Liverpool Taffy by Katie Flynn Page B

against Menna will I hear! She is a good girl and willing to be your friend, rascal that you are, boy. You will treat her with respect while you are under my roof and no more dirty talk will there be about Menna taking your Mam’s place … she knows she can’t do that, she seeks only to comfort me, to make my hard lot easier …’
    ‘Then you won’t marry her? There’s nothing between you?’
    The silence that followed went on several seconds too long. Davy and Dai were in the meadow above the house, out on the brow of the hill which nosed down, eventually, into the sea. Behind them was the monument to those who had lost their lives aboard the Royal Charter , when she sank within sight of land in the worst gale any man had known. Before them was the sea which had swallowed her up – her and many another vessel, all carrying good men who did not deserve such a death.
    ‘Marry? Ah well, now … that’s to say … she is a good girl, I’m telling you, Dai bach, and your Mam would think scorn on you to say otherwise … if my Bethan were here …’
    ‘You make me sick, mun!’ The words had burst from Dai even as he bit his lip to try to prevent them. ‘If Mam were here she’d have your Menna out from under herroof before the cat could lick its ear! No place for two women in one house, she’d say, and Menna would be back behind the bloody bar of the Crown, where she belongs!’
    Davy was not as tall as Dai, but he drew himself up to his full height and glared at his son with something very like hatred in his dark eyes. ‘Faithful to your Mam I have been for thirty year, since the day we wed! A good Da to you and Sîan, too. But talk like this I will not take, d’you hear me, boy? Menna is here to stay and you are out … d’you hear me? Out! You shall not sully Mam’s memory or Menna’s good sweetness to me in my hour of need with your dirty tongue. Out! Out! OUT !’
    ‘I’ll go, and willing,’ Dai had said quietly. ‘And never darken my doors again, Da, as they say in the old melodramas? Is that what you want? Because I tell you straight, I won’t come back here whilst you and Menna are sharing a roof and neither wed to the other. That isn’t how Mam brought me up to behave, and I thought better of you. Sîan and Gareth don’t say much, but they’re of my mind. So it’s no children you’ll have if you …’
    Davy screamed ‘Out, I said!’ and turned on his heel. He almost ran down the long meadow, leaving his son standing at the brow of the hill, with the bitter taste of defeat in his mouth.
    His father was in the wrong and would never admit it; he was behaving in a way which would have Mam turning in her grave if she knew of it, which Dai prayed was not the case. Well, it was the end, then. The end of happiness, contentment, the end of his closeness with his father, his pleasure in the home they had shared for so many years.
    He knew he could take a ship out of Amlwch because he and Melrion had ridden the motorbike over there a week since, and there had been jobs, then, for someone with his experience of small boats. But then he had hesitated, not wanting to burn his boats, to close the door on Moelfre, his home, his entire life.
    He would hesitate no longer, however. He would go as his father bade him and never come back. Never, not even if the old man married the bitch and gave her his name. Never, not if the sweet sky rained blood and the sea turned to boiling oil.
    Never. Never. Never.
    But now, sauntering along the little Irish lane and reliving that terrible day, Dai told himself that never was a long time; too long. His father would marry Menna no matter how often he said he would do no such thing, because the village would not let him keep her living there as his mistress. Davy was obstinate, but once his son had gone he would do the decent thing by the brassy little bitch.
    So I could go home … well, I could go and stay with Sîan at first, I suppose, make sure of my welcome, Dai