A Small Country Read online

‘And a criminal, according to you.’

  ‘No, no, that was his father, Thomas, the one you’re named after, he was the crook. Old Thomas Morgan, Hendre Ddu, was the one that smiled and spoke fair and cheated and robbed and throve like the green bay tree. You know what he’d do, don’t you. I’ve told you before, he’d lend some poor little dabs a hundred pounds when the harvest was bad; no interest, only a little clause in the contract that if they couldn’t pay it back by such-and-such – and it seemed such a long way ahead – he’d have their bit of a farm instead. Done. Signed. Wait. Grab. Esger Gog. Ffynnon Fair, Garth Lwyd, Ffos-y-ffin. Do you know how I know? My grand-father, Amos Evans, Cefn Hebog, was one of the fools, see, that signed away his little inheritance. A small farm it was, less than twenty acres, but it had been in the family for close on four centuries, what’s that, about sixteen generations. I’ve got reason to know, I have.’

  ‘You should have steered clear of the Morgans, then, shouldn’t you? Touch pitch and be defiled.’

  ‘Aye, I should have steered clear of them, indeed I should. But if I had, you wouldn’t be here for a start, and I’m glad you are, somehow, drunkard or not. Anyway, old Thomas Morgan wasn’t all bad, I don’t say that. He did a lot for the area one way or another. For instance he gave three acres of good land in the middle of Henblas for a cemetery, so that the people he squeezed to death could have a decent burial in the dry. He probably did something quite substantial for the workhouse in Llanfryn too. I don’t want you to think he was all bad.’

  ‘We’re imperfect, all of us,’ Tom said, significantly.

  ‘Yes indeed. We are indeed. Though your mother is less imperfect than most of us, I admit it. She was sent away to a Christian school and taught to be charitable and virtuous to atone for the sins of her fathers and she is a good woman, I mean it, but difficult to live up to. She’s kind and gracious and quickly moved to pity and once she had something more but that dried up years ago. But she’s a good woman, I’ve said so, and I hope you’ll never let her down as I have.’

  ‘I hope not to,’ Tom said. A lofty silence settled on them. Tom got his pipe out and Josi sat back in his chair and started to hum. He looked about him and nodded at various people.

  ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ Tom asked. At last.

  ‘A girl,’ Josi said. He sighed as he thought of her. A little creature she was, not much bigger than a leveret, but she’d caused a good deal of trouble one way or another. Mari-Elen they’d called her, after his mother and Miriam’s, two women who’d died young from poverty and over-work. ‘Hard work never killed anyone is the greatest lie since God shall provide.’ He could hear Miriam’s voice in his head. If Miriam died, his life would be over. Even thinking about it made him feel cold. He took a draught of beer and saw that Tom was still looking at him.

  ‘A girl,’ he said again. ‘Boys are too much trouble altogether; they go their own ways and they drink like fish. A girl. So big.’ He held his large hands out in front of him, about a foot apart. ‘She looks a cross little thing at the moment, not unlike you round the eyes.’

  Tom felt a heaviness in his chest, as though he’d swallowed a stone with his beer. He remembered having the same sort of feeling as a boy, whenever his father had cuffed him; the pain of the blow had been nothing.

  ‘I hear you’re going away,’ he said.

  ‘That’s right. It’s best, isn’t it, all in all. I’ve been offered the job I went for and it’s as good as I’ll get. Llwyn Cadno Farm, South Cardiganshire. The owner of the place, Isaac Lloyd his name is, knows how I’m placed and doesn’t seem to mind. I told him straight out and he said “You’re a bloody fool, then, but it’s none of my business. I want an experienced man, so your loss is my gain.” Thinking about it since, I’ve wondered if that’s why he offered me such a poor wage; because he knew I couldn’t turn it down. Imperfect beings all of us. Never mind. I dare say we’ll survive, won’t we, all of us, what do you say?’

  ‘About that twenty pounds, Dad, you can forget about that.’

  ‘Did your mother tell you to say that?’

  ‘I’m saying it.’

  ‘No, no, I’ll pay it back. If she’d said it, it would be different.’

  ‘She hasn’t said anything, one way or another.’

