Chapter 14

On Friday he phoned Alex.

“D’you fancy coming round for some beer at home? Celia is out on the town, so I’m housebound.”

There was a moment’s pause before he replied. “Sorry old son, I’m out on a date. How about Saturday at the pub?”

“That would be good, but if you came to mine instead, Celia would be there and the three of us could have an evening in together. I’ve plenty of beer in. You never see Celia and me at the same time. It would relieve her of another boring evening in.”

Another pause. “Well, actually I was sort of booked with the gang at the pub. You coming?”

David had not seen the gang since the Ozzy affair, and gave a little hum of reluctance.

Alex must have sensed it for he said, “Ozzy won’t be there, and the others won’t bring up your situation at home. Come on, David, you need to keep up with them.”

Celia returned from her day off after lunch on Saturday, and they took the children to the park in the afternoon. David left after tea for the pub and the group. Somewhat apprehensive of their reaction to him at first, he soon relaxed as the conversation remained firmly away from him and his situation, and he went home pleasantly inebriated.

On Sunday morning over breakfast, Celia had a suggestion.

“David, every two weeks you go to your parents on Friday night and come home on Saturday morning.”

“Yes, to coincide with your day off.”

“Exactly. You come home after a hard week at work and have to pack for yourself and the children for an overnight stay. How d’you feel about changing things a little?”

“In what way?”

“On weeks you go to your parents or to Gwen’s parents, I would change my day off, and you could go to yours on Saturday morning and stay till Sunday evening. I would leave for my time off at the same time you go. I could get back here late Sunday evening. If you go to Wales, you could go on Friday and come back late Sunday. The weeks you’re here, I would take Friday night and Saturday morning as we have been doing. How would that suit you?”

David thought for a moment, and it made good sense. He had only been going on Fridays locally to his parents because that was when Celia was off.

“Yes,” he said. “That makes perfect sense.”

So the following weekend he found he was free on Friday evening and phoned Alex to find he was free for a night at the pub. Tony and Greg were also there and a good time was had by all. Next morning Celia left for her day off and David packed and went to his parents’.

The following weekend he was at home and Celia left for her night and day off. Again David phoned Alex but there was no answer and the answer phone was not on. He enjoyed playing with the children and putting them to bed. Afterwards he relaxed with a couple of beers. It felt peaceful, being alone in the house with just the sleeping children.

Then the phone rang and it was Bethan Price, his mother-in-law. He briefly wondered if she were still his mother-in-law, but she was asking about the children and how he was.

“Dafydd bach,” she said somewhat diffidently, “How would you like to come for the weekend next week? We miss you.”

“Strangely,” he replied, “I was thinking of inviting myself and the children.”

“Oh, that’s good,” she said cheerfully. “Coming on Friday until Sunday?”

They chatted about Bethan’s children, and she voiced her worries about Siân. David wondered if Siân was the reason he’d been invited.

“Three years now it is since she graduated, and no sign of any work. She’s got a good degree in English and she’s been taking courses in Business Administration and Keyboard skills and all she can find is that waitressing job in the hotel here. It’s starting to get her down, you know. I think she’s coming round to the idea that she’ll have to look for work in England. There’s nothing here in Wales, even in the bigger towns.”

David thought. “I can ask around here, and we can chat at the weekend, how’s that?”

“Oh Dai bach, that’d be brilliant. I’ll not tell her; let you chat about it with her. She’ll listen to you.”

“I don’t know about that, but I can try. I don’t think she’s averse to leaving Wales – she offered to stand in for Celia and even take over if Celia were to leave.”

“Oh, I don’t think that’s likely sweetheart, I think Celia is pretty permanent.”

“We’ll see,” David said, now certain he was invited so he could ‘chat’ with Siân, but wondering at Bethan’s last remark.

David was right. On Saturday afternoon the proud grandparents took the children to the park, suitably wrapped against the cold. It was the last day of November and though the sun shone, there was little warmth in it.

“Siân’s in the parlour,” said Bethan, as they left, “I think she’d like a chat.”

