Dead Man's Embers (20 page)

Jane Eyre
lies open and unread on her lap. She has scarcely turned a page over since her journey began. She needs to order her thoughts before she arrives home. News of a different kind will be expected there – news of Arianrhod and the expected child, and of Aberystwyth – and Gwydion, no doubt, will want to know if she found an opportunity to speak to his mother, to prepare the way for his own news. She remembers her father
quoting a great Scottish writer to her,
Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive
, and explaining to her that it was always best to tell the truth. She has found out that Osian Rhys taught her one thing but did another. It does not help her now to think of that, but she is determined that Branwen will tell her what she wants to know about their father.

She is glad to sit with her own thoughts. Her rushed stay with Angela has tired her so much she does not think she could converse with anyone. She had been so certain that she would find the reason for Davey's strange behaviour, but she had been disappointed. Angela knew nothing that gave an indication of what might have wrought such a great, and apparently sudden, change in him. Whatever it was must have happened before his second time in the clearing hospital. Angela had been a little vague about the date – and why not, why should she remember one event among the many? – but Non has worked out that it must have been after Ben Bach had been killed. Davey was meant to be keeping an eye on him for Elsie, he had promised her that he would do so. And so, maybe Ben Bach's death, coupled with the extensive damage to his platoon soon afterwards, was the cause of the change in Davey's behaviour that Angela had noticed, that thousand-yard stare. In London she has seen how affected other men have been by the War, and she can partly understand Davey's response, but not the story of what Angela had called the liaison. What led to that? She gazes at her book – the pages may as well be blank – and closes it with a bang that disturbs the dust and the one other occupant of the compartment, an old man who had been snoring gently in the seat next to the other door. The train squeals to a halt in Welshpool, with the usual hiss of steam and the stink of burning cinders that the engine spits out, and the old man gathers his belongings, doffs his cap to Non and leaves the compartment.

He is almost immediately replaced by a young family, chattering like a flock of starlings. In her own language. She smiles at them all, and exchanges Good afternoons. The young mother carries a baby, fast asleep, and the next child in age is a boy – a rascal, Non thinks, when she catches the look in his eyes – and then two girls with their hair in long plaits that must have taken time in a busy day. The eldest girl, the one in charge of this little crew, sits demurely next to Non. Her father pats her on the head and tells her she is a good girl before he, too, sits down. Non thinks she can feel the warmth of the glow coming from the child at the praise from her father. A toy is brought out to keep the rascal occupied, a cup and ball. He concentrates hard on mastering the art of throwing the ball into the cup, his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth like a kitten's.

Non never managed to do that, catch the ball in the cup, she did not have the patience. Her childhood suddenly seems a long time ago; she must have been about the same age as this eldest child next to her here when her father died. She does not think she was as good. She can barely remember what her father looked like. She has his book, his famous herbal, at home, with his photograph in the front – but he had been young then, and she had never known him young. He seems to have become a figure in a story that she was told, as if he invented himself for her benefit. She does not know if any of the stories he told her about her mother, about his work, about his scholarly pursuits, about his travels and those foreign men that used to visit him – she does not know if any of those are any truer than all the stories of old and the fairy stories he told her. She believed every word, never questioned any of it. Although she does, now, recall occasional puzzling remarks from neighbours, and asking her father to explain them. Ignore them, Rhiannon, he had told her – our neighbours
are good people, but because we do not share their belief that there is a God looking down on us, they fear for our mortal souls. Non suspects now that the neighbours had long given up their crusade for her father's soul, they were likely concentrating on saving hers. Her father had left her to her own devices much of the time, to develop her own ideas about life from the information and the teaching she had from him. By now she understands that children can develop strange and perverse notions when matters are not explained to them. She knows she must have been an odd little thing by the time her father died and she was taken in by Branwen – an odd, wayward little thing. She feels bereft, as if something has been taken from her, as if now she has lost her father all over again. She needs to find out what is true and what is not, and she reminds herself that she will insist that Branwen answers her questions about Osian Rhys when she goes down to Aberystwyth for the birth.

She is jolted out of her reverie when the train stops at Newtown and the young father takes his son on his knee to make room for a woman dressed in heavy mourning – in this heat! – accompanied by a young man, her son or, more probably, her grandson. The young family, with the exception of the sleeping baby, is fascinated by the woman, they are all watching her with interest, but Non turns her eyes away – she sees a woman whose heart is compressed by a great sorrow, who is beyond the help of the Sal Volatile her caring grandchild is holding for her.

The heart is a mysterious organ. She thinks of the drawings she saw in Seb's consultation room. How can it be that a lump of flesh – for that is all it is – full of gristle and muscle and tubes can hold our feelings? She should have asked how that could be, if Seb's own heart had felt something when his friend was lost. Would he have an answer? Would his laboratory be able to tell
him that? Or tell him why Angela is still alive when her heart is broken utterly?

Last night, still angry with her father's deceit, Non had decided to place her trust in modern medicine and, without thinking too long about it, had taken one drop less of her nightly draught, and this morning another drop less. She is not sure if she feels different, whether she is better or not. She is still tired, exhausted, worn out by the heat and by the city. How can people live all their lives in such places? She hopes Seb knows what he is about. Perhaps she will slow down the rate at which she is reducing the number of drops she takes of her lifeblood, until she receives his letter with the results of the tests that he had promised to send her.

A thought has come to her since he spoke about symptoms. He had asked her whether she had hallucinations and she had laughed at him. But she was not entirely sure that she knew what such a thing was. When she looked at the elderly woman on the seat opposite, or when she saw the child on the way to London, and saw the sickness in them, was she hallucinating? Were these figments of her imagination? They were moments of great clarity and distress to her, but were they real? Branwen is the only living person who knows of Non's gift, and she prefers to pretend it does not exist since one unfortunate diagnosis of Non's that involved a local minister. Non's sister had been – and still is – a great chapel-goer, and she had been mortified.