  ‘I’ll wait till she does then, and abide with that.’

  Josi refused another drink and left within the hour.

  As soon as he’d gone, Tom realized that they hadn’t talked of any of the things he’d had on his mind, he was no wiser even about what clothes his father wanted, all he knew was the name of the farm he was going to.

  His father had left without any ceremony, as though he’d be seeing him again later that night. There was little ceremony about his father; no fuss, no show. He suddenly saw him resting at the side of a hedge, his whole body completely relaxed so that he seemed almost a part of the landscape. He seemed extraordinarily at peace with himself; even at the present time, with his life completely disrupted, that was the impression he gave. Whereas he, Tom, felt an alien wherever he was, both in Oxford and back in Wales. He called for his third pint of beer. What could alter his life, he wondered, give him a sense of purpose, a place in the world? Love? Religion? Neither seemed to have the power to move him. He dreaded the empty Sunday ahead. He’d go to chapel, of course. He probably didn’t get more out of it than Catrin did, but it didn’t seem worth making a fuss about; grieving his mother. If only Edward was still with them. He could talk to Edward. Even about his father.

  Josi walked quickly towards Hetty Lewis’s house in Cambrian Street. It was the first time he’d ever lived in a town, and though it was a small one, surrounded on all sides by hills and fields, he felt hemmed in. In three days, he and Miriam were leaving for the farm on the other side of the mountain; it would be a hard life, but not impossible like living in the middle of bricks and chimney pots.

  Hetty had already had her bowl of gruel and gone to bed and Miriam was suckling the baby in front of the fire.

  The best kitchen was small and cosy as a burrow. Josi sat in the large fireside chair, an old chair of elm and oak, shaped and polished by years of human contact like the handle of his scythe. He ran his hands along the curved arms; feeling the proximity of others comforted him always.

  He and Miriam didn’t speak; the baby was easily distracted, interested in everything except feeding. When at last she would take no more, Josi took her from Miriam.

  Her dark plum-coloured eyes were wide open but unseeing; she seemed knocked out by milk. ‘Elen,’ he said. She tried to focus on him, but yawned instead; a brief, pink yawn. Afterwards she resumed her blind gazing.

  He handed her back to Miriam.

  ‘Won’t she do for you?’

  ‘She’s all right. She’s all right.’

  ‘She’s filling out. Even Auntie Hetty says so.’

  ‘She’s all right. She’s all right. It’s just that she won’t have much of a life, that’s all.’

  ‘You mean, because she’s a hedge child.’

  ‘That’s a very coarse expression.’

  ‘I don’t know any other, That’s what she is, anyway. In fact, she’s more of a hedge child than most. She was born in a hedge as well, very near.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of that, anyway. I was only thinking of her being brought up poor. It’s no joke.’

  ‘You and I survived. She’ll survive too. She looks a little fighter. Look at her fists. Anyway, I can think of plenty of people worse off than us, we’ll have ten shillings a week and a cottage.’

  ‘A pretty poor cottage with nothing decent to go in it.’

  ‘Are you regretting Hendre Ddu already?’

  ‘Of course not. I never cared for Hendre Ddu.’

  Miriam didn’t reply but looked at him sadly. That was her greatest worry; that he had made an over-hasty decision.

  ‘It wasn’t the farm I ever wanted, it was Rachel. Does that make it worse? It wasn’t that I was so much in love with her, only triump
hant, somehow, that she was so much in love with me. Can you understand that? She was older than I was, a large gracious woman who looked as though she’d never been young and yet she was as silly about me as a sixteen-year-old about her first sweetheart; had to have me with her every minute. Her father was dead-set against me of course, and I was excited by that, and by the way I won every round. When her father shouted about the damned cheek I’d had, asking her to marry me, I said I never had, she had asked me. It was the truth but I shouldn’t have said so, I know. Only I hated him; everybody did. When he died there wasn’t so much in it for me. And when she’d had Tom and Catrin; she had a bad time with Catrin, I’ll give her that; she thought the farm would be enough for me. But it wasn’t, it never was. I could never be interested in grappling and grasping for more and more profit. That’s how people get rich, by loving money, thinking of nothing else, becoming slaves to it. Old Griffydd Morgan used to wait for his ha’penny change. He’d insist on his discounts, even from little traders almost going bankrupt. When he bought, he could afford to wait till prices were low, but he never sold low. Nobody ever had a bargain from him. I don’t get pleasure from doing people down. Having a bit of money is fine, of course it is, but if it’s in your blood to make it grow and grow, it’s the devil taking over, that’s how it seems to me. Anyway, it was never my farm but Rachel’s so I saved my soul. I’m not saying I wouldn’t like to be able to buy a little place, I would, but I wouldn’t get rich. I’d work hard. I can’t help that, it’s in my nature to work hard, but I know when to stop and I know how to enjoy other things. You know that.’

