Dead Man's Embers Read online

  She takes the plates, and the salad leaves that had wilted before they could eat them, across to the sink. The kettle is already tinkling on the fire in the range and she takes the poker to the coals to bring it to a boil. She may let the fire die down then; they can do without their late evening cup of tea in the interests of cooling down a little.

  Davey had come home exhausted from helping his mother fill in her census return, exhausted in a way he rarely became after even the hardest physical work. When he arrived at his parents’ house, it was to find that his mother had locked his father in the small room in the roof all afternoon. Old William Davies was distressed by the heat and lack of water and had cried when Davey released him, telling him he wanted to go home, that his mother would be worried about him. Catherine Davies could not see that she had been wrong to lock her husband away. She had told her son, He is nothing but a nuisance. Then, when Davey sat with her to fill the census return, she insisted that Billy’s name should be on it because he was still there with her in spirit. His refusal to include Billy left his mother in a greater sulk than the one she had fallen into at dinner time. Davey had forged his father’s signature as the head of the household. He told Non that he was thankful they no longer had to fill in a column about the mental health of any person on the form. He wouldn’t have known what to write about either of his parents.

  All day Non has been glad to think that the people she loves best are with her for this occasion; that the census will be completed to show that her family is all together on this one night in 1921, that it will be written down and made true so that generations into the future her descendants will see that it was so, and no one can ever deny it. Now she begins to be concerned that the picture it will present may not be the absolute truth.

  She carries their cups and saucers into the parlour, a room they tend to use only for special occasions, for which Non is sorry because it is a well designed and pleasant room, looking out to the north and the peaks of Eryri. Plumes of smoke snake into the sky from the distant foothills; they have heard tales of spontaneous fires occurring on the hillsides where the grass and gorse has withered and dried under the relentless glare of the sun.

  And here is her family sitting waiting for her, for their after-supper cup of tea, and for this once-in-a-decade event to begin. Meg is excited, Non can hear it in her high voice and giggles. Davey will be irritated by her girlish silliness before the evening is out. He has already laid the form on the writing table behind the sofa, filled the inkwell, and has two pens lying in wait on a pristine sheet of blotting paper. Gwydion is attempting to read the form over his shoulder and, from the expression on his face, failing.

  ‘Strictly confidential,’ Davey says, pointing to the words printed boldly at the top of the sheet.

  Non is not sure whether he is joking or not. As she goes back to the kitchen to make the tea she remembers how full of jokes and laughter he used to be, and her heart leaps at this sign that maybe the old Davey is still there, somewhere. In the same instant she remembers his treachery, and her heart steadies.

  She returns with the tray bearing the teapot, the sugar bowl and a jug of milk she hopes has not noticeably soured, and deposits it on the table next to Davey. ‘You can pour, Meg.’

  Meg busies herself, and Non sits and waits for Davey to begin.

  ‘We’ve got to get this right first time,’ he says. ‘No blots, no crossings-out that suggest we’re incapable of it.’ He picks up a pen and dips it in the ink. ‘The example they’ve given shows that I have to put my name first, then yours, Non, then you children in order of your age, then Gwydion last because he’s a visitor.’

  ‘I don’t suppose it matters as long as they have the information,’ Gwydion says. ‘Does it?’

  The pen shakes in Davey’s hand and a drop of ink falls on the table. ‘Quick, a cloth!’ he cries.

  Non fetches a cloth and mops up the ink. The tremor in Davey’s hand is something as new as the attacks that send him under the table to fight his war all over again. Why have his nightmares turned into something so physical? Surely he had done his duty, more than his duty even; he had been made a corporal, he had been mentioned in despatches. Why does he have to bear it all again? She wishes she knew if any of the other men who returned suffer in this way, but no one talks of the War: they all want to forget it, to leave it safely in the past where it belongs. She wonders how many others find it erupting into their present.

  ‘Non, you fill in the form.’ Davey has moved to sit on her chair while she was returning the cloth to the kitchen. ‘Your writing is much clearer than mine. I’ll dictate what you have to write, so I can sign the form knowing they are my words on it.’

