A Small Country (6 page)

Edward nodded again. Rose and he were respectably married and Catrin being provided for. He picked her up and laid her on the red sofa of their love nest. Her lips opened as he kissed her and the pupils of her eyes dilated. He’d never seen eyes that were truly green before, green as the sea, stormy.

‘Still,’ Doctor Andrews said, pushing his coffee cup away from him and stubbing out his cigarette, ‘we can’t sit here all morning, can we, putting the world to rights. I’ve enjoyed meeting you, Mr Turncliffe.’

Catrin appeared at the door as the doctor was leaving. ‘I’ll come to Llanfryn with you, Doctor, if that’s all right. Are you going straight back?’

‘It’ll be a quicker way to get the medicine and a few other things that Miss Rees wants,’ she told Edward. ‘Doctor Andrews has a motor-car. I’ll get a lift back from Arthur, Ty Croes.’

After she’d gone, Edward sat down again in the garden. It was already hot, too hot. The scent of orange blossom came to him from somewhere, and it was as heavy and artificial as the perfume counter in one of the Kensington stores. The bees climbing into the foxgloves suddenly seemed like old men stumbling into their clubs, and too-sudden love was only lust, he was better without it. Rose was the daughter of his father’s business partner and oldest friend; their marriage would be suitable in every way, he liked her, loved her, wanted to look after her, to protect and cherish her. But....

‘Catrin.’

At first he thought he had spoken aloud, then realized that Rachel Evans was in the garden. He rose to his feet and went towards her. They shook hands.

‘I’m so sorry to find you unwell,’ Edward said. ‘Catrin has gone to Llanfryn with the doctor. May I get you some coffee or some tea? Or anything at all?’

But Miss Rees was already out again with a straw hat and a cushion and a shawl.

‘Mrs Evans, bach, you’re looking much better, indeed you are. Almost your old self again. Mr Tom will be so pleased to see you up, he was disappointed yesterday, wasn’t he, Mr Turncliffe? Now have a cushion behind your back, that’s right, and you’ll need this as well. Oh yes, you will. You’ve come straight from bed and it’s light as a feather. Catrin went with Doctor Andrews to get the medicine and she’s bringing a bit of sea fish as well for your dinner. Now I’ll fetch you a little glass of egg and milk. Will you take some egg and milk, Mr Turncliffe? It’s an excellent thing for a headache, or would you prefer barley water? You must have something to keep Mrs Evans company, isn’t it.’

‘We’ll both have some of your lemonade, Nano, a bit later on. You can go now. I know you’ve got too much to do as usual. Do sit, Mr Turncliffe. I hope you’ll be able to stay a good long time with us. It’s wonderful for Tom having you here, he gets very lonely on his own.’

They sat and talked and afterwards sipped lemonade as though it was a perfectly ordinary morning.

After dinner, Edward helped with the mowing.

FIVE

They finished cutting Waun Hir by seven, so that all the men knocked off at a reasonable hour.

Rachel Evans sat at the supper table with Edward and her children that evening, the three young people trying not to notice how little she was managing to eat. Instead of eating, she talked. About the farm, about the old days when her grandfather had drained the marshland bordering the river, put the stony heathland, ‘The Top’, under the plough, and planted all the trees. ‘Morgans have lived here ever since the old house was built,’ she told them. ‘Search the church records and you’ll find an Elys Morgan in Hendre Ddu in 1637, a Llwyd Morgan afterwards, another Elys after him. This part of the house was built in 1741. Most of the furniture, made by local craftsmen, came at the same time; this table, these chairs. The clock too. This dresser and the one in the front kitchen.’

She seemed feverish, talking compulsively, no one able to stop her. Edward broke in to ask appropriate questions which Tom tried to answer, but his mother wouldn’t be deflected; she insisted on answering every time, answering fully, elaborating and then repeating herself.

They were all relieved when the meal was over and she ready to go back to bed. Catrin went upstairs with her and later went out to the kitchens to help Nano and the girls with the vast quantity of washing-up they had after the men.

Edward and Tom decided to take a walk as far as Pen Bryn.

