The Owl Service (2 page)

“Lovely day for a swim,” said Huw.

“Yes,” said Roger. “Perfect.”

“Lovely.”

“Yes.”

“You were swimming?” said Huw.

“That's why I'm wearing trunks,” said Roger.

“It is a lovely day for that,” said Huw. “Swimming.”

“Yes.”

“In the water,” said Huw.

“I've got to get changed,” said Roger.

“I'll come with you,” said Gwyn. “I want to have a talk.”

“That man's gaga,” said Roger when they were out of hearing. “He's so far gone he's coming back.”

They sat on the terrace. It was shaded by its own steepness, and below them the river shone through the trees. “Hurry up then,” said Roger. “I'm cold.”

“Something happened just now,” said Gwyn. “There was scratching in the loft over Alison's bedroom.”

“Mice,” said Roger.

“That's what I said. But when I knocked to scare them away – they knocked back.”

“Get off!”

“They did. So I went up to have a look. There's a pile of dirty plates up there: must be worth pounds.”

“Oh? That's interesting. Have you brought them down?”

“One. Alison's cleaning it. But what about the scratching?”

“Could be anything. These plates, though: what are they like? Why were they up there?”

“I couldn't see much. I asked Huw about them.”

“Well?”

“He said, ‘Mind how you are looking at her.'”

“Who? Ali? What's she got to do with it?”

“Not Alison. I don't know who he meant. When I told him I'd found the plates he stopped raking for a moment and said that: ‘Mind how you are looking at her.'Then you came.”

“I tell you, the man's off his head. – Why's he called Halfbacon, anyway?”

“It's the Welsh: Huw Hannerhob,” said Gwyn. “Huw Halfbacon: Huw the Flitch: he's called both.”

“It suits him.”

“It's a nickname,” said Gwyn.

“What's his real name?”

“I don't think he knows. Roger? There's one more thing. I don't want you to laugh.”

“OK.”

“Well, when I picked up the top plate, I came over all queer. A sort of tingling in my hands, and everything went muzzy – you know how at the pictures it sometimes goes out of focus on the screen and then comes back? It was like that: only when I could see straight again, it was different somehow. Something had changed.”

“Like when you're watching a person who's asleep, and they wake up,” said Roger. “They don't move, nothing happens, but you know they're awake.”

“That's it!” said Gwyn. “That's it! Exactly! Better than what I was trying to say! By, you're a quick one, aren't you?”

“Can you tell me anything about a rock with a hole through it down by the river?” said Roger.

“A big slab?” said Gwyn.

“Yes, just in the meadow.”

“It'll be the Stone of Gronw, but I don't know why. Ask Huw. He's worked at the house all his life.”

“No thanks. He'd give me the London Stockmarket Closing Report.”

“What do you want to know for, anyway?” said Gwyn.

“I was sunbathing there,” said Roger. “Are you coming to see how Ali's managed with your plate?”

“In a sec,” said Gwyn. “I got to drop these in the kitchen for Mam. I'll see you there.”

Roger changed quickly and went up to Alison. His bedroom was immediately below hers, on the first floor.

She was bending over a plate which she had balanced on her knees. The plate was covered with a sheet of paper and she was drawing something with a pencil.

“What's this Gwyn says you've found?” said Roger.

“I've nearly finished,” said Alison. She kept moving the paper as she drew. “There! What do you think of that?” She was flushed.

Roger took the plate and turned it over. “No maker's mark,” he said. “Pity. I thought it might have been a real find. It's ordinary stuff: thick: not worth much.”

“Thick yourself! Look at the pattern!”

“Yes.– Well?”

“Don't you see what it is?”

“An abstract design in green round the edge, touched up with a bit of rough gilding.”

“Roger! You're being stupid on purpose! Look at that part. It's an owl's head.”

“—Yes? I suppose it is, if you want it to be. Three leafy heads with this kind of abstract flowery business in between each one. Yes: I suppose so.”

