CHAPTER 32
Vic nodded, looking away as a coach ground up the hill towards Capel Curig, then spread an arm wide.

“Let go of Enfys and come here, love”

It was getting easier to call her to Alys, or my subconscious was succumbing to the beating my waking mind was delivering, so it was indeed Alys that crawled across to her father’s embrace. He murmured something in Welsh to her, and she almost grinned at me.

“Dad says you can’t talk properly, so we have to use the other language”

Vic held a finger to her lips (once again, I was working hard on those pronouns).

“Not just that, love. Uncle Mike’s been doing a lot for us this morning. Now, will you be happy back in school?”

She started to shake, and he shushed and soothed her for a few seconds.

“Not talking about that one, love. We’ve all been talking about other things, other ways, and we have better ideas. Your two uncles here, and Aunty Pen, they have a friend who knows about these things”

“Pa things---what things, Dad?”

“What they call home schooling. Just for a while”

She looked up at him, eyes screwing up, and said something in Welsh, her voice nearly breaking. Vic cuddled her close, wiping away a tear.

“Uncle Mike can’t understand, love”

“This isn’t… I’m not… Dad, I’m me! Not going to stop that”

He cupped her chin, lifting her eyes to his.

“Fy nghariad fychan, we understand. Yes, I meant it that way. Mam and me, we might not understand it all, but we can learn, so it will be home school for all of us, ah?”

“Fychan?”

“Ie, fychan”

‘Little one’, with a soft mutation to give it a sense of the feminine. Alys was crying, as Vic spoke to her, and for the benefit of the rest of us.

“My child hurts, and that I, we, will not, cannot allow that. What we are thinking, what your uncles and aunty are helping us with, is find a way forward. You’ve told us who you are, so now we’d like to see who that is. I did a lot of thinking last night, and if this works, this school plan, I can work from home a lot more. Would you be okay with your Dad hanging around the house with you?”

She was starting to cry again, as Nansi reached out to her with her own offer.

“I did some talking with the doctors, Alys”

The child gave a convulsive jerk, but buried her head even further into her father’s chest, as Nansi continued.

“We have savings, Dad and me. Some of that is for your university days, but those are a long way away. We have some names of other doctors we can talk to, people who can do the official thing. What we are thinking is that you can go back to school when you are eleven”

“Mam?”

“Yes, love?”

“Who goes back to school?”

“Whoever you and the doctors say you are”

Enfys piped up, asking if she would still be able to see her friend, and that question reminded me exactly how old the two kids were. Was it simply her distress that had aged Alys, or was it more than that? Either way, Nansi simply smiled and nodded. Vic was smiling as well.

“How could we not let our girl’s best friend come by and see her? Now, who wants a chocolate muffin?”

That started to break the spell, and as chocolate met lips there was a loud croak, and all three of the Edwards looked up, before Vic and Alys started a heated Welsh discussion containing the words ‘bran’ and ‘cigfran’, so I guessed they were arguing over whether the large black bird passing overhead was a crow or a raven, and as I knew that argument intimately, probably getting pedantic about a raven actually being a type of crow, and so on at length. I’d heard the same discussion many times, most recently between Steph and her man. Before that it had been between me and my wife. Not now, Rhodes. Sun’s out, the raven’s ganged up with two others to attack a buzzard, Keith and Pen are bouldering on the outcrop above our slab, and two children are pointing at the old bridge as Vic laughs.

“Cer ymlaen!”

The three of them scrambled down to the arch under the road and onto the old packhorse bridge of jammed stones, Alys holding a finger to her lips as she pointed to something in the water and held still, until a plump brown bird with a white breast flew upstream to the lake’s outflow. A dipper—wonderful! I turned to Nansi, noticing that her smile seemed to have gone with her child.

“You okay, Nansi?”

She shook her head slightly, and then almost whispered.

“Not sure, Mike. This is a lot to try and wrap my head around, and it’s other stuff”

She waved at the expeditionary group as they waved back.

“Would be so easy to say she’s acting girly now, but she isn’t, not any more than she was before. She’s, and yes, got to keep using that word, she’s acting the same way she always has. It’s just I can see it now, and I’ve been thinking about all the times I can remember, I can understand now, how she was trying to tell me, and I missed them all, until we very nearly missed a child, and I am doing my best not to cry, so please tell me something, find something, funny or silly, whatever. Something else to think about”

“Um… I was in Scotland one day, up at the end of the Glen Nevis road. Do you know it?”

“Went there with Vic before we were married. I was expecting a randy weekend away, and he’s doing a photo commission. Typical!”

She was beginning to smile, though, so I pressed on.

