The Earth Hums in B Flat Read online

  ‘No,’ I say.

  ‘No what?’ he says. ‘Not find out about Bethan’s? We may as well. What colour are her eyes, blue or green?’

  The silence travels around the shelves, and in and out of the books until every volume holds its breath.

  ‘Brown,’ I say.

  ‘Brown?’ Richard says. ‘No, that can’t be right. Look . . .’ He moves the book around for me to see the scientific diagrams clearly. ‘A blue-eyed parent and a green-eyed parent can’t have a child with brown eyes.’

  ‘Brown,’ I say and colour Bethan’s eye with my only brown pencil, which makes it look as if it’s a leaf that has changed colour and is about to fall from the family tree.

  39

  ‘You’re a bit quiet, Gwenni,’ says Nain. ‘What’s the matter? Is it your mam? She’s been up and about today; she must be feeling better.’ Nain’s preparing supper in the scullery. The potatoes are peeled and in their saucepan and she’s scraping baby carrots over a sheet of newspaper.

  ‘Tada took her to see Dr Edwards this morning,’ I say. ‘Maybe he gave her some more new tablets. I don’t know. Tada’s taken her out for some fresh air.’

  Nain stops scraping and looks at me. ‘Cheer up. Worse things happen at sea.’

  Do they? I make my mouth smile at her.

  ‘Hmm,’ she says. ‘Well, don’t stand there like an ornament. Help me with these.’

  I pick up a baby carrot and scrape it and hand it to Nain to wash. Then I scrape another one and pop it into my mouth and crunch it. Sweet baby carrots are my second-favourite vegetable in the world. Broad beans are my first.

  ‘Are you here for your supper?’ says Nain.

  I shake my head. ‘We had chips from the chip shop,’ I say, ‘and egg. Tada fried mine hard the way I like it. I fetched the chips. Greasy Annie was asking after Mam, I think; I never know what she means. And she said not to take a dish for the chips again; she wraps them in paper now.’

  ‘Take no notice of her,’ says Nain. ‘She’s not a nice woman, that Annie. I’m never sure if she’s not a ha’penny short of a shilling. Something went wrong when she was born. Her poor mother nearly died and Annie was ill for a long time. Just before I had Lol; that’s why I remember it.’

  ‘Is Greasy Annie the same age as Aunty Lol?’ I say. ‘She looks as old as you, Nain.’

  Nain peers at me over her spectacles and laughs. ‘She must really look old, then, Gwenni.’

  Nain’s skin is wrinkled like the prunes Mam used to soak for breakfast and she wears her grey plait twisted round and round her head so that she looks like the witch that tried to capture Hansel and Gretel. But I don’t tell her that.

  ‘It’s hard for you to think that we were all young once, just like you, Gwenni,’ says Nain.

  It’s true. ‘What did you like to do when you were young, Nain?’ I ask her. I slip another tiny carrot into my mouth.

  ‘Oh, like,’ she says. ‘That didn’t come into it. I left school at twelve and went into service as a maid. It was hard work, but by the time I was in my twenties I was housekeeper of a big house in London. Then I came home to the farm to look after the younger ones for Tada when Mam died.’

  ‘And you met Taid,’ I say.

  ‘And I met Taid,’ she says. ‘You did what you had to do in those days, Gwenni.’

  What does that mean? ‘I saw Taid’s gravestone in the cemetery when I was looking for dates for my family tree,’ I say.

  ‘Did you, now?’ says Nain. She scrumples up the newspaper with the carrot scrapings and takes it to the compost bucket outside the back door. The lid clangs like a bell when she drops it back in place.

  ‘And his other wife’s,’ I say.

  ‘Sarah,’ says Nain.

  I nod. ‘And all her dead babies.’

  ‘Another thing about those days,’ says Nain. ‘The babies came regular as clockwork. Poor Sarah, she never got over losing so many, and the last one killed her.’

  ‘William,’ I say. ‘The daring young man on the flying trapeze.’

  ‘Your father was very fond of Wil,’ says Nain. ‘But Wil flew away just like Lloyd George. Saw his chance and left. Except Wil never flew back again.’ She holds the pan with the carrots in it under the tap and runs water into it, then gives it a shake.

  ‘Bethan says Miss Edwards told her class that you don’t have to have babies if you don’t want to. You can have contraception instead.’

