Dead Man's Embers

  Also by Mari Strachan

  The Earth Hums in B Flat

  This digital edition first published by Canongate in 2011

  Copyright © Mari Strachan, 2011

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  First published in Great Britain as Blow on a Dead Man’s Embers in 2011 by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE

  www.canongate.tv

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 84767 531 6

  eISBN 978 0 85786 132 0

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  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Acknowledgements

  I

  Adam, Llio, Cai, a Rachel

  hefo cariad mawr

  1

  Something is weighing on her breast, squeezing her heart. For a moment Non cannot move, not sure if she is awake or still in a dream. She breathes evenly to keep panic at bay, and her heartbeat steadies. The dream vanishes but the weight remains. She recognises it: it is a sense of dread that is becoming familiar, though quite what it is that she dreads she does not know.

  She opens her eyes, then narrows them against the brightness streaming into the bedroom with its threat of another scorching day. In four, no, three days it will be the solstice, so it must still be early for the sun to be this low in the sky. When she is able to move and put her hand out to Davey, all she touches is the cool sheet on his side of the bed. Again.

  The open sash window lets in the sweetness of the honeysuckle that clambers around it and the industrious drone of bees moving from lip to lip on the flowers. Non breathes deeply, stretches until her calf muscles tingle, then swings her legs sideways and sits up on the edge of the bed. She reaches for the small, dark brown bottle, uncorks it, tips out thirteen drops of the liquid it contains into a glass, pauses, then adds one more drop, pours water from the jug onto the drops and swallows the draught in one gulp, grimacing, as she always does, at the bitterness of it in the back of her throat. Every morning she hears her father’s voice tell her that her lifeblood is less bitter than the death that will surely claim her if she does not swallow it, the death that is constantly at her shoulder. It is what gives you the gift you possess, Rhiannon, her father would also say. A gift that is as bitter as the drops, a gift that is no gift at all.

  As she sits on the side of the bed her heart begins to calm, but the dread that woke her still weighs upon her. She feels as limp as a rag doll as she stands and walks towards the washstand. The heat is enervating; it lies like a thick blanket over every day. She pours water that is already lukewarm from the large jug into the bowl, and splashes her face and neck with it.

  She remembers the time before the War when the quiet and warmth would engender a sense of deep contentment in her. It now seems far in the past, that time early in their marriage when she had discovered that Davey was impossible to wake in the mornings, when she would take up her book and tiptoe downstairs to sit in the kitchen or at the open door to the fresh morning garden, breathe deeply of the promise of a new day, and read – until it was time to put her coarse apron on over her nightdress to rack the range and light the fire and wake the house with the noise. A rumpled and sleepy Davey would descend from the bedroom and pretend to chase her out into the garden. That has all gone. The War has taken her husband as surely as if it had killed him, and returned a stranger to her in his place.

  She lifts her hairbrush and draws it through her hair. Forty long strokes. Non has no recollection of her father teaching her that rule; that must have come from her sister. She gathers the hair together at her nape and ties it into a large knot. She pulls her work dress on, fastens the buttons with nimble fingers and neatens the collar in the looking glass above the washstand. She studies her reflection. She, too, has changed: she sees it in her eyes. She has turned into a timorous creature, as different from her true self as Davey is from his. You mouse, she tells herself, are you going to be defeated by this mystery, this puzzle of what is happening to your husband? She stands up straight. She, who has beaten off death every day of her twenty-nine years, will not be beaten by this.

  2

  Non makes her way downstairs and pushes open the kitchen door. The sunlight in the hallway streams into the room towards Davey who is crouched beneath the table. The fringe of the blue chenille tablecloth dangles in front of his face, and he peers out through it into the light, shouldering an imaginary rifle.

  It is happening again. Is this what woke her? Is it this that she dreads? Non has grown used to the nightmares Davey has at times since his return from the War, when the bedclothes churn into a battlefield as he fights and thrashes and sweats his way through some private torment – nightmares that wake her and drive her from the bed but which Davey denies when she asks him about them. Now, it seems the nightmares have changed from dreams into something more real, more fearful. The first time it happened was Wednesday morning; she will never forget it, she thinks, not for a sparrow’s heartbeat. She had woken to find Davey gone from their bed and found him sprawled under the kitchen table, deadly quiet in his concentration as he aimed his rifle at some unseen foe. Non had crawled under the table to him and he had given her a look that chilled her heart and froze her tongue. She had crept away and left him.

  She knows that there is nothing to be done now except to leave him. But has she not just resolved that she will not be beaten by the mystery of what is happening to her husband? She knows that he betrayed her when he was away – and it pains her to think of it – but she senses, no, she knows that is not what is haunting Davey through his nightmares; it is something else, something that has to do with fighting the enemy. She draws a chair back from under the table, lifting it to stop it screeching on the flag-stones, positions it so that she can see Davey, and sits on it. She smoothes the tablecloth with the back of her hand. Like life, she thinks, smooth and rough, worn thin so that it is almost a hole in places, plush as if it were new in others. She is uncomfortable. She does not want to sit here on a kitchen chair to watch her husband fight the enemy all over again under the table, but believes she must if she is to understand what happened to him.

