Dead Man's Embers Read online

  ‘Non,’ Maggie Ellis’s voice cuts in on her thoughts. ‘Non, I said, your Davey’s all right now, though, isn’t he? Back to normal?’

  Non has to suppress a hysterical sob she feels rising in her throat. She sidesteps the question. ‘He’s busy with the Festival preparations, Mrs Ellis. Working all hours.’

  ‘He’s lucky to have the work, Non. He’s a good carpenter, I’ll give you that. I remember him making things from bits of wood when he was younger than your boy there.’ Maggie glances at Osian again, narrowing her eyes at him and shaking her head. She would not be the first to wonder where he came from. Non no longer allows herself to wonder.

  As she watches Osian’s knife shaping the wood, she realises with dismay that she has completely forgotten it is his birthday today. She has been absorbed by the horror of what is happening to Davey inside the house, but it is no excuse. What kind of mother forgets to wish her child a happy birthday?

  Seven years, she thinks, since Davey brought him home. Osian was a poor, mewling thing when Davey brought him to her, a newborn, long and red like a newly skinned rabbit. Davey said there was no need to know where he had come from, or who, he was now her child, as if he were somehow making up to her for the fact that she dare not bear a child of her own. Though she had not, then, felt the need for a child of her own. She had wanted to know more about the boy, but all Davey would tell her was that the young mother was dead, she had not told her family who had fathered the baby, and the boy was unwanted. But why had Davey taken him, she had asked, suspecting that her husband knew more than he was telling her, and he had replied, For you, Non, as if that was the end of the matter. So, she had kept her questions to herself, and named the boy after her own father. To all intents and purposes Osian is hers, and to this day she does not know what to do with him.

  She watches him fold his penknife, blow the dust from the wood he has been whittling, and set a tiny carving down on the wall. A perfect miniature soldier.

  Maggie Ellis gasps with surprise. ‘It does make you wonder where he gets it from, doesn’t it?’ she says.

  4

  Non had returned to the kitchen to find Davey sitting at the table reading his Cambrian News as if nothing had happened. She had sent Osian upstairs to dress himself and hastily wrapped the new shirt she had sewn for him in brown paper.

  Now, they are all sitting around the table. No one else has forgotten Osian’s birthday. Davey leads the singing of Happy Birthday, which Meg complains is pointless because Osian is not listening. Her father silences her with a look and retreats behind his newspaper.

  ‘You wouldn’t like it if we didn’t sing to you on your birthday,’ Wil says. He delves into the pocket of the jacket he has slung over the back of his chair and produces an untidily wrapped parcel that he pushes towards his brother, who takes no notice of it.

  ‘You see?’ Meg says. ‘No point.’ But she, too, has a small parcel that she gives Non to pass to Osian. ‘I bought my favourite sweets,’ she says, ‘so if he can’t be bothered to open it, I’ll have it back.’

  Non places her own parcel next to Osian’s breakfast bowl. She looks at him steadily eating his porridge. ‘I’ll help you open your presents,’ she says, and unwraps Wil’s parcel so that the pouch it contains spills a handful of marbles to roll along the table. Osian stops eating to watch them bounce onto the flagstones. ‘Your prize marbles, Wil,’ Non says. ‘Are you sure?’

  Wil shrugs. ‘When did I last play with them?’ he says, and gets down on his hands and knees to gather them from the floor.

  ‘Open my parcel for him, Non,’ Meg says, and Non does as she is told. Osian immediately begins to sort the jelly babies into rows of different colours and puts a red one into his mouth.

  ‘I’m afraid he likes them, Meg,’ Non says.

  Meg frowns and begins to complain that she is too close to the fire, she is too hot, what is the need for a fire on a day when the sun is blazing so hard yet again it is likely to set fire to the whole world. It is a marvel that all the while she scowls in complaint she looks like an angel, her golden hair a halo around her head.

  ‘To boil the kettle for your cup of tea, Meg, to cook your oats, to heat the washing-up water for your dirty dishes.’ Meg would try the patience of a saint, and Non is no saint and her patience is sometimes sorely tried. ‘At least it stays cool in this part of the house in the morning. If you’re too hot where you are, change places with me.’

