One Crow Alone

by S. D. Crockett

Anwen crept to the sofa. Under a bundle of blankets and rugs, a small child was sleeping, a hank of fine hair spilling over the pillow. The old lady peered down, stroked the child’s hair and rearranged the bedding unnecessarily.

  “Still fast asleep,” she whispered, smiling.

  The old couple undressed, pulling thick sleeping gowns over their vests and undergarments, and they lay close and still in the narrow bed, waiting for the cold sheets to warm beneath them.

  The child murmured in its sleep.

  “We should get down to Dolgellau, as soon as the weather clears—try and call Bethan,” whispered Anwen. “Let her know Alice is well at least.”

  In the hallway, the dog raised its head. Looked toward the front door.

  Something had fluttered and stirred.

  But it was only an ill wind creeping over the threshold and the sound of snow gusting against windows and falling heavy on every roof.

  25

  The springs in the mattress creaked as Magda lifted herself up from the pillow.

  An early light slanted across the floorboards, brightening the faded color on some ancient threadbare rug and spilling up onto the thick quilt that lay heavy across her body.

  There was the sound of a child somewhere downstairs, the running of feet and a door closing.

  A child? Here?

  She pulled back the bedclothes and looked down at her blistered feet, slid down, padded across the cold floor, and looked out the window.

  What time is it? And where is Ivan?

  She rubbed at the frozen condensation on the pane. Outside, the sky was clear, casting green-blue shadows on a newborn landscape that stretched away as far as she could see. The woods surrounding the house were still and bare, a patchwork of white fields and tree-covered foothills in the distance.

  And from the woodland a man emerged, leading a pony with an old woman seated on its back. The figures made their way toward the house, kicking up a trail in the new snow. As he came through the gate, the man caught sight of Magda at the window. He smiled up and raised a hand as if he knew her, then realized that he did not, and looked away.

  Magda stepped back behind the curtain.

  There was a knock on the bedroom door.

  “Are you up yet?” The handle turned and the old lady appeared. “I’ve got you some fresh clothes. And hot water.” She pushed the door open with her elbow, huffing breathlessly, and struggled in with a bowl of steaming water. Magda took it from her hands, and the old lady dipped back out of the door, only to reappear moments later with a jug, some soap, a towel, and a bundle of clothes.

  “You’ll feel better after a wash.” She plumped the clothes down on the bed and sat down to catch her breath. “I don’t know what would have happened if you’d been out in the weather last night.”

  “Where is my … my friend?” said Magda.

  “He’s gone to cut some firewood with my husband. They’ll be back later. Your boots are drying in the kitchen. When you’re ready, come down.”

  “It is very kind of you to let us stay here—”

  “Oh, don’t worry about that.” The old woman got up from the chair. “And I’m Anwen.” She looked a little embarrassed. “I thought you might start talking a lot of gibberish like your friend.”

  “His name is Ivan; I am Magda.” Magda smiled. “From Poland. He doesn’t speak English really.”

  “Poland, is it. Poland, eh. Should have guessed.” She patted the pile of clothes. “They’re my daughter Bethan’s clothes. This is her room.”

  “She is not here?”

  “No. Her little girl Alice lives with us though. You’ll meet her when you come down.”

  Magda stood awkwardly on the thin rug.

  “Well, I’ll let you be.” Anwen gave a quick smile and went out, closing the door gently behind her.

  Magda listened to her heavy tread descending the stair. Stuck to the back of the door was a poster of three slick-haired boys—The Razors. The daughter’s bedroom. The ceilings were low and the floors were dusty—every corner laced with last year’s cobwebs. She could feel grit on the rug. Aside from the high bed, there was a narrow chest for clothes and a small iron fireplace, which had been boarded up.

  She locked the door and knelt down. Took off her shirt and splashed steaming water onto her face. She hung her long hair into the bowl, and using the soap she raised a lather, pouring the last water from the jug to rinse. Afterward, with the water gray and scummy, she washed the dry blood from her feet, rubbed herself down with the towel, and with splayed fingers combed through the tangles in her hair.

