One Crow Alone

by S. D. Crockett

  “One, two, three—” They swung it onto the top of the fire and waited for it to catch. Anwen gathered up a box of spare pots and pans and brushes and cloths from her own kitchen, and rattled them down on the table.

  Magda hauled two buckets of water from the house and put them, sloshing, on the kitchen floor.

  Ivan wheeled several loads of firewood from the log shed and began to stack them in the lean-to by the back door. Magda cleaned the ash in the range and laid a bed of twigs and old paper in the grate.

  “We could probably do with cleaning the chimney,” said Bran, watching her. “But I’m sure it’ll do for now.”

  Alice came pushing past his legs and peered in at all the bustle. Anwen too poked her head around the door. “I’ll give you a bit of help if you want it.”

  “No,” said Magda cheerfully. “Thank you. I will do it myself. You have your own work. And when I have finished I will come and take my clothes to wash, and if you have anything for me to do…”

  Anwen nudged Bran. “See,” she whispered in his ear. “Gourty was right. I think we’ll get on very well with them.”

  * * *

  Magda’s knees ached as she knelt on the flagstones and cleaned the range with a wire brush. As she worked, clouds of rust came floating from where she scrubbed. Ivan gave the window a shove. Cold air welled into the room, gusting out through the back door. Magda looked about at the bare, dirty, dusty, freezing, cobwebbed room. “It will be good when it is clean,” she said.

  Ivan smiled, watching her wrap a cloth around her hair. Perhaps it was her certainty that he liked.

  “What?” she said, hands above her head tying the knot.

  “Nothing. Just you, Havemercy.”

  “Don’t you have logs to stack?” She picked up the broom.

  * * *

  It was a hard bit of effort sweeping around the old beams in the ceiling, with the broom snagging on hooks and nails, and her hands in the air the whole time. Ivan came in and laughed, and she said, “Stop laughing.” So he took the broom and made a passable job of the room upstairs to save her aching arms.

  Then she made him carry the table out into the snow, and the heavy oak dresser too so she could clean the floor.

  “Who are you expecting?” he said.

  “You want to sleep in a sty?” She knelt down and lit the fire in the grate. She tipped her head to one side and peered into the oven. The twigs had caught and so she fetched some logs and put them in with a billowing cloud of smoke that made her cough. Then she closed the window and filled the copper with water and an arc of warmth began to spread out across the room.

  “Ivan—”

  But Ivan had sneaked to the orchard to poke meaningfully at the remains of the bonfire with a smile across his face.

  * * *

  When Anwen came in to announce that there was food ready, she was not prepared for the change that Magda had wrought in the old kitchen. She opened the door to a warm and spotless room, bare indeed, but her old pans arranged neatly on the shelf, the sink scrubbed clean, the floor damp in the corners but drying from where it had been washed.

  A neat stack of logs had been piled beside the range and Magda sweated over the pine table with a stiff scrubbing brush.

  Clomping sounds from upstairs suggested that the boy, Ivan, was busy in the bedroom, and Anwen was satisfied that these two strangers were indeed a good bet. It was a shame, she could not help thinking, to be burning another fire in the house, but that was unavoidable.

  “Here’s something to eat,” she said, putting a pot on the table. “And I must say you’ve made a thorough job of this place, Magda. It’s all very cozy. In the morning we’ll see what jobs need doing about the farm if you’re feeling well enough for it. Well—” She looked about one more time with a satisfied gaze. “Goodnight.”

  Anwen closed the door. They heard Alice twittering on down the passageway, and the dog gave a bark from the depths of the house. Finally, a door closed far off and Magda hurried up the stairs to the bedroom.

  “There is food, Ivan—”

  Ivan was kneeling on the floor by the bed. His coat lay beside him, the bundle of illegal passports and the wedge of remaining zloty in a pile on top of it. He was prizing up a floorboard with a piece of metal.

  Carefully, he laid the passports and money between the joists and put the floorboard back in place, hammering the nails in over a cloth to deaden the sound.

