A Small Country Page 18

  ‘I don’t want them.’

  ‘Oh, but you’ll want them later, I’m sure. She was very fond of her books. I’ll keep her clothes if you want me to. I’ll wear them; I’ll be glad to.’

  She lifted the clothes out of the trunk again and put them on the table. Such a small pile they made. ‘You have them,’ Josi said. He knew that in offering to wear them, Mrs Thomas was showing the extent of her respect.

  ‘Mr Davies the minister held a service here, Mr Evans. He couldn’t have been kinder, not if she had been one of his members. “Judge not that ye be not judged.” And a beautiful prayer.’

  Josi shuddered to think how angry that would have made Miriam. But nothing can touch her now, he thought. He turned away from Mrs Thomas. He could hear the sea outside.

  ‘Did anything out of the ordinary happen that day? Anything different? To make her do it, I mean?’

  ‘I’ve asked myself that dozens of times, Mr Evans. Gone over it, minute by minute. It was an ordinary day. Well, no, not entirely. I had a letter from my youngest son that morning, telling me he had enlisted with the army. That upset me a lot because he’s only eighteen and never been strong like the other two. The eldest one is thirteen years older and always been hard on him. I was afraid it was that that had made him join up. She knew I was worried, I suppose, though I didn’t talk about it. Only just told her about the letter; read it to her, perhaps. I can’t remember. Apart from that, nothing unusual happened.’

  (She had decided not to mention Tom’s visit in the evening. If his father wasn’t already aware of it, it would give him something else to worry about; might cause more trouble in a family where there was already too much.)

  ‘She took the baby for a walk in the afternoon, came back, fed her and put her to bed. Then she had some tea and did some sewing for me. That’s all. I left her downstairs reading. She would often stay down after me for ten minutes or so. I used to be cross with her about wasting the paraffin, but that night I didn’t say anything; I was too worried about my son, I think. I just left her. “Good night”, perhaps, nothing more. Next morning I woke and knew, I don’t know how, that something was wrong. Even before the baby began to cry, I knew. And then I saw that her bed hadn’t been slept in and I rushed out and found her shoes on the wall. And then I ran to get the old Captain from Ynys Hir to take his boat out and sent my neighbour’s boy to Llys Howell for the police. I did everything I could, Mr Evans.’

  ‘Yes. Everything you could.’

  ‘That’s all I can tell you. They found her on the Friday, as I told you. And the next day I opened the letter that came for her every week and wrote to the solicitor asking him to get in touch with you.’

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  She wanted to ask how long she would have the baby, whether she would be paid; money was short in the winter, not many people wanting new clothes, but didn’t feel she could. She would write again to the solicitor in a week or two.

  ‘I’m sorry to have troubled you,’ Josi said then, in a flat, empty voice. ‘I had to see you. I’ll go now. Thank you.’

  But when he got to the door, he changed his mind and came back. He stood near her for a moment with his hand on the table; then sat down heavily in the chair as though having no more strength even to stand.

  A little nerve played in his cheek. Apart from that he was perfectly still.

  ‘Did she talk to you about me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nothing at all.’

  Mrs Thomas, though she felt sorry for Josi, now only wanted to get rid of him. She knew he was trying to scratch comfort from somewhere, but she felt too drained of emotion to respond. She hadn’t really responded to anyone since her husband had died sixteen years ago. She was willing to answer questions, to do her duty, but didn’t feel she could do more; he had no right to expect it.

  But he did expect it. He was still waiting.

  ‘I know she loved you,’ she said at last.

  ‘How?’ Josi winced, as though it was pain she had given him, not comfort. ‘How can you know that? If she didn’t talk about me.’

  ‘A hungry person is the one to smell food, Mr Evans.’

  ‘Is that all you can tell me?’

  ‘That’s all. She loved you, I know that.’

  He sat with his head in his hands.

  ‘You’ve got your little girl. Yours and hers. At the moment, I suppose you feel she’s a bit of a problem; a big problem perhaps, but you’ll thank God for her later on. She’s going to look like her mother.’

