Margot & Me Page 9

  The buses are so infrequent that when Margot offers to drive me part of the way I have little choice but to accept. ‘Don’t forget about your mother, will you? She still needs your help,’ she says once we’re zipping down the country lanes.

  ‘I won’t,’ I say defensively. ‘But she’s getting better.’

  ‘Still.’

  ‘I’ve been looking after her for years. I know what I’m doing,’ I add, leaving while you abandoned her to live in the middle of nowhere unsaid this time.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Margot says, and I have to check if she’s being sarcastic. She doesn’t seem to be. ‘That was unnecessary, you’re right. It’s nice you’ve made a new friend. And I hear the food at China Garden is very fair, not that I’ve ever cared for fast food. Too salty. Too many chemicals.’

  I think there might have been something positive buried in that sentence somewhere, so I quit while I’m ahead. Margot drops me near Llanmarion bus station about ten miles away from the farm. She then goes off to run some errands but I only have to wait about five minutes for Danny’s bus to arrive.

  Llanmarion is even more poxy up close. There’s a Wimpy and some pound shops, but there really are a lot of betting and charity shops – one no doubt facilitating the use of the other. ‘Is this it?’ I ask.

  ‘Afraid so. If you want the proper shops we’ll have to go into Swansea. It doesn’t take too long on the train.’

  ‘Well, this explains those suicides out in the forest,’ I say with a sly smile.

  Danny laughs. ‘Come on, there’s one good shop. Get this, it’s a bookshop and it’s got a café in it! Whatever next?!’ He takes my hand and we set off past Boots.

  As we pass the chemist there’s a commotion. A burly security guard with a skinhead, steroid arms and ubiquitous Celtic-band tattoo drags a woman out of the store, and the security gates start pealing. ‘Get off me!’ she shrieks, adding some top-shelf expletives for good measure. She pushes the guard off her and staggers into the road, obviously wasted.

  Danny steers me away. ‘See her?’ he breathes in my ear.

  I look more closely. She has a haggard face, greasy hair scraped tightly back into a Croydon facelift. She’s missing her front teeth, breasts spilling out of a boob tube under a soiled Adidas tracksuit. ‘Yeah. God, what a mess.’

  A pause. ‘That’s Megan Jones’s mum.’

  ‘What? She looks about fifty!’

  ‘Nope. She’s only in her thirties.’

  She must, as my mum would say, have had a hard life. I feel a smidgeon of sympathy for Megan, although my mum’s had issues too and I don’t go around terrorising half the school. The security guard empties out her bags and sure enough finds a load of shoplifted baby clothes. Danny takes my hand again and pulls me away, although I’m oddly compelled to watch. ‘Come on.’

  We pass street drinkers and pramfaces and a crazy Bible ranter already worrying about the millennium. To be fair, all of these types inhabit Clapham High Street too, so I can’t really blame this one on Wales. The apocalyptic cloud formations rolling off the hills I can however. In the car Margot commented the sky was ‘black like someone’s punched it’ and she has a point.

  Avid Bookshop is in an end terrace next to the postbox and a kebab shop. It’s a weathered building made from warty granite and leaded glass. Upstairs the windows are steamed over from a hissing coffee machine. A bell tinkles as we enter and we head straight up the spiral staircase to the little mezzanine overlooking the bookshop. Danny was right; this is lovely – as lovely a bookshop as I’d have found anywhere in London.

  And they do both lattes and pains au chocolat.

  The tables are a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party affair, with an assortment of mismatched Marie Antoinette chairs and antique crockery. For a second I can see this in a fashion spread, until I remember where I am. We order hot chocolates topped with gloopy whipped cream and marshmallows – the sort of calorie cocktail a true ballerina wouldn’t even look at, let alone consume – and sit at the table nearest the window. I kiss my Fonteyn days farewell and take a big gulp of my drink.

  Danny fills me in on essential Maes-y-Coed gossip: which teachers are having extra-marital affairs; which teachers smoke between lessons; which teacher allegedly murdered his wife. I’m not sure I believe that last one.

  He gives me a bit of background on Bronwyn – apparently her dad is every bit as eccentric as she is, and her mum ran away to join a commune when Bronwyn was six. ‘And what about you and Dewi Allen?’ he asks finally, like he’s been dying to the whole time. ‘There are rumours …’

  ‘They’re not true,’ I assure him. ‘We just have to get the same bus. Anyway … he royally pissed me off the other day.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I tell him.

