New Welsh Short Stories E-Book

• Herausgeber: Seren
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 333

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Nineteen compelling and varied short stories by writers born or living in wals. With widely differing approaches to form and style, this is a confident selection of superb new stories from up-and-coming, established, and award-winning writers.

Leseprobe

Contents

Title PageIntroductionNight Start – Tyler KeevilGround-nester – Stevie DaviesYes Kung Fu – Joâo MoraisMr Philip – Carys DaviesLevitation – Jo MazelisRising-Falling – Joe DunthorneCrocodile Hearts – Kate HamerA Letter from Wales – Cynan Jones17 – Thomas MorrisOn the Inside – Trezza AzzopardiJohn Henry – Mary-Ann ConstantineThe Bare-chested Adventurer – Holly MüllerNo One is Looking at You – Deborah Kay DaviesLiar’s Sonnet – Zillah BethellHappy Fire – Rachel TreziseA Romance – Sarah ColesLearning to Say До Свидания – Maria DonovanPulling Out – Eluned GramichBalm-of-Gilead – Robert MinhinnickBiographiesCopyright

New Welsh Short Stories

edited by Francesca Rhydderch and Penny Thomas

INTRODUCTION

In the course of the twentieth century, anthologies of short fiction from Wales accumulated something of a proud history.The first book ofWelsh Short Storieswas published by Faber in 1937, featuring Dorothy Edwards, Margiad Evans, Glyn Jones and Rhys Davies, among others. Since then similarly ambitious selections have continued to appear from one press or another in Wales or England, irrepressibly it seems, when the short story has been in vogue – and when it hasn’t. With a stubborn, wonderful force behind them they keep coming, short stories from Welsh writers, followed by anthologies of Welsh fiction in English. However, if Richard Ford was hesitant to claim that the short story is a national art form in the introduction to his selection of American short stories for Granta over twenty years ago, then so must we be even more reticent on our small patch of land. What we can say is that the Welsh short story continues to endure in the face of huge obstacles, both cultural and commercial. More than that, it continues to thrive.

Our aim in publishing the nineteen stories included in this volume was to choose authors and writing whose focus on form and style is both exemplary and satisfying. We invited work from writers either born or living in Wales, but we were not seeking writing that was specifically representative of contemporary Wales, or even of the current Welsh literary scene, hence also our decision not to include translations of work published originally in Welsh. We filled out no spreadsheets with regard to geographical balance, gender equality or anything else. We simply asked writers whose fiction we love – celebrated, established and emerging – to send us their newest work.

The result is a collection bursting with vitality. Many of the writers included are award-winning authors who write both novels and short fiction (also poetry, in the case of some), and the seriousness with which they approach their craft is very much in evidence. Several of the stories, for example, show the unique shape that can be given to a short story as opposed to a novel by clustering the narrative around one central image or symbol. In Carys Davies’ story ‘Mr Philip’ the old shoes confronting a grieving son are skilfully narrowed down to one (new) pair which symbolises all too painfully the depth of his loss. Joe Dunthorne’s ‘Rising-Falling’ boldly harnesses physics to internet dating in a story about who – caught between our real and virtual selves – we pretend to be. Trezza Azzopardi’s starfish in ‘On the Inside’ brings richness, bleakness, and a touch of otherness too, to a beautifully observed story about a difficult relationship. In Deborah Kay Davies’ ‘No One is Looking at You’, a yearned-for bikini becomes the object of the reader’s as well as the protagonist’s fascination: the ending – no spoilers – is gut-wrenching and without the easy get-out clause of any last-minute compensations. Kate Hamer’s magic realist twist in ‘Crocodile Hearts’ brings together every element of the story – voice, character, emotion and central image – to create a terrifying ending in the ‘domestic noir’ mode.

Closely observed scenes in many of the stories collected here reveal a tightness of control without compromising the potential for open-ended epiphanies. Cynan Jones’ ‘Letter from Wales’, for example, is an artfully conceived story in which the central symbol is withheld almost until the end, resulting in an effective twist which also operates as a clever refusal to close down our interpretation until the final lines. Stevie Davies’ ‘Ground-nester’ likewise observes the minute palpitations of life under the guise of observation of the natural world: in the final instance the unusual bird in question becomes a symbol of the possibility of redemption as well as loss.