Siân was sitting in one the ‘best’ armchairs in the parlour. The parlour was the ‘best’ room, for special occasions and special visitors. David sat in the other chair, absently wondering why one sat ‘on’ dining chairs but ‘in’ armchairs.

“I assume this is what your mother was talking about last week?” said David with a grin.

“Yes. I can’t live the rest of my life as a waitress, and I’ve looked for jobs all over Wales, even Cardiff and Swansea, but I’m not even getting interviews.” She stopped and looked at him expectantly. Again he remarked upon her similarity to Gwen. She was a very pretty girl.

“So you’re thinking of looking further afield,” said David. “You won’t be the first. If you’re not getting interviews, perhaps we need to look at your application technique and your CV?”

“Would you?” she asked, reaching for a briefcase by her chair.

“I see you’re ahead of me,” said David with a laugh. “Shall we go where there’s a table?”

She took him to her bedroom, where there was a table, empty except for a laptop, and two chairs.

Still ahead of me,” he said. She blushed, and he thought she looked superb.

He read her CV. It was pretty sparse.

“Your degree is in English, you gained a 2:1. What did the course cover? What was the subject of your dissertation? As an employer I’d want to know. Did you do any work experience when you were still in high school?”

“Yes, but–”

“It’s the different tasks they gave you on work experience that’s relevant to your application: it shows how adaptable you are. Vacation jobs? You cared for Evan and Bethan, that can go down. Details of the tasks undertaken in whatever you did, shows you can assess and categorise the elements of a job. You’ve put down, ‘waitressing’. More detail: what tasks do you undertake?

“Again, your keyboard and business courses. What did they cover? Which software packages are you familiar with? Are you getting the idea? It’s not just the jobs you did, but what skills you used in those jobs. Variety.”

They worked on her CV, and then on her letter of application. After an hour she looked dazed and happy.

“Dai, Cariad, I can see why you’re a CEO. No one ever explained it like that – why I need to put all this extra stuff in.”

David sat back and she leaned across and kissed his lips, and his neck. “Thanks so much,” she whispered.

“You’re very welcome, sweetheart,” he said, still shivering from her sensuous kisses. “Now one other thing. There are three vacancies coming up in our offices. They are all largely administrative, some phone work, filing, answering letters, email work. Here’s a printout of the advert for those posts. What I think you do have is a considerable facility for English composition, spelling and grammatical accuracy. Can you do something for me?”

“Anything, Dai,” she said with shining eyes.

He delved in his pocket and took out a pen drive. “On this drive there are two pieces of writing. They contain a broad cross section of grammatical and syntactical mistakes people make in writing English. There are also some fairly abstruse words and some malapropisms,,, “ he looked at her inquisitively to see if she understood.

“I’ve read ‘The Rivals’,” she said with a grin. He smiled.

“You’ve got a printer, I see,” he said. “I’ll leave you to it. Can you produce as nearly perfectly corrected copies as you can, print them off and bring them to me. I’ll go and make some tea.”

He made the tea, brewed it, poured it and brought it to her, to find her totally absorbed in the job she was doing. He left her to it. An hour later she appeared with two A4 sheets of printed paper. She handed them to him and he settled to read them.

He was amazed. Each piece was perfect, but more than that, in some parts she had re-crafted the sentence constructions to clarify the meaning, and re-paragraphed one of the pieces as well. Each was a work of art.

“Siân, you must add to your application letter that you have a talent for proofreading and editing text, and that you would gladly submit to any test to prove your assertion. These two pieces are not simply perfectly corrected, but actually improved. Some of those words–”

“That’s what on-line dictionaries are for,” she laughed.

“Siân, if you were to apply to us for a job, you understand I can have nothing to do with any part of the application process; there is a department for that. But download those two pieces from the pen-drive, OK? You understand?” He gazed at her significantly.

She understood. He could see she was highly intelligent and capable, and wondered if she would apply. “Thank you so much,” she said. “I’ve learned a lot this afternoon.”