  ‘I don’t want to sit next to him,’ Meg says. She grimaces at Osian who would be oblivious to her disdain even if he were not busy eating the red jelly babies one after another.

  ‘Osian,’ Davey says. ‘His name is Osian, Meg.’ He turns over a page of his Cambrian News, folds the paper in half and leans it against the teapot.

  Meg opens her mouth to answer; she always has an answer. Non breaks into the conversation before Meg can further annoy her father. It is difficult most times to know what to make conversation about. Every subject seems to lead to the War, and Non especially does not want that to happen now that Davey has started having these turns. Turns! she thinks, there must be a better name for what happens to Davey.

  ‘Maggie Ellis next door was up and down the garden all night to the closet,’ she says. Maybe Wil, clinking the marbles back into their pouch one by one, will give one of his impersonations of Maggie. Then she stops; even that could lead to dangerous territory. She puts her hand in her apron pocket to make sure that the soldier Osian carved when they were in the garden, in the space of just a few minutes, is still there and not set down where Davey can be upset by it. She marvels at Osian’s skill. Her fingertips trace the tiny details and the smooth finish of what he has made. How does he know what to do to produce such a thing? She cannot recall where or when he first acquired the penknife, he seems to have always had it. She hears again Maggie Ellis asking if he was safe with it, and knows what she meant. Osian is not always predictable.

  Wil has not heard her, Non realises. He is smothering a hearty yawn. ‘You stayed out late with Eddie last night, Wil,’ she says. ‘Did he have amazing tales of his great adventures on the Seven Seas to tell you?’

  Wil rubs his cheeks with vigour, as if to wake himself. ‘He did, Non. The things he’s done! It sounds a good life, seeing the world like that. He’s been all the way across the Atlantic to Newfoundland and back with only—’

  ‘That’s enough!’ Davey bangs his knife down on the table, rattling the cups on their saucers, slopping the tea over their rims. ‘Eddie’s no hero, Wil. His father needed him to stay at home after his brother died. Eddie should have done his duty and stayed, not gone gadding about to please himself.’

  Duty! What a hard word that is for any of them, let alone a boy of fifteen. Where did it come from? It is not a word the old Davey would have used, although he, himself, had always been dutiful. Non holds her breath as she sees the look in Wil’s eyes, a compound of misery and mulishness.

  ‘He says he’s changing ships, so there’s a berth going,’ Wil says. ‘On the David Morris. Cook and boy. Sailing out of Port in a few weeks after the repairs are done. Eddie says me being a carpenter should clinch it if I want it.’

  Wil has always been the quiet one, the dependable one, too much put on his shoulders that he has carried without a word of complaint. Non is fondest of him by far; Meg is a trial every day.

  ‘David Morris?’ Meg says. ‘That’s a funny name for a ship.’

  ‘I don’t want to hear another word about it,’ Davey says, not shouting now, his voice even and reasonable as he re-folds his paper and lays it flat on the table.

  Wil is not going to stop. ‘I asked Eddie if he’d vouch for me. He says he’ll talk to the Master, William Griffiths – he’s from Barmouth – some sort of relation to Eddie’s father, cousin or something, that’s how Eddie got on the ship in the first place.’ He looks straight into his father’s eyes as he speaks. ‘His father knew all about it, he was happy for Eddie to go, to do what he wanted. He knew Edd
ie hated farming.’

  Davey is barely listening now. He has that look in his eyes that is so often there since he came home, as if he is staring into a distance that they are unaware of, and seeing things they would not recognise even if they saw them.

  ‘If Wil goes, can I have his bedroom? It’ll be too big just for him,’ Meg says, glancing at Osian. ‘Osian, I mean,’ she adds, giving Davey a sideways look. ‘He can have my little room. He won’t care. He doesn’t care about anything.’ She turns to Osian. ‘I mean, you don’t even care it’s your birthday, do you?’

  ‘Wil’s not going,’ Davey says.

  ‘He’s fifteen, and there is no duty to keep him here,’ Non says. ‘He should have some idea of what the world has to offer before he settles down.’

