by Alis Hawkins
Over the old man’s head I watched a listless boy driving a draggle of sheep towards the edge of the common. They were going home. It was getting late, dusk was dimming the air and making the cold bite. Perhaps a lifetime in the stableyard had given Edward Thomas cold-weather skin but I was used to a fire in Mr Schofield’s office. I rolled my shoulders. They were stiff from the way I had to hunch to keep my hands in my pockets but I needed my fingers to work on the way home. Couldn’t afford to give the horse its head.
‘Anyway,’ Philips finished, ‘for once, the squire put his foot down, said it was about time Harry started learning how to be a gentleman and Davy started learning how to make a living.’ He grinned. ‘You can bet we didn’t get that from Mari! That came from one of the maids who’d overheard the row between Harry and his father.’ He winked. ‘Surprising what you can hear when you’re polishing the floor outside the study door.
‘So, Harry went away to school and Davy went to Mr Davies’s in Newcastle Emlyn.’
I felt spider-feet walk over me at the mention of Mr Davies. Odd to think of this David Thomas at the school that’d been my home for four years. I shifted my numb feet.
‘I’ve heard Harry talking about some agreement that David Thomas would be steward when he became squire. That’s not true, is it?’ Harry had assured Lydia Howell that it was. I wanted to see whether anybody else at Glanteifi had known about it.
Edward Philips rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. I watched his hairy nostrils being alternately squashed and pulled open. ‘Mari was always going on about that – how her boy was going to be steward. She was behind the idea, for sure.’
‘Harry said David was an educated man. I see what he meant now. Mr Davies’s school.’
‘Wasn’t just that, boy. Harry wanted his friend to know everything he did – he was always trying to teach Davy what he’d learned away at school. Mind, he’d been the same since they were tiny. As soon as his tutor’d taught him to read and write, Harry had to pass it on to Davy. Sums, the same. Not that young Davy was much of a scholar – used to rage at Harry that he was a bad teacher, that he wasn’t explaining things properly. Didn’t like not being as sharp, see? Brought out the nasty side in him.’
He looked away and I knew he was looking into the past again. As long as he was looking at David Thomas that was all right with me. Except that I might freeze solid before he’d finished at the rate we were going. The boy with the sheep had disappeared. Probably inside by now. I envied him.
‘There was one time,’ Edward Philips said, ‘they’d’ve been eight or nine, I suppose – and Davy’d decided to get his own back for the lessons. Said he was going to teach Harry to wrestle. Only it was wrestling according to his rules and Harry got beating after beating from him until I told him that if he didn’t stop, I’d take a stick to him.’
A shiver went through me. ‘Not a man to cross then.’
‘No,’ Edward Philips said. ‘No, you wouldn’t want to cross David Thomas. Him and his mother were a pair well matched in that respect. Best to keep on the right side of them.’
If we didn’t move soon, I wasn’t going to be back in Newcastle Emlyn before it was completely dark. ‘Why did he emigrate to America?’ I asked.
‘That was a surprise, that was. There’d been no talk of it at all. The boy’d been courting seriously – a girl with a good farm coming to her. And then, all of a sudden, that was all off and he was going to America.’
‘How did he get the money?’
Philips sighed and unfolded his old bones from the tree stump. ‘Harry I suppose. I mean, I know they’d argued but Harry was always a loyal friend.’
‘They argued – Harry and David? What about?’
He turned his lips down. ‘Don’t know. But they came to blows over it, whatever it was. Right there in the yard, in front of everybody.’ I felt a spot of rain. I hoped it wasn’t going to come to much. Without hat or coat I’d be drenched in no time.
The old man turned for home and I moved to his side.
‘Mari was very bitter when Davy went,’ he said. ‘Blamed Harry for losing her son. Mind you – she’d always been a difficult woman. Never knew where you were with her. Sweet as you like one day, caustic as lye the next.’
‘Does she still work in the big house?’ I heard myself slip back into the language of my childhood instead of referring to Glanteifi by name.
‘No. Squire was glad to pension her off when the boy went to America.’
‘So where can I find her?’
‘If you take my advice, boy, you’ll leave well alone.’
John
All the way home I wondered about two things.
Lydia Howell’s anonymous letter, and the argument Harry’d had with David Thomas.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that those two things were connected, that Lydia’s letter to Elizabeth Jenkins’s father had caused the argument. Otherwise, why had Harry been so keen to ask her about it?
Did David Thomas believe that Harry’d had something to do with that letter? If he did, they’d’ve had reason to come to blows. The accusation that he was the father of Margaret Jones’s child had ruined any chance David had of marrying Elizabeth Jenkins. No wonder he’d decided to emigrate.
But what, if anything, did that have to do with our investigation? Try as I might, I couldn’t see that either the letter or the argument had any bearing on Margaret’s Jones’s murder. That was down to Beca – I knew that from the evidence of my own ears.
I could still hear the rain pattering on the leaves, the killer speaking as he forced Margaret Jones to her knees. An ordinary voice, as if they were just having a conversation. Except she didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer. It was just him, talking, on and on, to the back of her head, his knee between her shoulder blades.
