My daughter is at that difficult age. It starts younger
than you think. She’s nine, going on fifteen. People think that growing up in a
village is the safest thing for kids nowadays, but kids can find mischief
wherever they go. At least in Swansea there’s a cinema or a bowling alley.
Something healthy for them to get involved in. I worry around here, there’s a
lot of older kids with their pimped-up rides and whatever else it is. What will
they try and get her involved in should I chance to look away?
Still, she has good friends. There’s a few years of
innocence left in her, I hope. Surfing and sandcastles down on the Gower, ice-cream
melting off the cone. After Guy and I divorced, I felt that Wales was the place
to come. I’d had such happy holidays here as a child myself. I suppose I felt
as though I were giving her a childhood of holidays. I’m not sure she viewed it
in quite the same way – uprooted from Croydon and dragged to the open wilds.
Not just feral animals, but feral children too. Dark-eyed and untamed, running
in the fields with the horses, rough-and-tumbling in the hay with the dogs and
the geese and half a petting zoo. It didn’t take her long to adjust.
Even her accent settled in. Everyone’s either ‘scrut’ or
‘lush’, depending on whether she likes them or not. When my mother comes to
visit she’s endearingly Mamgu, and most of what I do is ‘immense’. I’m glad –
no, relieved – that she has settled so well, but sometimes I hear her speaking
in this local way and feel a pang of sadness; a distance between us. I am an
English immigrant, she is a native.
Her closest friend is a slip of a girl called Tara
Ann-May Glover. As serious as a banker calling in your overdraft. Stern, dark
eyes that analyse every throw-away comment. They’re seeking out grains of
humour, and the moment she finds something funny her whole face lights up like
a Chinese lantern. Her thin lips stretch twice their size across her appley cheeks,
and a trickle of lovely laughter escapes.
I’m very fond of Tara Ann-May. I can’t say the same of
her parents, though. Oafs, the pair. I have nothing whatsoever against people
who didn’t take up higher education or go on to university. I realise that I am
very fortunate to have had those opportunities afforded me by my own
academically-minded parents. But I do take umbrage at animal stupidity. Her
father looks like Rasputin, there are probably mice nesting in his bushy black
beard. I’d dread to look.
Her mother is just as raven-haired, and somehow tanned,
as though she still works the fields in all weathers. She dresses in thick
knitted jumpers and a dirty blue skirt, with Wellingtons on her feet caked in
cow dung or whatever else she happens to have waded through in order to escape
their hillside farm.
I know, I must sound like a snob. It’s got nothing to do
with how she chooses to dress. I think it’s simply the easiest part to
articulate. She carries her head so high that her nose practically points to
the sky. It bothers me simply because there is nothing proud in the way she
parents poor Tara. Little thing gets left out in all weathers, she does. I once
found her sitting on the dry stone wall at the end of our front yard. There she
was in the pouring, ice-cold rain. I brought her in, dried her off, wrapped her
up and fed her soup.
“Do your parents know where you are?” I asked her.
She nodded.
“Shouldn’t you be home in the warm?”
She found a grain of funny in that and giggled.
My daughter, Megan, distracted her with the piano for the
rest of the afternoon. When I tried to call the Glovers’, nobody answered. I
drove her home shortly before dusk. The rain was easing up, but the road out to
their farm was still waterlogged. There were occasions I feared I would have to
get out and push.
When we got to the door, she undid her seatbelt and
climbed out with hardly a ‘thank you’. I got out, too. I didn’t like the idea
of her being home alone. She had already disappeared inside when I knocked on
the half-open door. I heard dogs barking, but thankfully none came charging
towards me.
“Hello?” I called.
Nobody answered.
You’d think, being a fully grown woman with a fair amount
of self-confidence, I would simply have wandered in and looked around. Kept
shouting. Found them – or not. But instead I hovered on the doorstep, suddenly
very uncertain.
I cringe to think about it. I simply called out: “Goodbye
Tara,” and returned to my car.