  ‘I’ve got to get a move on,’ Davey says. ‘I’ve promised to work on the seating for the Festival this morning. I hope it’ll bring better work our way, Wil, more interesting to you than making coffins, anyway.’ He gulps his tea. ‘And, Meg – you can help Non make up a bed for your cousin Gwydion. When’s he arriving, Non?’

  ‘He’s not really my cousin, though, is he?’ Meg says, before Non can answer. ‘He belongs to Non’s family, not ours.’

  Non suspects that her mother-in-law has had much to do with Meg’s education on family matters. ‘He should be here before dinner time,’ she says.

  ‘He’s travelled, hasn’t he, Non?’ Wil says. ‘Gwydion?’

  ‘Not as far as Newfoundland,’ Non says. ‘He was in Brittany last summer with some university friends.’ She turns to Meg and adds, ‘Next door to France.’

  ‘I know that,’ Meg says. ‘I’d like to go to France. I already know a lot of French words – je parle français un petit peu – and Mademoiselle Green says I’m her best student and she’ll lend me some French novels over the summer. And she says that if we had any relatives in France during the War we should ask them to teach us some of the French they learnt. What did you learn when you were there, Tada?’

  Davey puts his palms on the table and lifts himself up out of his chair. ‘Nothing of use to you,’ he says to Meg. ‘What can your Mademoiselle Green know of words men learnt when they were fighting?’

  ‘Her brother was a captain in the—’ Meg stops when she sees the look on her father’s face.

  ‘An officer, then,’ Davey says. ‘Well, that would be different, wouldn’t it?’

  Meg frowns down at her plate. She’s not sure what to read into this, Non thinks. Non is not altogether sure herself.

  Davey pushes his chair under the table. ‘I know it’s Saturday, Wil,’ he says, ‘but I could do with a hand on this job, just for the morning.’

  As Davey walks away from the table, Osian stands up, his chair skittering back along the flagstones, and holds his hands up to stop his father without actually touching him. Osian plunges his hands into Non’s apron pockets and, before she realises what he is trying to do, pulls out the soldier he carved and puts it on the table.

  Davey’s face darkens and he grabs the figure from the tablecloth and throws it into the fire where it immediately begins to smoulder. ‘Cannon fodder,’ he says in a conversational tone. ‘Cannon fodder, little Osian. We’ll have no more of them.’

  No one moves as Davey heads for the door. Non surveys her children’s faces. Meg looks astonished, Wil despairing, and Osian has no expression at all.

  5

  Wil leaves the house, wearing his workclothes, a few moments after his father’s dramatic departure.

  Non catches his hand. ‘You follow your heart’s desire, Wil,’ she says.

  He turns and hugs her, not something he does often; the Davieses are not a demonstrative family. ‘I’ll miss you, Non,’ he says.

  She remembers her father frequently giving her the advice she has just given Wil. Follow your heart, Rhiannon, he would tell her, it is the only way to live. And each time he would tell her the story, with only the slightest variations between one telling and the next, of how he had followed his heart’s desire to carry on in the traditions of his mother’s family, which in medieval times had been hailed as one of the great families in the use of herbal remedies, who could and would cure anyone, from paupers to princes, with their secret recipes. But his father had wanted him to pursue a career in the law and when he refused had cast him adrift without a penny. My own father, Rhiannon, he would cry, and then hug her so tightly that all the breath was knocked out of her. And then he would tell her the story, her favourite story, of how he had seen her mother for the first time and fallen passionately and helplessly in love with her before she had as much as uttered one word to him. She, too, he would say, was my heart’s desire. So, follow your heart, my child, and everything else will follow that.

  ‘Go,’ Non now says to Wil, and he walks out into the sunshine, a man already, a man with a mind of his own, not the boy she had taken on in the blitheness of youth and the headiness of love when she was following her own heart’s desire.

  She turns away from the door to find Osian hovering behind her, her shadow child. ‘You stay with me today, Osh,’ she says. He gives her his usual blank look. ‘Your big cousin Gwydion is coming to stay. You like him, remember?’ After seven years it is still difficult for her to remember not to touch Osian. When he knocks against an inanimate object he hardly notices it. It is people he objects to. But she can hardly blame him for that; there are times when she finds people hard to contend with.

