A Small Country Read online

  Josi wondered what she meant, but she smiled and drew herself away from him as though unwilling to be questioned.

  He let her go, his thoughts returning to Miriam. It was worse for her than for him. He was in the bosom of his affectionate family and surrounded by old friends; she was alone with strangers. Would anyone comfort and help her when the baby was fretful in the night? She was more sensitive than it was possible to be, happier than anyone else in the world when she was happy, but easily cast down, easily frightened, easily hurt. If only she had been willing to come back to Llanfryn, to old Hetty. ‘I won’t go where you’ll be tempted to visit me,’ she had said, ‘I know that would be worse for you.’ She was brave and wise; all the same he wished she was at Llanfryn with her aunt.

  Lowri came in from the yard and stood before him. She came from the same small hamlet as he did, they were distantly related.

  She didn’t say a word in greeting, just stood there looking at him with a familiar homely tenderness in her eyes. She reminded him of the picture of his mother as a child. He tried to think of something to say to her.

  ‘It’s whinberry tart today,’ she said at last. ‘Sali and I picked a basketful last night.’

  ‘That’s what I came home for,’ Josi said.

  They smiled at each other.

  Tom wrote to Edward telling him that he intended applying for a commission. ‘In a way I’m only escaping from the nightmare situation at home,’ he wrote. ‘Doctor Andrews has arranged for Catrin to be away so that she doesn’t have to see Mother suffering – he says she will soon be much worse – but in fact it is I who would find it intolerable. Catrin is much harder, or much braver, than I am. So I shall go to Monmouth tomorrow and with any luck shall be in France within the month. I persuaded Father to come home, so I shall be leaving the farm in good hands.’

  The next day he received a letter from Edward.

  Patriotism has filled my soul. I feel that nothing can be as worthwhile as a soldier’s life, a soldier’s death. I feel I have met my destiny. I have only one wish; to be leading a platoon in France and to be worthy of my country. You’ll be glad to know that Rose and I were married quietly at the end of last month. Luckily she feels exactly as I do about everything. Please give my kindest regards to your beautiful sister.

  Tom read the letter with awe, feeling ashamed of his far less elevated motives for joining the army.

  ‘Edward sends you his regards,’ he told Catrin over breakfast. ‘He and Rose got married last month. Do you think you could find time to buy them a wedding present?’

  ‘I think so. I’m going into Llanfryn with Doctor Andrews later on. What sort of thing would be suitable?’

  ‘Ask Mother. She’ll know.’

  Catrin went upstairs shivering in the summer heat. Definite news at last, and she was glad of it. Now she would no longer be troubled by improbable dreams that he might still be remembering her from time to time. He was married. She had certain knowledge of it. Pain struck like a knife between her eyes.

  She stood before the window of her bedroom and let the pain seep into her, nerve by nerve, cell by cell. She walked over to the mirror above her dressing-table to examine the pain. To her surprise it hadn’t altered her appearance, the devastation was only inward. How could her silly face look so composed still? It seemed wrong.

  She picked up her heavy silver hairbrush and struck the mirror, and for a second, while it cracked and splintered, she saw herself smashing into fragments. She screamed in terror, and when Nano rushed into the room she was just in time to save her from collapsing on to the floor.

  ‘Whatever is it? Whatever is the matter? What have you done, you naughty girl?’

  She dragged Catrin to the bed and managed to lift her on to it.

  ‘Seven years’ bad luck you’ve brought us. How did you manage it, you naughty girl? Thing are bad enough here as it is. What have you done?’

  When Doctor Andrews arrived, Miss Rees took him first into Catrin’s room. She was thoroughly alarmed at the way she was lying on the bed absolutely still.

  ‘Now what is it?’ the doctor asked the girl after dismissing Miss Rees. Her pulse was normal. She was breathing evenly.

  ‘I haven’t much time. Tell me what it is. Have you changed your mind about leaving home?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then what is it? You can’t just lie here all the morning like Sleeping Beauty. I thought you were coming into Llanfryn with me. What is it?’

  He took her hand to pull her into a sitting position, and to his surprise she squeezed his hand and looked at him piteously, her eyes brimming over with tears.

