by Clare Dudman
But the shine of her hair was in every fibre that he sewed, and the smallest scrap of velvet was enough to remind him of her touch. Megan. Her voice was like birds singing, he told his mother, and she’d laughed. And her face was like an angel’s, and she’d laughed some more. All day it shimmered in front of him and he could spend an hour just thinking about it and not doing much else at all. He knew each part, each feature; the angle of her nose, the space between her eyes, the way her upper lip touched the lower one, and the way her eyebrow disappeared to nothing above the corners of her eyes.
Sometimes Powell would catch him in this reverie and tut. ‘No hope,’ he said, ‘I feel sorry for you, bachgen. Love is like poison, an illness; one day you’ll wake up and find out the fool you’ve been, but it’ll be too late by then.’
But at last he’d let him go each evening, shrugging and telling him that he couldn’t say he hadn’t been warned, and Silas would run: down the street to the outskirts of town where her father’s business took up half a street, up the small path to one of the windows at the side, and then stand, call, softly and then more urgently: Megan, Megan, Megan.
Then there’d be that face at the window. That smile like sunshine on her face and then that bird – fluttering in his chest, rising up to his throat, taking away his breath, twittering and chirping and not making sense. ‘Are you ready? Shall I come up? Where shall we go?’ Then the window flying open and her voice floating out: ‘Silas! Wait! I’ll be down directly.’ Then that laugh, oh, such a sweet sound. Or sometimes, better: ‘They think I’m asleep. Can you climb up?’ And so he would scramble onto the roof of the outhouse and then up to her window, scratching his legs, tearing his clothes but then into her arms. Her arms. Then the smell of her bed – ah, the sweetness of hay and the sweeter smell of her – and then Megan: in his arms, laughing, covering him with kisses. My love, never let me go, always be mine, forever and ever and ever. Until the world ends. Or we do.
‘Eat.’
He shakes his head.
‘Mam says…’
He looks at her. Miriam. He should be grateful. He should try to talk. ‘And what does your Mam say this time?’
‘That you should eat. That I should try and make things you’d like. Bacon, bread, cheese…’
‘I’m sorry. I can’t. Tell your Mam that.’
But she continues to watch him so he starts to slowly eat his bread. When she goes he returns the crust to his plate.
Why did he not stop her, why did he leave her alone, why did he bring her here, why didn’t he talk to her more, why didn’t he explain, why didn’t he save Richard, Gwyneth, why did he let her go?
‘I’m taking Myfanwy to my mother’s.’
He says nothing.
‘Did you hear me, Silas?’
She turns, walks out. After they have gone a boot follows her out of the doorway. ‘Go away!’ He bellows. ‘Leave me alone.’
No one helped her. No one tried. No one cared.
He stands and starts to kick everything he can find: his chair, the bench, the table, the pans on the fire. A slug of boiling water soaks the fabric of his shirt and sends him roaring into the parlour. He struggles at his shirt sobbing with pain that hits him again and again: red wave then black wave then red again. His eyes are closed. It is as if he can see the pain inside his chest. He touches it where the water hit him with a finger and roars again. Red: scarlet, vibrant, bloody. And with it a sound: discordant like people shrieking. He crumples onto the floor. The red darkens. The shrieks become yelps and then sobs. He rests his head against the settle and listens. There is someone there. Someone sitting in her chair. If he doesn’t open his eyes maybe she will stay there.
‘And why didn’t you try?’ he tells her. He knows what she is doing. Without opening his eyes he can feel what she does. She looks up from where she is sitting and smiles back. Smiles, at last she smiles.
‘Too late now,’ he says, and takes the shirt he is holding and throws it at her. Something falls. He opens his eyes. Her favourite vase smashes against the floor.
‘That wasn’t y Tylwyth Teg, Megan, that was me!’
She is still there. Still smiling. As if she can’t hear him. As if she doesn’t know what he’s done. As if she doesn’t know what she’s done. He gets up, stamps on the pieces and looks back at her. ‘Too late now,’ he says again, and scoops up the broken pieces with his hands, curling his fingers tightly around them until his thoughts become quiet.
