Rhodri

Penri had flour in his hair and on the floor and sticky dough up around his elbows, on cupboard doorknobs and all over the chair on which he stood. Soaked through by the cloudburst, you warmed yourself in front of the range and wondered where Justin had left his common sense; making scones for tea was hardly a practical way to occupy the kids for an hour. Tirion, who’d changed quickly into dry clothes so that she could join in the fun, rolled out pieces of the soggy mix for Penri and Justin to stab with the shaped cutters; she proved as menacing with the rolling pin as she’d been with the loofah and Justin bore floury weals on his arms and cheeks where she’d struck him in her play. You felt the comforting heat of the oven penetrate the dampness of your jeans and shirt, and through the warming of your body you sensed the awakening of sexual arousal. And the collision of two thoughts: the primitive and savage sexuality of Justin’s flour streaked features excited you as much as the latent racism from which the fantasy arose appalled and offended you.

Drying yourself off after a hot shower you heard the phone ring. Justin called from the kitchen for you to get it on the bedroom phone as he was still covered in flour. Eleri sounded a bit down; the paper she’d delivered at the conference in Gregynog had gone well enough, but she’d been disappointed by the other contributors and decided to leave that evening so she could spend Sunday with the children. With Gwydion still in the States, Rhodri suggested she might have supper with them and stay over until the morning, otherwise it would be late by the time she and the kids got back to Anglesey and an empty house. They could crack open a few bottles of wine and put the world right until the early hours like they’d done so many times in Aber. She said she’d see.

Justin

The scones weren’t too hard. You ate them with the bramble jelly you’d made at the end of the last summer. The blackberries had been picked with the children along the overgrown hedgerows through which the lane up to Hafod Ilan rambled. Rhodri suggested that perhaps, if there was a next time (for in the good half hour it had taken to clean up the mess you’d come to rue your folly), they might add a bit more lard and a bit less milk. Tirion and Penri, their mouths full of bramble jelly and scone, were oblivious to their uncle Rhodri’s jibe. Cut by the sharpness of Rhodri’s intonation and frustrated by his jealousy of the relationship you had with the children, you felt your anger rise and, with a stabbing stare at Rhodri, left them to their tea.

Much as you’d expected, you found the spade and garden fork that Rhodri and Tirion had used, still covered with mud and manure, dropped carelessly on the floor of the outhouse. You set about cleaning them, having long become resigned to finishing jobs which Rhodri left unfinished. You’d recognised the spoilt child in Rhodri in the first days of your coming together, and disliked the brat… But those days had passed quickly into weeks of frantic sexual pleasure when little else about the character and personality of a new lover seemed to matter, and for as long as you’d made Rhodri the myopic focus of your attentions, Rhodri, in return, had loved you in a way you’d never known. Almost imperceptibly, those indulgent weeks of heightened lusty passion had given way to the mundane reality of getting on with your everyday lives. You’d become more aware of Rhodri’s spoilt child as an unwelcome intruder in the relationship, but you also began to recognise the shift from being in love with Rhodri to loving him, and in accepting his faults you found ways to cope. You finished tidying the outhouse and decided, since the rain had stopped, to walk off your unquelled anger along the riverbank.