MORNING SERIAL
THE Welsh has come back a bit, at least when he’s outside with Elfyn, when they’re doing the walls. It feels right then. But still, with his mam, or with anyone else, there’s no words, just a blank space in his mouth. A space that’s bright, too bright, so that when he tries, his mouth’s just empty, or perhaps not empty, too full, like when you try to speak with a mouth full of white bread.
They sit to have lunch, Pigeon and Elfyn, leaning their backs against the wall they’ve made, unwrapping the sandwiches Elfyn’s brought them, unrolling them from the brown paper. They’re big, thick sandwiches. They taste like something real. The cheese in them is tangy and spicy and good. Half the sandwiches are for Pigeon, and half for Elfyn. They don’t speak as they eat.
But after eating, as they drink bitter black tea from Elfyn’s big flask, there’ll be a conversation.
“Chei di’m gwell na’r mynyddoedd ’ma.” Elfyn says today, looking past the wall at the hills.
“Na,” Pigeon agrees. “Does na’m gwell lle yn y byd.” Elfyn says it quietly, because it’s a fact.
Pigeon smiles. And right now it’s true. They’re on top of it, on top of the world on this heap of a hill by this wall, and there’s nowhere better, nowhere better. There’s nowhere else in the world. His mam’s worse and worse. She sits. She stares into space and she drinks.
“Ti’n yfed Pigeon?” Elfyn asks one day. Do you drink, Pigeon? “Na,” says Pigeon.
“Na fina machgen i. Na finna. Hen beth gwael ’di alcohol. Difetha bywyda’ a Difetha pobl,” says Elfyn.
Pigeon sits quietly, knowing Elfyn’s right. Alcohol is a home- wrecker, a people-wrecker a medicine with terrible sideeffects. Elfyn looks at him. Then gently. “Sut ma’ dy fam, Pigeon? Ro’n i’n i nabod hi, blynyddoedd yn ôl ’sdi. Pan o’dd ei theulu hi’n cadw’r post.”
Elfyn? Knew his mam once? There it is again, like her name, Mari, as if she was once someone real. It’s the gentlest of invitations. Between the words there’s Elfyn beckoning. You can talk to me. You can talk to me my lad. That’s what’s between the words.
> Pigeon is the winner of the Wales Book of the Year and the Rhys Davies Fiction Prize. Published by Parthian