Semi-Detached by Griff Rhys Jones Read Free Book Online Page A

the
white-haired matriarch of the family. She was spoken of in awed if not
quite respectful tones. From the perspective of the back of the car, as it
rumbled through the four thousand traffic lights on the way from Sussex to
Cardiff, she seemed to be a powerful brake on the independence of our rulers.
    We were
ordered to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, to keep out of the way, to make no
noise, not to fight or argue, and to make use of our two Welsh phrases, ‘Nos da’,
good night, and ‘Boredar’, good morning. This wasn’t because she spoke Welsh
herself (though all the ancient crones of Wales usually had it in them
somewhere). Nain (North-Waleian-Welsh for ‘Granny’) had long been settled in English-speaking
Cardiff. The Welsh was only designed to make us look cute.
    It
would appear that we children were the principal reason for the excruciatingly
long journey in the first place. And she, Nain, despite being sensitive to the
slightest flaw in our upbringing, like some ant-eater able to sniff out wriggly
behaviour, was also apparently frail, not used to young children and in need
of long periods of complete inertia in her gloomy house in the suburban street
in Pen y Lan, the quiet, posh bit of north Cardiff.
    Her
husband, Taid (North-Waleian Welsh for grandfather), had originally come to
Cardiff to supervise the Western Region for Jesse Boots, always a slightly
mythological presence in my father’s side of the family (There were ‘shares’,
spoken of in hushed tones.) William Rhys Jones the Elder was a chemist who had
worked in London and Southampton, having originally come from Betws-y-coed. He
was a Senior Deacon of the Calvinistic Methodist Chapel and preached himself.
He always entertained the visiting ministers. Three times every Sunday my
father was forced to walk the mile to the chapel, and they always discussed
last night’s film on the way Whether the film did for coming back, too, my
mother couldn’t tell me. Taid was a charismatic man who died at the age of
sixty-five, when my father was still at university, but my father was the runt
of the family, ten years younger than his older brother, Ieaun.
    Nan and
Uncle Ieaun took over the running of the Rhys Joneses. This seemed to have
included a fierce duty to prevent the two daughters marrying. Any man who came
back to Elan Road was virtually run out of the house. My aunt Gwyneth had to
pretend to take my father, the little one, for a walk to get down to the tennis
club and eventually escaped to Gloucester with a minister (although I can’t
think that he played tennis). But Megan had to stay I sat with her in the Park
Hotel towards the end of her life, when I was touring to Cardiff and its
impossible New Theatre stage, and she remembered the dances she had been to
there with tears rolling down her face.
    As
children, we always arrived in Cardiff after dark. Wales is forever
associated with inedible salad. It was ‘impossible’ to have a ‘proper’ supper,
because nobody could guess when we might arrive, so big, weeping chunks of
boiled ham were laid out with hard—boiled eggs, bitter 1950s lettuce and blobs
of salad cream: that vile yellow gloop that puckered the mouth and just about
smothered the taste of the over-ripe tomatoes. My father loved it. To us it
seemed a poor reward after sitting for six hours in the back of the Morris
Traveller. And worse, after Megan had cleaned the plates away into some smelly
back bit of the gloomy, under-lit house (though it was Nain who did all the
cooking, my mother assured me) it would be announced that it was immediately
time for bed, even for my brother, who, although he was the oldest, must be
tired out after the long journey.
    So we
were lined up to kiss the old woman with the long, bright-white witch’s hair, a
passable imitation of my father in drag, and then, God help me, I remember
hugging her and piping up, like Shirley Temple in Wee Willie Winkie, ‘There’s
a kiss from Mummy, there’s a kiss