The Earth Hums in B Flat Page 26

  The back door slams behind Nain on her way home and the front door slams behind Aunty Siân and Tada on their way to the station.

  ‘I’m going to see Caroline,’ says Bethan. Mam sits up and stretches her hand out towards her. Bethan ignores her and vanishes like Tada and Aunty Siân through the front door, and I’m left here with Mam.

  ‘Sharper than a serpent’s tooth,’ says Mam.

  ‘What?’ I say.

  Mam doesn’t reply. Instead, she rocks back and forth on the seat of her armchair. Maybe all this rocking she does is working something loose in her head. Maybe it’s nothing to do with the space machine cooking her brain.

  ‘I’m going to Nain’s for a minute,’ I say.

  ‘No, you’re not,’ says Mam, snapping to attention as if one of the loose pieces has rolled back into place. ‘Who do you think is going to get the chips if you go off to Nain’s?’

  I don’t mind fetching the chips. It’s better than staying here and it’s better than having to tell Nain everything that happened before she came round. Because she’ll be wanting to know.

  ‘Shall I take the money from your purse?’ I say. Mam doesn’t answer again but I take her purse from the left-hand drawer in the sideboard. ‘Shall I get Tada a fish?’ Tada likes fish.

  ‘I’m not wasting money on fish for him,’ says Mam. ‘He can have a fried egg like everyone else. Get a shilling’s worth of chips.’

  I take a shilling from her purse. It’s smooth and thin. Hundreds of fingers must have earned it and spent it. I put it in my gymslip pocket and head for the door.

  ‘Take a dish,’ says Mam.

  ‘Greasy Annie said not to bother with a dish last time,’ I say. ‘She said to have it wrapped like everyone else.’

  ‘Greasy Annie is common as dirt,’ says Mam. ‘Wrapping the food in filthy old newspaper. Her poor mother would turn in her grave. Take a dish. Take that glass one with the lid. That’ll show her.’

  What will it show her? Greasy Annie wouldn’t think Mam could show her anything. Greasy Annie thinks she could show Mam a thing or two; she said so last time. I didn’t know what she meant but it made everyone in the chip shop laugh. But I don’t tell Mam that.

  ‘I can’t take a dish when she said not to,’ I say.

  ‘Take. The. Dish,’ says Mam. She bangs her hand on the arm of the chair with each word.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘Don’t make me take it, Mam.’

  Before I realise what’s happening Mam jumps up from her chair and smacks me across my face with the palm of her hand. The sting in my cheek makes my eyes water.

  ‘Satan. Satan.’ Mam hisses the words at me. Her spit sprays my stinging cheek. I try not to think about the spit. What did she call me? Are her brain pieces coming loose again? I back into the door but she comes after me, her arm raised to slap me once more. I must get Nain.

  The door slams into my back as someone opens it.

  ‘Get out of the way,’ says Bethan. ‘What a stupid place to stand.’ Tears run down her face and she’s out of breath.

  ‘Bethan, my Bethan,’ Mam says. She closes her eyes and holds her hands out to Bethan, her palms upwards, like a saint in a picture. Bethan takes no notice of her but there’s no room to move so I take hold of Mam’s shoulders and shuffle her back towards her armchair. Maybe she thinks Bethan’s helping her because she smiles her empty smile and lets me push her onto the seat.

  Bethan holds out a scrumpled piece of paper to me.

  I take it; it weighs more than paper. ‘What is it?’ I say. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘The matter,’ says Bethan as she scrubs the tears from her cheeks with her fists, ‘is that stupid Mrs Smythe won’t let Caroline speak to me.’

  ‘What?’ I say.

  ‘What? What?’ Bethan mimics me. ‘It’s all your fault. Making friends with that Richard. I told you he’s a mother’s boy. He tells his mother everything. Look at that note.’

  I try to unscrumple the paper and a stone falls out and drops on Bethan’s foot. She kicks me on my ankle in return. ‘You’re so stupid, Gwenni,’ she says. How was I to know the paper was wrapped round a stone? Things like that happen in School Friend and to the Famous Five. Not to me.

  The paper is a sheet from a school roughbook and it’s difficult to smooth out well enough to read the pencilled writing. Bethan snatches it from me and waves it in my face as she says, ‘Caroline says that Richard told his mother all about Tada not being my father, and all about Mam being doolally. She says her mother’s sending them to stay with their grandmother in England until they can find somewhere else to live where we won’t be a bad influence on them.’

