The Earth Hums in B Flat

by Mari Strachan

  ‘Little pitchers have big ears,’ says someone behind the door.

  ‘What was she up to this morning, Magda?’ My stomach flutters as I hear Mrs Thomas next door’s voice. ‘She came to my door with an old photograph of Ifan – I didn’t recognise him – and she wanted to know if I’d seen him since he disappeared. Perhaps she thought I was hiding him in the garret.’

  Everyone laughs. Mam will be cross with me all over again.

  ‘She’s a character all right, your Gwenni,’ says Mrs Morris. ‘Now, who’s going to take this tray through?’

  I rush to a seat in front of the fire, far from the door, where my legs roast instantly and my back is still cold.

  ‘You’ll all have mottled legs, sitting that close to the fire,’ says Mrs Davies Chapel House as she walks in with the tray of crockery. ‘Come back here and lay out the cups and saucers, Gwenni.’

  I put out all the saucers in a row on the trestle table and then start to plonk a cup on each one. The egg sandwiches still haven’t arrived. My stomach is hollow with hunger. Mam’s cakes look small and a bit grubby. I think I got all the bits off. Mam’ll be cross with me if anyone finds some of John Morris’s hairs on them.

  I watch Mam when she comes through into the Meeting Room behind Mrs Davies Chapel House with her big pot of tea, but she doesn’t look at her cakes.

  ‘We were just talking about Elin,’ says Mrs Owen the Milk to Mam and Mrs Davies Chapel House.

  ‘Shocking the way that Ifan’s behaved,’ says Nellie Davies, clicking her knitting needles faster and faster. She leans forward to whisper, ‘Miss Owen Penllech was just saying that he beat her.’

  ‘And those little children,’ says Miss Owen Penllech and stabs herself with her embroidery needle and bleeds into the yellow flowers she’s embroidering so that they turn orange. ‘You know what happened there.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ says Mam. ‘I don’t. It’s just nasty gossip.’ The pile of plates in her hands rattles and her face has turned pink.

  ‘What about that little grave out there, then?’ says Miss Owen Penllech and sucks a drop of blood still welling on her finger.

  Ifan Evans beat Mrs Evans and the girls? And what little grave? I try to put the cups on the saucers without making so much noise.

  ‘You’ll know all about what happened there,’ says Miss Owen Penllech to Mrs Dr Edwards. ‘Wasn’t Dr Edwards called in?’

  ‘He was,’ says Mrs Dr Edwards. ‘But . . . you know . . . I’m not privy to medical matters. What goes on between Rhys and his patients is completely confidential.’

  There is a flurry of movement behind me, and Mrs Edwards the Bank comes through the door with a large square tin covered in red roses clutched to her bosom and a scent of roses blossoming from her. ‘Sorry I’m late, ladies,’ she says, with a little gasp in her voice. ‘Oh dear, I don’t like walking through that cemetery on my own, day or night. I have to stand there plucking up the courage to do it. I really do think the Roman Catholics are very lucky to be able to cross themselves, to arm themselves, so to speak, before they go into danger.’

  Everyone stops knitting and sewing and looks at Mrs Edwards the Bank. Everyone in our town goes to a chapel, except for the posh people who go to church. I take the rose-covered tin from Mrs Edwards. ‘What sandwiches are they, Mrs Edwards?’ I ask.

  ‘Egg, Gwenni,’ she says.

  Someone groans as I open the tin and the smell of the egg spreads over us like a tablecloth. But Mrs Edwards the Bank’s egg sandwiches have egg right up to the edges and cress and something that tastes like salad cream but is nicer. And they never have bits of eggshell in them, or black crusts on the bread.

  Everybody starts to talk and I begin to put the sandwiches on a plate so that I can hand them round. And now the room goes quiet again and I turn to the door and come eye to wide-open eye with Mrs Llywelyn Pugh’s poor dead fox. I step back and Mrs Llywelyn Pugh walks past right to the front by the fire and Miss Owen Penllech and Nellie Davies move aside to make room for her. She sits there, nearest the fire, and her dead fox drapes itself sadly around her shoulders. Her legs will be more mottled than anyone else’s.

  ‘Gwenni. Pay attention.’ Mam pushes the pile of plates into my hands. ‘Take these and give one each to everyone. And collect their sixpences at the same time and put them in the tin.’ She puts an old tobacco tin on top of the plates. ‘And remember Mrs Llywelyn Pugh doesn’t have to pay.’

  ‘But she’s richer than anyone else,’ I say.

  ‘Be quiet and do as you’re told,’ says Mam.

  ‘I haven’t got sixpence,’ I say. ‘Does that mean I can’t have any food?’ My stomach grumbles; I expect everyone can hear it.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ says Mam. ‘I’ve put a shilling in for both of us.’ She picks up the tin and rattles and rattles and rattles it under my nose.

  ‘Magda,’ says Mrs Dr Edwards. ‘Sit by me. Take a deep breath now, dear, deep breath.’

  I pass the plates around, and make sure everyone puts sixpence in the tin. I stop next to Mrs Llywelyn Pugh for a moment and look hard at the dead fox but it doesn’t blink at me again. It looks utterly dead tonight.