  For the first time, the way he was looking at her made Miriam sad.

  ‘You’ve had other women,’ she said.

  ‘No one.’ Josi thought it was true. The others hadn’t counted. ‘No one but you. Whatever made you say that? Miriam, what’s the matter?’

  She had turned from him and was looking into the dying fire.

  ‘I saw your daughter in Llanfryn on Thursday morning. She was in Lloyd the Chemist’s.’

  ‘Catrin? Why didn’t you tell me? What happened?’

  ‘She followed me into the street. She just wanted me to know, she said, that you’d had plenty of other women before me and would have plenty after.’

  Josi said nothing for several moments. After a time he got up from his chair and came to sit at Miriam’s knees and kissed her hand. ‘Only you and I know,’ he said. ‘Only us two. Oh, I’m sorry about Catrin. I’m sorry about everything. We both knew how it would be for you, didn’t we? At least I’m with you now. We can’t get married, but we’re together. Aren’t we? We’re together.’

  ‘I’ve got a few things in Rhydfelen,’ Miriam said in quite a different voice – her schoolteacher voice which he hadn’t heard for months. ‘I left them in Nant Eithin’s barn. Neli Morris said she’d mind them for me till I sent for them. We should take them with us when we go; it’ll cost more to send for them later. They’re only odds and ends but they’ll be useful, blankets and so on, pots and pans, two chairs and a chest of drawers that belonged to my mother.’

  ‘I’ll fetch them on Monday. I’ll borrow a cart from someone.’

  ‘Won’t you be afraid of people talking?’

  ‘They’ve talked enough by this time. Why should I mind? Do you think I’m ashamed of you?’

  ‘You should be. And of yourself.’

  ‘You’re not ashamed.’

  ‘I’m not religious like you are, so I don’t feel the same. I feel sorrowful about your family, even Catrin. I don’t like to think of your wife who’s a good, kind woman, everyone says so, whom I’ve wronged. But the wrong’s done. Neither of us could choose differently so I try not to feel ashamed. Life’s hard enough without that. I know you feel bad about moving from this place.’

  ‘Not at all. We’re only crossing an old mountain. Only thirty miles. Some of my people went to America when times were bad, we’re only moving to another county.’

  ‘A different place, though. Different people.’

  ‘Poorer, that’s all. Land’s not so fertile, that’s all. What does it matter. I like a challenge; a bit of a struggle.’

  The baby was fast asleep, her little face old and resigned as though she knew already that life was a struggle, one way or another. Miriam handed her to Josi again while she made the fire safe and got a candle to take them upstairs.

  ‘I hope to God we don’t have too many of these,’ Josi said. ‘They’re nice little things, I know, but they all have to be fed and watered.’

  NINE

  Catrin spent a miserable Saturday.

  She had always felt thoroughly at ease with Edward Turncliffe. She had never been wary of him as she was with other young men; he was her brother’s friend, and in any case engaged to be married. She had allowed herself to think of him as a friend, one of her few friends, so that the new feelings he had aroused in her filled her with shame and anger; a new and deeper relationship was the last thing she had wanted.

  The idea of marriage had always been so abhorrent to her. She hated weddings – she seemed to go to so many – merriment for everyone except the poor bride who generally looked timid and embarrassed. And if the broadest of the jokes were anything to go by, the wedding breakfast was only a preliminary to a farm-yard kind of coupling, leading as inevitably to the first pregnancy; the bride of a few months by this time pale and big-bellied, the finery of the wedding and the presents forgotten.

