A Place of Meadows and Tall Trees

by Clare Dudman

  And suddenly it hurts. It hurts so much he can’t speak. A scald. Searing his body like a flame. He drops the bucket and starts to run.

  When he returns to his cottage Megan is dressing Myfanwy in her best clothes. They both turn to look as he stops at the threshold and sinks where he stands.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he gasps and Megan comes close and holds his head against her skirt.

  ‘I know,’ she says, over and over again. ‘I know, I know, I know.’

  Twenty-four

  It is Megan who is strong this time. She smiles and talks for Myfanwy, sweeps the house, cooks, even helps with the clearing of the ground and the digging, while Silas weeps, digs a little in the field and weeps again. ‘I’m sorry,’ he tells her, ‘I’ll get better.’ And she smoothes his hair, kisses him and tells him that it’s all right.

  ‘How can you go on?’ he asks her once, and she says she is holding it in like a breath – then letting that breath out a gasp at a time, and that way it hurts, but not as much.

  Today she is in the warehouse with Jacob and Myfanwy. Jacob has taken it upon himself to make an inventory of the stock but he doesn’t seem to have made much progress. Silas stops at the threshold, listening.

  ‘How many was that?’

  ‘Six, no, that was last time, eight... er...’

  ‘Are you sure this time?’

  ‘Well...’

  A loud sigh and then: ‘Shall we start again, Jacob?’

  ‘I suppose we should.’

  ‘And concentrate this time.’

  ‘I always concentrate. It’s your fault – you’re not making a note when I say.’

  ‘Well, you keep distracting me with all this talk about Indians.’

  Silas steps over the threshold so they can see him. ‘What talk about Indians?’ he asks.

  Jacob turns around, his mouth slightly open. A notepad trembles in his hand. ‘Ah, Silas.’ A pause. Myfanwy runs to her father and pulls at his trousers. ‘I want a drink, but Mam says I’ve go to wait.’

  Silas pats her on the head absentmindedly. ‘What’s this about Indians?’ he asks again.

  Jacob is grateful for the question. ‘Just a request for trade,’ he says, trying to appear nonchalant, ‘a letter from one of the chiefs. Murga gave it to Edwyn – and we had a meeting to discuss it, but of course you… well, we didn’t want to trouble you.’ He pauses, examines Silas’ face and then continues. ‘Seems harmless enough to me, but Megan seems to think that we should be preparing for an attack.’ He sits heavily on the nearest sack, his knees outspread, and the chain of his pocket watch glittering across his waistcoat. Now that things are more settled he has clearly managed to locate his shaving knife. He is sprucely turned out, but there is a small stain on the collar of his jacket, and his outspread fingers are covering a tear on his trousers. Not for the first time it occurs to Silas that Jacob is in desperate need of a good woman.

  Myfanwy gives up with her father and stands by the door. ‘Mam, I’m thirsty!’

  Megan takes her daughter by the hand. ‘I just think we should be wary, that’s all.’

  ‘But Edwyn says it’s quite normal. Nothing at all to worry about.’

  ‘Mam!’ Myfanwy pulls her mother through the door and their footsteps fade into the distance.

  Jacob and Silas look at each other. ‘But we should take no notice of Edwyn Lloyd. The man is an idiot,’ Silas says, ‘and no one in their right mind should trust him. Look at the result of his lies. First Richard – and now Gwyneth.’

  ‘That is the Lord’s doing, Silas,’ Jacob says gently, reaching over to him and patting him on the shoulder. ‘It’s not Edwyn’s fault. The Good Lord called them to Him. It was their time.’

  Silas shakes him off then steps back to glare at him. ‘Why do you insist on defending him?’

  For a few moments there is silence. Silas is aware of something giving inside. It is as if something is boiling within him. Something like milk in a pan.

  ‘It’s what happens. Children die. It happens at home and it happens here. You can’t blame Edwyn Lloyd. If the good Lord wants them he will take them.’

  Silas clenches his teeth and shakes his head.

  Jacob sighs. ‘I know he’s got some things wrong, Silas, he’s only human after all. But he’s doing his best... and the way he handled the government officials – surely you have to admire that?’

