She thrust the scrap of paper at him. He scanned the list. She’d listed the sailors’ watches too, and their corresponding bell times. Alf’s big, round old-dog eyes filled with pride.
‘Well done, lass. You’ve made an excellent start.’
‘Yes. Can I have my list back, please?
‘No, let’s write this up now.’
‘It’s okay.’ Bridie plucked it from his fingers. ‘I know you’re busy, with … well, with the cleaning and everything. Besides, this’ll need another draft. I’ll rewrite it this afternoon, shall I? We can work on it together, when you’ve got time.’
Alf’s eyes narrowed, suspicious. Bridie stretched her smile wide.
‘Right. I’ve a meeting at four bells. After that, I’m on supper duties. But I’ll be free all evening. I promise. We’ll make our first proper entry tonight.’
Tonight. A proper entry. Bridie’s face set like cement.
Alf would be too tired come suppertime. He always was. She should be able to gull him for a few more drafts. But, really, what was the point? Her notebook was dead. She couldn’t hear her dad’s voice anymore when she turned its pages. Or feel his presence. She may as well toss it overboard.
Slipping the list behind the notebook’s cover, she marched along the deck, keeping her pace slow, deliberately even, though her knees threatened to buckle beneath her skirts.
The ship’s waist wasn’t wide: about twenty-five feet according to Alf’s useless store of information. But it took an age to thread her way through the tangle of wind-sails and washing lines strung across the deck. At the bulwarks, she stood, looking out over the great green counterpane of the waves. It was so vast, undulating, like a pattern for eternity. It would make a fitting grave for her memories.
Neptune’s kingdom beneath the sea.
She balanced her notebook on the high curved rim of the bulwarks. The ink would run, of course. Fish would nibble at its pages. She’d lose all her dad’s stories.
Tonight, Alf had said. A proper entry.
She closed her eyes, imagined Alf’s big blunt hand scoring the notebook’s pages—words like archipelago, sextant and compass, all thick and black and ugly. A sob rose in her throat. One shove, that’s all it would take. No more doubts, no more danger, no more questions.
Her notebook safe from Alf’s horrible, prying hands.
No! She couldn’t do it. She staggered back, clutching the notebook to her chest. It might be dead but it was still precious. She had to give it one more chance. But how? Where? Her eyes sought the base of the main mast. Siân wasn’t in her usual place. She must be resting. But what about Rhys? Had he been in steerage at dinnertime? She’d been so caught up in the currant and pease disaster, she’d failed to notice.
But, no, she didn’t think so.
She swivelled back round, threaded her way across the deck, circled the white-washed deckhouse, the makeshift horse box, the two small boats lying lengthwise between. If Siân had taken to her bunk, Rhys must be behind the horsebox.
Alone.
She peered around the boat end. Rhys sat, knees bent, head in his hands, his feet resting on a lashed down pile of spars. He’d removed his cap and draped his jacket over the kennel. Beside him, a row of puppies tugged greedily at their mother’s teats.
Bridie took a deep breath and blew out through her puffed cheeks. What now? Interrupt him? Ask for help again? Would he even be interested? Did it matter with Alf’s proper entry looming? Rhys might be ‘poor company’ and he certainly seemed to be having a ‘difficult journey’. But he’d stood up to Alf, claiming stories could help people understand their lives and, if that was the case, if stories did truly have that kind of power, then maybe, just maybe, his Taliesin story could help bring her notebook back to life.
She gathered her skirts and crawled into the narrow space. Her boots clunked on the hollow wood of the deck. Her notebook swished like sandpaper. Rhys didn’t look up, even when the bitch gave a low warning growl. His stillness was like an apse or a sanctuary.
She inched closer, saw the hard yoke of his shoulders, his tense, ridged fingers.
‘Rhys.’ No reaction. ‘Rhys.’ She touched a finger to his knee.
His head snapped up, eyes darting, unfocused. They came to rest on her face. ‘Bridie!’
‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.’
‘No. It’s me who should apologise. Hours, I’ve been sitting here, with others like yourself needing space and privacy.’ He twisted round, grabbed his jacket and cap and began to squeeze past her.