  She sidesteps past him and into the kitchen where Meg is still sipping at a cup of tea that must surely be stone cold by now even in this heat. ‘Help me clear away, Meg,’ she says, and begins to stack their plates and cutlery. ‘Then perhaps you can gather some raspberries for later.’

  ‘Nain says that kind of thing is for servants to do,’ Meg says. ‘And she says I’m not your servant.’

  Non takes a long, deep breath. Count to twenty, Non, she hears her sister counselling her. One, two, three . . . She will not become embroiled in an argument with Meg about the folly of some of Mrs Davies’s teachings.

  ‘That’s all well and fine if you have servants to do the work, but we don’t, so come on, Meg.’

  ‘You have Lizzie German to help with the washing,’ Meg says.

  ‘That’s different, and you know it. And she’s Mrs Grunwald to you.’ Non ignores Meg’s huffing. ‘Now, Gwydion will be here soon, and we need to get these breakfast things cleared away and his bed made up before he arrives.’

  ‘When’s his train?’ It is almost a year since Meg last saw Gwydion, when she had conceived a girlish passion for him; a passion that may not have entirely vanished judging from her heightened colour.

  ‘He wrote that he’d be here for his dinner,’ Non says, ‘but I’m not sure which train he’ll be on. He knows his way from the station by now, Meg, so we’ll have to expect him when we see him.’

  She leaves Meg to finish clearing the table and wash the dishes, and goes upstairs to make the beds and empty the slops. Saturday’s housework is usually done by dinner time, and she will have time to spend with Gwydion this afternoon. She pauses as her hands smooth the sheet on her bed – her bed! – it is Davey’s bed, too. How she longs for the intimacy they shared before Davey joined the fighting. She lifts the bedcover from the floor and throws it across the bed where it billows before it drops into place. The War returned Davey, one of the few, and for that she is grateful, but the War seems to have returned the wrong man to her. He looks enough like Davey, he speaks enough like Davey, he even behaves enough like Davey that most people assume he has not changed. But it is all an act; this man who now lives with her is a stranger.

  Sorrow overcomes her and she sits on the bed, her face cupped in her hands. The memory of his return hurts as if it happened yesterday. She remembers the tentative knock on the door and how she had opened it to find Davey standing there as if he had no right to enter his own house. She had not expected him, no one had news of when their men were coming home, they came when they came. She
had gasped his name, then did not know what to say to him, what to do. Davey had walked into the house, Non retreating before him. And as if he had been practising the lines, he said, I’m glad to be home, Non, but there is something I must tell you. He had paused as if he needed prompting, given a slight start, then continued, I have to tell you that although I will look after you and the children, because that is my duty, we cannot be as we were. She remembers wanting to laugh, swallowing the hysteria that had risen in her throat. Cannot be as we were? she had said, the first words other than his name that she had uttered to the husband she had not seen for years. I am not fit to be your husband, Davey had said, I have fallen in love with another woman and been untrue to you. She remembers staring at him in disbelief. Where were there other women to meet on the battle-field? – that was the first thought that had come to her mind. Who? was all she could think to ask. A nurse, he had replied. Non had wanted to know her name, and still wishes she had never asked. Was not Angela exactly the name of the kind of woman a man might prefer to plain old Non?

  She smoothes the bedcover, tugging it slightly to straighten its lines. She wishes she had cried, screamed, pleaded, said it did not matter to her. But she had not. She had possessed secrets of her own by then and had realised as soon as she saw Davey on the doorstep that she had very nearly made a mistake of her own, too, and had no right to plead. Would their lives be different now if she had behaved differently then? It is a question that has haunted her.

  And so it had been. Sharing a bed because there was no other place for Davey to sleep. Sharing a house, sharing the children, sharing their lives. But not sharing a marriage any more, not sharing conversation and laughter, their hopes and dreams, their fears. She grieves for her Davey, who had loved her, and who she had loved in return, she grieves for him as if he were dead. More than if he were dead. She may have decided that she will not be defeated by the mystery of what haunts this Davey, by the puzzle of what he has become, but she has no idea how to begin to fight back, how to begin to find the Davey who loved her.