Riding the Storm

by Susan Holliday

  Alun felt muzzy. His back ached, his arm throbbed. ‘You must be joking,’ he said.

  Slowly and carefully Huw secured his crutches and picked up the key.

  ‘I want it back straightaway,’ said Alun sharply. Whatever had come over him? Why had he let it go when it was so precious?

  Huw nodded and pushed his way up the ward.

  ‘This time lucky,’ said Morgan as Huw passed him, ‘and don’t drop the key.’

  Huw stood solemnly in front of the tall cupboard with its mirror full of cloudy images. He pushed the key into the lock where it glinted in the moonlight.

  ‘It’s turning,’ he said excitedly.

  The children were so intent they didn’t even hear the inurse coming up the ward.

  ‘Sleep-walking again?’ She sounded a bit like Mam, thought Alun, and he shoved himself under the bedclothes. For some reason Mam filled his mind. His breath broke and tears filled his eyes. She had already left Dad so why shouldn’t she leave him? Then he remembered the key and pushed back the bedclothes. Huw was hobbling back to bed with a glazed expression on his face. Alun felt trapped. He knew Huw had to leave the key behind but it didn’t help. Say it stayed in the cupboard forever? His sight blurred and when the nurse had gone back to the office he whispered angrily,

  ‘What did you go and leave my key for? You must be out of your mind.’

  ‘Look, I’ll go back,’ said Huw, on the defensive. ‘I’ll go back now.’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ hissed Bryn. ‘If you go back she’ll know something’s up.’

  ‘I’m nearest,’ said Morgan. ‘I’ll get it.’

  ‘Not with your knees you won’t’ said Huw, ‘You’ll take longer than me. Anyway, I promised I’d look after the key, didn’t I?’

  Alun watched him reach for his crutches, put them under his arms, once more slide off the bed. His eyes blurred and he could no longer make out what was happening. Suddenly the phone rang and nurse’s muffled voice gabbled behind the office door. Everybody muttered with relief.

  ‘It’s turning,’ Huw was saying but as he spoke the phone clicked down and Sara whispered, ‘Get straight back.’

  ‘You should have let me go,’ muttered Morgan.

  Huw put the key in his mouth and hobbled back.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Alun, taking the key and shoving it under the bedclothes.

  The nurse came through the door as Huw once again rolled into bed.

  The clatter of his falling crutches sounded suspicious but there was nothing she could say for everyone was lying still, eyes clamped like limpets, mouths open, snoring loudly.

  When she had gone, Alun turned to watch Huw. Not everyone would have done that for me, he thought. He felt warm inside, as if something in him was waking up. It was a feeling he hadn’t had for a long time. Perhaps there was something in this silly Rhiwallon story after all.

  The next morning Sara rode up the ward, manipulating her chair between the beds. She had a small pile of grey paper on her lap and gave a sheet to Alun. Mrs Williams walked over, her long, fair hair loose over her shoulders. A mess, Mam would have said but Alun found himself liking it. It made her seem less of a teacher and more like Olwen. He wasn’t sure why he liked Olwen particularly. Perhaps it was her long hair or her smile, but he wasn’t sure.

  ‘We need you to do something for us, Alun,’ said Mrs Williams.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘We need more work to put up.’

  ‘Why?’

  Mrs Williams shook her head.

  ‘At the rate things are going we’ll be lucky to stay here for Christmas. The powers that be want to close the ward, maybe even the hospital. It’s the same story all over. Money, that’s what runs the world. It happens the Inspector’s coming soon and we want to impress him with our work, then he might listen to us. You see, it’s very important to keep things as they are for a little while at least.’

  ‘I can’t imagine not being here,’ said Sara, ‘It’s been my school for nearly always.’

  ‘You have your own school now,’ said Mrs Williams.

  ‘I know, but I always come back here, don’t I?’

  ‘You mean they might turn us out?’ said Huw.

  ‘You never know,’ said Mrs Williams. ‘If we’re lucky they might move us to a new ward or even a new hospital. We don’t know.’

  ‘But I don’t want to go to another ward,’ said Huw, looking hard at the mirror. It was glinting in the morning sun; there was a shine on it like a wax that would receive any message they might want to put on it. ‘Please help us, Rhiwallon,’ he whispered.