  He looked up at Magda. “Until the weather clears.”

  * * *

  After they had eaten, Magda lit a candle on the mantelpiece. Outside, the snow had stopped falling and the wind had died and there was a quiet peace. She fetched an armful of logs from the shed and shut the door. Just the small dark window was an ominous black eye in the room, and she hung a cloth over it.

  “You have made a good job of this place,” Ivan said, coming up close behind her as she stretched up on her toes to hook the cloth over a nail. He rested his chin on her shoulder and crept his hands about her waist. “Must be time for bed…”

  “I don’t know why the English do not have shutters,” Magda said, taking his hands from her waist. “Every room is like being naked.”

  Ivan sauntered back to the fire and stretched his arms in the air. Dropping them suddenly, he clomped up the narrow stairs, three steps at a time, and came down, clanging the old tin bathtub against the walls. “Let’s wash.”

  She dipped her chin at him.

  “Why not?” He grinned.

  So they scraped the tub down on the floor by the fire and filled it with hot water from the range, bucket by slow bucket.

  It seemed to Magda that this was a very pleasant thing to be doing. They laughed a bit and water spilled on the flagstones. She hung two small towels on the back of a chair to warm.

  It was all ready.

  “You first,” Ivan said.

  A very pleasant thing to be doing until you have done it and the bath sits there waiting for you to be naked.

  She blushed.

  “I’ll sit at the table and promise not to look.” Ivan put his hand in front of his eyes, then he opened his fingers like bars in a cage, and looked through them, grinning at her. “I promise.”

  Magda slapped at him playfully, her cheeks red.

  “All right, all right—I’ll go upstairs.”

  When she heard him creaking on the floor above, Magda finally undressed.

  “Don’t you dare come down,” she shouted at the ceiling.

  She stood bare. Her clothes folded on the chair. Her feet flat on the cold stone floor.

  So this is what it is to be naked with a man so near.

  She tucked her long pale hair into a roll at the nape of her neck, flicked a nervous look at the door, and stepped into the water.

  It felt very hot. The water stung her blistered feet. She stood in it for several moments then lowered herself down, the tin sides cold against her arms.

  A wave of homesickness came over her then. A strange sense of unease. She felt uncovered, unprotected in some way she could not reconcile. Like a sparrow in a gale. Blown every which way and unable to land.

  And it was not just the nakedness. And the thought of the one mattress upstairs.

  There were footsteps from above.

  You have made your own bed, even if you did not have much choice. Now you must lie in it.

  She swirled the water with her hand; the heat dissipated a little.

  And how lucky you are to have a bed for the night.

  She wiped the perspiration from her neck. The water felt good.

  She held her fingers up in front of her eyes like Ivan had done, and looked through them. She laughed quietly because it was quite funny, and then she relaxed, and her head tipped back and she rested her arms on the edges of the tub where the handles formed a ledge and her hair fell out of the twist at her neck and slumped into the water and she closed her eyes and listened to the spitting of the fire in the range for a while, and felt the first gentl
e warmth for a long time, creeping into her bones.

  And so, like that, she pretended neither to hear Ivan’s tread on the stair—nor his turning of the door handle.

  And Ivan came over and put his hand in her damp hair. She opened her eyes. And he kissed her.

  It wasn’t so difficult after all.

  And they went upstairs.

  Sparrows in the gale.

  27

  “Out the way, Daffodil!” Anwen pushed a hairy ginger sow away and emptied a bucket of oats and scraps into the trough. “Ivor there is far better behaved.”

  A large boar snouted over and snuffled his nose about in the feed. Anwen scratched at his back and he flicked his short curly tail and grunted.

  “You muck this lot out,” Anwen said, “and then we’ll do the cows. Don’t let Daffodil near the gate. She’s a runner, and if she gets a sniff of freedom we’ll be an hour getting her back in. Don’t be mean with the straw either; they only eat more if they’re cold.” She held the stable door open and Magda pushed the wheelbarrow into the sty. She rubbed at the sow’s ear. It grunted happily, chomping on a turnip end.

