The Earth Hums in B Flat

by Mari Strachan

  I shake my head. ‘We were just talking about spirits,’ I say.

  ‘Hmm,’ says the Voice of God. ‘I’ll swap places with Mr Ellis. He can look after my class and I’ll sit here with you. Move up, Geraint.’ He sits in the pew and turns sideways to look at me. ‘So, you were listening this morning, Gwenni?’

  ‘We were talking about animal spirits,’ I say. ‘Can animals – like foxes, say – be resurrected, Mr Roberts?’

  The Voice of God can see Aneurin making faces at me without even looking at him. ‘Stop that, Aneurin,’ he says. ‘Go on, Gwenni. What do you think?’

  ‘They’re alive, aren’t they? So they must have spirits. And if they’ve got spirits they can be resurrected, can’t they?’

  ‘What does everyone else think? Edwin?’

  ‘That’s daft.’ Edwin has a quiff that almost matches Aneurin’s, but sometimes it collapses so he looks as if he’s got a long fringe, like Mrs Williams’s old horse in the field behind Penrhiw. ‘That’s just like a girl. Animals are animals, aren’t they?’

  ‘Gwenni’s soft in the head,’ says Aneurin.

  ‘Aneurin,’ says the Voice of God.

  ‘But it’s silly. How can animals have spirits? We wouldn’t eat them if they had spirits, would we?’

  Deilwen Beynon speaks for the first time. ‘Mami says it’s our spirits that make us human,’ she says. Her voice is entrancing, like a breathy whisper, and her Welsh sounds so different to ours. I’m smiling at her, but she doesn’t say any more. And now I realise what she did say and I stop smiling.

  ‘Does it say anything in the Bible about animals having spirits?’ I ask the Voice of God.

  ‘Not exactly, Gwenni.’ The Voice of God sighs.

  ‘So animals could have spirits, then?’

  ‘I suppose it’s a matter of opinion,’ says the Voice of God.

  ‘My opinion is that they don’t,’ says Aneurin.

  ‘Mine, too,’ says Edwin. They both turn to Geraint.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Geraint takes off his spectacles and rubs them against his pullover. ‘But I did see our old cat’s ghost. So she must have had a spirit.’

  Aneurin looks at the ceiling. ‘Was that when you had your specs on or off?’ he says to Geraint.

  ‘I saw her ghost, too. So there,’ says Meinir to Aneurin.

  ‘I saw my Nain’s ghost,’ says Eirlys. ‘With Pero, her old collie.’

  ‘I don’t believe in ghosts,’ says Alwenna.

  I stare at her. She believed in ghosts last weekend. We went ghost-hunting around the castle. ‘But you believe animals have spirits,’ I say.

  ‘No,’ she says. And she smiles at Aneurin again.

  ‘But you said your little white kitten’s spirit had gone to Heaven when it got run over by Wil the Post’s bike.’

  ‘I was just a child, then,’ she says.

  ‘It was only last month,’ I say.

  Aneurin winks at her. She re-crosses her legs. Swish, swish.

  ‘Well, Gwenni, I think this is a draw,’ says the Voice of God. ‘Now I want you all to sit here quietly until the end of Sunday School. I’m going over to see how Mr Ellis is getting on with my class.’

  I pick up my Bible from beside me on the seat. Its fine, gold-edged leaves whisper as I turn them over. What are they telling me? I wonder how long it would take me to read my Bible from beginning to end, to find proof that I’m right. The Voice of God could have missed the proof. Maybe I’ll find out if spirits can float on water, too. Are spirits New Testament? I’ll begin with that. Tonight. The edge of the seat is digging into my legs. I shift along the pew, and see that Alwenna is leaning forward to talk to Aneurin and Edwin. Their hair is greasier than the leg of lamb. Whatever is the matter with her?

  Meinir passes me a bag of sweets. ‘You can take two,’ she says. ‘But don’t give Alwenna any.’

  I take one pear drop from the bag. Its sourness makes my jaw tighten. I pass the bag back to Meinir. I suck the sweet and watch a long strand of spider’s web that Mrs Davies Chapel House has missed dangle down from the gallery and sway to and fro like a clock’s pendulum above Aneurin’s head. There must be hundreds of spider spirits in this Chapel. Tiny, scuttling ghosts. I wonder if the spirit of Mrs Llywelyn Pugh’s dead fox is still here, waiting for me to rescue its body and give it a decent burial.