  Non sits and takes up the pen and looks expectantly at Davey. He avoids her gaze.

  ‘First, David William Davies,’ he says. ‘We’ll do a whole column then go on to the next one, Non, rather than travel across. I think that will be easier. They need to know so much.’

  Non scratches away with the pen, dips it in the ink, scratches some more.

  ‘It doesn’t hold much ink, that nib,’ Davey says. ‘Try the other pen.’

  She could do this in quarter the time, left alone to do so. She waits for Davey to tell her what next to write.

  ‘Rhiannon Davies,’ he says. ‘What am I doing? Just write our names in age order, Non . . . but leave Gwydion till last.’

  Obediently, Non writes their names in the first column. There we are, she thinks, together for posterity on this piece of paper, that much is true – we are all here physically in this parlour on this sultry evening in June.

  ‘Next column,’ Davey says. ‘Head, Wife, Son, Daughter—’ He stops and looks at Osian. ‘Son.’

  ‘You can’t say that,’ Meg says. ‘He’s not your son, is he? That would make him my brother, and he’s not actually, is he?’

  ‘Surely you can say son if he’s your adopted son?’ Gwydion says. Non and Davey have never admitted to anyone that they have registered Osian as their natural son. Osian sits to Davey’s left, unconcerned by all that is happening around him, his face and the way his hair grows so like Davey’s that Non cannot believe she has never noticed it before.

  ‘Son.’ Wil’s voice is strong and sure. ‘He is your son, Tada. What else would you put?’

  Before anyone can argue about it, Non writes Son against Osian’s name, and wonders exactly what Wil can have meant by stating so strongly that Davey is Osian’s father, whether he meant more than she would have seen in his words only yesterday morning. She puts Visitor against Gwydion’s name and blots the column to dry the ink before moving on to the next one.

  Here, their ages are required. ‘Meg, we need years and months for this. You’re very good at your numbers, so will you work them out for me?’ Meg does the sums and Non fills the column, asking Meg to take Osian’s birthdate as the day he came to them, the day that she and Davey had given to the registrar as his birthdate. And who is to say it was not?

  Meg sighs theatrically at her request. ‘His birthday was only yesterday, Non. An idiot could work it out. Seven years and one day.’

  Non quickly runs down the sex column, nothing to argue about here, she thinks. Four males and two females. How unlike her own family, all those dead girls, come and gone before they ever appeared on a census return.

  ‘What next, Non?’ Wil is beginning to fidget. ‘I’m meeting Eddie in a while, I can’t be late.’

  ‘Marriage or orphanhood,’ Non reads. ‘If you’re over fifteen you have to be single, married, widowed or . . . divorced.’

  ‘Divorced!’ Meg is animated. ‘Do we know anyone who’s divorced? It’s very . . . racy, you know. Fancy putting it on that form.’

  Racy! Where has Meg come across a word like that?

  ‘Hold your tongue, Meg,’ Davey says. ‘You get carried away about matters where you’re too ignorant to have an opinion.’

  Meg sulks, her expression exactly like her grandmother’s. So, that is where she gets i
t from, this whole tedious sulking thing. Non does not recall anyone ever saying Meg’s mother was a sulker. She shrugs slightly at the photograph of Grace hanging over the fireplace. Her angelic beauty belies the tales Non heard about her before she was married to Grace’s widower.

  ‘I have to put you down as single now that you’re over fifteen,’ she says to Wil who blushes scarlet at the very thought.

  And then, while Meg and Gwydion are laughing at Wil’s red face, she slips in Mother Dead against Meg’s name, and Both Alive against Osian’s, according to the instructions at the head of the column. It is enough to confuse utterly any descendants.

  ‘Shall I put Harlech down as the birthplace for all the children?’ she asks Davey.