  ‘Whatever next,’ says Nain. ‘The things they teach you at school these days.’

  ‘So why did Mam have me when she didn’t want to have me, Nain?’

  ‘Of course your mother wanted you,’ says Nain.

  ‘She says she didn’t,’ I say.

  ‘That’s just her nerves talking,’ says Nain. ‘Take no notice of her.’

  ‘But she never says it to Bethan.’

  Nain doesn’t say anything. She concentrates on reaching for the saucepan lids from the top of the wall cupboard.

  ‘I know about Bethan,’ I say. ‘About Tada not being her father.’

  ‘Hush,’ says Nain. One of the lids drops from her hand to the stone floor where it rings and rings until she puts her foot on it. ‘How?’

  I shrug. I promised not to tell, didn’t I?

  ‘Nanw Lipstick’s girl; goes without saying,’ says Nain. She bends down and picks up the lid. ‘Leave it alone, Gwenni. It’s up to your mother and father to tell Bethan, not you.’

  ‘I wouldn’t tell Bethan,’ I say. ‘But I don’t understand, Nain.’

  ‘Do you have to understand?’

  I nod. ‘I do,’ I say.

  Nain sighs and rubs her hand along her forehead. ‘Let’s get these pans on the fire, Gwenni. You take the small one through for me, and don’t pinch any more carrots or there won’t be enough for Lol’s supper.’

  We carry the pans into the living room and when Nain has poked the fire just right and put the pans exactly where they should be on the coals, she sits in her rocking chair and I sink down and down into the old leather armchair. Lloyd George shuffles on his perch and gives a soft sigh.

  ‘I don’t know,’ says Nain. ‘I suppose I’m about do the right thing here. It must be better for me to tell you than for you to hear dribs and drabs of old gossip.’

  There’s no book in any library that will tell me this story. ‘Please, Nain,’ I say. ‘You’ve always told me how useful it is to know things so you don’t go and put your foot in it.’

  ‘Hmm,’ says Nain. ‘This is a bit different, Gwenni. A bit near to home. Well, listen closely, because I’m not telling you twice.’ She leans back in her chair and begins to rock slowly; the chair gives a faint creak every time she rocks forwards. ‘Your mother and father married when your father was on leave from the army. He only had a few days. People were marrying like that all over the country then, in haste, because of the war. Everyone was afraid that they’d never get a chance to marry their sweethearts; that they might die fighting, you know.’ Nain glances up at Uncle Idwal’s picture on the wall. ‘Your grandmother wasn’t well so your mother decided to carry on living with her until your father came back again.’

  ‘I know about her, too,’ I say. ‘But not everything. Alwenna didn’t know everything.’

  ‘Well, there’s a surprise,’ says Nain. ‘Nanw Lipstick usually manages to invent anything she doesn’t know.’ She stops rocking and stands up to take the lid off the carrot pan. ‘Bit slow this evening, this fire.’ She rattles under the pans with the poker. The phoenix poker; but I won’t think about that.

  ‘It was nerves with your grandmother, too,’ she says. ‘I’m not quite sure what happened to her, your mother never said anything except that your grandmother had gone to Dinbych for treatment for her nerves. I don’t know how she died. She’d have been in her forties then, and that’s not old enough to die, whatever you may think, Gwenni.’

  ‘Alwenna said she went . . . she had bad nerves because Mam was having Bethan. But why, Nain?’


  ‘Oh dear, Gwenni, you’re very persistent. I suppose if I don’t tell you you’ll be off asking someone else.’ Nain lowers herself back into her rocking chair. ‘Let me think,’ she says. The chair begins to rock; creak, creak, creak. ‘Now, Gwenni, do you know how long a baby takes to grow in its mother’s belly?’

  Rabbit babies take a month. I don’t know how long a human baby takes. I shake my head.

  ‘Nine months,’ says Nain. ‘When your mother lived with your other Nain, I used to write to her regularly and she used to reply. I never got to see her; it was difficult then, what with one thing and another.’ She glances at Uncle Idwal’s picture again. ‘But she just turned up on the doorstep there, almost a year to the day she and your father married, with a letter in her hand from the army saying your father was coming home because he’d been shot in the leg, and with a belly out to here.’ Nain holds her hand way out in front of her own belly.

  ‘Is that why Tada has a limp?’ I say.

