by Bond, Nancy
“It wasn’t quite this awful at the end of August,” said Peter. “At least there were a few more people around and all the shops were open, but on its best days it isn’t beautiful.”
“What on earth do people do out here?”
“Run guest houses in the summer and keep students in the winter or have shops. And there are the ones like Hugh-the-Bus and Mr. Williams who work at regular jobs all year. Lots of professors from the University live out here, too, like Dad, and go into Aber every day,” explained Becky. “Gwilym says he likes it better here in the winter when there aren’t so many people. He says there are more birds.”
Peter shook his head mournfully. “The Bog has gotten to him. It can be quite serious—Bog Fever. No cure.”
Jen laughed. That sounded more like Peter. He seemed to have relaxed a bit.
Stuck in among the boarded-up buildings were shops that were still open and busy this morning. Jen looked in at each one with interest. There didn’t seem to be any supermarket in Borth, just lots of little stores that each sold one kind of thing: meat, or fruit and vegetables, or baked goods. They got sucked into a bakery by the lovely warm, sweet smell, as they stood looking at the cakes and pies in its window. Jen bought them each an eclair and they walked on, eating them and shamelessly licking their fingers.
Along the ocean, the houses suddenly ended and there was a great, gray cement sea wall instead, too high to see over from the road. On the right Becky pointed out the station where Jen had arrived. Was it really only two days ago? It hardly seemed possible. She remembered Aunt Beth saying, “It won’t be anything like what you’re used to, dear. I don’t think there’s much there.” And Jen had answered confidently, “Dad and Becky and Peter will be there, and it’ll be fun to live by the sea.”
“Hey,” Becky nudged her. “What are you thinking about?”
“Probably that in another three weeks she’ll be on her way home again,” said Peter, gloomy again.
“No,” said Jen. “Just thinking how different from Amherst it is.”
Peter snorted. “That’s the kind of remark that always gets me into trouble!”
“Come on,” Becky said, “let’s go up on the sea wall.”
There were steps to go up and a broad flat walk on top. On the other side was the sand beach. In spite of Peter’s gloom, Jen was excited to be so close to the ocean. They lived too far from it at home to go often, but she had always loved it.
The steel-gray sea washed up and down the beach; the waves chipped white at the edges where they met the sand. Becky turned around to show Jen where their house was on the cliff behind them, but Peter refused to stop because it was too cold, so after a moment they followed him. Becky was too busy telling Jen about people and houses to notice when Peter did stop short, and she ran up his heels, Jen right in back.
“Do watch out,” said Peter irritably, catching his balance.
“You ought to say when you’re going to stop.”
“I didn’t know I was. There’s one of your friends, isn’t it?” He pointed down the beach to a thin solitary figure wandering slowly toward them along the tide line.
“It’s Gwilym,” said Becky. “I wonder what he’s been out looking for. Hey!” She waved her arms at him. “Hey, Gwilym!”
The figure turned in their direction and continued moving slowly.
“Maybe he’ll ignore us,” suggested Peter half-hopefully.
“What’s the matter with him?” Jen asked in surprise.
“Nothing,” said Becky flatly. “He just isn’t interested in the things Peter likes, that’s all. He’s perfectly nice once you get to know him, but I think he’s a bit shy.” She jumped off the wall and ran over to Gwilym.
Jen and Peter followed slowly. Jen had heard too much from Becky about Gwilym not to be curious. He greeted Becky, glanced apprehensively at her brother and sister, and turned to point at something up the beach the way he’d come.
“There’s a flock of ducks out there, Gwilym says. Can you see them? They’re down near Ynyslas,” Becky informed them as they came up. “He says they’re scoters.”
Oh, dear, thought Jen. Her first impression was of a tall, awkward boy, thin and brown-haired, wearing glasses. He looked uncomfortably like his mother. Gwilym blushed unbecomingly at Becky’s excitement. “Scoters are really very common here,” he said, not looking at Jen. There was a painful silence then he added, “They winter here every year.”
“This is my sister, Jen,” Becky said quickly.
