Meici looked pleased. He became expansive. ‘Mam’s always telling me to bring a friend home for tea, but . . . just between you and me, Lou, I don’t have any. It’s not easy making friends is it?’
‘No,’ I agreed. ‘It’s not.’
‘You’re a good bloke you are, Lou, a damn good bloke.’
‘Please don’t call me Lou. Where does your mum live?’
‘Not far from Bwlchcrwys.’
‘How many people are coming to your party?’
There was no answer.
After five miles free of traffic we found ourselves reduced to a crawl by a group of escaped sheep trotting down the middle of the lane. Meici hit the horn but, unusually for creatures who are normally easily spooked, they didn’t seem concerned. ‘I’m glad I let you be my friend,’ said Meici. He took a slip of paper out of his shirt pocket and proceeded to unfold it one-handed. ‘I ’spect you know a lot about book-learning and stuff,’ he said. ‘Don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘A lot.’
‘Thought so, you can tell. What’s this mean?’ He handed me the slip of paper. The word ‘serenade’ was written on it.
‘Serenade?’
‘Yeah, what’s it mean?’
‘It means to court a girl by singing outside her window.’
‘Ah!’ said Meici. ‘That explains where I went wrong. I thought it was a drink.’
‘They’re easily confused. Where did you come across it?’
‘That would be telling, wouldn’t it?’
The group of sheep divided and darted to either side, back on to the high green grass bank. We picked up speed and drove on, an awkward silence left hanging in the car by Meici’s last remark. After a while he spoke. ‘You see, I got myself into a bit of a fix by telling mam that Arianwen was my girl. Mam keeps on at me to bring her round. So I’ve been doing one of those correspondence courses about how to talk to ladies and stuff. I’m not sure if you noticed but a lot of my patter is straight from the book.’
‘The Old Black Magic? ’
‘That’s right. Have you read it?’ He dug me in the ribs with his knuckles. ‘You’ll never guess what?’
‘What?’
‘I’ve bought one of those condoms. It’s hidden in my room for when she comes round.’
I changed the subject. ‘So, near Bwlchcrwys, you say?’
‘Not that close. Maybe five or six miles. We used to live in Abercuawg before they built the dam.’
‘That’s the town that reappeared because of the drought.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Quite eerie, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah,’ said Meici. ‘It is. Gives me the willies.’
‘Did you know the girl who disappeared?’
‘I wasn’t born then, but mam knew her.’
‘What about the boy they accused of murdering her?’
‘Goldilocks? She knew that family, too. She’ll tell you some stories you wouldn’t believe. The father was a lay preacher, called Ahab; always drunk. The mother ran out one Christmas.’ He turned to me. ‘You know what the father did? He put her shoes in the pig pen and told the children the pigs had eaten her.’
It was a small cottage built from the grey local stone. Meici turned into a rutted farm track and stopped the car. He got out and fetched a bag from the boot. He took off his trousers, rolled them up and put them on the back seat, then took a pair of short trousers out of the bag and put them on.
‘They were cut down from my granddad’s Sunday best,’ he explained. ‘I’ll cop it if I don’t wear them. I’m not allowed to wear long trousers. Mam says maybe next year when I’m thirty-five.’
I took the present out, a gift-wrapped, rectangular slab. ‘Happy birthday!’
Meici looked at me and smiled uncertainly. It was as if the meaning of the ritual escaped him but he did not want to let on. I pushed the present towards him, against his chest. ‘It’s for you.’
‘What is it?’
‘A present, of course.’
He blinked and then a smile began to spread across his face. ‘A present? You mean like in Pollyanna?’
It was my turn to look puzzled.
‘That’s a book I’m reading. It’s ever so good. It’s about a little girl who always sees the bright side of things. When things go wrong she plays the Glad Game. Like one Christmas she had a present, but it was a pair of crutches. Instead of getting upset she played the Glad Game and said she was glad because she didn’t need crutches. I play it too, sometimes.’ He clutched the present in both hands and stared in wonder. ‘I didn’t think real people got them.’
‘Maybe you should open it.’
He unwrapped the gift with hesitant, unpractised fingers, taking great care not to tear the paper. Finally, he held the box out at arm’s length and admired it. ‘A model plane,’ he said, eyes brimming with tears of joy. ‘I’ve seen them in the shops.’ He paused and then said, softly, in a reverie, ‘Best to keep it in the car. If mam sees it she might . . . she might . . . well, we don’t really have much room for it at home.’
We drove on and pulled into a hole in the hedge and parked in front of the cottage. In the space of a twenty-minute drive from town Meici’s confidence had drained away; now he seemed nervous and unsure. As we approached the cottage his stature diminished, helped perhaps by the short trousers, and he started to tremble like a dog who has fouled the lounge carpet and knows what is coming. He walked past the front door which was clearly only used ‘for best’ and round to a kitchen door that hung on one rusty hinge. Many years ago it had been painted green but almost all trace of that paint had gone. Meici pressed down the latch with his thumb and walked in. I followed. The kitchen smelled of camphor and anthracite smoke, stale bacon fat and unwashed flesh turning sour with age. His mum sat with her back to us, ram-rod straight at a simple kitchen table that had been set for tea. She wore black with her grey hair spread across the shoulders. She made no attempt to turn round. We walked round to one side, still she stared straight ahead. She was thin and bony with sallow skin and a bitter expression on her face. The atmosphere was frosty and even without knowing either of them I could sense something was seriously amiss.
‘Mam,’ said Meici, ‘this is my friend L . . .’ his tongue froze as he noticed something unusual about the supper scene. There was a condom lying with mute accusation on his plate. He gasped.
Meici’s mum articulated her sentence slowly and trembled slightly with repressed fury as she spoke. ‘What is this filth I found in your room?’
Meici opened his mouth to answer but nothing came out but a puff of air, the ghost of a sigh.
‘Answer me directly, boy, or it’ll be the worse for you.’
He stammered the beginnings of a word but could get no further. He pressed his thighs together and thrust his backside backwards in the posture a child adopts to control its bladder, but which I had never seen deployed by an adult before.
‘I’m waiting,’ said his mum.
‘It’s a French letter,’ he said finally.
‘It’s an engine of Satan,’ she corrected him. ‘Explain how this abomination came to be in this house.’
‘I . . . I . . . Louie gave it to me,’ said Meici, ‘I didn’t want it.’
His mum considered. The progress of her cogitations were revealed by a slight clenching of her cheeks. ‘A likely story! Do you remember what I told you would happen if I caught you messing around with harlotry?’
‘Yes,’ said Meici almost inaudibly.
‘Speak up, boy!’
‘Yes.’
‘Bring me my stick.’
‘No, please, Mam. Please.’
‘Fetch me my stick and go into the shed.’
‘Please send me to bed instead.’
‘You’ll go to bed directly.’ She turned and looked at him, her eyes glinted with anger. The look crushed all further protest and Meici went out. His mum gathered herself and rose slowly, and, still affecting not to notice me, walked out. A minute passed and I heard swishing sounds followed by yelps. When Meici came back in he was wiping tears from his cheeks with his sleeve and snivelling. His mum followed and said, ‘Now get to bed, and take Esau with you.’