A String in the Harp (2 page)

Aunt Beth had remarked on that and Jen could tell from her tone of voice that she still disapproved strongly of what her brother, Jen’s father David, had done. Only five months after his wife’s death he had accepted a teaching position at the University of Wales in Aberystwyth, and less than four months after that, he and his two youngest children had gone to live in Wales. Nothing Beth could say to him would change his mind. He was grimly determined to get away from Amherst, at least for a while, to fill his mind with something besides the automobile accident.

When Aunt Beth had realized it was pointless to argue with him over going, she had begun on his responsibility to his children instead. And David had finally relented. Jen could still see his set, white face as he told her that she was to stay in Amherst with Aunt Beth and Uncle Ted and continue high school. She had protested, but only half-heartedly. Secretly, she was relieved not to be leaving the town and school and
friends she had known all her life. The horror of losing her mother was only compounded by the idea of leaving all that was safe and familiar, and she didn’t understand why David felt he had to.

For Peter, twelve, and Becky, ten, there was never any choice. Their father stubbornly refused to leave them behind. Jen was only two years from college, and college was very important to David. Nothing must jeopardize her education. But a year in Welsh schools wouldn’t harm the other two at all—it would, on the contrary, be a good experience. So Jen had helped sort and pack and store things in the attic of their Amherst house and had watched her father and brother and sister leave for Britain without her. Becky was excited, but Peter had fought against going every inch of the way. He was openly envious of Jen, rebellious and angry at being taken away from his school, friends, home. She knew he felt as she did about needing familiar things to hold on to.

And now, she wondered, how had he adjusted? Her father and Becky gave her no clue in what they wrote, they only said he was “fine” and “sends his love,” which she rather doubted.

The sign on this station platform said “Machynlleth,” which stirred something in Jen’s mind. She hunted for her wad of papers and found what she was looking for: a note saying Machynlleth was only fifteen minutes from Borth. One of the two women got out here, gathering up her bags and bundles and continuing to talk as she went. The sun had gone into cloud for the last time and the early winter dusk was closing around the train. Jen glanced up at her suitcase in the rack over her head and decided she’d better get it down. She had a horror of being caught on the train at Borth, of seeing the station start to slide away before she had time to get out the carriage door. When she’d manhandled the case down—Aunt Beth had packed it with heavy, sensible clothes—she tried brushing the wrinkles out of her coat, her hands damp, her fingers nervous.

The train left Machynlleth and ran along the bank of a river. The valley it followed widened, pushing the mountains back on both sides. In the fading afternoon light the country looked bleak and unfriendly; wind rocked the train gently, and the glass of the window was cold. On the right through the windows beyond the corridor Jen could see the mud flat of the river stretching away from the train and to the left the mountains withdrew from a vast, grass-covered plain. Along its far edge was a thin row of lights, which came rapidly closer. The train turned and ran behind a low row of houses, the grass plain still beside it as it slowed.

Jen fumbled with her gloves, biting her lip in the way that irritated Aunt Beth. Where was her family? Would they be on the platform? What would she do it they weren’t? Oh, God, let them be there! For a dreadful moment she couldn’t see anybody at all. Then her father’s slim familiar shape moved out of the shadow, beside him Peter, hunched inside his jacket, and Becky hopping up and down in a short skirt, her knees pink with cold.

The other woman in the compartment nodded to Jen as she struggled with her suitcase, airline bag, and pocketbook and held the carriage door for her. The wind and Becky hit her almost simultaneously, taking her breath away, as she stepped onto the platform.

“You’ve come! You’ve come! You’ve come!” shouted Becky, hugging her enthusiastically. “I thought the train would
never
get here!”

Over Becky’s head, Jen grinned at Peter and he grinned back.

“Hello,” said David. “We are glad to see you! Hope you had no trouble getting here.” As soon as Becky let go, he gave Jen a slightly less breathless hug.

“Hey,” said Peter, “have you got all your stuff? I’m freezing to the platform!”

Outside the station a short, dark-haired young man slung her bags into an elderly car.

“We’ve even got the taxi for you,” Becky explained. “This is my sister, Jen. That’s Billy-Davies-Taxi.” The young man grinned pleasantly and nodded in agreement. “We don’t usually have a taxi,” Becky confided once they were squashed inside, “only when
we
came.”

