Dead Man's Embers (12 page)

And, now, she is going to part with it. Her most treasured possession. She had decided yesterday when she wrote to Angela that she needed to be certain she could finance a visit to London, for which she would need money for the train fare, for other travel in London, for lodging, for food, and for who knew what else. She had also decided that it is a visit she will make whatever Angela replies; Non is sure that it is in London she will find out the truth that will help Davey. He has not mentioned Angela's letter; she is not sure what this signifies, but she has decided that she needs to know more before she asks him about it. Wil's revelation about Billy has removed any lingering doubts about what she plans to do. She takes a deep, long breath to calm herself. She makes a final farewell to the ring and closes the lid on it, swings the brass hook up and around to latch it, and drops the tiny box back into her bag.

She knows where to go. She had noticed the shop with its three golden balls when she was in Port with Catherine Davies and Elsie, and wondered about it. She fastens her bag, unfurls her
parasol, pushes herself up from the wall with an effort, and sets off once more.

This town is big compared to her own, and teeming with people talking at the top of their voices; with children – why are they not at school? – running and shouting; with beggars – beggars! – at street corners; with men dressed almost in rags knocking at doors here and there, so many tramps, she thinks; with dogs of all shapes and colours and sizes, fighting and barking and whining; with horses pulling carts with rickety wheels; with new-fangled motor cars and delivery vans chugging their way along the road, raising clouds of dust in their wake; with the mournful hoots of a train in the station; with distant cries and thumps and crashes from the harbour. Between the jostling and the noise and the heat she feels quite faint and is glad to see the name of the street she seeks across the road from her. She thinks, London is going to be a hundred times, no, a thousand times worse than this. Her heart almost fails her at the thought. She quickly furls her parasol and uses it as a walking stick to lean on to cross the street and to fend off the two dogs that swirl around her, yapping at each other, as she crosses.

Apart from its golden balls the outside of the shop is plain and shows no indication of what may lie inside it; but she knows what kind of establishment this is. She has a memory of going with her father to just such a place in Liverpool; she had been fascinated then by the variety of goods laid out in the window – watches, chains, ornaments, clocks, and hanging behind them articles of clothing, coats and hats, even one top hat, and rows of boots. Her throat closes up at the memory of them all, the trade in human misery they represented, but she swallows hard, holds herself upright and pushes open the door.

A bell jangles somewhere in the curtained area behind the
counter. The violence of the noise makes her start. She takes another deep and calming breath and sits on the round-bottomed chair beside the counter. When a man appears from behind the curtain she composedly takes the box with the ring in it from her bag and hands it to him. He glances sharply at her, then opens the box. He cannot disguise the gasp he gives, which he quickly turns into a cough. He produces a device from his pocket like a miniature telescope and puts it to his eye and examines the ring from all angles. The light from the diamond seems to Non to blaze in his face. He sets the ring back in its box. He reads the writing on the white silk, examining it closely. He places the box on the counter between them. He purses his little cherub lips and smoothes back his blond hair unnecessarily. He names a price.

‘It's worth a great deal more than that,' Non says, but she has made a rough calculation of the sum she may need, based more on guesswork than knowledge, and the sum he names, she thinks, will be more than enough. And it will be less money to find when she wants to buy back the ring, it will gather less interest. She will not think now about where the money is to come from to redeem it.

He shrugs, holds his hands open as if to say, Take it or leave it.

‘I'll take what you offer.' She lifts the tiny box from its place on the counter, hands it to him and accepts the pile of coins he gives her in return, and the receipt, which she places even more carefully than the money into her purse. Thirty pieces of silver. She knows the story, even if she is not a believer.

The light out of doors is blinding, the sun at its height, its rays powerful, the shadows cast by the buildings stunted and solid. She glances up at the town-hall clock in its elegant tower. She thought she had spent a lifetime in that shop and it was no time at all. The same two dogs are circling each other and whining in the
street, and the old carthorse pulling the brewery dray is still standing outside the
The Australia
, listing slightly and munching on its oats or whatever food its owner put in its nosebag. And my life is completely changed, she thinks.

