New Welsh Short Stories Read Online Free

cylinder of blades that twirled on the axel. I’d seen him pushing it around his yard, and around our yard, too. I wheeled it out. Then I knocked back the rest of the Bell’s and set the flask carefully on the patio.
    I’d never used a push mower before, but there wasn’t much to it. I released the catch on the safety lock, lined the front up with the edge of the lawn, and guided it along. Like all of Gwilym’s tools the mower was well - kept, the wheels oiled, the blades clean. As they spun around, they flashed and made a soft snick - snick sound, like a barber’s scissors. Bits of grass fluttered up and caught in the breeze. The smell was really something: sweet and fresh, like corn on the cob when you’re stripping the husks. I walked the mower the full length of his lawn, pirouetted it on the spot, and pushed it back. I kept on doing that.
    About halfway through, I heard a clap of thunder. Then came the rain – this warm spring rain, the drops fat and heavy as marbles. I didn’t stop, even when it really started to hammer down. Pretty soon my shirt was drenched, my jeans were soaked, and my shoes were covered in bits of soggy grass. Rainwater ran down my face, got in my eyes, drizzled off my nose. It was like being in the shower. The next time I manoeuvred the mower around, I looked up and saw Lowri standing at the bedroom window, watching me, her face pale as a moonstone behind the glass. She didn’t wave or smile. But she didn’t tell me to stop, either.

GROUND - NESTER
    Stevie Davies
    When Daisy noses out the mother bird, bloody meat and scrambled eggs is what she’ll be, Chris says. But the labrador – speeding down the lawn, nostrils flown with rich scents – lollops past the ground - nester into the poppied wilderness thronged with field mice and hedgehogs, where their garden joins the common.
    â€˜Blinded poor Daisy’s nose she has,’ Carly says, on tiptoe at the kitchen window. ‘Noses are eyes, aren’t they, in the doggy world?’
    The mother bird has shrunk to a dapple of shadow, hardly visible. The earth’s tremor as her enemy swept by must have registered in her belly, jostling the yolks in their shells.
    â€˜Daisy’s daft but not that daft,’ Chris says. Only a suicidal quirk of nature could have brought the ground - nester to the edge of a Glamorgan housing estate, a tasty come - hither to predators.
    â€˜But I’ve heard about this on the radio. Snipe, was it? – and quail – they switch off something smelly in their glands and that camouflages them. Nature’s so clever.’
    The ground - nester’s a nondescript sort of bird, dun and puny: no snipe or quail. I can’t lose Carly, thinks Chris, even as he sees how naive she is. She has never surrendered that childhood capacity for wonder. What she sees in him, he’ll never know. But whatever it is, he thanks his stars. Not that Chris believes in stars or gods or any powers except Sod’s Law. Again he keeps this to himself. Carly’s rooted in a way he’ll never be, except through her. It scares him, his dependency, but what can you do?
    Chris never names his ex, even to himself. Always two sides? I don’t think so. Never mind: she’ s history.
    Carly doesn’t care for his bitter moods. Chris understands that and bites his tongue. She stands at the sink in skinny jeans and long grey sweater, all five foot nothing of her, swaying, arms folded, watching the mother bird, and he’d do anything for her. He folds his arms about his partner’s slight body; they rock gently, observing the scene in the garden. Daisy, loping back, again misses the scent of prey, the dope.
    â€˜I’m off,’ he says. ‘When’s Bella dropping Jarvis off?’ He tries not to see her in their daughter’s slutty clothes and slovenly walk and her willingness to dump his grandson on them. On benefits, nil ambition, going