MORNING SERIAL
IT was a map, a flattened-out cartography where hills and stars and the horizon of a sea were boundary markers. At the centre of the painting the artist had placed the open stage set of his house, the stairs, up and down which the same male figure serially, endlessly and repetitiously ran, and doorways in which the figure was framed as in a coffin, and windows to view the figure poised before a miniature representation of the whole. Exploding cones of orange and spurts of red scattered a scintilla of seeds to the horizon, and beyond.
“There seem to be collections of his work, private and public, but I’m told he’s not to everyone’s taste.”
“Not for the palate of those who are without taste,” I said.
Gwil let this one lie and returned to the bone I did not wish to pick. Not yet anyway. I told him, but without her equivocation, what Bran had told me that morning in person. I wasn’t in the paternity picture. That seemed to satisfy him, but to leave him with other niggling thoughts.
“That really puts Mal right back in the frame, then,” he mused.
“Is he around?” I asked. “Still lives in town. We see each other frequently, of course. Officially, I mean. You know he’s my chair. Chairs the board.”
I nodded again. My neck was getting used to it. He gave me one of his helpless, not-whatyou-think, grins.
“He appointed me, of course. But the thing is, William, we both saw that what this place needed, to take it forward, without losing its mission, its natural constituency if you like, was a leader who … who had the local in his – or her of course, though that was never likely here! – in his inner being, but had risen above, or rather beyond, it. Maldwyn knew my track record in admin and saw my ability to spearhead, well, a new way forward, tying the community and its civic leaders together more.”
“Tightening the bonds, so to speak,” I supplied.
“Exactly. Well, not exactly like that, but, yes, in a closer intimacy.”
I had my moment, like a gap in the field of play. I went for it. The Crossing by Dai Smith is published by Parthian in the Modern Wales series www.parthianbooks.com
CONTINUES TOMORROW