‘This is your fault, Margaret – you’ve brought this on yourself… All you had to do was one thing. One simple thing. You said you’d do it. You said you had done it. But you were lying, weren’t you? Lying!’
I’d seen him shake her then, like a man shaking a disobedient puppy by the scruff of the neck.
‘After you saw Howell, you were going to go to Probert-Lloyd, weren’t you? You were going to tell him – save your own miserable skin…’
There had been a plan, that much was clear. And the killer had thought Margaret was going to tell the magistrates. But had it been a Rebecca plan? I’d always believed it had. But now I was starting to ask myself whether that was just because of the way I’d come to witness Margaret Jones’s murder.
Cardiganshire, May 1843
Uncle Price called me over.
You want to help Beca don’t you?
Of course I did! There wasn’t an eleven-year old boy in the county that didn’t want to be a part of Rebecca’s cause. And my head was still full of the gatebreaking I’d seen weeks before in Cwmduad when I’d looked for my father in the crowd.
Yes, Uncle!
Good. Then take this to Mr Williams at Waungilfach.
Only a message? In broad daylight? No face-blacking, no torches? I stifled my disappointment and took the message from my employer.
Put the message into Mr Williams’s own hand. Give it to him and nobody else. Don’t give it to a servant.
Yes, Uncle.
I shouldn’t’ve hankered after a nighttime assignment because I near as damnit got my wish. As a gwas bach I was at the bottom of the farm’s pecking order. I was at the beck and call of every other servant and no amount of telling them that I had a message to take for Uncle would stop them wanting me to run errands for them. So it was getting towards dusk by the time I set foot on the path through the Alltddu to Williams’s farm.
When I climbed over Waungilfach’s back gate, a man was standing there, dressed as if he was going to chapel.
I’ve got a message for Mr Williams.
Give it to me, then.
Are you Mr Williams?
He came towards me, then, a hand raised. Don’t cheek me, boy! Give it to
me now.
What else could I do? I was a gwas bach and he wasn’t dressed like a servant. So I gave it to him.
When he read it without moving his lips, I relaxed. He hadn’t learned to read at Sunday school with a pointing finger and words read aloud. He must be a gentleman, then. He must be Mr Williams.
Then he glanced up at me.
Tell your uncle all right.
All right. I’ll do what this letter says. I’ll do what Beca wants.
I’d watched Margaret Jones die, not half an hour later, as I sheltered from the rain.
Of course, it was years since I’d realised that the man I’d given the note to hadn’t been Williams Waungilfach. William Williams had come to our office one day and Mr Schofield had told me his name, so that I’d know the gentleman again.
If my shock showed in my face, nobody’d thought it was worth mentioning.
I’d put that shock away. I’d tied it up with all the other secrets and put it to the back of my mind. But his face – the killer who was not William Williams – had been in my nightmares.
Tell your uncle all right.
My ‘uncle’. I was going to have to persuade Harry to go and talk to him.
Harry
‘Harry, what a pleasant surprise!’
My father came from behind his desk towards me. He sounded sincere and I was somewhat taken aback; after our last encounter, I had expected a certain froideur. But I had not come to Glanteifi to exchange pleasantries.
‘Why didn’t you tell me that Margaret Jones was my brother’s daughter?’
The hand on my shoulder fell away. ‘Williams,’ he muttered, bitterly. ‘I suppose he told you in an attempt to steer suspicion away from himself?’
‘No. Williams is blameless, for once.’
John and I had agreed that we would not reveal Nathaniel Howell’s secret. If it proved necessary to explain how we had come by our information, we would simply say that the minister had died on his way to Ipswich and that we had spoken with his sister. However, I did not propose to offer my father any further explanation unless I was forced to do so.
‘It doesn’t matter who told me,’ I said. ‘What matters is that you didn’t.’
He lowered himself on to the button-backed leather settee which had stood in the same position for as long as I could remember. ‘Please sit down, Harry.’
‘I’d rather stand, if it’s all the same to you.’
My father’s voice was low and tired. ‘I know you can’t see me but I can see you and I would rather not have you glowering down at me. Please, sit down.’
I perched on the edge of a chair. ‘Well,’ I repeated, ‘why didn’t you tell me?’
I heard my father’s sigh. ‘As soon as I realised that you had formed an attachment to the girl, I took steps to separate you—’
‘Yes, you sent me away to Oxford. But why didn’t you tell me who she was?’
‘I had no way of knowing how far things had gone between you,’ his voice was quiet. ‘And I did not want you to feel disgust at yourself.’
Disgust. Was that what I had been feeling since Lydia Howell’s revelation? No. What I had been feeling was anger, pure and simple. ‘Is that the truth, Father?’ I heard my witness-harassing tone and tried for a more conciliatory one. ‘Are you sure it wasn’t because you didn’t want me to think less of George?’
‘Think less of George?’ My father sounded baffled by the idea. ‘You never knew him – what opinion could you possibly have had of him, one way or the other?’