  He pulled his hand away. ‘I must go to your mother. I’ll expect you in the car in ten minutes.’

  He strode in to Mrs Evans’s room. Could the girl be in love with him? Was she trying to draw attention to herself? Angling for him? The possibility swam in his head like whisky on an empty stomach.

  ‘Mrs Evans,’ he said as he entered the room, abrupt in his excitement, ‘may I have your permission to ask your daughter to marry me?’

  He hadn’t meant to say it, had resolved against it time after time, but the pressure on his hand, that look of hers had confounded him.

  ‘Indeed you may,’ Rachel Evans said, looking very happy. ‘Indeed you may. And I shall hope for your success.’

  While he examined Mrs Evans, Miss Rees, who had been in the adjoining dressing-room hurried downstairs to find Tom.

  ‘Mr Tom,’ she said. ‘I think you had a letter from Mr Turncliffe this morning.’

  ‘Yes I did, Nano.’

  ‘Will you be writing back to him today?’

  ‘I wrote to him yesterday – our letters crossed – but I’ll be writing again in a day or two, I think.’

  ‘Tell him that Miss Rees has got some very special news for him and that she hopes he’ll come back very quickly to hear it.’

  ‘He won’t be coming back this summer I’m afraid, Nano.’

  ‘Won’t he? Are you sure?’

  ‘Quite sure. Would you like to write to him yourself? I can give you his address. He’d like to hear from you.’

  ‘No, I won’t write to him. Perhaps you can give him a message from me. Tell him that the doctor is going to beat him to it unless he gets in touch with us very soon.’

  ‘Unless he gets in touch with us very soon? What can that mean? I don’t think he’ll make head nor tail of that message, Nano.’

  ‘Oh yes he will. You just tell him what I said; he’ll make head or tail of it, indeed he will.’

  ‘The doctor is going to beat him to it if he...’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Could this be something to do with Catrin?’

  ‘It could. Yes, it could be something to do with Miss Catrin.’

  ‘Oh Nano, you’ve got quite the wrong idea. Mr Turncliffe got married last month, he was never interested in Catrin except as my sister.’

  ‘Does Miss Catrin know that he got married last month?’

  ‘Yes. I told her this morning. She’s promised to buy him a...’

  But Miss Rees had left him and in no time at all was with Catrin again, cradling her in her arms, calling her a white flower, a treasure, a skein of silk, her golden one.

  FIFTEEN

  Doctor Andrews called at Hendre Ddu that evening after supper and found an opportunity of speaking alone with Catrin. By this time his ardour had cooled a little and he felt rather grateful to her for turning him down. Her manner was so gentle; she seemed so pleased and flattered by his offer, and gave such excellent reasons for refusing it, that he left caring for her more deeply than when he arrived. Instead of injuring his self-esteem, she had managed to bolster it, seeming to suggest, though without saying so, that if he were to ask her again some time in the future, she might have changed her mind. He made her promise to write to him.

  She left home at the end of the week as planned and was immediately plunged into the harsh realities of a nurse’s life. From b
eing a cosseted young lady, working when she felt like it, but more often pleasantly idle, she was for twelve hours a day at everyone’s beck and call, given the meanest and dreariest tasks and forever told to look sharp about them. Everything was strange, the clanging noise and the cold, frightening smells of the wards, the food, dismal and inadequate, the cell-like room she shared with two other girls. For the first month, every muscle of her body ached, her eyes were red-rimmed and dull from the long hours, her feet so swollen that she couldn’t lace her heavy shoes. A probationer nurse, it seemed to her, worked as hard as any man at the harvest, as hard as a horse hauling timber, as hard as the wife of a smallholding whose labours were endless and proverbial. She was too exhausted to think about Edward except in the few moments it took her to drop off to sleep every night. She was far less miserable than she had been at home. She didn’t for a moment regret her decision to leave; she was certain that she had found her vocation.

  At the end of the month, the Matron told her that she was pleased with her progress, that she had already – in practical nursing – caught up with the other probationers who had been at the Infirmary since May, and that she would now be given an easier duty rota, so that she could find time to study for the preliminary examination which was being held in three weeks’ time.

