by Bond, Nancy
“No, as a matter of fact he said he hadn’t when I asked him. But he mentioned he’d discussed it with your daughter—again, Jennifer, I believe. I am right?”
Jen gave an unwilling nod.
“So you see.”
“I see that you’ve really got nothing but hearsay to go on,” said David. “In Cardiff I remember your telling us that nine times out of ten the objects people turn up and bring to you are simply archaeological rubbish. The countryside must be full of it.”
“Quite, David, quite,” said Dr. Owen with exaggerated patience. “But we do examine every piece that comes in and occasionally we find a real treasure. How can we be sure until we see?”
David nodded. “I understand that. You depend upon cooperation, though, don’t you? You can’t force someone to give you whatever he’s found, involuntarily.”
“Well, not always. That’s a rather touchy subject, David, and I’d as soon not get into it with you. Unpleasant, you know. Naturally, we do depend to a great extent on voluntary donations, as it were. Cooperation is terribly important, not only because it’s far simpler for everyone, but it gives people a sense of having done something. Really, David, all I’m asking for now is your cooperation.”
“But I’m not the right person to ask. You must go to the one with the object.”
“There.” Dr. Owen made a gesture with his hands, as if to say exactly so. “One of your children and here I am. If I seem to be addressing myself primarily to you, it’s because I feel we’re colleagues in a sense and I know you understand my position. I rely on you to make your children understand it. After all, I’m a stranger to them. However, I’m sure you can make them bring it forward. I know children love to play games, but this really isn’t a matter to be taken lightly.”
“I agree.” David’s tone was cool. “I don’t much like the word ‘make’.”
“Sometimes it does seem necessary. It’s only fair to warn you that the Museum does have methods of dealing with those who are uncooperative, when it seems advisable. If it were learned that you were withholding an important specimen from us, there could be rather an unpleasant investigation. Mind you, I don’t say there would be, but there could be. And you’d not have a very strong position, David, as a visitor to Wales. . . . Nor would it seem altogether admirable, shall I say, for a man in your line of work.”
“Meaning?”
“You are a university lecturer. Someone dedicated to scholarship and all that.”
“I would be sorry to see it come down to that,” said David shortly.
“Indeed, so should I,” Dr. Owen assured him with sincerity. “But this is my job, you understand. Normally I enjoy it tremendously—I find it exciting and vital—but from time to time there are situations . . . and this is one of them, I’m very much afraid. I don’t think there’s anything unreasonable in my position, do you? I am simply doing my job the most effective way I can. As a parent, I would rather have thought your job—”
“My job is to bring up my children the most effective way I can,” interrupted David. “Part of that job is teaching them responsibility and then trusting them with it. I find it’s not easy to learn, either for them or for me. We all have to allow each other to make mistakes, and we’re not always as quick as we should be to understand and help. But we are learning, Dr. Owen. I’m beginning to have a good deal of confidence in us—I think we’ll survive as a family, but only if we can rely on each other. So”—he paused—“I’m going to rely on them now to do what’s right. And they can rely on me to help. You’ve made your case and I’ll grant it’s a strong one, but I’ll tell you in all honesty, I will not stand to see my children bullied by anyone but me.”
Jen’s heart lifted. She felt like cheering.
But Dr. Owen looked aggrieved. “There is surely a difference between bullying and using common sense, David. You could perhaps call it intervention?”
“Of course. I want to be fair with you, I respect your position. But I truly believe Jen, Becky, and Peter would none of them treat this matter irresponsibly. If I change my mind for any reason, I won’t hesitate to intervene, as you say. Right now I’m going to leave it to them.”
“Not a very professional attitude, David,” said Dr. Owen reproachfully. “I certainly hope you don’t regret it.”
“So do I,” David agreed. “I don’t think, however, that we’ll get any further by pursuing this now.” He turned to Jen and Becky who had been listening to the conversation intently. “Do you both understand quite thoroughly what we’ve been saying?”
Jen pulled herself together. “Yes.” Becky nodded.
“Good. Dr. Owen’s quite right, I am responsible for you—you’re minors—so if I think you’re getting out of hand,” the suggestion of a smile, “I will interfere, I promise you.”
