Emrys sees faces in faded linoleum. Sneering faces like his Uncle Kendall's. He hears a voice calling out to him. He hears a fist banging on his back door. But he stays in his seat staring down at those faces, screwing his eyes almost closed to study the washed out pink, grey features swirling at his feet.
'I know you're there Emrys!' a crusty voice shouts. Silence. Then footsteps stamp back down the garden path to the lane.
Emrys shifts his ungainly body up from the chair and tiptoes over to the kitchen window. Outside, beyond grimy net and smeared glass, he sees his next door neighbour's bending over a stooped old woman and as they talk, the old woman's gaze drifts past the gossip up to the kitchen window.
Sighing, he flinches at the sound of the telephone ringing out in the hall. Leaving the window, sidestepping the cat he hates, he plods to the kitchen door, leans against the jamb waiting for the ringing to cease.
When it falls silent, the cat's body twines around his leg and taking the hint, Emrys returns to the kitchen to feed the beast.
After the cat finishes his meal and licks its dish clean, it stalks to the back door, tail raised up like a rod. Recognising the sign, Emrys lets it out and as he does so, that crusty voice calls out.'How's your mother?'
Mrs. Jenkins is standing, he knows, on two concrete blocks and peers myopically over the dividing wall covered in pigeon shit.
'Fine,' he mutters, about to shut the door, blocking that bitter face out.
'I called round earlier,' But Mrs Jenkins is not ready to release him. 'Wanted to know if your mother needs anything from the Spar.'
'No, she doesn't.' He closes the door but remembering his manners, opens it up a crack, adding, 'Thanks for asking,' promptly shutting it again.
He goes to the window, sees his neighbour still standing on her dias. Then she drops out of sight and he breathes in a wheezy sigh of relief.
Upstairs, his mother rests on a double bed she once shared with a father he never knew. Emrys looks up at the ceiling, a mental image of her huge frame rising and falling as she dozes brings on another sigh. Then he sniffs as if he can smell baby powder which is always liberally sprinkled over her after a shower.
Now he calls up, 'I'll bring your lunch up shortly, Mother!' but her reply, he thinks, is muffled by the constant sound of her radio.
Going into the larder, he pulls a face at its lack of contents. A few tins, packets of bisciuts laced in cob webs sit on shelves in need of cleaning. Emrys takes out a can of baked beans and soon the beans bubble on the gas stove. Spooning out the beans onto a plate, he places his mother's lunch on a tray and about it take it upstair, is interrupted by the sound of the front door bell chiming.
The tray in his large hands jerk as the bell chimes again. 'Damn!' Emrys cuts off the rest of the curse. Mother hates swearing. Putting the tray down on the floor, he creeps on slippered feet down the dim hall to the front door. From upstairs, the one 0'clock news drifts down, declaring interest rates rising.
The letter box flaps up. Two green eyes peer through the slit. 'Come on, Emrys,'Wendy, his mother's district nurse, cajoles. 'Open the door, it's bloody freezing out here.'
His cheeks grow hot and about to do as she asked, he pauses. Mother dislikes being disturbed especially at lunch times.
'Mother's not home!' his lie sounds weak.
'Of course she is,' comes the reply. 'Please love. It's cold and your Uncle Kendall's flu jab is due at one thirty.'
'Go to him first then,' Emrys says, shivering at the thought of the man who's brought misery and confusion into his life. "Don't tell your mother," Uncle Kendall used to tell him when Emrys was a child, holding out a packet of fruit gums as an enticement.
Wendy, forcing lightness into her tone; a tone people often used when addressing him, 'Please Emrys.'
Unable to resist her pleasant wheedling, he opens the door, saying, 'Mother will be angry with me.'
And Wendy, stepping inside replies, 'I'll sort it out love. Don't you worry'
Now she's running up the stairs, her black bag banging against a slender thigh and he hears her feet patter across the landing into his mother's door opening.
Slowly Emry climbs the stairs and as he reaches the top, Wendy emerges from the bedroom, her face ashen. 'Go downstairs, Emrys,' she says. 'Put the kettle on.'
He starts to cry. Takes a step towards Wendy. 'Mother said Uncle Kendall was coming to live with us.' And as his sobs turn into wails, the stench of death mingling with the sweet scent of baby talc wafts out of the darkened bedroom.