Dead Man's Embers Read online

  She lifts her head; her work will never be done while she sits here and mopes. She pushes herself up from the bed and finishes straightening the bedcover. From the linen cupboard on the landing she draws out sheets and pillowcases to make a bed up for Gwydion. She buries her nose in the sheets; last year’s dried lavender still scents them and the cotton is crisp on her cheeks. She takes the bedding into the boys’ room, and wonders, as she does every morning, how the two of them can breathe in here, never mind sleep. Wil says that Osian is afraid of some unknown beast climbing through the open window, though how Osian has told him this is something of a mystery to Non. Sometimes, she wonders if the fear is Wil’s. It will be a bit of a squash for three in here, she thinks, then remembers that Wil may not be home for very much longer, and will not mind a bit of a squash anyway, Wil being Wil. She has no idea what Osian will think of it. Gwydion is rather old to be sharing with the younger boys but it was his idea to find work here during his university vacation and invite himself to stay, so he ought not to mind too much. He is probably used to sleeping in all kinds of places, student that he is. She unrolls the mattress that stays under Wil’s bed when not in use and makes it up into a comfortable bed for Gwydion. She resists the strong temptation that assails her to lie down on it for five minutes – what would Mrs Davies say! – tidies Wil and Osian’s beds, and decides to open the window wide, beast or no beast.

  Non stands still by the window to watch Meg gathering raspberries, eating as many of them as she puts in the bowl, and between each bite humming more tunefully than the bees working the roses outside the boys’ window. The faint and comforting clucking of the hens reaches Non from the farthest part of the garden as they scratch for titbits before the heat drives them to lie almost comatose in the shade of the shrubs. The heat already mutes the sounds of conversations from neighbouring houses and the snatches of song finished almost before they are started because the effort is too much. The heat lies like the hush of a Sunday over everything.

  Meg startles Non when she leaps up from the raspberry canes as if she has been stung, a mere second before a roar comes from the front of the house that seems to shake the walls. Fear makes Non’s heart pound: should she take some of her drops? No time. Instead she runs down the stairs and out through the front door to find a gaggle of children crowded around a monstrous black motorcycle with what appears to be an airman on its back straight from the pictures she has seen of the Sopwith Camels during the War – though she was never able to imagine such graceless machines flying like birds. But the War is long over, it cannot be anything to do with the War.

  The airman waves at her and leaps off the bike in one graceful bound. He takes off his goggles and peels away his skin-tight helmet to reveal a face that is one of those most dear to her.

  ‘Gwydion,’ she cries as she stumbles down the steps, her arms open wide to receive him – for this family, her family, is demonstrative – not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

  6

  ‘So,’ Gwydion says. ‘Where is everybody?’

  ‘We are everybody,’ Meg says. ‘It’s only the boys who aren’t here.’

  ‘You’re perfectly right, Meg, The important people are all here.’ Gwydion smiles at her.

  Meg’s face blushes under her freckles – the freckles she is forever dabbing with buttermilk in the hope that they will vanish. But she has a point. Where would the men be without the women? Non remembers a line from a poem her father used to quote to her, For the hand that rocks the cradle rules the World. She balances the tray of food on the edge of the table, supporting it with one hand and handing the dishes out with the other. She says, ‘Davey and Wil are at the castle making the seating for tomorrow’s rehearsal for the Music Festival.’

  ‘Ah, hobnobbing, are they?’ Gwydion says. ‘That’s why I borrowed the bike – I thought there wouldn’t even be standing room on any of the trains.’

  ‘The real thing’s not for another week and a half,’ Non says. ‘Do you need an excuse to borrow the bike?’

  ‘They’re building the stage, too, they’re doing all the carpentry,’ Meg says. ‘Is that hobnobbing? I’m in Sam Post’s choir. He told Nain I was the perfect little lady.’

  ‘Don’t start, Gwydion,’ Non says as Gwydion opens his mouth to reply.

  ‘But start on the food,’ Meg says.

  Gwydion laughs at her. ‘So you are as clever as Non says.’ Meg preens, the clever young lady, then she wriggles and blushes, the girl child still.