Gwilym nodded. “Mum said you’d come Saturday. Just for the holidays, she said.”
“Three weeks,” said Jen, wondering what else Mrs. Davies had said.
“What did you see besides scoters?” Becky demanded.
Gwilym looked relieved; he was on safe ground. “Teal, widgeon, scaup, and a couple of pintails, mostly. All common this time of year.” He managed to look straight at Jen this time. “It’s good birding up at the estuary. Are you interested?”
“I’m afraid I really don’t know anything about birds,” she admitted.
“Oh.” He was clearly disappointed. “People who aren’t interested in natural history generally find Borth rather isolated.”
“Yes, they do,” declared Peter.
“Have you lived here always?” inquired Jen politely, with a frown at Peter.
“Yes.” He put a full stop on it, and Jen began to search for something else she could ask, but then he went on. “I like it really. I like it this way, but in the season it gets too crowded.”
Jen looked around at the vast empty sands and tried to imagine Borth crowded without much success: bodies stretched out on the sand, children building sandcastles, people swimming, eating ice cream, jostling on the sea wall. She shivered as the raw December wind gusted around them, and they began to move along the beach toward the cliff as if by mutual consent.
“After Bank Holiday in May or June all the rooms in town are booked solid, and the caravan parks south of here are full. It isn’t much fun then.”
“I should think it would be more cheerful,” observed Jen.
Gwilym shrugged unenthusiastically. “Depends on what you like, I suppose. It’s nicer without strangers in the house, too.”
“Strangers? In your house?”
“I told you,” said Becky. “Mrs. Davies takes in guests during the summer.”
“Is it a hotel?”
“Just like yours,” replied Gwilym. “A bit bigger perhaps. We’ve got three spare bedrooms with Susan and Sheila gone. Mum does your housekeeping because she hasn’t anyone to look after at home this winter. She had a University student last year.”
“It must be awful to have strange people staying in your house,” said Peter.
“You get used to it. Mum’s always done it. Her mum used to do it in Shrewsbury before. Lots of people around here do bed and breakfast in summer. Mum says it more than pays for itself, and it doesn’t cost the trippers near as much as staying in a hotel would do.”
“I would hate it,” Peter declared.
“I don’t know,” said Becky thoughtfully. “It would be fun seeing who came. I don’t think I’d mind.”
“But suppose you don’t like them? What if they leave a mess, or make lots of noise, or stay out late at night?” Jen could see all kinds of problems.
“You risk it,” Gwilym answered, sounding mildly surprised that the Morgans considered bed-and-breakfast such a strange business. “Usually they’re not bad—I hardly ever see them. Dad and I keep to the kitchen mostly, and guests have their bedrooms and the lounge for meals and like that. Don’t you have bed-and-breakfast in America?”
“No way,” said Peter.
“We have hotels and guest houses and motels,” Jen amplified, “but I’ve never paid to stay in someone else’s house.”
Gwilym nodded wisely. He had opened up considerably and even seemed to be enjoying the conversation. “Dad says there are some motels in England and Scotland, but I’ve never stayed in
one. They’re very dear. Mind you, not all bed-and-breakfasts are very nice, but Mum keeps a good one and does a nice fried breakfast. Of course, last year—” They were all watching him with great interest. “Last year we did have a couple that left without Mum seeing them. But that’s only happened the once to us.”
“You mean they left without paying?” Becky asked.
“They did. They said they would stop the weekend till Monday morning, see. Then Sunday night we heard them come in—Dad said after it must just have been the man, but he made enough noise for two. When they didn’t come down to breakfast in the morning, Mum went up to knock—she only serves until nine so she won’t have to spend the morning over it—and the door was latched from the inside, see, and no one answered. Dad didn’t get an answer either, speaking through the door, so I had to climb up the outside by the drain. The window was wide open, and there hadn’t been anyone in the beds at all and the place was cleaned out. My mum was that mad, but Dad said they must have been truly hard up, not able to pay. We never did see them again, those two.”
“But that’s awful,” exclaimed Becky in shocked tones. “What did your mother do?”