I saw her mother in the village later that week, but she
didn’t say a word to me. Even her eyes failed to acknowledge me. The woman holds
the manners of a trout. If someone had brought my daughter home after she’d
been left out in the rain all day, I’d have been so apologetic. At least have
bought them a bottle of wine or something. I’d take it as a statement against
my parenting. Not her, though. Didn’t even register.
It wasn’t the first time I’d noticed signs of neglect. I
was fairly sure that two of the boys in the village were Tara’s brothers, but
she rarely gave a direct answer to any question. When I asked Megan, she simply
shrugged. She could have been related to half the population for all I knew, it
was that sort of place. A little ‘inbred’ as we used to say in the city. God, I
sound so contemptuous. I never regret moving here – it was the best decision I
ever made. I just wanted to look after Tara Ann-May. She was round our house so
often it started to feel as though I had another daughter.
Yesterday, I came home to find them huddled
conspiratorially in the kitchen. I knew where I wasn’t wanted, so I made myself
a cup of tea, checked they were good for biscuits, and retreated. I slowed in
the corridor, as most mothers do, simply to catch the thread of their
conversation. It would have been nice to be able to join them at the table but,
even had I been their age, I doubt they would have made space for me. I was
rather a gangly girl, legs akimbo, clumsy, always knocking over juice and dropping
crumbs down myself. I probably wouldn’t have been trendy enough to join their
gang. Still, what I heard made me wonder.
“-should have seen him, Tar. He was luscious.”
Ann-May let out a waterfall of laughter.
“Shh,” my daughter cautioned her, obviously suspicious of
my eavesdropping. I continued on to the living room, feeling beneath the sofa
cushion for the remote.
My goodness. Only nine and already turning her head when
the boys walked by. I wasn’t sure I was quite ready for my little girl to pupate.
I had assumed we had a little longer. Megan one, Mother nil.
It was actually quite difficult to concentrate on the
news whilst I knew they were through there discussing the opposite sex. I
wanted to creep back and listen a little longer, but reminded myself that this
was an absolute parenting no-no. You have to respect your child’s privacy,
otherwise they’ll never share anything with you.
I blew on my tea and tried to understand what Andrew Marr
was saying about the recession.
After Tara left, Megan went up to do her homework. I
almost went up to have a heart-to-heart. I made another cup of tea and stood at
the bottom of the stairs for a while, wondering whether that would be the right
thing to do. It was the same sense of awkward uncertainty that I had
experienced at the farm. Go in and meddle, or hold back and hope for the best?
I had become more aware of the dangers of meddling after
Guy and I parted. More than ever, I felt the weight of personal responsibility pressing
around my shoulders. I couldn’t fuck up, because she didn’t have another parent
to run to. She wasn’t about to hop a plane to the Algarve to talk it over with
her father. Maybe in a few years, but not now. I’d learned early on: if in
doubt, step back.
This morning, I watched her walk down the path in her
pleated school skirt with her satchel over one shoulder. It might have bothered
me less if she were learning to explore her sexuality with Tara, rather than
some faceless, ‘luscious’ lad I couldn’t put a name to. At least Tara was unlikely
to break her heart. But then, what would I know – I’d hardly made a shining
success of my own relationships over the years.
I sat down at the computer to do some editing for our
local paper. One of several part-time jobs I juggle. I’m one of these people
who can get out of bed, make a cup of coffee, and sit down at my desk until the
work is done. I’ve never been much of a telly addict, and there are precious
few distractions in the village.
That was at eight o’clock. Now it’s ten and here I am,
walking our imaginary dog around the block to make sure my daughter is in
school, not doing anything she shouldn’t be. How ridiculous is that? It’s not
even break yet. I have no idea whether she’s there or not. I haven’t been this
parentally paranoid since the first days after her birth – running to the cot
every two minutes. Worried if she was crying, worried if she wasn’t.
I should relax. She’s my daughter. She’s smart for her
age. Grounded.
