Excerpt: A Spell in Wales

Chapter 1 The tempest

It would be the worst storm in more than a century. An Atlantic cyclone that would equate to 11 on the Beaufort Scale – just below a hurricane’s 12 – was expected to peak in the early hours. The storm would break through coastal defences and tear across Wales, warned newscasters. Prepare for the worst, gloomed the Environment Agency. Locals should stay away from the coast because the storm combined with high spring tides could result in tidal waves and massive flooding. The Cleddau Bridge would be closed, as would many roads in low-lying areas. The Stena Line ferry crossing between Fishguard, Pembrokeshire, and Ireland’s Rosslare was cancelled. Gales of 80mph, hail and lightning would blast through the Welsh mountain valleys with a likelihood of unseasonal snow. The Met Office predicted that South Wales and southern England would suffer the brunt of the storm. It issued a severe weather warning, saying power supplies could be disrupted, trees uprooted and buildings damaged, making driving conditions hazardous.

'Stay off the roads,' motorists had been instructed.

Prospero paid no attention to weather forecasts. he believed that they were invariably wrong. Myffanwy went on packing the car, interrupted by bellowed afterthoughts from her husband every so often reminding her of crucial items such as his film projector, his hunting jacket, extra pairs of climbing socks for him, his wintergreen and Deep Heat salve for the wonky shoulder; all things he himself had forgotten to pack. Angel and the boys would meet them in Monmouth in the old Volvo Prospero had given her at the end of the marriage and they would head up past Chepstow alongside the river Usk in convoy.

By 6pm as they crossed the old Severn bridge from Gloucestershire into Wales, powerlines had come down, so that there was no electricity and advertisement hoardings on the outskirts of the market towns were toppling like a deck of cards. It was dark and icy.

'I might as well get rid of this SatNav,' said Prospero in annoyance. 'Worse than useless.'

He had not been listening to the mellifluous voice giving him instructions, had missed the turn-off and was now taking a detour back to the crossroads he recalled coming through 45 minutes before. He turned to smile encouragingly at his child bride and wished her fringe did not look so frizzy. Another turn-off flew past and he swore under his breath.

'Stubborn old bastard,' thought Myffanwy. He was grinning at her with that mild lechery that accompanied him on holidays away from London and she was not in the mood. At 31 she was no longer the adoring child bride he had married six years previously and felt this fantasy had played itself out. Prospero's ex-wife was coming on holiday with them after all.

'He is a force of nature, Mav,' her mother had said at the wedding reception. 'You won't be able to do a thing with him. I know that kind of man, I also found them appealing in my anarchic 20s. Prospero is someone who will satsify himself first and never think of consequences. He will just carry on doing whatever he pleases and wreaking havoc as he goes through life. You are marrying a tyrant and you will battle to get away from him.'

'I don't want a man who could be managed,' Mav had said irritably, wishing her mother would not turn into a gloom-mongering Cassandra after a few glasses of champgne. 'He is elemental. an Alpha male, even. Just like daddy.'

'He's getting old,' her mother had said, waving her empty champagne flute about like a rally flag. 'Look at all that white at the crown of his head. Sixty-three years od darling. And you are 25. Look at the fool, peering at the menu rather than put on his spectacles, just the way your father did. I predict stormy weather, my dear. But that is what you want, I suppose. Excitement and tears and shouting. Slammed doors and all that kind of thing. Don't throw your grandmother's Limoges at him, that is all I ask.'

Her mother had been right. Her mother was always right about affairs of the heart.

Prospero suddenly puts his foot on the accelerator, overtakes and swerves violently to avoid a white truck with its lights dimmed.

'Get the numbers,' he shouts 'We'll stop and report that bloody maniac. 486, or is it 468? Quick, woman, your eyes are better than mine!'

'Belligerent sod,' thinks Mav who prefers to be called Myffanwy. In the gleam of headlights from oncoming cars her impish elfin face looks tired and mulish.

The marriage is in trouble.

Mav had met Prospero in spring, on a cool but sunny evening in Bloomsbury, attending an academic book launch. He had come up and asked her if she was wearing a fragrance from Van Cleef & Arpels.

Yes, she had replied, thinking So not an inventive pick-up line.

'I am allergic to these modern synthesised scents,' he had said peevishly. 'Shall you leave or do you want to drive me from the room?'

He means it, she thought, baffled and astonished at this full-frontal assault. He did mean it too.

'I have a hyperallotrophic sense of smell,' he explained, reflling her wine glass. 'I wake at night and can recall the odours that were once present in all my memories. It is an aberration I may one day turn into a very lucrative skill in the hospitality industry or the perfumier trade.'

