The Earth Hums in B Flat (12 page)

‘You're lucky,' she says. ‘I think they'll do.'

In the firelight Mam's face looks as if it's breaking apart like my poster. Little cracks have opened up in the face powder below her eyes and at the corners of her mouth. She pushes the hot baking tray into my hands. ‘Pick off any cat hairs,' she says, ‘and I'll make some icing to put on them. No one will know.' She heaves herself up from the floor. ‘And don't you dare tell anyone,' she says.

14

I skip along the road beside Mam.

‘Walk properly,' she says. ‘You're making me feel wobbly.'

Mam holds the tin with the cakes in front of her with both hands, pulling it tight to her stomach. I had to spoon the icing on the cakes because her hands were too shaky, and then she found some cherries left over from Christmas in the larder and I cut them up so there were enough to put a little red blob on top of the icing right in the middle of each cake.

‘Who's making the sandwiches tonight, Mam?' I say.

‘Mrs Edwards the Bank,' says Mam.

‘Good. I like her egg ones.' I begin to skip again. Mrs Edwards the Bank cuts the bread thin like Nain does and puts plenty of egg on the slices.

‘You're not going to eat everything in sight again, are you?' says Mam. ‘People will think I don't feed you. You can't be very hungry; you didn't eat much lobscouse for your supper. And stop skipping. Why don't you listen sometimes, Gwenni? I may as well talk to the man in the moon.'

I stop skipping. Mam knows that I don't like lobscouse. All those bits of grey meat and white bone and potato and carrot in watery stock with globules of grease floating on top. It reminds me of washing-up water and I can't eat any of it.

‘Now you're dawdling,' says Mam. ‘Come on, hurry up.'

We turn up the path through the cemetery to the vestry. The vestry lights are dim. To save money, Mrs Davies Chapel House uses bulbs that don't give much light. So she can buy more and more silk stockings, Alwenna says. But I don't want to think about Alwenna.

Several people are standing in the vestry's little kitchen. There's a clatter of crockery and talk and a loud hum from the boiler as it heats the water for the tea. I listen to the hum but it's not the same note as the hum I hear in the sky. I can't see Mrs Edwards the Bank or her egg sandwiches.

‘Here come some cakes,' says Mrs Sergeant Jones. She takes the tin from Mam and pulls off the lid. She hands the tin back to me. ‘Here, Gwenni, put them on that plate there, and put a doily on the plate first, mind.'

There's already a plate of cakes on the table. Someone else has made cakes like Mam's and put a whole half-cherry on the icing. I look at Mam and she sniffs and says in a whisper, ‘Those will be from Mrs Twm Edwards. She can afford half-cherries.'

Mam's cakes would look better if they had no cherries at all on them. There's also a plate of Mrs Sergeant Jones's famous vanilla biscuits. I can smell the vanilla from here.

‘I don't suppose we can expect Elin Evans this evening,' says Mrs Jones the Butcher. ‘I haven't seen her once in the shop since Ifan went. She used to come in every day after school.'

‘There's more to Ifan's disappearance than meets the eye,' says Mrs Morris. ‘You know my cousin Morwenna from Cricieth? Well, she knows of Elin's family there. Rather a posh family but all dead now, apart from the sister of course. Anyway, Morwenna heard that . . .'

But I don't hear what Morwenna heard because Mrs Sergeant Jones coughs loudly all over Mam's cakes and nods at me and says, ‘Why don't you take your mam's lovely cakes into the Meeting Room, Gwenni. There's a fire in there to sit by.' And she hands me the plate of cakes and takes hold of me by the shoulders, steers me into the room next door and closes the door on me. I place Mam's cakes on the white-clothed trestle table. I think I'll have one of Mrs Twm Edwards's cakes instead of Mam's. And a piece of Mrs Thomas next door's big chocolate cake that's here on the table. She always bakes a big chocolate cake when it's her turn. The women on the benches near the fire are too busy talking and knitting and sewing to take any notice of me, so I stay by the door.

‘Little pitchers have big ears,' says someone behind the door.

‘What was she up to this morning, Magda?' My stomach flutters as I hear Mrs Thomas next door's voice. ‘She came to my door with an old photograph of Ifan – I didn't recognise him – and she wanted to know if I'd seen him since he disappeared. Perhaps she thought I was hiding him in the garret.'

