Digging Out (23 page)

When I have circled round the cemetery and am back at the car, my breath is pushing my lungs and my heart beating hard against my ribs. Will I continue to run for the rest of my life?

Catching my breath, I drive to the top of my favorite hill, a view of all of Aberfan. If I’ve got the place right from Beryl’s description, Evan now owns this meadow. Folding my arms and standing stock-still for a long time, I listen to the wind, and it steadies me. From the corner of my eye I see the cottage and the silver Cortina parked in front of it. Then I see Evan, walking up the hill toward me. I fold my arms and stay my ground.

“I was wondering if you would come to see me,” he says simply. Although he is clearly not overjoyed to see me, I am surprised how the sound of his voice immediately soothes me, catches me by the hand.

“How did you know I was here?”

“Here? On the hill, in my back meadow? Or here, in Aberfan?” Now that he is close up I can see his hair really does have gray all through it. In fact, it is mostly gray. His pale smooth skin is almost wrinkle-free. His eyes seem to gleam behind his glasses, and his lightly lined mouth is still full.

“I am totally embarrassed,” I tell him.

“Why?”

I have forgotten what it feels like to have him speak to me. I have forgotten the thrill of his full attention.

“My behavior a few moments ago, running off like that—I don’t know what came over me. I just suddenly had to get away.”

He tilts his head and looks at me challengingly. “Seems to be my experience with you.”

“Omigod, Evan. That was quick, but not entirely fair.”

He sighs, kicking the ground in front of him. “Perhaps you’re right. We can leave it for now, anyway.”

I’m grateful for the reprieve, although it has stirred my own anger.

“I saw you in chapel yesterday. How do you find your mam and da?”

“I’ve not seen them yet.”

“Really? Do they know you’re here?”

“No.”

“Your mam told me she’d written you. She didn’t think you’d come. Actually, neither did I.” He stretches his neck from side to side as if trying to crack it and then sits on the edge of the nearby wooden table. “
They’ll
be glad you’ve come.”

“Clearly you’re not.” I am happy though that he still sees my parents, figuring in my absence that he might not.

“It’s not that I’m unhappy to see you, Alys. It’s just that I’ve put you behind me, if you know what I mean. It took me some time—in fact quite a lot of time. But, well, let me be clear. I’ve put
us
behind me.” His anger is overpowering.

I try to ignore it. My hand goes to my shilling again. “What about the bench?” I ask abruptly. “Who put the bench there?”

He looks confused.

“Bench?”

“In the cemetery.”

My question seems to disarm him. He takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes gently as if I am taking him back to a place he has not visited in a while. He looks at me sadly, the energy between us changed.

“Your father.”

I am quiet. Perplexed. I was so sure it had been Evan.

“It was your da built the bench. Out of the tree … Seems he’d managed to keep part of the tree after I’d cut it down. It was the year you left. It took him ages to make it. And then, according to your mother, he dragged it up the path by himself and put it where it is now. Imagine—the weight of it is something. Until recently, at some time of every day you could find your father sitting up on that bench.”

We both stand stiffly, looking at each other.

He sighs. “I can’t believe you still blame me. You do, don’t you, Alys? For letting it happen. Parry’s death. You always blamed me, didn’t you?”

He takes in a deep breath, running his hand through his hair, kicking the grass. He squints like he is trying to get me in focus, dig into my thoughts.

When I don’t answer him, he asks, “How long will you be staying, then?”

Although it’s not a lot, I feel my insides soften some. “Here? On top of this hill? Or in Aberfan?” My voice is shaky.

“Oh, Alys.” He shakes his head and air escapes through his teeth. “
You
are the quick one, Al.”

I almost smile. “About a week.”

He nods.

“Beryl told me you bought the cottage.”

“I did.”

“Is it as nice as we thought it might be—you know, back then?”

Our eyes meet briefly.

“Would you like to see it?”

E
van leads me down the hill and onto a pathway made of flagstones.

Above it are flower beds filled with tall orange poppies, their wide black eyes huge; cow parsley and yellow marigolds; lavender asters; mounds of honeysuckle growing over the side fence; and ivy. I wonder if it is deliberately haphazard. I think it must be.