Bridie knelt, blocking his path. ‘Actually, it was you … you, I wanted to talk to you … about your story.’
He stopped, head to one side, his expression a mix of weary puzzlement. ‘You liked it, I hope?’
‘I did, yes, and what you said about stories … and everything. And well, I was wondering … just, wondering whether I could write it down … in my notebook.’
‘My story? In your notebook?’ His stillness returned.
‘It’s just, I think, I can remember how you told it. But … if I could ask questions, it would help.’
‘Is that all?’ His eyes searched her face.
She flushed under his gaze. Her finger found a knot in the deck, tracing it inwards, outwards, all hard and gnarled and complicated. ‘It’s just, well … sometimes, I can’t feel my dad’s presence anymore.’
A sigh, the weight of his body shifting. He settled back against the horsebox. ‘I can tell it again if you like, and others. I have plenty of others.’
‘Oh, yes, please!’
He smiled—not a tight, white-faced smile—a real smile that lit his eyes, like the flare of a torch, promising warmth and friendship, with only the white-knuckled clench of his fists to tell her how much the gesture was costing. She didn’t understand his secrets. Only that they were real and nagging. But in that moment, she wanted him to understand the value of the gift he was offering.
‘I haven’t been honest with you, Rhys, about my notebook. At least, I haven’t told you everything.’
‘Indeed! How so, Bridie Stewart?’
‘Remember I told you my dad gave it to me, just before he died? Well he did, that part was true. He was a musician, like I told you, until he got sick and sad and couldn’t play his flute anymore. Sometimes … he drank too much. But even then, even when he was sick and sad and drunk, he never stopped believing in stories. That’s why he gave me the notebook, so I could write them down. But then he died, suddenly, well … in an accident, and the notebook was empty.’
‘So you filled it with his memory.’
She nodded, throat tight. ‘At first, it was terrible. I couldn’t remember anything. Only bits and pieces, as if the stories were all broken up inside me. But I wrote them down as they came.’ She stopped, opened the notebook, passing over the terrible confusion of the flyleaf, to a list written in her looping twelve-year-old hand. ‘Once I had the pieces, I could fit them together. Only by then, there were so many, I couldn’t write fast enough. So I began to tell the stories over-and-over in my head.’
‘So you wouldn’t forget.’
‘Yes.’
‘Then, as you were able, you made them complete. Trying to catch every word, every phrase, exactly as they’d been told. But in the end, you found they were the same, but different, as if they had somehow become your own.’
‘You know! How did you know?’
‘Well, now, Bridie Stewart, I might have done something like it myself.’
‘But … my dad, he was a musician, not a storyteller. He never stood before a crowd, like you and Siân. Only told stories, softly, by the fire, for me and Ma. She used to like them once … but not anymore.’
‘She tries to forget.’
Bridie nodded, though his words didn’t come close to explaining Ma’s attitude.
‘What about you, Rhys? Did your dad tell stories?’
‘No, not Tad. Siân’s great aunt, Rhonwen, was the storyteller. No matter how t
ired or busy or pensive, she always had time for the old Welsh tales.’
‘What was your favourite?’ Bridie leaned forward, hugging her knees.
‘Well now, that’s easy. There is a lake high up in a hollow of the Black Mountains called Llyn y Fan Fach. Once-upon-a-time, a fairy woman came out of the lake and married a man. It reminds me of Siân—and her aunt Rhonwen.’
‘Siân came out of a lake!’
‘No.’ He chuckled. ‘There’s twp, I am not explaining myself properly. The Lady of the Lake healed with plants, like Siân. She passed her remedies onto her sons, who became healers of great renown. The Physicians of Myddfai, we call them.’
‘Oh.’ Bridie bit her lip. ‘That was silly.’
‘Mind, I wouldn’t be surprised if Rhonwen came out of a lake. She was the seventh child of a seventh child. Some say she had unnatural abilities. Rhonwen never needed to put an ox-blade in the fire to see what the coming winter would be like, or lay mistletoe beneath her pillow to shape her dreams. She simply knew things.’