Not all the stories opt for a twist in the tail, or even an epiphany. In ‘The Bare-chested Adventurer’ Holly Müller’s episodic approach mirrors the circular direction taken by the narrative. Eluned Gramich’s ‘Pulling Out’ is equally confident in its circularity, hovering around a mother who no longer knows how to be a mother, the increasingly absent centre in a story about siblings in retreat from the world. In the case of Maria Donovan’s ‘Learning to SayДо Свидания’, the picaresque narrative delicately echoes the terrible stop-start progress of grief.

The power of the voice is crucial to the success of any short story.The writers featured here all speak in their own accent: some shout out, while others whisper – always within earshot of the reader. The celebrated strong voices of Rachel Trezise’s fictional creations add a marvellously complex character to their number in ‘Happy Fire’. Sarah Coles also has a witty, vulnerable narrative voice, which she wraps around the form of her story ‘A Romance’ with considerable skill.A story about a film set which mercilessly explores the unglamorous goings-on off camera, this piece cuts choppily and comically between script and counter-script. Zillah Bethell’s similarly demotic, playful narration in ‘Liar’s Sonnet’, inspired by the mystery of Einstein’s daughter Lieserl, keeps the reader firmly on her toes. Mary-Ann Constantine also draws on other art forms and historical sources to shape her narrative: the scraps and fragments quoted from a traditional ballad become the guiding force of her story, ‘John Henry’.

What is most striking about the voices in this collection is that they convince from the first line. Thomas Morris’ ‘17’ is a fresh take on a coming-of-age story, in which the adolescent voice shifts seamlessly between comedy, pathos and ennui. Tyler Keevil’s ‘Night Start’ brings a Canadian accent to a story which opens in a naturalist mode, but soon veers into supernatural territory (also very subtly and lyrically exploited in Jo Mazelis’ story, ‘Levitation’). It is the Carveresque, apparently downplayed voice which manages to knit these two strands together so successfully into a low-key yet powerful epiphany. Joâo Morais’ story, ‘Yes Kung Fu’ is a fabulous sketch of Cardiff life, with a voice featuring its own urban rhythm and dialect. This mixture of harsh street life with narrative empathy is fast becoming a hallmark of Morais’ work, and ‘Yes Kung Fu’ is a good example of what the Welsh notion of the ‘square mile’ of a writer’s imagination might mean in the twenty-first century. Robert Minhinnick, by contrast, offers two almost entirely disembodied voices in his ‘Balm-of-Gilead’, in a piece which can be seen as a renegade reworking of ‘Under Milk Wood’ for modern times. You could say that in this story, voicebecomesform.

That image of the Welsh writer’s ‘square mile’, traditionally the square mile of the childhood which made her/him a writer, remains a powerful one for anyone mapping the progress of the Welsh short story.The square miles turned over by our authors stretch from a claustrophobic flat in Tokyo to Cowbridge Road East in Cardiff, from a faceless Chinese hotel to a melancholy visit to Morovia. The reach of the author’s compass is not merely north, south, east and west as we know them: it is the reach of the imagination itself, taking us out of our own world,elsewhere.That is the pleasure of reading a short story, whatever its provenance: the moment at which reader and writer, journeying together, arrive at its destination.

Francesca Rhydderch and Penny Thomas

NIGHT START

Tyler Keevil

It was late June, and hot, and I was having a hell of a time falling asleep.That was nothing new.That’s always the case, with me. Partly I’d been thinking about the bun Lowri had in the oven, and all the change that was coming at us. But mostly I’d been watching the digits on our clock creeping up, one at a time, and then cycling back to double-zero when the hour passed. Midnight came and went, then one o’clock, then two. Close to three a breeze started blowing pretty hard, causing the curtain to twist and curl, real elegantly. Like a ballroom gown, maybe. Watching the movement helped some. So did the rustling sound of the beech trees outside. I started dozing off, and then twitched awake – one of those twitches that feels like a shock, like a silent alarm clock going off inside you. They’ve got a name for this: a night start. They’ve got a name for everything, these days. It happens to me a lot, but this time felt different. I thought maybe I’d heard something, out in the backyard. I had the impression of clapping. I’d dreamed of clapping, and applause. A big occasion of some sort.

