Keeping the World Away (3 page)

They were off. Mounted horses led the procession of carts and caravans, pulled slowly by older, heavier horses. Children ran alongside and so did the dogs, howling and barking and jumping. The silence they left behind was eerie. Suddenly, Gwen could hear birds singing and the cracking of twigs all around. She got up. ‘Come on,’ she said, touching Gus gently with her foot. He still lay prone. She prodded him again, and he rose, his face a scowl. This time, she led the way, remembering it perfectly, but he was slow, and he dawdled. She had no means of knowing the time but she feared it must be nearly time for Eluned to go into the kitchen and she did not want to have to face her. But Gus did not care. He was in a dream, away with the Gypsies. The thought of home made him miserable. Their mother had been away a long time. Gwen was miserable, too, but she would not care to show it. It did not do to show her feelings. Crying brought unwelcome attention. She wanted to hide, to find her room at Broad Haven and lock herself into it.

At the gate in the hedge, she waited for Gus. His head was
down
, but he was coming along a little more quickly. They tiptoed through the garden. Gwen noticed her father’s curtains were still drawn. So were all the others in the house so it could not be six o’clock yet. On the stairs, she paused, waiting for Gus, and squeezed his hand. He squeezed back. Softly, she crept into the bedroom she shared with Winifred and got into bed, fully clothed. In a short while, the household would come to life. She knew all the sounds off by heart, though the order varied. Sometimes Aunt Rose sang her hymns as she got up, sometimes she did not. Sometimes both aunts waited until Father had breakfasted and left for the office before emerging themselves. Today, none of the sounds were right. A faint click downstairs told her Eluned was up, but none of the other usual sounds followed. She lay there, alert. There was whispering on the landing above. Who? The aunts never whispered. Her father, to one of the aunts? He never whispered either, never. She sat up. More whispers, this time passing her door. Then a gentle knock. ‘Gwendoline? You are to dress, and dress Winifred, and come downstairs. Your father wishes to see everyone.’

She got up and drew open the curtains on the bright August day. She helped her sister to dress and brushed her hair as best she could. She heard her brothers jumping down the stairs and a loud ‘Sssh!’ from Aunt Lily. Her heart began to beat a little rapidly. She put her hand over the place where the beating was and held it there. Winifred looked up at her anxiously, and she tried to smile. Hand in hand they descended. Eluned and Gwenda and Josiah were standing in the hall, side by side. Aunt Lily emerged from the morning room and beckoned to them. Thornton and Gus were already there, standing awkwardly in front of their father, who had his back to the fireplace. He stood very still and erect, gazing far off over the heads of the boys. Then he told them. Afterwards, barely pausing, but touching Winifred’s hair as he passed, he walked into the hall and repeated the news. Then he went up the stairs, steadily, not holding on to the banister. They heard his bedroom door close. Winifred was weeping and Aunt Rose went to her and tried to embrace her but she wanted
only
Gwen. Gwen let out a loud ‘Oh!’, almost a shout, and Gus echoed it louder, and called out, ‘Mama! Mama is dead!’ and began to run round the room hitting things, and Aunt Rose could not stop him. He ran out into the hall and the other children followed him, crying and laughing at the same time, and he yelled over and over that Mama was dead and they laughed hysterically and sobbed and clutched each other. The aunts and the servants did not know what to do.

All day, curtains and blinds were pulled tight shut, and the aunts sorted out sombre clothing for them. Mama was dead. How? Gwen wanted to know. When? Where? And did this mean they would not go to Broad Haven? Gus drew, all day. He covered white page after white page with mysterious crosses drawn in thick black charcoal. Gwen longed to be outside, anywhere. Inside, the walls pressed in on her and the ceilings lowered towards her and the doors came to meet her. She felt she would burst. She had to shut her eyes tight and rise out of the house and hover above. It was so exhausting and frightening.

‘Gwendoline has not wept a single tear,’ she heard Aunt Lily say to their father.

