Tirzah and the Prince of Crows

by Deborah Kay Davies

  They hear the front door slamming. Quick, Osian whispers, switching off the light. They make it down the attic ladder as Osian’s father gets to the top of the stairs. What have you two been doing all alone up here, may I enquire? he asks, squinting his eyes at them. Here I am, just back from the place of prayer, and this is what I find. He lowers his head like an angry animal and stares at Tirzah. Now, why aren’t you in your own home, young lady? It was my idea, Da, Osian says. She was poorly and I looked after her. Osian’s father fills the landing, forcing them to take several steps back. His voice seems to bounce off the walls. What am I always saying to you, son? he shouts. My house, my rules. He reaches around Tirzah with a broad hand for Osian and pulls him forward, knocking her off balance. You, girl, to the kitchen this minute. I will inform your parents you were upstairs. Tirzah’s ankles are like pieces of stiff wood. She has to take one step down at a time. Behind her she can hear the sound of Osian being smacked hard across the face.

  In the kitchen, Osian’s mother is lifting a patterned scarf off her gleaming black hair. What were you thinking of? she asks Tirzah sadly. Still, what’s done is done, and there’s no going back. We were only looking at Osian’s train set, Tirzah whispers. Now then, his mother says softly, no stories, please. It will only make matters worse. Osian would never have a train set. His father says such things are a wicked waste of time and money. She puts her hand on Tirzah’s shoulder and squeezes. Her eyes are red, and she wipes her nose on an apron corner. Let’s see. What about a little bit of toast? she asks, starting to bustle about without doing anything. They are both listening to the sounds of furniture being knocked over and Mr Evans’s deep shouting from above. The toast is already under the grill. Sit down by there and have a quick bit of supper, she says, filling the kettle with water. It will do you good after you’ve been unwell. She butters the toast fiercely, breaking it into pieces. Tirzah looks at Osian’s mother, and the plaited bun, luxurious and full of a kind of mystery, which is piled richly on top of her head. It looks too heavy for her to support on such a narrow neck. Tirzah’s own throat has shrunk so much that not even a sip would pass, but she struggles to eat some of the charred bread. Thank you, Mrs Evans, she says. She tries to take in what Osian’s mother is saying. Always Aunty Margiad to you, little one, she hears. Mrs Evans indeed. Thank you, Aunty Margiad, Tirzah whispers, the incinerated toast stuck to her tongue like coal dust.

  There is the sound of a banging door and then Mr Evans comes downstairs. Everyone should be in bed, he announces, out of breath. This is what happens when one lets down one’s guard to the Evil One. Everything else flies out of the window, including Christian bedtimes. His hair has flopped from the slick comb-back he always wears. Tirzah looks at his half-untucked shirt and disarranged tie. It’s high time you were in your own home, he says, not meeting her eye. I will step out with you now and have a word with your parents. Tirzah stands up and looks around for her Bible. And we will put you on the altar, young lady, he goes on loudly, as if he were addressing a congregation. Right you are, Trevor dear, Mrs Evans says, and nods encouragingly at Tirzah, eyes glittering against her dead-white skin. A tendril of hair has escaped and is coiled around her small jaw like a drooping plant. Tidy yourself up, Mr Evans shouts. She jumps, and with trembling fingers pushes the hair behind her ear. Off you go, pet, she says to Tirzah, coming over to give her a peck on the cheek. Take care now, and God bless.

  Osian’s father keeps a hard grasp on Tirzah’s elbow as they walk, his breathing still noisy. Does he think I’m going to scarper? she wonders. A growing desire to shove him off is rising inside her. They walk in and out of the pools of lamplight, past the curtained front windows of the terraced houses. Tirzah slows down when she sees her neighbour’s black cat arching its way towards her. Mr Evans tightens his grip. Get off me, she says suddenly through narrowed lips. You are hurting my arm, and she shakes herself free. Pussy, puss, she croons, crouching, and the cat makes a small chirrup of greeting. Hello, Blod, she whispers, stroking the cat and ignoring Mr Evans. She can scarcely see, her eyes are so full of tears. Blodwen raises her inky, pointed face and rubs Tirzah’s wet cheek. In the quiet street, Tirzah puts both hands on Blod’s reverberating back and allows the purring cat to calm her. Mr Evans’s black shoes and trouser turn-ups are waiting. Unhurriedly she stands and walks ahead of him, sensing he is struggling to control his anger. He would like to strike me like he struck Osian, she thinks, appalled by the realisation. Briefly she remembers Mrs Evans flinching away from him. Before he can react, she darts ahead and bangs on her suddenly beloved front door. When her father peers out, she pushes past and runs up to her room.