‘Did you hear that?’ I asked Lowri.

But she was out. She’s like that, Lowri. She could sleep through a stampede, or a tornado.The whole house could be torn apart, and carried off, and she’d still be lying there in bed among the wreckage, practically comatose, like Sleeping Beauty. The only thing that ever wakes her, sometimes, is her dreams. But a hot spring night, or a strange noise? That’s nothing to Lowri. It’s a real gift of hers.

I got on up and went to our window and tugged aside the curtains. It overlooks our backyard – a narrow strip of garden, stretching away from the terrace – and has views of the hills around town. The hills were dark, rounded shapes, like the backs of whales. The sky was all cloudy and heavy, weighed down with moisture, holding in the spring heat. It felt almost tropical, as if a thunderstorm was about to start. The clouds had blotted out the moon, which made it hard to see anything. But I heard, all right. I heard what had woken me up. It wasn’t clapping, but a kind of clack-clack-clack sound. Like a loose shutter banging in the breeze.

‘There it is,’ I said, looking back. ‘What the heck is that?’

But Lowri just murmured at me, and rolled over. Light from the nearby streetlamp laid out a yellow rectangle on the bed, and she was in the middle of the rectangle. She was sleeping atop the covers, on account of it being so hot. Her vest had ridden up, exposing her belly, which was as round and fulsome as the hills outside. At the top was the little nub of her belly button, jutting up. That had been strange for me, when it happened. Nobody told me that belly buttons do that, when a woman gets pregnant and starts to swell. Hers had just popped out from the pressure like a valve. It still looked kind of odd to me. It didn’t look bad, but it didn’t look the way it used to.

I told her I was heading downstairs. I told her again that I’d heard something, and was going to check it out. It seemed important I explain all that, even if she couldn’t hear me. I figured it had to register, on some level.

*

In the kitchen I pulled on some jeans that were draped across the drying rack, a T-shirt, and my Converse. There were four Coors, in a plastic yoke, on top of our fridge. I tugged a can out, then put it down, then picked it up again. I’d been trying to quit. Or cut back, at least. On account of the baby. It’s not as if I drink all that much. Not as much as some people, anyway. Still, fatherhood was on my mind, and responsibilities, and all of that. But I figured what the hell. The baby hadn’t arrived yet, and a beer might help me sleep.

I cracked the tab open slowly, letting it foam and splutter. I didn’t drink any at first. I stood and held the can in my fist and listened. It seemed real quiet. I was used to the sounds of Gwilym, our neighbour on the right, puttering around, all through the night. I’d get up at some crazy hour – I’m pretty much an insomniac – and the first thing I’d do was listen out to see if he was up, too. The dark of rural Wales, the quiet lonesomeness of these small towns, can get to you. Past midnight, there’s nothing happening, and nowhere to go. No all-night diner. No cafe. No Mac’s or 7-11. No bars that stay open, and no gas stations, either. No people or light or signs of life. And so at night, when I couldn’t sleep, I didn’t have much. But I had Gwilym, and the sounds he made. The walls between these old terraces, they’re real thin. I would hear his radio, or his footsteps on the stairs, or his voice as he talked on the phone. He had a sister who lived in Alberta, where my family comes from. He could call her up late, because of the time difference. He must also have had a sliding closet door. I never saw it, but I heard it. I heard it rolling back and forth, opening and closing, as he fetched things.

I’d always been able to detect those sounds, ever since we’d moved in. Now, nothing. I took a sip of beer, warm and metallic, and listened to that nothingness, straining against it. I kept hoping to hear something – anything – which of course made no damn sense. But then I did. I did hear something. I heard that same clack-clack-clack, coming from the backyard. I’d almost forgotten what I’d come down to do. I went out there with my beer. The breeze was still blowing – hot and blustery and sort of tempestuous. It wasn’t normal, that kind of weather. Not for Wales. Then there was that clacking. It was coming from Gwilym’s yard.

