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‘What a pity you gave in to Nano’s last wish. Poor lad, you didn’t stand a chance when May came to visit us. She so gracious, so like your dear mother. And you so green, so inexperienced. Anyway, I applaud your determination to make a success of your marriage.’
There was a moment’s silence. ‘Though I can’t honestly say that I regret my failure.’

‘How could you when Mari Elen is one of the results of it? She’s as bright as morning. Only, precocious as she is, she isn’t too sure what being pregnant means.’

‘Don’t speak in riddles, lad. What are you getting at?’

‘I believe Lowri is pregnant, Nhad, am I right? If so, my fondest congratulations.’

He explained about his recent encounter with Mari Elen in the orchard. For a moment Josi smiled, then grew serious again.

‘We’re afraid to say anything, lad, because the poor love has had several miscarriages during these last few years. I insisted that she told Graham last time and he examined her to see if everything was all right, so I suppose Catrin knows about it. I’ve got a feeling, though, that the first stage this time has lasted a little longer than usual. But I don’t intend to make a family announcement until Graham gives us the nod.’

‘How wonderful. I do hope she’s looking after herself. It will give May a bit of a boost too, I think. She’s so anxious to have a baby. And I think having a family of my own might do something for me, too.’

‘I hope so. It kept me relatively steady at least until you’d grown up.’

‘I never asked you, never had the nerve I suppose, how long you’d been with Miriam before she got pregnant.’

‘Why is it suddenly important?’

‘I’m interested that’s all.’

‘Several years all told.’

Tom thought that was all his father was going to say, but after a moment or two he continued. ‘I’d heard that the new Mistress of the village school was a fine musician and when Catrin was in the grammar school I went there to ask her whether she’d coach her for the Saint David’s Day Eisteddfod at the Grammar School.’

‘And that’s when it started.’

Josi, tangled in his memories, again failed to answer, looking about him as though trying to remember. ‘No. No, not then. She’d have nothing to do with my suggestion. Sent me away feeling very sorry for myself.’ Another few moments. ‘My, but Nano was furious about it. “Who does she think she is? A chit of a village schoolmistress being so high and mighty.”’

That was as much as Josi was ready to disclose. His eyes were suddenly full of tears and Tom left him to himself.

Love rules us all, Tom thought, but I’ve got to prove I can master it. He went back to May and held some skeins of wool for her to wind into balls. He tried to think of something kind to say but he only managed to tell her how much he liked her new saffron-yellow blouse.

But she had some news for him. ‘Catrin called when you were out. You and I are to be uncle and aunt again it seems.’

‘How splendid. Little Rachel needs a companion.’

‘Yes, she was born on my first visit here. I’m very happy for her and Graham, of course, but very sad about myself.’

‘Of course you are. But Graham was telling me that no one should feel over-anxious for at least the first two years. And May, we’ve barely been married a year and a half.’

‘Yes, but I’m a lot older than Catrin, almost ten years older and I don’t feel at all optimistic.’

‘How about a holiday? Let’s go to stay by the sea in Pembrokeshire, somewhere near St David’s. We’ll spend our days walking along the cliff paths, breathing in the healthy sea air. You’ll have to buy a lot of new clothes and we’ll pretend we’re on our honeymoon.’

‘You’re very kind to me.’

‘Of course I am, I’m your devoted husband.’ He kissed her tenderly and felt better than he had for weeks.

After dinner, Tom sought out his father again. ‘May tells me that Catrin is expecting another child.’

‘Yes, I heard. Poor Graham is very worried apparently, he was frightened to the bone by that depression she had after little Rachel May was born. Catrin could be the same this time again or even worse. He was dead against them having another child. But there you are, even doctors, it seems, can’t stop the flow of life.’

