Move Over Darling (3 page)

‘Not this time,’ Alys said firmly. ‘A permanent change is happening, thanks to people like Coralie who are deliberately choosing to live and work in the area.’

‘Ah, I wondered why I couldn’t place you,’ he said, studying her face again. ‘Not a local girl then?’

Coralie could imagine what he was thinking. Anyone born in Penmorfa had probably heard enough from incomers ‘finding themselves’ or making fresh starts to wonder if it was worth advertising the place as a centre for reincarnation. The ‘muck and fluff’ image of west Wales that suggested it was largely populated by farmers and hippies was hard to shake off. Even her well-meaning friends had accused her off running off to Penmorfa to live in a fantasy. All the amateur psychologists amongst them had nodded sagely at her fledgling business and made knowing comments about wiping away the past. Nevertheless, she wasn’t about to let
him
get away with writing her off as some kind of fantasist.

‘I didn’t come here on a whim,’ she told him. ‘When I accepted voluntary redundancy it occurred to me that with an internet connection, I had the freedom and opportunity to start my own business in a place that had always attracted me.’ Even if her parents had thought she was in the throes of a nervous breakdown.

‘I tested the demand for my products by taking a stall at a couple of summer fairs to see how they’d be received, and when I’d sold out by lunchtime, I realised I was on to something. I haven’t looked back since. The Craft Courtyard’s the ideal complement to my online business and how many people get these kind of views from their work place?’ She gestured at the window. ‘It certainly beats climbing the corporate ladder.’

‘Hmm,’ he replied, darkly. ‘I’m not sure the poor sod who has to get up at four in the morning to milk cows, before he goes to his other job because he’s at his wit’s end wondering how to pay his fuel bills, would agree.’

‘Oh, Gethin!’ Alys wailed, throwing her hands up in despair. ‘Don’t be such a misery! Are you deliberately trying to frighten Coralie back to the city?’

He rubbed a hand across his stubble and managed a rueful smile. ‘Don’t take any notice of me, Coralie. I’m sure you’ll prove me wrong with Sweet Cleans, but nothing in your shop’s going to help me clean up the mess my father left behind. Besides, I prefer the countryside from a distance. Call me a bad Welsh boy, but that green, green grass of home business doesn’t do it for me. If I ever get the urge to look at grass, a run through Central Park suits me fine.’

Coralie didn’t need an invitation to call him a bad boy; it was etched all over him. Opinionated with it, too. But soon he’d be back on a plane and back to New York where he belonged. ‘I escaped to the country and you escaped from the country,’ she said out loud, earning herself another penetrating glance from those deep blue eyes.

‘Exactly,’ he said, before turning to Alys. ‘So if times have changed, why is it still so hard to get decent mobile phone coverage? As if trying to find a builder to come out and give me some quotes for work on the old cottage isn’t going to be enough of a challenge.’

‘Oh, that’s easily remedied,’ said Alys. ‘Come over to the farmhouse with me and I’ll get you the number for our builders and you can use the landline, but don’t forget about the Pembrokeshire promise.’

‘Eh?’ said Coralie.

‘Promise we’ll do it tomorrow. Unless there’s something better to do,’ said Gethin, shaking his head. ‘Since my phone’s refusing to play, I suppose it’s too much to expect that there’s an internet café in the village now, is there?’

‘You can get twenty-minute slots on the two PCs in the library, provided you’ve got a ticket and you’re prepared to take turns with Wilfie, our nearly famous local poet who’s trying to find a publisher, and Edna Harris, who’s looking for a man on “My Single Friend”,’ Alys told him.

‘Or, if you promise to be nice to Rock, you could come in and try my router,’ Coralie heard herself say, wondering how she’d managed to make it sound like a sinvitation. Two faces turned to her in surprise. ‘What?’ she said. ‘I was only trying to help.’ Trying to help mattered to her these days. Besides, the sooner Gethin Lewis finished whatever he’d come to do, the sooner she could get on with her nice, neat life.

‘Excellent idea,’ said Alys beaming, but Gethin looked doubtful.

‘I appreciate the offer,’ he said, taking a step backwards, ‘but you nearly finished me off just looking over the fence.’

‘Actually that was Rock,’ she felt compelled to point out, ‘and it was an accident.’

