by Clare Dudman
But even before I saw them I knew they were there. I could feel them coming. Strange creatures in the air. Their spirits and their helpers making the other world restless. Disturbing my sleep. Making the rou skittish.
By the time they came close enough to see, the sun was high: a weak sun, doing his best to warm up the air and the wind blowing his efforts away.
From the shore there was a boom, like a small thunder, and then they detached themselves from the swan. Like fleas. No, larger than fleas. Like rats. Rats disturbed from a nest. Falling into the water and crying out when the water grasped them, swimming like rats do, frantic and clumsy, their heads above the water and then one of them stepping on the land first, jumping up and yelling to the rest who were going back to the swan. Trouble, I thought and wondered if Elal knew. Trouble, I thought then and I was right and wrong. Nothing is all one thing or the other. So it was with these men and their women, especially their women.
Five
They unload their possessions onto the beach. There isn’t much; most families have easily packed all they own into a single large trunk. They haul them up the beach to the shelter.
Silas unlocks his and peers inside – thirty-eight long years on this earth and so very little to show for it. He riffles through baby clothes, rolls of cloth, rugs, pots and pans until he finds what he is looking for – a couple of old blankets. He pulls them free and with them comes something else – a roll of old bills and orders. He briefly glances through them: small sums marking triumphs and then larger sums with accompanying demands, threats and denials. One paper is caught by the wind and carried towards the sea. He runs after it, catching it just before it reaches the water. It’s nothing more than an old bill; the ink a little faded but still legible. He snorts – if he could only read it. Yet he knows every word. He walks back slowly, glancing round to check that no one seems to have noticed his sudden frantic movement. No need for anyone else to see – even though each man here will have similar secrets.
The doctor’s boy had chased after him at the market. The shrill ‘Mr James’ had forced him to stop and look around, and the boy had thrust the bill into his hand with a short small bow of his head.
He had waited until he was alone before breaking the seal: the doctor’s scrawl had meant little to him, but the long line of figures and the sum underlined twice at the end had meant rather more: more zeros than he could ever remember seeing on a piece of paper before. They’d wobbled in front of him while the rest of the world had retreated, like a column of hungry mouths exclaiming O, O, O.
Even Elinor’s placid words failed to reassure him.
‘We can help you out, bach.’
He’d shaken his head. He couldn’t bear the thought of his father-in-law smirking as he reached into his cash box. He would do this himself. ‘Don’t tell anyone.’
‘I won’t, if you don’t want me to, cariad, but...’
‘Promise?’
She’d nodded slowly once. ‘I promise.’
Ah, Elinor – how he sometimes misses her gentle words. He smoothes down the bill and adds it to the bundle of other papers. Why is he keeping all these? What good is it all now? The demand of £10 from a man in Chester for a church that was empty each Sunday; then one for £37 from the Melrose estate to be paid by Lady Day for his one-room cottage and land; and then the smaller bills: the £3 he owed the saddler and the shillings he owed the grocer. Then those more inconspicuous chits written in Megan’s hand – each one recording a small heartbreak – the sow and then his eight cows and then his dogs: Polly, Benny, Sammy.
More faithful than humans, he always told Megan.
Soft you are, Silas. My father was right.
And more intelligent too. He sits on the top of the trunk to force it closed. Well except for that night when they had followed their urges rather than their brains. That night. For a few seconds he sits still on the wooden box. If it hadn’t been for that night he would still be in Wales, still in Rhoslyn. Still have a wife and three small children. Three. The day seems to darken. That night it had been cold and autumnal. There had been bonfires somewhere; he remembers smelling them. Even though it was dusk Silas could make out white fluffy backsides in his cabbage field; no doubt their owners helping themselves to supper. The dogs were on them at once of course; through the gate and yelping and barking for kingdom come.
Silas smiles at the memory. Always too optimistic, especially that Benny. Those cabbage fields were riddled with burrows, and the dogs had never a chance of catching them, but still they persevered. He’d whistled, but they’d taken no notice. He’d laughed. Daft old creatures. So he’d waited until they’d come back with their tails slunk down between their legs, and he’d given each one a friendly wallop on their backsides.
But someone had been watching. He’d heard hooves on the road, as he was telling them off, and that night Trevor Pritchard, Melrose’s gamekeeper, had called. As usual he’d just tapped once on the door before barging in with his two oafish sons. They’d stood at the doorway leering while their father had crossed the room in two paces and started poking around the place with his stick.
It had taken a couple of minutes for Silas to speak. ‘What are you doing?’ Then, annoyed at how ineffectual he was sounding, had quickly added, ‘Get out, or I’ll set my dogs on you.’ Which, it turned out, was exactly what Pritchard had come for.
Silas shuts his eyes, remembering the old cottage. There had not been much to see – apart from the large pieces of furniture everything else is with them still, packed away in the trunk. To one side was the cupboard bed with the children’s low bed beneath, a small cupboard set into the wall and the bible and a prayer book propped up by a jug on the deep windowsill. In front was the great dresser festooned with jugs and plates and cups. To the other side a table and chairs, and the settle pulled up toward the fire. Apart from that there was just the ironwork hanging above the grate and a ladder leading to the small loft stretching across half the room. The floor was made from slate flags – a recent addition replacing beaten earth – and Megan had just completed a long rag rug in bright jewel colours which ran down the middle of the floor.