The cottage has a Dutch door and the top is wide-open. As he pulls the latch on the bottom and I go in ahead of him through the mudroom and another open door, I realize how nervous I am. I am trying to contain myself. The immediate feel of the place as I look around is that it is delightfully warm and gracious. Two leather chairs flank a huge open fireplace; books, magazines and papers are piled everywhere; a small wooden table with four chairs around it; a chandelier with six candle lamps—each with its own small, opaque shade—hangs over the table; a waist-high wooden sideboard; and a Welsh dresser with delicate blue and white plates arranged on it. An open window is framed by brilliantly flowered drapes.

“This is the dining room, although I use it for everything.”

I am pulling down the sleeves of my cardigan.

“Are you cold? Shall I light a fire?”

“I’d love that.”

“A cup of tea? Or a glass of wine?”

“Wine would be lovely.” My knees are shaking. I turn around, admiring everything. I wonder how much of the cabin was decorated
by the woman with whom he lived, perhaps still lives? I stand awkwardly in one place.

Sensing my discomfort he asks, “So what is it?”

“Nothing. It’s beautiful.”

“But?”

“It’s just that… What I mean is, are you living here alone?” He looks at me quizzically. “You know, is it all right for me to be here?”

He seems confused. “What do you mean?” he asks. “Oh, I get it.” He shakes his head in disbelief. “You think a woman decorated my home. You can’t imagine that a man, let alone I, could do it. Is that what you’re getting at? Certainly if Beryl told you I’d bought the cottage she must have told you I live in it alone.”

My turn to shake my head, embarrassed at how cold he continues to be, and feeling completely caught out by him. Of course Beryl hadn’t come clean about him living alone. Though it stuns me how relieved I am that he is. However, now I am angry at Beryl stirring things up. She wanted me to be jealous.

Evan moves over to a wine rack tucked among some bookshelves. “Do you like red or white?”

“Red would be perfect.” I am uncomfortable to the point of anxiety. I don’t know how to hold my body or what’s going on inside of it.

He opens the bottle and, taking two glasses from a shelf behind him, leaves it for a moment. Then, moving over to the fireplace, Evan puts some kindling and newspaper in it, several logs, and strikes a match and blows the flame into action. I watch him, his movements easy and fluid.

“Where are you staying?”

“Well, last night I stayed with Auntie Beryl, but I’m actually staying in Cardiff at the Angel Hotel. My luggage is there. I didn’t expect to stay with Beryl last night. It just sort of happened. It’s taking me longer than I thought to get to Mam and Da’s.” I am struggling. I don’t know how to behave. I stare at Evan. He looks so much like Dafydd.

No doubt feeling my eyes on him, he glances up at me. “What? Did Beryl not tell you something else you are wanting to know? You keep looking at me as if you are expecting something else, someone else.”

“I was actually thinking how much you look like Dafydd.”

“I rather think it’s the other way around, don’t you?” He smoothes his hair, looking sort of haughty. “That, of all things, must have been rather disconcerting for you through the years.”

“No,” I probably answer too quickly, and then can’t think of what else to say. I am beginning to realize just how far out of my mind I had to put Evan in order to go on, and what price it has cost us now. “It wasn’t exactly disconcerting. It just was what it was.”

“And what exactly was that, Alys?”

“It was, I don’t know, just normal. Dafydd was Dafydd.” But there’s the anger and hurt in his eyes again and I know I haven’t really answered his question. I stop myself from saying anything more that might somehow sound glib or superficial.

He fetches the wine and glasses, placing them on a low table in front of the fire.

“How is Dafydd?” There is more than a touch of hostility in the question, and it feels like he is holding it tight so as not to let it take control of him. He hands me a glass of wine.

“After your gram died, I lost contact with most news of the two of you. Of course your parents didn’t have much either. Last I heard, you’d finally married—Marc, is it? And had another child? I’ve always been curious as to why you never asked me if your husband could adopt Dafydd.” Now the hurt is harder to ignore, but I don’t know what to say, so I say nothing. The silence is deadening.