‘Sure it was,’ he agreed, ‘and thanks, but with the hours my body wants to keep at the moment, it’ll be less trouble for both of us if I can find an alternative.’

‘I’ll get that number then,’ sighed Alys, going out of the door.

‘And safer,’ he added with a smile, before following.

Coralie felt her face fall and was glad no one could see. He wasn’t wrong about that.

That evening, at the farmhouse, Alys tucked her white-blonde hair behind her ears and decided that she’d had enough of sitting at the kitchen table listening to the clock ticking her life away. Left to Huw, who’d started the business with an acre of land adjoining the Lewis farm, the garden centre would have remained little more than an expensive hobby. He’d been persuaded, when the chance came, to expand the acreage, but it had been up to Alys to come up with diverse ways to make it pay. She was pleased with how the Craft Courtyard was taking off and even the investment in the holiday cottage was beginning to look as if it would pay dividends. But instead of Huw and Kitty supporting her, as she had hoped, she was starting to feel as if she had left them both behind along the way.

She eyed them now; Penmorfa ought to be the perfect spot to create a family-run series of businesses and she had hoped that Huw and Kitty would share her vision. But far from engaging in a lively debate about it over dinner, both her husband and daughter were doing an excellent job of pretending not to have lost their appetite, each of them mesmerised by their chicken casserole as if it contained the secret of the universe. When had she become less interesting than a dead chicken?

‘Well, isn’t this nice?’ she said, brightly. ‘All of us sitting down together again – just like old times.’

There was a clattering of cutlery as both Kitty and Huw stopped eating to cast suspicious looks at her, as if daring her to go on. Which one should she start on first? Kitty had been difficult and moody since she’d come home so something was bothering her. Apart from the obvious. Alys eyed her over a glass of supermarket Cabernet Sauvignon which Kitty had turned down, claiming to have a headache. ‘So, Kitty, what’s the latest on the job front then? Heard anything from that agency yet?’

Kitty picked up her fork and poked at her food as if the answer was hiding under a dumpling. When she failed to find inspiration there she addressed her thoughts to something else with a soft centre – her father.

‘I thought I’d take a bit of time out, so I don’t make the mistake of rushing into anything.’

Huw smiled and nodded and withdrew into his own thoughts again, mechanically lifting food to his mouth. In the summer months he enjoyed giving talks to the tourists at the garden centre, but during the winter no one in Penmorfa needed a lecture on ‘Vegetables for Beginners’, which tended to make him feel a bit redundant. In the environs of the nursery, Huw could coax just about any plant to life, but at home he was a bit like a bulb that had withered away and shrunk underground. Alys thought the time for him to emerge from the hard soil to bloom and thrive again was long overdue.

‘But you’ve already been here a month, Kitty,’ she said, willing her husband to join in. ‘It’s lovely for your dad and me to have you here, but it’s not going to do wonders for your career, is it?’

Alys was beginning to run out of patience. Huw was becoming so introverted that at this rate he wasn’t even going to notice that Kitty was having a baby until she went into labour. Since her daughter had gone to live in Cardiff in September, she guessed that they only had until June or July to get their heads round the idea. She looked from one to the other and waited to see if Kitty would finally give in and admit that she wasn’t planning to return to work any time soon.

‘I’m getting a bit of work experience with Coralie,’ Kitty said, making big sad eyes at her father.

‘Uh-huh. And how are you going to support yourself on that?’
Not to mention the baby
, she was sorely tempted to add. Kitty, as Alys bet to herself she would, managed to squeeze out a few tears. ‘Are you saying I’m not welcome? Most parents would be glad to have their daughter home. Wouldn’t they, Dad?’

‘What?’ said Huw.

‘It’s called tough love,’ said Alys, trying not to lose her rag. ‘You’re twenty-two years old and you haven’t stuck at anything yet. You can’t be an adolescent forever. At some point you’re going to have to decide what you want to do with your life.’

‘Fine,’ said Kitty, pushing her plate away as she had done when she was a toddler. ‘If you don’t want me here, I’ll move into the holiday cottage out of your way.’

Alys shook her head, ‘I’m sorry, Kitty, but that’s not possible. I’ve just let it out to a paying customer. We’ve got to pull together and bring in the money where we can.’

Huw brightened up. ‘Oh, fair play to you,
cariad
. Where did you find a holidaymaker at this time of year?’

