CHAPTER 6
Alys was back at the school gates on the Wednesday morning, looking apprehensive as she spotted me. I locked my bike up carefully before walking across to her.

“What’s up?”

She did her usual trick of looking around for attentive ears, then shook her head.

“Nothing really. I mean nothing now. Sort of”

“Is it what I said the other night?”

“No! Yes. Sort of, again. Saw my doctor on Saturday. One of them. I have to see shrinks about who I am, and what they give me, there’s another doctor who takes loads of blood out of me. Lots of needles”

“You told me about that, about the anti-boy stuff”

“Blockers, you called them. What’s the problem there?”

She looked at her feet, a faint blush rising in her cheeks.

“I don’t want him to stop them, Enfys, cause I’d get all hairy and stuff, turn into a boy, and he only lets me have them if the shrink doctor says he can”

“Doesn’t he believe what you tell him?”

“Yeah, but. He has to see I’m a girl, It’s one reason I wear skirts most of the time”

She looked up, and there was a flash of a grin there.

“Yeah, and I tell him I like skirts, and no lying there, is it?”

“What’s the problem, then?”

Shwas once again staring at her feet, her voice so soft I had to strain to hear it.

“The shrink doctor has to really believe me, Enfys. Girls wear skirts and nail varnish. Girls want ponies. Girls… girls watch boys. Dream about them. If Doctor Coates finds out, he’ll stop everything!”

I had no choice but to ask the question.

“Finds out what, Alys?”

She looked up once again, but this time there was no grin, the hair blowing across her face doing little to hide the pink of her cheeks or the dampness of her eyes.

“Finds out I dream about you, Enfys”

She rushed on, closing down our conversation as sharply as a gale-slammed door.

“Come on. Mrs Preece, then this afternoon we’ve got the orchestra, and---”

Her hand flew to her mouth, as her eyes opened wide, and the faint flush turned into a full-on blush. He lowered her hand, her mouth working a couple of times, before her grin reappeared.

“What I nearly said!”

She turned away, scurrying off towards classes, and as I closed in, she whispered, “Nearly said I was looking forward to playing with you!”

Of course, that was exactly what she did, after I had struggled with the school harp’s tuning, and she made bad jokes of putting a tuning fork next to her cymbals and tapping them to see if they themselves were ringing at the right pitch. We had been with several other girls over lunch break, so it wasn’t until we were leaving that I was able to pick up the aborted conversation from the morning. Alys was far more upbeat than he had been on her arrival.

“Yeah, my endo says—that’s what they call the blood doctor---he says the blockers are doing their job, and if we keep on course, I might start getting the real stuff when I’m sixteen or seventeen. Can’t do it any younger”

“So you’ll, you know, grow…”

She looked down at her school jumper.

“I’ll do what Ifor is always telling ne to do? Grow a pair? Well, I did, but it’s another pair I’ll grow, different sort, fingers crossed!. You all set for Friday night?”

“Absolutely. You’ve cheered up since this morning”

The blush was back, but so was the grin.

“What I said about dreams, Enfys?”

“Yeah?”

“Nice to see I wasn’t dreaming about some things. There’s my Mam; see you tomorrow”

She was off and away, as I settled onto my bike. I was overflowing with relief, but mixed with it was resentment. Why was she being made to jump through hoops by some miserable old bigot of a doctor? Surely, if so many people could see the girl in front of them, why not him?

I added Doctor Coates to the list that included Ifor and Mrs Preece. Whatever they could do, however, didn’t matter: she dreamt about me.

My ride home was so much easier than it had been the previous week, but perhaps my singing could have been quieter.

Friday came along, and with it a flurry of cards from my classmates, Mrs Preece insisting that they sang a chorus of ‘Happy Birthday’, but it was the evening I was waiting for.

‘Wear something nice’. Alys had said, repeating my own words to her, but my wardrobe had never been that girly. I had some new jeans, though, and a really nice blouse Mam had bought me, so I put them on, spending time sorting my hair and adding a little bit of the make-up I hardly ever used. When I joined my parents for the ‘off’, I got a very knowing look from Mam, followed by a smile.

“All set, then? We’re going the long way round”

“There isn’t a long way round!”

“There is if we’re going by Little Willy’s girl. Picking up Steph’n’Geoff”

Dad snorted at that one.

“Like one of those carpet cleaner jingles, love!”

He started to sing, deliberately off-key.

“Just do the Steph’n’Geoff, it’ll clean your breath”

Mam threw a cushion at him, and he grinned.

“Do you think it was deliberate? Picking someone with a rhyming name?”

Mam laughed out loud.

“As deliberate as you and those tight climbing shorts of yours? Come on; got everything, Enfys? Can you put your coat and that into the boot to make room?”

It was already dark as we arrived at the Falls by Pont Pen y Benglog, the Woodruffs having walked along to the carpark, and once they had squeezed into the back seat, Mam set off back down the A5 to Bethesda, Mam finding a space out of the back of the Cow, which had its usual ‘Clwb Ffolc Heno’ sign on the footpath. Mr Harries, the landlord, waved at us as we entered, pointing to a table in a corner with a ‘reserved’ sign on it, and Dad’s mate Mr Conway, standing at the bar, grinned at the Woodruffs, Steph making a big thing about holding her husband’s hand but still grinning back. In return, Mr Conway—Illtyd, Dad called him---bought a round of drinks for the five of us.

