by Clare Dudman
‘Arianwen, Gwyneth, Richard, Mam…’
‘Come, cariad fach, St David’s lights are for warning of what lies ahead – not for what has already passed.’
‘I saw a bird, I should have told you. Outside the house. Sitting there. On its own.’
Silas sighs. Everything is a warning. Every sign presages death. When did this start? He can’t remember. When did the girl that laughed all the time change into this superstitious woman?
‘Come, Megan, time to go home. You need to rest. You’re tired.’
But it is as if she is dreaming. She hardly seems to hear or know he is there.
‘It’s a sign,’ she murmurs. ‘From Dadda. Even though I didn’t warn him, he’s telling me. I shall be joining him soon.’
He takes her by both arms and shakes her slightly. ‘Megan! There are no lights. It’s dark. Look at me.’
He waits, but she doesn’t move. So he takes her by the arm and gently pulls her, down off the rock and back onto the track for home.
‘Why’s Mam not speaking any more?’ Myfanwy asks.
Ever since the night by the river she has not said a word.
Sometimes he sees her eyes following something around the room, and sometimes he hears her muttering the spells she used to use to guard against the fairies. Often he finds her sitting up in bed with tears trickling down her face, silent and quite motionless.
‘Can’t you just talk to Myfanwy?’ he asks her once. But it seems that she cannot.
‘Edwyn is talking about going back to Wales,’ Selwyn tells him. ‘He says he needs to go back to get more people.’
Silas snorts. ‘The man can’t stay still. He skips around the place as if he has an angry little rat in his trousers.’
‘He says now would be a good time to go – while there is good news to report.’
‘That man would promise a vision to a blind man if he thought it would persuade them over here to Patagonia.’
Selwyn smirks. ‘Only if they were Welsh.’
‘Yes, and only if they were willing to lose everything they love and still show never-ending devotion to the cause.’ But he is smiling too now.
‘But he was right in the end, wasn’t he?’
‘How?’
‘This...’ Selwyn spreads his arms at the sacks of seed, the grain and the equipment.
‘I think we have to wait and see, ffrind, it is only one crop, only one year.’
‘He says Dr Rawson was dancing around his table.’
Silas is doubtful. The Dr Rawson he met was serious; he really can’t imagine him doing such a thing.
‘Well, maybe not exactly a dance,’ Selwyn says, noticing Silas’ face. ‘But he did say he talked so fast his glasses clouded over, and he had to take them off and wipe them.’
Silas grins. That he can imagine.
But there is sad news as well. Selwyn takes his time to tell him, waiting until evening until they are alone together in Selwyn’s house. At Patagones Edwyn had encountered Yeluc, Selwyn tells him. The old Indian was camping outside the settlement with his women. When he heard that they were going to Buenos Aires he demanded to come too.
Selwyn pauses, sighs, walks up and down the small length of his living room holding his latest colicky offspring in his arms. ‘The Meistr told him not to go, but he insisted. Then the Meistr said a strange thing: Buenos Aires kills Indians – but of course Yeluc took no notice.’ He pauses to peel the baby carefully away from him, hoping that the child is asleep, but a whimper causes him to press the child against his shoulder and walk again.
‘The old man wasn’t well, apparently,’ he continues. ‘Dreadfully seasick. Then, when they got there he was worse. Ych-a-fi! Buenos Aires is a filthy place, Silas. Edwyn says that there are cess pits and wells sharing the same small plaza.’ He tuts. ‘Moch! They drink their own cach.’
He sits beside Silas, patting the back of the child draped against his chest. ‘He got worse. Edwyn took him to the hospital but it was no good.’
For a few minutes he is silent.
Silas blinks away tears, but still the room blurs. Someone has snatched something from him. He can’t trust himself to say anything.
‘He had to tell Seannu. She said nothing. Just sat. He wasn’t sure she’d understood.’ He checks his child again and then walks with him to the cot.
