MORNING SERIAL
HE’D thought he was after something scientific. He was after something that was full of FACTS and experiments and explaining things just the way they were. And then he got to that row of bright spines.
They were all picture books there, for kids. He got one off the shelf. This was the kind of thing Iola would’ve read when she was little. He opened this one. It was a big blue book, quite heavy. It was for a mam or a dad to read to you, it’d be too heavy for a small kid to hold on their own. He sat down on the sofa. Iola’s sofa. Next to him there was a pile of clothes, waiting to be ironed or folded and to be put away. He could smell something vinegary coming from the kitchen. It was probably pickle. There was always something on the go in Iola’s house.
Efa was always doing something, cleaning or cooking or lighting candles, or listening to music. In his house there was just mam. She hardly moved all day. They watched TV in his house. They ate food from packets and tins. In Iola’s house there was always things happening, people working to make things happen. It made things move around inside you. You were like the house. Going places. Happening.
Pigeon sat on the sofa next to the clothes that were halfway through being folded, smelling the pickle that was halfway to being made. Iola’d be back in a minute. Perhaps she’d be angry? Or was she scared? He’d better just get a book and go, come back another day. Why’d he said that thing to her? Said ‘about a murder’. Why’d he said it?
He sits with the big book, and he starts to read. And the first lines of the story are like visiting an old house in the past where things are different and where people wash clothes on a Saturday and make their own bread. It’s old fashioned, the story, and it has a taste like a cinnamon bun, spicy and sweet and gone out of fashion.
It’s because of the words. The words aren’t for him, they’re for someone else. Someone with tidy, ironed trousers, round cheeks, and a mam who wears scarves, has pink, soft lips, smells clean.
> Pigeon is the winner of the Wales Book of the Year and the Rhys Davies Fiction Prize. Published by Parthian
CONTINUES TOMORROW