I went around the fence, over to his side, ready to find whatever I was going to find.

*

Gwilym had lived on the terrace longer than anybody. In fact, he’d been born on it. He’d moved away, during his stint on the freighters, but when he’d finished with that he returned to Llanidloes, and bought his old house back, his mother’s house. Like ours, it was a two-up two-down factory worker’s cottage. He had worked in the local factory until it closed. I worked in a factory, too – up the road in Newtown – and before that, back home, I’d worked on a fishing barge. So we had that between us. We had Alberta, too, on account of his sister. He knew all the towns, with their odd names: Drumheller and Medicine Hat and Stony Plain and Black Diamond. We would talk about those places, and what the weather was like over there, and how the Flames and Oilers were doing. When we talked, we talked over the fence between our yards. Gwilym would lean on it, his arms folded across the top, and doing that pulled up the sleeves of his shirt, revealing the anchor tattoo on his forearm.

I have a tattoo, too – but on my back, so I don’t think he ever saw it.

Since he’d been around so long, and was retired, he’d become a kind of caretaker on the terrace. When something went wrong in our house – or anybody’s house – he could fix it. He knew those houses, had seen the work done on them over the years. He’d even done some himself: after the factory closed down, he worked as a builder, on a casual basis. He’d added some of the bathrooms, fitted the kitchens. He had boarded up all the fireplaces, when that was the thing to do, and he had opened them up again, exposing the old brickwork, after the country cottage look came back into fashion. He had helped us do that to our place, and fit our woodburner. And lay our flooring. When I tore up the carpet in our living room, I found old quarry tiles underneath. They were all damp and cracked and there were earthworms coming up between them. It turned out those tiles had been laid on bare soil. Gwilym said that had been the way, back in the day. He and I dug them all out of there, put in a layer of damp-proofing, and fitted new hardwood planking. There were other things, too. He showed me how to replace a washer on our leaky faucet, how to thaw the drainpipe when it froze up last winter, and how to re-point the brickwork on the windward side of the house. Sometimes it seemed as if our house would have damn near fallen apart if it wasn’t for Gwilym.

When we went on vacation, for weeks or months at a time – gallivanting around Europe, or heading back home to see my family – he would cut our lawn, and tend our garden, without us asking him. Some people, they might say we were taking advantage of the old guy, and maybe that’s true. I’ll admit that. But if you tried to stop him, or thank him, he would wave it off. He wouldn’t even really acknowledge it. He was like the shoemaker’s elves, in that story.You’d look away, or go away, and something would get done. The yard always looked better when we came back from holiday than when we’d left. But never as good as his. His lawn had always been real tidy, damn near immaculate: the edges neat, the flower beds rich and fertile and free from weeds, the grass cropped short as a putting green. Now, though, it was becoming overgrown. It had only been a week since he’d died, but he hadn’t been able to do any yard work awhile before that. And in the spring, in this kind of weather, nature is positively explosive. The grass was already a few inches high, sticking up in thick patches, and dandelions had sprung up around the edges. Moss was creeping across the paving stones, which were dotted with garden snails and big brown banana slugs. I had to be careful, picking my way between them. I hate stepping on the damn things in the dark.

All the gardens on the terrace are narrow – only six feet across – but they go a ways back. At the end of his, Gwilym had built a shed. The shed light was on, the door open. It was fanning in the breeze. That was what was making the clacking. Gwilym had never left his shed open. At first, I figured it must have been local kids. They sometimes come up from the football pitch below our terrace, after drinking in the stands. I thought maybe they’d snuck in, to see if the old guy had anything worth taking. They wouldn’t have done it while he was alive – it’s a real nice town, in that way – but maybe now that he was gone, they figured it would be okay.