  Tirzah lies straight and stiff under the bedclothes, her outline barely making a shape. The unlined curtains are meagre and the street lights stain the room with tints of dark yellow. She can hear Mr Evans shouting downstairs and her father answering him, but she is unable to concentrate. On the wall opposite the bed is a framed embroidery. She sits up. Surrounded by a trail of cornflowers and poppies are the words, Suffer The Little Children. This picture has been in her room since she was a baby, so familiar she hasn’t really looked at it for years, but now she wonders what it really means. Tonight has been so strange, she begins to think it might be a message. If it means all children, big or little, should suffer, then she understands. And as if a door has swung open to let in freezing blasts of air, she starts to shake, chilled by a mood of utter dejection. She wriggles, trying to find a comfortable spot, and imagines Osian’s father being a boy. How did he fall in love with Aunty Margiad? Was he ever handsome? Did he have hands like Osian? Did he stroke Aunty Margiad’s long, silky hair and kiss her lips in secret on the mountain? Poor thing, with her trembling fingers and sinewy neck. Was she a lovely girl once? Tirzah considers, and realises Mrs Evans is beautiful, even now. Osian has taken after her, that’s plain to see. It’s hard to picture Mrs Evans falling in love with that man, but it must have happened somehow. People just don’t get married out of the blue.

  She remembers the fleshy sound of Osian’s face being slapped, his stifled cries, and her own head starts to burn. Is Osian lying on his bed now? How is he feeling? She hopes he’s asleep and dreaming a good dream. Tirzah can’t imagine Joseph whacking young Jesus about the head. Then she reminds herself: Of course, He was perfect, so it’s not the same thing. The Son of God was never a guilty worm. But what trespass have she and Osian committed? Kissing couldn’t possibly be a sin. And anyway, how would Mr Evans have known what happened in the attic? She lies back down, her body starting to relax as she warms up. She hears the front door slamming and then there is quiet downstairs. She thinks about the grown-up Osian she glimpsed this evening, realising he has even lost the salty boyish smell she always loved. She punches her pillow, hoping her parents won’t want to have things out tonight. And tomorrow there will be ructions; she will be in trouble with everyone. Feeling scoured out inside, she is smitten with the knowledge that she is almost a grown-up too, and deliberately steers her thoughts from the way she returned Osian’s kiss, imagining instead that she is drifting with open arms and closed eyes through the huge doorway of the castle of sleep.

  The Lust of the Flesh, and the Lust of the Eyes

  (1 John 2:16)

  Tirzah has escaped to Biddy’s house. They sprawl at opposite ends of the new chocolate-brown velour sofa Biddy’s mother is so pleased with. Rain throws itself at the sash windows, rattling the frames, and a watery valleys’ light coats the glass ornaments in the display cabinet with an unreal sheen. Listen to that old wind, Biddy says, hugging a cushion to her chest and nudging Tirzah with her foot. It’s nice to hear it when we’re inside, but doesn’t part of you want to be out there? Tirzah nods. She likes to think about the mountain when there is a storm. She pictures the rooks being thrown around the sky, and the whinberry bushes shining with raindrops. The ragged sheep will be pushing against the low mossy wall that runs for miles around the edge of the forestry. They press so hard they leave blobs
of grubby wool in the wall’s crevices. It must be nice for them, sheltering beneath the eaves of the pine trees, nibbling tender spurts of greenery from the wall. The forest floor is dry even in the worst rain. She has sat on the dusty, needle-strewn ground deep in the woods and breathed its trapped, resin-rich smell. Not a single raindrop can get through the huge pine-umbrellas way up above. It’s stifling and warm, silent and watchful, in amongst the endless straight trunks. A place no one could ever find you.

  Tirzah thinks now of Biddy’s back garden, and how much she loves it, even in the rain. Her own father concreted over the earth in theirs two summers ago, when the dandelions were bursting like mini explosions everywhere you looked. He’d been battling the weeds for as long as Tirzah could remember, glad of the chance to explain how God had quite rightly cursed nature since Eve deceived Adam. Mind you, he always liked to add, that Adam must have been a weak one. An apple? I mean. It would’ve been a very different story if yours truly had been on the scene. Really? A piece of fruit, and he caved in? Sin, sin, sin! he’d shout, making the word sound like something you coughed up, slicing at the ragged yellow heads with a blade he’d lashed to a broom handle. You see the wages of it, rampant all over the face of the earth! She remembers the way his shoulders hunched and his neck emerged from his shirt like the neck of a furious tortoise as he clutched the broom handle with its flashing blade. Every growing season he was the same.