  The Voice of God comes by with the breeze from his overcoat. ‘Good, good. I knew I could count on you to behave,’ he says. ‘I’ll let you off this time, Aneurin. Now all of you go down to the front for the hymn and the blessing.’

  The classes gather back into the front pews from the musty, dusty corners of the Chapel and the youngest children are brought in from the vestry clutching drawings of Easter eggs and hopping and chirping like Easter chicks. But little Catrin isn’t with them. My little wren.

  ‘Oh, damno,’ says Alwenna. ‘Look, I’ve laddered my stocking on this silly seat.’ A long white streak is travelling the length of her leg. ‘Mam will kill me.’

  I lean towards her. ‘We made a vow,’ I say, ‘that we wouldn’t talk to boys. And especially not to those two.’

  ‘That was when we were children, Gwenni.’

  ‘A vow is a vow,’ I say. ‘And we mixed our blood.’

  ‘Hymn number seven hundred and sixty-five,’ says the Voice of God, ‘A Pure Heart.’ Mrs Morris begins to pull at the stops on the organ, and pedals until the organ pumps out the music with only a few silent notes.

  After the blessing we file out of the Chapel. The cloudy day seems bright after the dimness inside.

  ‘I’ve got a really good idea,’ I say to Alwenna, ‘about Mrs Llywelyn Pugh’s dead fox. Tell you about it on the way home.’

  ‘I’m going straight down home today,’ says Alwenna.

  ‘But we always go for a walk after Sunday School,’ I say.

  ‘Not today,’ says Alwenna.

  Aneurin and Edwin stand behind her. ‘Did you tell fox-face about Mrs Evans?’ asks Aneurin.

  ‘What about Mrs Evans?’ I narrow my eyes at him.

  ‘Alwenna’s Mam says Ifan Evans has left her to go off with his girlfriend,’ he says.

  I look at Alwenna but she’s examining the ladder in her stocking. ‘Don’t be silly,’ I say. ‘He can’t have a girlfriend if he’s married.’

  Aneurin sniggers. Alwenna starts walking down the hill.

  ‘Wait for us,’ Aneurin shouts, and he and Edwin rush past me and catch up with Alwenna, one on each side of her. I watch them walking away, Alwenna’s yellow skirt with its big petticoat swaying from side to side. I’ll have to tell her my good idea another time. I’ll go straight home for tea. This Sunday, I won’t be late for it. I think of the tinned peaches and cream and thin bread and butter Tada will have made ready. But I’m not hungry, though my stomach is quite hollow.

  10

  I push Bethan’s arm back to her own half of the bed. She snorts and mumbles and kicks her leg out so that it lies over my left ankle. Her leg is heavy and hot and it’s difficult to move it back, even when I kick it with my free leg. I arrange myself flat on my back, straight out under the bedclothes. When I rescued my ribbon this morning from the Chapel floor it had two skinny dead spiders entangled in it, but they’re gone now and I smooth the ribbon back in place over the feathery bumps along the length of the mattress.

  Bethan put out the light before I could find anything about spirits in my New Testament, but there’s a lot more of it to read yet. I only got as far as the end of the first chapter of Matthew, which is all about Jesus Christ’s grandfathers, going back for forty-two generations; I counted them. He had no grandmothers at all. There’s a thin moon chasing the clouds in the sky tonight but its light isn’t bright enough to read by, not even if I get up and sit next to the window. When I lift my head I can just see Mari the Doll on the chair, asleep underneath her patchwork blanket. Aunty Lol gave me the red and green wool for the blanket and lent me the needles. But the needles were size eleven, and it took me wee
ks and weeks to knit enough squares. When I told Mam I was knitting a blanket to keep Mari the Doll warm just in case she came alive in the night and felt the cold, Mam said: Don’t be silly, Gwenni; people will think you’re odd. But Mari the Doll listens to everything I tell her; maybe dolls have spirits just like people and foxes and spiders. It’s no good asking the Voice of God about that when he doesn’t even know about foxes. I wonder if I’ll find anything in my New Testament about it.

  From the trees in Bron-y-graig comes the hoot of a corpse bird. Mam always says I must cover my ears if I hear it, in case it brings a death with it. I hear it every night when it’s out hunting for mice and voles. Does that count as bringing a death?

  This grey blanket scratches under my chin, so I fold the sheet over it and hold them both against my mouth and nose. If I breathe in the warm, aired scent of the sheet it will make me sleepy. I try not to see Buddy Holly watching from the wall at the foot of the bed, the lens of his spectacles glinting in the moonlight. I have to dress and undress under the bedclothes ever since Caroline gave Bethan the picture to pin up on the wall, but Bethan doesn’t care if Buddy Holly and all three of his Crickets see her without any clothes on at all.