Everyone laughs. Mam will be cross with me all over again.

‘She's a character all right, your Gwenni,' says Mrs Morris. ‘Now, who's going to take this tray through?'

I rush to a seat in front of the fire, far from the door, where my legs roast instantly and my back is still cold.

‘You'll all have mottled legs, sitting that close to the fire,' says Mrs Davies Chapel House as she walks in with the tray of crockery. ‘Come back here and lay out the cups and saucers, Gwenni.'

I put out all the saucers in a row on the trestle table and then start to plonk a cup on each one. The egg sandwiches still haven't arrived. My stomach is hollow with hunger. Mam's cakes look small and a bit grubby. I think I got all the bits off. Mam'll be cross with me if anyone finds some of John Morris's hairs on them.

I watch Mam when she comes through into the Meeting Room behind Mrs Davies Chapel House with her big pot of tea, but she doesn't look at her cakes.

‘We were just talking about Elin,' says Mrs Owen the Milk to Mam and Mrs Davies Chapel House.

‘Shocking the way that Ifan's behaved,' says Nellie Davies, clicking her knitting needles faster and faster. She leans forward to whisper, ‘Miss Owen Penllech was just saying that he beat her.'

‘And those little children,' says Miss Owen Penllech and stabs herself with her embroidery needle and bleeds into the yellow flowers she's embroidering so that they turn orange. ‘You know what happened there.'

‘I don't believe it,' says Mam. ‘I don't. It's just nasty gossip.' The pile of plates in her hands rattles and her face has turned pink.

‘What about that little grave out there, then?' says Miss Owen Penllech and sucks a drop of blood still welling on her finger.

Ifan Evans beat Mrs Evans and the girls? And what little grave? I try to put the cups on the saucers without making so much noise.

‘You'll know all about what happened there,' says Miss Owen Penllech to Mrs Dr Edwards. ‘Wasn't Dr Edwards called in?'

‘He was,' says Mrs Dr Edwards. ‘But . . . you know . . . I'm not privy to medical matters. What goes on between Rhys and his patients is completely confidential.'

There is a flurry of movement behind me, and Mrs Edwards the Bank comes through the door with a large square tin covered in red roses clutched to her bosom and a scent of roses blossoming from her. ‘Sorry I'm late, ladies,' she says, with a little gasp in her voice. ‘Oh dear, I don't like walking through that cemetery on my own, day or night. I have to stand there plucking up the courage to do it. I really do think the Roman Catholics are very lucky to be able to cross themselves, to arm themselves, so to speak, before they go into danger.'

Everyone stops knitting and sewing and looks at Mrs Edwards the Bank. Everyone in our town goes to a chapel, except for the posh people who go to church. I take the rose-covered tin from Mrs Edwards. ‘What sandwiches are they, Mrs Edwards?' I ask.

‘Egg, Gwenni,' she says.

Someone groans as I open the tin and the smell of the egg spreads over us like a tablecloth. But Mrs Edwards the Bank's egg sandwiches have egg right up to the edges and cress and something that tastes like salad cream but is nicer. And they never have bits of eggshell in them, or black crusts on the bread.

Everybody starts to talk and I begin to put the sandwiches on a plate so that I can hand them round. And now the room goes quiet again and I turn to the door and come eye to wide-open eye with Mrs Llywelyn Pugh's poor dead fox. I step back and Mrs Llywelyn Pugh walks past right to the front by the fire and Miss Owen Penllech and Nellie Davies move aside to make room for her. She sits there, nearest the fire, and her dead fox drapes itself sadly around her shoulders. Her legs will be more mottled than anyone else's.

‘Gwenni. Pay attention.' Mam pushes the pile of plates into my hands. ‘Take these and give one each to everyone. And collect their sixpences at the same time and put them in the tin.' She puts an old tobacco tin on top of the plates. ‘And remember Mrs Llywelyn Pugh doesn't have to pay.'

‘But she's richer than anyone else,' I say.

‘Be quiet and do as you're told,' says Mam.

‘I haven't got sixpence,' I say. ‘Does that mean I can't have any food?' My stomach grumbles; I expect everyone can hear it.

