Welsh Lessons-2

“NICK! The bus goes in TWO MINUTES! We’ve got to get down there now!”

“NAH. We’ve got loads of time. It always leaves ten minutes late.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Caught it loads of times. Driver’s probably still in bed.”

The bus garage was a grey corrugated shed, next to the police station. Its size and bulk were out of place among the huddled brown terraces of the village. The long green Cronsvale single-decker was parked askew outside, doors open. They clambered aboard and sat down at the back.

“It’s a Bristol RE.”

“Of course it is.”

“Gardner engine.”

“Something out a lawnmower? No wonder it takes an hour and a half…”

“No - Gardner. They make engines. For buses and trucks. They’ve got one of the new Leyland Nationals at the garage now. We might have it on the way back.”

“Can’t wait…”

The driver, a stocky black-haired guy heaved himself up the steps and into the seat, panting and grunting slightly. His glance rested on his two passengers, for a split second.

“Come with me, Nick, but let me buy the tickets. I want to show you something.”

“Sure...”

“Dau tocyn i Bangor os gwelwch yn da. No sorry! Dau tocyn i FANGOR! Os gwelwch yn dda. Returns.”

“Errgh?”

“Mae hi’n dysgu Cymraeg.”

“What she want to do that for? Especially you people? Sixty pee.”

 

They walked back to their seats.

“That’s AMAZING Janice! You couldn’t even say Llanerchyllwch three weeks ago!”

“He’s a racist.”

“Not necessarily,” said Nick. “Cronsvale drivers hate all humanity. Maybe it’s just his special way of showing that he doesn’t like you either.”

“Fish wants me to take the Welsh O level. Reckons I could pass it.”

“Good for you. I only scraped a ‘C’. Never even opened a textbook; must have somehow picked up enough to pass. I mean, I can understand it pretty well, most of the time anyway, but I don’t let on; has its advantages. But you must be brill at languages.”

“Jack French said I know more French than him.”

“Not saying much, probably. But I bet you know all the mucky words…”

“You know what that little bitch Sian said to me? She said, ‘Well Janice, as you know so much you’ll be giving everyone in the school French lessons’. Thinking I wouldn’t know what it meant…”

“What does it mean?”

“Oh, Nick…”

 

 

The bus sighed as it went round the Llanallgo roundabout, clipping the kerb clumsily. Janice sighed too: “Can’t this thing go any faster?”

“It’s the schedule. We’ll be ten minutes early into Bangor anyway, you’ll see.”

“Gawd. We’re going so slowly we’ll meet ourselves coming back.”

“We will be coming back. It goes down into Moelfre and turns round. Then it comes back up this way again.”

“Cronsvale - bunch of sadists.”

“We’ll be in Benllech soon. It’s nice. Maybe we could ride out there on our bikes one evening.”

“You joking? It must be, what, ten miles? Isn’t there any seaside closer than that? Apart from the Creek.”

“We could sneak into a pub in Benllech. It’s far enough from Llwch…”

“If you can afford to get me drunk…”

 

On the narrow road at Red Wharf Bay, the bus from Bangor was coming the other way. The two drivers pulled up alongside each other for a chat, oblivious to the straggle of cars building up behind. They couldn’t make out what they were saying, but their driver jerked his head back in their direction.

“He’s talking about us. Well, about me.”

After Red Wharf Bay, Janice nudged him. “Let’s snog! Annoy the bastard…”

 

“You’re getting better. Go again?”

“Sure…”

The second kiss lasted until Pentraeth, where the bus pulled into a layby and waited for a couple of minutes to allow the timetable to catch up. Then the driver pulled out again, without warning; an elderly green Morris Minor wailed its horn as the bus swung out into its path.

“This guy wouldn’t last five minutes driving a bus in Manchester.”

“Cronsvale buses are an occupational hazard round here. Keeps the population in check.”

 

As Nick predicted, they pulled into Bangor well ahead of schedule. As they got off, Janice jabbed a finger towards the driver’s window. “Gwelwch yn eich mirror, pal!”

“FOOK off!”

They walked on down the high street.

“You know, I don’t think mirror is the Welsh for mirror, Janice.”

“Do you think that’s why he swore at me?”

 

 

They enjoyed the bustle of Bangor. It was term time, and there were students about. In the bookshop, there was even a rotund black woman in a leopardskin print African dress. Their gaze met briefly, like related but different species encountering each other on the forest floor. The woman looked away to the Social Studies shelf.

“Just come down from the trees,” muttered Janice as they left the shop.

“JANICE! That’s racist!”

“I know...”

 

They caught the bus back to Llwch at about four. A different driver, younger, taller, fair-haired. His gaze rested on Janice briefly as Nick gave him their tickets but without registering visible surprise.

“Word must be getting around the bus-driver’s canteen,” said Janice.

 

 

“What’s Holyhead like? Any good?” asked Janice. She saw the sign as the bus swung off the A5 at Menai Bridge.

“Got a cinema; we went to see The Italian Job when I was younger. My mum used to teach part time at the convent school, before she got too ill... And there’s a delicatessen.” 

“A del-i-ca-tessen? In Holyhead?”

