Dead Man's Embers (34 page)

‘Worse than that.' Meg gives another shudder. ‘He was very peculiar. He won't come back again, will he, Tada?'

‘No,' Davey says.

How can Davey be so definite? Doubt begins to shade Non's
relief. Won't there always be a danger that Teddy will come back? That sooner or later he will tell someone what happened to Ben Bach?

‘Non,' Meg says, rising from her chair, ‘please may I not wash the dishes tonight? I've got some schoolwork to do. I should have done it right away when the holidays started, and I don't want to forget it.'

‘French, I suppose,' Non says, imagining
Madame Bovary
, in French.

‘No. Why would you suppose that?'

Non smiles. ‘Go on, Meg. Gwydion can help me. Take Osian up with you, it's time he was in bed.'

Non and Gwydion clear the table, and wash and dry the dishes. It is already twilight beyond the window panes. Non watches their reflections in the glass, busy at work. It is quieter tonight, there are no owls about. They must have found better hunting elsewhere. She stands still at the sink below the open sash, listening to the breeze rustle through the roses that climb the wall around the window.

‘Look at that moon rising,' Gwydion says. ‘It's a lovely evening. And cooler at last. I think I'll go for a walk, do a bit of thinking, Non. I'll see you both later. I'll take the key so I don't disturb you, shall I?'

Davey flaps his
Daily Herald
at Gwydion to wave him on his way.

Non dries her hands. She closes the back door and the door to the hall and the window. Davey watches her. She feels his gaze following her as she moves about the room. She sits opposite him at the table; she takes his newspaper from his hands and lays it down.

‘Davey, is Teddy really gone?'

‘He is, Non.'

‘But . . . what did he say? Is he going to stay away? What if he turns up again? What if he tells everyone about Ben Bach the next time he comes back, or the time after, or the time after that? Are we always going to be waiting and wondering?'

‘He won't be coming back, I promise. There's no need for you to worry, no need for you to ever think of him again.' Davey leans across the table and cups Non's face in his hands. He looks into her eyes. ‘We can just forget about him.'

Non holds Davey's gaze for a long time. ‘Davey?' she says, ‘what—?'

Davey takes one hand away from her face, his calloused palm stroking her cheek. He smiles at her and lays his forefinger against her lips. He shakes his head. ‘Shhh . . .' he says. ‘Shhh . . .'

Non has not slept. Scarcely a wink, she thinks. The window had rattled until she could stand it no longer and had climbed out of bed to wedge her handkerchief between the sashes and the frame. She wishes it were as easy to quieten the thoughts that have rattled in her head all night. It is noticeably cooler. She should have slept well on the first cool night for months, but she has heard the clock strike each hour throughout the night. Now, she hears it mark the quarter hour. Quarter to six, and the dawn has broken, tingeing the sky rose-pink, sung-in by a choir of birds.

A whimper comes from Davey who has slept all night. Like a baby, she thinks, a little resentfully. She leans on her elbow to watch his face, the blush of the dawn reflecting from the bedroom walls to colour his skin. She thinks how strange it is that colour vanishes in the dark. She has always been able to see clearly at night, but it is always a monochrome world she sees, shades of grey.

Davey's eyes flutter beneath his eyelids. He is dreaming, but of what? It does not appear to be a bad dream, his face is reposeful, a slight smile on his lips. But it is early days yet, she reminds
herself, to think that he is . . . cured. It is only three nights since he remembered what it was his nightmares were trying to bring back to him. It seems strange that knowing what he had done – which seems to Non an act that would haunt her all her life – has brought some kind of peace to Davey. It must, then, be best to know, she thinks, rather than not know; it is something she has always thought to be true in principle. But to kill someone she knows, deliberately, in cold blood, whatever the reason – could she do that? She does not know the answer. Would it not depend on the circumstances? War changes everything, she thinks. Everything. Everyone in the country must know that. We will never be free from it.

When the clock strikes six she will wake him, she decides, laying her head back on the pillow. Why could he not have said what happened to Teddy? He could have said he promised he would go away and not come back, or whatever it was Teddy did say to him. She will not allow entry to the thoughts that have hovered about her all night, waiting to pinch and prod her into the wrong conclusions.