  Alun heard him and turned to Mrs Williams. ‘Give me a pencil,’ he said, ‘and I’ll have a go with my left hand.’

  ‘What about drawing something from the legend?’ said Mrs Williams. ‘That could be your project.’

  ‘I can’t imagine anything,’ said Alun.

  Mrs Williams smiled. ‘You don’t have to. We have plenty of photographs.’

  He chose a photograph of the Black Mountain from Llanddeusant. That could be Dad standing there with a stick in his hand, Alun thought, looking at the dark slope that rose up from trees and green fields to barren uplands. He read the blurb on the back. That’s where I am too, he thought, under a grey wall of rain and the wind blotting my sight.

  Mrs Williams nodded. ‘A good dramatic choice. By the way, did you sort out your eye problem?’

  ‘They said it would go soon,’ said Alun shortly.

  Sara wheeled herself back to the table.

  ‘What else can we do to stop the ward closing?’

  ‘Work hard,’ said Mrs Williams, ‘say a prayer or two. You don’t have to be in chapel to pray. It always helps when people care.’

  Sara put the rest of the paper on the table and settled herself down.

  ‘I’m drawing the physicians of Myddfai,’ said Olwen. ‘I wish I could be healed by them. The thought of another op gives me a headache.’

  ‘Listen to this,’ said Morgan, opening his book. He put on a serious voice.

  ‘For a headache. Whoever is frequently afflicted with a headache, let him make a lotion of the vervain, betony, chamomile, and red fennel; let him wash his head three times a week therewith, and he will be cured.’

  ‘Sounds like the latest shampoo,’ said Sara and everybody laughed.

  ‘Thanks a million, Rhiwallon,’ said Morgan, returning the book.

  ‘Well, he might help us all,’ said Huw seriously. ‘What does he come for otherwise?’

  ‘I didn’t know the legend had such an effect on you all,’ said Mrs Williams in surprise.

  ‘Huw’s a great fantasist, he is,’ said Alun. ‘It’s his ancestors. They were all Celtic minstrels with too much imagination.’

  ‘Well, try to get some of this down on paper now,’ said Mrs Williams.

  ‘I can’t draw scenery,’ said Alun, ‘not with my left hand.’

  ‘Draw the cupboard, whispered Huw. ‘That’s what I’m doing. Then I’m going to draw what I think is inside. I don’t care if they laugh.’

  ‘What do you think is inside?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ Huw chewed the end of his pencil. ‘Tell you what, if you let me have your key again, I’ll have a look tonight.’

  ‘OK,’ said Alun. He began to draw the cupboard out of a sort of sympathy for Huw. He drew carefully, making pencil strokes as his art teacher had encouraged him to do at school.

  ‘Best thing you’ve done,’ said Mrs Williams, a little later. ‘You’ve made a real leap there. Now, what do you imagine is inside it?’

  The smile she gave him as she went away made him feel good. He stared at the cupboard he had drawn but it was not long before his elation was over. He wished Mrs Williams hadn’t asked him to imagine what was inside. He dropped his pencil, screwed up the sheet of paper and threw it on to the floor. He edged down the bed and shut his eyes. Suddenly, acutely, the blackness came back and he didn’t know why.

  Soon he pushed himself up in a pa
nic and was relieved to see Mrs Williams nearby waiting for him to hand her the empty clipboard.

  He knew he had let her down but the blackness stood between them so he shrugged his shoulders and she went off without further questions. He felt uncomfortable now, and was relieved when Sara collected the pencils and went back with Olwen to the girls’ end. He shut his eyes and only opened them when the tea-lady came up the ward with her swaying trolley.

  Not long afterwards Huw’s family arrived, early as usual, crowding in as soon as school was over. This time Huw’s mother was holding her baby. The small pink-faced child smiled at Alun but he felt apprehensive. Ffion sidled up to him and showed him a small bear wearing a bib. She danced the bear all over his bedclothes and, without understanding why, Alun shivered and shouted, ‘Get off!’

  He turned the other way and caught sight of someone about the size of his own mother coming towards him. But it wasn’t her; she would never come. He turned round to see Ffion was already back, laying her little bear inside his locker drawer as if it was a wooden cradle. It was then he understood why he had shouted.

