The Wife of Cyncoed & Idyll: two plays (NHB Modern Plays) (eBook)

Penny’s holding court.

She’s there, she is, swinging gently back, forth, in the egg chair I’s had my eye on all afternoon.

And I’m trying not to listen in, I’m just trying to enjoy my little glass of Prosecco but there is a lot of laughter coming from all those listening to her story.

Portugal – that is the word that I can’t help but focus on.

Penny’s saying about why they chose to get a villa there:

That it’s better than Spain, that you gets more for your money.

But mostly how it is for Malcolm, my ex, her husband, and his golfing.

‘Not that the courses are thanking us,’ Penny says, ‘every time he plays a round, he digs a new bunker.’

And Malcolm, do you know what he’s doing, he’s stood there smiling, he’s actually got his hands up, playfully protesting, as Penny makes this joke at his expense.

‘Are you alright there?’

It takes me a moment to realise Penny’s talking to me. Somehow, see, I’ve just ended up in the midst of this group.

‘Oh, sorry, ignore me’, and I looks at Dave, my son-in law, and goes, ‘I’s just admiring the egg chair. New isn’t it.’

Dave just nods, sips his beer.

‘John Lewis, right, Dave?’

‘Better ask your daughter. I just pay for it.’

I’m suddenly telling everyone that I’ve got my eye on one too. That I got a few vouchers from work on my last day. Put them towards it. How I’s got a real sun trap down the back of my garden.

Mixture of nods and smiles, sips of drinks, greet me back. Then Dave goes he is off to get another beer and asks if anyone else wants one. And a few others, say ‘I’ll come too’ and starts to head back towards the house with him.

‘Would you like to give it a try?’

Penny’s asking as she gracefully hops out.

‘No, no, don’t get out on my account.’

‘Honestly, it’s fine, I think we’ve all had enough out here anyway.’

I look up at Penny, her hair glistening in the sun and try to match her smile.

‘Will you be alright getting in?’

Malcolm actually seems concerned as he asks. As if he’s dealing with someone really old, like the way he used to speak to his mother in her last few years.

Penny slaps him on the arm.

‘She’ll be plenty fine.’

I watch them walk back up towards the house. Malcolm’s hand it’s resting on Penny’s bum, guiding her to where all the noise is now spilling out from.

I feel the sun on me.

I push the egg swing a little. Test it. Springier than I thought.

I goes to get in –

‘Mam, there you are.’

It’s Emma, she’s come walking over with Jacob, my grandson, in her arms.

‘I could really do with your help, you know.’

The smell hits me, a one-year-old’s diet: Breast milk, mixed with mashed sweet potato, and broccoli – however used to it, it can’t help but make your eyes water.

‘Come here, Nanny will take care of you.’

It is not the easiest nappy change. It’s one of those ones, you know, where it’s all leaked out of the side. I tries to distract myself a little from the smell and the flecks of broccoli trapped under his scrotum by looking at the photos they got all framed up around his nursery.

Jacob there in Emma’s arms just after he has been born. All sweat and tears and love.

Clara, my eldest grandchild, probably, what just turned two, with me pushing her in the swings down by the lake.

Next to that there’s a photo of Malcolm, Penny, Emma, Jacob and Clara all smiles as they sit together eating lunch at the villa in Portugal, by the side of its sparkling pool.

It gets me thinking about my passport, about where I put it.

Truth be told, I don’t even know if it is in date any more.

As I spread a bit of Sudocrem on Jacob’s bum, I can hear Emma chatting downstairs:

‘Dad, your glass is empty, let me get you a drink.’

‘Oh, go on, you twisted my arm. Tell Penny I’s just going to spend one.’

I go to shut Jacob’s door, but –

Malcolm’s there. He takes a really long moment to consider us –

‘He’s a healthy young man, that’s for sure.’

The bathroom door closes behind him.

The rest of the party flies by really.