  Josi sat silent and still for several minutes so that Mrs Thomas wondered whether he could be physically ill. He still had his head in his hands. She wondered if he could be praying.

  At last he got to his feet. ‘I’ll take her with me,’ he said.

  ‘Not tonight?’

  ‘Yes, tonight. I’ve got a motor-car outside.’

  ‘Who’ll look after her?’

  ‘I’ve got a good girl to look after her, don’t worry about that. She’ll be well cared for.’

  ‘What about your wife?’

  ‘It’ll be all right.’

  Mrs Thomas felt both regret and relief; she was fond of the little thing; all the same she had been worried about the time she would keep her from her sewing, worried about making ends meet.

  She went upstairs again and brought down the baby and a bundle of little clothes.

  ‘I’ve wrapped her up well. Are you sure it will be all right for you to take her tonight?’

  ‘Yes, quite sure.’

  She put the baby into his arms.

  ‘She’ll be well looked after,’ Josi said again. Deriving a momentary sense of comfort from the warmth of the sleeping child, he looked up and thanked Mrs Thomas for her care.

  She affected not to hear him.

  ‘Here’s her bottle. She drinks from it nicely now, though I had a lot of trouble last week.’ She was finding difficulty in keeping her voice steady. She wanted them both out of her way.

  The driver seemed surprised to see the baby in Josi’s arms but said nothing, only hurried out to take the bundle of clothes from Mrs Thomas. ‘It’s a stormy old night, isn’t it,’ he said gravely. ‘But I suppose you’re used to it here. Yes indeed.’

  Mrs Thomas and Josi shook hands and parted with no further word.

  Mrs Thomas went back to her little cottage, made the fire safe, and went straight to bed. She lay awake for hours, though, pulling at the bedclothes, turning the pillows. I’m getting soft in my old age, she told herself angrily. What good will this ache in my blood and my bones do anyone?

  Miss Rees and Lowri were still up waiting for Josi.

  ‘Will you go down to see Sali’s mother?’ he asked Lowri. ‘Eben’s waiting outside to take you. Ask her whether she can come up to sit with Mrs Evans tonight. I want you to have the baby.’

  ‘Sali’s mother is here, Mr Evans,’ Miss Rees said. ‘Yes, I sent for her earlier on. She’s upstairs with Mrs Evans now. Well, we were expecting the baby, weren’t we? Where else should she be but here? And now give her to me, do. You’re holding her too tightly. No wonder the little mite is crying. There, there, my little one, there, there. Lowri’s got your milk and your bed all ready for you. There, there.’

  Five days later Rachel Evans died. Tom had already let Catrin know how ill their mother was, so that being sent for, she came prepared for the worst.

  ‘You can’t want her to live any longer. You can’t want her to live in this pain,’ Miss Rees said over and over again to herself, and to everyone else, but all the time praying for a miracle. Catrin and Josi watched silently at the bedside, keeping their thoughts to themselves.

  ‘Mor hyfryd yw y rhai drwy ffydd. Sy’n mynd o blith y byw,’ Miss Rees recited. The old funeral hymn. ‘How happy, they, in steadfast faith. Who leave the world’s unrest. Their names are fragrant in the air. Their slumbers sweetly blessed.’

  Rachel recognized no one in the last days, but those words she seemed to recognize. O
nce or twice they all felt that she seemed to be listening to them with an air of peace, almost of pleasure.

  The funeral occupied and sustained Miss Rees over the next days. The great throng lining the road to the chapel, the four officiating ministers, the chapel crowded to the doors, the hymn-singing, faultless as singing at a festival, the profound silence at the graveside, the extravagant number of wreaths, the five women, all previous maids whom she had trained – and all in decent mourning – serving the traditional cold ham and beef in the house afterwards; all these things were balm to her sore heart. Josi’s cast-iron silence and impassivity at the funeral, and his absence from the house afterwards, also seemed right. Although she felt sorry for him, she couldn’t help feeling that his guilt was a measure of his redemption. (In her innermost heart – although she was ashamed of it, knowing it to be unChristian – a small, nasty voice insisted that Miss Lewis’s suicide was also far from inappropriate.)