There is one more thing to do, now that she knows she has the means to go to London. She fingers the letter in her skirt pocket; the envelope is becoming just a little creased, just a little furred at its corners.

She crosses the road, her parasol held high, sidesteps a pile of dog droppings in her way and mounts the steps to the Post Office. There is little chance, she thinks, feeling as if she has taken on the role of a Catherine Davies, there is little chance of anyone I know seeing me here, posting this letter, and wondering what I am doing, why I am not posting it at home. When she hears her name called she turns quickly from the letterbox, hiding the envelope behind her bag, to see Wil running down the street from the direction of the harbour, leaping up and punching the air. She quickly turns to the letterbox and slides the letter into the voracious mouth, before turning back and waving, gaily, at Wil.

She smoothes her hand down the side of her skirt, down over the empty pocket. Now for their celebration.

Non is pouring the breakfast tea and trying to work out what the earliest would be when she might reasonably expect a reply from Angela. She thinks that if the reply comes too quickly, by return, it would say that Angela does not want to see her. And why should she, after all? No, she needs Angela to have considered her request and thought about what they might discuss and maybe how she can help before putting pen to paper in reply. I posted it yesterday, she thinks, pausing in the pouring of the tea until Gwydion says, ‘Non?' and she carries on pouring. Angela should get it today, or maybe tomorrow, say tomorrow, Saturday, so that would give her the weekend to think it over, then she would post her reply on Monday, so I would get it by . . . well, say next Wednesday. Nearly a week, then. She will have to put it out of her head, in the meantime, and think about all she needs to do here to be able to go away suddenly for a few days. She has no idea, yet, how she will manage the going-away.

The letterbox in the front door rattles open and shut, which makes her spatter golden tea into all the saucers when she starts at the noise. Don't be foolish, she tells herself, Angela will only
get my letter today at the earliest, it cannot possibly be a reply. Unless Angela is psychic like Madame Leblanc.

Meg scrambles from her chair, all notions of being a young lady forgotten in the race to find out what the postman has delivered to them. Non hears her scrabbling at the mat by the front door, then there is a silence, and then her feet can be heard slowly shuffling along the passageway back to the kitchen.

‘Nothing too exciting, then?' Gwydion says.

‘It's for you,' she says, holding the envelope and staring at it. ‘From Ireland. And it's taken for ever to get here, just look at the date-stamp.'

‘Well, give it to him, then,' her father says.

With a scowl on her face and a quick sweep of her arm Meg sends the letter spinning across the table to land in the bread and jam on Gwydion's plate.

‘Meg!' Non can see that something has upset Meg, but cannot let such behaviour go unremarked. ‘Say sorry to Gwydion for being so careless with his letter.'

Gwydion is shaking crumbs from the envelope and wiping smears of jam off with a lick of his finger. ‘Don't worry, Non, it's what's on the inside that's important,' he says.

‘Open it, then,' Meg says. ‘Who is it from? Is it from her?' She invests the final word with a sneer.

‘That's enough of that behaviour,' Davey says. ‘Sit down and drink your tea, Meg.'

‘You're jealous.' Wil laughs at Meg. ‘As if Gwydion would have you for a sweetheart. You're too young, and too cross and too silly. And you've got freckles.'

Non gives him a disapproving glance and he has the grace to look sheepish. He is on tenterhooks. He belongs neither with them any more nor on the ship yet. Poor Wil. He ought to be
able to enjoy the feeling of pleasure at being given the job he wanted so much without feeling guilty about mentioning it in front of his father. Davey had taken the news in his stride yesterday when Wil told him and shaken Wil's hand and clapped him on the back and wished him well, and told the rest that they were celebrating that evening. But . . . Non thinks, and sighs. It had not been exactly the kind of celebration Wil might have wished for. They all went to sit outside the castle to hear the oratorio that was the highlight of the day's Music Festival. Davey felt proprietorial because he and Wil had done all the carpentry for the stages and the seating. Non remembered her father speaking to a visiting colleague about hearing an open-air performance of Mendelssohn's
St Paul
in Germany; for some reason it had ended in an argument she was never likely to forget, because it left her father with a bloodied nose. She wondered if she would discover what it was about the music that had caused such strong feelings, but she did not, unless it was the subject matter – religion always seemed to arouse people to extremes. Meg was inside the grounds all evening, helping, as a result of being a member of Sam Post's choir, which had performed earlier in the day – maybe the excitement and late night are the cause of her bad temper today. Osian watched flights of birds patterning the sky against the colours of the setting sun. Wil left after half an hour to play billiards at the Institute. It had not been an entirely successful celebration.