  The bubbles inside him rise – hot and uncontrollable. ‘No! No, I do not.’ He is shouting now but he doesn’t care. ‘The man has deceived us – haven’t you realised that yet?’

  Jacob tries to hush him but Silas takes no notice. ‘Do you know why we’re really here? Do you?’

  Jacob is silent now, open-mouthed.

  ‘We’re just Argentine pawns, Selwyn told me. If we’re here, the Chileans can’t claim the land. They’re not interested in the Welsh. All they want are more Spanish-speaking Argentines. What will be worse? The English or the Argentines?’

  ‘I’m sure you’re wrong about that, brawd. Edwyn Lloyd would have told us, I’m sure.’

  ‘Would he? Are you sure? Come with me, look.’

  Jacob follows him outside and Silas points to the flag. ‘What is that? What does it mean? Is that part of a New Wales? Or something worse than the old one?’

  Megan is mending one of his shirts when Silas returns to the cottage. The place has been swept, the dishes and clothes put away. She has a frantic air about her, as if she is finding it difficult to keep still. She smiles too brightly when he enters and agrees too vehemently when he suggests he makes tea. Everything is too slow and too difficult. The twigs he has collected for the fire burn too slowly; the rough table he has made is too rickety and uneven for the pot; and when he tries to pick up the kettle it slips from his grasp and steam scalds his hand. He slams it down and turns to her.

  ‘Why did we come?’ His voice is quiet and intense. ‘Tell me Megan. Remind me.’

  She doesn’t answer, just continues with her sewing, stabbing the needle into the cloth again and again with swift vicious movements. At her feet Myfanwy plays silently with her doll, pretending to sew too. He knows the answer: Jacob. Her sanctimonious brother with his smug confidence in God and even greater faith in Gabriel Thomas – the principal of an insignificant college for ministers in Bala. Jacob had made a career of confirming that man’s prejudices and conceptions of the world and, in reward for this unquestioning support, had been granted a position teaching at the college. It was there that Jacob had heard about Gabriel’s scheme to populate Patagonia, and there that he had encountered Edwyn Lloyd. Oh, how unlucky it had been that the Meistr had happened to come along to the college with his big ideas just a few weeks after the incident with Trevor Pritchard and his dogs. Silas had always suspected his brother-in-law of a certain missionary zeal, but never expected to be amongst his potential converts.

  Silas remembers opening the door to Jacob that day: his inane smile on his broad big face, made to look even more inane somehow by that carefully cultivated fringe of beard. The cottage was almost empty, all their good furniture already sold to pay off their debts. Jacob had taken it all in as he’d stood on the doorstep, his pale-green eyes blinking underneath the shadow of a wide-brimmed hat.

  Jacob had been told the story immediately – crisp short sentences from Megan – while he’d stood in front of the fire, his jacket open, warming his hands. Then, when she had finished, he had turned to them with his shoulders squeezed up to his ears, one hand clutched in the other in front of him, grinning – like a child anticipating a treat.

  ‘Oh, this is the Good Shepherd’s work! He has sent me here for you now!’ Then he had shut his eyes and clutched his hands together in front of his face. ‘Thank you Lord, your servant is listening.’ Then he had looked around at them and grinned. ‘Wait until you hear. Oh such wonderful news – at last my Lord has told me how I am to bear witness for Him.’

  Then he had told them about Patagonia, and the Emigration Society in Liverpool th
at was set on establishing a colony there. It was then that Silas had first heard the name of Edwyn Lloyd: ‘...a great man, you have to meet him. He has been over there with one of his gentlemen friends from Port Madoc. They scouted around the place and he says it’s a wonderful place, a new Eden, a paradise.’ He’d looked around to make sure everyone was listening. ‘And the best news – I am to be the minister. Such a great honour. That is why I am here. I have to persuade more people to come with me.’ He’d paused to draw breath. ‘Will you come? You have nothing to keep you here, have you? Nothing at all. In Patagonia you will be able to do what you want when you want with no interference from anyone.’

