MORNING SERIAL

“WE’VE got five more to get up before coffee.”

Nain’s anger subsides. The three of us shuffle across the hallway together. Huw doesn’t speak again. He goes into his shell. Into somewhere behind his cataracts, where my taid is.

EFA’S out when I get home from work, so I can search through Nain’s papers properly. I want to know it, want to know what’s happened to us, our family on this hill, what’s always been happening to us, what’s wrong.

There are three shoeboxes of Nain’s. All full of paper. The first is just snippets from newspapers. Bits of awful poems and letters she’d had published for a fiver, and competitions or prize draws she’d meant to enter. In the second is all bills and bank statements, most of the bills are overdue and most of the bank statements show how much she owed. In the third box there’s her letters, and it’s under a heap of Christmas cards I find it, the photo. Men from the quarry stood there, and the women. It’s for the Eisteddfod, a choir or a party of singers at least standing to have their photograph taken before they perform. At the front is Nain, I can tell by her eyes, but Nain’s young in the photograph, and her face is open, open and fresh and lovely, so that you can’t believe she’s the same person at all. And then there’s a face torn out, and that’s Taid. I know because I can feel Nain’s fingers all frantic as they tear through the photograph. I can feel Nain in the attic hating him, and maybe more than hate, something worse, more painful. I hold the photograph and I can feel her, hating. More than Efa hates her now even.

I can’t see the face, but I can see the shoulders, strong, and he’s tall, and you can see a bit of black hair, so Taid was dark. He’s in old trousers and a shirt, and isn’t dressed as smart as the other men, who’re in their Sunday clothes.

That’s all of him I find except these postcards, and this letter. It’s been scrunched up tight. I can feel Nain’s fingers trying to stop me opening it.

> Pigeon is the winner of the Wales Book of the Year and the Rhys Davies Fiction Prize. Published by Parthian