“I was having a cuppa from the tea van that used to park there, old John McDonald, and this car pulls up, family of Glaswegians from their accents, and one of them asks us, me and John, where Ben Nevis is, so John nods to me to answer. I point up the waterslide to sort of say ’you’re standing next to it’, and then the woman asks me if it’s true it’s the highest mountain in Scotland”

“Serious mountaineers, then?”

“Ah, just a family out in a nice place. I sent them along the path to the Steall, as it’s a pretty safe route. It was the third question that got me”

“Fourth? What happened to third?”

“Oh, that was which was the second highest, so of course I said it was Ben McDui. The fourth question was to tell them which hill was Ben McDui”

Cruelly, I waited till she had a mouthful of tea before adding, “Which is in the Cairngorms”

She sprayed satisfactorily before announcing my status as a child of unmarried parents, and once her laughter had settled, she simply smiled and thanked me before musing once more.

“Going to be a slog, Mike”

“Unless that Australia job comes up surprisingly fast, I’m not going anywhere, not anywhere too far away”

She looked hard at me.

“I don’t mean this in a nasty way, but it hurts that she spoke to you first. I’m glad she did, or glad that she spoke to someone who could listen, I mean. So close to… No. Not happening. One door opens, another gets bloody nailed shut. I just wonder what little Enfys is thinking”

“They’re adaptable at that age, Nansi, surprisingly so. As for being able to listen, well, I’ve had the advantage of a lot of Steph over the last few months. The more I see of her and her husband, the easier it gets to understand. That first time I met her, in the pub, shit! Anyway, who Alys first spoke to isn’t the thing, it’s that she has done, properly, so we can work on making the future better rather than worrying over the past”

She was still staring, and I knew why, so I just shrugged.

“Yeah, I know, and I will never stop missing her, but I’m finding other things to care about. Displacement activity, they call it”

“Like caring about that little one down there?”

“Yes, and before that it was Penny and Keith. All of them, us two, we’re still here, so I’m doing that priority thing, triage. Keeps me going”

Stops me doing bloody stupid things like soloing Tennis Shoe, my inner voice added.

“Nansi?”

“Yes?”

“What’s your next step?”

“I don’t know. Not going on a shopping spree for clothes, anyway. Don’t think my child is going to wat to spend a lot of time outside once things get moving. Anyway, Pen’s offered me some of Enfys’ old things for Alys. I suspect that she’s more looking for recognition than dressing-up”

I found myself laughing.

“Sorry, something Steph said. I mean, on the hill, she’s all practical kit, proper climbing trousers or leggings, and when she’s anywhere else, it’s a skirt or a dress. She said she likes to wear them because ‘after so many shitty years I can’. Made a lot of sense, especially when she pointed out the comfort, Offered me one of hers to wear”

It was Nansi’s turn to laugh.

“You wouldn’t fit into one of hers!”

“Yup, and there are no bloody pockets, so what’s a man to do?”

I grabbed another sandwich as the trio made their way back from their bridges, Enfys pointing up at her parents and saying something that probably translated as something like “What about me?”

Alys lay back on the rug, eyes closed to the sun as her parents poured cold drinks in an attempt to tempt the errant crag child back to our picnic site. The sunshine seemed to be doing a fine job of delivering us from the twin darknesses, and we made the most of it, especially after Keith had gone over to the car park and returned with three pairs of rock shoes and enough gear to set up a top rope. Penny spotted my smirk and shrugged.

“Living in a place like this, how could we not keep the basics to hand? Fancy some stuff, despite your trainers?”

“Why not?”

We spent a couple of hours messing about, even Alys trying some simpler stuff while Enfys gabbled away at her, showing an amazing sense of balance for such a youngster. Eventually, their energy ran down, and we packed up for the run back down to Bethesda and Vic and Nansi’s offer of a meal at theirs, or at least a sit down with a mass order from the chippy.
Both children rode with the Hiatts while Nansi drove Vic and myself to the chippy. She was pensive.

“Given the house keys to Pen, Mike. Taking a bit of a chance”

“What? On Penny?”

“Don’t be silly, Mister Rhodes. On our child. Now, got that order ready?”

We gathered chips, pies, fish, battered sausages, mushy peas and drove back to their place, alcohol left in the supermarket for that night at least, and Vic rang his own door bell. It was answered by Pen, who nodded slightly at some unseen query from Vic.

“Tea’s brewing, folks”

We settled ourselves around the living room, children nowhere to be seen but two place settings on the dining table ready for them. Nansi set out their plates, having left the paper parcel wrapped on top of each and called “Kids!” up the stairs. There was a thunder of little feet, and the two smallest of our crew were at the door. Each was in a dress, and Alys was grinning directly at me. I grinned back.

“That suits you, Alys”

Her grin nearly split her head in two.

“That’s my name!”