Non closes her eyes and leans on the glass of the compartment window, cooled slightly because she sits on the opposite side to where the sun is slowly descending into the west, still a red-hot ball, the sky aflame with the certainty of more heat the following day. She is on her own, listening to the rhythmic clatter of the wheels on the final stage of her journey. The young family waved
her a goodbye at Aberdyfi, and the mourning woman and her grandson left the train at Barmouth . . .

She opens her eyes with a start. Has she dozed? She looks out at the sea and the lowering sun through the opposite window. Home, she thinks, almost there.

The castle looms above her as she leaves the train and crosses the railway to climb the hill home. The shops are closed, the winding streets quiet. The Saturday evening hush is broken only by the voices of children at play, or by their mothers calling them indoors for their suppers.

She is quite breathless when she arrives at her own house, but that is as usual, neither better nor worse, and she climbs the steps to the front door and pushes it open. Home. She wants to cry for the happiness it brings her despite the worries and problems that await her here.

Gwydion steps through from the kitchen into the hall as she is hanging up her hat on the hat stand. ‘Non! Oh, Non, Non.' He takes hold of her and shakes her, then hugs her tightly. ‘Where have you been, Non? What happened to you? We've been so worried. Davey's frantic. Are you all right? Oh, Non!'

Outside the back door, shaded from the sun, is the only place that is cool. Non stands, leaning lightly against the wall, crushing some of the honeysuckle that scents the air, and surveys her garden. The hens cluck faintly at one another and they are already out of sight, occupying what areas of shade they can find to hide from the relentless sunshine. Her plants are in dire need of water – she forgot to ask anyone specifically to water them every evening when she was away – and now the lemon balm and the mints are paying for her lack of concern. Even from here she can see browning leaves underneath the shrubby tops, and some of the flower heads are drooping. That is the first task, then, although it is entirely the wrong time of day to do it.

She fetches the big watering can from the shed next to the closet and fills it from the cask standing beside the shed. That, too, is almost empty, rain is desperately needed. When she was in London, Angela told her there were rumours that the Government was considering causing explosions in the clouds to bring rain, although Non cannot for the life of her see how that would work. It seems a most unlikely solution; there were never clouds in the
sky to explode. She shakes her head. Some people think they can make everything behave the way they want. Some things you just have to let be, some things are stronger than man. Man can't control everything. Her father used to teach her that, Work with the natural world, Rhiannon, he would say, not against it. She is no longer sure about anything he said, the truth of it, the value of it. But it is difficult to stop thinking about his teaching, it is something she has always done, it has been her one constant all the years of her life. She feels now as if the ground is shifting beneath her feet, as if she is standing on the soft sand of the dunes. She is out of kilter with the way things really are, here at home and in London. She knows that the cause of it is the way her father reared her – Branwen often complained of her upbringing. During the ten years she spent with her father she had settled into ways of thinking and behaving that would never leave her. It was no wonder that she had never felt at home with Branwen – nor with anyone else until she met Davey. She wishes now that she had not become so . . . so pliant when she married Davey, trying to suit his ways instead of staying her own self. But she had wanted to be a good wife to him, and to repay him for loving her. During the War she had been more like her true self again, in order to survive. When Davey returned she had reverted to the role of the good wife who does as her husband tells her and does her utmost not to annoy him – though there are times when she forgets. She sighs. She is not absolutely sure where she belongs, whether there is a place where she can belong.

‘Yoohoo, Non!' Maggie Ellis bobs up and down beyond the garden wall.

Non lifts the heavy watering can and walks across the garden. She does not want to speak to Maggie this morning, but it is as unavoidable as sunrise and sunset.

‘Have to do everything yourself if you want anything done.' Maggie nods at the watering can.

‘I forgot to ask anyone to water the plants,' Non says. ‘They've managed everything else.' But she knows this is not what Maggie wants to talk about. She can see that something else is biting at her.

‘You had everyone in a bit of a tizzy,' Maggie says.

Non lifts the foliage of the balm and waters the roots, careful not to drop water on the leaves where the sun would scorch.

‘But you're home, now,' Maggie says. ‘And no harm done.' The slight upward inflection invites Non to tell her more.

‘A misunderstanding is all.' Non does not pause in her task.

‘Ah, your niece had her baby sooner than expected?'

‘The minute I left to come home, it seems,' Non says. ‘I'm travelling back down tomorrow, so I've got a lot to do, Mrs Ellis.'

‘Of course you have.' Maggie Ellis is still bobbing about, still has not said what she wants to say, but seems reluctant to start upon it. And for that Non is glad.

Pandemonium had broken out last night on her return. Eventually she had found out that on Friday, when everyone at home thought she was still in Aberystwyth and everyone at Aberystwyth thought she was at home, a telegram had arrived from Branwen asking her to return immediately. At home, no one knew what to do, they assumed that she was on the train home from Aberystwyth when the telegram arrived and so had not begun to panic until it was obvious she was not. So, yesterday, when she was sitting on the train from London in the heat of the day, telegrams had gone back and forth between Davey and Branwen. They both knew she had lied to them. But neither knew where she was.

Davey's relief at her return was more than tinged with anger at her behaviour. Meg had quietly left to spend the evening with
a friend from work, Wil had gone to play a game of billiards at the Institute, and Gwydion had taken Osian for a walk with him though it was well past the boy's bedtime. And Non was left with Davey. Davey had talked to her, no, at her, concerned she could see, and furious, too, wanting to know what she had been thinking of, where she had been.