  ‘A bad influence?’ I say.

  Bethan throws the note on the fire where it flares up, then settles into a thin sheet of ash that breaks into pieces and disappears up the chimney.

  ‘Are you sure that’s what it says?’ I say. Though there’s no way of checking now. ‘Because Richard told me ages ago his mother wanted to move away.’

  Bethan stamps her foot. ‘It’s all your fault, stupid. All your fault.’

  ‘Gwenni’s bad. Gwenni’s bad.’ Bethan’s shouting has started Mam off again. She’s pulled her pink cushion with the red roses from behind her and is hugging it as she rocks in her chair. To and fro, to and fro. She rocks in time with the tick-tock of the brown clock. ‘Bad-bad. Bad-bad.’

  Am I?

  ‘I only wanted you, Bethan. You and your father. And now there’s only you. Only you.’ Mam hugs her pink cushion harder. Then her hand darts out and she catches Bethan’s wrist and tries to pull her down beside the chair.

  ‘Stop it.’ Bethan shouts and Mam lets go so that Bethan staggers back from her. She turns to me. ‘D’you think Aunty Siân was wrong?’ she says. ‘D’you think what Nain Eluned had was catching after all?’

  We look at Mam. She’s shaking as she rocks and her uncombed yellow curls seethe on her head as if they’re alive. Her face has started to melt the way it did when she burnt Mrs Llywelyn Pugh’s dead fox. Sweat runs down from her forehead and along the sides of her nose and along her top lip where it takes her lipstick with it to run in bloody streaks down each side of her mouth. Is this what madness looks like? What must it feel like?

  ‘She’s absolutely bloody bonkers,’ says Bethan. ‘I expect that’s how you’ll be when you’re older. I expect you’ve already caught Nain Eluned’s illness from Mam; that’s why you’re so odd.’

  ‘Satan.’ Mam points at me. Her arm shakes, her hand shakes, her finger shakes, but there is no mistaking where she’s pointing. My stomach starts to hurt. Why is she calling me that?

  ‘What’s she on about?’ says Bethan.

  ‘Your father is the Devil,’ says Mam, her finger still pointed at me. ‘The devil forced himself upon me and begat another devil. You are no child of mine.’ She sounds like someone reading the Bible. Is she talking about Tada?

  ‘What about my father?’ Bethan shakes Mam’s pointing arm. ‘Who’s my father?’

  ‘An angel,’ says Mam.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ says Bethan.

  ‘An angel who came in my hour of need,’ says Mam. She smoothes her pink cushion and frowns. The red petals on the cushion look rusty in the firelight. ‘Is this his blood?’

  ‘Now what’s she on about?’ says Bethan.

  Blood. Eight pints of blood in every human body. It shows where people belong and where they don’t. It spills on floors; it trickles into Reservoirs; it runs under bathroom doors. It will pour out of me every month.

  ‘No. Not his blood,’ says Mam. She strokes her cushion. ‘Her blood. See how it blooms like the roses in her garden.’

  ‘She said that last night,’ says Bethan. ‘That was your fault, too.’ She peers at Mam’s pink cushion without getting too close. ‘Are those funny petals really blood? That’s disgusting. I’ve been sitting on that cushion.’

  Mam begins to rock again. She holds the cushion as if it’s a child she’s nursing. She speaks to it.
‘You came from Mam’s house, the only thing. Mam said you devil Magdalen you’ll send me to an early grave the way you carry on is enough to drive me to despair. What did I do to deserve such a devil for a husband such a devil for a daughter? You’ll pay when that child is born. Sharper than a serpent’s tooth. Sharp, sharp.’

  Bethan’s hand creeps into mine and I hold it tight, tight. When will Tada be home?

  Mam rocks and rocks. ‘Mam said this cushion is my only comfort in this life. You are to have this cushion when I’m gone Magdalen never to forget me. The cushion will be your penance Magdalen. You must never forget me you must never forget that you have pushed me into this madness made me commit this sin she said. Don’t do it Mam I said. But it was done. Her blood bloomed like the roses in her garden. Her wrists like mouths but not talking. Don’t talk, don’t tell. Hush.’ Mam lets go of the cushion and puts both her hands over her mouth.

  Bethan pulls her hand away from mine. ‘Bloody hell,’ she says. ‘I’m going to get Nain.’