“It's not abstract,” said Alison. “That's the body. If you take the design off the plate and fit it together it makes a complete owl. See. I've traced the two parts of the design, and all you do is turn the head right round till it's the other way up, and then join it to the top of the main pattern where it follows the rim of the plate. There you are. It's an owl – head, wings and all.”

“So it's an owl,” said Roger. “An owl that's been sat on.”

“You wait,” said Alison, and she began to cut round the design with a pair of scissors. When she had finished she pressed the head forward, bent and tucked in the splayed legs, curled the feet and perched the owl on the edge of her candlestick.

Roger laughed. “Yes! It is! An owl!”

It was an owl: a stylised, floral owl. The bending of its legs had curved the back, giving the body the rigid set of an owl. It glared from under heavy brows.

“No, that's really good,” said Roger. “How did you think it all out – the tracing, and how to fold it?”

“I saw it as soon as I'd washed the plate,” said Alison. “It was obvious.”

“It was?” said Roger. “I'd never have thought of it. I like him.”

“Her,” said Alison.

“You can tell? OK. Her. I like her.” He tapped the owl's head with the pencil, making the body rock on its perch. “Hello there!”

“Don't do that,” said Alison.

“What?”

“Don't touch her.”

“Are you all right?”

“Give me the pencil. I must make some more,” said Alison.

“I put the lettuce by the sink,” Gwyn called. “I'm going to see Alison.”

“You wait, boy,” said his mother. “Them lettuce need washing. I only got one pair of hands.”

Gwyn slashed the roots into the pig bucket and ran water in the sink. His mother came through from the larder. She was gathering herself to make bread. Gwyn tore the leaves off the lettuce and flounced them into the water. Neither of them spoke for a long time.

“I told you be sharp with them lettuce,” said his mother. “You been back to Aber for them?”

“I was talking,” said Gwyn.

“Oh?”

“To Roger.”

“You was talking to Halfbacon,” said his mother. “I got eyes.”

“Well?”

“I told you have nothing to do with him, didn't I?”

“I only stopped for a second.”

“You keep away from that old fool, you hear me? I'm telling you, boy!”

“He's not all that old,” said Gwyn.

“Don't come that with me,” said his mother. “You want a back hander? You can have it.”

“There's slugs in this lettuce,” said Gwyn.

“You was speaking Welsh, too.”

“Huw doesn't manage English very clever. He can't say what he means.”

“You know I won't have you speaking Welsh. I've not struggled all these years in Aber to have you talk like a labourer. I could have stayed in the valley if I'd wanted that.”

“But Mam, I got to practise! It's exams next year.”

“If I'd known you was going to be filled with that squit you'd never have gone the Grammar.”

“Yes, Mam. You keep saying.”

“What was you talking about, then?”

“I was only asking Huw if he could tell me why those plates were in the roof above Alison's room.”

The silence made Gwyn look round. His mother was leaning against the baking board, one hand pressed to her thin side.

“You not been up in that roof, boy.”

“Yes. Alison was – a bit bothered, so I went up, and found these plates. I didn't touch – only one. She's cleaning it.”

“That Alison!” said Gwyn's mother, and made for the stairs, scraping her floury arms down her apron. Gwyn followed.

They heard Alison and Roger laughing. Gwyn's mother knocked at the bedroom door, and went in.

Alison and Roger were playing with three flimsy cut out paper models of birds. One was on the candlestick and the other two were side by side on a chair back. The plate Gwyn had brought from the loft was next to Alison's pillows and covered with scraps of paper. Alison pushed the plate behind her when Gwyn's mother came in.

“Now, Miss Alison, what's this about plates?”

“Plates, Nancy?”

“If you please.”

“What plates, Nancy?”

“You know what I mean, Miss Alison. Them plates from the loft.”

“What about them?”

“Where are they?”

“There's only one, Mam,” said Gwyn.

“Gwyn!” said Alison.

“I'll trouble you to give me that plate, Miss.”

“Why?”

“You had no right to go up there.”

