight?”

“Well, that’s the thing, why we brought both cars down. We assumed you’d want your housemates along, and it’s a lot easier taking you home, HOME home, and using the bunkhouse than dragging six of us down here and back”

Alys burst out laughing.

“That’s not what Dad said! Or your Mam, love! What was it from Keith? ‘I want a pint and its friends, so you will have to be duty driver’, wasn’t it, Mam? And from Dad as well?”

I held up a hand.

“Six, Mam?”

“Yes. Mike has a friend with him”

“A friend, or a special friend?”

“Um, the latter”

There was a little flicker behind her eyes, something she was avoiding telling me, but I decided to leave it there.

“So, this meal isn’t going to be pizza, curry or Chinese, then?”

She shook her head, grinning.

“You forgotten what night it is?”

“Oh! Of course! Meal there, then? At the Cow? Then the usual? Oh… Kitzy?”

That girl looked up from what had been a steady inspection of her shoes.

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry, but we’re making all these decisions about where to eat, and nobody’s really asked you. You okay coming out with our families? I mean, you’ve stopped in the bunkhouse before, but this is just us”

To my gratification, she looked up at Lee for agreement before nodding.

“Same pub we went to that time?”

“Yes”

“But not planning on climbing wet slate tomorrow, then?”

I looked over towards the thick clouds smothering the mountains, then shook my head.

“I am not going to ask if I look stupid!”

“All right, then. Are we dumping our kit first? Time to grab a shower?”

Alys waved a hand.

“Grab what you need, change of clothes and toiletries and stuff. We’ve laid bedding out for you ready, and I’ll add another set for you. Decent showers in the bunkhouse, and I should know as I’ve spent enough time cleaning them”

She looked straight at me, raising an eyebrow.

“And? Who do you think covered your work while you were playing in the snow?”

I had no suitably scathing reply to that one, on the simple basis that it was true, so I simply asked what the mothers had planned. Nansi replied.

“Nothing special. We get down to the Cow early, they do us a meal, your harp is there ready, assuming you can remember how to play it…”

“Mam!”

She was grinning, and I had a sudden surge of warmth and love.

HOME home, indeed.

The two women ran us all over to our shared house, which surprised me in its complete lack of mustiness, and I realised that Alys must have been keeping more than one set of housework in hand, and all the way through our conversation and the short drive, Tref and Jordan just grinned and nodded their agreement. As we dumped our bags in our rooms before ferreting through them to find what Alys had suggested, I collared all four on the stairs. Tref was chuckling by then.

“Your girl, Enfys: like a married couple, you are!”

That actually cut so close to home I had to struggle not to wince in a visible way. The Cairngorms trip had been a superb experience, apart from my nose, but I had missed Alys dreadfully, more so because we had been living as a couple for long enough by then for it to seem the default, the right and proper way our lives should be lived, and yet I knew that we would soon be spending the best part of a year apart. Could I cope?

Leave it, Hiatt. Not the right time. I found a smile for him, one that felt cheeky enough for the moment.

“Not complaining, am I? Get your kit sorted, and we’ll be off. Kitz?”

“Um, yeah?”

“Not going to make any assumptions here, but we’re out od spare beds. I can sort the sofa out for when we get back, if that suits?”

She blushed bright pink, before answering the hanging question.

“Lee… I…”

I spoke up before she could make it worse for herself.

“That door there, then. Downstairs in ten minutes, ready to go?”

A wordless nod, and I was off to pack my own necessities. Let them find their own way.

Downstairs again, and then into the cars, and it felt odd heading back up the A5, as if I hadn’t been to Bethesda for an aeon. The rain got heavier the further we went, and by Tregarth it was absolutely hammering down. I remembered a phrase I had found in French, that it was ‘raining like a pissing cow’, and the giggles finally set in so badly that I had to explain it to Mam, and it was actually my own lover who asked the traditional question about how old I actually was, and so Tref’s comment came back to me, which just set me roaring with laughter I couldn’t explain without the risk of major embarrassment.

I was just about under control when we arrived at our place, that of my own family rather than ‘ours’, and as that thought went through my mind, I couldn’t dislodge the hook Tref had set there.

Yes. That was all I could say to myself, that it made absolute, perfect sense. All I had to do was pick the right time, and the right place, and so many other things, but I knew, as fully as I now understood I always had, that Alys was mine and I was hers, and it was no different from the way my parents had fought for each other, the way Mam had walked out on Dad rather than watch him be lost to her.

My laughter settled under that wave of certainty, and it was all confirmed when I saw the chunky figure waiting outside our front door, rain splashing his bald head and dripping off his beard. I stopped a couple of metres from him, somehow uncertain.