‘Don't be silly,' says Mam. ‘I've put a shilling in for both of us.' She picks up the tin and rattles and rattles and rattles it under my nose.

‘Magda,' says Mrs Dr Edwards. ‘Sit by me. Take a deep breath now, dear, deep breath.'

I pass the plates around, and make sure everyone puts sixpence in the tin. I stop next to Mrs Llywelyn Pugh for a moment and look hard at the dead fox but it doesn't blink at me again. It looks utterly dead tonight.

‘Move on, Gwenni,' says Mrs Twm Edwards, who's following me with the plate of sandwiches. I've left some in the tin, which is lucky because they've all disappeared from the plate by the time Mrs Twm Edwards gets to the end of the last row. I sit at the back next to the tin and nibble at the egg sandwiches; I close my eyes and savour the creamy egg and the peppery cress. As we all eat, Mrs Sergeant Jones talks about the arrangements for the charabanc to take everyone to the Singing Festival in Bermo. Maybe Mrs Edwards the Bank will make the sandwiches for us all. I wonder why she's afraid of walking through the cemetery outside the vestry. Maybe she thinks there are spirits there. Nain says spirits can't hurt you. Does that mean spirits that float on water, too? I've never noticed a little grave in the cemetery, so which little grave was Miss Owen Penllech talking about? I know that my grandfather, who died when Tada was young, is there, and my Uncle Carwyn who had the family hair and used to show me how to make eggs disappear behind people's ears just like the conjurer who performed at the Memorial Hall. And Tada's sister who died of a horrible disease when she was a little girl. Probably everyone in this room has someone belonging to them in the cemetery.

It's cold here by the door; Mrs Llywelyn Pugh is taking up all the heat from the fire. She's taken off the dead fox and slung it on the back of the bench where it droops with misery.

I put my hand into the tin with the red roses but it's empty and Mam is glaring at me. Have I been eating everything in sight?

‘It's very good of you, Mrs Llywelyn Pugh, to volunteer to make sandwiches for the Festival,' says Mrs Sergeant Jones. ‘But are you sure it's not too much trouble to make all the sandwiches?'

I know what that means. Sardines and black crusts. Alwenna says they're minced-mouse sandwiches. If a person wears a dead fox around her neck, what is there to stop her putting dead mice in sandwiches?

‘Cakes, Gwenni,' says Mrs Sergeant Jones. ‘Hand the cakes round, please.'

I pick up the plate with Mrs Twm Edwards's cakes and the plate with Mam's cakes and walk round with them. Everyone takes one of the cakes with a whole half-cherry on them until there is no choice left but Mam's cakes. I'm trying so hard not to look at Mam that I knock the dead fox onto the floor as I pass behind Mrs Llywelyn Pugh's bench. Its little dead paws cling to my legs. ‘No,' I squeal and I kick at the fox. Mam glares at me again but everyone else laughs.

‘My father killed that, you know, young lady,' says Mrs Llywelyn Pugh in English, ‘when I wasn't much older than you are now.' The dead fox has been dead longer than I've been alive. Longer than Mam's been alive, even.

‘Was your father a shepherd, like Ifan Evans?' I ask her. There is a long silence. I look at Mam. She has her hand over her mouth and her eyes are closed and no one else is looking at me either.

‘Dear me, no.' Mrs Llywelyn Pugh is still speaking English. ‘We had a large estate. He went hunting on horseback, for pleasure. My sisters and I each had a fox-fur from him. Dear Father.'

I look down at the poor little dead thing. It's small and thin and its fur has worn away in places. Killed for pleasure? Catrin said Ifan Evans liked killing the foxes, too.

‘Pick it up, Gwenni,' says Mam from behind her hand.

‘I can't,' I say. ‘You know I don't like touching dead things.'

‘Don't be silly, Gwenni,' says Mam. ‘That's not a dead thing. I told you, that's a fox-fur. Now pick it up for Mrs Llywelyn Pugh.'

I bend down and scoop up the dead fox with the empty cake plate. It slithers as if it's going to jump off but I throw it at Mrs Llywelyn Pugh and it droops over her shoulder and stares at me with its sad eyes. What is it trying to say to me? Is its spirit still there, imprisoned inside the glass eyes?