  ‘If you pass the prelim, you can ask for a transfer to a military hospital,’ one of her colleagues whispered to her over the sluices one morning. ‘They’re crying out for nurses for the soldiers coming back from France. It can’t be worse than this and it might be better.’

  ‘My brother’s in the army,’ Catrin had whispered back. ‘All the same, I think I’ll finish my training.’

  Within a fortnight of the outbreak of war, Tom had succeeded in obtaining a commission. Kitchener, who had been made Secretary of War, was determined to raise, train and equip new armies of unprecedented size almost overnight, and the newspapers, lashing up a frenzy of patriotism by the tales of atrocities perpetrated on the innocent Belgians, ensured that there was no shortage of volunteers. Indeed they flowed in at a rate which put a heavy strain on the machinery for accommodating and training them. Tom spent a hectic but enjoyable six weeks, teaching the newest recruits to march and handle a rifle. It was an out-door life with plenty of congenial company and high spirits. Morale was high; everyone seeming eager to get out to France before it was all over. The newspapers published only favourable news, and though there were rumours in the officers’ mess of retreats and set-backs and long casualty lists, it was considered bad form to discuss them.

  After six weeks Tom was given leave. He didn’t look forward to going home. During his weeks with the army he had managed to push his mother’s illness to the back of his mind; he was both reluctant to have to face it again and ashamed of his reluctance.

  It was a Sunday evening when he arrived home. The harvest had been gathered in and the men and maids were at evening service.

  Only Miss Rees came to the door to welcome him, and she without any of her usual vivacity, her face old and unsmiling.

  ‘Is Mother worse?’ he asked her.

  ‘Much worse.’

  ‘She, who was usually so stubbornly optimistic about everything, seemed to have learned resignation.

  ‘Much worse. Don’t go up to her till you’ve had a bite to eat. You’ll be very upset. You father is up with her now. He’s very good, sits with her for hours; as soon as he gets in from the fields at night.’

  ‘Do you think we should get Catrin home?’

  ‘No, not yet. It’s not necessary. Lowri is doing the night nursing and she’s a good quiet girl, she doesn’t agitate your poor mother. I think your poor mother would be agitated to have a proper nurse, though we may have to have one soon, we leave it to Doctor Andrews. It’s to be as he says. He’s like an angel from heaven and may God forgive me for thinking him not good enough for Miss Catrin. My dearest wish now is to see them married. I tell Mrs Evans, “Mrs Evans bach, Miss Catrin is going to have the best husband any girl ever had and better, and she deserves it too, little silk, for who is she but the best, and the daughter of the best woman ever trod the earth”.’

  Miss Rees talked on as she cut bread and butter and carved meat and prepared a salad. Her words were as fluent as ever but their tone was different. Previously there was always a perilously high note in her voice, it was only a breath away from laughter, now it was flat and joyless.

  Tom ate his supper, his first proper meal for twenty-four hours, watched over by the old woman.

  ‘You’ve put on weight, my boy. Your poor mother will be happy to see you looking so well.’

  ‘I’ve put on a stone in six weeks.’

  ‘It’s a grand life, then, is it?’

  ‘It’s a healthy life, I suppose. I’m out of doors all day. The food’s not marvellous but there’s plenty of it.’

  ‘Have you come across Jim Brynteg yet?’

  ‘No, I haven’t. Is he with the Monmouthshire Regiment?’

  ‘He’s with the army, anyhow, and I told his mother you’d look out for him. She’s very worried about him, because as you know poor Jim was never very....’ Miss Rees tapped her forehead.

  ‘Several boys have gone from these parts, and more will go now that the harvest is in. I don’t know who will run the farms, I’m sure. There’s no guarantee that they’ll be home for the ploughing, is there?’

  ‘No indeed, no guarantee.’

  ‘But Christmas you said, Mr Tom.’

  ‘Christmas nineteen-eighteen perhaps, Christmas nineteen-twenty.’

  ‘Don’t let’s have any of that gloom in front of your poor mother, now.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘I’ve told her you’ll be home for the ploughing, if not before.’