  “If we’re lucky, she’ll have a good litter this year—enough that we can slaughter a few to sell in Dolgellau.”

  “Is the town near?” said Magda.

  “Town!” Anwen scoffed. “A village at best. And there’s nothing there except the army store. Some people come back in the summer thinking they can raise some chickens and grow a few cabbages. There’s a market then of course. And plenty of traders come on the Liverpool boat to pay low-down prices to us who’ve been working all year in the snow.”

  “The boat—is it the only way to Liverpool? Even in the spring?”

  “Pretty much, since the roads have been so bad and fuel so expensive. And electric cars don’t help when the lines are always down. Not that we ever had any newfangled cars out here.”

  “Does the boat come often?”

  “Every couple of weeks to the fish market at Barmouth. People get down the river to Dolgellau from there. There are still a few of us out here with things to sell. And I’d like to see someone try to stop us. There’s Huw Thomas and his family over the hill: he still has his sheep. And you’ve met the Gourtys: they’ve got the ponies, although there’s no trekking business anymore, and—Daffodil! Get. Off!” Anwen pushed the sow away with her knee and slammed the sty door shut. “Well, I’d better feed the chickens and let you get on. And watch out for that pig!”

  Ivan came over with a bale of straw from the barn at the end of the farmyard.

  Three cows hung shaggy heads over a rail, clouds of warm breath snorting from wet noses. They were short-legged, black-haired beasts, not a sort that Magda had seen before, and they watched her work with a herdlike interest as she shoveled pig shit into her wheelbarrow.

  Ivan leaned over the door. “They’ve got us working soon enough.”

  Magda stabbed her fork into the dung in the barrow and smiled. “‘Us’?”

  “I’ve been splitting logs for the last two hours. You should see my hands—” He held them out.

  Magda went to him and held them, turned them over gently. Then she reached over the gate and kissed him on the cheek. “Poor thing.” She laughed. “Hey,” she added. “Throw the straw over before you go.”

  Ivan hefted the bale onto the top of the stable door and she grabbed it and pulled it over to the back of the sty. Bending it against her knee she pulled off the twine and opened it up.

  The pigs came over, grunting piggily as they wriggled their heads, tossing the loosened straw in the air.

  Magda used this moment of distraction to open the gate and get the barrow out before Daffodil realized she had missed her chance of freedom.

  Ivan grasped her arms. “Come here—” And he tried to kiss her. And not on the cheek either.

  Magda pushed him off. “Someone might be watching—” and she hurried past him with the barrow. “Don’t forget to put more logs on the stove,” she said, without the backward glance that would show her red-cheeked smile.

  * * *

  Anwen came out from the chicken shed with Alice. The little girl slipped into the cow pen and pranced about on the clean straw.

  Anwen hauled a bucket of water over the gate and Magda topped up the water troughs and filled the manger. The cows stretched up sturdy necks and pulled out wisps of hay, chewing slowly with the gastric rumblings and gentle lowing of feeding cattle.

  “I usually come and give them a brushing if they’ve been in for a bit,” said Anwen. “I like cows. They’re gentle, pleasant animals on the whole. The two heifers there—that one’s called Primrose, and the other, with the little horns showing, is May. The pregnant one is Queenie. Not very original names, I know. She’ll be calving soon, Queenie will—look at her.” She patted the cow’s rump. “I hope the weather gets better in good time so we can let them out.”

  Animals in the barn, work to be done, fires to be lit, children to be fed. Life going on. But not in Morochov, thought Magda.

  “Animals have simple ways,” she said. “Sometimes I wish our own lives were so simple.” She surprised herself with the words. They were Brunon Dudek’s words. Where was Brunon now? And his brother Aleksy, and the Kowalskis and Stopko’s dog? Was Bogdan Stopko still in Krakow even?

  And Mama? Where was she?

