Of Earth and Stone

Of Earth and Stone

Cardiff December 1991. My father drives down there through pouring rain, the windscreen wipers frantically clearing a path though the winding lanes, where we brush against the bare, grey hedgerows. Then we speed down through the traffic, water splashing up all around us.

Dad has an exhibition of his pottery and paintings in Chapter Arts Centre in Canton. I just thought it was my mother who was the artist, but it turns out I was wrong about both things. One, she was never my mother and two, she was not the only artist in the family.

My brother Ben drew too, of course. Usually small animals and birds hidden in trees, magical drawing that grew more and more mystical the older he got, until strange multicoloured creatures soared through night skies and monsters lurked in black forests. And, it turns out, I was wrong about that, too. He was not really my brother.

I suppose you take things for granted. I can't remember a life without him – or Willow. I never called her Mam or Mum, just Willow. But then she was different to the other mothers. Tall, angular, white blonde hair cut short and spiky and a beaked nose like an eagle. The other mothers seemed dumpy and rounded, full of warm hugs for their children.

Willow never met us at the school gates, even when we were very little. First Dad would come and pick us up and then Ben would carry me home on his shoulders or, as I got older, we'd cycle or race each other home, lungs gasping and legs pumping.

But to get back to Cardiff December 1991. It has been nearly two years now since we'd become convinced something terrible had happened to Ben. He'd left in the September with Marie, his girlfriend, off to tour the world.

I remember hiding in my bedroom when they went, too upset to say goodbye. I felt as if I'd never see him again – but how could I have known? I never liked Marie – and when she came back that Christmas, without him, I started to hate her. Where was my brother? What had she done?

There were hushed conversations between Dad, Willow and Marie's parents after we heard nothing from Ben that Christmas. Finally one crisp bright winter's day in early January, when the bright white snow was piled up high outside our old cottage door, while Dad and I were digging out the path, I said 'We have to report him missing. I mean, for him not to have got in touch at Christmas, Dad?' It was just so unlike him - and we'd had no word since November when Marie said she'd left him in Paris.

The walk down to the police station had been slow, a trudge through knee high drifts. We'd taken a spade just in case and those silver emergency blankets that crackle like foil. I was fourteen at the time. Old enough not to feel like a child but too young to be confident in the adult world. But I'd been stubborn and there was no way I wasn't going with Dad to the police station.

'Cariad, it's probably closed.' he said, speaking to me in Welsh, the old mother tongue that settled deep in my bones. Ben and Willow had never spoken Welsh. But Dad had persisted, speaking to me whenever we were alone, so it became our secret language that bound us together.

The police station was open. The policeman was a large man with curly brown hair, thick fingers and the body of a retired rugby forward made soft with beer. He gave us a cup of tea and took down all the details, his hands moving thickly across his blue notepad.

' Eighteen you say. Did his girlfriend say he was in trouble or injured?' 'No, nothing like that.' We'll put him on the missing person's list but, to be honest, he's probably just having some time out, spreading his wings.' And Dad was happy to be convinced. So it was left like that, just us the three of us waiting every day for a letter, a phone call, something to show us he was alive and well.

So Cardiff 1991 and so much has changed since I was last here with Ben. We'd taken the bus down to go Christmas shopping, just the two of us, which was unusual then. No Marie. It had been a special day.

Then there were no homeless on the streets and though shabby, the roads had seemed cleaner, the lights brighter and the air crisp with hope. We'd wandered through Cardiff market, the smell of fish enveloping everything. We'd gone up to see the puppies and hamsters on the balcony, pushing past the crowds of shoppers laden with colourful bags, past the record stall and the old man with the long grey beard.

I remember a small ginger and white puppy lying forlorn in a corner of a cage just chewing its tail. We couldn't take him but stroked him through the bars, spoke to him for a while. Ben was like that – already a teenager but still silly for animals.

Anyway, why I am telling you all this is, as we leave the market and head towards the Hayes, as the rain softens and the sun appears hesitantly in the sky, I see him. I see Ben. He is walking towards us, maybe three rows ahead along on the Hayes.

His bloated face. It's such a sadness. Puffy and red eyes. The Ben I remember has gone. I see someone drunk and lost and I want to turn around and leave him there. I can't let my father see this. I can't let Willow's heart be torn in two by what he has become. I am so ashamed.

So we stand and stare at each other- and then I turn away. He didn't ring. He didn't write. I don't need to know why. I can see that. But he's running up to me crying' Tara! Tara!' and Dad turns round and, instead of anger, Dad is hugging him and crying. He's such a warm and good man and I feel, for the first time, that maybe Ben is not.

Maybe he has inherited the bitter cruelty of his mother, the woman who shut me out of her life for so long. I had thought all mothers were like that. So cold and distant.

Cardiff 1991. When we stop crying and hugging, the three of us turn around and we walk down to Castle Street. Ben wants to see Dad's exhibition. He's loud in his enthusiasm, rambling in his excuses for why he hasn't been in touch, his words slurring around the lies.

I walk behind them and take time to look at all the stone animals perched on the grey castle walls: the big cats, the seal and finally the anteater and the pelican. We turn into the Castle Grounds, the ground slushy with mud, heading back to Sophia Garden where Dad's blue polo is parked. A heron is flying above the murky waters of the Taff, cutting a clean white line across the greyness of the river and the sky.

As I get into the car, Ben squeezes my arm, and smiles. A light drizzle starts falling. I watch the raindrops blur my view of him, bending down, clumsy and heavy to get into the front seat. Despite the heat of my anger, the pain of my disappointment, I feel a small fierce hope unfold in my heart. Perhaps what is broken in him can be mended somehow. Maybe this will be a Christmas in which things finally start to get better, when we can be a real family again.

As we pull away from the car park, I watch the water gathering in puddles as the rain becomes heavier. The grassy verge is turning to mud and a young woman's feet sink deep into the mud, as she struggles to open a red umbrella against the wind. I imagine her heading off to reach the warmth of a cafe, hugging a steaming cup of tea with her hands and finding some refuge from the harshness of this winter.