I stepped in there. The workbench was clear, the drawers all shut, the tools hanging from hooks on the wall, his lawnmower propped upright in the corner. The shed was as tidy as always, as tidy as he’d left it. Nothing seemed to be amiss, or out of place. I figured the door must have been left open by the surveyor, or appraisal agent, or whatever you call them. I’d seen him earlier that day, poking around: a beefy guy in a grey suit, one size too small. He’d had a pen and a clipboard with him, taking stock and making notes. Reckoning what they could get for the place. Gwilym’s sister – the one over in Canada – was going to sell it, furniture and all, at a low price for a quick turnover. He didn’t have any other relatives left, and nobody in Wales.

I snapped off the light, took a sip of beer, and stepped back outside. Over the fence, in our yard, I saw movement. Somebody – a shadow – was floating down the walk. I stood still. I didn’t know who it was. Not at first. But then by the shape I could tell it was Lowri. That bulge gave her away. Her robe barely covered it. She had both hands folded across her abdomen, carrying the weight of her belly before her like a medicine ball.

I put down my beer can – tucking it in a flower pot – and called her name. It took her a moment to figure out I was in Gwilym’s yard. When she did, she came over to meet me at the fence, so that we were facing each other across it, like Gwilym and I used to – only now I was standing where he’d always stood.

‘I woke up and you weren’t there,’ she said.

‘I couldn’t sleep again.’

‘I was worried. I’d been having a dream.’

‘I thought I heard something. I tried to tell you.’

‘I don’t remember that.’

‘It was Gwilym’s shed door, banging in the breeze.’

‘He was in my dream. Gwilym was.’

The way she said it got my attention.

‘What kind of dream was it?’ I asked.

‘One of those kind.’

She started telling me about it. It was some dream. She said Gwilym had been in bed with me and her, lying between us. He was old and gnarled and yellow-skinned – like he’d been near the end – but also very small, and healthy-looking. It was as if the wrinkles were a baby’s wrinkles, and as if the yellow tinge to his skin was from the sort of jaundice that a baby gets, not the cancer.

She said, ‘He was old and young, at the same time.’

‘Like Benjamin Button,’ I said.

But Lowri didn’t get the reference, or didn’t care about it. She was unconsciously rubbing her belly, like a crystal ball, and looking past me, towards the hump-backed hills.

‘Maybe it means we’re having a boy,’ she said.

‘That’s not what the scans seemed to show.’

‘The scans aren’t always right.’

‘I know that. I read about that.’

I folded my arms, and leaned on the fence, in a pose a lot like Gwilym’s.I wasn’t sure about having a boy.I wasn’t sure about it at all.We’d been expecting a girl. I could leave most of it to Lowri, if it was a girl. If it was a boy, I’d have to teach him things. How to throw a ball. How to hold his hockey stick. How to drive and how to tie a tie. I didn’t know if I had it in me, all of that. I didn’t even know how to tie a tie.

‘It was just a dream,’ I said.

She was still gazing at the hills. I couldn’t make out her face. All I could see was her hair, in the light of the streetlamp. It formed this wild tangle around her head, thicker than it had ever been. That was because of the hormones. The pregnancy hormones, they trigger all these changes in a woman – another thing nobody had ever told me. They had made Lowri’s hair fuller, her breasts bigger, her skin sort of shiny and radiant. It was downright terrifying, all those changes. Standing there in the dark, my wife didn’t look like my wife anymore. It was as if she’d been taken away, and replaced with this other wife, like a changeling. One of the faeries, maybe. She closed her eyes and inhaled through her nostrils, taking a deep breath.

She said, ‘I haven’t been outside at night for so long.’

‘It’s a weird one. So warm and windy.’

‘Everything is different at night.’

‘Sure – you can’t see anything.’

She looked at me, an appraising look. And maybe a bit disappointed.

‘Don’t stay out too long,’ she said.

‘I’ll be up in a bit.’

She drifted back the way she’d come, fading into the shadows. I stood for a spell, hands on my hips, staring at the yard and thinking about her dream. If she’d dreamed it, it could come true. I knew all about Lowri and her dreams. We didn’t talk about these things but they were accepted. Part of the package that had come with marrying her. Maybe she really was some kind of faerie. If she’d dreamed it, we could be having a boy.

