One Flesh

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Book excerpt

Chapter 1

It was raining and getting dark as Owein Morris trudged along the path back from the pit with his friends. His lean, vigorous body ached in places and he longed to rest his aching limbs in a comfortable chair in the Lamb and Lark, and take that first taste of beer.

Just then, Rhys Trow, a thickset fair-haired lad who had been in Owein’s class all the way through school, said, ‘That’n’s a bit of all right,’ and Owein looked up in time to see Rhiannon Dawkins as she passed him and his friends on the road. She was a tall girl with long black hair, a pale complexion and beautiful blue eyes. Her tight-fitting jeans showed off her long slim legs, and she was walking with her hands in the pockets of her padded sleeveless jacket. 'Hello, Rhiannon,' Owein said.

She turned her head and her dark flashing eyes seemed to make blind contact with Owein's for an instant, and then she carried on past without making a reply. Whether this was because he had seen her and spoken too late, or because she would not lower herself to speak to him, when he was with his friends, he could not be sure.

‘Oh, he-llo, Rhiannon,’ Rhys mimicked him after the girl had gone by.

‘What…?’ Owein felt silly.

‘Anyone’d think you was soft on that lass.’

 ‘She’s a looker, all right,’ Padrig Jervis admitted. ‘I’ll say that much.’

‘That she is,’ Geraint Deakyn agreed.

Owein kept his thoughts to himself. He didn’t want to talk about Rhiannon with his friends. What did they know about her? What did anyone really know about her?

They walked along in silence, each taken up with his own thoughts, until they reached the pub. The air was full of cigarette smoke inside, and there was a log fire burning over in the fireplace. Rhys bought a round and the men sat on stools at the bar and drank. They were on their third pint when Glyn Morgan came in saying that Owein’s little sister was outside. Owein finished what was in his glass, before he stood up and went out.

‘What do you want, Sally?’ he asked his little sister. She was a pale, slender child of nine.

‘Mam says to tell you Dad’s not well and if you can come home.’

‘She does, does she,’ Owein sighed. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Come on, then.’ He took little Sally’s hand and they trudged along in the gathering dark.

            As they neared the row of thatched miners’ cottages, the sound of voices could be heard: of mothers berating their children, of laughter and of tears, and there was a smell of cabbage and onions. The terraced cottages were laid out in ranks of twelve, and Owein lived in the first rank.

            He took out his key and opened the door to the house. ‘Go on in,’ he said, but Sally waited for him to enter first. It was dark inside, and the place smelt of the dinner of fried liver and onions that Owein’s mother had made earlier on. His father was sprawled in the easy chair, warming his feet by the fire and gazing dejectedly before him. The only light in the room came from the television, over in the corner. Some sort of film was on, with the sound turned down. Owein turned the light on and looked at his father, but Mr Morris continued to ignore his presence; it was the act of a man who knew he was being observed. His face was broad, swollen with drink, and blotched about the cheeks and nose with broken red blood vessels. His silvery hair was flat on his head, so that it looked like corrugated steel, and his forehead was marked with deep, course lines. He wore an old pigskin waistcoat and black worsted trousers.  

            ‘Drunk again, Pa?’ Owein sneered.

            ‘Nowt to do with you if I am.’

            ‘It is if little Sally has to come to the pub and get me.’

            Mr Morris turned his head as if it cost him an effort to look at his son, and just then Owein heard a groan coming from upstairs. Mam, he thought, and rushed out of the room and up the staircase in the dark, the stairs creaking underfoot as he climbed them three at a time. ‘Mam!’ he called, as he reached the landing.

            There was no reply, but Owein heard what sounded like stifled sobs. He rushed into the bedroom, and there was his mother lying face down on the bed in her street clothes. ‘He’s done it again, Mam, hasn’t he?’

            His mother didn’t reply, other than to make a little snuffling noise.

            Owein punched the wall. ‘I ought to take him out and give him a regular beating for this.’

            ‘No, Owein, don’t,’ Mrs. Morris sobbed. ‘Not that...he doesn’t mean nothing by it.’

‘I told him the last time I wasn’t standing for any more of it.’

            Mrs Morris clutched at his sleeve. ‘No, Owein, please.’

            ‘Enough is enough, Mam.’