  Gwydion has a way with women Non notices anew. She remembers that it was always so. ‘She’s learning French,’ she says. ‘Fast.’

  ‘Can you speak French, Gwydion?’ Meg asks.

  ‘Not fluently,’ he says. ‘Breton, Irish, but not a lot of French.’

  ‘Tada can,’ Meg says, helping herself to several slices of brawn.

  Gwydion looks enquiringly at Non, and she shrugs. Who knows how much French Davey can speak or understand? He was over there long enough, he was over there for most of the War, languishing in the soil of the country. He could be expected to speak some of the language. But they will probably never know.

  ‘And what about you, Osian?’ Gwydion looks at the child they have all been ignoring from long habit. ‘Parlez-vous français?’

  ‘He doesn’t know anything,’ Meg says.

  ‘What I think,’ Gwydion says, ‘is that Osian may surprise you all one day with what he knows.’

  Meg pouts her disagreement.

  And all this time Osian sits with his hands in his lap, far away from them. Or is he? Non wishes she knew how to reach him, wherever he is. He was the first to make her feel like this so that when it happened a second time, when Davey who is not Davey returned home, she recognised it, that withdrawal from her. But today is Osian’s day whether he is aware of it or not.

  ‘When you’ve eaten your meat and salad and bread and butter,’ she says, ‘we have a special cake. Because today is a celebration.’

  ‘Because I’m here?’ Gwydion asks.

  ‘Don’t be big-headed.’ Meg gives the back of Gwydion’s hand a light slap.

  Non smiles at their exchange. ‘We’re celebrating Osian’s seventh birthday,’ she says. They all three look at Osian, but he makes no response to the sound of his name nor to their attention.

  ‘It’s not really his birthday,’ all-knowing Meg says. ‘It’s the day Tada brought him home for Non so she could have her own baby. We don’t know when his birthday is, really.’

  Her own baby! Non is at a loss to understand from where the notion had come that she had wanted a baby of her own. Had she been needy without being aware of it? And Meg, poor Meg, has still not got over the invasion of this intruder into the family not much more than a year after Non had committed the same crime. ‘He was a tiny baby,’ she says. ‘It’s as close as can be to his real birthday.’ It is also the date Davey had registered as the day of Osian’s birth, along with the two of them as his natural parents. She thinks that must be some sort of crime, too.

  ‘Happy Birthday, Osian.’ Gwydion raises his cup of tea in a toast to the unblinking boy.

  And as Meg rolls her eyes heavenward and carries on eating her bread and butter a miracle happens that makes Non catch her breath. Osian scrutinises Gwydion’s raised cup, and then raises his own in return. A mirror image. It happens so quickly and quietly that it leaves Non wondering if she has dreamt it. She looks at Gwydion, and he smiles at her and nods. He has always known her thoughts.

  Gwydion turns to Meg. ‘You know,’ he says, ‘if you’re as clever as Non says, when you’re older you could go to university, like me.’

  ‘Could I?’ Meg stops eating. ‘Could I really, Non?’

  She smiles at Meg. ‘You could if you wanted to, Meg, Why not?’ It is costly enough to send Meg to the County School at Barmouth, but Non fervently believes in the necessity of education. Her own father had been an enthusiastic educator of his daughter. Non had not realised what an eccentric education she ha
d received until her father died and she was sent to school. It had been an education that encouraged her to be curious about everything and to satisfy that curiosity. It had also been an education that made her aware of all the possibilities that were out in the world, most of which she discovered were out of her reach because she was a woman. But surely the War will have changed much of that? Women had done the work of men when the men were away fighting. Non had to give up her work as a teacher at the primary school when she married Davey, but the school had been desperate, she does not think it is too strong a word, desperate to take her back for the duration of the War when male teachers were in short supply. And because of those brave suffragettes, she thinks, she will even be able to vote at the next election.

  ‘But what for?’ Meg turns to Gwydion. ‘Nain says education is wasted on women. Nain says, Look at Non. And she sent me back here when I said I wanted to go the County School because she didn’t approve.’