It was a fine, cool evening, the colours just fading from the hills, the sky full of pale yellow clouds. The river sounded close and full.

‘I’ve stood here with him hundreds of times,’ Tom said. He kicked the lowest bar of the gate as they reached it.

Edward sighed. He was thinking of Catrin, imagining her there with them, imagining her arm brushing against him.

‘He always said he didn’t care for views. He always said he hated the land. “Go to London,” he was always telling me, “there’s no bloody farms there”. But he stood here all the same, night after night.’ Tom kicked at the gate again, though more gently. ‘He was a fine figure of a man,’ he said. He spoke as though his father was dead.

‘He was,’ Edward agreed, suddenly feeling grateful to the begetter of so much beauty. He thought of Josi Evans, dressed always with some flamboyance in corduroy and flannel and tweed; essentially a countryman, he couldn’t imagine him translated to the city. Whereas Catrin’s looks would fit her for any life she chose. He saw her in London society; graceful, stylish, slightly bohemian; a beauty anywhere, by any standards.

‘Even at his age, he turned heads,’ Tom said. ‘Even last Easter in the ploughing competition, I couldn’t help noticing how the women looked at him. It’s more difficult for someone like that to keep on the straight and narrow. It’s easy for other men to preach. They haven’t had the temptations. Roderick the minister, now; a few wisps of sandy hair, no eyebrows, very little chin, what does he know about temptation?’

‘He called to see your mother this afternoon? Mr Roderick?’

‘Yes.’

‘She finds him helpful?’

‘Yes. She said he prayed for us all. She likes that sort of thing. There’s no harm in it.’

‘Was Catrin there?’

‘I shouldn’t think so.’

‘She isn’t religious?’

‘I honestly don’t know. She doesn’t feel much about anything, that’s my opinion. I know you think otherwise.’

Tom’s despondency suddenly took on an aggrieved edge. ‘You may not have noticed it, Ned, but Catrin’s getting too pretty by half. I don’t mean that she’s beautiful like some women you see around, Professor Warren’s wife, for instance, but she’s eye-catching in a way that makes me worry about her. To be perfectly honest, that’s one of the reasons I don’t want her going away to college. One simply doesn’t know what she might get up to.’

‘Your parents might have said the same about you and stopped you going up to Oxford.’

‘Men can look after themselves.’

‘You just said they can’t. Your father couldn’t. You just said so. To tell you the truth, I don’t feel too confident about you. On the other hand, I think Catrin is quite capable of looking after herself.’

‘I’m not so sure. Why can’t she just stay home till she gets married? What good will college or Art School do her? She’ll get married eventually. You can tell by looking at her that she’s not going to turn out a blue-stocking.’

‘Who is there for her to marry if you keep her here?’

‘There’s no shortage of young men here. What’s wrong with a farmer? I’d have no objection to any go-ahead young farmer as long as he was going to inherit sixty acres or so. And there’s a teachers’ training college at Llanfryn. According to Nano, those students keep things pretty lively around here. She was talking about the maids but I can’t see that Catrin need be left out. She went to evening classes at the college last year; History and Welsh literature, I think. What’s wrong with a teacher? Mother would help them along. Then there’s Doctor Andrews. He’s very attentive.’

‘Isn’t he married?’ Edward felt a sting of jealousy as he thought of the doctor’s dark good looks and assured manner.

‘He’s a widower. No children. Good practice.’

‘He’s much too old for her; he must be almost forty. I don’t like him either. I know I’ve only met him once, but I don’t like him.’

‘Why not? He’s a very clever chap. Very well thought of.’

‘He’s too smooth.’

‘Smooth? John Andrews? I’ve always considered him a pretty rugged sort of character. Anyway, Catrin likes him.’

‘Let her go to Art School. Her heart’s set on it. If she was keen on Doctor Andrews she wouldn’t want to go.’

‘What about me? What company would I have if she was away? She’s someone to argue with, if nothing else. Someone to tease.’

‘But in no time at all you’ll get married, see if you don’t. There’ll be no end of girls throwing themselves at you.’

Edward had expected a smile, but even in the fading light he could see Tom’s look harden.