  Then one day, deep in summertime, he’d cut down all the plants: her mother’s drooping raft of perfumed Albertine roses, the butterfly-sprigged lavender bushes along the path to the washing line, even the bright mint that spilled out of an old china sink. Tirzah and her mother stood at the kitchen window holding hands as he slashed the coloured heads off all the flowers. Let this be a lesson to you womenfolk, he yelled, striding over the mutilated, raspberry-hued London Pride that frothed up against the wall, and banging the window with his filthy knuckles. They could not hear him clearly, but Tirzah recalls the look of his mouth and the sweat on his forehead as he went on about women and their fleshy, indulgent ways. She could feel her mother’s hand shaking. They’d stood and watched until the fire he’d built was under way, and all the dying plants were wreathed in smoke. When Tirzah came out later, the smouldering blossoms still smelt sweet.

  Tirzah’s eyes are closed, her cheek nestled against the fuzzy brown cushion as she thinks now about Biddy’s long, thin back garden. She sees the warty old plum trees and the rhododendrons with their collapsed insides that used to make such good dens. Biddy’s mother keeps a few chickens down at the far end, and if Tirzah is allowed, she comes round when the chickens put themselves to bed and listens while they settle and croon to each other. She likes to think that the clucking sounds they make are questions: Whaaat? they ask with different levels of interest. Whaaat? Whaaat? The chickeny smell inside the roosting coop makes you want to sneeze, but it’s inviting – dusty and mild, like the chickens themselves. Tirzah suddenly misses the fluty sound of pigeons and all the old plants and flowers that used to grow in her own garden. Biddy still has the tree house they played in when they were little. Tirzah remembers crouching up in the tree, surrounded by ripe plums abuzz with slow-motion bees. Thinking about it now gives her an uncomfortable tightening inside her chest that’s both lonely and somehow thwarted. She looks sideways through her lashes at her cousin, wondering if she could explain her thoughts.

  Biddy has been watching her. Come on, you, look alive, she says, smiling. First tell me about what’s been going on these last ten days. Have you seen Osian? What happened? But Tirzah doesn’t want to explain about him or his father, and how Pastor and two of the Horeb elders had come round and squirrelled themselves away in the study at the end of the upstairs hallway. The meeting went on for hours, it seemed to her. Sitting so silently and still in her bedroom, she had begun to feel as if she were solidifying, becoming more and more like the carved figure of a girl, something made of wood, whittled out of a huge lump. When she was called to the study, she could barely stand upright. It was as if she had to creakily unfold and wait for the blood to start flowing in her veins and arteries again before launching herself towards the door. Then she had listened to a talk about chastity, and purity, and how a girl must guard herself against temptation. That’s rich, she thought hopelessly. Osian kissed me. I didn’t ask him to. It wasn’t something she could point out, though, so she waited until she could leave the room. An important point, brother, Pastor had said to her father as he left. Spare the rod and spoil the child – and this is something never so true as in your situation. He talked over her, as if she were a table. That girl is asking for trouble, going into a boy’s house of an evening. She remembers the sound of the men’s shoes as they stomped downstairs. She hadn’t seen Osian once since then. He hadn’t been to any chapel services. Was it horrible? Biddy asks. She squeezes Tirzah’s hand. Anyway, Tizzy, never mind all that silly business. You’re here now with me, and I’ve got a corker of an idea. Tirzah watches as Biddy leaps off the sofa and does a little dance on the crescent-shaped rug in front of the empty fireplace. Let’s turn the television on.

  Biddy’s parents have rented a TV for what they have called a test of faith. Are you sure, though, Bid? Are you allowed? Tirzah asks. Bum and celery, who cares? Biddy says, chewing her thumbnail hungrily. What’s the point of having a telly if we can’t watch the silly thing, I’d like to know. She puts her hands on Tirzah’s shoulders and gives her another squeeze. Robinson Crusoe will be on, she says coaxingly. You love that book, don’t you? Well, now it’s a telly programme. Tirzah can’t resist the idea of seeing Robinson. If this is a test of our faith, she says, we’re the blackest goners. Oh, rubbish, Biddy states. Most people in the world have a telly and watch it until their eyes fall out. How can a book be safe to read, and the programme based on it be sinful? Your own parents bought you Robinson Crusoe, didn’t they? Tirzah can see how this seems right. It doesn’t make sense otherwise. Biddy switches the TV on, and they wait for it to warm up.