“Uncle Mike?”

“By god you’ve grown, love! Hug?”

Stupid bloody question, and I stepped forward to be held by a man who had been there for my parents, been a true friend to them when most needed.

“How long are you back for, Uncle Mike?”

He chuckled, eyes crinkling, as I realised how much older he was. Life was shooting past me.

“Old enough to drop the ‘Uncle’. Love!. Got three weeks before I have to go back. Now, Alys says you had a bang? Nice black eyes!”

“Really? Black eyes?”

“No, not that bad. If it had been a proper break, like mine, you’d have had proper shiners. Now, someone to meet. Ish!”

A young man, looking about my age, stepped out into the rain, Mike slipping an arm around his shoulders.

“Ish, Penny and Keith’s girl, Enfys. She’s Alys’s other half. Enfys, my son Ishmael. No, no big white whales were involved at any point. Ish, this one is another wallcrawler, like her parents”

The young man laughed, and in a slightly staccato accent informed us that we could “Bugger that for a game of soldiers”

He was of what I had heard described as ‘mixed race’, olive skin and eyes with a hint of epicanthic fold. There was clearly a lot of history hiding their, but he was… Mike’s boy, so I grinned and waved at the rain.

“My thought is exactly the same in this weather! Where are you both staying?”

Dad called from inside our home.

“Where do you think, given we have the space? Mike does snore, by the way, don’t you, mate?”

“I do that. A side effect of breaking one’s schnoz. Don’t believe Ish does, though”

That lad laughed, and it was an easy and happy sound.

“Yeah, Dad, and how would you know? I don’t sleep with you, do I?”

He suddenly coughed, shaking his head, then grinned once more.

“I didn’t mean it that way! It’s just that once Dad gets his schnoz bugling away, I don’t sleep at all! Are we standing out here in the rain all night?”

Hint taken. I led the others round to the bunkhouse, Mike pointing out where Dad had set up his bed in a separate room.

“He remembers our camping trips all too well, love. Anyway, what’s tonight going to be like?”

“Um, pub meal? Then the folk club. I’ have a harp now”

“So beer, then?”

Same old Uncle Mike. He watched as the others claimed beds and bedding before giving a little nod towards his private room. I stepped in, and he shut the door behind us, looking at his feet for a few seconds, then lifting his head to stare straight into my eyes.

“Penny told me about you and Alys, and about Alys and Neil, and, well, about Alys. What she is”

“She’s the woman I love, that’s all”

Another slow nod.

“Aye, that I can see. I just need to know if there’s any subjects best avoided tonight, or at all. Don’t want to put my foot in it. As to ‘what’, well, I’ve been working in both Thailand and Singapore for several years now. Enough said”

“Is that where, well, Ish?”

He grimaced.

“Aye, I suppose so, really, though I met his mother in Perth. Both of us a long way from home, and I’d worked there as well, which is how we got chatting, I suppose”

“Where’s she from?”

“She was from KL. Kuala Lumpur, that is”

‘Was’. Oh.

He indicated the bed.

“Take a seat for a few? Get this out of the way?”

I sat down, slowly, while he slumped.

“I’m going to rush through this, love, because I can’t handle dwelling on it, even though it was a few years ago. Two of us, on our own, foreign country. We clicked. We did the proper thing, and we did it in King’s Park, where all the good weddings happen. Ish arrived nine months later”

His face twisted, breathing speeding up for a few seconds, then once more he looked into my eyes.

“Maryam went home for a visit when Ish was twelve. We were in Singapore then, nice house off Portsdown Road. Old colonial place, kept by the firm. Swing on the tree in the front garden, mynahs everywhere, and ants. Walk down the path at night, in flip-flops, you’d find them hanging off you by their jaws, the big red ones… No. Back to the subject. Maryam was Malay, therefore Muslim, and that means that Ish is legally a Muslim, as he is half Malay, and their law says all ethnic Malays, that’s the way they phrase it, are automatically Muslim, and she had married a Yid”

Once more, a pause, then an attempt at a wry grin.

“Yup, not a big thing here, but as they say, Mike’s short a bit of skin, and… And Maryam never came home. Home to me and Ish, that is. I paid for a private detective, like they do on the telly, and all he got me was where she’s buried, after some sort of accident with inflammable liquids. Sorry. So please, tonight, leave that bit of our family history unasked. Ish thinks she had a car accident. Not told him the truth; don’t know if I can”

He wiped his eyes, the smile that followed it a lot softer, and then hugged me, one-armed.

“I know as much as I need to about Ifor Watkins, so I assume there was some sort of separated-at-birth shit about her family and his. Now, are we off for a beer or more?”