Hiraeth Page 2

  Immediately, he began to jog, already running from his decision and knowing that Idwal would never forgive him. It took Brendan over an hour to get back to the small caravan in the wood, and he made his plans on the way. Now that the cash was accessible, he’d buy a bigger caravan; they could keep it camouflaged and hidden in woods – moving on was easy with a caravan.

  Slowing to a walk just outside the trees, he caught his breath and calmed himself, preparing to deal with Mona. At five metres from the door, Brendan knew something was wrong; the angle of the main plastic window had altered, there was movement behind the caravan and a strange snipping noise.

  “Mona?” Brendan called out warily.

  There was a brief pause in the odd noise, and he rounded the caravan poised to strike. His niece was sitting on a plastic chair, savaging her long, thick hair with kitchen scissors. Brendan blanched at the mutilation and the violence of her cutting action.

  The girl glared up at him after a minute or so – she had obviously decided the haircut was over. “You locked me in.” It was an accusation.

  “I had to, Mo.” Relief flooded his brain – these were the first words she had uttered in a week. The first words she’d spoken since her parents had died.

  Brendan had tried to comfort her that night, to hug her against him, still covered with the stink of her parents’ ashes. Mona hadn’t cried, but she had slept – slept for almost the entirety of the week. He’d had to lock her in to keep her safe.

  “I broke the window.” Her stiff body language told him to keep his distance.

  “It doesn’t matter; we’re getting another caravan, a bigger one.” They were three feet apart but it felt like thirty.

  “Will there be a funeral?”

  “No, Mona.”

  “What about…?” her voice broke a little. “What about Id?”

  Brendan took a breath; he’d prepared this speech, this little scenario, over and over again in his head. They were only words, so why were they so hard to say? “Sit down, Mona.”

  Grey eyes burnt him where he stood. “Tell me,” she commanded, but somehow he couldn’t do it; the words wouldn’t come.

  The teenager stood and strode at him in one smooth movement. At seventeen, Mona was big: tall, powerful and strong. She already owned the muscled body of a warrior and Brendan was struck again by her resemblance to Tom – his square jaw and sharp bones, emphasised now by the crude haircut.

  “Tell me, Brendan.” Her hands had already turned into fists at her side, and Brendan noticed the pink music machine was still clenched tightly in her grasp – it had been last year’s birthday present from her brother, and the only possession Mona genuinely cherished.

  “Idwal has deserted,” he blurted too quickly. “He’s on the run from the army. He went AWOL in Afghanistan – after they told him about the accident.”

  An invisible force struck Mona across the belly and she bent forward; there was nothing in her body to vomit up, but retching nevertheless wracked her. “He’ll come back, though?” It was a whisper from a sad, lonely girl. A girl he had loved and treasured as his own since her birth.

  Mona’s vulnerability broke Brendan’s heart but speaking past his emotion, he fumbled as close to the truth as he dared. “No he won’t. He can’t come back here, it’s far too dangerous.”

  She was sick then, heaving over and over again, but producing only bile.

  *

  Things were better in the morning; Mona was awake and had finally eaten. Today he would tell her some facts. Not very much maybe, but just enough to keep her safe.

  Talking about her parents’ death was hard and Brendan wasn’t a gentle man, but he explained with as little brutality as he could manage. “Your mum and dad didn’t die in a car crash. They were murdered.” Brendan was constantly surprised by Mona’s lack of fear; whatever emotion he saw in her eyes, it was never fear. “I can’t tell you much more than that.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s too dangerous. The less you know, the better.” Brendan knew his niece wouldn’t be fobbed off; there was too much of her father in her for that. “Your life is in danger; that’s all you need to know.” He didn’t want to sound hard but he couldn’t help it, he just needed to keep her alive.

  “What did they do wrong?” she asked, showing another rare glimpse of that vulnerability, and Brendan was torn.

  “Nothing, Mo. Please don’t ever think that. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. That was all. It was fate.”