I went inside to get the mickey of Bell’s that I had stashed under the cereal cupboard. It was the last of my whisky. I’d stopped buying whisky, when we saw that blue line, when the first test came back positive. I was trying to stick to beer, as part of my plan. Beer slows you down and fills you up. With whisky, you have a few shots and you feel as if you’re just getting started. But if I was going to have a son I needed some of that whisky. I brought it outside and sat on the bench that overlooked our yard and I drank from the flask, the glass cool on my lips, the liquor hot and molten in my throat.

The grass in our yard was even longer than in Gwilym’s. It had grown so long it had taken to flopping over under its own weight. There weren’t just dandelions, but buttercup and dock weed and forget-me-not. The flower beds were tangled up with shrubs and plants that I couldn’t even name. A writer had lived in the house before us, and she’d planted all that stuff. Our side of the fence was overrun by Russian vine. And at the back of the yard, if you can believe it, was a poison tree. Some kind of oleander. It was all twisted and gnarled, with a few brittle leaves, and looked as if it carried a curse. I was supposed to uproot it and get rid of it before the baby arrived. If a little kid got up close to that tree, and ate one of the leaves, he would die. That’s what the estate agent had told us, with a solemn expression, on the day we signed the mortgage contract. But I’d never gotten around to digging the damned thing up, or tending the garden, or starting on any of the other jobs I’d been meaning to do.

Even the sidewalk, right where I was sitting, was a job. The concrete was all cracked and buckled. I’d been meaning to repair it, and had asked Gwilym the best way to go about it. He knew, and he offered to help me, too. He’d even booked a cement mixer for us, and ordered supplies. But then he got sick. He got too sick to do that, or anything else, either.

On the sidewalk at my feet, a snail was crawling along, leaving a trail behind it that glistened in the dimness. I watched it curl and stretch, inch by inch, with its feelers out, quivering and sensing for a way forward, groping blindly. I didn’t know what it was looking for, that snail. I didn’t even know what snails like to eat. Leaves, maybe. Or minerals in the dirt. I splashed a little whisky in its path, and waited to see what would happen. It came up to the dribble of liquid, which must have been as big as a pond to it, and stopped. Its feelers quavered. Then it turned and began to navigate around. I held out the bottle, over the snail, and tilted it until the liquid reached the neck, near the top. I knew what would happen. Or I thought I knew. It would be like acid, or poison. But I didn’t have it in me to do that.

I poured more poison in my mouth instead, and stood up. I started patrolling the yard, looking for things to do. Gwilym, when he was around, had always been doing, doing, doing. He’d never hurried, but he was never idle, either. Diligent. He was diligent, which I guess is how he’d managed to get so much done, and stay on top of things. I’d never been like that. I’d always put things off, let them slide. I’d just have a hard time getting started, is all. But maybe it was about time. Without Gwilym around, the whole damned terrace was going to seed. That was a phrase he was fond of using: going to seed. Better take care of that, he would say, before it goes to seed. Or, a man can’t let his house go to seed, now, can he?

‘Damn straight,’ I said, as if he was right there. ‘We can’t let this place go toseed.’

Then I did something crazy. I marched to the back of the garden and started kicking at that poisonous tree, that goddamned oleander, again and again, until it cracked and went over. And I tore tangles of Russian vine off the fence, and grabbed big fistfuls of dandelions from the lawn. It was a start. Our yard already looked a little better. What really got to me, though, was seeing Gwilym’s yard. The state of it, I mean. I knew how the old guy would have felt about that. So I went around to his side, to the shed. The door was still open. His lawnmower was an old-fashioned push mower, with a cylinder of blades that twirled on the axel. I’d seen him pushing it around his yard, and around our yard, too. I wheeled it out. Then I knocked back the rest of the Bell’s and set the flask carefully on the patio.

I’d never used a push mower before, but there wasn’t much to it. I released the catch on the safety lock, lined the front up with the edge of the lawn, and guided it along. Like all of Gwilym’s tools the mower was well-kept, the wheels oiled, the blades clean. As they spun around, they flashed and made a soft snick-snick sound, like a barber’s scissors. Bits of grass fluttered up and caught in the breeze. The smell was really something: sweet and fresh, like corn on the cob when you’re stripping the husks. I walked the mower the full length of his lawn, pirouetted it on the spot, and pushed it back. I kept on doing that.

