The Rice Paper Diaries (24 page)

It is cold in the shade of the tree and she wishes she’d put her jumper on to come out instead of skipping away, pretending she couldn’t hear Elsa’s voice carrying up into the garden from the scullery behind her.

‘What does she write in those letters?’ Tommy says lightly, as if the answer doesn’t matter at all.

‘I don’t know.’

‘How do you think we can find out?’

‘I’m going away to school.’

‘Maybe not. Maybe not if you can help me find out what she writes about.’

‘How?’

‘Next time she sends you to the post office, you come and see me. You bring me the letter.’

‘And then I won’t have to go away?’

‘No.’

‘Promise. Do you promise?’

‘Yes, I promise.’

Mari looks out over the sea. She feels sorry for the boy who lives next door to Bristol House, Richard, because he has to go to the orphanage in Carmarthen next week, and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. He doesn’t whistle when he delivers the papers any more; instead he flings the
Cambrian News
into the porch so hard that it hits the bottom of the front door with a thwack.

Tommy takes his hand away from her wrist and she gets to her feet.

‘Will you do it?’

‘Yes.’

She takes the basket and starts to pick her way down the path between the sheets hung out to dry.

The soles of her shoes are still wet from the orchard. She knows she’s going to fall before it happens. She doesn’t trip; she just slithers off one of the slate steps and lands on her knees in the back yard. She sees the basket dropping from her hands and rolling down to the back of the house, with damsons flying out of it. Some of them land on the kitchen window, leaving marks on the panes. She wonders why Elsa doesn’t come away from the sink and open the back door to see if she’s all right. Still on her knees, she looks through the smeared glass at her mother. But Elsa isn’t rinsing or pricking sloes or stirring them into the gin; she is bent over, clutching her sides and retching into the basin while Nannon stands at her side with her arm around her, pulling Elsa in close, looking straight ahead over Mari’s head, taking no notice of the split open ugly faces of the damsons against the grass.

12

Nannon and Elsa are in a strange mood, fussing around the leftovers on the breakfast table, and looking up at the clock above the range again and again. Nannon says they will take the car to Lampeter, and when Elsa asks about the petrol coupons she says the petrol coupons can go to hell for one day.

‘Am I coming?’ Mari asks.

‘What?’ Nannon says. She is busy taking a wad of notes out of a jug on the dresser and counting them. She puts some of them in her purse and the rest back in the jug.
‘Yes, yes, of course. You can go and put your coat on, if you’ve finished your toast.’

Mari runs to the coat hooks in the hall, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She waits on the road outside for a long time, while Elsa and Nannon get themselves ready. She can hear a wireless crackling in one of the houses further up the terrace, and someone shouting down on the quay, although when she leans over the wall she can’t see anything apart from the roofs below and the navy of the sea.

When Nannon and Elsa come out of the house wearing lipstick and sunglasses, they look like photographs of themselves. Nannon sits in the driver’s seat, with Elsa next to her, and Mari behind. Mari could lie lengthways if she wanted to and fall asleep, but she doesn’t feel sleepy, so she sits up and looks out of the window.

Nannon waves a gloved hand at a woman standing on the corner of Lewis Terrace and Water Street. The woman gapes through the window. ‘Going somewhere for the day, are you?’ she calls out.

‘Yes, that’s right,’ Nannon beams back at her.

The woman opens her mouth to say something else, but Nannon has pulled the throttle out and turned up Water Street, and the noise of the engine is louder than anything the woman might have said. As they drive up the hill Mari turns around and puts a hand over the leather seat and looks out of the back window but all she can see are the woman’s ankles and shoes sticking out below a cloud of dirty smoke.

‘No one makes me laugh like you do, Nannon,’ Elsa says.

‘She deserved it.’