She turns her head away from Davey. Her bedside table still looks a little bare to her without the bottle of tincture on it. It seems to have left a large gap for such a small object. She is hardly ever aware of the beat of her heart now, which is far pleasanter than feeling it leap and flutter in her breast throughout the day, as it often used to do.

The kitchen clock chimes the hour before it begins to strike. She counts: six o'clock. She turns back to Davey and lays her hand on his shoulder to shake him awake. I have not done this since before he went away, she thinks, when he was impossible to wake in the mornings. She had given up trying eventually, she remembers, and used the time before Davey tumbled out of bed
to keep up with her reading. So much of our knowledge is in books, her father used to say to her, though she doubts he meant the novels she loves to read. They are like her father's stories – not true, but holding truths within them.

She shakes Davey again, and he grunts and opens his eyes to peer at her as if she is a stranger and he does not know where he is.

‘Wake up, Davey,' she says. She watches him remember; it is as if his thoughts are being poured back into his head after being absent all night.

He glances over her shoulder at the window. ‘It's early, Non,' he says.

‘I want to talk to you, Davey,' she says. ‘Before everyone's up.'

‘Talk?'

She knows Davey is a doer rather than a talker. He has talked to her more than he has ever done in their few hours of revelations.

‘About Teddy,' she says.

‘What about him?' Davey's eyes close again as he speaks.

‘I want to know what happened to him.' She shakes Davey by the shoulder. ‘Please, Davey.'

‘He's gone. What more do you need to know?'

‘The manner of his going,' she says.

‘The manner of his going!' Davey laughs, waking himself properly. ‘Oh, Non, you sound like someone in a drama. He just . . . went.'

How can he laugh when this is so serious? She will make him listen. ‘Did someone make him go, Davey? Did you?'

Davey turns to stare at her. He shuffles himself into a sitting position, pulling his pillow up behind his back. ‘So, you tell me what you think the manner of his going was, Non.' His steely voice is at odds with his bleary eyes and tufty hair.

She wants to back down, un-ask the question, go back to being the good, pliant wife. But she says, ‘Something doesn't ring true, Davey, something doesn't make sense.'

‘Teddy didn't make sense a minute of the time he was here,' Davey says. ‘The only sensible thing that he did was to go on his way.'

‘Why?' Non says. ‘What changed so suddenly?'

‘Saturday night,' Davey says. ‘I had to take him back to the workshop, that's why I was so late. Constable Evans said the boys had been pretty rough with him. I expect he took fright. He was . . . gone by Sunday morning, anyway.'

Non notices the hesitation. ‘But why didn't you tell us he'd gone when you came home on Sunday?'

Davey makes a fuss of pulling his pillow into a different position behind his back. ‘I didn't know he'd gone for good, did I? He might have come back. I didn't want to raise your hopes.'

She sees immediately that he is lying. It is something to do with his eyes. She cannot put it into words.

‘Tell me the truth, Davey,' she says.

A mulish look creeps into the set of his face, so like the expression she had sometimes caught on Wil's face that she catches her breath. She had always thought it was something Wil had taken from Grace.

‘It can't be worse than what you told me on Saturday evening, can it?' she says.

‘Why have you got to know everything, Non?' Davey says. ‘Why can't you let things be sometimes?'

She thinks she has let things be far too much. She is not about to do so again. She waits to hear what Davey will say. Suddenly she is aware of her heart beating fast, and lays her hand over it as if that will calm her agitation.

‘I was trying to protect you,' Davey says, at last. He looks at her. ‘You and the children.'

‘From what?'

Davey shrugs. He looks at the foot of the bed again. ‘When Osian and I got to the workshop on Sunday,' he says, ‘he was still there, up in the loft. I left him to sleep – he was so drunk when I took him back the night before, he wouldn't have been any use for anything. Albert came to the workshop later and we put old Calvin in his coffin. It was dinner time by then, so I told Albert I'd nail the top down, and he went off for his Sunday dinner. I got our oatcakes and cheese out for me and Osian, and called up to Teddy to see if he wanted any. There was no sound from him, so I went up the ladder and there he was – still fast asleep. I tried to shake him awake.'