Partially reassured, I turn and start walking for home. I
pop into the Post Office to pick up a paper. Coming out, I happen to look over
and notice a kid sitting on the bench by the green. I keep walking, but
something causes me to turn back.
I watch him for a moment, then make my way over.
“Hello,” I say.
He looks at me, this young, blond boy. He has blue-grey
eyes like Flintshire slate, set deep within a frame of thick honey brown.
“Should you be sitting here?” I ask, expecting him to
tell me where his parents are.
He simply shrugs.
“Shouldn’t you be in school?” I smile.
He shrugs again.
“Well, I think you probably ought to think about it.”
He gives me a withering look. I frown and start to walk
away. It’s unusual for me to see anybody I don’t know in the village. Everybody
knows everybody. That’s the point of living here. It’s called ‘community’. Or
‘down-right-nosy,’ depending on the day you’re having.
Perhaps he’s new to the area. He must be about my
daughter’s age. Poor attitude for one so young.
Megan is late home from school. Only by twenty minutes,
but I find myself on edge.
“Where have you been?” I ask.
“Tara had to get something from school,” she replies. “I
waited with her.”
By the end of the following week, a lot doesn’t feel
right. She’s been late home four consecutive nights, later each time. I’ve
asked her not to be, she’s promised not to be – yet she keeps doing it. I have
no idea why this bothers me. There’s nowhere safer in the universe than our
little den in the hills. But something else isn’t right. Tara hasn’t been round
in days. Those two are inseparable. I can’t make head nor tail of it.
Unable to shake the strange sense that something is
wrong, I decide to take a drive up to the Glovers’ and see what’s going on. Has
she fallen sick? Megan remains evasive on this point. Perhaps it’s worse than
that, perhaps she’s run away. Are her parents mistreating her?
I pull into their yard and turn off my engine. Oddly, the
front door is ajar, just as it was the last time I was up there dropping her
off.
“Hello?” I call out. “Hello? Anyone home?”
Just as last time – no answer.
I approach the door and push it slightly, peering into
the gloom. Not even a barking dog this time.
“Hello, Mrs. Morley.”
Tara’s voice makes me jump. She’s standing off to one
side, by the red metal pole holding up a dilapidated barn extension. Like the
rest of the house, it looks as though it’s about to fall down. If she were my
daughter, I wouldn’t have her standing anywhere near it.
“Hello, Tara. How are you?”
“Da iawn.”
“I haven’t seen you around lately.”
“I’m not allowed to come any more.”
“Not allowed?”
She shakes her head.
“By who?”
“Mammy says I mustn’t.”
I find it hard to process this information. What have I
yet to find out about my daughter? And why hasn’t anybody come to tell me about
it?
“Why aren’t you allowed?”
“Just mustn’t.”
Grappling with restraint, I managed a smile. “Okay. Well,
I hope this is just a temporary separation. We miss you.”
She nods but doesn’t say anything.
Megan is just as
furtive about the break-up. Two days later I have to lay down the law.
“This is the final time, Megan. If you’re going to be
late home, I want to know about it. What have you been doing for the past hour,
because I know you’re not hanging out with Tara anymore.”
It hurts me to ground her. It hurts me that I have to do
it – that she leaves me no other choice. If she’d only tell me where she goes
after school, but she won’t. Still, perhaps it’s better that she stays quiet
than lies to me. At least she is still an honest abscondee.
It’s a horrible feeling to know that someone has decided
that your child is not fit to play with theirs. It’s deeply hurtful, especially
when that opinion is held by a family of – quite frankly – miscreants. I was
surprised they paid enough attention to Tara to notice who she was playing
with. I had half a mind to drive back out there and give them a piece of my
mind, but petrol’s expensive and they’re hardly worth it. I vowed to make more
of an effort to talk to Tara next time I saw her.
As I sit, scowling at the TV, I think that I can hear
voices. I glance at the clock. It’s ten-thirty. At first I wonder whether it’s
background noise from the programme I’m watching, then I turn the volume down.