‘If you just think about it . . .' Gwydion is waving the letter at Meg. ‘Aoife is still in Aberystwyth, not returned to Ireland yet.'

Meg looks down at her lap and seems to find a loose thread in her apron pocket that requires her complete attention.

‘This,' Gwydion says, and flaps the pages enough to create a breeze, ‘this is from my friend Idwal who went to Ireland about three months ago.' He looks at Non. ‘He went to see what the
situation really was like out there. I'm not so stupid that I take everything anyone says to me, however much I admire them, without checking things out for myself, Non. But Idwal says Aoife's father is perfectly right in what he's told us. That he's been quite restrained, in fact.' He sits back in his chair with his arms folded, the letter dangling from between a finger and thumb. ‘Things are moving on fast. Idwal says there'll be a truce soon.' He turns to the start of the letter to look at the date. ‘And look, he wrote this before de Valera met with Lloyd George in London. There's got to be a truce now.' He waves the letter in Davey's direction. ‘So, what have you got to say to that, Davey Davies? A free Ireland!'

‘Sounds to me as if you're all hotheads, the lot of you,' Davey says. ‘It'll lead to nothing but more trouble.' He rises from his chair as he speaks and disappears through the back door before Gwydion can reply.

Gwydion pushes the letter into his trouser pocket.

‘Aren't you going to read it to us?' Meg asks. ‘We always read our letters out loud.'

But not our sewing patterns, Non thinks.

‘News to me,' Wil mutters. ‘What letters?'

‘Later,' Gwydion says, ambiguously. ‘I'll be late if I'm not off out soon. And I've just remembered, Non. Davison asked me to take some things to the post for him after work yesterday, and when I got there it was shut, and they're too big for the letterbox. So please, Non, dear, sweet, pretty Non, will you take them along for me later?'

Non laughs. ‘Anyone would think you'd been to Ireland already and kissed the Blarney Stone,' she says. She remembers an Irish friend of her father's visiting him, and saying to her, Sure, and hasn't old Osian here been courting the Blarney Stone. And then having
to explain to her what he meant and tell her the entire story of the stone. He must have wished he had never mentioned it.

‘What's that?' Meg asks.

Non takes a deep breath to tell Meg the story she had been told, and at the same time Wil pushes back his chair and says, ‘Was Tada going to the workshop, just now? Have I got time to drink my tea, Non?'

‘Plenty, I don't think he was going off to work,' she says, ‘and you, Osian, come on, try to eat some bread and butter at least. And eat the crusts, too – I don't want to find any more hidden under the edges of your plate when I clear the table.'

‘Well, he'll be able to eat meat with his bread and butter for breakfast every day if he carries on like this!' Davey's voice precedes him into the kitchen. He is so loud and jolly that Non is alarmed. Loud and jolly is as unlike the old Davey as morose and far away. Davey never used to pretend anything, and now he is all pretence. Sitting here at the table, she is overcome by such a yearning for her lost husband that it is all she can do not to burst into tears.

They all, except Osian, watch Davey carry a package into the kitchen. Meg raises her eyebrows and feigns a lack of interest but Non can see that she is as eager as anyone else to see what her father has brought in.

Davey sets the package on the centre of the table and pushes the breakfast crockery aside. Slowly he peels back the wrappings to reveal a – Non is at a loss to know what to call it – a carving? a statue? a sculpture? It is a young girl seated on a rock with the sea frothing about her feet. The water looks so real that Non almost expects a wave to break and splash onto the table. The girl gazes down at her hands folded in her lap, and her face, that is both centuries old and years young, bears a look of loss and longing that is heartbreaking to see.