  He begins to nod then pauses for a heartbeat as his eyes flicker towards Osian. ‘Harlech,’ he agrees. There is doubt that Osian was born here, then. Where did he come from? She wonders if there is a penalty for giving the wrong information on the form, it must say so somewhere. She leafs through the papers that have come with it. Here it is, signed by the Registrar-General – a fine of £10. And the moral enormity of giving false information that will carry on down the generations for as long as the paper does not turn to dust! She is not at all sure about this. And yet, here is Osian, and as far as the authorities are concerned he is their natural son. And it may not have been a complete lie, she thinks. Although, contrarily, she wishes it were.

  She returns to the form. ‘Everyone at school has to have whole-time next to their names here,’ she says, ‘so, that’s you, Meg, and you, Osian. What does it say about university education, Davey? What do I write next to Gwydion’s name?’

  Davey’s concentration is intense. Is he, too, thinking of Osian’s parentage?

  ‘Whole-time,’ he says. ‘I don’t think we have to count the work he does in his holidays.’

  ‘I rather like the idea of being put down for posterity as an archivist or researcher,’ Gwydion says.

  ‘Is that what you’re being at Wern Fawr?’ Meg pulls her chair closer to his.

  ‘Well, no, just sorting out the man’s books, Meg. But it sounds grand, doesn’t it?’ Gwydion puts his arm around Meg and gives her a casual hug until she pushes him away, her face as scarlet as Wil’s. ‘Anyway, I may not be going back to university after the summer.’

  Not studying for his doctorate as his parents expect? No wonder he’s afraid of telling his mother about his plans.

  Then Davey slaps his hand on his thigh and says, ‘Whole-time. We’re doing this census for this exact time here on the nineteenth of June and never mind what you were doing a week ago or what you think you’ll be doing after the summer. Whole-time. Write it down, Non.’

  Non scratches the words on the form. A photograph is a picture of a few moments captured by the camera when they dare not move, but this census is capturing a picture in words where they have jumped about like . . . like fleas. Does that mean it will be blurred? She does not want to hand down a blurred photograph.

  And what will be happening in another ten years’ time when it is done again? Where will they all be? It is hard to remember where they all were ten years ago. Davey married to Grace with no idea that she would soon be dead. Wil started at school and Meg playing with her dolls at Grace’s knee. No thought of Osian on anyone’s mind. Gwydion just about to start at the County School with his future stretching before him, a clever and graceful boy already. And she, a student teacher in lodgings, already at nineteen, it seemed, meant for a single life, looking after other people’s children. No children for her or she would be dead. And it is true that the descendants she imagines will not be flesh of her flesh.

  ‘Next column, Non,’ Davey says. ‘It’s easy, look, carpenter for me, housewife for you, apprentice carpenter for Wil.’

  Dip, scratch, dip, scratch. Non fills the form with her bold handwriting. Her father insisted on absolute clarity when she wrote first the Latin names, then the Welsh, on the labels for the herbs and concoctions and decoctions and ointments and pills that he made, for fear of anyone mistakenly taking or applying the wrong and dangerous remedy.

  ‘Then put Albert’s name down in the next column as my employer and Wil’s, then the workshop address in the last column.’

  ‘But Albert’s never there, you say he lets you do what you like,’ Meg says.

  ‘He still employs me, he pays my wages,’ Davey says. ‘He still puts food in your mouth and clothes on your back.’

  ‘It’s your hard work that does that,’ Non says as she blots the ink.

  ‘Is that it? Is it finished now?’ Wil stands up. ‘I’ve got to see Eddie, Tada. I promised.’

  ‘Two more columns,’ Non says, ‘but you can go, Wil. One’s to say which language we speak – Welsh or English or both – and the other’s putting an X by all you children’s ages here. I don’t know why it has to be done again when it’s already on the form. Ah, well. See you later, Wil. Try not to wake Osian and Gwydion if you’re very late.’

  Wil vanishes from the parlour and a moment later they see and hear him leaping down the front steps and running down the hill.

  ‘Oh – to be footloose and fancy free,’ Gwydion says, making a face at Meg that makes her giggle.

  Non gives the form to Davey for his signature. The tremor has vanished from his hand and he signs it neatly.