*

They were going to leave Haverfordwest and move to Tenby. No reason was given. Eluned was going with them, and Gwenda, who helped her. Gwen heard Eluned tell Aunt Rose that she would give it a try but did not know if she would take to Tenby. Gwen felt superior. She had been to Tenby many times, with her mother. She remembered the bay, and the beach with the bathing huts on it, and the palm trees. She felt glad to be going there, away from the house to which Mother would never return. It hurt so much to look into her bedroom and see Mother lying there and know she was not really there at all, that it was only her imagination. The room was empty. Her father had moved out of it. He had taken his clothes and moved to the bedroom next to the boys’, and no one went into that other room any more. Except for Gwen. She did not put the light on, or open the curtains, but stood with her back to the door, and looked.
The
room was all shadows, merging into each other, streaming across the quilt on the bed, an army of them. Half-closing her eyes, she made sinister figures out of them. They were frightening but that suited her mood. Being frightened was preferable to aching with misery.

They all had to help to pack. The aunts had tried to organise the packing before they themselves left, but they were too distressed, and too concerned with their own departure, to succeed in getting the children to empty their drawers and cupboards and put the contents in trunks. Gwen had been surprised the aunts were not coming to Tenby, and had not understood why. It was, she thought, something to do with her father. Did he dislike his sisters-in-law? It was impossible to tell who or what her father liked. He did not talk to them, unless to give orders, and he had said nothing about the aunts, except that they had done their duty and he was grateful. Aunt Rose’s face, when he said that, in front of them all, was strange. Gwen did not know whether she had seen anger or contempt there, or perhaps only pain. There was no point in thinking about it. There was no point in thinking about a great many things, but she could not help brooding.

It was exciting taking the Tenby road out of Haverfordwest. They had all wondered if they would cry when the door of No. 7 was shut for the last time, but nobody did, and nobody looked back. ‘Where are we going?’ Winifred whispered. Tenby meant nothing to her. She was only five, and had never been there. ‘Beside the sea,’ Gwen said, feeling that was all she needed to know. Beside the sea. But when they got to Tenby, glimpsing the tawny sails of the fishing smacks, they found that their new home was not exactly beside the sea. It was not one of the tall yellow houses above the harbour but was up a dreary side street off the Esplanade, one in a row. The paint was peeling off the window frames and it had a shuttered, dingy look. No one said anything. They were afraid to offend their father by expressing their dismay. Silently, they entered the house which seemed dark and crowded with mahogany furniture. It was a tall house, with a basement and three floors and attics above. ‘Soon we will be settled,’ their
father
announced, but there seemed no comfort in his words. Gwen hardly dared to climb the stairs behind her father. On and on he went, never turning to look at her and Winifred, never speaking. ‘Wait,’ was all he said, when they reached the top landing. He opened the doors to the three attics, looked in them, and then gestured that the girls should enter the middle one.

There was a lot to be thankful for. Gwen kept telling herself that. For a start, there was light, two skylights without blinds. And the walls, though papered, had bland, creamy-coloured flowers wandering across a pale yellow background. There was cracked and horrid linoleum on the floor, but the two rag rugs, one beside each bed, were pretty. There was a small chest of drawers, and above it a painting in a gilt frame. It was of a boy wearing a red velvet suit. He was standing with his hands in his pockets, one foot resting on a dog. Gwen shuddered. Her father noticed, and to her surprise said, ‘You may take it down.’ He took it down for her and carried it away. The nail it had hung on looked odd above the blank square below. She would draw something herself to hang there.

The first night was hard. Nothing felt right, and they all longed for the morning when their father would go to the office and they could escape onto the beach. But he did not go. When Gus asked at what time he would be leaving he said he would not be going to an office again, ever. He would work at home. The news appalled them. They stared at him. They could not work it out. Father always went to the office. He had impressed upon them many times how hard he worked, how necessary it was for him to work to cater for their many needs. What would happen now? ‘You will go to school,’ he told them. ‘It is being arranged. Until then, we will take walks.’ So they put coats on and followed him out, and he walked ahead, as he always did, his carriage rigidly upright, his nose in the air, and they half-ran to keep up. At least they were outside and nothing was so bad. The sun shone, the sky was nearly all blue. Once they got to the Esplanade the sight of the sea lifted their spirits. ‘Breathe deeply, in, out,’ their father said, and they stood in a line and did what he said, in, out, many
times
. Down on the beach, where they were then permitted to go, they ran away from him, Gus leading, shouting and yelling and chasing the seagulls. The tide was out and there were patches of hard sand where Gus drew pictures with a stick he picked up. Gwen and Winifred looked for shells, collecting them to take home, and Thornton gathered up seaweed and popped it. All this time, their father stood where they had left him, watching, but there was something unusually patient about him. He did not bother them.