  In one of those flashes that came to him nowadays, filling the blanks in his memory as if it was happening now, Alun’s mind was filled with the image of the big stuffed bear that sat on the corner shelf in the front room. It was Tony’s teddy and it told him Dad was not coming back. Not yet, at any rate. Funny how he had forgotten until now. It was April Fool’s Day, he remembered, and Tony had tricked him about the time and made him late for school. He recalled how that night when he lay in bed listening to the noises downstairs, it sounded as if Mam and Tony were still playing the fool or getting drunk or something. He remembered climbing out of bed and lifting the carpet at the broken floorboard where he could hear best.

  ‘There we are,’ Tony was saying, ‘the best prize in Carmarthen Fair. I got it specially for you.’

  ‘Oh Tony, you shouldn’t, but he’s lovely, isn’t he? I love the trousers with the braces.’

  ‘I always did like teddy bears,’ said Tony.

  ‘You’re like one,’ Mam replied. ‘A big softy, that’s what you are.’

  Then there was a sort of silence until Mam said, ‘I didn’t think it would ever happen; I didn’t think we’d ever pull it off. You and me –’

  ‘And little ‘un,’ said Tony, ‘the three of us.’

  The three of us! Alun knew he was caressing Mam’s stomach because he had seen him do this before. That was the very moment he knew it was Tony’s baby, and not Dad’s.

  He remembered his confusion, how he had started to rock and cry like a baby himself and push open the window to see if he could see Dad anywhere. But the lamp light only lit up pools of darkness and where their street curved down into Castle Hill there was nothing but cars flashing towards the station or out to the M4. It was lightly raining and he cried unashamedly. The three of us, he repeated over and over again. The three of us. How dare they!

  If he knew where Dad was he’d run away to him and that would show them. Then his tears had stopped and his anger had begun. He leapt off the bed and cast round for something he could use for beating up Tony. He picked up the spare pump for his bike and ran to the door and then ran back in despair and pounded the bed with it. Hit! Hit! Hit! He hated Tony! He hated that baby even before it was born.

  Now he knew: that was when the blackness had begun.

  ‘I don’t like teddy bears,’ he told Ffion.

  ‘Why not?’ she asked.

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Just don’t, that’s all.’

  ‘What’s this then?’ she asked, pulling out his key from the drawer.

  ‘All that’s left of my bike,’ said Alun shortly. ‘Look, I’ve got the padlock round my wrist.’

  ‘Not so good as this,’ said Ffion, holding up her bead bracelet for him to admire.

  ‘Tell you what,’ said Alun, trying to think of other things, ‘could you let me have one of your hair grips?’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘A secret.’

  Ffion pulled out a hair grip from the top of her long fair plaits and gave it to him. Huw leaned over. ‘Don’t lose the key,’ he told Ffion, ‘It’s really important.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We’ll know all about it tomorrow!’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘The secret of the cupboard,’ said Alun mysteriously.

  The low night-light cast shadows down the ward. Alun watched them until he fell asleep and dreamed he was crawling at the bottom of a rain-beaten pit. Then Huw’s voice woke him up: ‘Rhiwallon is back!’

  Alun yawned. ‘Go to sleep.’

  Rain was falling on the roof, babies were crying. He heard the nurse’s footsteps hurrying out of the office and into the babies’ ward. He wanted to sleep again but his curiosity overcame his exhaustion and he pulled himself up and stared at the cupboard.

  Perhaps it was because he was halfasleep or because he was allowing his imagination to wander. Whatever the reason he had no doubt that what he now saw in the mirror was the shadow of a youth, carrying what might be a black calf, looking at him with eyes that were full of sympathy. Had Rhiwallon come to heal them? He stared at the ghost for a long time until, between one blink and another, the shadowy, white face disappeared.

  He turned to Huw. ‘I saw something but now it’s gone. Imagination, I expect.’

  ‘He was there,’ whispered Huw tensely. ‘Then he disappeared as I was talking.’

  He stared intently at the mirror as if he could will Rhiwallon to return.

  ‘It’s bucketing outside,’ he whispered. The rain would hide any noise he made. ‘I’m going to try, OK? Where’s the key?’

  ‘In the locker,’ murmured Alun. ‘And don’t lose it. Don’t forget the hair grip. You might need it.’

  Huw put the key and the hair grip in his top pyjama pocket.

  ‘Safe there,’ he whispered, reaching for his crutches.