  I leap as the back door groans on its hinges beneath the bedroom window. John Morris squawks as Mam throws him out for the night, and then yowls as soon as the door is shut on him. He likes to sleep in the chair by the fire, not out on the wall in the cold. Two doors up, Nellie Davies’s bony tabby cats join in the caterwauling. I hear Nellie Davies’s sash window crash open and the slosh of the water she keeps in a chamber pot by her bed as she throws it over her two cats. Nellie Davies has got good aim; the cats are quiet now.

  And listen, Mam and Tada are coming upstairs; because of his limp, Tada never manages to miss all the squeaky treads. I close my eyes and keep still. The bedroom door swings open and Evening in Paris floats in on the draught. ‘Fast asleep, both of them,’ says Tada. He closes the door, and as I pull the sheet tighter around my nose the landing light goes out.

  I feel the thump of the bed as Tada climbs into it on the other side of the wall from me, and the bedsprings twang as he settles himself down. Bethan flings her arm over my face. I pinch it and shove it back again. Alwenna has her own bed; she doesn’t have any sisters to share with. But her three brothers all have to sleep in one bed. I try not to think about Alwenna.

  ‘Don’t put the light out, sweetheart,’ says Tada. The light switch clicks all the same and the bedsprings twang again as Mam gets into bed.

  ‘Don’t do that, Emlyn,’ says Mam. I pull the sheet and the blanket up over my ears.

  ‘Why not, Magda? What’s the matter tonight?’ says Tada through the sheet and the blanket.

  ‘Can’t you see I’m worried?’

  ‘This will stop you worrying, sweetheart.’

  The bedsprings twang in a frenzy; I push the sheet into my ears.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ says Mam.

  Bethan grunts and turns over onto my side of the ribbon. I roll her into her own space and pinch her leg hard to make her stay there. She lies on her back and snores.

  ‘You’ll wake the girls,’ says Mam.

  The quiet lasts until Tada starts to breathe heavily. I slow my breathing to keep pace with Tada’s and I begin to feel distant and drowsy. I close my eyes. I wonder if I’ll fly in my sleep tonight; I didn’t last night, I had that bad dream instead. I want to be up in the quiet sky on my own, with only the light of the moon and the hum of the Earth for company. I wonder if I’ll ever see the spirit in the Baptism Pool again.

  ‘Emlyn,’ says Mam. I jump out of sleep. ‘Emlyn. Don’t go to sleep.’

  ‘Then just tell me what’s worrying you, Magda.’

  ‘What do you think’s happened to Ifan?’ says Mam.

  ‘Ifan?’ says Tada. ‘I don’t think anything’s happened to him. He’ll turn up. Why are you worrying about Ifan?’

  ‘I’m . . . I used to be quite fond of him. You know that.’

  ‘It was a long time ago, Magda,’ says Tada. ‘No reason for you to worry about him now.’

  ‘Nanw Lipstick is stirring up old stories about him. And she says he’s gone off with a fancy woman.’

  I wriggle towards the wall and put my ear against it. The wallpaper has rubbed into a furry patch that tickles my ear.

  Tada gives a spluttery laugh. ‘Is that what’s worrying you?’ he says. ‘That Nanw Lipstick will find out you once went about with Ifan?’

  ‘I couldn’t bear it. Not all the gossip,’ says Mam. ‘And what if she found out about . . . you know . . . Mam, as well. I couldn’t bear the shame of that.’

  ‘Oh, Magda,’ says Tada. His voice is weary. ‘You were hardly a fancy woman, were you? How old were you? Just a girl. And as for your mother . . . well, we’ve gone over and over that, haven’t we? Over and over it.’ The bed thumps against the wall again as Tada turns over. ‘What happened to your mother is nothing for you to be ashamed about,’ he says.

  In the back yard John Morris has got into a fight with Nellie Davies’s cats. They fizz and spit at each other. Nellie Davies complains about John Morris all the time. I don’t understand why he’s such a good fighter when he’s so lazy. Maybe he has the spirit of a warrior in him. If foxes and spiders and dolls have spirits, a cat is sure to have a spirit too.

  I press my ear back against the wall.

  ‘Anyway, that’s water long gone under the bridge,’ says Tada. ‘It’s poor Elin Evans we should be worrying about if he doesn’t turn up again, left on her own with those little girls.’