“You’re right. I did marry Marc.” And then I look directly at him when I deliver my next line. “But he passed away almost a year ago.” I almost add,
And guess what—turns out be had a whole other family
. I shudder, holding back my tears. This is the closest I have come to confiding my discovery. It makes sense to me that it would be to Evan.

“Oh, Alys, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Hannah is almost nine now.”

He stares at me sadly. I might be imagining it, but there seems to be just the barest hint of relief that I pick up in his body when he adds, “I had absolutely no idea. None at all. I’m rather surprised Beryl didn’t say.”

“She didn’t know. Anyway,” I continue, moving quickly by Marc’s death, “we never spoke about his adopting Dafydd. Marc
and Dafydd had a very good relationship. He would have liked to adopt him, I’m sure, but it never came up. He never even asked. We talked, though, about what it would mean to him when Dafydd asked to meet his birth father.”

“Birth father? Hmm. That’s kind of clinical. Makes me sound like some prearranged petri dish donor, doesn’t it?” He rolls his eyes.

“Well, I certainly didn’t mean it that way, Evan,” I say defensively. Nothing is coming out quite right. “It’s just that Marc knew there would come a time when they would have to face you in some way. It’s not like he didn’t want Dafydd to know you.”

“Big of him.”

I suspect I’m getting just the tip of the iceberg from twenty-odd years of anger. “Frankly, I suppose it might have been easier if he had adopted Dafydd.”

Not only do I feel we are stalemated in anger and defense, but now I’m beginning to wonder how I might gracefully leave the cottage. My discomfort level is too high.

“So why didn’t you suggest it?”

I shrug. What truth can I offer him? “I’m not sure. Perhaps because I didn’t want you entirely out of my life,” I admit rather boldly, having not really thought about it. “Or maybe because adoption would have meant having to have contact with you, and I wasn’t ready for that, either. I don’t know, maybe both.”

His next question, of course, might be:
And you’re ready now?
Which would really put me on the spot, completely corner me. But he doesn’t ask, though he looks at me as if he might.

I change the subject quickly. “So did you buy the cottage from the same people who lived here when we used to trespass on that back meadow?”

“Trespass? That’s a funny way to look at our outings. I never felt we were trespassing. I remember those as innocent picnics, Alys. The two of us wanting to share a meal.” There is a softer, more familiar illumination in his eyes, the bright light I remember like a Fourth of July sparkler. “I’m sure the Whites loved our comings and goings in their field, knowing we were innocent as the day was long.”

Now I’m not quite sure if he is kidding or not, but I say, “Oh, right, Evan. Would you like to explain all that groping and bustling about we used to do, then? As if no one in this cottage might have
looked out the window at any moment and seen us, full daylight, rolling about in the middle of a wide, clear-mowed meadow, for goodness’ sakes. What do you think we must have been thinking? Do you think we thought we were invisible?” The memory seems to move me from a solid state to a more liquid one.

“I wasn’t thinking.” Evan’s sudden smile makes me blush to the roots of my hair. “As far as I am concerned, it
was
innocent, Alys. Simple. That bustling and groping about, Alys, was love. At least for me, it was.”

It is a tense, uncomfortable challenge, even more so than the rest have been. I am unable to respond, afraid I will lose it completely.

A few seconds pass and he turns to look at me, quietly. Almost apologetically he says, “Let’s not fight. I suspect we have a day or so to work out what we might feel about all of this?”

I nod.

“How’ve you coped with your loss of Marc?”

“Well, I don’t know exactly,” I begin tentatively, wondering if this is a trick question. “I guess I’ve just sort of moved through one hour at a time. Now there are full hours, three or four of them together, when I don’t think of him at all.” I look down. “Sometimes it doesn’t feel much like he’s gone.”

Evan nods and looks away before continuing. “You know, the people who lived in this house had five children. When I bought the place, there were two bedrooms on either side of that six-foot stone wall and no inside loo.” He runs his hand through his hair. “Occasionally I walk around this place and I’m embarrassed at how much space I have. This fireplace was covered up with Sheetrock and an electric fire—their attempt to modernize. Yet when I moved in, the cowshed, which is now my parlor, still had a thatched roof. Mrs. White even offered me the cow.”

“Hmm. I don’t see you with a pail and stool.” My small attempt at some levity.