“I didn't go.”

“Nor to send my boy up, neither.”

“I didn't send him.”

“Excuse me,” said Roger. “I've things to do.” He ducked out of the room.

“I'll thank you not to waste my time, Miss Alison. Please to give me that plate.”

“Nancy, you're hissing like an old goose.”

“Please to give me that plate, Miss Alison.”

“Whose house is this, anyway?” said Alison.

Gwyn's mother drew herself up. She went over to the bed and held out her hand. “If you please. I seen where you put it under your pillow.”

Alison sat stiffly in the bed. Gwyn thought that she was going to order his mother from the room. But she reached behind her and pulled out the plate, and threw it on the bed. Gwyn's mother took it. It was a plain white plate, without decoration.

“Very well, Miss Alison. Ve-ry well!”

Nancy went from the room with the plate in her hand. Gwyn stood at the door and gave a silent whistle.

“You ever played Find the Lady, have you?” he said. “‘Now you see it, now you don't.' Who taught you that one, girlie?”

“Y
ou've caused a right barny,” said Roger. “Nancy's been throwing her apron over her head and threatening I don't know what, your mother's had a fit of the vapours, and now Nancy's on her dignity. She's given my Dad her notice three times already.”

“Why doesn't he accept it?” said Alison.

“You should know Dad by now,” said Roger. “Anything for a quiet life: that's why he never gets one. But you'd a nerve, working that switch on her. Pity she knew the plates were decorated. How did you manage it?”

“I didn't,” said Alison.

“Come off it.”

“I didn't. That was the plate I traced the owls from.”

“But Gwyn says you gave Nancy an ordinary white one.”

“The pattern disappeared.”

Roger began to laugh, then stopped.

“You're serious, aren't you?”

Alison nodded.

“Ali, it's not possible,” said Roger. “The plate was glazed: the pattern was under the glaze. It couldn't rub off.”

“But it did,” said Alison.

“But it couldn't, little stepsister. I'll show you.”

Roger climbed the ladder and opened the trap door.

“It's too dark. Where's your torch?”

“Here,” said Alison. “Can you see the plates? They're in a corner over to your left.”

“Yes. I'll bring a couple to prove they're all the same.”

“Bring more. As many as you can. Let's have them. Hand them down to me.”

“Better not,” said Roger: “after the tizz. But I don't think these'll be missed.”

“Mind the joists,” said Alison. “Gwyn nearly fell through the ceiling there. It was queer.”

“I bet it was!”

“No. Really queer. He slipped when he touched the plate, and he went all shadowy. Just for a second it didn't look like Gwyn.”

“It's the darkest part of the loft,” said Roger.

They washed the plates and took them to the window. Roger scrubbed the glaze with a nailbrush. “The glaze is shot,” he said. He picked at it with his fingernail. “It comes off easily.”

“All right,” said Alison. “I want to trace these owls before the light goes. I'm making them properly this time, out of stiff paper.”

“Not more!” said Roger. “Why do you want more? Where are the three you did earlier?”

“I couldn't find them.”

“If you're going to start that drawing again, I'm off,” said Roger. “When you've done one you've done them all. Shall I take your supper things down?”

“I've not had supper,” said Alison.

“Hasn't Dad been up with your tray?”

“No.”

Roger grinned. “Your mother sent him to do the stern father act.”

“He's not come.”

“Good old Dad,” said Roger.

Roger went downstairs and out through the kitchen to the back of the house. He listened at the door of a long building that had once been the dairy but was now a billiard-room. He heard the click of ivory.

Roger opened the door. His father was playing snooker by himself in the dusk. A supper tray was on an armchair.

“Hello, Dad,” said Roger.

“Jolly good,” said his father.

“I'll light the lamps for you.”

“No need. I'm only pottering.”

Roger sat on the edge of the chair. His father moved round the table, trundling the balls into the pockets, under the eyes of the falcons and buzzards, otters, foxes, badgers and pine martens that stared from their glass cases on the wall.