When he looks again she is gone: just a cushion where her smile was, just a seam, curling upwards, grinning at him, until he hits that away too.
‘What have you done with your hands?’
Mary tuts, makes him sit and washes them with clean rags and water.
‘And your chest!’
He sits without moving while she looks for the butter.
‘It’s like looking after another child,’ she says, then stops. He has lifted his bandaged hands to cover his head. ‘Oh cariad!’ she says and she holds both his shoulders until they stop shaking.
Fifty
Edwyn is talking about Jacob. ‘The man is happy in Buenos Aires; I thought it better to leave him there,’ he says, glancing at Silas. ‘He is making influential friends, and getting quite a reputation. I think to have Jacob a little longer in Buenos Aires will be of benefit to everyone.’
Edwyn stops. His eyes flick over to Silas again. He reaches over and touches his hand. ‘I’m sorry, brawd.’ He’s said it before but Silas hasn’t heard. He doesn’t hear it now. He sits without responding, looking blankly ahead, rocking slightly. She is gone. He tries to hate her but he can’t. If he could hate her he thinks it might make him feel better.
Edwyn sighs and looks around. ‘Anything else?’
Everyone is subdued. It is hard to concentrate on what is being said.
‘Has there been any word about the Denby?’ Selwyn says at last.
Edwyn inspects his hands on his lap and for a few seconds everyone waits.
‘The Denby, Edwyn, have you heard anything?’
He shakes his head, his beard that has become more grey and grizzled, brushes against his jacket – one sweep to the right, another to the left. ‘No. I’m sorry. There’s been no word from either Patagones or Buenos Aires. All anyone can tell me is she left Patagones on 16 February. There were strong winds the next day, they tell me. And as we all know the condition of the ship was not… good.’
Silas looks up. The Denby. Her feet. The things she said. Misery overwhelms him like a wave.
‘I am very much afraid we are going to have to assume the worst.’
At the back of the room someone gasps.
For several minutes it is silent.
‘All those men!’ Selwyn’s voice cracks. ‘Dewi, Gareth… so many of them.’
It is quiet again. Towards the back someone sniffs.
‘We can’t give up, not yet. There’s still a chance – look what happened to the Maria Theresa!’
‘It’s been longer than that, man – much longer.’
They are silent again. Everyone is looking at the floor remembering faces.
‘Jiw, jiw.’
‘What a waste.’
‘It is going to be difficult without them,’ Edwyn says eventually.
‘It’s a punishment!’ Silas stands. Suddenly everything is clear. ‘That’s what it is.’ His voice is high, taut, trembling. ‘Don’t you see? We’re not meant to be here and we’re being punished. A flood and then a famine – it’s like the bible. Like when Moses leads them away. We have to go too – maybe back to Wales or Santa Fe.’
‘But the crops, Silas, they’re growing strongly now, surely that’s a sign to stay,’ Selwyn says quietly.
‘No, we should go.’
Everyone waits in silence. Eyes stare at Silas and then at Selwyn and then at Edwyn. The Meistr is trembling. For a few seconds Edwyn’s face twists as if a sequence of emotions is being played out in his mind and banished one by one: anger, sorrow, fear
, then nothing – as if someone has wiped it clean. Edwyn stands and pulls Silas to him, hugs him close and pats him on the back while Silas stays as he is, his arms stiff and outstretched. Then, still holding him by each shoulder, he looks into his face. ‘I’m sorry, brawd. You are suffering, I know that. You’ve lost her and it is hard to bear. But she is with the Lord now, happy.’ He smiles sadly. ‘We can’t know His ways, ffrind, we must just accept them.’ He lets him go. ‘Come now, go with Selwyn and rest. You are tired and God needs you well.’
But Silas stays where he is. ‘How do you know what God wants?’ he asks quietly. ‘What gives you the right to say?’
Edwyn looks at him calmly. ‘I can’t know, brawd, all I can tell you is what I feel in my heart.’
