MORNING SERIAL
“BUT old Alfred, our pal, more in keeping with us, showed that wider environmental pressures were what actually forced adaptation, change, to survive as a whole, in any given local world or environment. So any survival of the fittest, and that phrase incidentally was Herbert Spencer’s spin on Darwin’s biological theories when applied to economy and society, has to place individual life within the frame of culture and society. Which is, after all, what we need to hear in this benighted part of the globe, isn’t it? Moving on together. Sorry about the lecture, you know me, but I thought you’d like the idea.”
I dutifully nodded. Gwilym took that as a good sign. He waved his hand in the air. Modest and self-deprecating.
“I’m getting ahead of myself. As usual. You know me. Always the doer! And I still haven’t found out why you’re home. Bran? Have you seen her?”
I nodded again. I should have been sitting on the back-shelf of a car.
“Yes, I have. That’s partly why I’m here.”
“Partly?”
“Yes. And for Haf. Why don’t you tell me about Haf, Gwil?”
He poured himself another coffee. I waited. He put his cup down, a little too heavily. The coffee spilled from the saucer onto his inlaid and varnished coffee table. He ignored the puddle. He was considering my request. Its innocence. Or not. He began slowly.
“You remember I wrote to you. Perhaps I shouldn’t have. Wasn’t my place. But, you know, everything had gone – went – so lopsided, for a while, after you left, after you and Bran split. All so uncertain.”
He paused and looked up. He switched effortlessly from the academic to the demotic. Just to show he could. Just to show we were still blood brothers. He was wasting his time with that one, and had done years since. I didn’t bother to alert him to it. Not yet. He leaned, like a buddy, towards me. Go ahead, kiddo, I thought. And he did, effortlessly.
“Look. I started. We started. That autumn. To see each other again. Just after you’d gone.”
> The Crossing by Dai Smith is published by Parthian in the Modern Wales series www.parthianbooks.com