  He would have made such a performance of it, the old Davey. He would have had them all laughing at him. The last thing Non wants is still to be like this in ten years’ time. She has to find what is troubling him. It is something more than that wretched nurse, that Angela, she is sure of it. How would she go about finding someone who served with him in the War? Would the War Office tell her who his comrades were? Maybe she can concoct a story, pretend he is ill and needs to see his old army friends. She does not know where to begin. And she has no idea where it would all end. But anything would be better than this. Wouldn’t it?

  10

  She recalls what she had thought last night, anything would be better than this. Is it a memory from last night that has brought on Davey’s attack this morning? She has not seen the start of one of his attacks; she cannot fathom what might bring one upon him. She remembers the way his hand trembled and swallows her tears. Tears are of no use to Davey or her.

  She settles on her chair. By now, she has discovered the best vantage point for seeing Davey without being in his line of sight. She glances at the clock. Five past six, and the sun is already hastening over the back end of the garden. There is no coolness even at night, no dew to soften the edges of the heat. The clucking the hens make sounds cross already; they have become so bad-tempered that they will peck her hand at the least provocation. Only two or three of them are still laying; she will have fewer eggs than usual to give to Lizzie German today.

  Herman waddles in through the door, skirts around Davey without looking at him, and flutters up onto the back of Non’s chair. He pulls gently at her hair with his beak, cawing softly now and then. She puts up her hand to stroke his head; she has missed him over the last few days and is glad of his company. He is almost the same age as Osian; she wonders if this is old for a crow. She remembers the tiny bundle of feathers Herman Grunwald had brought for her, jostled, he had said, out of the nest by his brothers and sisters as they fledged. The skills her father had taught her enabled her to mend the chick’s broken wing. Sometimes she thinks she lavished more care and attention on the crow than she had on Osian. Herman was the one who spent time with Osian, huddling up to him in his cradle or in his perambulator – much to the horror of the town’s women who peeked under the hood to catch a glimpse of the new and mysterious baby. Non had soon stopped wheeling the perambulator through the town and instead had taken the boy and the bird for walks along the roads and tracks that led up to the farms in the hills.

  Davey is lying completely still under the table, except for a slight twitch in his shoulders and the tensing of his forefinger on the trigger of his imaginary rifle. Is this what it wa
s like for him in the trenches? Did he have to lie as still as death in the mud, in the rain, in the snow, in the heat, in the stench? She has no idea what it was like.

  No one had any idea what it would be like. Seven weeks after Davey brought Osian to her, four weeks after Herman Grunwald presented her with the crow, Britain had declared war on Germany. Some of the town’s younger men, mere boys, had rushed to join up immediately, sensing a big adventure waiting for them. Everyone said it would be all over and done with by Christmas, the enemy routed, the proper order restored. We’ll show them, the young men had promised, cheerfully and confidently, as they waved their goodbyes. Non wipes away a stray tear from her cheek. The War had gone on and on. Lloyd George had encouraged reluctant Welshmen who felt the quarrel was not theirs to realise it was their duty to fight. And Davey had always been dutiful, she thinks, always dutiful. It won’t be for long, Non, he had said as he held her close to him that last night before he left, I’ll soon be home. She had tried her hardest to be brave with him, for him, but already the lists of the dead were daily growing longer in the Liverpool Echo that the early evening train delivered without fail.

  Herman is becoming impatient with her. He pecks more vigorously at her scalp, so that she moves her head away from him sharply. He caws his disapproval, and flaps his wings. Davey gathers himself into a crouch, shoulders his rifle and peers out through the fringe of the tablecloth. His head bobs like a kestrel’s as he searches for his prey, his eyes beady with concentration, his mouth contorting with unspoken words. Herman flutters from the chairback and lands on the floor in front of Davey who jerks backwards then strikes out with his arm and sends Herman bowling across the flagstones. Davey, Non thinks, who would not harm a soul. She jumps from her chair to go to Herman but he stands up and ruffles his feathers, his beak pointing upwards in umbrage, and trundles out through the back door. Non does not know whether to laugh or cry.