Nannon waves her hand again airily, and Mari grabs onto the handle of the car door in case they run into a hedge. They pass a house below the cemetery gates with a wire cage in the front garden, like the chicken run Frank has built in the orchard for Nannon to keep hens. Mari presses her face to the glass as they pass the cottage, hoping to see the pet monkey with his sad, wrinkled face, but the run is empty.

‘It’s probably too cold for it to be let out today,’ Elsa says, before Mari can ask, and the way she says it makes Mari think that her mother doesn’t want to talk any more, so she pushes herself right back on the seat and stares out at the world from an angle, the yew hedge of the cemetery appearing and disappearing, trees and chimney pots petering out, until there is just her face reflected in the glass, moving across the sky. On the hilltop roads there are trees with bare branches, doubled
-
up by the wind. When the car begins to dip downwards again, the flat fields spotted with sheep between the road and the valley bed tilt back and fore, as if they are on a boat caught in an unexpected swell, pushing them up off the surface. Before long, though, the sea of green around them becomes steady, and houses start to fly by the windows, quickly at first, then slowing down until the car comes to a halt on a street with shops all along one side and a high sandstone wall and a pair of black wrought
-
iron gates on the other. Nannon sighs as the engine whines away to nothing, and sits back in her seat, her tweed coat sliding about on its leather surface. It makes a rude, belching noise when she shifts her weight around, but she takes no notice.

‘Shall we get to Gino’s before the rush?’ she says to Elsa.

‘Yes, let’s,’ says Elsa, smiling.

The café is all marble and mirrors. There is a tall man behind the counter wearing a collar and tie, and a plain white apron. He smiles broadly, as if he’s been waiting for them.

‘Hello, Gino,’ says Nannon.

‘What a wonderful surprise,’ the man says in a staccato voice. ‘It’s been too long since we saw our friends from New Quay. Please, take a seat by the window.’

Elsa and Mari sit facing each other, and Nannon has the view of the street outside. Mari looks at Gino’s bald spot moving about in the mirror, and the pictures of opera singers on the walls, their mouths wide open. Nannon sighs and spreads her arms out across the table.

‘Isn’t this wonderful, getting away for the day?’ she says.

‘Here we are,’ says Gino. He puts two small, thick cups and saucers on the table, and moves the sugar pot from the centre closer to Nannon. He goes back behind the counter and brings out a dish set with cut sandwiches and a tall glass filled with something that looks like crushed ice, with blackberries sprinkled over the top.

‘And for the young lady, a sorbet made with fruits of the season. Our own new recipe.’

‘What do you say, Mari?’ says Nannon.

‘Thank you,’ she says, eyeing the blackberries as they start to collapse into the melting sorbet. She takes the long spoon which came with it and starts eating straightaway. The cold tang of it hurts her mouth, but it is moist and sweet, better than chocolate.

Nannon stirs a spoonful of sugar into her coffee. Gino has gone back behind the counter and is washing cups at a sink against the wall. Elsa is staring at the grey veins of the marble table top.

‘What’s wrong?’ Nannon says to her. ‘I’m going to treat you both. I’m going to get a proper trunk for Mari, a good one for school, and you can choose whatever you like – maybe a valise? They’ve got lovely leather ones in that place next to the ironmonger’s. Nice and light for travelling overseas.’ She looks straight out of the window down the high street. ‘I think I’ve got everything ready for Mari, at least. Maybe we could do with a few more handkerchiefs, though.’

‘I can’t stop it happening, though, can I?’ says Elsa. ‘Any of it.’

Mari pushes her spoon into the sorbet and pulls the sticky centre out. She holds it up before putting it in her mouth, examining the pellets of squashed fruit.

‘Have you finished?’ Nannon says to Mari. Mari hasn’t, but she gets down from the table.

‘I want you to go out and get some fresh air,
cariad
,’ Nannon says, getting up and making sure that Mari is wrapped up warm in her new grey school coat. ‘Go over to the fountain and sit on that bench there until Nannon comes to get you, there’s a good girl.’ And she puts a hand on either side of Mari’s head, and strokes her hair, then sits back down, holding her small coffee cup with both hands, her coat still over her shoulders.