Non listens to his story. She watches the sun climb higher in the sky, the gathering clouds scudding across its face, the bedroom becoming lighter and darker in turn.

‘I couldn't wake him, Non. And then I pulled him on his back and I saw he was dead.'

Non feels no surprise, but she is saddened. ‘Poor Teddy,' she says. ‘Poor man.' She remembers all the men in Angela's ward. ‘Was it his heart, I wonder?'

Davey turns his attention from the foot of the bed to Non. ‘Truth is, Non, his throat was cut.'

Non gasps and covers her mouth. She does not know what she was expecting, but it was not something so . . . so bloody as this. This is the way you would kill an animal.

‘You wanted to know, Non,' Davey says. ‘The mattress he was on was soaked through.'

Osian, thinks Non. Where was he when this was happening? ‘Did Osh see him?'

Davey turns his head away. ‘I don't know,' he says.

Non thinks she knows. She thinks of Osian's implacable face. She thinks of him not taking his eyes off Davey, even to eat his food. Was he looking for comfort, or was he wondering what his father had done?

‘What happened to him, Davey?' she says. ‘Who . . . who cut his throat?' She can hardly bring herself to say such words.

Davey starts. ‘No one, Non. No one. He killed himself.'

‘Cut his own throat?'

‘I saw men do that in the War, Non,' Davey says. ‘It's a quick way to go. He didn't have anything to live for, Teddy. He was a lost soul.'

‘But to cut his own throat . . .' She can scarcely believe that she is sitting in bed talking about such a thing. ‘Poor man,' she says again, though she does not think she feels as much sadness as she should. It is too tinged with relief. ‘What did Constable Evans say? There'll have to be an inquest, won't there?' As she asks the questions she thinks it is strange that Maggie Ellis and Lizzie had said nothing of this yesterday. The town must have been humming with the news.

‘He was dead, Non. Nothing was going to make a difference to him. I thought the least fuss, the better. What if it all came out – the reason he came here – Ben Bach – what if it came out, Non?'

But no one knows except the two of us, Non thinks. ‘What have you done, Davey?'

‘Protected us,' he says. ‘Elsie Thomas, you, me, Osian, the family, the town – all of us, Non.'

‘Where is he?'

Davey does not answer. She sees that the tremor is back in his hands. She should not have questioned him so accusingly. He has
been through so much, protecting them, Wales, the world, against the darkness. But she has to know all there is to know, now that she knows half of it.

‘Where is Teddy, Davey?'

Davey turns to her. His cheeks are wet with tears. ‘I put him and the knife in with old Calvin,' he says. ‘He's in the ground, in the cemetery.'

‘Osian's knife?'

‘Osian's knife,' he says. ‘Osian's knife killed him. You know what people would think, what they would say. I had to protect Osh, Non, he can't do it for himself.'

Non instinctively puts her hand out to him and he grasps it as tightly as he grasped her hand when he told her he had killed Ben Bach. He grasps it as if he is drowning and she will save him.

‘I had to keep Osian safe, Non, I had to keep us all safe,' he says looking into her eyes.

She looks back at him. That is the truth in his story, she thinks. She nods at him and, tentatively, he lifts her clasped hand to his lips and kisses it.

Meg yawns and huddles closer to the fire in the range. ‘Why is Tada allowed to stay in bed late and I'm not?'

‘You asked me to get you up early, Meg. I thought you were going to spend the day with your Barmouth friends.' Non lays down the wreath through which she is twining strands of ivy. It is difficult to see exactly what she is doing by lamplight. She glances through the kitchen window, but all she can see is her own reflection staring back and Osian sitting across the table to her, Herman nestling on his shoulder. When she first came downstairs this morning there seemed to be as much frost inside the window panes as there was out of doors where it sparkled in the light of a moon only just beginning to wane. The winter has already been hard after such a hot summer, and it is not Christmas for another week. She picks up the wreath again and holds it in the pool of lamplight to find the gaps that need filling.