‘Call them, James. There’ll only be more trouble if you don’t.’
There was nothing he could do. The three men were large and they each had sticks. In the end it had been Richard who had called them. Richard, with his quivering little voice questioning Silas, and then accidentally calling out their names, whereupon they had appeared of course – from the only place they could be, under the bed.
Pritchard’s sons had made smart work of them; cowing them with sticks before trussing them up with rope and shoving them into sacks. Then, leeringly licking his lips, Trevor Pritchard had written out a receipt with their names.
‘What are you going to do with them?’
They were moaning like pups.
Pritchard grinned nastily. ‘Not in front of the children. This won’t be the end of this little matter either, don’t you worry. Mr Melrose is most particular about his stock of game. He’ll be here directly, to see how things stand.’
That weekend Melrose and a couple of his English friends had come trampling over Silas’ crops and scaring the milk from his cows. The following week Silas had been summoned to the solicitor’s in town.
‘Mr Melrose is giving you notice to quit,’ the round little lawyer had said.
‘He can’t do that!’
‘I’m afraid, Mr James, that he can – and has. Apparently there was some issue with the game.’
Silas had tutted and shaken his head. ‘Nothing happened. That sly snake of his, Trevor Pritchard, has been making things up.’
‘Well, he’s using that... not that he needs a reason.’
‘I’m going to see him.’
‘There’s no point, Silas. He won’t listen. You know that.’
He’d slumped back in his chair and looked at his hands, suddenly defeated. ‘What can I do, Mr Roberts? I’ve put my soul into that place.�
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‘I’m sorry Silas.’
‘Is there nothing that can be done?’
‘We-e-ll...’ Roberts had fiddled with the gold chain which always looped out of the watch pocket on his waistcoat. ‘Maybe he would consider your renewal if you would agree to an increase in rent.’
Silas had gasped. ‘I can’t. I can barely afford to pay what he wants as it is.’
‘Well, then...’ Roberts had yanked at his watch chain until a large gold watch had landed in his small white palm. ‘Stopped again, damn it. I’ll have to take it into Thomas’ again.’ Then he had risen to his feet and clapped Silas on the shoulder. ‘I’m so sorry, old man. There’s not much else I can suggest.’
‘But I’ve a young family, and that land is all I have, all I had...’
‘I know, I know. You’re not alone. It’s small consolation, I know.’
‘What can we do?’
‘No one is allowed to become destitute in this day and age. The council will...’
‘We’re not going to the workhouse.’
‘Well, you’ll have to find something else then.’
‘What?’
‘Really my man, I have no idea.’ He was looking at his watch again and frowning. ‘I did hear there is a good living to be made on the coalfields.’
‘Down the pit?’
‘Yes, it’s hard work, I know, but there’s money to be had.’
‘But there are accidents, explosions, people are killed...’
‘Well, if you don’t feel you can do that you’ll have to find something else then.’
‘What?’
But Roberts was clearly not listening. He’d given his watch a few careful winds and was now examining its face. ‘My father brought me this, you know. All the way from London.’
But Silas had gone, slamming the office door shut behind him.
Six
Yeluc
They took their time to disgorge themselves from this craft. Now it was close, twisting and straining the sinews that held it where it was, I could see that this was just what it was, a craft, a distant relative of the ones I’d heard about, the ones the bowlegged ones use in the colder lands. Not like theirs though, no, not like theirs at all. This was large, several toldos sewn together floating on a raft of trees. And between the toldos and the wood were the people.
Signalling to Seannu and her sisters to keep down, I crept closer to see; my hair part of the thorn, my body close against the ground. There were people waiting. Two men and a woman, the swimmers and then some others I hadn’t seen before, emerging from their own toldos, a few horses and a few other animals rounded up and chomping at the ground. Why had I not seen them? They ran along the beach to welcome them, their arms waving, shouting their language the same words again and again, running into the surf and out again, pulling at ropes that were thrown at them, then pulling at the small craft that had been born of the large one and followed the people that swam like rats into the water.
Step back. Close my eyes. Time is a god too, powerful but he can be tamed. Sometimes I can make him stop, go back and he will show me again what I know.
It is dark. How long have I been here? Seannu and her sisters have stolen away, following some quest of their own and left me here. No matter.
Their great swan is whispering to itself in the waves: creaks, sighs, promises of return. They have built a fire on the beach below me. Over the fire the women have assembled poles and pots and now things spatter, jump and boil within. Meat. It is something one of them killed.
Ah yes: a great roar from one of their sticks and then a small cry from something nearby.
Trouble, I said to Elal and he answered me in the wind. Yes, Yeluc, trouble. He prefers the silence of the bolas, the calmness of an arrow.
