Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I’ve never seen mountains. Mountains that make the sky smaller.
Easter weekend. Celyn asked me up weeks ago, careful with it, like the asking might chip. Last Christmas this is where they’d come without me. The year I’d broken it. I spent the day in Lewisham looking at the empty chair. Now it’s my hands on the wheel.
Celyn’s in the passenger seat, feet on the dash, the soft old white trainers. The nails orange today, bright against the moss-green jumper like a traffic cone in a field.
Stubble, two days, dark, no makeup. The hair tucked behind both ears. The earrings catching the grey light through the windscreen.
Celyn’s held it from Betws-y-Coed. The home weight, the shoulders dropping. The hand on the window, fingers on the glass.
‘Left here,’ Celyn says. ‘After the bridge.’
I take the left, the road narrows. Didn’t think that was possible but the road narrows and there’s a stone wall on one side and a river on the other and Celyn’s looking out the window at the mountain.
Snowdon, they told me, except it’s not called that, it’s Yr Wyddfa, and I’ve said it wrong three times and Celyn laughed every time and didn’t correct me and that’s worse.
‘There.’ Celyn points. The hand.
A house: stone, grey, slate roof, two windows either side of a green door, gravel. A van, white, dirty, the lettering on the side: O. BEYNON PLUMBING & HEATING.
Celyn hasn’t moved.
The hand. The one that was pointing. It’s on the lap now. The fingers pressing into the knee.
‘All right?’
‘Yeah.’ Celyn breathes. The breath. In. Out. ‘Yeah. It’s just. They’re a lot.’
‘Your family’s a lot.’
‘My family’s a lot.’ The mouth tightens. A smile that doesn’t reach. ‘They’ll call me Gethin.’
The name, I’ve heard it once. A phone call, three months ago, Catrin’s voice through the speaker and the name that isn’t Celyn and how Celyn’s face went flat.
‘I know,’ I say.
‘I don’t respond to it. I haven’t. It’s not a fight. I just don’t respond. And they’ll use it and I won’t turn and there’ll be this gap where the name hangs in the air and nobody says anything and then Mam says it again louder because she thinks I haven’t heard and I hate myself for it.’
The hand, tighter on the knee. The orange nails white at the tips.
My hand finds the hand. The knuckles. The ring, silver, thin, under my thumb.
‘I’m here,’ I say. Don’t have anything better. Don’t have anything else.
Something shifts when eyes meet. A weight I want to carry, somewhere safe to set it.
‘Right,’ Celyn says. ‘Right. Let’s go.’
Rhys opens the door, shorter than I expected. Five seven, maybe five eight. Broad, the face. Lined, kind. Celyn’s eyes, except deeper set. Grey hair, neat. The side parting like it’s been the same since 1985.
‘Croeso, lad.’ He puts his hand out. The grip. Proper. Working hands. I know working hands.
‘Mr Beynon. Cheers for having me.’
‘Rhys.’ Pulls me in. A pull that says: inside, now. ‘Catrin’s made bara brith. If you don’t eat it she’ll be in a mood until Whitsun.’
Then it’s Celyn’s turn, and there’s no handshake for Celyn. Both arms, the lift, Celyn half off the step, and Rhys says something into the hair, Welsh, low, and holds on a beat longer than men round here let themselves. I look at the boots by the door and let them have it.
The hallway, small, boots by the door three pairs, wellingtons, a coat rack with six coats. Photos up the wall, a whole childhood of them. Celyn at eight or nine, holding a fish, and that one’s got the grin in it, the real one, the one I get now across a table. It’s about the last photo that does.
After that the grin goes out. Celyn at fourteen, school uniform, blazer too big, hair cut to a boy’s, and the face only manages the half-thing, the thing before a smile that never lands.
A boy in every frame, and not one of them fits.
Shoulders up at the ears. Eyes gone somewhere the camera can’t follow.
Loved, though, that’s what gets me. The family photo, Christmas crackers, paper crowns, Rhys mid-laugh, the brother who must be Owain, Catrin’s hand on Celyn’s shoulder gripping like she’ll never let go.
They loved this child to the bone. They just had the wrong one, and the right one was in there with the lights off, waiting it out.
I know the lights on. That’s the thing I can’t shake, stood in this hallway.
I know what Celyn looks like lit, the laugh that takes a whole pub, sitting on counters like gravity’s optional, both hands going when the idea’s good.
Same face as these walls, mains switched off.
Something in me sets hard, the way a slab sets.
Not again. Not while I’m here. I’m not having that face back on a wall.
Different from the Carrick table. Different. The wrong names, the Wikipedia page, the ‘he’ that keeps coming, but the bara brith. The boots by the door. The coat rack with six hooks. The whistle kettle that Catrin puts on before anyone asks.