  47

  Nain takes one look at Mam hugging her cushion and watching things we can’t see in the fire and says, ‘I’m fetching Dr Edwards. You two sit here quietly and don’t upset her any more. Gwenni, make some tea.’

  I don’t think Mam wants tea. I don’t think Mam would know a cup of tea if I held one in front of her. But I nod at Nain anyway.

  She leaves through the front door and the draught rushes through the house and slams the back door that she left open on her way in. Bethan and I both jump at the noise but Mam doesn’t notice it. She stares at the fire, which flares and flickers with the draught. Smoke puffs out from it and misses the chimney, swirling its way up past the mantelpiece and around the Toby jugs instead. They’re looking scared; their cheeks have paled as if this amount of excitement is too much for them. They’re looking at the ceiling instead of leering at the woman on the sideboard or watching Mam; the cracks in the plaster up there must be the most interesting things in the world. Maybe even the Toby jugs are afraid that madness is catching. The smoke threads between them and along the ceiling and hovers around the pale electric light in its glass shade.

  ‘Pooh,’ says Bethan, fanning the smell of the smoke away with her hand.

  The smoke against the light looks like wisps of cloud across the moon. But there’s no peace here like that of my night sky, and no music. If Mam could hear the Earth’s music, maybe she would be filled with so much wonder there wouldn’t be room inside her for illness.

  ‘Tada should be back soon,’ I say. I look at the clock; Aunty Siân’s train must have been late arriving or Tada would be home by now.

  ‘Your tada,’ says Bethan. ‘Not mine.’ She chews her thumbnail. I can see that it’s already bleeding around the edges. ‘I’m never going to know who mine is, am I?’ She kicks back at the leg of her chair. ‘An angel. Huh.’

  Mam moans softly. It’s hardly a noise at all. She sounds like a newborn kitten John Morris once stole and carried home that mewled like this for its mother. We never knew why he stole the kitten. Perhaps he was its father; I didn’t think of that. The kitten’s mother gave him two deep scratches on his nose when she fetched the kitten back. They took weeks to heal.

  Bethan and I don’t speak; a silent agreement not to disturb Mam any more. What is Bethan thinking? She has too much to think about. When she notices me looking at her she turns sideways in her chair so that I can’t see her face. I sit here resting my elbows on the table, watching Mam out of the corner of my eye. Has her life become as unbearable as Nain Eluned’s? What if she tries to do something that Bethan and I can’t stop her doing?

  I hear voices outside the window and when the door opens Tada comes in with Dr Edwards close behind him. Nain follows them, standing on tiptoe and trying to look over their shoulders.

  Dr Edwards stands and watches Mam, then he gives a sigh and brings his black bag over to the table and takes out a syringe. Bethan sucks in her breath when she sees it. Dr Edwards smiles at her and draws some liquid into the syringe from a vial; he squirts some of it into the air. He holds the syringe behind his back and walks over to Mam and crouches down beside her chair.

  Dr Edwards glances first at Tada, who is still in the doorway, then he says, ‘This will be just a little prick, Magda. Nothing to worry about. You’ll hardly feel it and it’ll make you nice and sleepy.’

  He balances the syringe on his thigh and takes hold of Mam’s arm and pushes up her sleeve. It must be difficult because Mam won’t let go of her pink cushion. She behaves as if Dr Edwards is not there. Perhaps he’s as invisible to her as I am. Perhaps she thinks that if she can’t see us we won’t exist. Maybe no one real exists for her at this moment. Except Bethan.

  Dr Edwards plunges the needle into her arm. He looks up at Tada and says, ‘This will be very quick, Emlyn. She’ll sleep until the ambulance comes. It’s the best thing.’

  ‘Ambulance?’ says Bethan.

  ‘Your mam’s ill, Bethan,’ says Dr Edwards. ‘She needs to be somewhere she can be taken care of. Now,’ he walks to his bag and packs away the syringe and the empty vial, ‘if you walk down to the surgery with me, Emlyn, we can have a chat about this. We’ll hear the ambulance when it passes and be back here by the time it’s parked up.’

  Mam is already asleep and before he and Tada leave Dr Edwards lifts her eyelid and peers at her eye and checks her pulse against his big pocket watch. ‘Cover her with a blanket,’ he says to Nain. ‘And she’ll be fine where she is.’