  ‘Did you have a boyfriend back in London?’ he asks, adding a third sachet of brown sugar to an already sickly-sweet drink.

  ‘Sort of,’ I say. ‘There was a guy called Xander.’

  ‘Was he cute?’

  I smile. ‘He was like totally dreamy. You know River Phoenix? Kinda like him. Before he died, obviously.’

  ‘Did you break up?’

  ‘Yeah …’ I almost say, I was too busy looking after my mum to have a boyfriend, but stop myself. ‘It didn’t work out.’

  ‘Did you have sex?’ Typical! Boys are always so obsessed with doing it.

  ‘Danny! No! I’m fifteen! And also I’m saving myself for Keanu Reeves.’ Or Thom Deacon, whichever asks me out first.

  ‘Not Dewi?’ he asks with an impish grin. God, why are boys so immature?

  ‘No. Absolutely not.’

  ‘Shame. He’s pretty hot.’

  I decide it’s safe to go for it. ‘You think Dewi’s hot? Does that mean …?’

  Danny rolls his eyes. ‘Look. It’s not a big deal, like. Yeah, I like guys, but you can’t tell anyone, OK? I’m sure in Clapham guys can walk around holding hands and stuff, but here I’d get my head kicked in. Only Bronwyn and Sophie know.’

  ‘I won’t say anything, I promise.’

  ‘I know everyone at school thinks I’m a giant flamer anyway, but if my dad finds out he might actually disown me.’

  His tone is jovial, but I can tell he means it. What must that be like? To worry your dad might hate you for something you have no control over? OK, I’m not exactly flavour of the month with Margot, but this is much worse. ‘Is it really that bad?’

  ‘Ach, we’ve never got on. I don’t think I was what he was expecting when the doctor said, “Mr Chung, you have a bouncing baby boy!” I’m a terrible disappointment.’

  I take his hand over the table. ‘I don’t see why. Who wants a generic baby boy, when you could have a real-life Danny?’

  ‘Aw, babes!’ He smiles. ‘It don’t matter anyway, does it, like? I’ll be heading straight to London when we finish Year 13. I wanna be in Cats or Les Mis.’ He pouts. ‘Yeah I’m a gaysian boy who lives in a Chinese takeaway and wants to be in musical theatre! I just collect those stereotypes like charms on a bracelet! What you gonna do about it?’

  I return home and find a new addition in the living room. A video machine! I’ve never been so happy to see an old VHS player in my life. ‘Where did you find it?’ I ask, actually kneeling before it as though it were a religious icon. I feel I should leave an offering.

  Margot swishes around in the kitchen with a feather duster. ‘It was in Oxfam in town. Only ten pounds.’

  This is the closest I will probably ever come to wanting to hug her. ‘Thank you! Oh my God!’ I turn to Mum. ‘Can we watch a film tonight? Pretty Woman? Dirty Dancing?’

  ‘Of course we can!’ Mum smiles. ‘But before we do that, look what Margot found in the attic …’ She picks up the remote and presses play.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Watch.’

  It’s a grainy home movie. The date stamp in the bottom left-hand corner says 12/07/80 and a woman in a wedding dress is standing in front of a mirror. ‘Is t
hat you?’ I ask, hand over my mouth.

  ‘It is!’

  A voice on the camera speaks. ‘Turn around, darling, let’s get a look at you.’ It’s my Grandad’s voice and it’s like hearing a ghost. I can just about see his reflection holding the camera in the mirror next to Mum.

  Mum turns around to show him her dress. It’s ivory lace with bell sleeves.

  ‘Look at your giant Farrah Fawcett hair!’

  ‘It was very fashionable!’ Mum says, rubbing her crop. ‘I bet you don’t even remember me with hair …’

  I roll my eyes at her. ‘Duh, of course I do. You look pretty.’

  We turn back to the video. There’s a cut and now we see Mum getting into her wedding car with Grandad and Margot. ‘Margot, I’m totally digging that hat!’ I call to the kitchen. Margot comes through to have a look at the floppy wide-brimmed hat she’s paired with a periwinkle bell-bottom trouser suit.

  ‘It was truly the decade taste neglected,’ she says with a wry smile.