The spirit in my stomach grumbles at the smell and I begin to crawl backwards, my old legs snagging branches, making them crack but the sound does not matter. Eventually I stand but they do not notice. I am thin, dark against the sky. There are many of them clumped together in groups around the fire. They talk without meaning, words changing into songs and songs into chants. And something changes within me. The spirit that grumbles is suddenly quiet and still. I listen. Many voices entwining becoming one. Something loud, something strong. Something that clutches at the spirit inside me and makes him strong too. Elal. It must be Elal. They know him too.
Seven
There have been more speeches like sermons, more sermons like speeches – all three ministers having their turn – and they have buried the poor child who died in the night, on the land above the cliff. Silas thought it an almost unbearably bleak ceremony which caused Megan to weep new tears.
‘He didn’t suffer, did he, Silas?’ Her voice is so quiet he has to huddle closer to hear.
‘Richard?’
A nod.
‘No, my love, he went peacefully.’
‘You think he knew?’
‘Only that he was going to heaven. I told him that soon he would see the Good Shepherd and He would gather him up in His arms with all the other little lambs that He has called that day to be with Him.’
‘Did he believe that?’
‘I’m sure he did. He smiled at me and murmured that he hoped their fur would be soft.’
‘And do you, Silas?’
‘Do what, cariad?’
‘Believe.’
‘Of course I do,’ he says gently, and strokes her head.
There is nowhere to sleep. The only shelters are the half-built roofless sheds, and so the hold of the Mimosa is being stripped of all its timber. As the men carrying the planks come near, Silas thinks he can smell the stench of the hold still held within its grains, and for a moment he is back there, in the port of Liverpool, the Mimosa still captured in its dock on the Mersey. Someone is hacking away the mermaid figurehead which has been deemed too scantily dressed for respectable eyes, while below there is the sound of hammering and sawing as the bunks are put in place. Then, above that, there is the sound of the town – the yells, the calls and the laughter. In his mind he walks through the clamour, along the dirty streets with their ripely smelling piles of horse dung and discarded, rotting wares and into the quieter and more dignified reaches of a suburb. A Welsh suburb. He remembers the waiting; the days turning into weeks as the emigration committee tried to find a ship.
There had been so many rumours: a government paper declaring that the place was besieged by Indians; then a newspaper questioning that there were enough funds; and then, worst of all, there were the posters on the wall outside the chapel. Each week there would be a new bleak ‘report’: the Argentine government was reneging on its promises; there was not enough land; and finally the whole thing was a wild goose chase and the Welsh would be back within a year.
‘English gossip and scaremongering,’ Jacob had said, when he’d read it all to them. ‘Take no notice. Edwyn Lloyd warned me about this. Keep the faith, he said. A new Wales for the Welsh. Think only of that.’
It was too much for some; and when a promised ship, the Halton Castle, failed to appear, several families packed up and went home. A few weeks went by before another ship was found. It was an old clipper – used to carry tea rather than people. Gabriel Thomas, the colonists’ benefactor, had to spend yet more of his wife’s money kitting it out with bunks and tables, but soon the Mimosa was ready for boarding.
May had been warm and the great grey Mersey had seemed to smell of the life they were discarding. Old pieces of clothing and furniture were floating on the surface; half-decayed carcasses of animals stank from where they were caught under jetties; swirls of browns and reds, greys and black. A dirty old soup of a river.
Silas shuts his eyes and hears it again. Wood scraping against wood, then all of them climbing the ladder, Megan slower than usual and protective of her bump, and Jacob so excited he’d actually hugged Richard and Myfanwy to him until they had howled their protests. It’s starting, he’d said, our great adventure. But then they’d bee
n interrupted.
‘Hey, you!’ English. They’d turned to the direction of the voice to see a large, very hairy young man, wearing the tattered jacket of a naval uniform. ‘Welsh? Coom-raigh? Understand, eh?’
They’d left it to Jacob to reply.
The hatch with its two doors propped open was across a deck scrubbed so hard that its knots stood out like sores. They’d walked across it unsteadily trying to get used to the slight movement beneath them. Silas had stood back until last holding Myfanwy. Already the hold had its own stinking miasma seeping out onto the deck: fish, seaweed and the contents of a latrine.
‘You can pass down the child now, Silas.’ He’d had a sudden urge to run away but instead he’d forced himself forward and nudged Myfanwy toward the hole.
‘No!’ she’d said, as soon as she was close. ‘No! I’m not going down there Dadda, it smells of cach.’
But a pair of hands had grabbed her, and swallowing hard he had followed Myfanwy’s sobs into the gloom. There’d been a tangle of arms and legs, and then a mass of bodies. Like maggots, he’d thought, and then followed the movement of one of them into the edge of darkness. The bunks were crude – hastily made from unfinished planks. Then there was a screen made from rough pieces of wood. On each side were bodies, each one with a face looking up at him. Then, eventually, they found a vacant bunk – just enough room for the five of them.
Home for the duration, Jacob had said cheerfully, the smile in his voice apparent even in the darkness.
For two long months that bunk had been home. Towards the end of the voyage he knew every stain, every knot, every twist in the timber. It had been their table, their bed, a place for the children to play. Gwyneth had come whimpering into the world there and Richard… had left.