With a sigh Dr. Owen stood up. “I’m sorry I can’t really approve of your method of dealing with this, David.”
“So am I.” David got to his feet; so did Jen and Becky. “Of course, there’s always a good chance we’ve wasted a lot of breath on an object that doesn’t even exist—neither you nor I nor Dr. Rhys has seen it.”
The two men exchanged a long, not entirely unfriendly look. “Well, David, I’ve little time to spare this trip, I’m afraid. I’ve got some rather pressing business at the National Library before I go back to Cardiff. I hope you feel assured my interests in this matter are purely professional if we find we must pursue it further.”
“I do,” said David.
“Good. And if anything does turn up, you can reach me at this address for the next few days—it’s a guest house in Aberystwyth. I’ll be there until Wednesday. I think possibly once you’ve had time to consider, you may want to reach me.”
David nodded. “We may. Becky, would you get Dr. Owen’s coat, please?” He and Dr. Owen shook hands.
“Thank you for tea. I hope I’ll be speaking to you again soon.” Dr. Owen paused long enough to look sharply at each of them, then left, walking quickly away from Bryn Celyn, down the hill to the bus stop. Jen, Becky, and David watched him go.
“What’ll happen now?” asked Becky.
“I don’t know,” David answered. “I doubt very much that he’ll drop it, he’s too sure of himself, and his arguments are good ones. But he knows where I stand, heaven help me! I only hope I don’t live to regret this, as your Aunt Beth would say, I’m sure. I’m only being humorous, Jen, don’t frown at me. And where the hell do you suppose Peter’s got to this time?”
“You swore—are you terribly cross with him?” Becky asked.
“I have a feeling I ought to be!”
“You can be if you want,” Peter said suddenly. “I just couldn’t face him at the last minute. I’m sorry. And I didn’t tell you where I was going.” He made no move to enter the lounge but stood uncertainly in the doorway, his hand on the knob.
“Where were you?” demanded Jen. “And why didn’t you tell us?”
“You wouldn’t have let me go.”
“You’re right.”
“I thought we’d been all through this business of going off alone,” said David severely.
“He hasn’t been gone very long,” said Becky. “He can’t have gone far, it’s only four-thirty.”
“I hate to admit it,” said Jen reluctantly, “but we were better off without Peter here. It would have been worse if he’d stayed.”
David threw up his hands in mock defeat. “What chance does a parent have against the three of you? Why don’t we go have a proper tea in the kitchen and forget Dr. Owen for the time being?”
Jen waited until David left them and the three were alone, then got down to business with Peter. Whatever else, she was determined that he should know how his father had stood behind him with Dr. Owen. “He defended you,” she told her brother. “He told Dr. Owen that the Key was your responsibility and he trusted you to do the right thing with it. I wish you’d heard him.”
Peter made no attempt to hedge. “I couldn’t stay. I know it
was wrong to run out on you like that, but I didn’t even know I was going to do it until the doorbell rang. I might have said just the wrong thing and I wasn’t sure of Dad.”
“You should have been,” Becky said a little impatiently. “He’s on your side—our side.”
“I wasn’t sure.”
“Well, you can be now. He’s trying his hardest to understand,” said Jen.
“So are you,” Peter said unexpectedly, looking straight at her. “And it will all be over soon, I know it will. I’ve just got to stay away from Dr. Owen long enough to finish it.”
“You’ve made a good start,” exclaimed Jen dryly but without anger. “I hope you’re right and it is over soon—it’ll be a tremendous relief.”
Peter agreed.
***
Sunday, after dinner, the doorbell rang. David found Rhian on the step, jiggling impatiently up and down. Beyond her the ancient Llechwedd Melyn pickup stood at the curb.
“Afternoon, Mr. Morgan! I hoped you’d be yere then.”
“Come in,” said David. “Jen? Becky! Rhian’s here. We’re just finishing the dishes. Is that one of your brothers in the truck? Would he like a cup of tea?”
“Never refuses,” said Rhian with a grin and darted back to ask. She returned, followed diffidently by Dai Evans. He wiped his gumboots carefully on the mat and pulled off his cap; he looked huge and awkward in the unfamiliar kitchen.
