Tirion

No… Uncle Justin hadn’t been in Aberystwyth… He knew uncle Rhodri from work… Yes, they’d both worked in the same office at the hospital for a while until he’d moved to the personnel department… That’s right, before they’d stopped working and gone to live in Hafod Ilan.

‘And have I got a mammy? Yes, she still lives in Liverpool with my father.’

You laughed because he’d given you the wrong answer.

‘No, I mean like my daddy’s got my mammy.’

Perhaps sensing that you were working something out or to give himself a moment to think, Justin asked you if you knew the name for the relationship between your mother and father. Thoughtfully, you spoke some terms in Welsh and after a few moments’ word searching in your English vocabulary you said, ‘They’re married and they’re husband and wife.’ You caught on to his word game.

‘Have you got a wife, then?’ you asked.

‘You know I haven’t got a wife, Tirion… I’ve got uncle Rhodri.’

You went quiet for some minutes and then asked perplexedly what their relationship was called, ‘You can’t both be husbands, can you?’

Justin

You smiled at her logical conclusion and thought about the terms you and Rhodri used to describe your life together; friends, partners, lovers even spouses, but you heard yourself saying, ‘It’s called living together, we’re special friends.’ The answer seemed to satisfy her because she looked out of the window for a long while before she asked you about Richard Pennant and the slate quarry.

‘Do you know where Jamaica is?’

She laughed, thinking you were being silly, and asked, ‘What has an island somewhere far away got to do with Richard Pennant and my school project?’ You pulled into the nursery so you said you’d tell her the story later.

Penri

After marking the date carefully on each of the newly laid eggs with a date stamp (that uncle Rhodri had shown you how to roll gently over the shells so as not to break them), together you put eighteen into three egg boxes, laying four under the pottery hen that nested on the work-top next to the kettle. You took the three boxes to the village shop where Mrs Jones gave you both a welcome. ‘We always have customers for Hafod Ilan eggs,’ she smiled a yellow, bad toothed smile and offered you a Kit-Kat. ‘What else are you going to do to be a good boy for your uncle?’

‘We’re going to plant potatoes,’ you told her, ‘but we have to go up to the riding school first to get some manure.’

She laughed, showing the black teeth at the back of her gnarled mouth, and said, ‘And they’re sure to be good potatoes if you grow them in horse muck.’

Holding the bag open for your uncle Rhodri to fork in the manure, you asked if all mammies and daddies picked one another the way you’d seen them do on the television. Rhodri, completely at a loss to know what you were talking about, asked you what you’d seen. You described the way a girl had asked three boys some questions and then picked the one she wanted to marry. Rhodri explained that going on television shows like that was just a bit of fun and that the boys and girls weren’t really looking for someone to marry… But you lost all interest in your uncle Rhodri’s explanations when one of your wellingtons got caught in a sludgy part of the manure heap; it sank even deeper as you tried to wriggle it free and before Rhodri had a chance to grab you, you’d fallen face down into the steaming horse shit. Rhodri laughed, until he realised that you, spitting straw and dirt from your mouth, were beside yourself; at first you bawled from the fright and shock of it all and then you whimpered until long after getting back to Hafod Ilan.