The boots are all different sizes. Three pairs, worn work boots. The ones that know ground. The ones that carry weight on the tarmac and in the snow and through streams when it’s raining in February and nobody cares about wet feet because the work matters more than comfort.
I know these boots. Mine are Rotherhithe leather, bought where my father bought his. These are Welsh boots, local, the kind that know ground that isn’t London.
The coat rack, six hooks. Two people live here. The hooks stay up for the ones who come back.
Catrin’s in the kitchen, the whistle kettle already going. The routine that doesn’t need asking. The tea happens because you’re here.
Different from Mum’s kitchen. The same underneath. The extra cup set down without asking, like it’s already decided you’ll stay. No trial, no looking you over. You came with one of theirs, so you’re one of theirs.
Celyn came from this. It shows. Celyn doesn’t fidget, doesn’t prove anything.
Ewan’s right about the Carrick table. No crooked tiles, no unsaid things. The wrong names are here, the he Celyn doesn’t turn for, but they’re surface. The underneath is solid.
‘Ron, cariad.’ Catrin. The kitchen doorway. Shorter than Rhys. Round face. Warm. She comes straight at me, arms open, no hesitation. The hug is, I wasn’t ready. She smells like butter and flour and something sweet and the arms go round me and squeeze and she’s strong for her size.
‘You’re taller than I expected.’
Pulls back. The assessing look, the same look Mum gives people. The what-are-you-doing-with-my-child look. ‘Tea?’
‘Yeah, cheers.’
Celyn’s already in the kitchen. Sat on the counter, the only person in the world who sits on counters at twenty-five. A cat has materialised on Celyn’s lap. ‘Yr hen gath,’ Celyn says, low, to the fur. The cat purrs like a small engine.
Catrin crosses to the counter and takes Celyn’s face in both hands.
Doesn’t say a name, not the wrong one, not any.
Just holds the face, thumbs on the cheekbones, kisses the forehead, and Celyn lets her, eyes shut, the cat sliding off forgotten.
Whatever this house gets wrong, it doesn’t get this wrong.
The kettle’s old, the whistling kind. The kitchen’s old. Everything’s old, the tiles, the Aga, the cloth on the table with the faded flowers.
‘Gethin says you’re in construction.’
The name, in the air, Celyn doesn’t move, doesn’t look up. The fingers in the cat’s fur. Still.
The gap, the one Celyn described. Catrin says it how you say a word you’ve been saying for twenty-five years. The groove in the floorboard that the door has worn by opening the same way a thousand times.
I watch Celyn not move. Celyn told me about it once, two in the morning, face in the pillow, flat as a bus timetable: not mine, never was, a name they gave to someone who didn’t exist. The flatness was the thing.
‘Celyn did,’ I say. Into the gap. ‘Site manager. Victoria North, the big restoration in Ancoats.’
‘Lovely,’ Catrin says. She pours the tea. Doesn’t notice the gap. Or notices and can’t cross it. ‘Milk?’
The gap’s still there. The name in the air like a bridge nobody’s walked across. Catrin pours the tea, the practiced pour, muscle memory, the normality of it sitting right next to the break in the conversation.
I don’t flinch when Catrin says the name. Flinching would agree with it.
I find Celyn’s hand. I press, one second, two. You’re not alone in the gap.
Celyn presses back, barely. The fingers closed around mine.
‘Please.’
The kitchen, the tea. The bara brith on the plate, dark, dense, the butter melting. I eat a piece because Catrin’s watching. It’s good, proper good.
Celyn hasn’t spoken.
The back door opens.
Owain, the brother. Bigger than Celyn, wider, taller. My height. The same colouring but rougher. The hands, I see the hands first. Knuckles. Calluses. A plumber’s hands. Hands that know copper pipe and compression fittings by feel.
He goes to Celyn first. A hand round the back of the neck, the rough pull-in, foreheads nearly touching, something Welsh and low that makes Celyn snort and shove him off. Brothers.
‘All right?’ He’s looking at me. Sizing up. Professional. One tradesman reading another.
‘All right. Ronan.’
‘Owain. You work construction?’ He’s already pulling a chair out.
Already sat. The wife, I didn’t catch the name, peeling a coat off a wriggling kid behind him.
Two of them, four and three, and the moment the coats are off they make for Celyn on the counter like the cat did, the little one hauling herself up by Celyn’s jumper.
‘Yeah. Site manager.’
‘What kind?’
And we’re off, the kitchen table. Owain asks about foundations and I tell him about the Victoria North footings, the Victorian brick, the underpinning, the steel reinforcement.
He asks about wet trades and I ask about his pipework and he tells me about a job in Caernarfon where the whole heating system was gravity-fed and we’re both leaning in and the tea’s going cold and Catrin’s refilling it and the kids are under the table and Rhys is reading the paper and,
Celyn.