Gino is shouting orders into the kitchen.

‘Lasagna…
Cawl
, please… Open sandwich with ham.’

Mari crosses the road and looks at the fountain. The dark stone makes the running water look black, but she drinks it anyway, just to see what it tastes like, cupping it in earthy handfuls and letting it dribble down the sides of her mouth. She stands back and reads the inscription, taking her time, because some of the English words are new to her:
Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst.
She puts her fingers into the letters and runs them up and down, as if she’s writing them out for herself. She wonders what
whosoever
is. She looks over at Gino’s. Nannon has put her coffee cup back in its saucer and pushed it to one side. Mari can’t see her face, because Elsa is in the way, her shoulders jerking up and down.

Mari runs over to the pavement on the other side of the road. She pushes the door of the café open.

‘And I swear to God,’ Elsa is saying loudly, rubbing her face with a hankie so that the make
-
up runs everywhere, leaving circles under her eyes the colour of blackberry pulp. ‘If I could drown it like a puppy, I would.’

‘There’s some would kill for a baby, you know that,’ Nannon says.

Gino slams the till shut behind them and Nannon looks up and sees Mari. The solemn expression on her face stays the same, but she puts an arm out, and Mari runs to her.

‘Right then,’ she says loudly, her arm tight around Mari’s new coat. ‘Time for us to let our friend Gino clear the table and get on with our shopping.’

Nannon and Elsa spend the afternoon playing with trunks and hatboxes, exclaiming over collapsible hangers and folding handles, while Mari stands in the shop window and looks across the street through the iron gates at the playing fields opposite, at the college girls chasing a ball with lacrosse sticks and shouting at each other, their bare legs red raw with cold.

By the time all the errands have been seen to, the afternoon air is thickening into mist and Nannon says they should start to make tracks for home. As they pass the playing fields, Elsa stops to watch the girls in their gymslips flitting in and out of the shadows.

‘Come on,’ Nannon says, taking her arm.

Mari walks behind them to the car, putting her hand into the pocket of her new coat and touching the stiff corners of the envelope inside, the one with Oscar’s name on it, just to make sure it is still there, safe, ready to give to Tommy when he asks for it.

13

She is to pretend that nothing is wrong. She is to walk with Nannon and Elsa past the Memorial Hall to Towyn Chapel. When they leave her at the vestry door and walk along to the chapel, she is to wait, pretending that she is putting her handkerchief back in her pocket. Once they’ve disappeared through the folding doors at the top, she is to turn around and walk back down the lane to Lewis Terrace. She’s to let herself into Gwelfor, because the door will be on the latch, and she’s to go straight to the kitchen, where he’ll be waiting for her to give him the letter. The worst that will happen is that she will get a telling
-
off for not going to Sunday school. And even if they do find out they won’t make too much of it, because they think it’s her last Sunday.
They don’t know yet that she’s not going away.
Only Tommy knows.

‘Mari!’ Elsa calls up the stairs. Mari lets the paper flower drop into a saucer of water and watches as the petals open one by one. She carries the saucer over to the dressing table next to the window. Even paper flowers need sunlight. That’s what Lin said when she wrote back. That if Mari takes good care of them, they will last a long, long time, just like real flowers. Perhaps longer. Perhaps forever. And ever. Amen.

‘Mari,
dere ’mlaen, wnei di
!’ Nannon shouts. Nannon doesn’t just save her English for certain people, schoolteachers, say, or tourists; she saves it for certain moods. Welsh is for the milkman, and naughty children, and late
-
night conversations with Elsa on the other side of the brocade wallpaper in Mari’s bedroom. Welsh is for when Nannon can’t wait any more: ‘
Dere lawr nawr, neu fe awn ni hebddot ti!
’ Mari runs down the stairs. She doesn’t want to be left behind.