It was too dark to see much of Borth, even if Jen had had a chance to look around her as they drove, but she was much too busy answering questions and giving messages and relaying news about Amherst: Uncle Ted and Aunt Beth, the opening of the college, the blizzard on Thanksgiving, the tenants in their house, Peter’s friends and Becky’s two cats.

“And the Sullivans found you at the airport in London all right?” David wanted to know.

“Oh, yes, and they were very nice and bought me another breakfast at the station. They said to say hello to you. I didn’t have any problems at all.”

“I would have been surprised if you had. I gathered from your aunt’s letters that the whole operation had been planned like a military campaign,” David remarked dryly.

Jen didn’t tell him Aunt Beth’s elaborate emergency procedures: in case the plane were delayed; in case the Sullivans didn’t meet her; in case there was trouble with Jen’s passport; in case she missed the right train. . . .

“You must be over the ’flu or Beth would never have let you come.”

“Mmm. A couple of weeks ago, and Dr. Harris said I was as well as ever.”

“Little did he know what you were planning to do,” said Peter darkly behind his upturned collar. “If you don’t come down with pneumonia here in the first ten days . . .”

“It’s a very healthy climate,” said David flatly. “We’ve none of us been sick with anything since we came.” Jen looked from her father to her brother; there was tension between them; she sensed it.

“Lots of fresh air . . .” David was saying.

Lots indeed. The taxi stopped abruptly and they all climbed out. The wind hit them immediately, strong and boisterous. Jen wasn’t prepared and she almost lost her balance. She looked about her and discovered they were at the top of a cliff; below and to the right were the lights of Borth proper where the station was. To the left were empty miles of sea as gray as the clouds overhead. The horizon was lost somewhere between. Nothing shielded them from the wind.

She hadn’t imagined this; she felt a bit overwhelmed. Peter said, still hunched, “Not even the last outpost of civilization.” The tips of his ears were miserably red. “Civilization must have decided it wasn’t worth coming out here.”

Jen glanced at him doubtfully. He was inclined to relish his pessimism, exaggerating deliberately to wring the last drop from it, she was used to that. But this time he sounded decidedly down, no trace of pleasure in his remark.

Becky grabbed her arm then and pulled her toward one of the houses in the row behind them. It was a two-story, brown stucco house with a bow window and a gate and a tiny scrap of garden in front. It took the full buffeting of the wind, only the street and a strip of grass and scrub keeping it from the cliff.

At least, once the door was closed, most of the wind was shut outside. In the dark hallway Jen took off her coat and David hung it on a peg.

“You’ll be sorry,” Peter muttered at her.

“Sorry?”

“Wait and see.”

“Well,” said David, as if he wasn’t quite sure what next, “this is Bryn Celyn, and I hope you’ll like it while you’re here.”

“Bryn Celyn?” echoed Jen.

“Holly Bank in Welsh,” Becky informed her. “All the houses here have names. Once you get used to it, it’s much nicer than numbers. Let’s have tea.”

Peter still hadn’t taken his jacket off, Jen noticed, not even when they sat down around the kitchen table. Someone had set it for a meal with plates and silver and a huge teapot, and Jen realized for the first time that she was tired and ravenously hungry. David put the kettle on to boil and Becky uncovered plates of sandwiches and tomatoes.

Listening with half her attention to Becky chatter about school, Jen looked at the kitchen. It was completely strange, totally unfamiliar except for her father and Becky and Peter. A little desperately she thought, yesterday morning I was
home
and
nothing
was strange. And now, outside this room, there is not one single person I know. I don’t even know the language.

“Does everyone speak Welsh?” She interrupted Becky.

“Just about,” said Peter, and “Not at all,” said his father. “More people are learning it now, but most know English first and Welsh is a second language.”

“There were two women on the train speaking it—at least I guess that’s what it was.”

“I’m learning it at school,” said Becky. She was quite used to interruptions.

“You are?” Jen was surprised. “Why on earth—”

“Because it’s taught in the state-run schools,” said David, giving Peter a warning look, which Peter missed.

“It’s stupid,” he declared.

“You’re learning it, too?”

He nodded. “Fat lot of good it’ll do me.”