Definitely voices. I hit ‘mute’.
Although the double glazing muffles the sound, I still
recognise my daughter’s voice. Lured to the window, I draw back the curtain.
My heart stops.
There, just beyond our front gate, is the little blond
boy.
He is staring up at the roof of our house – to my
daughter’s window, above the room I’m standing in. I hold back the curtain with
just one finger. Observing, yet unobserved. He has triggered the porch bulb, so
the sliver of light unleashed upon the windowpane is swallowed by the luminous
dark beyond.
He grins, looks down at his feet and ruffles a hand
through his shabby, too-cool-to-be-bothered hair. I can’t quite make out what
he calls up to her, but I hear the floorboards above creek softly as she leans
out to reply. There is a certain charm about him, I can’t deny. Almost angelic,
had I not bumped into his ruder self by the green. That raised my suspicions.
When a boy is discourteous to his elders, yet lights up his smile for one girl
– you have to wonder what his motives are.
My goodness, I sound like my mother!
I glance at the clock again. Well, whatever is going
through his mind, it’s far too late for either of them to be up. I let the
curtain slide back into place, grab my sweater from the couch and pull it on as I walk to the door. I yank it open and step outside.
The porch bulb comes on.
My mind takes a moment to process this, as I stare out at
the empty night.
Taking a few tentative steps along the path, I turn to
look up at my daughter’s window. It is shut, reflecting back the crescent moon.
To be absolutely certain, I walk to the very end of our
yard and peer over the peeling wooden gate. I look left and right up the road.
An involuntary shudder brings me back to myself and I
return to the house. Clicking the deadbolt into place, I head upstairs and push
Megan’s door ajar. She’s lying there, apparently asleep. The temperature of the
room feels no different, I don’t detect the chill of a recently opened window.
“Megan?” I whisper.
She doesn’t stir.
I can’t be certain.
Quietly, I pull the door to. Is she pretending to be
asleep, or has she been asleep all along? Am I coming down with something?
Overwhelmed by subconscious stress, perhaps?
The next day, I’m still thinking about it. I try at the
breakfast table.
“Thought I heard you talking to yourself up there last
night?”
“Me?” That level of derision kids reserve solely for their
parents.
“Yes. Did you have trouble sleeping?”
“No.”
I would have found it easier not to believe her if it
hadn’t been for the porch light. I couldn’t explain that one to myself from any
angle.
“Okay. Straight home tonight?”
Of course, she wasn’t.
Late Monday. Late Tuesday. Which is why, by Wednesday, I
am here, standing at the gate, waiting for her.
I watch the other children trickle out. There are only a
couple of parents with me. All the kids are local, or from far enough away to
get bussed out. The only ones getting picked up have a dentist appointment in
Swansea or an after-school activity in one of the neighbouring villages.
“Alright, Helen?”
Mrs. Andrews, my daughter’s form tutor, catches my eye as she’s leaving.
“Hello Angharad. Is Megan still inside?”
“No lovely, I’m sure I saw her leave.”
“She hasn’t come out this way.”
Angharad stops for a moment and looks over her shoulder
towards the main door.
“Well, I couldn’t say then. Perhaps she went out the back
way?”
“There’s a back way?”
“Just over there, see? The gate.”
Peering past her, I see a tiny gate in the red iron
fence, right over on the other side of the playground. In all my years living
here, that’s the first time I’ve seen it.
“Usually locked, mind. But we opened it today for the
fire drill.”
“Oh,” I say quietly. “Well, I suppose I’d better get back
then. We must have missed each other.”
“Did she not know you were coming?”
“No. It’s not important, I was just passing.”
“Ah, that’ll be it then. You’ve just got yourselves
crossed.”
I smile and wave as she heads off down the lane.
Just as I’m turning to walk back in the direction of
home, I catch sight of Mrs. Glover. She’s standing up the road, by the Post
Office, staring. Tara isn’t with her, so I decide to go over and have a word.