‘If Lowri is pregnant, and indeed this morning she did have that far-away look in her eyes that I’ve noticed before in pregnant women, then Catrin could come to live here for a while so that they could be together. To be with Lowri would be the best tonic in the world for Catrin. I’m afraid she isn’t altogether happy with Graham. He’s a distant sort of fellow isn’t he? Very upright and dutiful and wonderfully good, they say, to the poor in the parish. But there’s something lacking. An inability to relax and be loving. He never laughs, have you ever noticed that? Hardly ever smiles.’

‘We’re a strange family, lad. Catrin married Graham because he was so kind and patient to poor Rachel and happened to be around when she had the news of Edward’s death. I married Rachel, oh, she was nice looking, almost beautiful at times and rather grand, but it was mostly because I wanted to spite her father who was so much against it. You married May simply because, due to a whim of Nano’s, she turned up here, was nice looking and had many good qualities.’

‘Why didn’t you warn me against it?’

‘Would you have thanked me at the time? No, I’m afraid it’s what happens, lad. Neither of us had the courage to wait for true love. But I suppose few marriages are really the union of two ecstatic people. Poor little Lowri married me because she was afraid of being parted from Mari Elen.’

‘And you were the Mishtir. That probably counted. She’d probably always admired you from afar.’

‘But I was also a relative of her mother’s, don’t forget, so I don’t think that sort of admiration went very deep. I was only Josi Ifans, Cefn Hebog to her. And I hadn’t got a very good record where marriage was concerned either. Poor little Lowri. I’ve become very fond of her. Perhaps I’m talking a lot of rubbish, but that’s how it is for me. Lowri’s a stalwart little creature and she often delights me, I’ve become very fond of her. But Miriam, well Miriam left a scent on my life and I still long for her at times.’

‘And what about poor May? She was sent for, wasn’t she, and came to the wilds of Wales simply because she’d had the grace to write weekly letters to me when I was abroad. And suddenly she was promising to marry me.’

‘And I think she was pleased to do so. She’d nursed her sick mother for years, had never, according to what she told me, had much chance to make friends and she was thirty, don’t forget. It sounds ungracious to say this, but I think she jumped at the chance to be mistress of Hendre Ddu.’

‘I wonder what she really thinks of me. All she seems to want is a family. As you say, she never had any friends and she’s delighted to have Lowri and Catrin who both seem to have taken to her.’

‘My father arranged a marriage at one time.’

Tom loved his father’s tales about his father, Jasper Evans, a cheerful, hard-working farmer who seemed to have had a very full and interesting life. ‘It was like this; our next-door neighbour, I say next door though her cottage was over half a mile from Cefn Hebog, her name was Gladys Stanley and she had a tidy little cottage and a field with a cow and some chickens. She was in her late thirties by the time I’m talking about and used to come up to call on us from time to time when she’d made herself nervous about some horrific story in the newspaper she took every weekend. My father told her she should get married to have someone to look after her but she always said, “Oh, it’s too late now’”.

‘Well, one Saturday afternoon he had to call in at Caffreys, the hardware shop in Llanfair, and this very helpful assistant he always went to was dressed in a black suit; his mother had died he said. He told my father he’d lived with her all his life and that he was very lonely. “Get your bike and be ready to come up the hill with me at four o’clock. I’ll introduce you to a very nice woman who might interest you.” To my father’s surprise he accepted the invitation and when they’d pushed their bikes up the hill for three miles, he took the man to Gladys’ cottage, knocked on the door and introduced them. “Here’s Tom Ifor Lewis,” he told her. “He’s lonely because his mother’s just died. If you give him a nice bowl of cawl and make him a pancake afterwards, he’ll probably start calling on you every Saturday night. I’ll be glad of his company and I think you will too.”

‘That’s all he had to say. And the two of them must have hit it off very well because a month or so later they called the banns. My father was always very proud of that. They were a very happy couple it seems.’

‘It’s a good story anyway,’ Tom said.

‘Absolutely true according to my father. I heard it from him many times.’

Tom looked over at his father and smiled. ‘By the way, I’m taking May off for a holiday, suggesting that all the sea air in Pembrokeshire might be the answer to our failure to conceive.’