  Catrin stayed home for a few days after the funeral, her mind numb with shock. To her the funeral had been almost unbearable; the mockery of grief. She was not yet nineteen and had always idolized her mother.

  ‘How I wish you’d stay home with us now, Miss Catrin. How will we manage without you, and Mr Evans in such a way? What will we do? I’m sure I’m past everything and Lowri’s got her hands full with the baby. Megan could manage her, she’s a good little girl, but Mr Evans says Lowri, so there we are. And Sali’s not up to the dairy work, you know that yourself, let alone the baking. I know Mr Evans will pull himself together soon, for Mr Tom’s sake, but all the time he talks about leaving Hendre Ddu and going back to Cefn Hebog. What good will that do anyone? Lowri’s mother won’t let her go to that out of the way place you can be very sure, and when I tell him so, he says the baby will have to stay here with us and that he’ll come over every day. Five or six miles to ride every day and winter upon us. It will break him, Miss Catrin; perhaps that’s what he wants. But who’ll look after the farm for Mr Tom if his own father doesn’t? What a comfort it would be, Miss Catrin, if you could leave that old hospital and come home. And Doctor Andrews would be so pleased too, and your father, you can be sure, and I can’t help pitying him in spite of everything.’

  ‘I simply can’t, though, Nano. So many nurses are going to the military hospitals; we’re getting terribly short-staffed. When the war is over, I’ll come back, I promise you. And it can’t last much longer. We could force the Germans back now, they say, but they think it’s better to wait for spring, when they can get the New Army out there to finish the job properly. I’ll be back in the spring or the summer, you shall see. I’ll be back when she’s a year old; Mari-Elen. She’s lovely, isn’t she, Nano? What terrible trouble she’s caused and look at her smiling at everyone with her little gums. I was very cruel to her mother, Nano. I saw her in Llanfryn last summer and I was very cruel to her. I didn’t have any right to speak to her as I did.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about that, I’m sure. I know I’d have done the same anyway. Who could help it? I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but she has a lot to answer for. Who knows if your poor mother would have broken like she did if that woman hadn’t taken your father away. I would have had a pretty sharp word with her if I’d have met her, I know that.’

  ‘No, it was wrong of me. Unforgivable. It can’t have been her fault. Father isn’t a child.’

  ‘The woman is always to blame. Always.’

  ‘I can’t see how you can say that, Nano. That seems very unfair.’

  ‘It may be unfair. I think it is unfair. But it’s the truth all the same. A man is always ready to take advantage, a woman must be strong and say no or there’ll be no decency left. That’s how it’s always been and that’s how it always will be. She wasn’t a good woman, that’s the long and the short of it. She shouldn’t ever have come to Rhydfelen by rights. There’s plenty of people will tell you that she taught next to no religion in her school and went to chapel only once in a blue moon. She only got the job because she had studied at home for a BA and what good is that for an elementary schoolmistress, I’d like to know. How much Latin did old Martin Williams know, but he was a wonderful schoolmaster; none of the children left him without the long multiplications and roods and chains and more things than I can name, and he was only put in the school because Sir Grismond ran over him one Christmas Eve and broke his good leg. It’s character you want in a school, not booklearning. Martha Penbryn that used to wash for Miss Lewis told me that she used to read wicked books and novels. She wasn’t wicked herself, I’m not saying so, or your father wouldn’t have had anything to do with her, but she didn’t have any stability to her. The balance of her mind was disturbed, as they said in the quest. But there you are, God is merciful, and the little one will be well cared for and loved too. Who could resist such a little doll, isn’t it? Sidan bach Nano. Oh well, if only this old war was over and Mr Tom back home, I could make some sense out of it, somehow.’

  NINETEEN

  Tom’s first letter to Edward from France contained news of his mother’s death.

  Of course I expected to hear of it daily, but the sorrow is still as sharp. It was wrong of me to escape my responsibilities by coming out here where I can’t feel really involved. I should be with my father. Poor Catrin, too. She writes bravely, but she’s very young to be away from home at such a time. I know you’ll write to her, Edward, try to comfort her. She looks on you as a brother. Everything has been quiet here for the past few days. I wish there wasn’t so much time to brood.