  Tom had finished his meal and was wondering if he could smoke for five minutes before going upstairs to his mother. He brought out his pipe and pouch of tobacco and laid them on the table in front of him. In a low, expressionless voice he started to recite:

  I heard the crane cry unto men his greeting,

  To tell them it was time to drive the plough,

  Ah, friend, he set my sorry heart a-beating

  For others have my fertile acres now.

  There was a moment’s silence.

  ‘That’s a very sad verse, Mr Tom. Who wrote that sad verse, I’d like to know?’

  ‘A Greek poet, Nano, two or three thousand years ago.’

  ‘Dear, dear. I thought that crane didn’t sound like one of our birds, somehow, unless it was a crehydd; he’s a grave old bird indeed. Well, there’s no need for us to concern ourselves with those old Greeks, is there. And no one shall have your fertile acres, I can tell you that. Not while Miss Rees has any breath in her body.’

  Nano’s majestic chest rose and fell behind her starched white apron. Tom wondered whether he would ever see her again. He put down his pipe, still unlit.

  ‘I’ve got something to show you, Nano.’

  He pulled out a white envelope from the inside pocket of his army tunic. He passed her the photograph it held.

  Miss Rees took it over to the lamp.

  ‘Very nice,’ she said at last. ‘A very nice, pretty young lady. Who is she, Mr Tom?’

  ‘Her name is May Malcolm. She’s the step-daughter of my colonel. We’ve only met twice or three times but she’s promised to write to me when I go to France. I promised to keep you informed, didn’t I?’

  ‘France is it, Mr Tom?’

  ‘I think so. After I get back on Saturday.’

  Nano’s chest rose and fell again.

  ‘Go up to see your poor mother now,’ she said. ‘Show her the photograph.’

  Tom pushed his pipe back into his pocket and got to his feet.

  ‘Is she church or chapel, say?’ Miss Rees asked, as he reached the door.

  ‘Heavens above, she’s only promised to write to me, Nano.’

  ‘A lot can happen in letters, remember. Perhaps she would be kind enough to send
a few lines to your poor mother too. It would give her something to think about. A step-daughter of a colonel would be something to think about, wouldn’t it. What is a colonel exactly? Very important, I know. Something like a Lord Lieutenant, I suppose. A wife changes with her husband anyway, so it doesn’t matter too much. All the same, it would be nice if she was chapel.’

  Tom was glad that Nano had warned him of his mother’s condition. As it was, his heart seemed to contract with pity as he looked at her; she was wasted to a shadow. Looking at her face, he could see the skull beneath the skin. Your poor mother. He heard Nano’s voice.

  Her eyes lit up, though, to see him, and she grasped his hand with great strength. He forced himself to smile at her.

  ‘How handsome you are, Tom,’ she said. ‘It’s the first time I’ve seen you like your father. You’ve quite grown up.’

  She turned her head towards Josi who was sitting by the window, as far as possible, perhaps, from the heat of the fire. He nodded at his son but didn’t get up to greet him. ‘Pity me, too,’ he seemed to be saying. To Tom’s dismay, tears started up in his eyes.

  His mother, noticing, tried to make conversation. ‘Tell us how they’re treating you,’ she said.

  So he sat at her side and talked. He forced himself to talk. He told her about some of his brother-officers, about some of the men, tough young miners, many of them, with an original attitude to army regulations. He told her something about his colonel, intending to lead up to the pretty step-daughter, but by this time it was clear that she was too tired to listen to any more. ‘Sleep now,’ he said quietly, releasing his hand from hers; and she closed her eyes obediently and slept.

  ‘I’ll come down for a while,’ Josi said. ‘Nano shall come up for an hour or so.’

  The two men left the room together, both on tip-toe.

  ‘It’s a mercy that they let you come home,’ Josi said as they reached the sitting-room. ‘Doctor Andrews is putting her on stronger drugs soon; he’s warned us that she may not recognize us much after that. He doesn’t think she’ll last much longer now. She’s in terrible pain from time to time, too much to bear, it seems, but she bears it. How long can you stay here?’