by Alis Hawkins
By the time I left the woods behind me and crossed Williams’s rickyard, I was as jumpy as a stray cat.
It was late. I was afraid Mr Williams would’ve locked up for the night and I’d get a thick ear for disturbing the family. I didn’t know, then, that people like the Williamses could afford lamps and candles enough to be up half the night if they wanted to.
What a relief when I went to climb over the back gate and saw a man standing there in the gloom. Leaning on the gable wall of one of the outbuildings, he was. The dairy by the scrubbed-clean look of the step.
It wasn’t till years later that I understood why David Thomas had been standing there. He’d’ve been invisible from the house and the farmyard. I’d only seen him because I’d come the back way.
Over the gate I went, and into the rickyard.
‘Good evening,’I said.
He didn’t reply straight away and I thought it was because I was only a gwas bach. But then I wondered. I didn’t know Mr Williams but I knew he was a gentleman. Perhaps he couldn’t speak Welsh.
My English wasn’t very good in those days but I did the best I could manage. Told him that I had a message for Mr Williams.
He held his hand out. ‘Give it to me, then.’ He spoke English as well.
I didn’t know what to do. Uncle Price’d been very clear about this letter. Give it to Mr Williams at Waungilfach, he’d said. And make sure you put it in his hand. Only his. Don’t give it to a servant.
This man wasn’t dressed like a servant. But I had to be sure. I didn’t want to let Beca down. And I didn’t want a beating for not doing what Uncle Price said.
‘Are you Mr Williams?’
He came at me, then, hand raised. ‘Don’t cheek me, boy! Give it to me. Now!’
What choice did I have?
I watched him read. And then I knew it was all right. This man must be Mr Williams because he was a gentleman – you could tell because he didn’t move his lips when he read. Everybody I knew moved their lips, except our minister. Even I did and I was the best reader in our chapel.
He finished reading and looked up at me. ‘Tell your uncle all right.’
Good. He was going to do whatever Beca wanted. I was relieved. Sure to’ve got the blame, I was, if he’d said no. Uncle Price would’ve been furious.
I nodded and climbed back over the gate. Glad to be leaving him behind. He frightened me.
I went faster on the way back but the rain came down properly before I even got to the wood. Hard, heavy rain that was going to soak me to my skin. I began to run. Down the path, looking up the slope. Looking for the cave tree.
The rain pelted the leaves, splatted onto the ground. The air was full of the noise of it. I could feel rain soaking through on my shoulders and my knees.
Then, there it was. Right above me. The cave.
Bramble thorns ripped my hands and the rain was running down my neck but, inside a minute, I was scrambling into the dark of that mouth under the tree.
A flash of lightning came as I was crawling in under the roots. Then the thunder. Almost straight away. The storm wasn’t moving down the valley. It was right over me.
Lying there on my side, I was completely sheltered from the rain. I was still wet and cold, but I wasn’t getting any wetter. The rain came down on the leaves in front of my face, steady and hard. Like the sound of barley pouring out of the sack into the rolling mill.
Lightning came, again and again. And every time, it was as bright as noon. Brighter. But only for a moment. Then your eyes went dark. Darker than before while they adjusted again.
I don’t know how long I’d been there when a flash showed me a movement. Somebody was down below. On the path.
I stared until my eyes remembered how to see in the dark again and I could see two people. Standing under a tree. A man and a woman.
What were they doing out in this weather?
I watched them. They just huddled there doing nothing for a while.
Then the rain got softer. Maybe the storm was moving after all.
After a little while, I saw the woman put a hand out from under the branches. Looking to see how hard it was still raining. She must’ve got the answer she wanted because they came out then. Her and the man. Started walking down the path away from Waungilfach.
Down the hill they came and I saw the woman put one hand on the man’s arm. She had a little bundle in the other.
They were closer, now, and I could see it was the man I’d given the letter to. The man who must be Mr Williams. I’d thought he was saying all right to a meeting. A gatebreaking. But Beca must want to see this woman for some reason. He must be taking her to a meeting. I couldn’t think what the reason might be for a woman going to a Beca meeting but that didn’t matter. Beca did what Beca did.
They got nearer and I heard the woman ask, Why won’t you tell me where it is?
Because it’s a surprise, the man said.
He’d sounded English before, like any gentleman would. But, now he was speaking Welsh, he sounded like one of us. I’d never heard of a gentleman being able to speak Welsh so well.
Then I heard the woman speak again, clearer this time, because they were closer, almost directly beneath me.
Are we going to walk all the way? That was what she said. But the man didn’t reply. Instead, he seemed to stumble, sort of. She let go of his arm and he was a pace or so behind her. Then, before she could turn, his hands were round her neck.
What was he doing?
I didn’t know but I think I understood, even from that first moment, that something terrible was going to happen.
He pushed her forward, hands still around her neck. Then he put his knee in her back and she fell forwards. Her bundle dropped to the ground and I could see her hands pulling at his, trying to get his fingers away from her neck.
Then he spoke. He said, No, we’re not walking there. His voice was different than before. Tighter. Harder. There is no there. Did you think you deserved a farm of your own? Did you?