“Hullo,” said Peter, making a wad of his dish towel and tossing it in a corner of the sink. Jen gave an exaggerated sigh and spread it out again. “What are you doing here?”
“We came for you,” answered Rhian. “We’re off to Ponterwyd, me and Dai, to collect some of our sheep. John Ellis rang the Forestry yesterday to say he’d got some with our mark on, see. They’re some of his old lot that Da bought last year and they’ve gone off home again.”
“I didn’t think sheep were smart enough to do that,” remarked David, putting a mug of tea in Dai’s hand.
“Hill sheep. Aye,” Dai said, through a mouthful of biscuit.
“They know their own territory,” explained Rhian. “Da usually buys further away, but John Ellis Ponterwyd sold up last year and Da’s had his eye on them sheep for some time now. Went into building, John Ellis.”
“Good stock,” offered Dai, swallowing.
“Anyway, I was thinking did you want to come?”
“Can we, Dad?” Becky asked eagerly.
“As far as I’m concerned, if Dai wants to take you all,” said David. “Just remember why you’re going and don’t get in the way. And don’t be back late.”
“I told you we could use extra rock cakes,” said Becky to Jen, as she began to fill a paper bag. “How many?”
“Us and Gwilym. Met him going down to the shop for milk,” Rhian answered.
“Leave a couple for my tea,” put in David.
“If the weather doesn’t worsen and we have time, we might go up Pumlumon after we’ve got the sheep,” said Rhian.
Dai said, “It’ll hold for a while yet. Gray but clear with it.”
Ponterwyd was a handful of houses scattered on the main road east from Aberystwyth. Dai followed the bus route through Bow Street to Aberystwyth first to leave off a basket of eggs with one of Mrs. Evans’s customers, then turned the pickup left along the Rheidol and followed the river. Jen and Becky rode in the cab beside him, the other three in the bed of the truck. It was a novelty for the three Morgans to be driven anywhere, and Jen thoroughly enjoyed the feeling of excitement.
Near the tiny village of Goginan, tucked in a fold of the valley, the road climbed high up the hillside on a series of switchbacks. Rhian, Peter, and Gwilym in the back got a sudden glorious, wide-open view back down the Rheidol toward Aber and the sea: the river snaking across the plain it had carved, the great hills shouldering back from it, patched in dark and light green trees and fields of smoldering gorse, the sprinkling of cottages. Then they were over the crest of the hills and the valley was gone.
The cold damp air felt good against Peter’s face. There was too much of it racing past to make conversation possible, so he could sit with his back against the hard side of the pickup and his legs out straight and submerge himself in thought. Rhian was singing to herself, he could see her lips move without hearing the words. And Gwilym’s eyes were intent on the gray sky, searching patiently for hawks or buzzards, or with luck, a kite. Peter considered them, the three of them together: how unlike they were. Yet they’d grown familiar to one another and were comfortable. His fingers went automatically to the chain around his neck. It was all woven into the same pattern: Gwilym, Rhian, the Key, his own family, Wales, and a feeling sometimes so powerful it made the back of his throat ache. The pattern was right, it was working itself out. People spent their lives weaving patterns, borrowing bits from one another, but making each pattern different. Peter was part of Rhian’s, she was part of his; they overlapped but didn’t match. It made him feel old to think that way.
At Ponterwyd, Dai turned left up a steep, narrow road, last paved many Welsh winters ago, that led back into the hills. Gwilym whistled and pointed and, looking up, Peter saw a pair of buzzards, circling slowly just above the horizon, great ragged wings extending in shallow arcs.
The cottage they pulled up in front of stood small and lonely on the bare hillside, its cluster of outbuildings huddled close as if for company. It looked like any of the other hill farms around except that next to it stood a large truck with a flatbed covered with piles of brick and lumber.
John Ellis came out to greet them, surrounded by large, hairy dogs. He was a big pleasant-faced man in overalls and gumboots, with curly red hair. He and Dai made a splendid pair, Jen thought in admiration. Both were the same size, the same age, one dark, the other fair. They were evidently great friends. Dai climbed out of the truck, and they conferred for a few minutes. John Ellis pointed downhill behind the cottage and Dai nodded knowledgeably.