‘What about Siân? Does she know things?’
It was as if the wind slammed a door closed, changing the light in the room. She saw a flicker of alarm in his eyes, a tightening about his mouth.
‘No. Siân was her mother’s first child.’
Bridie shivered, feeling alone. Or maybe she imagined it? No, Rhys’s face had shut down. As if he’d gone to a place far, far away. How to bring him back? She mustn’t talk about the Lady of the Lake anymore, at least, not in relation to Siân. But she wasn’t ready to lose his friendship again. She reached out, touching a finger to his knee.
‘Please, Rhys. Don’t go away.’
He blinked, the twitch of his limbs putting her in mind of someone waking from a nightmare and passed a hand across his face. ‘Sorry, Bridie Stewart. It’s a terrible friend, I’ve been.’
‘It’s okay. We both have secrets.’
He smiled then, the light returning to his eyes. ‘We do, indeed, Bridie Stewart. We do indeed. Right, enough of my foolishness.’ He placed a determined hand on each knee. ‘Let me guess, your dad was Scottish, so what was your favourite fairy tale?’
Her favourite? It was a fair question, seeing as she’d just told him about her dad. She ought to have seen it coming. But she hadn’t—and now she didn’t know how to answer him.
‘Was it “The Black Bull of Norroway”, by any chance?’
‘No.’
‘“The Fairy and the Miller’s Wife?” Or what about “The Well at the End of the World?”’
‘Not those either.’
‘Well then, Bridie Stewart, I think you must tell me.’
What could she say? She’d had a favourite, until Ma twisted her dad’s message all out of shape. The story of Tamlane—a youth captured by the Queen of Elf-land and the brave young maiden who had rescued him. Her dad had reimagined it as part of her Christmas message.
She held her father, and lo! he turned to a wild bear waked with ire,
And she held her father, and lo! he changed to a lion roaring higher,
She held him fast, tho’ the wild elves laughed,
And the mountains rang with mire,
She held him fast, though he turned at last,
To a gleed of white-hot fire.
Tamlane wasn’t the girl’s father, of course. He was her secret fairy lover. Yet still the story resonated. She felt its loss more deeply than all the others, if that were possible. But how to explain? The truth was far too painful.
‘When I was little, I liked “Whuppity Stoorie”,’ she answered in a high, bright voice, ‘because of the name.’
‘Like “Rumplestiltskin”.’ He nodded. ‘A good choice.’
‘Do the Welsh have a story like it, one with a secret name?’
‘Indeed. It’s called “Sili go Dwt”.’
‘“Sili go Dwt”,’ Bridie repeated the strange sounding words. ‘Does it mean anything?’
‘Yes, Sili Somewhat Small, you would say in English. Once-upon-a-time, a mysterious green fairy tricked a poor widow into giving up her only child—’
‘Only, by the law she lived under, she couldn’t take him until the third day,’ Bridie interrupted with a quote from ‘Whuppity Stoorie’.
‘Exactly! But to save the child she must somehow guess the fairy’s name. Only in the Welsh tale, she’d changed her form. For although a tiny fairy, she appeared very tall.’
‘Oh. That’s horrible. She wasn’t playing by the rules at all.’
He laughed. ‘No. It makes for a better telling. Though, in this case the story does end happily.’
Bridie shivered, recalling the first time she’d heard “Whuppity Stoorie”—the soft burr of her dad’s voice, the scratchy feel of his jersey when she cuddled up close, the faint, musty smell of the theatre and fireside on his clothes. There had been no whisky stench to his breath in those days, or sickly smell of cough preparations. Only a delicious anticipation as the story unfolded, an agonised guessing of names, and Ma’s laughing voice telling him not to let his imagination run wild. Yet, all the while, the twinkle in his eyes had told Bridie the story would have a happy ending.
‘What’s your favourite story now?’ Rhys’s soft voice interrupted her thoughts.
‘Now?’
‘You’re not little anymore, Bridie Stewart.’
She’d forgotten this about Rhys, his uncanny ability to guess her secrets. Maybe he did indeed have second sight. Could he see into her life? But in claiming his friendship, she’d given him the right to ask these questions—and she must find a way to answer him.