  Mona was silent for a long time after Brendan had talked, after he’d explained how they would survive and how their life would be. His hand crept to hers over the small Formica table, touching her fingers and pulling her out of her reverie.

  “What is it, Mo?” He could see a question forming in her eyes.

  “I want to learn to fight. Really fight. Can you teach me?” she asked fiercely.

  Brendan smiled; his first in a week, and he squeezed her hand tightly in reply.

  1

  Moelfre

  Four years later

  Watching the English countryside whizz past, through the tinted windows of the car, lulled Mona into a trance. Her eyes flicked backwards, over and over again, picking out random details: the pink blur of a cyclist and the shape of a lake.

  It had finally happened.

  Brendan had not been there at the appointed time – after four years of unfailing consistency. Mona had made the call immediately, hoping that it might be a test, a dry run, to check if she could follow orders. So, she had packed, and the car had come – but Brendan hadn’t leapt from the bushes with a big grin and a carrier bag full of shopping. Her uncle was dead then.

  The lawyer all but confirmed it with his tone, and then he handed her the paperwork. Mona wasn’t feeling shock, or even surprise. After all, Brendan had reminded her of his imminent death almost every morning since she was seventeen. What she felt was crushing loss and complete loneliness.

  As the sumptuous, chauffeur driven car slid through the English countryside, Mona tried to seal her memories of the man away; it was the only way to deal with crippling grief and survive. They had endured four years of running – avoiding all cameras and most people. Mona had hated her uncle some of that time, and loved him at others, but she had respected him through all of it. Now he was gone, and she was totally alone.

  *

  For the first miles of the journey, Mona read and reread the will. It was baffling. The lawyer was taking her to a remote village in Anglesey, a place called Moelfre, which she had never heard of. On arrival, she was meant to find a man named Ifan – there was no mention of a surname. Once she had made contact, Mona was supposed to search for some relatives. If none were found by the end of the month, she was free to leave.

  There was no get-out clause. It was a particular requirement of the will – like a punishment, she thought; Mona wouldn’t inherit her parents’ estate without enduring it.

  The slick lawyer assured her that he knew nothing else, and was singularly mute for the duration of the journey. Until Mona noticed the sign for ‘The North’. She didn’t pretend to be a geographer, but Mona was pretty sure that Wales was south and west. Sitting up suddenly, she confronted the man opposite.

  “That sign said ‘North’.” Mona made it sound like a threat, which the lawyer seemed to take seriously for a few seconds, before lapsing into laconic law mode.

  “Anglesey, Ynys Môn, is an island off Gwynedd. This is the quickest way.” His tone told Mona he was used to explaining to idiots, and she had an urge to lift her leg and give him a sharp kick to the throat.

  “I’ve never heard of Gwinith.” She copied his pronunciation in a growl, but there was a slight nagging in her mind; Brendan would have hated this smarmy bastard.

  “You don’t trust me.” It was a lazy statement.

  “I don’t trust anyone.”

  “Maybe that’s just as well, Ms Jones.” His smile showed teeth but no warmth at all and Mona had th
e feeling he was nurturing a big, fat secret. “How’s your Welsh by the way?”

  “Welsh?”

  For the first time, the man opposite her showed some real emotion – and it was shock. He shook his head, regained the well-worn composure and returned to his own paperwork.

  Mona had heard that it always rained in Wales, and that at least was proving true. The weather in Kent had been a flaming June, but the further north-west they travelled, the wetter and colder it became.

  The car left the motorway and glided through grey, wet towns and tunnels that ran through mountains. After a long time of fighting sleep, Mona looked down at a swirling expanse of water from the height of an ornate bridge.

  “The Menai Strait,” the lawyer noted – his first words in four hours. “Not far to Moelfre now.”

  “That’s a funny name, Moelfre.” The word didn’t sound the same coming out of Mona’s mouth. “Does it mean something?”