            Owein left the room and descended the stairs, ignoring his mother’s calls for him to come back and listen to what she had to say to him. He’d heard the excuses she made for him far too many times. It was only the drink talking. He didn’t really mean it. He’s a good man at heart. Well Owein didn’t care about what his father was like at heart. His love for his mother, and his desire to protect her, filled him with self-righteous indignation as he went back into the living room.

            His father was still slumped there in his chair by the fire. The mere sight of him was enough to fill Owein with rage and disgust. ‘You’re a bloody coward,’ he said, spitting the words out. ‘Do you hear me? I said that you’re nothing but a bloody coward.’

            Mr Morris turned and looked at him, and there was a fixed, stupid expression in his eyes that was caused, at least in part, by the drink he’d taken earlier.

‘I’ll not have Mam being treated like this anymore,’ Owein said. ‘I promised myself the last time you hit her that it would never happen again. She begged me not to say anything to you and so I didn’t, out of respect for her. But now I can’t hold my tongue any longer. Things have gone too far.’

            ‘Who are you, a mere slip of a lad, to be telling me how I should behave in my own house?’

            ‘I wouldn’t have to if you didn’t keep beating on Mam.’

            ‘You oughta know when to keep your nose out of things.’

            ‘So you can carry on beating her, you mean? No, I told you, I’m just not standing for it any longer. This has got to stop.’

His father leered at him with a mocking grin on his long, thin, lips. ‘So what do you propose to do now, then, laddie?’ The old man seemed to be daring Owein to take action. But to challenge one’s father was to cross a line of some sort, to break some fundamental taboo. It was not something that one did lightly.

Owein realized that his father was waiting for him to say or do something, and opposing forces swirled within him as he said, ‘I’ll do whatever it takes.’

            Mr Morris got up out of the chair, and there was something of the dumb blindness of a big, heavy animal in his clumsy movements. Owein braced himself, his arms held high and at the ready, waiting for what was to come. It seemed to him there was something inevitable about the scene they were about to enact, that it had always been going to happen, and that he had been waiting for it all his life, waiting for it and dreading it with horror both at the same time.

            Just then, Owein heard the front door open and slam shut, and then the sound of footsteps out in the hallway, and his younger brother, Selwyn, entered the room. ‘Hello, hello,’ Selwyn said, ‘what’s going on here, then?’ He was a pale and slender lad and, dressed as he was in a grey suit with a waistcoat, he seemed to belong elsewhere. And for some reason, his presence in the room had the effect of making both Owein and his father conscious of the ridiculousness of what they were about.

             Owein dropped his arms and said, ‘Where’ve you been?’

             ‘Nowhere important.’ Selwyn put the book that he’d been carrying down on the table.

             ‘Got a sweetheart, have you?’

             ‘That’s my affair,’ Selwyn replied. ‘What’s up with you two?’

            Owein glanced at his father, then back at Selwyn and shrugged. ‘Nothing...why…?’

            ‘You looked as though you were arguing over something.’

            ‘No, we was only talking.’

At that moment, Mrs. Morris entered the room. She had freshened herself up, so that, looking at her, you wouldn’t have known she’d been crying. There was a red mark on her cheek, though. Selwyn noticed it straightaway and asked her about it. Oh, it was nothing, she told him. She’d just tripped outside in the dark and fallen and banged her cheek. Selwyn’s dark brows contracted in a frown and his full lips pressed together, so that Owein sensed that he’d guessed what had happened.

            ‘You’ll be wanting something to eat, Selwyn,’ Mrs. Morris said. ‘I’ll bet you’re famished.’

            ‘Just about.’

            ‘And you, too, Owein, I expect?’

            ‘I could eat, Mam, yes.’

            'All right, well if you go and freshen yourself up, Owein...and if you’ll lay the table for me, Selwyn, then I’ll see about making the meal.'

            ‘What about me?’ Mr Morris complained. ‘Don’t I live here, too?’

            Mrs. Morris fixed him a withering look and then she smiled. It was the most hypocritical smile in the world. It said that said she would tolerate him because she had to, but if circumstances were different then she wouldn’t so much as cross the street to give him the time of day. Owein had seen that smile before on his mother’s face.

            ‘Come on, then,’ Mrs. Morris said, ‘let’s get a move on.’