“Yeah, one day my mum brought these sort of pear things back one day. Avo…, avo…”

“Avocado pears?”

“That’s them. Weren’t very nice, though. Really hard and didn’t seem to taste of anything. I think we threw them out in the end.”

“You’re not supposed eat them when they’re like that! You’ve got to let them get ripe and soft, then have them with vinaigrette sauce! You people crack me up, you really do…”

“You know there’s a Chinese takeaway in Llwch? Opened last year…”

“Wow! You’ll be telling me there’s a nightclub next…”

“Not really. There’s Skinflints disco once a month in the Memorial Hall. Anyway, me and my dad went to the Chinese a few months ago. It was when my mum was in Bangor hospital, we didn’t have anything to eat. Well, we did, but he didn’t know to cook anything. Now my mum’s teaching him how to cook, and how to do the washing.”

“Your mum’s really ill, isn’t she?”

“Yeah.”

“What she got?”

“Don’t know; they won’t talk about it to me. But I think it might be cancer. I looked up cancer in the encyclopaedia. It kind of all … fits…”

“I’m sorry, Nick.”

 

The bus dropped them at the garage in Llwch. International Stores was still open. Through the plate glass window they could see a few old ladies, rummaging through the meagre stock on the shelves or chatting to the solitary woman on the check-out.

“Let’s both go in - tell me what they’re saying about us.”

They pushed open the glass door and went inside. They made a show of interest in the shelves of rusty tins of corned beef and peaches. Nick stayed within earshot of the women at the till who stopped talking, momentarily, then resumed their conversation animatedly. Janice recognised ‘merch’ and ‘gorsaf’ but nothing else. Nick nodded to the ladies and bought a packet of Wrigley’s spearmint.

“Diolch yn fawr!” said Janice as they closed the door behind them. They walked up the steep, dark lane behind the gasometer.

“Well?”

“Mrs Prytherch – the one in the green headscarf; she said we make a lovely couple. They like your hair. Wonder how you get it done. Mrs Geraint-Prees Jones told the others where your father works. Your mother’s a nurse but not working while she looks for a job. They think she might get one in the surgery here in Llwch. And you’re very clever; doing very well at school. And they wonder how you do your hair.”

“What is it about my HAIR with these people?”

“They said a few things about me too.”

“Such as?”

“It’s a pity I don’t know how to dress properly. I could be so good looking if I wasn’t such a scruff. But my mother’s too ill to do it, so that’s OK.”

“Perhaps I should take you in hand. Where’s the nearest decent men’s outfitters?”

“Search me. Liverpool, probably. There’s an express bus from here. Well, I say express, it goes all round the houses, through Llandudno and that…”

“Why does EVERYTHING round here involve sitting on a bus for three hours?”

“At least three hours…”

 

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The green-yellow phone rang. Nick wiped has hands on his jumper and carefully removed the receiver from its cradle, careful not to let it drop back and cut the call off. He’d done that a few times in the three years since the Richardson family had had it installed. It was Maureen, Janice’s mum.

“Nick. I was wondering if you could spare a few minutes to pop round this morning? We’ve had something painted on the wall of our front garden.”

“Something painted? Like, graf…graf….”

“Yes, grafitti. Words of some sort – only we can’t figure them out. We thought it might be Welsh.”

“I’ll bring my big dictionary. Be there in ten minutes.”

 

The grafitti on the low pebble dashed grey wall of the Robertson residence on Rhos-y-Bryn Road was

crudely-daubed, uneven. It hadn’t been done with one of those new aerosol cans – Cymdeithas yr iaith was increasingly turning to these to deface English road signs in North Wales. This was in white emulsion, with a brush: “NiGASAlan.”

“Is it Welsh, Nick?” Janice asked. “I came home yesterday evening at about nine and it wasn’t there. I found it when I came out to go to the newsagent this morning. I looked it up in my Welsh dictionary but I couldn’t find anything like it.”

“What about yours, Nick?” said Maureen, standing behind Janice and putting her hands on her shoulders. Janice was half an inch taller.

“Doesn’t look like any Welsh word I know.” Nick flipped his large tome open at ‘N’. “Nifwl, Ninnau….No, no, nothing like that.”

“Could it be something to do with the Gas Board?” said Janice. “An instruction for digging up the road? North Wales Independent Gas…”

“Doubt it. Gas round here is North Western. And who’s Alan? And anyway, the gas people wouldn’t go round daubing stuff on peoples’ walls in the middle of the night. Not even our gas people.”

“Hmm…” said Maureen.

Nick stood back from the wall, in the road. “Hang on. The ‘l’ in Alan. It’s meant to be a double ‘l’. It’s allan, Welsh for out.”

“So it’s: ‘Something out’…

“Oh…my…God,” breathed Maureen. “It’s starting…”

“Animals. Illiterate in two languages,” said Nick.

“Oh Janice; we should never have brought you here! You know, you could go and live with Naomi back in Manchester…”

“NO!...No ... It’s just ignorant kids. I just want to be with you…and Dad. I’ll be fine, honestly…”

“Would you like me to call round at the Police Station, Mrs Robertson?”

“The police? Oh no, love don’t want to have more trouble than we already got…”

 

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