  Non thinks this is probably true, but she does not want the child to be troubled by it. Catherine Davies had relinquished Meg – at last – when it became apparent that she would continue her education. ‘Your grandmother couldn’t take care of you and your grandfather,’ she says. ‘We have the room here, and you are our daughter.’

  Meg does not usually draw back from pointing out that she is not Non’s daughter, but she is silent now. It may be that Gwydion is having a mellowing effect on her. Non looks at her nephew, and her love for him warms her. Maybe it is this feeling that makes him appear so handsome to her, so tall and dark-haired and dark-eyed, like one of the characters from the old tales her father used to tell her. But maybe he actually is tall and dark and handsome, she considers, as Meg smiles at him and blushes, yet again.

  And asks, ‘Are there lots of girls at the university with you? And what do they do there?’

  ‘Not so many,’ Gwydion says. ‘There should be more. There’s no reason why not. They’re as clever as us men, and usually work a lot harder.’

  The three of them laugh. Non wishes it could always be like this, free and easy, not having to consider what they say, not having to be fearful of straying into forbidden territory with a word or two if they drop their guard for a second.

  ‘Is one of the girls your sweetheart?’ Meg asks.

  ‘Meg!’ After Non’s gasp there is silence. Something clutches at her heart. Is it fear? Jealousy? Surprise? She has never thought of Gwydion in this way.

  Gwydion clears his throat and mumbles words Non does not catch.

  Meg’s eyes sparkle. ‘What’s her name?’ she says.

  ‘Aoife.’ Gwydion says the name like a sigh, his face scarlet as the raspberries on the cake Non has waiting in the kitchen.

  ‘That’s a strange name,’ Meg says. ‘Is it Breton or Irish or something?’

  ‘Irish,’ Gwydion says. ‘She’s Irish.’

  ‘And she’s at the university in Aberystwyth?’ Non has to know who this girl is who has suddenly turned Gwydion into this man, this stranger, another stranger that she cannot begin to know.

  ‘No. Her father’s a lecturer over from Dublin, just for the year. He taught us Irish, and he had some of us round to his house for supper and the like. He’s very hospitable.’

  Non thinks again of the old stories her father used to tell her. Old, old stories. The Welsh and the Irish were always linked in them, as friends and foes. She thinks of the giant Brân who lived in the very place where Davey is working today, a brave and fearless leader who laid himself down across the sea to Ireland to make a bridge for his men to cross over when they went to rescue his sister Branwen from a cruel Irish king. She thinks, They are part of our history, the Irish, for better or worse, and we are part of theirs. Gwydion won’t be lost to us.

  ‘Is she pretty?’ Meg says.

  ‘She’s beautiful,’ Gwydion says. ‘She has skin like cream, and blue eyes that can change colour like the sea, and black curly hair.’

  Meg rubs the freckles over her nose. ‘Are you going to marry her?’ she asks, her voice suddenly shrill.

  Non rises from her chair. ‘That’s between Gwydion and . . .’ She stumbles over the name. ‘Aoife,’ she says, though she, too, would like to know the answer to Meg’s question. ‘Now, let’s clear up these plates to make room for Osian’s cake.’

  ‘We’re just in time, it seems,’ says a voice behind her.

  Davey. She turns around and smiles at him and as usual he avoids her gaze and greets Gwydion with a firm hand on his shoulder and a handshake. Man to man.

  As Davey and Wil pull chairs up to the table, Non fetches the cake and places it in front of Osian. The child brings out his penknife, snaps it open and begins to mark out the top of the cake into portions.

  ‘I’m not eating any of it,’ Meg says. ‘He’s spoilt it now. He uses that knife to cut up all sorts of things.’

  Non watches Osian’s face as he concentrates on his task and suddenly she sees what Maggie Ellis avoided saying outright to her this morning. She sees that Osian, this child that Davey had brought home for her, telling her his mother had died at birth and his father was unknown, this child is carved in her husband’s image.