  The girls sit side by side and hold hands. Look at the colour of my skin compared to yours, Biddy says, holding up her arm. Tirzah’s skin is white, and dotted here and there with small freckles. Biddy’s is creamy and without marks. I never noticed that before, Tirzah says. Our hair’s the same colour, though. Biddy pulls the elastic from her ponytail and they put their hair together. You can’t tell which is which, she says. Except that yours is thick and curly, and mine is soft and wavy. They weave their long hair together. I’m getting mine cut, Biddy states. Oh, please don’t, Bid, Tirzah says. I like it that our hair’s the same. Biddy contemplates her. I might not then, she answers. Anyway, the programme is starting, so let’s concentrate. They settle down again. Tirzah is transfixed. Everything on the screen is almost as she imagined it. The music is dreamy and a little disturbing. They watch as Crusoe swims out to his ship’s wreck and dives for supplies. He has difficulty in bringing the huge bundles ashore, and it looks at one point as if he’ll drown in the waves, but no, he gets back to the beach and lies there in the shallows, gasping as the ship finally breaks apart and vanishes.

  The girls are holding hands tightly, so intent on Robinson’s ripped shirt and the way his belly hollows out below his ribs each time he gulps in air that they don’t hear the sound of a key turning. They jump when the door bangs, then listen to Biddy’s father striding down the hall. They both know it’s too late to turn the TV off. Flipping flip, Biddy mutters. Now we’re in for it. He stands in front of them, holding a bicycle clip, the other one still clamped round his trouser leg. Duw, Duw. I cannot believe what I am seeing with my own two eyes, he says quietly, pronouncing each word with extreme care. What do you both think you are doing? Running into the Devil’s wide-open arms, that is what! Biddy starts to cry extravagantly. But, Dada, she says, sobbing, we wanted to see Robinson Crusoe so much. We love him. Biddy’s father turns his attention to Tirzah. Is this gospel? he asks. Tirzah nods and says quietly, Yes, Uncle Maldwyn, but is unwilling t
o tear her eyes away from the glimpse of Robinson’s bare legs climbing a tree. He is wonderfully nimble as he works his way up to the coconuts bunched high above him.

  Uncle Maldwyn begins to walk up and down the carpet. Each turn seems to make him sadder. Love him? he asks. Love him? He sounds perplexed. What do you know about such things? He turns away for a moment and briskly strikes his forehead with the hand holding the bicycle clip. Tirzah is surprised by his reaction; he has always been much more easy-going than her own father. What can have happened to make him change? This television is not for little girls, he now declares, whipping round to face them again. Tirzah glances at Biddy. We’re not that little, she thinks. I’m going to be seventeen in November. This machine, Uncle Maldwyn says, walking over to the TV and yanking out the plug, is like having the Evil One spewing out filth in the corner of the room. I see that now. The TV sparks and makes a hissing sound as the screen dies. Tirzah tries to look away, but her eyes are locked on the dead, grey rectangle. It is everything that is suggestive and lewd, Uncle Maldwyn says, his voice sinking briefly. His eyes are luminous with righteous anger. The world, the flesh and the Devil! he barks. That’s what it represents!

  Tirzah decides to make herself invisible. But it’s difficult to concentrate on the process with Uncle talking so insistently. His big, pointing finger pins her to the room, making things impossible. Just as her feet start to dissolve he shakes her shoulder and tells her she is on a broad and slippery path. Don’t think I haven’t heard about your dirty work at Osian’s. Such behaviour! In our own family! As if to underline what he’s said, he adds that the whole fellowship is most concerned. Tirzah’s mind stutters. What do people think I’ve been doing? she wonders. It’s as if icy air were blowing through the room. He stands back and contemplates her. I blame you for persuading Biddy to turn the television on, he says. She is easily led. But Daddy, Biddy says, going to stand close to him, her loose hair swinging. Why can’t we watch a nice little thing on the telly if we want to? He puts his finger to her lips. Now, he says, Tirzah, off home with you. It gives me no satisfaction, but I must tell your mam and dad. And Biddy. To your room, naughty, weak girl that you are.