‘Good luck to you. It’s a good place to paint too, they say. The air has some special quality, though the air around here seems good enough for me. And it may well be a good place to forget what you need to forget.’

‘I’ll never forget Maudie, you’ll never forget Miriam and I’m afraid Catrin will never forget Edward. But it’s better not to drop out of life altogether, isn’t it? It’s wiser to carry on. I intend to carry on.’

‘You’re right, son. It’s been good to talk things over, but we won’t mention any of these things again.’

Within a week or two, Graham had been able to confirm that Lowri was pregnant. Everyone was happy, particularly Catrin. They found out that their babies would be born within a few weeks of each another. Rachel May would be almost two and a half by the time the new baby arrived, Catrin wanted another girl. Mari Elen wanted a girl for them too – or a boy.

Graham agreed that Catrin should spend the last two months of her pregnancy at Hendre Ddu; he too thought it a good idea and of course little Rachel May and Molly the nursemaid would stay as well. Tom was looking forward to it.

He and Catrin had become very close after being so distant as children. Now, their closeness was very important to both of them.

Rachel was a dear little child, plump and very self-contained. She had straight brown hair and big dark eyes, she was pretty enough, but not beautiful like Catrin. She loved to sit on her mother’s knee and look calmly around her at everything going on. She adored Mari Elen, but was a little nervous of her, prefering to watch her than to play with her. She was two and a half by this time and would be very good natured and attentive to any younger brother or sister; jealousy was definitely not going to be a problem for Catrin and Graham.

Mari Elen was tremendously excited to hear of her new brother or sister but very unwilling to wait so long for the birth. Josi wondered if he could ever love a new baby as he loved Mari Elen. He was certainly fond of his grand­daughter, complaining bitterly whenever Graham was too busy to bring them over for their Sunday visit. ‘You only live five miles away and you could be in Canada for all we get to see you,’ he would say.

‘Tada we’ll be there next Sunday I promise you.’

Rachel was fond of him, too, and called him taxi, the nearest she could get to tadcu. Yes he certainly loved little Rachel, but when he thought of his love for Mari Elen, it seemed to swell in his breast and cause him pain.

It was the beginning of September before Tom and May set out for Pembrokeshire. Tom felt homesick as soon as he’d left his home patch, but reminded himself that it wasn’t anything he was doing for himself, but for May. He hadn’t even packed any art material apart from a couple of pencils and a packet of plain postcards, the most he was going to do was some sketching.

The boarding house they stayed at was homely and welcoming, the meals excellent. They walked for almost two hours every morning, May always ready to match her pace to his. They found pretty shells and stones on the sandy beaches and occasionally a delightful café where they stopped for morning coffee and bara brith. They got on well, the weather was kind, the sea sparkling outside their window every morning when they woke. Tom persuaded his wife to sketch with him and found that she was talented and would often manage to find some arresting feature in the landscape which he had missed. He realised that though he had been dreading the time they would have to spend together it was passing very pleasantly. Of course there were many times when his thoughts turned to Maudie and at those times he found it difficult not to show his unhappiness. Still, those moods eventually passed and he felt more at ease with himself than he had for a long time. He was delighted that May seemed happy and seemed to welcome their love-making in the little bedroom where they could hear the sea crashing against the rocks and sometimes feel part of it.

They stayed away for three weeks. Tom had been afraid that they’d get bored with each other, they’d never before been so long on their own, but he found May a very interesting person with definite points of view and a clear mind. He hoped that he, too, lived up to her expectations.

Apart from his occasional times of passionate longing for Maudie, which sometimes seemed a real physical pain, he felt that they’d managed to have a happy holiday.

But unfortunately it wasn’t a successful one. Before they’d been home a fortnight, May discovered that she was not pregnant, a frightful disappointment especially as her sister-in-law and her step-mother-in-law were beginning to show signs of their pregnancy. And though Catrin and Lowri both tried their best not to show how happy they were, there were times when she could hear them talking and giggling in another room, so that she had to rush upstairs to cry in the privacy of her bedroom.