‘“Tamlane”.’ Head down, she muttered the word.
‘But not anymore?’
‘No.’
‘Though, it too has a happy ending?’
It sounded stupid. It was stupid. On the surface the tales had so much in common—love and enchantment, the power of never letting go, no matter how desperate or ugly the situation. Yet, how to explain? Time had shaped them differently. For “Whuppity Stoorie” had been a child’s tale, one she’d grown out of with afternoon naps and comfort blankets, whereas ‘Tamlane’ had been her dad’s story.
She had believed in it.
‘When my baby brother died, Dad said he’d gone to live with the fairies. I was only little then, so I believed him.’
‘And it eased the pain of your loss?’
She shook her head slowly. ‘I didn’t know why the fairies wanted our baby. But I thought, at least he was happy. Then my baby sister died.’ She swallowed, looking up into his kind dark eyes, remembering the confusion, Ma’s endless weeping, the winter of her dad’s cough starting. ‘She died before she was born. You know, a stillborn child. I was older then and I thought it mightn’t be true about the fairies.’
‘But you wanted to believe.’
‘Then my dad got sick.’ She stopped, drew breath. If only her throat weren’t so tight, her eyes so suddenly swimming. ‘Then my dad got sick and sad and I couldn’t … well, I wouldn’t …’
‘Let him go?’
She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.
Even when he’d turned his face to the wall, she’d not let go; though Ma had given up and Mr Cooke the music director had paid a regretful visit, Bridie wouldn’t loosen her hold. Even after the accident, she’d kept faith. Thinking, if only she’d had more time, if only he hadn’t gone out that night, she might have saved him still. But now Ma’s words had changed everything and she would never know. Whether he’d played her for a fool. Whether after all that blind, stubborn believing, he’d always meant to go.
‘Painful, it is, when the words that once brought comfort seem to lose their voice. It’s not the stories that are at fault. Or that we were foolish to believe. Only that we must learn to see with different eyes. Sometimes it takes time and the answers aren’t always easy—that’s part of the magic. But we are never too old for fairy tales, Bridie Stewart, no matter what Alf or your ma might say.’
There was
more to say, so much more, and one day she’d find a way to tell him—about Ma hating her dad and Alf wanting to steal her notebook and how she couldn’t even read it anymore without hearing the echo of Ma’s cruel words. But now wasn’t the time.
She leaned back against the horsebox and closed her eyes.
Chapter 9
Rhys sat silently during supper that evening and all through the following morning. But a single nod at dinnertime told Bridie he hadn’t forgotten his promise. She shovelled down her salt-beef, raced through mess duties, and grabbed her writing materials. The Bevans sat in their usual place, at the base of the main mast. Rhys, knees bent, shoulders hunched, a hand caught in the dark tangle of his hair; Siân perched on her knees, scanning the deck.
Bridie raised an uncertain hand. Was this it? Should she walk over? Or wait for Siân to notice her? As if on a string, the Welsh girl’s head swung round. She turned, nudging Rhys. His head rose, eyes unfocused. A smile woke his features.
Bridie wormed her way across the deck, paying no heed to card games, sewing circles, or whose fingers she might be treading on. As she neared the base of the main mast, Siân called out, eyes ashine.
‘Stories, for you, now, is it, bach?’
Sinking down beside them, Bridie scarcely knew what to expect. Would Rhys repeat the story word-for-word, pausing as if in dictation? Or expect her to remember everything, rattling off the Welsh names so fast she couldn’t keep up with him? She glanced sideways. His tight face offered no clues, though; his mouth still retained a ghost of its smile.
‘I know you asked for Taliesin’s story, Bridie bach, and we’ll come to it in time. But today, I thought we’d start with my favourite—“The Lady of Llyn y Fan Fach”.’
Bridie frowned, picking up her pencil. ‘The story of the woman who healed with plants? And passed her remedies onto her sons?’
‘You needn’t fret. I’ll not be giving you a history lesson.’
‘But … if her sons were famous, they must have been real people?’
The Tides Between Page 8