‘You were lucky, Ned,’ he said. ‘You were free to choose. I’ll have to marry for money. I saw Charles our solicitor this morning and he’s warned me that our financial position isn’t what it was. My father’s heart wasn’t in farming. It’s lucky that mine is. All the same, I’ll have to marry money. I can only think of one suitable candidate and she’s about thirty. It’s a daunting prospect.’

‘What will your father do, Tom? Have you any idea?’

‘Not really. I’ve written to ask him to meet me at The Sheaf in Llanfryn on Saturday evening to arrange a few things; getting his stuff to him, for instance, I don’t really know what he wants. Dick Charles had heard he was trying for a job in some farm in Cardiganshire. I suppose it’ll be better if he moves away from here. Did you hear that Catrin saw his little schoolteacher in the chemist’s this morning?’

‘Good heavens, no! What happened?’

‘Nothing, really. No confrontation. Catrin saw her, that’s all she said.’

‘It must have been terrible for her.’

‘No. I tell you, Catrin doesn’t feel it like I do.’

In bed that night, Edward was too hot, too excited to sleep. Last year he had enjoyed a month’s working holiday at Hendre Ddu and had envied Tom’s carefree home life. Catrin, he’d considered a lovely bonus, the beautiful sister thirsting for the kind of talk he excelled at; classicism and romanticism in literature and art, absolute standards of criticism, the nature of God, ideas of immortality. She had flattered his ego and stimulated his senses. He had been drawn back, though Tom’s invitation hadn’t been pressing; he had suggested a walking holiday in Scotland at the end of September, had warned him that a second holiday in Hendre Ddu would be an anti-climax.

Yet he had come. He wondered whether Catrin, even last year, had exerted a greater influence on him than he had cared to recognize. Whether it was she, in fact, who had brought him back.

This year, she disturbed him so much that he was forced to re-examine all his assumptions about love and marriage. He desired Catrin, ached for her, couldn’t stop thinking of making love to her. He couldn’t look at her face without imagining her strange green eyes opening wide in surprise against the passion of his kiss. The buttons on her blouse, the frill of her skirt, her small feet, even in the clogs she wore on the farmyard, excited him so much that he had to look away. Feelings he had previously only experienced at the music hall or when seeing girls he would have been ashamed to talk to, now troubled him every minute, and though his first impulse was to leave Hendre Ddu as quickly as possible and return to London, to Rose whom he loved without embarrassment, the disaster of Mr and Mrs Evans’s marriage seemed to serve as a warning that sex was not to be so easily dismissed.

Doctor Andrews had shown no surprise at the fact that Josi Evans had a mistress and child, only that he was leaving home for them. Was marriage, then, as frail an institution as it had been in Victorian times, when the wife was worshipped and the husband’s lust satisfied in the brothel, or in an alternative establishment if he were rich enough? Wouldn’t he himself be heading in that direction if he married Rose whom he loved, yes, but who had never excited him as Catrin did? He had often thought longingly of marriage with Rose, their close domesticity, but he had never imagined undressing her, seeing her white and naked under his hands.

Wasn’t it possible to find love and passion in one woman? Catrin, he felt sure, was as tender and warm as she was intelligent and beautiful. Tender and warm. Why should he try to deceive himself; she looked like someone who would love passionately, that’s what he meant. Dear God, he was mad for her.

The right thing to do, surely, was to break off his engagement to Rose, however much distress it would cause them both and their families, and to choose again where his body worshipped as well as his mind. ‘With my body I thee worship. With my body I thee worship.’ He repeated the words like a spell. ‘With my body.’

He got out of bed and went to the window. It seemed so simple. What could prevent it? He would break off his engagement to Rose – it would mean less suffering in the long view – and return a free man, and ask Mrs Evans, Mr Evans if he could be contacted, for their permission to court Catrin, to begin his life again, to be re-born.

That’s what he would do, God help him, that’s what he would do. He opened his window wide to the smell of the orange blossom. He could hardly bear to go back to bed.

He slept at last, and when he woke it was some time after eight; Tom would have been out for hours, he liked to mow while it was cool, while there was still dew on the grass. He got dressed and went downstairs, the excitement and ardour of the previous night still persisting.