“Come on!” cried Rhian, vaulting down. “We’ll all help!”
They piled out, stretching.
“Two of our ewes back in John Ellis’s pen,” said Dai. “He’s seen two more by the river this morning.”
“Is that all?” asked Rhian.
John Ellis nodded. “If you’ll spread out and work toward the river from yere, we should be finding them no trouble. And I’ve my dogs to bring them back then.”
“Shouldn’t take long,” Rhian predicted.
“Then we can go on up there.” Gwilym’s eyes were on the slopes of the mountain Pumlumon, north, rising sharp-cut against the sky.
“It doesn’t look like much of a mountain,” observed Becky.
“Highest in Cardigan,” Gwilym replied.
Peter said, “It looks old.”
They spread out as John Ellis instructed, eager to get the job done.
“What do you suppose you do if you find a sheep?” Jen asked Peter, as they set off.
“Stand and yell, I guess.” He flashed her a grin.
But it was Rhian and Gwilym who spotted the two strays, both ewes with lambs, huddled uncomfortably in the lee of a gorse bush, fleece matted, eyes wild and blank.
John Ellis sent one of his dogs along to take them back to the cottage. The three border collies were canny sheepdogs, even though they’d lost their own flock. Their instincts were as sharp as ever. John Ellis was too fond of them to think of selling them with his sheep.
At a whistle from him, the one called Gyp streaked off, away from the ewes, belly to the ground, and circled behind them. A short, sharp whistle dropped the dog to earth like a stone. The other two collies sat still beside John Ellis, ears up, trembling with eagerness to be off, but too well-trained to move. At another signal, Gyp began to creep toward the sheep, keeping low and stopping frequently. The ewes were nervous, making short runs first one way, then another. They scented the dogs and people. Then Gyp began to show himself, pushing the beasts gradually uphill toward the cottage, anticipating them each time they trie
d to bolt the wrong direction.
Coll and Nell were given the task of bringing in the two sheep from the pen by the river, and they were done. But on the way back, Becky found a fifth sheep, half in, half out of a clump of gorse, quite dead. Dai hurried over at her cry of distress and looked at the ewe glumly. “An old one, she,” he said, and bent and rolled her over. Half-crushed under the bulky body was a tiny white lamb, less than a day old by the look of it. It lay very still.
“Oh!” gasped Becky involuntarily. “Is it dead too?” It was so new to be lifeless; it had only just started.
Dai gathered it up, his big hands deft and unexpectedly gentle. He was frowning. Then they both saw the lamb’s eyes half open. Weakly it bleated—a thin, pitiful sound—and Dai and Becky smiled at each other.
“It’s milk she’s needing, this one. If we can get her warm and fed, she might do.”
“Can I carry her?”
“Aye.” With the same gentleness Dai put the lamb in Becky’s arms and she was enchanted.
“Bess’ll look after you,” said John Ellis, when he saw what Becky’d got. “She’ll find you a bottle and rubber teat around somewhere.”
The kitchen was warm, and very full when they’d all crowded into it. John’s wife, Bess, didn’t seem at all put out by the appearance of so many strangers, but then she didn’t look like the sort of person who could be easily upset by anything. She was a comfortable, calm woman with kind eyes and red, rough hands. She found what Becky needed and showed her how to coax the orphan to drink warm milk from a baby’s bottle. Two very small Ellises sat cross-legged on the hearth, watching and grinning like Jack O’Lanterns.
Dai saw the lamb was in good hands and turned to John to discuss dogs; they apparently shared a passionate interest in the subject. There was a man in Ponterwyd Dai was particularly anxious to see called Howell Pritchard, who raised some of the finest rabbit dogs in the county. His best bitch had just whelped, and Dai’s heart was set on owning one of her pups. John Ellis was only too pleased to have an excuse to pay Howell Pritchard a visit himself.
“So,” Rhian interrupted, “you won’t care if we be off for a couple of hours, will you?”