A Small Country (21 page)

‘Very nice,’ she said at last. ‘A very nice, pretty young lady. Who is she, Mr Tom?’

‘Her name is May Malcolm. She’s the step-daughter of my colonel. We’ve only met twice or three times but she’s promised to write to me when I go to France. I promised to keep you informed, didn’t I?’

‘France is it, Mr Tom?’

‘I think so. After I get back on Saturday.’

Nano’s chest rose and fell again.

‘Go up to see your poor mother now,’ she said. ‘Show her the photograph.’

Tom pushed his pipe back into his pocket and got to his feet.

‘Is she church or chapel, say?’ Miss Rees asked, as he reached the door.

‘Heavens above, she’s only promised to write to me, Nano.’

‘A lot can happen in letters, remember. Perhaps she would be kind enough to send a few lines to your poor mother too. It would give her something to think about. A step-daughter of a colonel would be something to think about, wouldn’t it. What is a colonel exactly? Very important, I know. Something like a Lord Lieutenant, I suppose. A wife changes with her husband anyway, so it doesn’t matter too much. All the same, it would be nice if she was chapel.’

Tom was glad that Nano had warned him of his mother’s condition. As it was, his heart seemed to contract with pity as he looked at her; she was wasted to a shadow. Looking at her face, he could see the skull beneath the skin. Your poor mother. He heard Nano’s voice
.

Her eyes lit up, though, to see him, and she grasped his hand with great strength. He forced himself to smile at her.

‘How handsome you are, Tom,’ she said. ‘It’s the first time I’ve seen you like your father. You’ve quite grown up.’

She turned her head towards Josi who was sitting by the window, as far as possible, perhaps, from the heat of the fire. He nodded at his son but didn’t get up to greet him. ‘Pity me, too,’ he seemed to be saying. To Tom’s dismay, tears started up in his eyes.

His mother, noticing, tried to make conversation. ‘Tell us how they’re treating you,’ she said.

So he sat at her side and talked. He forced himself to talk. He told her about some of his brother-officers, about some of the men, tough young miners, many of them, with an original attitude to army regulations. He told her something about his colonel, intending to lead up to the pretty step-daughter, but by this time it was clear that she was too tired to listen to any more. ‘Sleep now,’ he said quietly, releasing his hand from hers; and she closed her eyes obediently and slept.

‘I’ll come down for a while,’ Josi said. ‘Nano shall come up for an hour or so.’

The two men left the room together, both on tip-toe.

‘It’s a mercy that they let you come home,’ Josi said as they reached the sitting-room. ‘Doctor Andrews is putting her on stronger drugs soon; he’s warned us that she may not recognize us much after that. He doesn’t think she’ll last much longer now. She’s in terrible pain from time to time, too much to bear, it seems, but she bears it. How long can you stay here?’

‘I have to go back at the end of the week.’

‘What then?’

‘France probably.’

‘Are you pleased?’

‘No. Does that shock you?’

‘Shock me? No. But I wish you were an idiot like the rest of them, it would be easier that way.’

‘I suppose so. Turncliffe now. He can’t wait to be on the front line. He thinks this war is the most glorious opportunity a young man ever had, the modern version of fighting the dragon; winning one’s spurs. He thinks death for one’s country is a privilege and an honour.’

‘It’s a good way to feel, if you can.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Nor can I, indeed. That Turncliffe; I always thought him a bit fanciful.’

‘Oh?’

‘Talked a lot without saying much. You know what I mean.’

‘I liked to hear him talk.’

‘So did Catrin, I’m told.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

Josi didn’t answer. After all, what was the point in making trouble between friends? Poor little Catrin, though. Turncliffe had led her on, according to Nano. Pretty words; no more, perhaps. Young girls were too ready to fall in love. Wanted to kill herself, Nano said, when she knew he’d got married. Sadness everywhere. Everywhere.

They fell silent, listening to the ticking of the old clock.

‘We need to talk about the farm,’ Tom said, after a minute or two had ticked away.