  I fetch a blanket from our bed. Nain tries to take the pink cushion from Mam, but she’s clutching it too tightly even in her sleep, so Nain lays the blanket over Mam and the cushion, and tucks the frayed edges in around Mam’s legs.

  ‘I’ll just pop home for a minute in case Lol’s back. Just so she knows what’s happening,’ says Nain. ‘Your mam will sleep now, so don’t worry.’

  Don’t worry?

  ‘What about the ambulance?’ says Bethan.

  ‘I’ll be back before that comes,’ says Nain.

  ‘I don’t mean that. I mean where’s it taking her?’ says Bethan.

  ‘Ah, well . . .’ says Nain.

  ‘Dinbych,’ I say. ‘The asylum. Like Nain Eluned.’

  ‘The bloody madhouse,’ says Bethan.

  ‘Bethan,’ says Nain. ‘They don’t call it that. It’s a hospital now. A special hospital for . . . well, for . . .’

  ‘Nutcases,’ says Bethan. ‘Like Guto’r Wern and Mam. D’you think they’ll recognise each other? Mam’ll have a fit.’

  ‘They’ll mend your mam, you’ll see,’ says Nain. ‘They’ve got all sorts of treatments nowadays. Mend anybody. She’ll be home in no time.’

  ‘Huh,’ says Bethan, slumping into Tada’s chair.

  ‘I won’t be long,’ says Nain. ‘Fetch me if you need me.’

  As she walks out through the door, John Morris sneaks back in. He stands and looks from Mam to Bethan, from Bethan to Mam, then jumps onto Mam’s lap and treads round and round on the blanket before he curls up on it and closes his eyes.

  It must be nice to be a cat, coming and going as you please. Some people in faraway countries believe that instead of going to Heaven when you die, you’re born again. You could be a boy or a girl, a worm or a bird, a horse or a sheep. I’d like to come back as a cat. Maybe once I was a cat and came back as a girl. Or a fox, maybe I was a fox and that’s the part of me Aneurin sees. Or perhaps I was a bird, soaring up into the sky, floating on the thermals; that would explain why I can fly. But doesn’t that prove that animals have spirits just like humans? Spirits that they pass along from life to life.

  In her sleep Mam gives a shuddering sigh. John Morris opens one eye and purrs and closes it again. The blanket will be covered in his cat hairs. That will probably make it thicker and warmer, which is lucky because it’s an old blanket from the jumble sale and has worn too thin to be warm in winter. Mam insisted it was brand new from a shop in Llandudno. Maybe when you have something loose in your br
ain you can’t tell the difference between truth and lies.

  Bethan is chewing her fingernails again. She and Caroline had a competition to see who could grow her fingernails first and Bethan won. But her nails will be all gone again now; I can see from here that both her thumbnails are bleeding.

  Where will Caroline and Richard go? Poor Richard. Maybe we will become pen-pals. Monsieur Jenkins made a special announcement in assembly that he wanted lots of us to become pen-pals with children in a school in France. But we had to write in English and be written to in French. He said no one in France wanted letters in Welsh. Richard won’t want letters in Welsh.

  Bethan will miss Caroline more than I will miss Richard. Will Janet Jones the Butcher want to be best friends with her again? She’s leaning against the cushions on Tada’s chair and her thumb has crept into her mouth. I fold my arms on the table and lay my head on them. If I fall asleep maybe I can leave all this behind and fly into my night sky.

  A bright blue light and a loud noise pulsing through the window startle me awake. Mam stirs and mumbles. John Morris slides off her lap without waking, taking the blanket with him and landing in a heap on the linoleum. Mam clutches her pink cushion. Even in her sleep she looks frightened at the commotion. I get up from the table and go over to her and stroke her hands as they grip the cushion. ‘You’ll soon be back home, Mam,’ I say. ‘Don’t worry. I won’t leave you. I’ll look after you until you’ve mended.’ Then I turn round and shake Bethan by the shoulder. ‘Wake up,’ I say. ‘The ambulance has come.’

  48

  The ambulance has gone quietly into the night, and Mam with it, still asleep, a smile on her face. Will she know where she is when she wakes?

  Dr Edwards said he would take Tada in his car after the ambulance, so he could see Mam settled in. Nain gathered some clothes together for her and said that she would look after Bethan and me until Dr Edwards brought Tada back home. So Tada has gone, too. Will Mam care that he’s there?