  Alun yawned and tried to make himself comfortable. His head had been aching for some days now and as he watched Huw’s small rounded back proceed slowly down the ward it throbbed violently. He hoped it would stop soon so that he could think about what he had seen. He also hoped he would walk as well as Huw when he had his crutches. It wouldn’t be long now, the doctor had said, but it was difficult to believe. Sometimes he thought it would all go on forever, the pain and the blackness and the grey blanks in his mind that he couldn’t fill. Yet tonight it didn’t matter quite so much, as if the shadowy face of Rhiwallon the healer had given him hope.

  He looked over at the others. Bryn was on his back, snoring as usual, but Morgan was sitting up rubbing his eyes. He looked smaller and less sure of himself with his glasses off and his brown hair tousled. More like the sort of person whose knees packed up the night before he ran for the County. Psychological, they said, but who was to know? And who was to know about Rhiwallon, for that matter? Legends were old as the hills, Mrs Parry said, and there was some truth in them though it was never straightforward.

  ‘Got to have a witness,’ said Morgan as Huw passed. His voice acted as a signal.

  ‘I’ll be a witness too,’ whispered Alun, trying to shake off his sleepiness. His vision was blurred, so when Huw reached the cupboard he could only half see him in the dim light. Instead of straining his eyes he listened to the lock scraping.

  ‘Told you it wouldn’t fit,’ said Morgan.

  ‘It’s got to,’ whispered Huw.

  ‘Give him a chance,’ muttered Alun.

  ‘I’ll help,’ said Morgan, reaching for his crutches and swinging himself awkwardly out of bed and along the ward. Through the blur Alun saw how tall and thin he was and how small Huw looked beside him. Morgan fiddled away at the lock as if there was some way in which it would open.

  ‘Push it in further,’ whispered Huw. ‘It worked before.’

  ‘So you say,’ said Morgan.

  By now Bryn had woken up.

  ‘Try the hairpin,’ he whispered.


  At that moment the phone rang and the boys stood frozen in front of the mirror. To their relief Nurse turned into the office without seeing them. Her voice flowed quietly and evenly from behind the door, giving them a sense of reassurance.

  By now they were all awake. It was strange, thought Alun, as if they were in some conspiracy and must see it through together. Even Sara and Olwen were sitting up, trying to see what was going on. To his surprise his eyes cleared and now he could see Morgan and Huw and the shadows in the mirror that might be their reflection or might be – but as he strained forward Morgan whispered excitedly,

  ‘Done it!’

  The cupboard door slowly swung open and the mirror collected other images as it moved round. There was a pause as the boys peered into the cupboard.

  ‘Empty,’ said Morgan, slightly triumphant.

  ‘Just a minute,’ said Huw, forgetting to whisper. ‘What’s at the back of that shelf?’

  He leaned on Morgan, and pushing his arm inside, brought out something.

  Nurse’s voice stopped abruptly and the phone clicked down. Morgan hurriedly swung the cupboard door back and returned to his bed while Huw worked his crutches as fast he could down the ward, a grey white bundle hanging from his teeth. Just as he reached his bed the nurse came out, and Huw flung the bundle at Alun who stuffed it under the bedclothes with his good arm, then shut his eyes.

  ‘Sleep-walking again?’ said the nurse, eyeing Huw.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Huw, carefully stacking his crutches against the bed and climbing into the sheets.

  Alun lay stiffly, holding the unknown bundle to his stomach, listening to the nurse’s footsteps recede. He could hear his heart beating to the pulse of the rain. He didn’t dare move. The bundle stuck to his chest like an animal that had leapt on him and pinned him down. Like a baby.

  Then he saw her in his mind, tiny in Tony’s arms, unbelievably real. She wore a little white baby-gro, like a doll. Her face was puckered up and a thin wail came out of the round hole of her mouth. Tony rocked her to and fro with a daft expression on his face that Alun had never seen before. That was when he walked out of the room and up to his bedroom. But he couldn’t get away from the thin wail that came up through the floorboards like a trail of string winding round and round his throat. He put his hands over his ears. If it wasn’t for her Dad would be downstairs, back from the ticket office, eating a peanut-butter sandwich, watching the news. Then there wasn’t a freak of a baby in the house, screaming its head off so that Mam had no time for him at all.