  “Yes,” he replied quietly, “it means ‘barren hill’.”

  The driving rain worsened the further onto the island they travelled, and as Mona finally stepped from the car at a bus stop on the side of the road, it could have been February.

  “Four weeks today, then, we’ll be waiting here at nine a.m.” He didn’t pause for an answer; the electric window slid shut, and the lawyer’s car receded into the rain.

  Mona began her search. There was a shop, just across from the bus stop. It was a general store, selling everything from beach balls to home-cooked ham. The sign was in Welsh, ‘Rhen Fecws’ and Mona tried to say the words in her head, but her brain couldn’t turn the letters into sounds.

  The writing may have been Welsh, but all the voices Mona heard were English – northern English. There seemed to be an entire extended family of them stuffed into the small shop and they were loud, wealthy and dripping in technology.

  A sullen-looking teenager was propped against the doorjamb, just shy of the busy drainpipe. The youth was plugged into several machines at once, and was sporting a comedy-sized pair of earphones. Mona and Brendan had read newspapers and she knew all about the swift development of the smartphone – though she hadn’t expected to see so much evidence of it here.

  As Mona waited in line behind the wet tourists, she wondered how the slimy lawyer had got it so wrong. People didn’t speak Welsh in this village. But then the small, older woman in front of her began a conversation with the shopkeeper. By their tone, the women seemed to be chatting about the foulness of the weather, but their language triggered a short circuit back to Mona’s childhood.

  Her parents had sometimes spoken that language to one another. They’d never explained its use, but then again, she’d never asked. Mona had always thought of it as a language of secrets – a code for keeping the kids in the dark or for when they got soppy with each other. Mona sighed. Perhaps she should have paid more attention, though to be fair she had always been crap at languages, and maths, and science, and geography… “Can I help you love?” The shopkeeper broke her reverie.

  “I’m looking for Ifan,” she asked simply.

  The woman paused and glanced quickly at someone behind Mona in the queue.“Ydi o’n gwybod pwy wyt ti?”

  Mona frowned. “I’m sorry, I can’t speak Welsh.”

  The woman looked surprised and then wary. “Can you be more specific?”

  “No,” Mona shrugged, “I don’t think I can.”

  “Best try down at Ann’s Pantri. Sorry, love.”

  Mona turned to the door and the rain.

  *

  The woman in Ann’s Pantri, carrying plates of tasty-looking pasta, appeared too young to be Ann. The restaurant was filled with the smell of good food and the sound of English voices.

  “Do you know Ifan?” Mona asked her.

  “Eevan? Cymraeg?” the woman asked, seemingly confused.

  “No, sorry,” Mona muttered.

  The woman moved nearer and Mona caught a waft of spice and two muttered words: “Lifeboat station.”

  *

  At the tiny, pebbled beach Mona followed a sign to the RNLI station, along the coastal path. Even through the veneer of grim weather, she could see beauty; the ferocity of sea against granite and the smudge of distant mountains. The only face she saw on her journey was that of Dic Evans, a big bronze lifeboat coxswain, who surveyed the Irish Sea with a look of grim capability.

  The sign said that the Moelfre Lifeboat Station was open to the public, but the door was locked. Mona swore and thumped it in frustration. She was deciding how feasible it would be to wee in the long grass at the edge of the coast path, when the door swung open. A big man stood there with a scowl on his face even before she’d opened her mouth.

  “Ar gau,” he growled. “We’re closed,” he added, almost immediately, and began to turn away.

  “I’m looking for Eevan.” Mona tried out the new pronunciation and the man stiffened. He turned back to her slowly – he certainly knew an Ifan, even if it wasn’t him. “I’ve got papers,” she added, hoping it would help her cause.

  “Show me,” he grunted rudely, and the hairs on the back of her neck rose in response – she didn’t like this bloke one bit.

  “Are you Ifan?” she demanded, matching his aggressive tone.