I shivered. Cold or fear I couldn’t tell you.
Why couldn’t I take my eyes off them? I didn’t want to see what was happening but I couldn’t take my eyes off the two of them.
He shook her then, as if he was annoyed that she hadn’t answered him.
No, he told her. This is what you deserve.
She was still trying to pull his fingers away. And she tried to kick out at him but her legs were folded back because he had her on her knees.
He pushed her further down, still talking.
This is your fault, Margaret. You’ve brought this on yourself. Words were just coming and coming out of him. As if he’d been waiting for her to be quiet so he could speak. 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?
I wanted to look away but I couldn’t. I could barely blink.
And he was still talking. Talking, talking, talking. As if he expected her to answer. As if he was angry that she was so quiet. I remember thinking that it was unfair – how could she answer? Stupid, the things you think when you’re watching somebody die.
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!
How long do you think it takes to strangle the life out of somebody?
Whatever you say, you’ll be wrong. It’s longer. Far, far longer.
Finally, he let her body fall to the ground and stood there, one hand in the small of his back as if he’d done nothing more out of the ordinary than clip the fleece off a ewe.
Then he squatted down. Rolled her over on her back and put a hand on her breast.
I closed my eyes then. Why? What made me watch him kill her and then shut my eyes as he made free with her body? It made no sense!
Except he wasn’t making free with her, was he? He was feeling for a heartbeat. Or breath. Making sure she was dead.
Her little bundl
e was still on the ground where she’d dropped it. He reached over and grabbed it, shoved it under his waistcoat. Then he took her arms and pulled her up. Bent his legs, got under her and she was on his back. A grunt like lifting a heavy sack and he was upright.
I hadn’t seen her belly till then. Her huge, huge belly. Now it stuck in his face, made him walk with his head to one side.
Because that’s what he was doing, now. Walking. Walking with her on his back. Not back up the track. No. Up the slope. Coming up through the wet, sodden leaves, ducking under low braches. Coming towards me.
Then I understood why he’d killed her there. Because of the cave where I was lying. He was going to put her there. He was going to bring the tree down and bury her in the cave.
Get away!
I knew that’s what I had to do. But I couldn’t. My legs and arms were numb with terror.
Still, he was coming up. Getting closer. I heard him slip. Saw him almost fall on his face. But he put out a hand and saved himself. Her body slewed round to one side, almost had him over, but he shrugged her back again and kept on coming.
I could feel water dripping onto my neck from the roots over my head. Smell the wetness of the earth. Move! I told my body. Move!
He was so close, now, I could hear his breathing. Finally, panic and action clasped hands and I was moving. Rolling out from under the tree. Grazing my shins on the stones at the lip of the cave. I knew the pain was there but I couldn’t feel it.
He swore in shock as he saw me and the sound of his voice terrified me. I tried to stand upright, lost my footing, almost fell backwards on him. With the strength of terror, I just kept my balance. Threw my trembling bones sideways, scrambled on hands and toes.
He came after me and only the weight of her body on his shoulders stopped him catching me. He slipped, she pinned him beneath her dead weight and I was gone before he could get a hand out towards me.
I’ve seen you boy! And I’ll know you again! I heard the rage in his voice and almost pissed myself. So say nothing or I’ll kill you. I’ll find you and I’ll kill you!
It must’ve been that same rage that gave him the power to pull a whole tree down on top of her. Even as I tumbled down the slope and spilled out onto the path, I heard the creak and groan and fall of it. It was almost more terrifying than his words.
Say nothing or I’ll kill you.
Harry
All the while John was speaking, I found my mind snagging on the most mundane details: the scrubbed cleanliness of the dairy step; the hunger of a small, overworked boy; the fact that Davy had not moved his lips as he read the note meant for William Williams. But the most poignant detail, the one that seemed to have taken painful root, was the image of Margaret standing under that tree and holding out a hand to see how wet she would get if they started walking again. That little, unthinking action seemed to represent all the things that violent death had stolen from her, the ordinary acts of daily life as much as the larger events that mark a person’s passage through the years.
I shifted my gaze until John’s face was in my peripheral vision. ‘How can you be sure it was Davy?’
‘His mother showed me a portrait he’d sent her from America. One of those photographic things.’
‘I see.’ The hope that he might be wrong had been faint at best.
‘I’m sorry, Harry.’
‘Don’t be. Without you, I would never have known the truth.’
The arbitrariness of John’s being there, in that tree cave, had struck me very forcibly while he was speaking. Everything we had done together rested on his decision to go to Waungilfach by one way and not another: the whole concatenation of circumstances that had led from that rainy evening to his being present at Schofield’s office when I called in to solicit the lawyer’s help.
‘If you hadn’t sheltered beneath that tree,’ I said, ‘there would be nobody, now, who knew the truth. I would have left Isaac Morgan’s house convinced that Margaret had taken her own life. That the only thing David Thomas was guilty of was trying to keep the scandal from Rebecca’s door and extorting the price of a ticket to America.’