  Silas had looked at Megan and to his surprise she had immediately smiled back. ‘Why not?’ she’d said. ‘Jacob is right. What have we got to keep us here? Mam is gone. Da is gone.’ Then she’d swept her arms out to indicate the bare walls of the cottage. ‘And soon all this will be gone too.’

  ‘But where is it? How far? There could be wild animals, or people! No!’ He’d folded his arms and shaken his head. ‘We can’t just leave home just like that!’

  ‘The children would grow up free citizens,’ Jacob had said, watching Myfanwy totter towards him on her newly discovered legs.

  But Silas had sat down on a box and shaken his head. They were both mad. Patagonia! He didn’t even know where it was.

  Megan had walked up to him and put her arm around his shoulder. ‘Please say yes, Silas. There’s nothing left for us here, you’ve said it yourself.’

  He looked up at them both: the two broad faces both smiling appealingly at him. It was as though something heavy and powerful was pushing him along, something he couldn’t resist, but still he had to try.

  ‘No,’ he’d said, ‘I can’t. What about Muriel? I can’t leave her.’

  ‘Muriel doesn’t need you, Silas – she’s got Sam. Please, Silas! Just think of it – isn’t it extraordinary that Jacob should come here today, of all days, with this news?’

  ‘It will cost twelve pounds for each adult and six pounds for each child, but you only need to pay a fraction of this now...’ Jacob had paused and continued more quietly ‘...and I have it on good authority that any Welshman who wishes to go, will go, regardless of payment, the Emigration Society will see to that.’

  ‘You see, Silas – we won’t have to pay a penny! Everything’s worked out for us. It must be fate telling us to go!’

  ‘No, Megan – the Lord.’

  ‘Then we must!’

  Silas wanted everything to stop. Surely it was not too much to ask for time to take a breath, to stand back and consider – but he was not going to be given the chance.

  Megan had smoothed his head as though he was her favourite cat. ‘What do you say, Si?’ she’d said softly.

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  Then Megan had smiled – they both knew he had lost already.

  If Megan remembers all this she says nothing. She just continues to sew and smile. He paces up to the fire in the hearth and pokes at it with a stick. Not my fault, he thinks. He can’t bear the quiet so he sits next to her on the crude bench and starts to talk. He tells her about the Argentines and Edwyn Lloyd, about Selwyn and her brother, and all the while Megan continues to silently smile and sew, the needle not pausing in its movement, one tiny glint of metal swiftly following the last. At last he stops and holds her to him. Not her fault, either.

  Twenty-five

  Outside, rain is coming down in a heavy burst.

  ‘Just like Welsh rain,’ Silas tells Megan, and laughs grimly. She groans and throws another shawl over the one she has wrapped around her already.

  ‘Good for the crops,’ he says, and imagines the tiny potatoes and the shoots of maize he has planted drinking it up and growing stronger.

  But this Patagonian rain doesn’t stop. It goes on: a downpour and then a drizzle, a shower and then another torrent, rain driven into sheets by the wind then falling quietly and continually, on and on until the river creeps upwards over its levees and banks, seeps onto the lower ground by the side, forms pools which grow larger which interconnect to form swamps, then lakes, until the valley is just one big lake – the sky reflected in it like a hazed mirror. Meanwhile the walls of the houses start to weep: tears wash down their outer skins, exposing the capillaries and veins of roots. The land is reclaiming its own, Silas thinks, mud going home to mud, as if the house is melting like tallow before the flame, everything becoming slurry.

  Silas wakes. There’s that emptiness again. That feeling that something’s missing. Then his eyes open wide. The walls are coming away from the roof and water is running across the floor from the back wall to the front. Part of another wall collapses softly into the pool outside with a subdued splash. He walks over to the hearthstone and lifts it. The tiny shoe is still there. For a few minutes he looks at it, then carefully replaces the stone into position. He rouses Megan, quickly scoops up Myfanwy and a few of their more fragile possessions, and they all run to the fort.

