Sweet Talking Money. Harry Bingham

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      1

      The Arctic Circle was having a good month for the export trade. Not content with dumping a shedload of snow on Boston, it had delivered a country-sized blanket overnight express to the British Isles, with further deliveries already in transit. At London Heathrow, nervous air traffic controllers watched their disappearing runways and reached for the panic buttons.

      Somewhere off the west coast of Ireland, Bryn’s jet nudged its course northwards by a few degrees and a not-very-apologetic pilot informed the passengers that their new destination would be Birmingham, not Heathrow. A ripple of conversation flowed through the economy seats at the back of the plane, but up in business, where Bryn sat, there was barely a flutter of interest as the travel-hardened veterans of the air revised their plans and helped themselves to sausage and egg.

      At Birmingham International, Bryn hired a car and pointed it not south-east down the M40, but southwards down the M5. Six weeks since Cecily’s departure, he still hadn’t admitted the fact to his parents, and the time had now come.

      As he drove into Wales, climbing out of the Wye valley into the Brecon Beacons, the snow on either side of the road thickened to a mantle six inches, sometimes a foot deep. For all his initial swerve in the truck in Boston, Bryn was well used to driving through snow, and he negotiated the ascending lanes skilfully, coming to rest at a farm on the top of the road, the last farmland before the open hills. He honked his horn, a clear note in the crystal air.

      Hearing the sound, his mother came anxiously to the door of the slate-roofed farmhouse. She looked at the unknown car with suspicion, before lightening into a flurry of smiles and greetings as Bryn swung his bag out of the boot. Welcoming him, scolding him, offering food by the bucket-load, she bundled him indoors.

      ‘If only you’d told me, I’d have got something ready. As it is, there’s nothing except a couple of pasties and last night’s shepherd’s pie and a bit of beef left over from the weekend and I could warm up –’

      ‘Mum, please. It’s eleven o’clock in the morning, and I had breakfast on the plane.’

      ‘On a plane again? There was a crash last week. In Delhi, was it? I wish –’

      ‘Not last week, the week before. And it wasn’t a crash, it was a near-miss. And as you say, it was in Delhi.’

      ‘So not Delhi, then?’

      ‘No, Mum – coffee, please, yes, but no beef, honestly – I was in America. Boston.’ Gwyneth Hughes’ expression puckered in a look of renewed concern, as America was, to her, a land awash with gangsters, guns and drive-by shootings; the only place on earth more dangerous than London. ‘And yes, I was careful. And yes, I did get Dad some Jelly Beans.’

      Her next two questions having been taken care of, her frown smoothed away, although a hint of caution remained in the eyebrows as though reserving the right to be worried at any time. ‘And Cecily?’ she asked. ‘How is she? No news, I suppose?’

      The question meant, ‘Have you got her pregnant yet?’ As the daughter of one sheep farmer and wife of another, Gwyneth had always known that fertility is the first and most important property of the female.

      ‘No, nothing like that, anyway.’ Bryn breathed out in a long sigh. His mother’s anxiety to be hospitable had released itself in his coffee. Six spoonfuls of coffee granules, a splash of water, and milk so thick it was virtually cream. He sipped it, knowing that he had to finish, even though he had a passion for real coffee, carefully blended, properly made. ‘Cecily and I have decided to separate. She’s gone her own way. We’ll get a divorce through in time.’

      ‘Oh, I see.’ Gwyneth stood at the sink, apron on, tap full on, staring out on to the farmyard, her last dark hairs turning grey. ‘You’re sure, are you? Maybe she just needed a holiday. Goodness knows there are times I’ve wanted one.’

      ‘No, Mum. It had stopped working. It’s final.’

      ‘Final, is it? Bryn …’ Gwyneth tailed off, but her son knew what she wanted to ask.

      ‘No, it wasn’t anything I did. There wasn’t another woman involved. Cecily did find … She’s with another man now. Lives in the Caribbean.’

      ‘The Caribbean? Oh, Bryn.’ She rinsed her hands and composed her face before turning round. ‘My poor love.’

      Bryn nodded, a bit too choked to respond. As the weeks had passed, he’d come to see that Cecily had been right. Over the years since their wedding, they’d floated too far apart for any amount of emergency repair work to mend the damage. If you leave a hill farm neglected for too long, the hill will claim it back, no matter what you do at the last. All the same, however sensible it might be to cut his losses, the fact remained that he had to start out all over again. He turned his head away and set his jaw against the possibility of tears.

      ‘It’s all OK at work, though?’ said Gwyneth, tactfully reading the need for a different subject. ‘It can be a blessing, work, staying busy.’

      ‘Work’s fine,’ said Bryn, regaining control of his vocal cords. ‘But I don’t know, I’m thinking of leaving, to be honest.’

      A surge of relief swept into his mother’s voice. ‘Oh, I do hope so. Your dad could use the help, Bryn. He’s not been so well lately and I know Dai has his hands full.’

      Bryn’s elder brother Dai, the family success story, had retired from professional rugby a few years ago through injury and started up a construction company, specialising in agricultural buildings for local farmers. Nothing would please his mother more than Bryn joining forces with Dai and helping his dad out on the farm in his spare time.

      ‘Lord, no. Not that. I’ve got a lot of options, but I’ll probably end up setting up on my own.’

      ‘Oh … I didn’t know you could do that.’

      ‘Do what?’

      ‘You know, set up your own bank, just one person. I thought you needed …’

      Bryn laughed. In the fourteen years of his banking career, his mother had understood nothing about how he earned his living beyond the fact that he worked for a bank. ‘No, I won’t set up my own bank. I’m thinking of going into health technology. Medicine.’

      Gwyneth searched her repertoire for an appropriate response, but came away empty-handed. She raised her eyebrows, put her hands to her perfectly set hair, and gave her son a big multi-purpose smile. ‘Medicine,’ she said. ‘That’s nice.’

      Meanwhile, outside, the first flakes of a new snowfall began to cover up the tyre tracks and footprints that had speckled the yard outside with black.

      2

      ‘You’re kidding.’ Cameron wasn’t fazed.

      ‘I know. I ought to be joking. I bought it over the phone. I was snowed up in Wales, and all I had was my dad’s blurry fax machine. It looked OK in the photo.’ He gestured around, trying to explain how he’d got drunk with his brother Dai one lunchtime, stumbled across to the farm office, peered at a string of small and fuzzy fax images СКАЧАТЬ