Silas rides. He has taken his strongest stallion, the one which doesn’t have to be encouraged too much to gallop. He grips with his knees and forces him faster, along the valley and out of it, into the desert where there is nothing. Then he shouts – cries without words. There is no one to hear him. He shouts until his throat hurts, then he crumples on his saddle and allows the horse to walk until it is darker and the wind has risen. The evening is clear. Around him the wind is blowing a haze of dust, making the ground seem higher. Above it is something like a small bush, the branches tangled around each other as if they are locked in a complicated embrace, and it is rolling above the haze as if it is floating on water. Silas watches it until it stops, caught on a cleft of rocks. Then he watches it as the wind tugs and it edges slowly around, floating there like leaves on water, like rags no one cares about, like Megan. ‘I loved you,’ he screams but there is no reply. He looks back at the bush and sobs until he is thirsty and has run out of water.
‘If there are too many women then maybe some of us are going to learn how to be men,’ says Miriam; she throws down her sewing and stands. Her eyes are level with Silas’. ‘Looks like I’m halfway there anyway,’ she says. When he just looks back at her blankly she punches him hard on the arm. He winces back. ‘Well, what do you think? I am just as strong as my brothers, I think. I can even beat Ieuan at running.’
He looks at her slowly, trying to take her in. He finds it difficult to concentrate, difficult to follow what is being said. He looks at her trying not to see Megan. She is as strong and tall as Megan but Megan’s strength had a softness about it, something that yielded and welcomed him to her – sometimes in spite of herself. Now, while she knows his eyes are on her, Miriam touches her nest of black hair with the tips of her long fingers. They seem to curve backwards slightly as if the tendons inside pull too hard. ‘Will I do, do you think?’ She holds her head to one side and blinks at him slowly like a young calf, then laughs at herself.
‘Yes, I think you will do very well,’ he says.
She looks a little surprised, struggles to control a smile that is more triumphant than demure and then says, ‘You were supposed to disagree, Silas. You were supposed to say you couldn’t imagine how I could be mistaken for a man.’
He is still looking at her fingers. She follows his gaze, turns her hands over and inspects them herself then shrugs. ‘Come on, Myf,’ she says and marches out.
The fields are more impressive this year than last. They started sowing earlier and each acre is showing much promise, the stems of wheat growing high and strong. Silas rarely looks. Each time he does he sees the ghost of Megan standing there, her hands on her hips, gazing out at the irrigation ditches then looking back reproachfully at him. My idea, she seems to be telling him. Without me there would be nothing. Without me you would be gone.
Then her ghost follows him inside. Each time it is the same. He catches her in the twilight sitting on her chair with Arianwen on her lap. You killed me, she says calmly. Once he catches himself replying. Once he finds himself weeping by her chair, his head on its empty seat, clutching the arms. No, Megan you did it to yourself. But she shakes her head.
Then there is a touch at an elbow, and there is Miriam, darker and leaner than she was, her mouth slightly open, looking into the place where the voice had been.
‘Can you see her?’ he asks.
‘No,’ she says, shaking her head.
‘Did you hear her?’
Another shake, but she keeps peering into the gloom, squinting a little until Silas has dried his eyes.
‘Sometimes I think I see angels,’ she says. ‘They are trapped here you know. They can’t go to heaven and they don’t fall to hell. All they want is to be with God, but something stops them.’
For a few seconds he sits while she stands next to him in silence. Then he sighs, brushes himself down and stands next to her. There is just the room, empty except for a man and a girl. He smiles at her. ‘You’ve not made tea, have you?’
Myfanwy has put her favourite doll – which is just a stick she has clothed with scraps of cloth – onto her mother’s chair. Silas catches her talking to it – though whether she is talking to the doll, the chair or her mother’s ghost is difficult to tell. ‘I have a new Mam now,’ she says and smiles contentedly in front of her.