  The warehouse is crowded. There is little room to lie down and rest. Bodies lie jammed next to each other breathing in the stench of the churned-up river, and the pervasive smell of mud. Outside the sludge sticks to clothes, to shoes, to skin. It comes over the rims of boots and oozes inside. Every movement is difficult and slow, and the children demand to be picked up because the mud sucks them down so fiercely and deeply they are afraid of drowning. In front of the fire it dries and falls off in flakes. The flakes disintegrate into a dust that is spread with every movement. It is in everything they eat and drink and in every gulp of air. Outside something bleats and bleats again, but no one takes any notice. It is too wet to go anywhere.

  One day of rain follows another: sheets of water that are blown around in eddies; heavy bursts that batter walls and faces; interminable drizzle that penetrates through to the skin; and then an onslaught of drops that seem as hard as small pebbles.

  Silas lies on a mattress of grain next to Megan and Myfanwy and listens with his eyes shut. The relentless drumming makes his mind wander. He imagines himself falling in time with its beat, deeper and deeper.

  And then it stops. In the sudden strange silence everyone looks out. Before the rain started, and it is a time difficult to remember now, there were the sounds of animals all around them: pigs grunting, cows lowing, but most of all sheep bleating – eight hundred of them, enough to cover a sizeable hill. Now it is quiet.

  ‘The sheep,’ Megan says, and looks at Silas, ‘I can’t hear them!’

  Silas and John Jones rush out to the pens but they are not there. The earth walls have been washed away and next to them the ground is churned up by many running hooves. A few of the men follow the tracks a couple of miles to the north but they peter out at the edge of the valley. The sun is shining now, and the air has become humid and hot. They shade their eyes and look, but the sheep have gone as far as their feeble little legs will carry them. Silas notices one guanaco that tears off in the distance but not a single white behind. John says he thinks he hears a distant bleat and for a few seconds the rest of them hear it too. But it is far, far away, as if it is taunting them, and although they go on a little way to see if they can see it, there’s nothing there and that is the last they hear or see of them. They walk slowly back to the fort to tell the rest.

  ‘All of them?’ says Edwyn incredulously. ‘All eight hundred?’

  The voices in the warehouse stop to listen.

  Silas and John nod.

  The Meistr looks at them both for a few seconds then abruptly turns away. Jacob chases after him and taps him on the shoulder. ‘Perhaps we should call a meeting. Perhaps I should discuss my inventory, Edwyn, so we know exactly what we have left and how long it will last.’

  Edwyn nods curtly, then takes a breath so deep his shoulders rise a couple of inches and then sink again. Then, without turning, he walks quickly away to the outside of the village.

  When they see him again he is smiling. But it is the smile M
egan smiles these days – not a smile at all but a determined stretching of the mouth. ‘All will be well,’ he says with a forced brightness. ‘You’ll see.’ He sits, and then gestures to Jacob to continue.

  Silas sits silently, but is not listening. All gone. It’s as if something inside him has collapsed and left a void. Everything – sheep, crops, houses, shelters. All that work. All those days scraping at the mud.

  Jacob takes the floor. He describes the items from his inventory that are probably safe and then pauses for approval. When no one speaks he frantically fills the silence with more words. Eventually he finishes and looks around the room as if he is waiting for someone to stand up and speak, but no one moves. In fact everyone is so intensely still and silent Silas looks around him. People are either looking at each other with frightened faces or glaring at the figure who sits at the front of the room next to Jacob: Edwyn Lloyd. The Meistr sits quietly. From time to time his eyes flick around the room as if he is looking for something, but whatever it is he doesn’t find it.

  Faces turn. Now Mary Jones is standing up and quoting from the report they all know so well: ‘Meadows and tall trees, wild cattle and other game… that’s what it says, does it not?’

  Edwyn says nothing – instead he seems to be waiting for someone else to speak with a weary silence. He does not have to wait long.

  ‘And where exactly did you see these wild cattle, when you first came over here, Mr Lloyd?’ Annie Warlock asks. ‘Because they’re not here now, are they?’

  ‘They were here.’ Edwyn’s voice sounds strained. ‘It must be the Indians, maybe they chased them away, like they did before.’

  Mary opens her mouth to speak again but Caradoc Llewellyn interrupts her. ‘The important thing, chwaer, what we should be concerning ourselves with, is our current predicament, and what we should do about it, not prodding bruises we can do nothing about.’