John’s eyes were fixed on me, I could feel his gaze. Did he believe me?
The mew of a buzzard overhead turned my attention to the clouds. But I would never see a buzzard again. No more than I would see Margaret Jones. Though the bird might still wheel and cry in the valley while Margaret was reduced to bones, the sight of both existed now only in memory, for me; it was not only the dead that were gone from my sight.
‘Why tell me now?’ I asked. ‘You could just have let me believe that Margaret had killed herself. I’d have let you go back to Mr Schofield with a good report and nobody need ever have been any the wiser.’
John did not reply immediately but his silence had the weight of a decision being made. His mare, impatient at this standing about, tossed her head, her bit jingling.
‘Right from the beginning,’ he began, ‘I was determined not to tell you. I was terrified of you finding out. I was scared that I’d lose my job. That Mr Schofield wouldn’t trust me anymore – that he’d think I was a liar and a fraud for not coming forward before. So I kept telling myself that you didn’t need to know what I’d seen. That I didn’t have to tell you.’
‘And yet you have.’
He drew in a long breath. ‘I thought we’d find out the truth. That you’d find out what had happened without me having to tell you. But we didn’t.’ He seemed to wrestle with himself, with how to express himself, perhaps. ‘At the beginning, I didn’t know you. But I do now. And I couldn’t have you believing David Thomas’s lie,’ he managed, finally. ‘Because Margaret Jones didn’t kill herself.’
‘No thanks to me. I still let her down.’
‘But you’d’ve made sure she was all right, in the end, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t’ve just left her to go to the workhouse.’ He was pleading now, wanting me to prove that I was worthy of the truth he’d given me. ‘And David Thomas took that away from you. He took the chance to make amends away from you.’
That, at least, was true. Whether or not I would have done as John believed, her murder had deprived me of the opportunity.
By unspoken consent, we moved off again and, as we began to descend the steep hill towards the tiny Gwenffrwd stream, John suddenly spoke, as if he felt the need to have all his questions answered, now, before it was too late.
‘Do you know why David Thomas killed her?’
‘Yes.’ I said no more. What Rachel Ellis had told me was nobody’s business but my own.
He obviously heard the finality in my voice. ‘What I don’t understand,’ he said, moving tactfully to more recent events, ‘is why Morgan and the others were so afraid of our investigation. Afraid enough to threaten the jurors.’
I took a breath, tasting the scent of wet road stone and damp leather. ‘I think Morgan must have been panicking that things were getting beyond his control, even before Margaret’s death. Once Nathaniel Howell had been chased away, there was nobody to keep Morgan’s group in check. It had been formed in rebellion against Howell and, with Howell gone, it became rudderless and dangerous. I think Isaac Morgan was afraid that Margaret’s death would be laid firmly at his door. His group had persecuted her and he, personally, had refused to help her, leading to what he believed was her suicide. Not only that but, if her death were to be investigated, all the activities of that group would be brought to light and he’d be at risk of being gaoled or even transported if the magistrates associated him with Williams’s barn being burned down. Not to mention the ridicule he’d endure if the truth about Lydia was made public. I think the fact that he paid for David Thomas’s ticket shows you how desperate he was to have the whole business of Margaret tidied up out of harm’s way.’
Because, if Isaac Morgan knew David Thomas at all, he must have known that if he was denied what he wanted, he would become a very dangerous enemy.
We rode on, the silence between us broken only by the liqui
d sound of the little, winter-full Gwenffrwd rushing to meet the Teifi. I watched it in my edge-sight, remembering it in summer, sunlit pebbles as bright as semi-precious stones beneath the shallow flow. Margaret and I had walked along this tiny road one sun-filled Sunday afternoon in July and I remembered picking a stem of red campion for her. I could still see her tucking it into her shawl with that dimpled smile of hers.
‘If Lydia Howell hadn’t fled to Ipswich,’ John said, pulling my attention back to the present, ‘none of this would’ve happened. If she’d still been here – as Nathaniel – Margaret would have come to you, told you everything.’
‘Possibly. But you can’t blame Lydia. She was afraid. Not only of being exposed, but for her life. Just as you were.’
The sudden impulse to defend Lydia was as strong as it was unexpected. Her voice – that disturbingly familiar contralto – came to mind, as did the sideways glimpses I had had of her in that Ipswich parlour and I was filled with a sensation that I would be hard put to explain.
A sensation of loss.
Part 6: Afterwards
Harry
Our investigation at an end, I felt no urgent need to share what we had discovered and I allowed Mari Thomas’s death and burial to come and go before I made public a version of the truth; a version that exonerated Rebecca and named David Thomas as the murderer of both Margaret and his own unborn child. I felt that his guilt should be known, even if he was safe from the hangman’s noose in America. Whether I would have been so keen to name him had he still been in Cardiganshire was a question I did not allow myself to dwell on.
I also wrote a letter to Bowen, setting out the whole sorry story and asking for his discretion. As coroner for the Teifi Valley and presiding officer at the inquest into Margaret’s death, however reluctant, I felt he had a right to know.