“Sitting with you I am, so I have to be sensible, and I don’t do sensible, so it’s back to bribery and corruption! Happy birthday, love. Got a card for you, ah?”

It wasn’t a guest night for the club, just an open mike floor spot evening, but there were more than a few regulars dropping in, who finally, finally, included Alys and her parents. My ‘wear something nice’ instruction had borne much more substantial fruit than hers, and she was in a dark blue wraparound dress in some heavy material that draped really nicely, her hair loose over her shoulders. Once more, Mam gave me a knowing look, and to my horror, so did Alys’ mother, and I realised how much my love must share with her own family. I wanted to die at that point, right there in the pub, but there were cards to accept, along with hugs and best wishes, and then Mr Harries was at the microphone. Too late to run off.

“Croeso i bawb i ein noson ffolc, welcome everybody to another evening of folk at the Cow. Not a guest night tonight, but we have a solid collection of performers ready to help you build up a thirst, hint hint. There will be a raffle at the break, but none of the prizes are alcoholic, so you will have to rely on me to cover that side of things. Now, put your hands together for our first performer, and as it is Illtyd Conway, all doors and windows are locked to prevent escape. Illtyd! Over to you”

In fairness to Dad’s mate, he wasn’t bad, giving us ‘Ar Lan Y Mor’ followed by ‘Fflat Huw Puw’, which got people singing along, and he was followed by Dad, who gave us ‘Rolling Home’. Always a great chorus song. Alys’ own father played some fiddle tunes, and so the evening went, up to the break. Glasses refilled, not for the first time, as Mr Harries worked his way round the audience with an ice bucket and a couple of pads of raffle tickets. I stayed where I was, largely because someone had her hand on mine.

She had whispered to me in one of the gaps between songs, a simple question as to whether what she was wearing was adequately ‘nice’, and I just couldn’t find any sensible words in reply, largely because the fact of my hand being held by the person I loved left no room for rational thought. Things got worse when Mam hissed at me.

“Enfys! It’s you!”

I looked around in confusion.

“What’s me?”

She pointed at Mr Harries.

“Go and stand with him”

I wriggled reluctantly out from behind our table, suddenly feeling lost as I had to let go of another hand, and joined Mr Harries at the microphone, utterly confused at what he expected from me.

“Hiya, Enfys! Ladies and gentlemen, today is Enfys’ birthday. Can we have a quick round of…”

Once more, I was embarrassed by that song, and as the applause sounded, a cake was brought out to our table, but it came to me first so that I could blow out the candles, which was even more upsetting. There was more, though. Mr Harries still held my arm, smiling in a truly smug way.

“Now, Enfys is up for the next spot. Take it away, love!”

Before I could ask him what he expected me to do, he theatrically slapped his forehead.

“Idiot that I am! Illtyd, you got her pressie?”

Mr Conway came out of the door to the upper cellar room, and when I saw what he was carrying out, I nearly fainted. It wasn’t huge, it wasn’t an orchestral version with forty dozen pedals. It was simple; it was beautiful; it was a harp.

They set it up behind the mile, and someone pushed a stool my way, and I ran my fingers over the strings, hearing the tuning as I checked the pegs. It was what is sometimes called a ‘knee harp’, but it had tuning levers on the neck so that I could change keys, and… and it was mine, and everything about it may have been worn smooth, but it was MINE, and…

Mr Harries was talking, and I had missed everything that had followed the appearance of MY HARP, so I looked up at him while sounding a simple arpeggio. What to play?

I started with ‘Gwenith Gwyn’ to feel how she played, and that was lovely, so I sped up into ‘Lark in the Morning’, and then, as my courage started to fail, I looked up at the faces in front of me and gave them ‘Men of Harlech’ on the perfectly reasonable expectation that they would do their best to drown me out. The audience didn’t disappoint me.

There was a hard case for it as well, I found out as we left, but that had to follow Steph’n’Geoff, their own little set ending in a demand for Alys’ Dad and myself to join them. After a quick round of “Do you know…?”, we arrived at a set of tunes we all had in common, and off we went, bouncing through the music until ‘time’ was called at the bar. My cake had vanished somehow, but at least some of it had passed my lips, and there was enough room in the back of the car for My Harp, and Alys’ hand was warm on mine, and the evening was so wonderful I wanted to cry.

I had to move away from her as we said goodnight, but I had another surprise as we dropped the Woodruffs off at their campsite, Geoff asking my father a simple question.

“You know your way there, Keith?”

“I do. Not done anything there for ages, but I still know where to go. Will it be dry enough?”

“Ah, that place dries quickly, and it’s set fair for tomorrow, so we should be okay. Enfys?”

“Yes?”

“Me and Hairy here only have a van, otherwise we’d pick you up. It’s your other birthday present tomorrow. Bit of a surprise, if you are up for one”

I had already worked out that they meant some place of other to go climbing, so I just smiled and nodded, and then made sure, once we were home, that my harp stood close enough to my bed that I could reach out and touch it through the night, just so that I could be sure it was real.