MORNING SERIAL
HE knew I didn’t. Not yet, anyway. Besides, he didn’t get what I really wanted. Maybe because I wasn’t too sure about that myself. Not yet anyway. Suddenly, Maldwyn seemed emollient. He stood up.
Six feet plus up with the same broad-shouldered, big-chested flat-stomached look and only a hint of a concession to flesh around his clean-shaven chin. Rugged, I think they call it. “Come and see my garden. You’ll like it.”
And his eyes, as hazel and flecked as the boxer’s, signalled an exit through the French doors. He didn’t wait for an answering signal. The handle turned and he stepped out on to a flagstoned patio below which steps led to the garden. The dog was out and down first. Mal beckoned me on.
The rain had stopped, leaving that peculiar hillside tumble of slotted slate roofscape at its best. Its age glistened back to an early promise and the sun was not too weak to hide the wrinkles, and strong enough to promise better.
Fat chance, I thought, but then the unexpectedness of the garden swallowed me whole. From the first stone steps down from the patio’s platform where the whole town lay before you, you stepped on to a lawn, springy, green and turfy, that cushioned you better than any carpet, and was longer and wider than most of the terraced houses.
It was held in on three sides by mature shrubbery which at the far end gave way to a screen of trees, a copse almost, that hid the town and all its ways completely. You could sit on that lawn anytime for over a century and not see the labour that had secured its cultivation or hear, except as a murmur, the friction of any human traffic. You could play croquet on that square.
Mal could tell I was moved. He thought I was impressed. “Nice, huh.” he said. “Whose was it?”
I knew the identikit ilk of the social group if not the singular identity of any previous owners. Coal mine managers. Town clerks. Solicitors. Publicans even. Provision merchants, wholesale and retail, for sure. Butchers. Bakers. Candlestick makers wouldn’t give me a full set, but I had always been a spectator at that particular species of card game.
> The Crossing by Dai Smith is published by Parthian in the Modern Wales series www.parthianbooks.com