‘People had been lauding him to the skies as long as I’d been alive! He was so tall and strong and fearless and handsome. He rode to hounds in the most dashing manner possible. He was the beating heart and soul of any gathering. He would have been bound to marry well, make our branch of the Young family as wealthy as your elder brother’s – and so on and so on ad infinitum!’
The silence that greeted my words only emphasised how wildly I had been speaking.
‘Is that what people said of him?’ my father asked.
‘You know it is!’
My father made no response. Was he thinking his own thoughts, his mind full of memories of my dead brother? Or was he looking at me, trying to fathom my thoughts, my presence here?
‘I tried to be like him,’ I had never mentioned George in my father’s presence before but, now I had begun, I seemed unable to stop. ‘I couldn’t be big but I tried with all my might to be strong and hardy. To be dashing and fearless, like him.’
‘But why, in God’s name?’ my father cried. ‘When had I ever given you to understand that I wished you to be like him?’
‘You didn’t have to! I was quite clearly a disappointment to you. You barely spoke to me, barely had anything to do with me. I was obviously an inferior creature in your eyes.’ My mouth seemed to have grown a mind of its own, articulating things that I had never acknowledged to myself, even in the darkest of moments. ‘You left me in the company of servants! What was I to think but that I deserved no better? That I was unworthy of the company of gentlemen, unworthy of your company?’
‘Harry!’ The voice was not my father’s; it was the voice of a man in pain. ‘How could you possibly think such things?’
‘Isn’t it true? Did you not leave me in the company of servants?’
‘Only because I thought that was what you wanted, that you were content there! Your mother was dead and I was at a loss as to what I should do for the best. You seemed happy with Mari Thomas!’
‘It was all I knew!I grew up thinking I was a little Welsh boy. That Mari was the mother I had been given and Davy the brother. Then, later, you complained of it when I wouldn’t relinquish them! You gave me no other teachers, no other friends and then you found fault with me when I loved them, when I learned the lessons they taught me!’
‘Harry…’ my father’s face was turned away from me, towards the fire, as if he had forgotten that I could not see in his features the pain that was all too audible in his voice. ‘I couldn’t bear to be disappointed a second time,’ he said, so softly that I barely heard.
I waited for him to explain. His hesitation indicated that he was unsure how – indeed whether – he should continue. ‘What do you mean?’ I prompted.
He drew in a long breath before turning to me. ‘George was brought up in every way as a gentleman should be. English nursery maids and governesses. My own riding master brought from the family home. Tutors who were required to instill habits of mind as well as learning. He had no contact with the household servants. He might as well have been brought up in Worcestershire.’
He stopped but he had not finished. Turning away once more, as if he could not bear to look at me and speak at the same time, he went on in the same flat, deliberate tone.
‘He became a little princeling who saw deference – no, not simply deference, adulation – who saw adulation as his due.’ He faltered, then stumbled on. ‘You say he was considered dashing – but where others saw courage I saw foolhardiness. Others might see charm and ease but I knew those qualities as duplicitousness and deceit.’
Feeling slightly dizzy with the effort of trying to see him, I shuffled further back in my chair.
‘He lied without compunction, ran up debts, borrowed incessantly from his friends and was a shameless womaniser. Twice, I was forced to remove him from school and he was sent down from his Oxford college – no, not the one to which I sent you – for maintaining a woman in his rooms.’ He stopped, abruptly. His breath was coming hard, as if he had been exerting himself. ‘When you were born, it was my dearest wish that you would not grow up to be like George. Not in any way. I was ashamed to have fathered such a person.’
‘Then why did you keep his portrait in your bed chamber?’
There was a beat of pure silence, as if every sound in the already quiet little room had been driven out by the force of my words. Then I heard my father swallow. ‘His mother had it painted for his coming of age. I removed it from the main hall aft
er her death and put it in my bedchamber until I could decide what to do with it. When you were born – when you survived against all the odds – I made up my mind that I would not let you grow up to be like him and I hung his picture on the wall so that I should be reminded, daily, that your upbringing must be different.’
I do not know how to describe the mental upheaval that my father’s words caused. All my life, I had believed myself a disappointment to him; believed that I had failed, in some essential way, to be the son he wanted. I had seen him as grief-stricken both for my mother and for my brother, the son who was so close to his heart that he had placed his portrait where nobody but he could see it.
My every opinion, my every understanding, my every action had been formed and moulded by that belief and, now, to understand that it was wholly erroneous, that my father had chosen to allow my upbringing to proceed in a certain fashion with the express intention of producing a better man than Georgewas utterly bewildering.
‘Of course,’ my father’s voice was heavy with self-reproach, ‘time revealed that I had failed you just as I had failed your brother. I had failed to instill in you the duties and responsibilities of a gentleman. You had no true esteem for your own position. Though I had allowed George to nurture too great a degree of self-regard, I erred just as badly in allowing you to nurture too little.’
I could not respond. I had not the slightest idea what to say to him.
John