‘Yes, that’s true.’

‘It’ll be mine, I suppose.’

‘Yes. Her father’s will.’

‘You’ll see to everything while I’m away?’

‘Yes.’

‘I thought you might live in Garth Ifan. You won’t want to live here with...’

‘With Miriam? No. But I can’t go into that. It’s impossible for me to think of any of that at the moment. I’ll look after the farm. Just leave it at that.’

‘I don’t want to be morbid, Father, but what if I’m killed? What would happen then.’

‘You’ve got time to make a will. Go to see Charles tomorrow. Only I don’t want any of it, remember. Nothing but Cefn Hebog. Your mother wants me to have Cefn Hebog and that’s right and proper. It should be mine. It was my grandfather’s. Your great-grandfather, old Thomas Morgan...’

‘Don’t bring that up again, for God’s sake. Cefn Hebog is yours. That’s the one thing I’m sure of.’

‘Good.’

‘Who’s living there now? Old Twm Price?’

‘And his son.’

‘They would move to Garth Ifan like a shot; it’s a better farm, a much better house.’

‘I know. But I don’t want to plan anything now. It seems all wrong. I can’t do it. I can’t think of it.’

‘All right. I won’t mention it again.’

In bed that night, Tom couldn’t sleep for thinking about his father and Miriam. He had a feeling that they would never live together again and felt the responsibility of having parted them. In a way, he’d been perfectly justified in telling his father of his mother’s imminent death, but he couldn’t discount his chief motive; that of abdicating his own responsibility; he had wanted to get away.

His mother would soon be dead, he felt rather as though she was already dead, and he feared what her death would do to his father, he seemed half-crazy with guilt.

There was the baby to think about. In six weeks with the army he had heard and thought so much about death. Twenty-five thousand Germans were said to have been killed in the last battle alone, and only a fool would believe that the English casualties could be as low as the newspapers pretended. Among so many deaths, a baby seemed important. What could he do? What could he say to his father?

He didn’t see his father in the morning, he was already out when he got down. Lowri told him that his mother had had a fairly restful night and that Miss Rees wanted him to go upstairs after he’d had his breakfast.

Lowri’s sister brought him breakfast. She was not yet fourteen, had only recently left school, and looked, in her blue, too-large dress and white apron, like a workhouse child. She told him her name was Megan.

‘Are you happy here, Megan?’

‘No, sir.’

Her answer took him aback so that he could think of nothing further to say. How could he expect her to be happy, he asked himself, as he ate his ham and eggs, in a house where the mistress was dying and no one had time to talk to her? Who was happy? He didn’t look at her again, keeping his eyes on his paper. Her red hair and small red hands tormented him, though, for many days.

At first he thought his mother was already dead; she lay so flat and still and white on her bed.

‘She’ll wake soon,’ Miss Rees whispered. ‘And it’s her best time. You’ll really be able to talk to her.’

He sat at the bedside and looked at his mother’s poor wasted body, her pale blue eyelids, her colourless lips.

As he looked at his mother, Miss Rees seemed to be studying him, as though she wanted to satisfy herself that his grief was sufficiently deep and tender. He wished for her sake that he could squeeze out a few tears. ‘She’s beautiful,’ he said.

‘Beautiful,’ Miss Rees echoed. ‘A saintly woman. Her soul is with God.’

‘When does Doctor Andrews come?’

‘About half past ten. You can stay until he comes.’

Two hours seemed like eternity. He wanted to walk over the fields and talk to the men.

‘Being here upsets me too much,’ he said, ‘I’ll come back later.’

As he stood up, his mother woke. ‘Josi,’ she said, her heart in her eyes.

‘Mrs Evans bach, it’s Mr Tom, look. Grown so big.’

‘Tom. Yes of course it’s Tom.’

She was too ill to hide her disappointment. She wanted only her husband.

‘Have you shown your mother the picture of your young lady Mr Tom?’

‘It’s in my army tunic, I’m afraid.’