Whatever it is about my girl that she doesn’t like, it’s not fair to break up
their friendship over it. The girls have grown up together. I miss Tara Ann-May,
but I also miss knowing that my daughter has a friend keeping her out of
trouble. Tara’s a good girl, like Megan, and they’re better together than
apart, I’m sure of that.
“Hafren,” I call her name.
She simply nods at me, her plump face squared by a dark,
unwashed mane. Her cheeks are red with the wind, and the exertion of tramping
down the hill to the village. I want to pop into the Post Office and buy her a
bottle of shampoo. That way, when she combs her hair, it won’t separate like
fields of ploughed sweat.
“I was hoping I’d bump into you,” I lie. “I wanted to
have a word about Tara.” After a second’s silence, in which she fails to pick
up the thread, I continue. “Is she alright? Only we haven’t seen her around
lately.”
“And she won’t be no more.”
“Oh, why’s that?”
“Your girl’s not right.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Your girl. She’s not right.”
“In what sense?”
“You know what sense.”
“No. I really don’t.”
“She’s taken up with that lad.”
“Which lad?”
“You know the one I mean. The blond lad. Billy Bwgan.”
“So he comes from round here?”
She gives me a funny look. It reminds me of my daughter’s
prized scowl of disdain.
“What?” I sigh, exasperated. I can’t help thinking that
this conversation is a lot harder than it really needs to be. It’s like talking
to a brick.
“He lives in the pit.”
“The slate quarry?”
She nods.
“Where, exactly? I’d like to go and talk to his parents.”
Her scowl deepens to a unibrow.
“He ain’t got no parents. Not living, anyways.”
“Oh! Poor boy.” A genuine pang of sympathy runs through
me for this unexpected orphan.
“Well, his carers, at least?”
“He lives in the pit.”
“Yes, you said that.”
“He died there.”
The air thickens around me. “I’m sorry?”
“Billy Jones, back in the fifties it was. Before my time.
He used to work the pits, then one day he went down there at night by himself.
He wanted to work right through until morning, so that when the men arrived
there’d be a big pile of rock for them to split. Only he lost his footing in
the dark. Fell right down into the pit. Snapped his neck clean in two, he did.
That’s why we call him Bwgan. Every ten years or so he shows up round these
parts. They say he was in love with the landlord’s daughter, so he comes back
looking for her. Charms her back to the pit with him and -” She falls silent.
“And what?” I ask, through tight lips.
“Well. Takes her home with him.”
I can feel the blood rising in my veins as she looks down
at her shoes.
“You savage, spiteful bitch.”
I turn for home so as not to strike her. To make up such an
horrific story like that! To tell me my daughter is being lured to her death by
– what? By a ghost story? She’d have me believe that, rather than admit the
truth – that she doesn’t like me. That she doesn’t like her daughter playing at
our house.
I don’t care if she changes her mind. My Megan is having
nothing more to do with that bat-shit crazy family. I don’t want them passing
on any of their sick ideas to her. Upsetting her, giving her nightmares. No
wonder she’s been late home from school with rumours like that flying around.
She’s probably too scared to walk down the lanes by herself anymore. She
probably hangs around until somebody gives her a lift home. Maybe she’s fallen
in with the older boys just for a bit of company.
I’m going to put an end to this once and for all.
I storm into the house and up to Megan’s room. I knock
and wait, catching my breath.
“Megan, may I come in?”
No reply.
I knock again. “Megan?”
Pushing open the door, I see that she isn’t there.
I go down to the garden, perhaps she’s feeding the
chickens.
“Megan?”
It’s getting dark already. I realise, surprised, that my
walk to the school has caused time to slip by.
“Megan?”
Returning to the house, I notice that her bag and coat
aren’t on the hook.
Just as I am processing this, there is a knock at the
door.
“Yes?”
Already I can feel my knees start to weaken.
“Mrs. Morley?” asks the uniformed officer.
“Yes.”
“I’m afraid there’s been an accident at Bryce Pit.”