“Wasn’t a thing she could do—gone is gone. Dad was sure they hadn’t signed their proper names in our book. That’s the risk of it, he says, but he took the latches off the insides of all the doors.”
They absorbed this story of petty crime in silence, stopping together outside Mr. Williams’s shop.
“Are you going up for lunch?” Jen inquired, avoiding Peter’s eye.
“Well—” Gwilym hesitated. “I’ve to do some errands for Mum.”
“Come by for tea,” offered Becky promptly.
Gwilym glanced at Jen uncertainly.
“Sure,” she said.
Gwilym smiled suddenly and Jen smiled back, glad to see his face lose some of its angularity.
“What did you do that for?” Peter demanded, as they started back up the hill.
“Don’t be unpleasant,” Jen said. “Just because you’re antisocial, Becky and I needn’t be. Besides, he may not even come, he didn’t say he would.”
But he did. Just after four he appeared at the kitchen door looking anxious. Becky pulled him in at once and made him take off his jacket. They’d kept the kitchen shut off from the rest of the house all afternoon, and it was quite cozy.
“Mum’ll be in soon to start your dinner.”
Jen set her teeth and lit the gas under the kettle.
“I told Jen you’d taken me walking with you,” said Becky, piling biscuits on a plate. “We even went on the Bog once.”
“His mistake was bringing you back again,” remarked Peter.
“Peter!” said Jen sharply.
“I was just thinking,” said Peter, sounding defensive, “that it would be a great opportunity to get rid of someone you didn’t like. Slowly she sank into the trackless ooze, her cries growing fainter and fainter, lost in the emptiness.”
“Beast,” said Becky cheerfully. “You’re wrong—Gwilym does like me in the first place. In the second, the Bog isn’t trackless because we’ve been right across it; and in the third, someone would be bound to hear you if you yelled. Besides there are cattle grazing on it and they don’t sink.”
“Not much of a bog then, I must say.”
“Oh, but it is.” Gwilym protested seriously. “There are all kinds of rare plants on it, and scientists have found pollen from prehistoric ones in the peat. It’s very old, you know. It’s been called Cors Fochno for so long people have even forgotten what the name means.”
“But if it’s any kind of a bog why don’t things sink into it, like in quicksand?” Peter persisted.
“They do, on parts of it. Every now and again someone loses a cow. But it’s safe if you know where to walk.”
“Unlimited possibilities.” Peter grinned ghoulishly.
“What a morbid conversation!” Jen said. “I’d rather think of the prehistoric pollen!”
“It really is scientifically interesting,” said Gwilym stiffly.
“No, I mean it,” Jen assured him. “It’s just that I don’t know anything about birds or plants. But it would be fun to go out on the Bog. Would you take us sometime?”
He looked at her suspiciously, the steam from his tea fogging his spectacles mysteriously. “It’s best early in the morning.”
“How early?”
“Six o’clock or so.”
Peter groaned. “You are mad,” he said. “Why are plants any better at six in the morning than at eleven?”
“It’s birds at six.”
Peter was about to make a sarcastic reply when Mrs. Davies opened the back door, letting in a blast of cold air.
“Oh, there you are,” she said, seeing Gwilym. “I expected you’d be out wandering on them dunes.”
“We met him this morning and asked him to tea,” Becky explained.
“Much better, too.” Mrs. Davies nodded in approval. “Spending time with kids your own age than out all day by yourself with them binoculars. Just what I’ve been telling you.”
Gwilym looked dreadfully uncomfortable. He appeared to have taken an unusual interest in the arrangement of empty mugs on the table, and Jen sympathized silently. To have a mother like Mrs. Davies—but, no, it didn’t do to think too much about mothers.
“Well, you can all lend a hand clearing up, so I can get your meal started.”
***
When David came home at six, he found pots on the stove bubbling quietly and his three children sitting peacefully around the kitchen table reading. Mrs. Davies and Gwilym had gone home.
“Good day?”
“Mmm,” said Jen, not looking up from her book. She’d found a battered guide to Mid-Wales on a shelf in the lounge and was reading the part about Borth and Aberystwyth.
