CHAPTER 15
That was when I nearly broke, but I had a long chat with myself. Stupid bloody thing to say, really, but while my thoughts were screaming and painful, there was a little voice underneath the agony whispering words of… What? Not solace; not comfort. Just words of sense and sentiment.

Carolyn had loved me, at least as much as I still loved her, and I had absolutely no doubts on that score. She was gone, and I took what solace, what comfort I could, in the fact that it had been so quick. To be honest, there was nothing better I could find to lift me from my bed, but in the end it was all I had, and it was enough.

My first day back in work was awful, every colleague avoiding my gaze as well as the subject. My first evening back at the folk club was much the same, at first, until ‘Graham Two’ did his floor spot. He was always an odd mixture, our second Graham, the sort of man who went to a singaround with a guitar, but his heart was there, and his introduction was to the point.

“Bit awkward for me, this, but I am looking over there at someone we have known for years, and he is hurting, and we all know why. I don’t do sensitive, you all know that. I usually don’t sing in tune, but, well. I’m going to do this song, and I hope Mike understands why I’ve chosen it. You all know it, so please join in, drown me out if possible. This is for Caro”

He looked at his guitar, then took it off and leant it against the wall, before starting to sing.

“The first time ever I saw your face…”

I wept, as did just about everyone else, but we raised our voices, and there were other songs before Graham One led us into ‘Chemical Worker’s Song’, and my glass kept refilling itself, and yes, I was absolutely bladdered, but when I woke on Pen and Keith’s sofa, I was starting to sort my life once more.

Caro had given me so much of that life, so it was never mine to throw away. I started pushing myself out of the door, and our walks to Sundon and Cutenhoe were central to my healing. I no longer had family, but I had true friends, and they had earned their returns.

I really needed to leave that town, though, and when Keith and Penny shared their own plans, I was fully with them.

It chimed so well with my own position, with my mood. Penny loved her man so much she had left him, and I realised that my love would have been at her side in every way. What else could I do other than take her place? Pen left, and in essence Keith and I were living together, shuffling from house to house as shifts, weather and pub choice dictated.

His questions about our hopes for kids opened so many wounds, but I clung to that newborn sense of love and friendship. They needed me, just then, even though Pen was hundreds of miles away. She would ring Keith every day, and how she juggled her life around his shifts would have impressed me if I hadn’t already understood what a formidable woman she was. My turn to step up and do what was required. I kept my answers to ‘smile and agree’.

I doubt very much they were surprised when I announced my own move to Sheffield, and Pen was cackling with glee, in the end.

“Bugger me, Mike, but if only you were still working for that bastard! The two of you could do a synchronised sod-you….”

She collapsed into even more raucous laughter, while Keith just held his hand out for the phone handset.

“I can hear the noise she’s making, mate, even from where I’m sitting. She’ll go on for ages like that. Let me deal with it”

And do it went, along with their house after a couple of false alarms, and my second-best friend was away to the hills. I spent a while explaining it all to Caro, as I set a small potted plant on her grave. No, I didn’t believe she could hear me, nothing like that; It was just that the simple act of talking helped me sort out my own mind, to set my chaotic thoughts into better order. I became moot, a little while later, and I was in Sheffield, as my own life moved on and my old one slept in a Stopsley cemetery.

That new life had its issues, of course, as Sheffield had and has its own, but Kul and the Gang (of course he called them that!) were almost always delightful, and the work challenging and rewarding. That last needs some explanation, for accountancy is usually considered to be one of the most boring professions the world has ever seen, a synonym for ‘grey’, but ‘accounting’ wasn’t exactly what we did.

I suppose the modern term would be financial, or perhaps business, ‘consultants’, for we did things beyond checking and submitting annual accounts or checking VAT records. We went into a small to medium-sized business, and looked holistically at what they did, how they did it, and what records they kept. It could be the simplest of advice to a one-man business, say the old ‘odd-year/even-year’ record system, right up to Kul’s speciality, which was the expanding world of computerised records, or Betty’s, which was the subtle, and occasionally far from subtle, art of getting debtors to pay their bills.

