CHAPTER 85
That was a hard period for me, a bit like riding in an out of control car. I had no idea how to deal with her when she got so determined apart from stepping back, and that was the bad bit. I didn’t want her dead.

Arwel moved in with the two ladies just before Christmas, leaving his son the house, and I was forced to realise, as if hadn’t already, how serious they were. It was odd, watching my great beast of an uncle, behaving like this round her, and I had to keep kicking myself to stay out of it. My earlier fears that he would lash out when confused seemed to be groundless, and that was a sharp lesson to me. If anything, I should have realised that my family were closer to me than is meant just by affection: closer in temperament, closer in, as it turned out, adaptability and flexibility. My parents had swung like ships with the tide in accepting both Elaine and myself, and the way they acted around both Tony and Siá¢n was banal in its normality. If my Dad could do that, I should have realised his brother came from the same nurturing.

I suppose the only one that was a little off was Uncle Gethin, but Aunty Gwen seemed to have his balls clutched firmly in her hands, with the same steel in her as my mother had. We invited the whole lot of them over for the holiday, together with Arris and her brood, and by the end of it even Gethin was starting to act normally around the couple, for that was what they were rapidly becoming.

Arwel seemed to have made a positive decision that if he was going down that road, he would do it properly, and I noticed the odd moments of unconscious affection becoming more frequent, and more evident. Alice’s lost weight had done wonders for her self-confidence, and she was just as ready to shut him up or otherwise modify his behaviour as she had been in the pub. Her “Be quiet, Arwel” was never harsh, never shrewish, but indulgent, teasing, as was his constant references to the ‘old woman’ or ‘old trout’. It was their communication that struck me; they really did approach a lot of things with the same attitude.

“I can’t be doing with those people who fret, Sar” he said to me once. “If you break something, clean up the mess and sort it out first, don’t sit their all weepy and stupid, aye?”

That was his way. If something went wrong, sort it first, then worry about the loss later. I wasn’t sure if he saw Alice as something wrong that needed fixing, or his own response to her, but I am sure it went something like ‘I’ve fallen for a bloke in a dress’ better do it right, aye’ but then, as I have said, he only ever knew Alice, never Alan.

So, that was Christmas, another round of excess and love, and the realisation on my part that the years were speeding up and getting away from me. Jim was spurting up, and would need a new bike soon, though we were doing what we could with a long seat post for now. Bev was truly gravid, due in February, and Pat and Janet were planning their own event and….I was getting lost.

Underneath it all, though, burning through the mundane, was the simple fact of happiness and contentment. I was, despite my doubts and gwan galon about being a fraud, doing exactly what I had always dreamt of, with a family I loved around me. Some people dream of lottery wins, of touring the world by way of the best hotels, of bedding film stars, all sorts of exotic silliness. I had my lottery win, in the end, and a lot of it was my family, both parts.

That was my perpetual Christmas present, having them round me. Despite my Mam’s doubts, I insisted we all troop off down to Pat’s ‘gaff’ for the carol service, and once Mam got singing, like a true Cymres she forgot her surroundings and melted into the songs. Pat had managed to get a few ringers into the hymn list, and I was reminded of the scene from ‘Zulu’ where a Welsh private soldier remarks that while the Zulu warriors can sing, they’re a bit heavy in the bass section. Dad, Hywel, Gethin and Arwel did great things with and to ‘Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah’ with its wonderful tune of Cwm Rhondda, and the church fairly shook at their harmonising of the chorus. Arwel spoilt it slightly by muttering “Bloody foreign words, what’s wrong with ‘Arglwydd, arwain..’ or ‘Wele’n sefyll’?”

I whispered back “We’re the foreigners here, you old bugger”

He grinned back. “Not originally, we were here before all these Germans”

“A lot of them are Irish!”

“Even worse! They never could sing, and the krauts need beer to get them going”

“Says the man who has paid for half the brewery…”

And so it went, that Christmas. No big presents, beyond the presence of my whole family, no dramas, no sudden revelations. Pie didn’t alert us to Jim falling down the old mine shaft, nobody got that ole time religion, war wasn’t declared and this time nobody hooked up with a new partner. We just ate, and watched TV, and played silly board games, and washed dishes, and tramped the sands and clifftops, and loved each other.

Arwel, Alice and Enid ran the New Year’s Eve shindig. I missed my hubby, as he had drawn the short straw of a night shift, but his cold knees would wake me the next morning. I drank far too much, though, for the first time in ages, and as Jim led his mother to her bed in the spare room, I realised that there shouldn’t be a spare room in a three-bedroom house. Arwel had moved even further than I had anticipated.

I woke at eight, my boy still asleep next to me, and after a toilet visit I made my way down to the kitchen and the kettle. Enid was already there, and indicating the upstairs with a flick of my eyes I asked “How long?”

“Just a few days. It was a cold night, and they were already settled on each other on the sofa, and Alice just asked f she should put a hot water bottle on his side of the bed to warm it up, and he sort of grunted like he does. Don’t think there’s any hanky panky, they just seem to need the company”

Why could I never see the bloody obvious in front of me? I had had enough experience of it that I should be able to spot when people were lonely, for that is what half of love and romance is really about: not being alone in the dark. For whatever reasons, which certainly didn’t seem to include lust on Arwel’s part (though I rather suspect Alice felt differently), two people had found a way to keep warm.

That was it, that was how life worked. People dreamt of the great romance, the Great Dark Man, and then, if they were lucky, they found the one person that, with some compromise, some give and take, they could shelter and be sheltered by, keeping the dark at bay. Dreams were fun, of course, but life, real life, was so much better.

Alice’s date for surgery arrived just after the holiday. For good or bad, she was going all the way. Arwel seemed sanguine. One day in my house, over a cuppa, he explained.

“If she goes, she goes, but she goes as she wants to be”

“And you’d be OK with that?”

He looked at me sharply. “Course I fucking wouldn’t, but it’s her call, her body, her life, aye?”

He sighed. “She’s done a will, and signed me power of attorney just in case, so all we have to do is wait and see. You’re going to need a locum again, aren’t you? Same weeks as Bev is due, and I can’t see Andy leaving his missus alone for their first kid”

Another sigh. “Worried, I am. The old trout is still a bit sideways from that twat’s car, and I just worry….well, you know, love”

I slipped round the table and hugged him. “She feels she has to do it. Same as me”

“You never, ever were a fucking boy, Sam. There never was a Sam, was there? That’s what makes it so easy to see her as she should have been, as she is. I look at you and remember the child, Twm being so proud to have a son, and he takes you as you are and loves you all the more. I can do that, I can match my brother, you know, but you never trusted me, not till now. I’ve got my son, but we all have you, and without that letting go we wouldn’t have had you at all, would we?”

I just sat, quiet. After that foreign trucker had empted my life, after Joe….yes, those thoughts had been there, but Elaine, Dad, Arris, all had been there for me. I thought of poor, lost Alice, in the rain on top of a Dover cliff, trying to decide which way she should walk. Loneliness…..

I hugged Arwel one more time. “Look, this family saved my sanity, perhaps even my life.. Alice is family. Whatever you want, whatever you need, I’m here”

He didn’t say a word, just hugged me tight. And wept.