‘I didn’t,’ Alys said. ‘He found us, but he’s not exactly a holidaymaker. It’s Gethin Lewis. He was planning to stay at Gwyn’s old place, but there’s been a burst pipe and it’s uninhabitable so I said he could rent the cottage whilst he sorts out what needs to be done.’

‘I suppose he’s come back to get shot of the place, has he?’ said Huw, stabbing a mushroom. ‘I mean, if Gethin Lewis could barely be bothered to come near the village whilst his father was alive, he’s not going to hang on to the cottage now his father’s gone, is he?’

‘It wasn’t as simple as that, you know. He must have had his reasons. Look how busy he’s been for a start; crucial exhibitions, interviews.’ She sought in vain for Huw’s face against the glare of the pendant light. ‘Gwyn was a hard man. He liked everyone to dance to his tune. Maybe Gethin needed to put himself first at some point.’

‘Selfish,’ said Huw. ‘Like too many people today, putting their own pleasure first.’

‘Not so selfish,’ Alys said, sharply. ‘He did the right thing by his father when it counted. He couldn’t have found a better nursing home for Gwyn, the finest in Pembrokeshire. Anything he needed, Gethin saw that he had it.’

‘Anything except his time!’ Huw observed crossly. ‘He could have helped put his father’s cottage right sooner.’

‘Do you really think so?’ she asked. ‘Can you imagine Gwyn welcoming a raft of renovations? Do you think he would have agreed to a travertine-tiled bathroom? Or a Shaker-style kitchen? You know how careful he was. He would have seen any attempt to modernise the cottage as a complete waste of money. Lord knows he only accepted help from Gethin when he was too feeble to refuse.’

And he drove a hard bargain. Goodness knows she and Huw had had to pay the full price when they bought the old farmhouse from him, together with the swathe of land that hadn’t been sold for grazing. Huw had been a bit reluctant to take on such a big financial commitment, but Alys could see the advantages of living on site rather than to-ing and fro-ing from their previous home on the other side of the village. Lately, though, she had started to wonder if she would have taken the same decision again had she appreciated quite how much stress it would bring.

‘Besides,’ she said, reaching across to collect plates since everyone seemed to have stopped eating, ‘it’s in our interest to keep Gethin Lewis sweet. Don’t forget that the track to the old cottage goes right past this house. You don’t know who he might sell it to. Or what they might do with it. Now, if you’ve all had enough, I’m off to the
Merched y Wawr
.’

‘Daughters of the Dawn,’ sighed Kitty, ‘Don’t you just love the way they try to make the WI sound exciting here? Like a bunch of loose women.’

Alys shot a quick glance at Huw, but he was too busy staring at the space where his plate had been. ‘I’m glad you’re so interested, Kitty,’ she said. ‘You’re coming with me.’

With too much jetlag keeping him awake and not enough Jack Daniels to help him sleep, Gethin put on his jacket and boots, ignored his throbbing toes and followed the narrow lane up through the snow-covered banks to where it joined a wider road. Instead of turning right towards the village, he took the left-hand fork across the land which had once been part of his father’s estate, past Penmorfa Garden Centre.

The old farmhouse where he was born had been given a considerable makeover by Alys and Huw. What he’d privately dubbed the Amityville Horror now looked cosy and welcoming against the frozen fields. The cottage his father had retired to five years earlier, built at a later date for one of the more fortunate farm hands, lay hidden away up a steep unmade track that disappeared to the side of the main property.

In the fifteen years since winning first prize in a national art competition, as a nineteen-year-old, the course of his life had changed dramatically, but inside the cottage time might have stood still. His father had clung on to the farm for another couple of years after his mother’s death, but gave it up in disgust when Gethin sold the work that had made him an overnight name. Contempt at the apparent ease with which Gethin had made his fortune also made him spurn financial help for as long as he was strong enough to do so.

On the hideous mottled-brown tiled fire surround in his father’s old sitting room a porcelain shepherdess his mother had cherished, because it was a rare gift from his father, was still flirting with the porcelain shepherd a family photograph away. If she was anything like his temporary next-door neighbour, the china lovers were best kept apart. The woman had as good as broken his toe just looking at him. Those vintage clothes were a menace too, turning his thoughts too dangerously towards black satin and the siren sigh of seamed silk stockings.