  The car leaves and there’s another cut. This time, the church bells are ringing and, through a blizzard of confetti, stride my mother and father, hand in hand. ‘Oh, it’s Dad.’ I cover my mouth with my hand and turn back to Mum on the sofa. She just watches in silence, misty-eyed.

  He’s so handsome. He had a neat beard and his brown suit has flares too. I cannot comprehend why he married in a brown suit, but whatever. ‘Give her a kiss, Paul!’ someone shouts, and he kisses Mum. Everyone cheers. Mum and Dad laugh and laugh.

  Behind me, Mum wraps her arms around my chest and gives me a backwards hug. I squeeze her hands back.

  Later that evening I am settled in with Mum and Margot in front of the television, when halfway through my Adventures in Babysitting video there’s a power cut.

  ‘Oh, the bloody electrics out here are a joke!’ Margot clatters around under the kitchen sink and produces a baton-sized flashlight. ‘There’s an old oil generator out back. I’ll go see if I can get her fired up.’

  The darkness is suffocating. ‘Mum?’ I say, unable to see her across the lounge.

  ‘I’m here,’ she replies, and that’s all I need to know.

  After ten minutes or so, Margot stomps back through the back door. ‘It’s no good. I can’t get the back-up to start. We’ll just have to wait.’ She rounds up some candles – long and tapered, short and stout – and we play cards for a while. Margot teaches me Knockout Whist, and in return I teach her and Mum how to play Cheat. With nothing else to talk about except the games, we all relax. The candles on the coffee table give us a comfortable globe to play in, somehow more neutral than the whole farm, which is undisputed Margot territory. Thankfully the oven is gas, so we can at least make tea with water heated in a pan on the stove.

  With no TV to watch we all go to bed early. I have two candles on my bedside table and, in the flickering light, Margot’s diary seems to call to me. Oh what the hell. I push the duvet back to retrieve it from inside the pillowcase. Where was I? Farm. Spooky forest. Bryn is a tool.

  Sunday 19th January, 1941

  Well, today was MOST eventful. I’m writing wrapped in a blanket in front of the fire. Glynis is worried I might be hysterical and she could well be right. My thoughts are all hither and thither but I’ll do my best to piece them together into some sort of logical tapestry.

  Where to begin? I think today is the first day I didn’t wake up disorientated, unsure of where I am. I rose early and helped Glynis in the kitchen. I still have no idea where it is she vanishes off to every day – even on a Sunday – but in the mornings it’s all hands on deck, as Father would say. A farm never stops, there’s always something to do: Ivor is in and out all day long, covered in oil and muck, and of course they have three extra mouths to feed.

  I like Glynis an awful lot. She explained that while the barn and stables were built in the post-industrial boom, the old farmhouse had mostly been torn down and rebuilt by Ivor himself after the last war. It was an accident during construction that mangled his hand and arm.

  I plucked up the courage to ask if they couldn’t have children of their own. ‘Well, that’s what we tell people,’ she replied with a slight smile as she sliced a bloomer loaf into generous slabs to serve with honey. ‘Ivor and I are on the same page when it comes to wee ones. They’re nice for a while, but even nicer to hand back.’

  I didn’t pry any further. Glynis seems happy with her choice, although I wonder how they’ve avoided falling pregnant. I do wish I knew where it is she goes each morning. I confess I’ve wondered if she’s taking food to the black market, although that doesn’t seem in character.

  Busying myself with laundry and mending Peter’s torn trousers, I didn’t even notice the morning passing away until Doreen and Bess arrived at twelve on the dot. Neither had been out to the farm before and were keen to see the animals.

  For Doreen it was quite the novelty. Interesting that after less than a week I consider myself to be an old hand, and expertly introduced her to the cow and chickens and horse.

  The weather was winter crisp with pale, frosty sunshine. Pleasant certainly, but hardly picnic weather, so Glynis invited the girls to share a bowl of hearty vegetable soup with us before we set off into the woods for our hike. ‘Just you be careful out in the forest,’ Glynis warned me as I tucked my hair into my mohair hat. ‘Stick to the paths, come back the way you go and stay out of the stream.’

  ‘Because of the mari-morgans?’ I asked with a smirk.

  ‘No, because it’s bloody freezing and you’ll catch your death!’ She wrapped a scarf around my neck.