  ‘What?’ says Nain. ‘Yes. Yes. But can’t you see what I’m trying to tell you, Gwenni? It was twelve months since your mother . . . saw your father last, and if it takes only nine months . . .’

  ‘Yes, of course I can see what you’re saying, Nain. I’m good at arithmetic. But I still don’t understand.’

  ‘What is there not to understand, for goodness’ sake?’ says Nain.

  ‘Why it was bad for my other nain’s nerves,’ I say.

  ‘I wish I’d never started this,’ says Nain. Her chair begins to rock quicker; the faint creak turns into a loud groan. ‘A woman who’s married to one man isn’t supposed to have another man’s baby, Gwenni. It’s just not right. Your grandmother was a big chapel woman and I expect she would have felt the shame of it too much to bear, especially since her nerves were already bad. I expect that’s how it was. I don’t really know. No one does except your mother, and she didn’t tell anyone. And it was none of my business. And that’s that.’ She rubs her forehead with her hand. ‘I think I’ve got a headache coming on,’ she says. ‘It’s turned so close this evening. When are your mam and tada coming home from their walk? Did they say?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘But, Nain, it is my business, isn’t it?

  I’ve got bits of her as well as you in me, haven’t I?’

  Nain shakes her head and doesn’t reply.

  ‘And,’ I say, ‘Alwenna said Mam sent the minister to meet Tada off the train. Was that because having a baby that didn’t belong to him was such a shameful thing?’

  ‘It would have been a bit of a shock for your father, wouldn’t it, just to walk into the house and find your mother like that?’ says Nain. ‘It was a bit of a shock for him. But he worshipped the ground your mother walked on and he decided that he’d bring Bethan up as his own. And that’s what he’s done. Bethan never needs to know.’

  ‘She’ll work it out, Nain,’ I say, ‘or one of her friends will. Miss Edwards gave them homework to work out how they get their eye colour and hair colour from their parents. I helped . . . someone do some work on it in the library at school today and I don’t think Bethan could have got her eye colour from Mam and Tada.’

  ‘You leave it alone,’ says Nain. ‘I’ll speak to your father.’

  ‘The homework’s got to be in tomorrow,’ I say, ‘And, Nain, Alwenna says her mother knows who Bethan’s father really was.’

  ‘Stuff and nonsense,’ says Nain. ‘Your mother wasn’t telling anyone and your father didn’t want to know. And that’s really that.’ She gets up from her chair. ‘Just look at the time. That Lol wanted me to try to tempt Lloyd George out of his cage for a bit.

  She’ll be back herself soon.’ Nain reaches for Lloyd George’s cage door.

  I make for the scullery door. ‘I’ll wait in our house,’ I say, but Nain opens the cage before I reach the door. Lloyd George doesn’t fly out. He scuffles along his perch to the other side of his cage from the door.

  ‘Look at him,’ says Nain. ‘The silly bird won’t come out at all since he came back from his great escape. Won’t fly, won’t speak. That Lol wants to take him to a doctor.’ She rattles her finger along the bars of the cage but Lloyd George just huddles tighter against the bars on the far side.

  ‘Dr Edwards?’ I say.

  ‘Some special doctor for birds in Bermo,’ says Nain. ‘I never heard such nonsense.’

  Lloyd George perches with his back to the cage door and his head in his feathers. He looks like the trembling blue ball on old Dafydd Owen’s windowsill. Except his feathers don’t look so bright any more.

  Nain hooks the cage door shut. ‘He’s probably learnt where his place is,’ she says. ‘No good ever came of not knowing your place.’

  But I don’t know where my place is. And what if I don’t like my place when I find it?

  40

  Look, Bethan is home from school before me today, sitting in Mam’s armchair, looking at something on her lap. For a minute I thought she was Mam, waiting to tell me off for being late.

  I didn’t walk back with Richard because he had Astronomy Club after school, so I went to the cemetery on the way home. Guto’s jam jar was on its side on the babies’ grave. I threw away the dead bluebells and picked some stems of cow parsley from the edges of the cemetery but they were too long to stand up in the jar so I spread a lacy cream shawl of them over Gwion and Nia. Because who else will do that for them now? And then I lay on my tombstone for a while looking up at the sky, because it’s almost as good as flying in daylight. I thought about my place; maybe my place is in the sky. I thought about Bethan and Mam, and me and Tada, and how we’ve always been two families, not one. I thought about Nain telling Tada about the eye colour. Why didn’t Tada keep Bethan home from school today? Or maybe he went to the school to ask Miss Edwards not to have the lesson. But he wouldn’t do that; he’s nervous of teachers, except for Mrs Evans. I didn’t think about Mrs Evans, or Catrin and Angharad; I just left them in my heart. And then I walked home.