  This man on the floor is as unlike himself as possible. His hair and his clothes are dishevelled as he crawls around on the flag-stones in the confined space. His eyes are wide open with the whites showing all around, as if he
is mad with fear, like a horse Non saw when she was a child. The farmer had shot the horse, said it had turned wild and dangerous. Non flinches each time Davey fires the rifle he imagines he has on his shoulder, the recoil sending him sprawling backwards. He is sweating profusely, his shirt already soaked under his arms and on his back, from whatever endeavours he thinks he is attempting. He mutters and calls out, words and phrases Non cannot understand, which sound sometimes like commands, sometimes like entreaties. He shouts, ‘Down, down’, and flings himself face down on the flags. She hears his face thump on the stone and she cringes.

  ‘Oh, Davey,’ she whispers. Her Davey, the real Davey, is a small man, and neat, and this was part of what she had loved about him from the first time she saw him. Small herself, she did not feel overpowered by him. He was far from being a moneyed man, but he had always made sure that the clothes he wore were clean, mended and ironed. His hair that had a will of its own, springing up from his head in dark brown spikes, was always carefully brushed, and his moustache with its glints of red neatly trimmed and combed.

  When she first met him it was as if she had always known him, and yet, it was his son she knew first. Wil was in the Infants class when she came as a student teacher to the local school, as sturdy and quiet a boy at five and a half as he is now at fifteen. She remembers being saddened that first winter when he seemed unmoved by the sudden death of his mother from a cough that had turned rapidly to pneumonia. She had felt a greater sadness at some of the tales that came her way about Grace, tales of callousness and cruelty towards Wil and his small sister.

  She looks down at Davey, lying flat now on the flagstones, his shoulders twitching as he sights down the length of his rifle, his forefinger squeezing on the trigger. She had not met him until the following spring; he had come to see if Meg could begin school a little younger than was usual. He had looked into her eyes and smiled at her and she had been lost. She had never thought that she would marry; she had never met a man she would wish to marry. And what man would wish to marry a woman like her who could not bear a child of her own for fear that it would put too great a strain on her weakened heart? Over the year he spent courting her, Davey told her that he had children, he did not need more. He wanted her, she delighted him by being so clever, so different.

  And they had been happy, hadn’t they? She loved Wil as if he were her own child. Meg she found a little harder to love. Davey’s mother had been glad to relinquish Wil to them, but refused to part with Meg. She’ll come round, Davey had said, but Catherine Davies had not done so for a long time. Perhaps there had been a little dark patch creeping in to dampen their happiness even then, Non thinks; perhaps that first year before Osian arrived had not been the idyllic time she had thought it was.

  She starts. Are those footsteps on the stairs? She does not want the children to see their father like this. She jumps to her feet but before she can reach the door it opens and Osian comes through into the kitchen, dressed in nothing but his drawers and flicking his penknife open as he walks past her towards the back door. He stops when he sees Davey, and Davey retreats into a crouch, staring at the light glancing from the penknife’s blade. Non puts her hand on Osian’s arm to guide him away, although she knows that he will cry out at her touch. And so he does, a high-pitched scream that ricochets off the whitewashed walls and reverberates from the flagstones beneath her feet.

  She turns to look at Davey as she draws Osian through the door into the garden and sees him fling himself flat again onto the floor beneath the table, yelling as he prostrates himself, ‘Down. Whizz-bang coming. Down, Ben, down.’

  3

  Osian’s scream ends as suddenly as it started once they are through the door and Non lets go of his arm. The garden shimmers already but the sun has not reached into the back of the house yet. There is a foul stench on the air, and Non realises where it is coming from when she sees Maggie Ellis rushing out the closet at the end of her garden, still in her voluminous nightgown and wearing a nightcap on her head. Though what she wants with a nightcap these hot nights is beyond anyone’s guess.

  Maggie Ellis stops when she catches sight of Osian, and tuts at him. ‘Out in your drawers again, boy?’ she says. ‘And was that you screaming, or was it that old crow of yours? Well, never mind. It’s your mam I want. Where is she?’ She clutches her stomach and moans.

  Osian pays her no attention. Non’s new found resolution fades a little. Is it not enough that her husband is on his knees under the kitchen table fighting a war that has been over for more than two years? But she walks from the shade into the sunlight. ‘Are you not well, Mrs Ellis?’

  ‘Not well, Non, not well? Of course I’m not well. Look at me.’ Maggie Ellis clutches her stomach again. ‘It must be something I ate. Everything’s going off – the milk’s sour, the butter’s rancid – and the flies, well, they don’t bear thinking about.’ She leans over the garden wall, snagging her nightdress on the clambering rose. ‘All night, Non, backwards and forwards to the closet. Do you think you could mix me a little something to stop it?’