David Morgan let out his breath crossly. “We have been over this countless times already. You go to school in Wales, you learn Welsh. You learn what everyone else does whether you see the point or not.” The tension was even stronger. Jen could see the same stubbornness reflected on both David’s and Peter’s faces. They both had tempers and quick tongues and neither gave in gracefully. Her mother used to say they were too much alike not to argue, but then her
mother had almost always been able to stop an argument between them. Now Peter’s face was closed and angry, David’s looked tired and older than she remembered.

“Well,” she ventured in the uneasy silence, struggling to live up to her mother, “if learning Welsh teaches you how to say the names of towns, it has to be useful. I don’t see where you put all the consonants.”

Peter snorted but said nothing, and David smiled at her.

Becky was delighted to help Jen unpack. They were sharing one of the front bedrooms on the second floor. The view from their windows was the same Jen had seen when she’d gotten out of the taxi: the sea and the village and the great flat plain the train had skirted.

“Does it have a name?” Jen asked Becky. “Is it a huge field?”

“Behind Borth, you mean?” Becky shook her head. “That’s the Borth Bog.”

Jen stared out at the great dark void. She was too numb with weariness to question Becky further at the moment. She was also beginning to see what Peter had been hinting darkly at in the front hall. It was cold in the house; the wind seemed to find every crack around windows and doors, and the white net curtains in the bedroom stirred eerily. Chilly draughts gusted across the floor. Jen shivered involuntarily.

“Do you like it?” Becky asked, bouncing gently on Jen’s bed. “What do you think?”

“I haven’t seen much yet,” Jen replied cautiously.

“I do. I like it,” said Becky a little too firmly.

“Peter doesn’t much, does he?”

“Right on the nose,” agreed Peter, joining them. “I’d tell you why, but I expect you want to go to bed tonight!”

“It can’t be
that
bad, Peter, really, or Dad wouldn’t stay,” said Jen, putting sweaters in a drawer, and blessing Aunt Beth for insisting on packing them.

Peter shrugged. “He’s made up his mind to stay. I don’t
think he even notices most of it, he’s too busy. He’s always working. But
I
notice and I don’t like it one bit.”

“But you didn’t like it when we first got here,” objected Becky. “You never tried to change your mind. It’s different from home, but that’s because it isn’t home. It really isn’t so bad.”

“I’m glad to hear it!” Jen smiled at her sister. “But is it always this cold?”

“At least!” said Peter. “This house wasn’t meant to be lived in year round, you know. They usually rent it out in the summer to people on vacation. I expect that’s why we found it right away.”

Jen sat down beside Becky. “Is this a summer resort?”

“In a manner of speaking. There’s a beach out there and I think sometimes the sun comes out by mistake. But wait till you really see it to get excited. The town’s one street wide and about two miles long with the ocean on one side and the great Borth Bog on the other—miles of one and acres of the other. I’ve never seen a place like it.”

“It really is a bog, then.”

“Oh, yes. You can sink in it. Maybe that isn’t such a bad idea.”

“Peter!” Becky sounded shocked, and Jen changed the subject quickly.

“How’s Dad doing at the University.”

“Who can tell? He usually spends his time there or shut in his study downstairs. I told you, he doesn’t seem to notice very much, and he doesn’t talk about work.”

“Do you ask him?”

Peter shrugged.

***

Jen wasn’t the least bit sorry to go off to bed with Becky at half-past eight as David insisted. But once the light in their room was out, she lay awake in the dark listening to the wind tear around the house.

“Jen?”

“Mmm.”

“I’m really glad you’re here,” Becky whispered. “It’ll be much nicer.”

“I’m glad, too.” At least I hope I am, she added to herself. Everything seemed unexpectedly complicated. It had been ever since their mother had been killed last December, and their family had seemed to come apart. She wasn’t surprised to hear from Peter that David kept to himself; he’d done that for months before they’d come to Wales. Only in Amherst they’d still had Aunt Beth to fill in some of the gaps. It wasn’t the same as having their own mother—Aunt Beth did her best to cope, but she’d never had children of her own and suddenly she was landed with three half-grown ones whose unhappiness and confusion she couldn’t really fathom. But there was still school and there were friends and music lessons and Boy Scouts and all the usual activities to turn to.