  It’s dark to come into the living room from the bright daylight. And there’s no fire in the grate to give any light or to boil the kettle or to cook supper. Maybe we’re eating at Nain’s house. But I can hear Mam humming in the scullery, so she hasn’t taken to her bed again. Perhaps Dr Edwards is a good doctor after all, just as Aunty Lol says.

  Bethan takes no notice of me. Now that my eyes have grown used to the dimness I can see that what she has on her lap is the box of photographs Tada gave me to look through for my family tree. Bethan begins to pick the photographs out of the box, one by one, and tear them in half and drop the two pieces on the floor. Why is she doing that? I lean forward to take the box away from her but she holds on to it with both hands.

  ‘Why. Didn’t. You. Tell. Me?’ she says. She lifts the box and bangs it down on her lap with each word.

  Nain didn’t speak to Tada about the eye colour, did she? Or Tada would have done something about it, wouldn’t he?

  Bethan screams and throws the box at me, and the photographs she’s left inside it flutter down over us both like huge snowflakes. ‘Say something, you baby.’ She jumps up from Mam’s chair and kicks the photograph box across the room. ‘That box is full of lies.’ She prods me with her forefinger, just like Mam does, and I back towards the door. ‘Didn’t you go with Richard to the library yesterday to do the eye thing? Didn’t you tell him my eyes are brown so Tada can’t be my real father? Didn’t you?’

  ‘I just said your eyes were brown,’ I say. ‘Anyone can see that by looking at you. I didn’t say Tada wasn’t your father.’

  She prods me again. ‘You could have told me before I went to school to sit in the lab this afternoon and listen to stupid Miss Edwards asking everyone about their homework, couldn’t you? I didn’t know what to say. At least I wasn’t the only one. Two of the Llanbedr boys had the wrong eye colour, too.’ She begins to snatch up the photographs from the floor and tear them into small pieces that she throws into the air. ‘All lies,’ she says. ‘All lies
.’ She giggles. ‘Miss Edwards got in a right flap and said we were moving on to a new subject. Only she couldn’t think what. Stupid woman. She said to forget all about it. But it was too late, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it, Gwenni?’ She throws the photograph she’s started tearing at me and I catch it and look at it. It’s of her and me sitting on Tada’s lap. I was a tiny baby so Bethan must have been about a year old. Her hair is curly and she’s waving at whoever took the photograph – Mam maybe, or Aunty Lol. Tada’s got his arms wrapped about us both. So, when was it we started being two families? ‘You could have told me. You could have warned me,’ she shouts. ‘You’re so stupid, Gwenni.’

  I could. But I listened to Nain instead. From now on I’ll listen to my own head.

  ‘Does Mam know?’ I say.

  ‘Of course she bloody knows,’ says Bethan and she picks up more photographs and throws them at me. The floor looks as if a grey blizzard has blown over it. ‘Why do you think she’s shut herself in the scullery humming like a bloody bee? She won’t tell me who, though.’

  I could tell her Alwenna said everyone knows who, but my mind tells me that Bethan wouldn’t want to hear what Alwenna said.

  ‘One good thing is, you’re not my proper sister,’ says Bethan. ‘Maybe now people will stop thinking I must be odd just because you are. I expect you get it from Ta— your father’s family. So it won’t be in me. That’s one good thing. I don’t want to be a stupid baby like you.’ She stamps her foot on the floor. ‘Writing silly stories.’ Stamp. ‘Talking to dolls.’ Stamp. ‘Playing silly games.’ Stamp. ‘Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.’ Stamp. Stamp. Stamp.

  A draught bangs the living room door against the back of my legs as the front door opens.

  ‘Nothing like coming home,’ says Tada, as he does every day when he comes back from work. ‘Nowhere like home.’ He pushes the front door shut with his foot. ‘And here are my lovely girls. But where’s your mam? She hasn’t gone back to her bed, has she?’