‘Edwyn went to see him before the end. Said he was lying there, quite calm, smiling. When Edwyn patted his hand and asked him how he was he must have thought it was you, ffrind. He kept staring at Edwyn and calling him Si-las. I think the Meistr was a little…’ he pauses to place his child carefully in its cot ‘…upset. The nurse there said that the old man had been talking about going to the Galenses heaven rather than his own. “Where that good people go must be a happy place,” he’d told her. Then, when he saw Edwyn, when he thought he was talking to you, he told him that he’d wait for you there, and take care of things in the meantime.’
The baby whimpers and Selwyn is quiet. He flops beside the cradle as if the speech has exhausted him and strokes his child’s head. ‘Edwyn told me to tell you,’ he says after a few seconds.
For a few minutes Silas examines his fingers on his lap. Then, when the child cries again, rises to his feet. He squeezes Selwyn’s shoulder to thank him and walks mutely out of the house into the night.
When Silas returns home the house is in darkness, and the wind is blowing at the door making it rattle against the catch. He pauses at the threshold. The house is cold, empty. With Yeluc gone from the world he no longer feels safe. The watchful eye, making sure all is well, has gone. Even when he wasn’t camped alongside them, Silas felt he was always out there protecting them, and now that he has gone Silas feels exposed and vulnerable. Stupid, he thinks, Yeluc was just an old man. But he’d been saving so many things to tell him: jokes, sayings, questions. And so many questions: whether the striped animal he sometimes saw shuffling through gorse was safe to eat; what was the Tehuelche word for rain; was it normal for the Chubut to rise and fall as much as it did last year; what causes the guanaco to run west year after year? No one will answer them now. A chill passes over him. He longs to touch someone. He calls out quietly but no one answers.
The hearth is cold and the kitchen is empty. Where is everyone? He sits at the table. There is a scribble on the surface with a piece of chalk. Silas smiles, remembering that yesterday Myfanwy had sat where he is sitting now. Then Miriam had asked if tomorrow the two of them could make a short trip in the new buggy. Yes, that’s where they’ll have gone. Perhaps Megan has gone too. He breathes in and then out again, sucking at the cold wind. Maybe that’s what’s happened. He feels a little lighter. Maybe at last she is getting better. He lights a small fire in the kitchen and then quickly walks up to the Jones’ house.
All three girls are there, sitting around the fire listening to Mary telling them all a story. John is there too, looking as much enthralled as everyone else. For a few minutes no one sees him enter and he listens to the end. It is a well-known story about a girl who dresses up as a sailor so that she can follow her love to sea. The crew escape from pirates onto a small boat and when they run out of food decide they must turn to cannibalism. Mary is just describing the drawing of lots to decide which one of them should be eaten first when she catches Silas’ eye. It is the important part of the tale – the part where they discover that one of the sailors is in fact a woman, meaning, for some reason, that she cannot be eaten after all. However in Mary’s version she moves straight on to their rescue.
‘So they got married like we did, by hopping over a brush, and lived happily ever after,’ she says.
‘That’s not what happens,’ says Miriam indignantly. ‘Why have you changed it, Mam?’ Then she follows her mother’s eyes to Silas and closes her lips.
‘Is Megan not with you?’ Silas says.
They shake their heads.
His shoulders sink. He should have checked the rest of his house. Megan will be in bed or maybe sitting in
the chair by the fire in the dark. He should have gone into the living room. But when he arrives back the chair by the fire is empty and so is their bed. He swallows and hurries to the outhouse and knocks on the door. Nothing.
He realises he is holding his breath. He forces himself to breathe slowly out and then in. He lights a lamp and quickly searches all the nearby outbuildings that are filled with sacks and pieces of equipment, but each one is as dark and as empty of anything living as the next. Where is she? He looks out into his fields and then the wilderness to the north. At least it is not deep winter and the air is not too cold. She’ll be all right even if she is caught overnight in the open air. He searches the ground for footprints but the only ones he can see are a mess of his own. Then he remembers the river and the lights. He examines the footprints again with the light and sees some smaller ones leading down towards the riverbank. Perhaps she has decided to go to the village, perhaps at last she feels like some company. At the water he pauses and holds his breath again. But the footsteps do not stop and they don’t lead downwards into the river, or eastwards to the village, but to the west, to the mountains and the empty desert.