She went into the cloakroom and washed off the fragrance on her collar bones and dabbed into the hollow of her throat. She felt very young and girlish and as if she was in the middle of a 19th-century European novel.

'I like older men,' she had explained to this handsome if unkempt bookseller when he took her out for coffee after the speeches and signings. 'Very much.'

Prospero had laughed, showing his fine white teeth. 'As an older man, I'm delighted to hear that,' he said.

And so the game had begun. She was the wide-eyed innocent, the curious and indulged pet. He was the sugar daddy, indulgent and teasing, a mentor who encouraged her to leave her editing job and start freelance writing for lifestyle magazines. It had not been a good move financially, but she had enjoyed playing at features journalism. Then Prospero had suggested she marry him and he would manage her career. His fith in her was compelling. He had courted her with armfuls of stargazer lilies and suppers at Ma Passion in Charlotte Street.

His stinginess as a husband came as a shock. Prospero might promise all kinds of things to his naughty pet in the heat of the moment but bedroom talk had nothing to do with keeping the household budget withn limits. And as it turned out, Mav would be managing his wildly fluctuating business interests while he sat and sold books online, emerging for lunch and tea breaks and what he called 'couch time'. Prospero had constructed his life around his own comfort and ease and Mav was now indispensble to that comfort.

Monmouth loomed up in a black sheet of solid rain.

The downpour was by now torrential and Angel's Volvo was nowhere to be seen. She was giving Davy and his gay friend Fernando a lift. As Prospero muttered and swore, trying in vain to reach Angel on the phone, Mav sighed to herself. She had been hoping Angel would help her cope with Himself and the housekeeping. But it was reasonable to assume they had heard the weather forecasts and decided against a week of playing at being drowned rats on a Welsh mountainside.

In spring and summer, the beauty of Prospero's ruined priory on a hillside above the river was undeniable. It had been adapted for use as a farmhouse with a large kitchen filled with squashy leather sofas, a canary yellow Aga and two stolid oak dressers piled with cream and blue crockery, but the old tower of quarried stone dated back to the early 11th century. A grove of ash trees stood on a rise just above the house and on summer nights the moon would come up golden and unhindered over the ridge.

In winter, Prospero's Cell as he called it, was inaccessibly high above the snowline, leaky, damp and draughty. The new-laid floors of slate tiles were freezing even when Mav wore slippers. Rain poured in through warped sash windows and streamed sooty grey down the chimneys. The entire homestead was arun with small field mice that nested in amongst the crockery and linen.

Mav's heart sank as they set off alone from Monmouth, the rain heavier than ever and a strong wind rising.

Up in the Brecon Beacons on dirt roads with mud gushing down the slopes like volcanic lava, they hit the first tree trunk. Mav got out and shifted the young rowan sapling in the watery light of the Subaru headlights. Prospero shouted out instructions from his open window but she could not hear a word in the gale. Her back hurt as she straightened up and when she climbed back in, the car was freezing cold and Prospero bellowing like a stalled bull.

'Shut the fuck up,' she said. 'No really darling, not another bloody word.'

The next tree trunk lay skewed across the narrow lane in a heaving mass of leaves and spiky branches. Both she and Prospero battled for nearly an hour to shift it just enough so the car could get by. They were both soaked to the skin and dangerously tired. Each time Mav moved in her seat she could feel and hear the squelching of mud.

Coming over the ridge down towards the priory, they skidded and went into a deep ditch. At this point Mav acknowledged to herself that she was frightened. The rain had stopped but it was pitch black outside and bitterly cold. When they got out and readied themselves to walk, flurries of snow had begun to fall thickly, in drifts of chilly flakes.

We'll need to walk fast,' she said. 'It can't be more than a mile or so. The torch is under the passenger seat on the right side. I'll get out blankets we can wrap around our shoulders.'

'What?' yelled Prospero.

' Never mind, you deaf old fool,' she said and fetched the torch herself.

The walk took almost three hours and they both fell twice, hard falls into concealed ditches and onto slithering gravel. The wind was blowing the rain into their faces like blunt needles. Whenever the snow stopped falling, the hail would come down. Once or twice Mav saw uprooted trees and collapsed hedgerows by the eerie white and green lightning bolts to the north. The frm road was impssible for vehicles.

She couldn't think ahead to the problems of heating and hot water in the cottge, she could only stay focused on getting through this. Prospero was silent and gasping beside her, clutching at her shoulder and almost pulling her over at moments.