“We met Gwilym,” said Becky. “Down on the beach. He told us about having tourists stay in their house.”
“What’s supper?”
“Well, you know it has to be either boiled or fried.” Peter closed his book. “Boiled tonight.”
David gave him an irritated glance.
“It certainly is a peculiar-looking area,” Jen remarked hastily. “I mean all this flat land. The rest of Cardigan seems to be mountains.”
“They call them hills here,” corrected David with a smile. “You find anything interesting?”
“I do wonder why they built a town here.” Jen showed her father a picture of Borth taken from their cliff top. “It isn’t a very comfortable sort of place with the sea on one side and the Bog on the other.”
“The beach,” explained David briefly. “Good place for tourists. It isn’t a very old town, but there’s a lot of interest here.”
Peter raised his eyebrows but kept still, to Jen’s relief.
“Gwilym says he’ll take us all out on the Bog,” said Becky.
“That should be fascinating.”
“I’m sure he’d take you, too.”
Ruefully David shook his head. “I’ve got far too much work to do right now to go on expeditions. But you should be all right with Gwilym. He knows the country well, I understand. Is dinner ready?”
Jen glanced at her watch. “Oh, help! It should have been off the stove ten minutes ago!”
After a frantic scramble they all sat down to another overdone meal. Then Jen, Peter, and Becky sat on and played Hearts until Becky’s bedtime.
“I don’t see why I should have to go to bed earlier than anyone else during the holidays,” she protested.
“The youngest person always goes to bed first—that’s the rule,” Peter told her callously. “Then you can get up first in the morning.”
“Thank you very much!” retorted Becky. “It’s a dumb rule!”
“They usually are,” Peter replied.
When Becky had gone, Jen got out her book again. Peter sat watching her until she felt slightly uneasy. “Well?” she said at last, looking up.
“Can we talk?” he asked
, his voice tense.
Jen wasn’t at all sure she wanted to, but she nodded. “About what?”
“You know. This place.”
“It doesn’t seem too bad to me actually,” she began cautiously.
“Oh, Jen!” Peter was agonized. “It’s awful! It’s a hole. Don’t try to be cheerful about it.”
Jen sighed. “Look, Peter, I know you didn’t want to come. Everybody knew it. But Dad decided and he couldn’t just have left you behind.”
“He left you.”
“That’s different.”
“Why?” he demanded. “I could have stayed with Aunt Beth and Uncle Ted, too.”
“Then Becky would have been by herself.” A vague, uncomfortable memory stirred in the back of Jen’s mind, part of a conversation between her father and Aunt Beth she had overheard. Aunt Beth was saying, “Well, I really think Jennifer will be fine. After all she is grown-up and sensible. But, David, I wouldn’t know where to begin with Peter. He needs a firm hand obviously, and Ted is so easygoing. Peter needs his father.” David had answered, “All right, you needn’t worry about Peter. I’ll manage. I’m very grateful to you for offering to keep Jen. You’re probably right about her school.” But Jen couldn’t very well tell Peter Aunt Beth hadn’t wanted the responsibility for him.
“. . . you know Becky,” Peter was saying. “She’d be perfectly all right on her own. She’s already got lots of friends.”
“Haven’t you got any?”
Peter gave an unhappy laugh. “Not likely. They’re all too busy with themselves to care about me.”
“Have you tried?” Before he could answer she went on, “I don’t see why you go on fighting it, Peter. Now that you’re actually here, there isn’t much you can do, it seems to me, except give in and make the best of it.”
“Best of it!” Peter exclaimed heatedly. “You don’t know what you’re talking about! Maybe it looks all right to you—you’re only visiting and you can go home in three weeks and forget all the horrible parts. But just for a minute, look at it the way I have to—a dead-end town, most of it shut up tight, crumbling away. No decent stores, not even a movie. The closest one’s in Aberystwyth and we hardly ever go there. Aberystwyth isn’t much either, but after you’ve been in Borth for a while it doesn’t look so bad! It rains all the time and it’s cold—you can’t even get warm indoors.”