Forty-eight
Yeluc
Sometimes I dream of Elal’s great white swan. I dream I am between her feathers and I am warm and safe. Sometimes I am in the white man’s bed and sometimes beside Seannu. Sometimes I journey into the high place and the low. Sometimes I see Tortuga and he smiles at me and tells me it won’t be long. But there is another dream too. A dream I haven’t had before. In this dream I travel alone. It is cold and when I spread out my arms I rise up to the stars. The stars are like faces burning in the heavens. Where am I, I ask but the stars don’t reply. Instead there is singing, all the voices of the Galenses singing out loud. It is all around me, as if I am with them. You are in heaven, they tell me. And I know I am safe.
Forty-nine
It is John Jones who finds her. He has set out with Silas at first light. Words fail him completely this time. He comes running back to where Silas is swiping at reed beds with a stick and for a minute he just stands in front of him swallowing loudly. When Silas loses patience and shoves past him John grabs his arm and blurts out, ‘Megan!’
‘What? Have you found her? Tell me.’
He nods, gestures for him to follow and runs along the path beside the river.
From a distance it looks like a clump of old rags caught up on some roots by the side of the river. Closer he notices her feet. They are bare, her boots either kicked or dropped away. It is these that he notices, these he keeps watching, the way the toes curl inwards, dark pink, each toe edged by the half shell of nail, small now that the swelling has gone. Her body is partly hidden by reeds, and her face is hidden by her hair. Around her are pieces of driftwood, an old bottle and the charred remains of some animal. She has obviously been washed up there, a small quiet eddy in the river, a part of the bank that overhangs with small red willows and gorse. John looks at him and then back to Megan. ‘What shall we do?’
Silas doesn’t answer. He keeps looking at her feet. She is half submerged in the water but her feet are clear. He goes up to her and hooks his hands under her arms and pulls. A wet cold weight. She is caught on something. John pulls away roots and wood, and Silas pulls again. Slowly she comes. He grunts with effort. She is wearing her best clothes: a long woollen skirt and petticoats, a chemise and stays, her good new blouse and two shawls, one tied over the other, each layer saturated with water holding her down. He lifts her hair. He can’t remember the last time he saw it hanging down like this. A long time ago, but he remembers it soft on his fingers, halfway between feathers and silk, and then that time she smiled, that time she dived forward and kissed him hard on the lips, and that time he held her properly, the first time, warm where they touched, fitting together then drawing apart. He draws back now. It is her face, then not her face. The curve of her eyebrow, but not her mouth. Too still. Slouched. Not her. Purple in this early light, dark against the white foam of the river. Half-open eyes. Nothing behind them. Too still. Not her. Coldness on his fingertips when he tries to shut them.
Asleep. He shakes her. Megan, Megan, Megan.
Another time. Another place. Megan! Megan, Megan, Megan. At the window. That smile. Her head on her pillow just like this. Her eyes half closed. Soon they will open. Soon they will look into his and smile. Yes, she will smile. ‘I always get what I want.’ You don’t want this. You don’t want this coldness, darkness, and loneliness. Wake.
‘No.’ He steps back. She falls from him. ‘No.’ He starts to run. She will wake now. She will come after him, laugh and tell him she’s joking. It’s all a dream, stupid man. Mine forever, don’t you remember?
He sees himself run, out of his body, one step ahead, just as he used to run to her and she’d always be there. Laughing, smiling. Silas! Climb up. It’ll be just us. Wake! Come out of your window just this once. Take my hand. It’s your turn.
‘Silas!’
‘No.’ Walking now. He sees his feet on the mud, one and then the next. She’ll be after him soon. She’ll wake and laugh. Megan as she was. Hair shining. Waiting. Hand in his.
‘Silas, come back.’
‘No.’
‘You’ve got to help. We can’t leave her here.’
He turns, watches himself turn back, walk back to the river while John struggles with the weeds, chops at the roots so that Silas can take her in his arms. A dead weight. Not as she was. Not this rigid unyielding, not this chill. He staggers up the bank, until he falls. His face next to hers. Megan. Enough now. Wake.