'It's fine darling, we're nearly there, just keep going a little longer,' she said aloud to both of them.

In the yard of the priory she could see nothing, dropped to her knees rather than risk another fall, and crawled across the courtyard, feeling her way over the paving and mud right up to the kitchen doorstep. She prayed and cursed as the large key jammed in the lock, but then suddenly they were in. She found the matches and the lamp, inching back and forth across the worn tiles to the dresser, lighting matches, shaking like a leaf. Then the gas lamp clicked and began hissing away, the circle of soft light an instant comfort.

And surprisingly Prospero was suddenly in command again, fetching kindling from the old scullery. He had always had a knack for lighting and cooking on the canary-yellow Aga, a temperamental monster Mav had come to detest.

There was no hot water but after sharing a pot of tea, they washed their faces with water from the kettle and went off upstairs to bed, piling on rugs and quilts from the wardrobe. They fell asleep almost immediately.

'Oh Angel,'thought Mav as she tumbled into unconsciousness, 'please do not desert me. This holiday was your fucking idea to begin with.'

Mav had met Prospero's ex-wife, the androgynous and charming Angel, at the wedding. She had not known about the existence of a previous wife until a tll womn in grey and cram had come over and kissed her on both Cheeks.

'I was married to Prospero for several years. He can be a dear at moments. Mav, isn't it? Let's do lunch when you come back to London.'

'Bluebeard,' Mav had said to her new husband as they boraded the Alitalia flight on honeymoon. 'How long were you married to her anyway?'

'Don't be silly, my sweetheart,' Prospero had replied. 'She belongs to my msspent youth. You will be the Muse of my misspent prime. A great disappointment, Angela. Not a loyal or discreet or monogamous kind of woman. And an unstable gender preference. Not that you would know anything about that, my little nymphomaniac.'

Mav had been intriged and faintly piqued by jealous twinges.

'No, tell me something about this undisclosed ex-wife, damn it. Throw me a tantalising morsel or two. Did she leave you for a woman?'

It was the first time she had seen her new husbnd, the disreputable and charming older man, go into an adolescent sulk. It lasted two entire days.

Back from honeymoon, Mav had rung Angel and the two women had met for lunch in Chelsea. Angel had arrived late. She was wearing a cape of deep blue and looked tall, elegant and gorgeously butch.

They had liked one another straight away. As the waiter brought in the plates of grilled duck breast in citron sauce, Mav had followed Angel's quizzical glnce and seen Prospero skulking across the road, trying to conceal himself in the shade of a stripep awning.

'Does he tend to go in for this kind of cloak-and-dagger stuff?' asked Mav, fascinated. 'So sweet to see that kind of unreconstructed jealousy in this day and age. So deeply uncool, but endearing.'

'Not jealousy,' commented Angel, smiling and indicating to the sommelier that she woud like some more pinot grigio. 'Curiosity. He always has to be included and know what is going on or he flies into a rage. When I went off with Renate he tried to seduce her for months just so he could find out what I saw in her and if he would also feel that way. He is a sensation seeker, quite literally seeking out sensations when it comes to anything experienced by those he thinks are in thrall to him. And Renate was a stone butch, so he had no luck. Such an endearing fool of a man. I was Ariel to his failed magician of course, but you probably know that by now.'

'Did he really rescue you from a tree house?' asked Mav. They could hear Prospero booming complicated orders at the unhappy waiter who was shrugging his shoulders and trying to get away.

'It was in the Serengeti, on a game safari. All those extraordinary flat-topped trees and giraffes walking in between them. We were up on a game viewing platform. Wth a rhino below us, so we couldn't go anywhere. And I badly needed to pee. Along came Prospero in an open landrover, hooting and waving as you are not supposed to do on these safaris, and the rhino moved off. The game rangers wanted to punch him, he had scared off all the game for miles around. My hero. He has that courtly love ambience about him, before you get to know him.'

'Oh he is irresistible at the start, we both know that. "My Ariel," he said to me, stnding under the tree and looking up at me with my bursting bladder. "You owe me." And for a while I felt I did owe him something, that there was some debt of gratitude. He changed my life. For the worse as it happens but I had been wanting some kind of change. I couldn't go on drifting around the world on a trust fund. Prospero took over Mummy's trust fund and emptied it. Like a kind of intimate disinvestment campaign.'

Across the street, Prospero is having a loud argument with the maitre d'. He stands up and gathers his papers and briefcase together. He notices both women staring at him with amusement from their window seat. They wave to him and, sheepishly, he waves back. He is a lovable man at moments.