  Mam doesn’t make a sound.

  ‘Nice woman like that,’ says Tada. ‘I can’t understand the man.’

  The silence stretches to the moon. I lie back and pull the sheet over my mouth again.

  ‘Best thing all round would be if Ifan came back soon,’ says Tada. ‘Twm Edwards won’t be able to manage without a shepherd for long and Elin could lose the cottage.’

  Mrs Evans could lose Brwyn Coch! What would happen to her and Angharad and little Catrin, cast out into the cold by Twm Edwards? Catrin doesn’t like the cold. Where would they live? Where would Mrs Evans put all her books?

  ‘Well, none of our business, is it?’ Tada says into the quietness. ‘But someone ought to find out where Ifan’s got to, fancy woman or no fancy woman. I wonder if Sergeant Jones is looking into it.’

  Mam doesn’t answer at all. The house sighs and grumbles around me as it settles down for the night. Bethan heaves over in the bed taking the blanket and the sheet with her. I haul them back. Bethan would like to know about Mam and Ifan Evans. Maybe Mam was only Bethan’s age. Just a girl, Tada said. It’s like Bethan liking Caroline’s brother, Richard. Yuck. Tada begins to snore, louder and louder, in a duet with Bethan. It’s difficult to think in all the noise. Now there are two things I’ve got to start doing tomorrow. I have to think of a plot to rescue the fox-fur from Mrs Llywelyn Pugh and give it a decent burial so its spirit will be sure to go to Heaven. And I have to find Ifan Evans. Then Mrs Evans and Angharad and Catrin won’t have to leave Brwyn Coch. And they won’t become homeless and nearly starve and Catrin and Angharad won’t die of scarlet fever because they’re living in poverty like the children in Little Women. Although I would help nurse them.

  I pull the sheet tighter over my mouth. The corpse bird hoots again and again in Bron-y-graig and I feel the beat of its heavy wings enter the rhythm of my sleep to carry me away into the night sky.

  11

  I push my way through the side gate of the Police House. Beside the path the bluebells hang their heads under the weight of the morning’s rain. The clouds have turned even greyer and I feel goose pimples prickling all over my arms. A breeze blows up from the sea. I raise my hand to knock on Sergeant Jones’s door and it swings open in front of me. Sergeant Jones is struggling to close the window behind his desk, sneezing into a big white handkerchief at the same time.

  ‘Martha’s beating the carpets,’ he says. ‘
That breeze blew all the dust in through the window.’

  I can hear the slap of the carpet beater from the garden beyond the window drumming on the carpets. Clouds of dust rise above the clothesline and drift towards the window.

  ‘Spring cleaning,’ says the Sergeant. ‘All it does is shift the dust somewhere else. If I sneeze much more I’ll probably have one of my nosebleeds. Are you any good at first aid, Gwenni?’

  I stand in the doorway and shift my weight from one leg to another. I don’t want to think about blood; I don’t want to think about Mrs Evans’s poor mouth and the piteous dead fox. Sergeant Jones waves the big handkerchief he sneezed into at me. I don’t look at the handkerchief.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ he says. ‘Don’t stand there holding up the door frame. I haven’t started that Mr Campion book you brought me last time yet, if that’s what you’ve come about. I’ve been much too busy.’

  ‘I haven’t come about that,’ I say. Sergeant Jones doesn’t catch criminals the way Albert Campion does. He says we don’t have criminals like that in our town, criminals that steal priceless jewels or kidnap people and murder them. I wonder if we have priceless jewels in our town. Maybe Mrs Llywelyn Pugh wears some under her dead fox. I want to be a detective like Albert Campion, not a detective who spends all his time digging his garden. Sergeant Jones says you have to be a policeman like him before you can be a detective. Detecting isn’t a suitable job for a woman, Gwenni, he says. But he won’t tell me why it isn’t. Maybe he doesn’t know.

  Sergeant Jones pushes his handkerchief into his trouser pocket and winks at me. ‘Come to confess to a crime, then, have you, Gwenni?’ he says and laughs until his chins wobble.

  I wait for him to stop spluttering. ‘Do you find missing people?’ I ask.

  ‘Sometimes,’ he says, scratching his head as if he’s trying to remember when he last found a missing person. He sits in his chair, which groans as he pushes his bottom back between the arms. I sit on the wooden chair in front of his desk. The seat is cold under my legs and I shiver.