‘Come on, Silas.’ John stands there awkwardly. ‘We’d best get the cart.’
There is a small bird pecking at something near the grave. A worm. Silas watches as the bird pulls, and the worm grows longer and thinner until it breaks and the bird flies away over the heads of the people in front of him, smaller and smaller, a speck and then part of the sky. Real. It is real. Just the bird and the sky. Nothing else. Not this singing or the mass of people or the hole in the ground or the box.
‘The Lord be with you, brother.’
He nods.
‘You must be brave now, my son.’
He blinks but there are no tears.
‘The Lord watches over you.’
He nods. He wants to believe – in God, in someone who loves him.
‘She is in heaven now, with her Saviour.’
No.
Sand. Scattering on the box. Hard, small grains bouncing, springing off. She is here. In there. No. He forces himself to think of it. Inside. Skin drawn back, teeth exposed. Bone. Flesh. Her legs. Those feet. Her face. Cold. Set into place. A doll’s. Not her. Not really her.
He draws away, steps back, watches himself. Shaking hands. This is not real. Smiling, nodding. He is not here. Earth to earth. The lid rattling. The box being covered. One small corner left. Dust to dust. Yellow-brown. Dry. The corner gone.
‘Come, Silas, time to go.’
A pit slowly filling.
‘Silas!’
The slow steady movement of the spade. ‘Come on, man.’
Then the wind.
Mary Jones has been baking. Myfanwy and the younger children are both confused and happy. They stuff their mouths full of dark cake and bread spread with the honey Ieuan found last week. They laugh, chase each other out of the room until Mary warns them to be quiet. Silas sits. He looks earnestly at each new face that comes forward as if he is begging them to tell him it isn’t true. Clasps hands. Mutters words. ‘Sorry.’
She is…
‘If we can help.’
She is. She was... she was, she was, she was.
They have gone. He can’t remember how or when. They were talking about ships: the Denby, then the one Edwyn Lloyd must have taken, but he can’t remember now what was said. He tried to listen but his mind kept making journeys of its own: onto the Mimosa and then on the Denby’s small lifeboat. With Megan. Then without her. She is. No. She was.
The room is in darkness but someone comes in, lights a lamp, then the fire. That girl. The strange tall one with the dreams and visions. She comes over and pats his hands. ‘She’s safe now,’ she says. ‘Happy. I fancy I saw her smiling.’
A back of a skirt, a blouse, that way of walking she has: ‘Megan!’ She turns around, her finger to her lips. ‘Be quiet now,’ she swishes away, her hair drawn up, one lock, one short tendril, where the baby has pulled. ‘I wanted to tell you…’
‘Later now,’ she smiles. Oh, she smiles. Then she turns around again and walks away.
‘Megan!’
She is gone.
‘Come back.’
But she won’t.
‘Mam said for me to stay. In case you need help. With Myfanwy, in here.’ She stops in front of him waiting for him to move.
‘You must go to bed now.’ Myfanwy. Little Megan. Her mother in miniature. ‘Miriam says so.’
‘Shh.’ The strange girl looks at his daughter and then anxiously back at his face again. Not Megan. Miriam. Her name is Miriam. He smiles slightly. Wearily he runs his fingers through his hair. ‘It’s all right. I should thank you.’ But he stays where he is. In case she comes back. In case she sits in that chair.
‘You should sleep.’
He shakes his head. ‘I can’t.’
‘You should try.’
‘Please leave me, I can’t.’
The bed is too cold, large and empty. It sags where she was. When he wakes it is too quiet. He reaches out and feels the cold dent where she was, then buries his head in her scent.
He sees her ahead of him, by the river, on her rock. He hears her laugh, though she didn’t laugh here.
‘A girl, is it?’ A voice from long ago. Powell the tailor catching him once more unpicking a seam. ‘Beware, bachgen. Once they trap you you’re like a fly in a spider’s web. A spider with a tongue, mab. Just think of that. Never any peace. Yak, yak, yak – all the day long.’ Powell had laughed at his joke. ‘You need to concentrate, bachgen, if you want to be a tailor.’