He smiles at her and pats her on the head then returns to his mending. Yesterday one of the stools he made for the kitchen broke and mending it is turning out to be more difficult than he thought. He has mended this stool before – whittled at this same piece of wood until it fitted into the hole. He remembers the kitchen, the warmth of Megan behind him, the faint odour of her milk, her blouse wet as Gwyneth whimpered to be fed.
He stops his work. Tears are dripping on the wood and it is difficult to see. He looks around. It is getting dark, time for him to light some lanterns. Miriam has gone somewhere. He had been tired yesterday and remembers now that he had been a little irritable with her. She had been tidying things away and he had been unable to find his chisel. When she’d told him that she hadn’t touched it he hadn’t believed her and had stamped around the place cursing and tutting until he had found it where he had left it. He had gone back into the kitchen with an embarrassed grin replacing his frown but she had gone and had not come back that night. Today when he had gone to her mother’s house to find out where she was he was told she had gone off on an errand for her father. Mary had been a little short with him, he realises now. Maybe he ought to go and talk to her, offer an excuse for his irritability, maybe take her some flour.
He looks up. Everything has gone quiet. The room is empty. Myfanwy is probably in the kitchen. He picks up the stick and whittles at it again. This time it fits. He stands the stool on the floor and presses down. It is steady on its three legs. He sits back, listens. There is not a sound anywhere. He stands. He has been sitting so long in the same position the whole of his left leg is numb. He stamps on it as he goes out to the kitchen and the blood returns painfully. They are not there. The door is open. He is sure he shut it behind him, maybe Myfanwy managed to let herself out. He runs into their small yard but there is no sign of them.
‘Myfanwy?’ he calls.
There is no reply.
The sun is setting, the scene is lit in yellows – a mustard field, shimmering gold river, lemon cliffs. He looks around for movement but it is quite still, the wheat in the field upright and silent. How quickly can a child move? He looks around him inspecting the sand, then sees a shuffling track leading between bushes.
‘Myfanwy?’
He lights his lantern and follows the path to the river. The ghosts follow him, whispering things he cannot quite hear. He bats them away, shakes his head. ‘Go, leave me, you’ve done enough.’
Then, in the silence following his call is a tiny sound.
‘Myfanwy?’
The sound comes again.
He runs forward towards the river and stops. There is the small willow with its overhanging branches and there is the child. He tastes bile in his throat and forces the burning mixture back down to his stomach. ‘Myfanwy!’ he whispers. The child is near the edge of the water where the current is strong and the water deep. She stops, looks around. ‘I’m looking for Mam’s
ghost.’ She smiles, turns around, reaches towards him but her foot slips on the wet mud. He lurches forward but she slithers away from him. She cries out and this time it is as if he is answering her. ‘Myfanwy!’ She is going, disappearing from view. He scrambles after her, reaches out, calls her name. Gone. The surface of the water undisturbed as if there is nothing there. She must have sunk quickly. He reaches in but he can feel nothing but cold. ‘Myfanwy.’
There is no hope. The child will have been carried away by now. He slips heavily on the mud. There is a chuckle behind him. She is caught on the bole of the willow, nestling in a hollow there. He touches her to make sure she is real. Then, as he clutches her to him something moves above his head, as if some great bird had departed from the branch and now is leaving them alone together.
Fifty-one
There are many women and not many men so the women marry young and the men take whom they please. It is a small obvious step for Silas to marry Miriam. She doesn’t even have to move homes, merely rooms.
It is Mary Jones who suggests it as he returns weeping with Myfanwy in his arms. ‘It looks to me, Silas, as if the sooner you get yourself a wife, the better.’
He follows her gaze to Miriam who is pretending not to listen as she reads her book by the lamplight at the table. ‘Well, what about it, girl?’
‘What?’
‘He’s asking you to marry him.’
Her eyes are small, but her eyelids long with dark skin. She looks at him and blinks once slowly. It reminds him so much of a fawn that something inside him weakens. With the entire Jones family and Myfanwy watching, he bends down on one knee. ‘Miriam Jones, I would be greatly honoured if you would agree to become my wife.’