  Her old clothes lay in a pile on the floor, gray and worn and dirty. The new clothes folded on the bed smelled of camphor: a pair of pants, thick woolen socks that only needed a little darning at the heel, a vest, a shirt and sweater, a pair of trousers, and even shoes. She put the new things on, which felt very good, gathered her own dirty clothes under one arm, and went out onto the landing. She found her way down the dim staircase, following the sound of voices to the kitchen.

  * * *

  There was another woman at the kitchen table. She stopped talking as Magda opened the door.

  “Magda. Come and sit by the Aga. Dry your hair,” said Anwen, standing at a sink, peeling turnips. “This,” she said, waving a hand toward the woman at the table, “is Mrs. Gourty, our neighbor.” She turned to Mrs. Gourty. “Magda and her friend Ivan turned up in the night.”

  “In the night? What on earth were they doing wandering about in this weather?” said Mrs. Gourty.

  There was a small girl scrubbing at a scrap of paper with an orange crayon. Shoulder-length brown hair fell over her face as she worked. She looked up and gave Magda a glance. “Dydy hi’n andros o denau, Nain—”1

  “Shh, Alice!” said Anwen, with her hand on the little girl’s shoulder, the hardened knuckles like Babula’s. “This is my granddaughter. Alice.”

  “Hello,” said Magda.

  The little girl stared. “You sound funny.” She continued her scrubbing.

  “Here, give me those.” Anwen took the bundle of dirty clothes from Magda’s arms. She turned to Mrs. Gourty. “She’s from Poland, Fiona.”

  “Poland! What on earth are you doing here then?” said Mrs. Gourty.

  With a stamping of boots, the back door opened and her son Callum came into the kitchen.

  “Here are the things you wanted from Dolgellau, Anwen,” he said, putting a bag on the table.

  Anwen riffled about in the bag and took out a packet of tea.

  Callum pulled out a chair and sat down at the table.

  “I’ll fetch you something,” said Anwen, going to the Aga. She filled the kettle with water from a jug and put it to boil.

  “Who’s this?” Callum waved his hand at Magda.

  “Her name’s Magda. Found her out on the step last night. From Poland.”

  “Mmm. And that boy in the log shed with Bran—him too?”

  “Yes. They’re friends.” Anwen brought a bowl of porridge to the table. Callum Gourty put his hat down and pushed his coat off onto the back of his chair. He looked at Magda. “You speak English?”

  “I learn in school.”

  “Long way from Poland.”

  “I came to find my mother.”

  “Here?” he said.

  “No, London.”

  “I take it you didn’t.”

  “No.”

  “Why here then?”

  “We have car, but a man steal it and leave us on the road. We are trying to go to Liverpool.”

  “Liverpool? Boat doesn’t run in winter.”

  “Boat? I do not know of a boat,” said Magda. “But we have a friend there who will help us go home.”

  “You came here from London then?”

  Magda hesitated, then nodded.

  “No place for city people out here. But I guess you’ve already found that out.” He took a spoonful of porridge. Eyes steady as a sniper, watching her across the table like a hawk.

&n
bsp; “I am not from city,” said Magda. “I come from village—we have horses and cows and sheep, and Bogdan Stopko had tractor and two fields.”

  Callum laughed. “Did he now.”

  “We have much snow on mountain, like here in England.”

  “And you left Poland to find your mother.”

  “She had a job in London. My grandmother die and the people from my village were taken away by soldiers. I hide in cellar so they cannot find me, but I ride across the hill and find another village and I go in the trucks to Krakow. With my friend. Ivan.”

  Callum put his spoon down.

  “Why did they take you away from your village?”

  “Weather very bad in Poland,” Magda said. “They take villagers to the city. I hear president on radio. He say it is Emergency.”

  “State of Emergency.” Mrs. Gourty nodded. “Heard that on the radio. Here too as well.”

  Callum leaned back in his chair and raised an eyebrow at Anwen. “Met some soldiers this morning, on the Dolgellau road. Asked if I’d seen two Polish kids. Said they’d probably be pilfering someone’s bins.”

  “Soldiers say they will take us to police—” blurted Magda.

  “Why?”

  “We have no papers.”

  Anwen and Mrs. Gourty exchanged a look.