I was immensely gratified to discover that there were two folk clubs within easy reach of my new home, one of them actually in Crookes, so another segment of my new life settled itself into place, and both Kul and his boy were more than happy to share their car with me for regular trips to visit the Hiatts. I asked Kul about that once, and only once. We were sitting in a Little Chef or Happy Eater or whatever, somewhere near Chester, grabbing a cuppa before the last run into the hills.

“Not wanting to head over to Leicester, see the family, at the weekend?”

Kul looked to Dal, who just shrugged a clear message of ‘Your tackle’. The man grimaced.

“What do you know about Leicester, Mike?”

“Been past it on the M1, on the way to the Peak. That’s about all”

“Well, let’s just say it’s another town that starts with an ‘L’, but this one rhymes with ‘fester’. Me and the missus brought the lad over here for much the same reasons you moved. We do the family thing now and again, but not that often. Me and this one, we spend, used to spend most of our time in the Peak, but then there’s you come along, and suddenly we’ve got free digs in the middle of real mountains! Win all round, we say”

Dal held up a hand to shush his father.

“Not really like he says, Mike. I know for a fact he’s tried to pay Penny and Keith for the stay, but they just ignore him, or tell him not to be silly. It’s why he’s grabbed the bill for so many meals over there. Doesn’t like to be beholden to anyone, my Dad”

Kul shook his head.

“Not what I think, son, not now, anyway. You have good friends there, mate. Thank you for sharing them”

The rest of the drive went quickly, but still too slowly, as I strained for the first sight of familiar hills. Down the coast road, with a slight twinge at the signpost for Aber Falls, then loop across smaller roads to pick up the A5, and finally, that time in the rain again, park up by the bunkhouse. It was quite busy that weekend, Keith cleaning out a shower stall as we walked in.

“Hiya, you lot. Can you go to the house for now? Pen’ll sort you out a cuppa. Got some mixing and matching of bed spaces just now; the rain’s brought a few of the campers in. If you leave your bags here, I’ll sort”

A knock on the front door was answered by a waddling woman, showing in all the traditional ways.

“Croeso, y bechgyn! [Lots more Welsh]. Tea’s hot; can one of you pour while I sort some snacks?”

She reached gingerly into a cupboard for some small plates, then a biscuit tin, leaving Dal to sort the drinks as she led us into the living room. There were extra cushions on her chair, along with a pillow, and a small rucksack leaning against the wall by the door. She caught my gaze.

“Grab bag, love. I should be dropping any time now. Nansi’s already done so”

Kul grinned.

“And?”

“Boy. Eight pounds four ounces. Calling him Dafydd Iestyn”

“Nice! What are you hoping for?”

Pen grinned.

“Healthy and happy, that’s all we want. Everything else is secondary. Now, other stuff. I am not going climbing with anyone…”

It was another good weekend, and the club was as fun and friendly as ever, but oddly, there was no sign of the miserable ginger fiddler. I found myself chatting to Illtyd at one point, because of course he simply settled at our table without asking, so I asked.

“Odd, Mike. Not seen him in ages, and he’s not been down the Bryn, which is his usual place to get pissed at. You never know; he might have succeeded”

I looked at him hard for a second, and he shrugged.

“You don’t think he had a death wish, ah? Amount of booze he put away?”

I had a flashback to that day we had watched him soling what I remembered as a thin and polished crux move, and shuddered. Illtyd took another slurp of his beer.

“Regular visitor, older woman, Pat, aye?”

“I know her”

“Aye. Well, she sometimes has a friend with her. Tall woman, hard-faced as anything. One winter, it was a hard one. That Steve Jones, he’d walked down here from Emlyn’s place, so a couple of us had a word with the two, that’s Pat and hatchet-face, and they gave him a lift back. Way the weather was, state he was in, he’d not have managed. Mike?”

“Yes?”

“He might be a miserable pisshead, but I don’t feel there’s any harm in him. This is my serious head on, ah? Be a shame if that’s it, lights out, but, that’s the way he’s always been heading. Just hoping he’s stopped coming for better reasons”

Those thoughts stayed with me all weekend, as we laughed and joked, and penny complained that she already had lousy bladder control because of her passenger, so STOP MAKING HER LAUGH.

Four days after we left Bethesda, that passenger disembarked safely. Seven pounds nine ounces, and her name was Enfys.

I was very, very drunk that night, and it was something I did at home and alone.