About halfway through, I heard a clap of thunder. Then came the rain – this warm spring rain, the drops fat and heavy as marbles. I didn’t stop, even when it really started to hammer down. Pretty soon my shirt was drenched, my jeans were soaked, and my shoes were covered in bits of soggy grass. Rainwater ran down my face, got in my eyes, drizzled off my nose. It was like being in the shower. The next time I manoeuvred the mower around, I looked up and saw Lowri standing at the bedroom window, watching me, her face pale as a moonstone behind the glass. She didn’t wave or smile. But she didn’t tell me to stop, either.

GROUND-NESTER

Stevie Davies

When Daisy noses out the mother bird, bloody meat and scrambled eggs is what she’ll be, Chris says. But the labrador – speeding down the lawn, nostrils flown with rich scents – lollops past the ground-nester into the poppied wilderness thronged with field mice and hedgehogs, where their garden joins the common.

‘Blinded poor Daisy’s nose she has,’ Carly says, on tiptoe at the kitchen window.‘Noses are eyes, aren’t they, in the doggy world?’

The mother bird has shrunk to a dapple of shadow, hardly visible. The earth’s tremor as her enemy swept by must have registered in her belly, jostling the yolks in their shells.

‘Daisy’s daft but not that daft,’ Chris says. Only a suicidal quirk of nature could have brought the ground-nester to the edge of a Glamorgan housing estate, a tasty come-hither to predators.

‘But I’ve heard about this on the radio. Snipe, was it? – and quail – they switch off something smelly in their glands and that camouflages them. Nature’s so clever.’

The ground-nester’s a nondescript sort of bird, dun and puny: no snipe or quail. I can’t lose Carly, thinks Chris, even as he sees how naive she is. She has never surrendered that childhood capacity for wonder. What she sees in him, he’ll never know. But whatever it is, he thanks his stars. Not that Chris believes in stars or gods or any powers except Sod’s Law. Again he keeps this to himself. Carly’s rooted in a way he’ll never be, except through her. It scares him, his dependency, but what can you do?

Chris never names his ex, even to himself. Always two sides?I don’t think so.Never mind:she’s history.

Carly doesn’t care for his bitter moods. Chris understands that and bites his tongue. She stands at the sink in skinny jeans and long grey sweater, all five foot nothing of her, swaying, arms folded, watching the mother bird, and he’d do anything for her. He folds his arms about his partner’s slight body; they rock gently, observing the scene in the garden. Daisy, loping back, again misses the scent of prey, the dope.

‘I’m off,’ he says. ‘When’s Bella dropping Jarvis off?’ He tries not to seeherin their daughter’s slutty clothes and slovenly walk and her willingness to dump his grandson on them. On benefits, nil ambition, going nowhere. Cheap rings crowd Bella’s fingers, looking as if they’d dropped out of Christmas crackers. Clogs to clogs in three generations.

‘She didn’t say.’

Though not Jarvis’ biological grandmother, Carly dotes on the toddler. She cooks him healthy food, worrying about the takeaways Bella feeds him. You can’t broach this without Bella exploding – stomping around in her skimpy clothes, thong showing when she bends over, teeth nicotine-stained. Older than her years Bella looks and somehow bewildered in a way that gnaws at Chris: crap dad he was. Carly tries to support Bella. She insists there’s good in her; it’s just that Bella conceals this in case it’s seen as weakness. And Jarvis is a sweetheart. The way Carly sees it, at least he gets a couple of decent meals in the week and perhaps he’ll ask his mam for broccoli of his own accord. Doesn’t Chris think so?

In … your … dreams, darling! But Chris admires his partner’s caring ways and is grateful. More of a mam and nan to his family thanher, that’s for sure.

