MORNING SERIAL
“COME, come — you mustn’t excite yourself like this, over nothing at all. Maybe the boy hasn’t a bit of interest in girls. I was only joking, Millie. You can take a joke now and again, eh?” “A very strange way you have of telling jokes, Dick Morgan,” came the sardonic reply. “But I tell you this — if our Ieuan is messing around with some girl I’ll soon put a stop to it. I got ways of finding out these things. I’m not stupid.” “Did I say you were?” “No, but it makes me wonder what’s going on in that mind of yours sometimes.” “Oh, hush, Millie.” “Don’t ’hush’ me. I’m not a child.” “All right, then. I’ll say nothing.” “Yes, that’s just you all over, Dick Morgan. Say nothing — but let the house go to pieces, let the children go where they like and do what they like. So long as you get your cigarettes and your paper and your glass of beer, nothing else matters. Leave the worrying to me.” The quarrel continued the following morning, and when Ieuan and his sisters sat down to their Sunday dinner their mother said hardly a word to them. Her fury had been exhausted, and she sat in stony silence, attending to their various needs at the table.
That evening, however, as she prepared the two girls for chapel, she turned her attention to Ieuan. Dressed in his best suit, he stood before the kitchen mirror, combing his hair.
“Making plenty of fuss over yourself tonight,” she said. Then, suspiciously: “You are going to chapel, I hope?” He bit his lip. The question had taken him unawares. He had never expected it. Chapel-going on Sunday evening had become a routine. It was accepted that he would attend the evening service.
What was the reason for mam’s sudden query? Had she found out about Sally? “I asked you, Ieuan, are you going to chapel?” “Well … y-yes,” he lied. “Why?” “Oh, I was just thinking that p’raps you had something else on your mind. Some other place to go. Your father was telling me the other night that—” “Millie!” His father looked up from the armchair.
“Yes, what is it, Dick Morgan?” “Leave the boy alone. If he doesn’t feel like going to chapel — well, what’s wrong with that? You don’t go, I don’t go. So what?”
Farewell Innocence by William Glynne-Jones is published by Parthian, Library of Wales, at £8.99 www.parthianbooks.com