  Non suspects that Maggie’s problems stem from eating too much, her gift that is no gift does not show her any illness in the woman. ‘A cup of strong tea will help bind you, Mrs Ellis. No milk or sugar, mind.’ She has lost count of the number of times she has told Maggie Ellis this.

  ‘Oh, I can’t abide my tea black like that, Non. No – you mix me a little something.’

  ‘You know I’ve long stopped doing that.’

  ‘I won’t tell Davey, I promise you, Non. It’ll be our little secret.’ Maggie reaches over the roses to try to pat Non’s hand where it rests on the stone wall, and Non hears her nightgown rip on the thorns. It would be so easy to mix a little something for her, but Davey has extracted a promise from her to make no more remedies. Other than her own dark drops, her lifeblood.

  ‘Make yourself some black tea, Mrs Ellis. It’s as good as anything.’

  ‘Non, Non, we share so many secrets, don’t we? And they’re perfectly safe with me, don’t you worry your pretty head. So one more little one won’t hurt, will it?’

  Non knows that Maggie Ellis has more to lose than she does from the telling of any secrets. She watches Osian who, in turn, is watching a flock of ravens wheel above him. Is he looking for Herman among them?

  Maggie Ellis heaves herself off the roses leaving a shred of her nightgown hanging like a ragged white flag on one of its branches, and rubs her stomach. ‘I think it’s easing, you know. Maybe there won’t be any need for me to take anything after all.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Non says. ‘Have you run out of ashes for the closet? Some marjoram on the floor would make it pleasanter in there. And a bunch of lavender to hang up.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re quite right, Non. Breathing in that terrible smell can’t be doing me any good. I put plenty of ashes down. It’s this weather that’s to blame. Have you got any whatever-you-said to spare for the floor?’

  Non has none to spare, but what is she to do? ‘I’ll gather some later,’ she says. ‘When the sun has been on it to draw out the oils.’

  Maggie Ellis squints at the sky. ‘The sun’s not very high yet. What are you doing out here?’ She glances from Non to Osian who is now busy whittling a piece of wood, and back again. ‘It was him I heard screeching, wasn’t it, not your old crow?’

  ‘We haven’t seen Herman for a few days,’ Non says. She shields her eyes with her hand and looks up at the wheeling birds. She cannot see Herman’s squared wings and flat-tipped tail. ‘He flies with the ravens sometimes, but I don’t think he’s up there.’

  Maggie Ellis nods at Osian. ‘Is he really safe with that knife?’

  ‘He’s been making things out of wood since he was old enough to handle the knife. You know that, Mrs Ellis. There’s no need to worry,’ Non says, though she herself finds the sharpness of the knife a mite worrying at times.

  ‘What I know,’ Maggie Ellis says, wagging her finger at Non, ‘what I know is that he’s
a great worry to dear Mrs Davies. Being odd the way he is.’

  It is highly unlikely that her mother-in-law would confide in Maggie Ellis given the remarks Non has heard Mrs Davies make about Maggie. And Non would not have said that her mother-in-law was worried about Osian, or about anyone else other than herself.

  ‘And the poor woman has had enough worries,’ Maggie Ellis says. ‘More than anyone should.’

  Non tries to avoid thinking about Mrs Davies unless it is an absolute necessity, and when she must, she tries to avoid thinking unkind thoughts, because Mrs Davies is a sick woman.

  ‘That old War’s left its mark on us all.’ Maggie Ellis beckons Non to come closer and lowers her voice. ‘Poor Elsie Thomas has started having her turns again. Of course, it’s the time of year, Non. But this time she’s convinced herself that the body they brought back to bury in that big abbey in London is her Benjamin. Wants anyone who’ll listen to write to Lloyd George for her and ask him to send Ben home. I told her not to be so silly.’

  Poor Elsie, Non thinks. When the letter – no, it had not even been a letter – when the filled-out form came from the War Office, Non read it to her; Elsie could not read English. Died, it had baldly said. Elsie was still waiting for her son’s body to come home, she couldn’t understand that it never would, that no one came home. No one, Non thinks, not one of them, except that single unknown soldier. Not even Davey.

  ‘I said to her,’ Maggie Ellis says, ‘I said, How can you have a picture of his grave with a cross on it hanging on your wall in that special frame Davey Davies made for it, and still think he’s buried in that big place in London? But she’s not quite the full yard is she, Non? She never was, that’s where Benjamin got it from. It runs in that family, she had a cousin just the same.’

  Maggie Ellis drones like the bees, but less productively. Non is too occupied with the thought that has occurred to her to pay Maggie much more attention. She has realised that Davey’s waking nightmares have begun at about the same time of year as his nightmares did last year, and the year before, too, she is sure of it. As if it was somehow all tied up together, which would not be surprising since Davey and Benjamin were in the same section, though Davey said he had not been there when Ben was killed and could not tell Elsie Thomas any more about what had happened than the official form did.