*

Nobody’s in when Chris gets home. Carly’s on the lawn with Jarvis straddling one hip. Hallo, you! Chris taps on the window and she beckons him out.Bampi’s coming, Jarvis! Look!Jarvis in a rapture of welcome leans out, calling Chris close.Here he is! Give Bampi a lovely cwtch!Securing his grandfather with the free arm, Jarvis locks the two adults to one another and himself. Kisses all round.

They’re keeping a distance from the bird, so as not to alarm her. Carly plants one foot in front of Daisy, whose baffled nose twitches. She takes the foreign body for a toy perhaps: but not her toy. The ground-nester, sunk into herself, is motionless, oily secretions shut down, glands closed. Nothing helps Daisy identify prey.

‘What I don’t get,’ says Carly, ‘is how she can feed while she’s stuck here. And when the chicks are born, how’ll she cope then?’

‘Maybe they don’t feed when they’re brooding, maybe they’ve laid down fat or something?’

‘Could be. Watch this space.’

A force-field surrounds the creature in a bubble of safety. Daisy, bored, slopes off to track foreign urine in the wilderness.

*

Jarvis is staying the weekend. Bella’s estranged partner, Taylor, that sordid waste of space, comes round – egging Jarvis on to play rugby in the house. It takes time to calm the lad after all the excitement: cheeks flaring with eczema, Jarvis grizzles as Carly washes his hair in the bath, singingRow, row, row your boat. He’s gone blond overnight, she exclaims – look, Chris.Gently down the stream.Were you blond as a child?Merrily merrily merrily merrily.Perched on the toilet seat with a can, Chris watches his grandson melt into Carly’s loving kindness.Life is but a dream.She hoists him out to be cuddled in a warmed towel. Her face then: there’s something so beautiful in its expression. Jarvis, calmed, slips his thumb in his mouth.

‘Can I ask you something, Chris?’

‘’Course you can.’

‘It’s a big ask.’

‘Ask.’

‘Could Jarvie stay more of the time, Chris? Pretty much live with us even? I love him as my own. I know she has her problems and I do sympathise … but honest-to-God Bella can be neglectful, there’s no other word for it. Take your time, don’t answer now.’

‘Well,cariad…’

‘No, love, don’t answer now…’

‘It’s not that I…’

‘Don’t, please. Just think about it.’

Chris defers the answer.

‘Oh and by the way,’ Carly adds. ‘I rang the RSPB. A young guy came round – eyes on stalks. He reckons it looks like a common sparrow but sparrows don’t act like this. The area boss’ll be round tomorrow. Meanwhile, we’ve to give the bird space – and see off cats. Daisy’s doing a great job at that.’

*

He’s working on the loft conversion when his mobile rings. ‘Come home, Chris, will you? If you can.’

She’s been crying.What, love? Tell me. He rushes to her, wraps his arms round her.

‘It’s Bella.’

‘What about Bella?’

‘The way shewastoday when she picked him up. Shouldn’t have been driving, honest-to-God. Her eyes weren’t right. Did you ever take stuff?’

‘No way,’ Chris says, his heart in his mouth, not wanting to hear about Bella’s antics – but your mind charges ahead of itself imagining bad things, the worst. And thinking defensively,Not my fault, she’s grown up now, it’s her mam, her scummy pals, not my responsibility.

But it is his responsibility, with Jarvis in the equation.

‘Why – you think…?’

‘She wasn’t right. That’s all I can say.’

‘But you let her take him?’

Carly flushes. Hastily Chris backtracks. He knows exactly what Bella’s like. The small, sad eyes peeping, alert for ambush. The shrieking laugh when nothing’s funny.Coming with me he is, I’m his mam, ta for having him, say tara, good boy, and stop that fucken racket.Something like that.

‘I couldn’t stop her, Chris.’

‘’Course not. Sorry.’

‘Worst thing was, the poor dab didn’t want to go. Howling he was – and it hurts her when he prefers us, how wouldn’t it? That’s why she smacked him – not hard but still – I told her straight and she flared up. Nothing you can say, is there? I didn’t ask straightout about drugs – didn’t want her to go off on one.’ Carly rubs away tears with the heels of her hands. ‘We need to consider taking him.’

Chris hears himself saying, ‘We might still have our own baby,cariad.’