  Magda saw it. “We hurt no one. We only want to go home. We have a friend. In Liverpool—”

  “Well, you’re in Wales now, girl. And you won’t be getting up to Liverpool for a bit. Does that boy come from your village too?”

  “No. He comes from Ukraine. It is long way.”

  “The Ukraine!” exclaimed Anwen.

  “So you’re both stuck,” Callum said.

  Magda was silent and looked down at her hands. She did not know why she had told them so many things.

  There was a rattling of a door and old Bran Mortimer came in through his back door. “Morning, all,” he said, putting his boots to dry at the back of the Aga. He peered down at his granddaughter’s scrawling. “So, what’s the road to Dolgellau like, Callum?”

  “It’ll clear. You’d get down there easy enough with the tractor this afternoon.”

  “Where’s that foreign boy?” asked Anwen.

  “He’s still splitting logs, and it’s good to see someone young and fit doing the work for a change.”

  “They’re illegals,” said his wife, folding her arms across her chest.

  “What?”

  “We’ve been having a chat with the girl,” said Callum, gesturing with his thumb at Magda.

  “What if the army come round here asking questions?” Anwen said. “What do we do then, I ask you?”

  Mrs. Gourty stood up and pulled on a large duffel coat. “What can you do? It’s miles across country and the Liverpool boat won’t come until spring.” She buttoned her toggles and pulled a knitted hat from her pocket. “Anyway, they can’t go wandering about the countryside in this kind of weather.”

  “Bet she’s quite handy with animals and all that,” Callum said. “Country girl like her. And the boy—there’s more wood needs chopping, isn’t there, Bran? Fences to be laid. You could use a strong pair of hands, help in the house. And there’s work up at our place too.”

  “But what if soldiers come round asking?” said Bran. “What should we do then?”

  “They’ve got enough on their plates without bothering about two kids. Don’t worry. You won’t be the only farm to have a few Poles mending the roof this winter.”

  Bran rubbed at his scratchy gray stubble. “Can’t pack them off in the snow right away anyhow.”

  Mrs. Gourty wriggled plump hands into her gloves. “No. Well, we’ve got ponies to feed.” She leaned close to Anwen’s ear. “And you can send Bethan up to our place as soon as she gets back in the spring. Callum gets bored of my company.”

  “Mum.” Callum reddened under his beard and ushered his mother out the door. Their heavy-coated backs disappeared into the back porch.

  Out in the snow-filled yard, Callum untied the pony. “Why did you say that about Bethan?”

  “You can’t just wait for apples to fall in your lap.”

  “Bethan Mortimer’s not interested in me. Or she wouldn’t have left Rathged.”

  “Well, it’s very exciting having a couple of runaways out here.”

  “Bran’s lucky. We could use a pair of hands with spring on its way. But there’s something that girl’s not telling us.” He looped the rein over the pony’s withers and helped his mother up into the saddle. He led the pony out of the yard and away under the trees, toward the river and their place on the other side of the hill.

  From the kitchen window, Bran watched them plodding away in the snow. Funny man, that Callum Gourty.

  Ivan came in from outside and laid an axe by the door. His face was red. Magda looked up at him. She had said too much and she was certain he would be angry. It had all unraveled like a ball of wool.

  “They know about the soldiers,” she said.

  For a moment he was still, then he took her by the elbow. “Let’s go. Get your things.”

  “Not so fast, lad,” said the old man, his hand on Ivan’s shoulder.

  “We will leave,” Magda said. “We do not want to cause any trouble.”

  The little girl looked up. “Are they going to go away?”

  Anwen, flustered, swiveled to the hob. She wrapped a towel over the handle, lifted it clear, and filled a large teapot on the sideboard.

  “Please don’t make them go,” said Alice. “She’s too thin to go away, Granny.”

  “Well, first off, let’s all have a cup of tea,” said Anwen. “They’ve spent a night under our roof, Bran, and they’ll have a bite to eat, even if I have to break a spade over the boy’s head. That girl isn’t being dragged out in the snow yet. For a start, she’s wearing Bethan’s clothes.”