  I think my favourite part of the farm – and I haven’t mentioned it yet – is the delightful rose garden beyond the chicken shed. Ivor built it for Glynis as somewhere to read on a summer’s evening, so she says. Paving slabs lie in an intricate spiral, and there’s a dainty wrought-iron bench under the shade of a handsome cooking-apple tree. At this time of year the rose bushes are thorny brown skeletons, but in the summer I can only imagine how sweet-smelling the blooms will be. I wonder if I’ll still be here.

  The three of us exited through the rose garden and were hardly two steps down the path when I heard Bryn calling after us the way Ivor rounds up the sheep. ‘You didn’t wait for us!’ he shouted as he, Andrew and Bill followed us down the garden path.

  ‘Who invited them?’ I asked in a stage whisper.

  ‘Doreen,’ Bess said, her tone flat. ‘I wonder why Reg didn’t come.’

  The boys caught up with us. ‘You’re not going into the woods alone, are you, ladies?’ Bryn asked.

  ‘Of course not,’ I told him. ‘I was just thinking how ghastly it would be to enjoy nature in the company of fellow women, or alone with my troublesome thoughts. Thank goodness you’re here to save us from ourselves.’

  Bryn was too thick-headed to pick up on my flagrant sarcasm, but Andrew suppressed a smile.

  ‘Where’s Reg?’ Bess asked.

  ‘We don’t want him hanging around with us any more. People will get ideas.’

  ‘What sort of ideas?’ I asked firmly.

  ‘My da doesn’t want people thinking we’re Negro-lovers. Everyone knows they’re lazy good-for-nothings.’

  ‘Oh for heaven’s sake!’ I exploded. ‘What utter codswallop –’

  But Bryn was already striding into the woods with Doreen trotting after him. Bess was crestfallen. I took her mitten-clad hand in mine and gave it a sisterly squeeze. I wanted to tell her how much trouble it would be for her and Reg in this godforsaken town, but a part of me realised I wouldn’t be able to stop her heart’s desires any more than I would the charging bull in the next field.

  Bryn led the way into the woods, and suddenly it was a far less inviting prospect. Doreen clung to his arm like a damsel in distress although her act was more wooden than the surrounding trees. I managed to phase out his crowing and absorbed the forest. The air was a tonic, rinsing the last of the London smog from my lungs. With the exception of a few hardy evergreens, the
trees were bare and the frozen ground hard-packed and silvery. It was like a Christmas card; I dearly wished I had brought my camera – I even saw a robin redbreast perched knowingly in a holly bush.

  After a while I heard the waterfall and understood the tales of mysterious ‘whispering’. The rushing water did sound like a trillion hushed conversations all at once. The air changed, becoming even fresher, as we neared.

  ‘Here it is,’ Bryn said as we zigzagged downhill towards the riverbed, the path becoming narrower, more treacherous. I had to cling to Bess a couple of times to stop myself slipping.

  ‘I see what you mean,’ I admitted. ‘It does sound like voices.’

  ‘Listen,’ Andrew added and we all fell silent. The chatter of the stream was urgent, scandalised. The water was fast-flowing, much too quick to freeze, and would no doubt rage faster as the snow melted off the hills. The strangest part was, the water was so clear, so pure, I had the strangest urge to jump right in, to submerge myself entirely like a baptism. But Glynis was right of course; the shock of the cold would be deadly.

  For a blissful moment, even Bryn stayed quiet, each of us happy to simply be. ‘It’s so beautiful,’ Doreen said dreamily, stating the obvious.

  ‘Follow me,’ Bryn said, leading the way along the edge of the stream. Here the earth was slick and we had to take care, helping each other from stepping stone to stepping stone. We formed a chain and it felt like an adventure – brave explorers trooping through the Amazon basin searching for rare orchids and the last dodo.

  The rush of water grew louder as we neared the waterfall. Well, it wasn’t much of a waterfall, more water running down over a craggy rock formation. ‘This is it,’ Bryn said. ‘Where the mari-morgans live.’

  ‘There’s no such thing!’ Bess said. ‘It’s just a story to scare children.’

  ‘So go in the cave then.’

  ‘No!’ Bess said at once.

  ‘What cave?’ I asked.

  ‘Just up there. Can you see?’ Bryn pointed about halfway up the cliff face and I saw there was a jagged crevice, a slit between two boulders. ‘That’s where they take you.’