Gethin shook his head and concentrated on the black-and-white photograph in the centre of the mantelpiece. There he was, a skinny little kid with glasses, leaning into his mother, his back to her stomach, her arms crossed over his chest to protect him. His father, just apart from them, one hand on his hip, one on his wooden staff, looking at the camera as if it would cost him money to smile.

All the helplessness of that small boy, his inability to protect his mother against his father’s dark mood swings, brought a bitter taste to his mouth. Why the hell had the old hypocrite kept the picture on display when his family meant so little to him? And the old man expected him to perpetuate the misery by bringing up his own children here! If his mother had still been alive it might have been different. How she would have loved seeing grandchildren running about the place!

He almost left the pale shepherdess where she’d stood for Lord knows how many years, but then he took pity on the lovers who had been apart for so long and placed her next to the young shepherd. Let them enjoy some time together whilst they could, before the house clearance guys turned up and separated them for good.

Closing the front door behind him, he took a deep breath of fresh air, noting that, yes, it really was warmer outside. Ready for sleep at last, he made his way back down the hill, the beam of the torch Alys had thoughtfully left for her guests picking out diamante clusters of snow. In his opinion, the holiday cottage’s hotel-style makeover had wiped it of all personality, but it was clean, warm and the double bed was comfortable. All he had to remember was the sloping ceiling above it.

A shaft of yellow light shining into the lane from his neighbour’s bedroom window reminded him that he wasn’t quite alone. The village’s isolated position created the worst of all worlds; long-term residents with a deeply ingrained way of doing business and all kinds of eccentric outsiders desperately seeking some rural nirvana. Wind farms, wind-chimes, woolly jumpers and crazy cat ladies – who needed it?

Before he could get to his front door, there was movement at his neighbour’s bedroom window and there she was, dressed for bed, in something sleeveless and mint-green that flared from her shoulders, billowing to somewhere just below her bottom. It was also, Gethin noticed, as she bent forward and came up with her cat, very sheer. He froze, wary of doing anything that might alert her to his presence and give her completely the wrong idea. ‘Samba Artist’s Sordid Secret’ was exactly the kind of story the British red tops would relish and whilst the New York press barely acknowledged the UK’s existence, he didn’t feel like putting his theory to the test.

Nevertheless he couldn’t quite drag his eyes away as his neighbour kissed the cat’s head and did a little twirl with it before putting it down again. With her curls loosened and touched with flame by the light behind her, she looked like a wayward angel, and when she finally reached up and drew the curtains, Gethin didn’t know whether he was disappointed or relieved. Except that this wasn’t Heaven, he remembered, this was Penmorfa.

‘It’s out of the question. The chairman of the Local Business Association has always drawn the Penmorfa Valentine’s charity raffle,’ insisted Delyth Morgan, clearly unable to support anything that would deprive her creepy husband, Hefin, of his moment of glory. The couple ran The Foundered Ship, and were responsible for more evil Sunday roasts of shrivelled meat and overcooked vegetables swimming in grey gloop than Kitty could bear to imagine.

Staring at the grandfather clock in the Vicar’s front room, Kitty longed for an end to her evening with the
Merched y Wawr
, especially since her numb backside was making her regret her choice of a straight-back chair in the corner of the room. Her knitted tunic fell in soft folds that hid the swell of her stomach, but for all the notice anyone was taking of her, she might just as well have stretched on the sofa, sporting a ‘Baby on Board’ slogan tee shirt. Except that she would have been stuck between Delyth and Mair, the double act of doom. There were many good women in the room, all trying to do their best for each other, she thought, but not Delyth and Mair, who were only interested in themselves. They had been trying to stamp their collective authority on the meeting all evening, but it was Alys, Kitty noticed, who drew most of their scowls.

‘But we’re talking about an internationally acclaimed artist,’ Alys said, looking shocked. ‘Wouldn’t it be marvellous publicity for the village if he could do it instead?’

‘We’re talking about Gethin Lewis,’ said Mair, folding her skinny arms. ‘I had to give him more than one smack when he started Sunday school. I’ll never forget the time he tried to bite me when I prised him away from his mother. She was always too soft on him. As soon as she’d gone I made sure he was sorry. He soon got the message, I can tell you. He didn’t dare play me up after that.’