MORNING SERIAL
YOU held out against Mama’s fatiguing admonitions and tearful silences, before collapsing in a corner seat of a train carriage. Issie had pulled away from Swansea station, Owen walking, then trotting alongside as the engine built up steam, until her hand slid out of his. Let go, Tada, she was saying anxiously at that very moment, fearful he would get dragged along and hurt; and there he remained, just ahead of her mother, a diminishing figure as she craned out of the window; he called out, Put your head in, my beauty. It wasn’t until near Neath, looking out at the scarred hills, that Issie realised she had finally cut free.
Her thoughts raced back across heath and sea to Denis, on whose account she had been cast adrift. What was he doing now? Now was nine o’clock in the time-zone she had quit. He’d have had his supper by now, presumably: the aproned woman to whom he had made eternal vows would have laid the table for one husband and three small sons. Now the mother clapped her hands to call the family to the table, setting down plates of roast chicken, and Denis sat obediently in his allotted place, smiled at the boys, whom he served with greens, though perhaps they didn’t like vegetables and the little one, Sam, squirmed on his chair. Issie’s imagination grew a room within the room into which she peered as if through plate glass; an England within a Germany, each as foreign as the other.
Probably the child would have eaten his cabbage without demur. Most likely, Denis and Doreen would have the kind of children who actually liked greens, belonged to the Wolf Cubs and fussed with tweezers and magnifying glasses over stamp collections. And it was to this charming family that Isolde had proposed to take an axe, cleaving their table from end to end.
***
The refectory was a roaring sea of children. She seated herself beside the other teacher of languages.
‘Foul row, isn’t it?’ said Susan Brierley. ‘Sleep well?’
> The Element of Water by Stevie Davies is published by Parthian in the Library of Wales series www.parthianbooks.com