  Edward decided to go to Cardiff to see Catrin. He didn’t try to convince himself that it was his duty, only that he had been given an excuse to do what he wanted and needed to do. Luckily he had a week-end leave prior to a posting to the South Coast.

  He showed Rose the letter from Tom, telling her that he intended to see Catrin. Rose was worried about his undertaking the journey at a time when he should be resting. (He had recently undergone two weeks’ field exercise with poor rations and very little sleep.) ‘But I need to see her,’ he told Rose, as though willing her, by the urgency in his voice, to question him. But she forbore, or saw no reason to do so. ‘I’m so glad that she’s training to be a nurse,’ was all she said. ‘If she were at home, leading an idle and useless life, think how much worse it would be for her.’

  The first available train on the Saturday morning was crowded with soldiers and civilians; the war had already brought about fewer trains and more passengers, and everyone seemed tense and over-wrought. The November day was cold and foggy.

  Edward decided to tell Catrin the truth about what had happened after he left Hendre Ddu the previous June. He realized that he had been foolish, even cruel to pretend that what had been between them was nothing but a holiday flirtation which had died its natural death. Because admitting or even thinking about the truth had been too painful, he had debased something fine and beautiful.

  If he had done wrong in marrying Rose, and he supposed he had, he had done it because it had seemed necessary: Rose’s spirit had been broken and his instinct, as well as his duty, had been to protect and console her. He would tell Catrin that. To speak the simple, unvarnished truth could surely not be wrong or dishonourable. He couldn’t face the thought of going out to France before it was done.

  He stood in the corridor, a bitter excitement struggling with the sadness and confusion in his mind. He thought about the war. He’d believed, like most other people, that it would be over in a matter of months. It had seemed a privilege, an honour, to fight for one’s country. By this time, it seemed only a grim necessity. Perhaps it was better to be stripped of false illusion. Even Rose, now that she was actually nursing the wounded, seemed more often outraged than excited by the war.

  How complicated life was, how ambivalent every motive, every action. He thought about Rose, whom he admired, loved, though not ardently, and who, hating men, loved him in her own way. When he had decided to marry her instead of breaking off their engagement, the
shock of disappointment he had felt at losing Catrin was not unmixed with relief that he was, after all, embarked on the easy, safe, approved, conventional way. He thought about Tom, his blunt, unimaginative friend who was in France ready to kill or be killed because he hadn’t been able to watch his mother’s suffering. About Catrin, with her longing for pleasure and success, who had suddenly dedicated herself to a difficult and badly-paid profession; sickened perhaps by the ease with which he had seemed to slip in and out of love, soured perhaps in her high expectation of life. Tom, who noticed little, had said she seemed to have lost all her joy. Oh, and if she was unhappy on his account, how could he bear not to comfort her? Was he strong enough to behave properly towards her? Perhaps it would be better, even now, if he stayed away from her. But he couldn’t stay away from her.

  Suddenly, in the middle of his troubled thoughts, fighting against a need to sleep, one clear fact emerged like a light: he was on his way to see her. He was travelling towards her. He would look on her beauty again and talk to her and hear her lovely voice. He was so filled with joy and warmth that, opening his eyes, he was amazed to find the day still grey and foggy, the people around him still downcast and self-absorbed. Even if I only speak to her about her mother’s death, she will know why I came, and if I never see her again, I shall always be glad that she knew.

  His exalted mood lasted for the remainder of the long, uncomfortable journey.

  When he arrived at the hospital, he asked for the matron and was taken to her office. He explained his wish to see Nurse Evans, producing the letter he had received from her brother. The matron, who already had a soft spot for the poor motherless girl, was pleased that her brother’s friend, and quite the gentleman, had taken the trouble to visit her. Instead of sending him to the probationers’ common room where officially approved visitors could be entertained, she showed him into her private sitting-room – flowers on the table, a good fire in the grate – and had someone fetch Catrin there.