  7

  The town’s streets are the way Non prefers them – empty of people. They should be bustling this early on a Saturday afternoon, but the heat has driven almost everyone indoors. A lone boy rolls his hoop half-heartedly in Pentre’r Efail, coughing in the dust it raises. Non pulls her straw bonnet closer around her face against the blaze of the sun.

  She has loved this little town from the moment she first saw it, its castle protected by a noisy garrison of crows, its narrow streets twisting up and down and around its hills, giving glimpses of the sea here and the mountains there, and its granite houses and cottages and garden sheds seeming to tumble one upon another so that the whole place is like a painting by a madman. She had welcomed it into her heart but it had not welcomed her, it had kept her outside of itself. But, she thinks, she is confusing the town and its centuries of history with its women here and now, the ones that still bob when she passes by, and the ones that scuttle out of sight so that they do not have to acknowledge her at all. As if I were any different from them, she had said to Lizzie German. Lizzie had replied, You are different, missus, no getting away from it. And inwardly, Non knew what Lizzie said was true, it had been true wherever she had lived. She had always been an outsider.

  Non walks around the sharp corner and down the hill through Tryfar. In every other house along here, she thinks, there is a woman I have helped during the War, whose intimate secrets I know. She counts them off as she passes: Nellie Evans, Lizzie Price, Gwen Morgan, Annie Jones’s daughter Betty, old Mrs Williams in the chapel house, and even here, in one of the grand houses of Bronwen Terrace, the wife of Moriah’s minister herself. You know things about them, missus, Lizzie German had told her, that no one else knows; it’s only natural they’re uncomfortable with it. And so Non stayed an outsider.

  Her mind flitters to her family, and she gives herself a mental shake. She will not allow herself to think of those close to her who have distanced themselves, not even Davey. This afternoon is for Gwydion.

  She pauses at the top of the long flight of steps down to the lower road. Voices float up to her like birds riding a thermal. She attempts to make out the figures she can see moving around the clubhouse – she wonders if Gwydion and Wil have arrived yet – but the air is too dense with heat for her to recognise anyone. She takes hold of the handrail and begins her descent.

  ‘You’ve made Wil’s day, bringing him down to the Golf Club on the motorbike so all his friends saw him sitting on the back of it.’ Non smiles as she thinks of the expressions on the faces of Wil’s friends. She and Gwydion had left him to enjoy his moment and followed the path across the links to the beach. Now she slips and slides down the sand dune ahead of Gwydion, pulling the brim of her straw bonnet forward so that it shades more of her face from the sun. Mrs Davies will be complaining to Davey again t
hat she looks like a gypsy if her face browns much more. Never mind that Davey used to call her his little brown wren, that he liked her brown face and her brown limbs. But that was before. Before the War, before Angela! She swallows the lump that rises in her throat. Before she recognised Osian’s shocking likeness to Davey.

  ‘Non?’ Gwydion catches her up, shuffling his feet through the soft sand. ‘Does Wil do much caddying?’

  ‘The salt will ruin your shoes,’ she says. ‘Why don’t you take them off? And yes, Wil comes down every Saturday, morning and afternoon if he can. It’s well-known, this golf course, you know, people come from all over to play, people with plenty of money. Wil can make more in a Saturday than he makes all week as an apprentice. He’s got an old head on his shoulders, has Wil.’

  ‘I’m surprised he’s staying on, then, working with Davey. Couldn’t he find something more permanent with the Golf Club?’

  ‘I don’t think he actually likes the caddying much,’ Non says. ‘Or some of the people who play here.’

  Non does not know whether Davey and Wil will have talked any more about the sea-going venture. She is not sure she should mention it to Gwydion. Her father brought her up to speak her mind, to tell the truth and accept the consequences. But now . . . now she is like a scared mouse, small and brown, scurrying close along the edges of a high wall, keeping as quiet as possible. What happened? The world constantly shifts like this sand beneath her feet. What is right one day is wrong the next.

  Gwydion puts his hand on her shoulder. ‘I’m taking your advice,’ he says and flops down on the sand to take his shoes off. She sits next to him and takes off her own shoes and stockings. The sand is scorching beneath her feet and between her toes. She and Gwydion scramble to the top of the next dune and slither down the other side.