  “Well, there’s no point telling it to me—” Bran tipped his head at Magda and Ivan, whispering at the end of the table. “They look more like two hares about to take flight than birds settling down to nest.”

  “Right then, you two,” said Anwen—loud and matter-of-fact.

  Magda and Ivan looked up as one, startled.

  “Before you get too hasty,” Anwen said, “let’s have some tea.” She held the large teapot like an offering. “Tea, and a chat about what we’re all going to do.”

  26

  Magda and Ivan followed the old couple down a disused passageway with Alice skipping about at their feet. At the end of it was a low wooden door.

  “Right—” Anwen pushed at it. “Haven’t—been”—she gave it a hearty shove with her hip—“in here for a while.” The swollen boards scraped across an uneven flagstone floor. Alice scooted around her grandmother’s legs and peered into the room. It was dark inside, and smelled of damp—a grayness falling in between cracks at a boarded window.

  “You’ll have to go outside and pull the boards off, Bran. Let in some light.”

  “I’ll fetch a hammer,” he said. “Come on, Ivan.”

  “I think it’s going to have lots of spiders,” said Alice, climbing up on one of the wobbly chairs at a small pine table.

  “It’s the old farm kitchen,” said Anwen. “Been boarded up for years.” Her breath misted the cold air. “There’s a range—it’s an old thing but”—she stepped around a stack of rotting tea chests and mice-eaten cardboard boxes—“should work.”

  Outside, there was a creaking, as first one board, then another, was jimmied away from the snow-piled window. Ivan looked in through the dirty glass, and when he had pulled the last plank away from the window frame, the room was flooded with the cold light.

  “There are lots of cobwebs, Nain!” cried Alice.

  “Well, there won’t be too many flies then, will there?” Anwen tugged at the oven and the rusty door creaked open on heavy hinges. She swiped at the cobwebs. “The whole place needs a good clean. Oh, there’s a larder too.” She lifted the latch on a narrow door, the dusty shelve
s inside lined with red-and-white-checked plastic. “The larder always used to be chock-full of jams and preserves and a big homemade cheese or two when I first came to Rathged. Bran’s mother was still alive then,” she said. “And here’s a door into the back garden.” She pulled aside a mildewed curtain and rattled the bolts. “Need to unlock it from outside. Like I said, all the place needs is a good clean and a fire to dry up the damp. There’s a small bedroom upstairs.”

  “Can I see?” Magda asked.

  “Of course.”

  A narrow, worm-eaten staircase led up to a tiny landing. The bedroom had stained black floorboards and faded rose-spray wallpaper peeling at the edges. A metal bed frame was pushed against the wall, the striped mattress beyond repair, clumps of stuffing falling out where small creatures had ransacked it for bedding of their own. There was a small fire grate and a narrow mantelpiece. And in the corner a folding wooden clothes rail and old-fashioned tin bathtub with enameled handles.

  Magda went to the window. There were dead flies on the sill and cobwebs as thick as lace. She pulled back a faded curtain and rubbed at the glass.

  Down below was an orchard all bare and frosted, a spiky hedge and a squat stone wall bounding the low end of it, and rising up to the right was the stable block and a narrow gate leading to the yard behind the main house.

  Puffing and creaking, Anwen twisted herself up the narrow stairs. “What do you think then? Spot of work about the farm and it’s all yours.”

  Magda turned silently back to the window and the trees outside. She tried to imagine them in leaf, heavy with apples, birds singing in the hedge, the grass new and green. “And we can have firewood? And maybe some blankets and things for the kitchen?”

  “Yes,” said Anwen, looking around the bare and dusty room. “We could find another mattress for the bed and you can burn all the boxes out in the orchard. There’s nothing in them that will be any good anymore.”

  Ivan poked his head through the door.

  “We can stay here, Ivan,” Magda said. “All we need to do is work a little on the farm…”

  He saw her bright face. “Yes. We will stay. Until the weather clears.”

  * * *

  They threw the old boxes and tea chests onto a bonfire out in the orchard. Alice stood in the doorway, mesmerized by the shooting flames leaping out over the snow. Finally, Ivan hauled the lumpy cotton-filled mattress from the bed and pushed it down the stairs.