  Catrin couldn’t bear to think that she had nothing to hope from life but the early ‘good’ marriage which everyone seemed to predict for her. At least she was determined to go to London first. Since her holiday there with Tom the previous year, it had been the focus of all her dreaming; so full of colour and life; art galleries, shops and concerts. If she could spend, say, seven years in London, she was sure that she would be willing to come back then to face the inevitable farmer bridegroom. To her mind, a bride of twenty-five, a mature woman of the world, wasn’t a figure of pathos like the innocent bride of eighteen.

  She wanted to ‘live’ first. If she had been asked what exactly she meant by ‘living’, she wouldn’t be certain, she only saw herself moving among beautiful intelligent people, accepted and admired.

  She had been in a state of rebellious waiting for over two years. She remembered when it had begun, in the spring following her sixteenth birthday. Before then, she had enjoyed school and certain aspects of her life on the farm, particularly riding; since that time, all her most deeply felt experiences had come from books, she had hardly lived at all at first hand. She had sold her outgrown pony and declined the offer of a horse, her schoolwork began to pall, she found the girls silly and the boys dull and immature.

  It was a theological student, preaching at their chapel one Sunday morning, who had brought about the abrupt change from schoolgirl to woman, though it would probably have been someone or something else if not he.

  He had been a painfully shy, incoherent preacher, even her mother had seemed a little embarrassed by him and everyone else in the congregation quite openly restless. ‘Poor young man,’ Miss Rees had said after the benediction. ‘His spirit was soaring, I’m sure, but the old words just wouldn’t come out.’

  They had stayed behind in the little cold chapel to invite him back to dinner. He was grateful indeed, he assured them, but he had made other arrangements. He had shaken hands with them. To her mother and Miss Rees he had stammered out a few conventional words of thanks. Then he had taken Catrin’s hand and in very distinct, ringing tones had said, ‘I am the Rose of Sharon.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Catrin had said, taking her hand away as quickly as she could. She had never seen the strange youth before or since.

  Back in the brougham afterwards, her mother had ventured an explanation for the young man’s outburst. ‘He was trying to tell Catrin that her beauty is a gift from God,’ she said. Miss Rees had been glad to agree, she had been a little worried about him, wondering whether the ordeal of preaching
the word had gone to his head. Before they had arrived home the two women were firmly agreed that his words were certainly in order and possibly of divine inspiration. ‘If he had said “You are the rose of Sharon”, it would be different,’ her mother had said, ‘and a little impertinent, but he kept to the scriptures unaltered.’

  Her father, told of the incident over beef and Yorkshire pudding, was quite ready to agree with his wife. ‘He was still in the high places,’ Josi had said. ‘No insult intended, I’m sure of it.’

  No one was surprised that he should have been struck by her beauty, only that he had commented publicly about it.

  Until that Sunday, Catrin had never seriously considered her looks. That afternoon she went to stand in front of the long mirror in her mother’s bedroom and studied herself from all angles and accepted her beauty. Nothing had been the same afterwards.

  She accepted that she was different.

  There had always been a gulf between her and her colleagues at school; now she understood it. Pretty girls generally had a good time at school, they were popular with other girls and teased by the boys and the masters, but beauty obviously set one apart; both boys and girls were rather in awe of it; it was as though the possessor belonged to a slightly different species.

  Lowri, one of the maids at Hendre Ddu, seemed to be her only close friend.

  It was she, a few months later, who showed her the picture-postcards, a series called Edwardian Beauties which her mother had collected some years earlier. ‘This one looks just like you,’ Lowri had said. ‘I wish you had a dress like that. I wish you’d let me put your hair up.’

  And so, on a wet Saturday afternoon, Catrin had borrowed one of her mother’s dresses, a pale blue silk she had worn on her honeymoon, and a fan and a shawl, and Lowri had brushed and combed her hair, arranging it in elaborate coils which she piled one on top of the other like fruit in a bowl. Then Catrin had stood with a hand on her hip whilst Lowri had surveyed her. ‘Miss Lily Langtry,’ she had said. For a time the two girls had giggled together quite happily.