  “No.”

  “Then you can’t see them, they’re for Ifan only.” Mona thought that the man was contemplating violence. Not that it mattered; her bladder was too full for her to care.

  “Come in,” he growled eventually.

  “I need to use your toilet.” Mona didn’t hide the edge in her voice and he pointed at another dark blue door, his glower deepening.

  After leaving the loo, Mona edged her way around the lifeboat, which loomed and gleamed above her in all its glory. The boathouse smelt enticing – a mixture of seaweed, diesel and hot machinery. There were voices above her, raised voices, so she found the almost vertical staircase, and climbed towards them.

  *

  The big man was the coxswain – it said so on his jumper – and he was growling into a VHF radio. He stabbed a finger at her, and then at a plastic seat. Mona obeyed but didn’t rush to sit down as ordered. At least this was progress.

  On another phone, there was a younger, slighter man, also sporting an RNLI uniform. The men looked related, brothers maybe, and they were having a heated debate with each other while simultaneously holding two phone conversations.

  The big man added to the mayhem by stomping around and occasionally rolling his eyes in her direction. In some strange way he reminded Mona of Brendan; it might have been the way he moved – perhaps he was a fighter too. The younger of the brothers seemed calmer and placated the other from time to time. Mona felt she might have intruded on a family row, though she was almost beyond caring.

  The rain was beating and sliding against the panoramic window, forced by the wind into its corners. Watching the weather was making Mona sleepy, and she reached for her mp3 player as a distraction. The machine was a touchstone for her, a talisman, a reminder of happy times. It came from a time before fear and running. Mona’s life used to be normal; there had been telly, phone calls, music and freedom. She used to have a family, but now Mona had only herself and her memories. And those were all stuffed into the tiny, tatty machine in her hand.

  Both men appeared happy to ignore her, so she stuck an earphone in each ear and put the player on shuffle. The familiarity of the music soothed her, but Mona hadn’t heard any new music for far too long.

  She was well into the playlist when Mr Grumpy came to stand in front of her. “Follow me.”

  Mona was wary; she hadn’t expected him to help her. “Where are we going? Do you know Ifan?”

  “I said follow me.” He turned away abruptly, without looking to see if she was affronted by his ever-increasing hostility.

  *

  While following the coxswain down the stairs and out onto the coastal path, Mona secured her rucksack over both shoulders. If it came to a fight she’d need both hands free. Th
e path wiggled down and round until it reached sea level. Grumpy was leading her to a row of ancient whitewashed cottages, only a hundred metres or so away from the foaming waves.

  The tiny white houses were so low that Grumpy had to bend down to knock. Time yawned on and he chose not to make eye contact with her during the wait, but closed them, as if preparing himself for some great test. The door eventually opened to reveal a small, wiry old man, with a mass of white hair and eyebrows. Mona immediately claimed the old man’s attention – he looked mortally panicked.

  The big man eyed the old man warily before starting up a loud discourse in their native tongue. After some energetic exchanges between the two, both sets of eyes rested on Mona. “Are you Ifan?” she asked.

  “I am,” he managed. “Who are you?”

  The old man’s reaction convinced Mona that she must have found family – it was equally evident that she wasn’t welcome. “I’m Mona Jones, and I’m here because Brendan Kelly sent me. He’s dead.” She’d finally said the words out loud, and they sliced at her chest as she offered up the paperwork.

  If anything, the atmosphere deteriorated at the mention of Brendan’s name. Ifan leant against the angry coxswain, who didn’t seem to relish the close contact.

  Mona was trying to work out what Ifan knew. He was mightily shocked, maybe even frightened. As he stood and gawked, the big man asked him some garbled questions, which Ifan didn’t answer immediately. When at last he did, an awful silence descended between the two, and it was obvious that Mona had sunk even further in Grumpy’s regard. The big man stomped into the cottage, relaying the bad news to whoever else sat behind the door.