Justin and the children started to get caught up in yet another play scene from the unwritten Narnia chronicle, Prince Penri and the Sea of Sharks. Eleri, despite herself, was impressed with the way Justin handled the children – and with his imagination! – but drew the game to a close as the sound levels rose. Everyone agreed to do a turn in a little noson lawen. Penri, with a bit of prompting from his mother, recited a poem in Welsh about a grandfather clock while Tirion sang about two rabbits being chased across a field. You and Eleri sang the duet that had won you both first prize in the inter-college eisteddfod too many years ago to remember, and as it was a Welsh Evening, Justin read Welsh Incident twice because the children shouted ‘Again uncle Justin’ after the final ‘I was coming to that.’

Eleri

After the children had been settled for the night and the supper dishes stacked in the dishwasher, you drank more wine and talked in the back living room. You, though, quickly gave in to your tiredness. You slept fitfully, dreaming vivid dreams… Penri was asking three boys questions, and then he walked down the aisle with Rhodri in a wedding dress while the Harlech Silver Band played Marchog Iesu and the Mayor of Cricieth twisted his fingers in his chain of office. Tirion cut sugar cane on the steep terraced quarries above Bethesda, and beyond Cricieth’s sea caves there was another Welsh incident: Justin the Dwarf rowed you in a boat and the sea of sharks on the bedroom floor snapped at your bare feet.

The Wonder at Seal Cave

Gethin stacked the returned books and wondered why Mr Bateman always seemed to do his marking in the middle study bay; why not the staff room, the small ‘prep’ room at the back of the biology lab, or even one of the other bays? Quite often, when he was putting books back in the geography section, nearest the study area, they’d smile at one another. Sometimes, if there was no one else in the library, they’d talk – but only if Mr Bateman initiated the conversation. Gethin liked these talks; he liked it that Mr Bateman seemed interested in what he was reading and what films he’d seen, or what he thought about mad cows, adulterous royals, and the war in Chechnya. Sometimes they even talked about football. When Gethin turned up for his library duty he found himself hoping that he and Mr Bateman would be alone, that there would be plenty of geography books to shelve, and that they might talk.

Mr Bateman was his favourite teacher; he was most people’s favourite really. He got angry sometimes and shouted a bit, but he was never sarcastic, which seemed to be the weapon most of the male staff used to intimidate their classes into some kind of order and control. And he always made biology interesting, even if there were lots of facts that had to be memorised. He was the kind of teacher most students wanted to do well for, to please. The exam results pleased everyone; there were more A grades in biology from Ysgol yr Aber than from any other school in Wales and the school’s record of success in biology was always used by the Welsh Office to challenge the cynicism of those opposed to Welsh language science education.