I watch Emma and Dave wave people goodbyes from the window as I load the dishes. I close the dishwasher up. Look round for what to do next.

‘Mam, me and Dave have had some drinks, and we’ve got to start getting them to bed soon, will you be alright getting a taxi?’

‘Put it on my account,’ Dave adds as he swigs another beer. I tell them he doesn’t need to do that. He nods and heads back through to the lounge. Golf starts on the TV seconds later.

Clara and Jacob they give me so many kisses when the taxi pulls up. Emma has to almost prise them back off my legs, ‘Relax’, she tells them, ‘you’ll see Nanny on Thursday. Nanny Daycare.’

Malcolm and Penny are stood by their new Jaguar.

‘We’d offer a lift but it’s basically a two-seater.’

‘It’s fine, it’s fine.’

And Penny gives me the biggest smile as she says it was so lovely to see me.

‘Nice house.’ The taxi driver says as he pulls out onto Lisvane Road.

‘My daughter and her husband’s.’

‘He must have good job.’

I nod. I guess Dave has. Same could be said for Emma too though.

–

Back before the divorce, when we lived in Cyncoed, on Dan-y-Coed Road, Emma used to always give me a row about cleaning: ‘God, Mam, not the vacuum again, it’s like it’s your best friend!’

‘You’ll understand one day’, I’d tell her, ‘when you have a family, a husband, how important it is to keep a tidy house.’

‘I’ll just get a cleaner, like Hannah’s mum.’

After Malcom walked out, not long after he made me sell the house, and this here, is what his financial settlement stretched to in the Cardiff High catchment area.

‘A wonderfully homely, two-bed maisonette, with panoramic views of the lake’ according to the estate agent.

Those first few months in here, I let things slip a bit. Dust would settle. Surfaces got sticky.

And oh god the screaming rows were even bigger with me and Emma.

‘I’m not sharing a room with Andrew, I want to go and stay with Dad.’

And I’d tell her: Yeah that’s fine, please do, bet your father’s new girlfriend would love to spend all her time washing your dirty underwear.

Emma never did, and I bought a sofa bed, so they each had their own room, and I started properly cleaning again, because you know what I realised: that even if I was no longer in my dream home I was still house proud.

So that’s what I do when I gets back in. I gives the surfaces a good clean, carpets a nice vacuum, then finally I tops up the water for the flowers I got from work. The card that they all signed is up next to it on the mantelpiece.

‘LIFE BEGINS NOW’ in big letters it says.

Read some of the messages:

‘Jealous! Paul.’

‘It was nice working with you. Best, Andrea.’ Thirteen years we sat opposite each other.

I puts the card back and –

I catch sight of my nan in the mirror.

Not possible, she has been dead going on forty years.

…

My mam would always say how I looked like her mother. She meant it as a compliment, as apparently, in her prime, Nan was a real looker.

I only knew her as an old lady though.

Shrunken.

The bin bag’s full by the time I’ve finished. Barely a walk to where the wheelie is but I still put my coat on and head out. I lifts the bin lid up and –

There’s not enough space for my bag, which, as I’ve only put one bag in since they last collected it, should make no sense, but it does.

Gill, two doors up at number eight. See, she’s been dumping her excess rubbish in my wheelie bin. What she does is, she lifts my rubbish what I’s already put in, then puts hers under so she doesn’t think I’d notice.

But I do.

And I know she doesn’t do it with Brian and Tiffany who lives next door, at six, she does it just with me…

I look at Gill’s house, feel the weight of the bin bag in my hand.

…

Bins get collected on Wednesday, I says to myself. Not long.

–

It’s the sound of birds that wakes me up.

What do I do now with this time I have for myself?

A leisurely rise, then treat myself by heading down to Café Terra Nova on Roath Park Lake.

Sits there with my cappuccino watching the swans teaching their cygnets how to swim.

Have a wander through the rose garden after.

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