*

There were caves under the crumbling town walls, dangerous places where the boys went. Gus had told Gwen about them, how dark they were, how damp to the touch the rocky sides felt, how strange the smell of putrid sea water. The boys took candles into the caves and lit them and frightened each other with the shadows they cast. Gus said he would take her one day, but not Winifred, who would be sure to scream. Gwen did not think she wished to go with him though she was curious to see what the caves were like. She wondered if she could live in a cave, if she had to, if some peculiar set of circumstances made it imperative. She imagined herself running away and having nowhere to go and no money to obtain shelter. She imagined what she would need to take with her to make a cave into a home. A blanket to sit on, a paraffin lamp to see by, a wooden crate to put her clothes in. She would cower there and no one would know where to find her. It would be quiet, so quiet, and she would hear drips of water falling from the rock above and her own breath going in and out. She would be alone, huddled into a ball, almost invisible in the gloom.

She tried to draw the cave as she imagined it. She put nothing in it except some stones, some shells. She used pastels, dark brown and grey melded together and a lighter brown for the ground. It was hard to draw the entrance. Could the sea be glimpsed? Would the sun strike through it? She needed help but Miss Wilson did not teach drawing beyond tracing outlines of flowers. Gwen would get no help from her. Gus, who could help, was now away
at
school, and her mother was dead. She imagined that the grave her mother lay in was a kind of earth-cave, but it would be alive with insects and worms weaving their way through the heaving soil. Her head was spinning, thinking of it, and she had to stop. Drawing Winifred settled her dizziness. Winifred wearing a hat, or Winifred with a ribbon in her hair, or herself, looking straight into the mirror.

It was disturbing, staring at herself, but she grew used to it. After a while, she saw a person who was not familiar but a stranger and then she could begin to draw. This person in front of her had such a cold, haughty look, as though proud of herself but unlikely to say why. She was not pretty. Her face was too flat, none of its features had any charm. The lips were thin, the chin receded, the eyebrows were too marked. The expression in the eyes bothered her and would not translate to paper. Only the clothes were easy. She liked clothes. She and Winifred had very few and none that were fashionable but with no mother and no aunts in the house they were allowed to choose material and instruct the dressmaker themselves. They spent hours hunting for fabrics beautiful to the touch but serviceable, knowing that the dresses must last a long time. They liked subtle colours, dark reds, deep greens, nothing too light or bright. Their mother’s clothes had mysteriously disappeared but they had her jewellery and wore her brooches and some of her necklaces and bracelets and cameos. When they were older, they would try the earrings, especially the pearls.

They had special skirts made for cycling, in black worsted material, but the waists had white ribbons sewn into them which streamed behind as they pedalled. They had jackets made with tight sleeves, and cut into the waist so that the wind would not ride up them. Clothes were a comfort. Clothes were something they had control over and they could make their own even if they could not dress like the Gypsies. Their dressmaker said they had good figures. Even though they had yet to fill out, she commented, rather impertinently, that for their age (Gwen fifteen, Winifred twelve) they were developing nicely. Gwen was pleased,
though
she did not show it. Her body was easier to look at in the mirror than her face. Having no eyes, her body did not challenge her. She could look at it and try to draw it and not feel irritated. Breasts were interesting to draw. Hers were not large, or not yet, but she liked their shape, round and high with brown nipples, pert and almost sharp. Pubic hair was difficult. She had seen Gwenda’s bush, when they had changed together on the beach at Broad Haven, and it had made her draw in her breath and want to touch the auburn fuzz, so springy-looking and plentiful, and spreading high and wide on Gwenda’s lower belly. Touching her own was disappointing. It was dark and sparse and she would rather it had not grown at all.