  “You must be wanting to know where your mother is, and wondering how you’re going to get back to Poland,” said Anwen, reading her thoughts.

  “In the spring they will let the people go back to the villages,” Magda said quietly. “I am sure. I will find her then.”

  “What if there’s a war?”

  “War?”

  “They talk about it on the radio,” Anwen said.

  Magda turned to her. “Ivan says the same thing. Do you think it will happen?”

  “Lord knows,” said Anwen. “Maybe it’s just talk—the radio people love to talk. These bad winters have made people silly. I shouldn’t worry too much. You can get to Liverpool easily enough once the Barmouth boat’s running again. Find your friend—the one who can help you. I’m sure you’ll find your mother then.”

  They were silent for a moment.

  “Why does your daughter not stay here?” said Magda. “Why has she gone away?”

  “Oh, Bethan. She’s earning money. For Alice.”

  “But why can you not make enough money selling milk and meat at the market? Your daughter could help you.”

  “Bethan’s not interested in getting her hands covered in muck. Not interested in this life of being up every morning at five. Not interested in old clothes and rough hands.”

  “But what about the child’s father? Where is he?”

  Anwen turned her heavy-coated body—and the conversation—away from the stable door, and since Alice was pestering conveniently, she took the little girl’s small hand in her plump one, and changed the subject.

  “Come on, Magda. Time for a cup of tea! Let’s get in and warm up a bit after all your good work. And you can soak your feet again. You don’t want those blisters getting infected.”

  * * *

  After lunch, Magda boiled a kettle and washed the pans in Anwen’s kitchen. She found herself happy, with thoughts of being alone with Ivan in the little room last night. Ivan blowing out the candle and coming over—his body cold in the dark. It was as if the other things that had happened were a thousand miles away when he had kissed her and she had kissed him back—and more, and was not ashamed of it at last.

  It was some kind of thrill that was entirely new and she smiled unthinkingly with it.

  When she had finished the washing up, she dried her hands and looked about the room. This place has got dirty round the edges with two old people on their own here. And a dog in the house.

  In Babula’s cottage, every tiny thing had a place and a purpose. Everything was cherished. Cleaned and polished because it had been hard-won. “Smoluch!” the old women in the village would have muttered to one
another about anyone with so much as a speck of dust on the shelves.

  If Magda ever complained of boredom, Babula would have her cleaning the windows with old newspaper and vinegar.

  “Make the most of what you’ve got, Magda. And be happy with it,” Babula would say, knuckles red with scrubbing at sheets in the wooden tub.

  * * *

  You can put this place in order while you are here, thought Magda. Make the most of it. That was it. Putting something in order. Even if her own life was like a badly packed suitcase of mismatched shoes that had been thrown down a hill.

  * * *

  “When do you wash the sheets?” she asked Anwen.

  “Sheets? Whenever I get the time. It’s all got to be done by hand. I used to take the washing machine for granted, I can tell you.”

  Magda looked at the washing machine in the corner, piled with old magazines and a bag of chicken feed. Back in the village, Kowalski’s wife had had a washing machine once. Brought by her son who worked in Germany.

  “A washing machine, Mama,” he announced proudly, dragging it out of the back of his car and attaching it with a pump to the well. The old villagers crowding around to watch.

  But after he left, it had soon stopped working: the pump blocked with grit.

  “Didn’t get anything clean anyway,” Mrs. Kowalski said. “The old way’s the best way.” And she resumed her time-honored habit of boiling sheets on the stove. But the washing machine remained, a strange object of plastic and gleaming glass, proudly on display for when her son came home.

  Magda smiled to herself, remembering.

  “Can I ask you something?” said Anwen, resting her knitting on her lap.

  “Of course.”

  “Did someone really steal your car? I mean—how did you get a car in the first place?”

  “Yes. Someone took it, but it was not really ours. But we did not steal it,” Magda said. “Not really. It was in London. We—” She looked at her feet, twisted the cloth in her hands.