‘Go and fetch it then, do, to show your mother.’

He went out obediently. ‘The Colonel’s step-daughter, if you please,’ the old lady was saying. ‘And a very pretty girl, too. He’ll be bringing her to see you on his next holiday, you shall see.’

When he got back, Miss Rees had his mother propped up on pillows. She was chaffing her hands.

‘What’s her name?’ his mother asked. ‘She looks very nice. Pretty eyes.’

‘May. May Malcom.’

‘After the Queen, I expect,’ Miss Rees said, ‘May of Teck she was before she was married. Why didn’t they call her Queen May? Such a nice name.’

‘How old is she, Tom?’

Tom had no idea.

‘Twenty-one,’ Miss Rees said, ‘six months younger than him. Just right.’

In a minute or two, his mother’s voice and looks changed abruptly; the pain had come back. Miss Rees gave her some white powder in a glass of water, took away her pillows and sent Tom away.

SIXTEEN

‘I have done no wickedness,’ Miriam said aloud as she walked along the narrow tree-lined road with her baby.

‘Such is the way of an adulterous woman, she eateth and wipeth her mouth and saith I have done no wickedness.’

Miriam knew vast tracts of the Bible; the Psalms, Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Isaiah. The words had always stuck to her like burrs. ‘So she caught him and kissed him and said unto him, I have peace offerings with me.’

It was a fine day but Miriam shivered in her despair. There was still no letter from Josi. Only one she’d had from him since his return to Hendre Ddu and that written in the first week.
Wait for me. Please wait for me. I love you.
She had worn out the scrap of paper by looking at it too often; she needed another letter, but he didn’t write.

She knew what he must be suffering with his dying wife and his troubled conscience; she sympathized with him. But nagging at her was the thought that he should also be thinking of her in her loneliness and loss.

The acrid smell of autumn was in the air, a bonfire somewhere in the distance, chrysanthemums in cottage gardens. Leaves, though still on the trees, russet and gold, already smelled of the earth, the bracken and the few hedgerow flowers, campion and ragged robin, had the same wet, decaying smell. Seagulls circled above her, crying desolately; the sea was no longer a novelty, but a grey emptiness, a scar on the edge of the land.

Mrs Thomas had managed to get Miriam an old baby carriage from the house where she had been in service as a girl, and Miriam had spent hours pushing the baby along the quiet lanes, gathering blackberries and crab apples. But blackberries became devil’s fruit in October and Mrs Thomas wouldn’t have them. Hips and haws weren’t worth the picking, though as a child she had eaten plenty of haws, ‘bread and cheese and beer’, on her hungry way from school.

‘You have your baby,’ Mrs Thomas would say whenever she saw that Miriam was miserable. ‘A lovely child. Perfect in every way.’

‘She is. I know it.’ Miriam would gaze at Mari-Elen for hours, as she waved her small fists about, or pursed her lips as though to begin a long dissertation. She was lovely. All the same, Miriam was disappointed in her – or in herself. The first day she had caught a glimpse of Josi on the tiny face; by this time there seemed no trace of him. Even her fingernails are like mine, she thought, her toenails, the shape of her ears. Loving her seemed only an extension of loving herself.

She wanted Josi. Loved him, only him. She had got used to his loving her. At first it had seemed a dream, his love, something too rare and glorious to be real. But she had got used to it, had learned
to accept it; as Christians, though unworthy, accept the love of God.

If he had cooled towards her when he had first known about the baby, she might have got used to that, too, by this time. But he had never wavered, had insisted on taking her away, defying society. Oh, he had loved her.

The sun also ariseth and the sun goeth down.

‘You have your baby,’ Mrs Thomas always said, as though that made up for everything.

Miriam liked Mrs Thomas well enough, what she knew of her. She was a secret, solitary woman, though, disclosing little of herself in the seven or eight weeks they had lived together. She was poor, it was obvious that her sons had all but forgotten her; that’s all Miriam knew. She made a little money by dressmaking.