An Exile’s Return

A familiar landmark appears on the distant horizon. Above it the evening sky glows a portentous red. Our destination is less than ten miles away and I feel relief and anxiety equally.

We’re heading for a town with pet names like the Hellmouth, Mordor, Eggy Town and the sublime, Port Toilet. I choose not to share the names with the kids; I guess they’d laugh but they might also ask ‘why?’ And I don’t want to twist their opinions to match my own.

We approach at speed in our ailing but willing old Audi. Overhead, the M4 junction sign reads ‘Port Talbot’ for the English speakers and ‘Aberafan’ for the EU funding. No one speaks Welsh here anymore. The motorway alternately bisects and bypasses the town on high stone columns. Running through the valley and down to the coast like a march of stone AT-ATs connected ass to mouth, ambling out to sea, Reggie Perrin style. Better to drown than stay. I’m suddenly aware of the noxious sulphur stench that sits on the town and ask everyone in the car to close their windows.

This is Port Talbot. My family are all here. Her family are all here. And now I’m here again... Fuck!

“Welcome home Rhys!” they’ll chirp. “It’s amazing you’ve moved back, shame about the circumstances of course.” They’ll proffer sympathy and empathy. Epithets of kindness that won’t make me feel any better about this decision.

Fucking Port Talbot. A South Wales steel-making town teetering on the brink of a full steelworks closure and the economic fallout that will abruptly follow. A town imprisoned on one side by high, brown hills; by grim sea waters on the other, and from within by the ignorant and intolerant fucks who choose to remain here. A town of pound shops and pawn shops. A town twinned not with a picturesque French port like Barfleur or the charming hills of Kufstein in Austria, but with the heavily industrialised Polish town of Piotrków Trybunalski. Both towns a triumphant celebration of grey and fatigue.

We’d gotten away once, over ten years ago, and had made a good life for ourselves in the paradise land of Luton. My Lutonian friends will vociferously challenge all positive recollections of their town but it’s about context and I make no apologies for liking it there. Ultimately, ‘there’ isn’t ‘here.’

A mostly happy decade, reluctantly spiked with twice a year trips back to Wales to assuage any familial guilt. To do Christmas. To do a ‘Big Birthday’! To meet new nieces and nephews. Quick visits. In and out. Forced weekend hominy then a swift return to our Bedfordshire home at an average 85mph and in under three and a half hours on a good day.

Now we’re travelling ‘home’ again but we’re driving in the opposite direction and we don’t want to arrive. None of us wanted to start again like this, but fate clearly likes poetic fuckery.

In the rear view mirror I can see my father-in-law following closely behind in a heavily burdened Luton van. I briefly wonder about the irony of its name before indicating to take the next slip road off for Margam. He carries our life in the back of that dirty white rental. Now, transporting and transplanting it back to its original host.

Maybe it’ll be different here this time? Maybe I’ll make better choices? Fewer fuck ups I hope! It’s true that we’re here out of necessity; we simply need help. The sort of help that only a family can provide. We know we haven’t been coping lately so some pride had to be swallowed and a call was made. Our daughter had to be the priority.

In less than 5 minutes I’d be ‘home.’ Walking through our new front door. Gill and Geoff’s front door of course, not mine. The in-laws’ house; their kitchen, their couch, their TV, their home. None of it mine.

There’d be plenty of time to sulk and whinge to Elin later. Right now I needed to act positively. Show them that this was going to work out. So I smiled at her, tried hard to convince with my eyes, and she smiled back.

“Be at Nan and Bamps’ in a minute or two guys!” I announce with fake enthusiasm. Two freckled, button noses lift from their iPad trances and reply with underwhelming “Yays” and a single monotone, “Cool!” I study them briefly in the rear view. My son Marc, stick thin and four years old. A heart of pure light and love. Tapping the screen rhythmically to make the little Mario jump and spin. Giggling and fidgeting in his seat. My daughter Emily, so thin too. So pale also. Physically weak but ferociously smart and witty. Wise and tough beyond her six years. A stubborn little warrior monk wearing her favourite auburn wig. A mushroom-like bob far too big for her sweet little head. She says wearing it helps her feel a little more normal; gives her a glimpse of the future, “A future with hair!” she jokes.

This is now the third time she’s had to fight to stay alive but I know she’ll fight hard and I know she’ll win. She’s the strongest of us all.

At every hospital the doctors would share Emily’s ‘chances,’ whispering disappointing percentages through thin, hopeful smiles. They hope she isn’t tuned in and won’t understand but she gets every word. She gets the math too and regularly dismisses it with a nonchalant wave of her tiny hand and a confidence borne of experience. She knows what’s happening in her body. She knows the cancer is back. She knows she’s the reason we’re here again. She needs us and it’s become more than we can give. So the decision became easy, the argument moot. We had to move back ‘home.’

I pull the car up outside the house and see Gill standing in the doorway, waving and grinning hard. I help Geoff park the van and usher the kids inside. Mugs are noisily set out and a kettle is switched on. I ask for two sugars, excuse myself politely, and head out the back door into the garden. I slump on a low wooden bench, under an arch of green leaves and solar fairy lights. I light the last cigarette in the box and suck cold air and death into my lungs. I notice I’m trembling a little. I exhale a plume of smoke slowly and focus hard on its dissipation into the evening air. I can feel a heavy, jaded thump in my chest while I ask myself heavy, jaded questions. I feel a single, clichéd tear roll down my cheek. I’m doing the right thing. I must be.