  ‘Move on, Gwenni,’ says Mrs Twm Edwards, who’s following me with the plate of sandwiches. I’ve left some in the tin, which is lucky because they’ve all disappeared from the plate by the time Mrs Twm Edwards gets to the end of the last row. I sit at the back next to the tin and nibble at the egg sandwiches; I close my eyes and savour the creamy egg and the peppery cress. As we all eat, Mrs Sergeant Jones talks about the arrangements for the charabanc to take everyone to the Singing Festival in Bermo. Maybe Mrs Edwards the Bank will make the sandwiches for us all. I wonder why she’s afraid of walking through the cemetery outside the vestry. Maybe she thinks there are spirits there. Nain says spirits can’t hurt you. Does that mean spirits that float on water, too? I’ve never noticed a little grave in the cemetery, so which little grave was Miss Owen Penllech talking about? I know that my grandfather, who died when Tada was young, is there, and my Uncle Carwyn who had the family hair and used to show me how to make eggs disappear behind people’s ears just like the conjurer who performed at the Memorial Hall. And Tada’s sister who died of a horrible disease when she was a little girl. Probably everyone in this room has someone belonging to them in the cemetery.

  It’s cold here by the door; Mrs Llywelyn Pugh is taking up all the heat from the fire. She’s taken off the dead fox and slung it on the back of the bench where it droops with misery.

  I put my hand into the tin with the red roses but it’s empty and Mam is glaring at me. Have I been eating everything in sight?

  ‘It’s very good of you, Mrs Llywelyn Pugh, to volunteer to make sandwiches for the Festival,’ says Mrs Sergeant Jones. ‘But are you sure it’s not too much trouble to make all the sandwiches?’

  I know what that means. Sardines and black crusts. Alwenna says they’re minced-mouse sandwiches. If a person wears a dead fox around her neck, what is there to stop her putting dead mice in sandwiches?

  ‘Cakes, Gwenni,’ says Mrs Sergeant Jones. ‘Hand the cakes round, please.’

  I pick up the plate with Mrs Twm Edwards’s cakes and the plate with Mam’s cakes and walk round with them. Everyone takes one of the cakes with a whole half-cherry on them until there is no choice left but Mam’s cakes. I’m trying so hard not to look at Mam that I knock the dead fox onto the floor as I pass behind Mrs Llywelyn Pugh’s bench. Its little dead paws cling to my legs. ‘No,’ I squeal and I kick at the fox. Mam glares at me again but everyone else laughs.

  ‘My father killed that, you know, young lady,’ says Mrs Llywelyn Pugh in English, ‘when I wasn’t much older than you are now.’ The dead fox has been dead longer than I’ve been alive. Longer than Mam’s been alive, even.

  ‘Was your father a shepherd, like Ifan Evans?’ I ask her. There is a long silence. I look at Mam. She has her hand over her mouth and her eyes are closed and no one else is looking at me eithe
r.

  ‘Dear me, no.’ Mrs Llywelyn Pugh is still speaking English. ‘We had a large estate. He went hunting on horseback, for pleasure. My sisters and I each had a fox-fur from him. Dear Father.’

  I look down at the poor little dead thing. It’s small and thin and its fur has worn away in places. Killed for pleasure? Catrin said Ifan Evans liked killing the foxes, too.

  ‘Pick it up, Gwenni,’ says Mam from behind her hand.

  ‘I can’t,’ I say. ‘You know I don’t like touching dead things.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Gwenni,’ says Mam. ‘That’s not a dead thing. I told you, that’s a fox-fur. Now pick it up for Mrs Llywelyn Pugh.’

  I bend down and scoop up the dead fox with the empty cake plate. It slithers as if it’s going to jump off but I throw it at Mrs Llywelyn Pugh and it droops over her shoulder and stares at me with its sad eyes. What is it trying to say to me? Is its spirit still there, imprisoned inside the glass eyes?

  ‘What a quaint child you are, my dear,’ says Mrs Llywelyn Pugh as she wraps the dead fox around her throat.

  But I have an idea. I know what to do to give the dead fox a decent burial and save its spirit. I only have to wait for the Festival. Alwenna can help me. I look at Mam in excitement but she stares at me with that tight look on her face that means she’s cross with me again about something.

  15

  The sky is perfect this evening. In one of my art lessons I mixed my poster paints to make a sky exactly like this; a deep, dense blue in the high curve becoming lighter and whiter towards the edge of the Earth where the hills of Lln look as if they’ve been cut out of black paper and stuck on. Mr Parry said it was too good to be true. But here it is. I want to fly up there to see the stars burst through the blue; Orion the Great Hunter with his mighty sword, and the Milky Way almost pouring its stars on my head. Last night I didn’t want to look down on the town or the sea; I floated on my back, listened to the Earth’s song and looked into the sky. Where does the sky end? And where’s Heaven? I never see any spirits up there. I wonder if other people live where those stars shine. Aliens. In the pictures aliens are always monsters. But what if they’re just like us? Would they be monsters then?

  What time is it? I’d better run to the Chapel vestry in case I’m late.

  I left the house ahead of Bethan and yet here she is in the cemetery before me, huddled by the vestry door with Janet Jones the Butcher from her Sunday School class. The Voice of God hasn’t arrived and the vestry is still locked. Alwenna’s sitting on our favourite tombstone twirling her hair and smiling at our bêtes noires.

  I stride across the grass from the vestry door to the tombstone and give Aneurin and Edwin a hard stare as I pass them. I hear them snigger as I clamber onto the tombstone and sit to face Alwenna with my back to them.

  ‘I was talking to them, Gwenni,’ she says.

  ‘Those two?’ I say. ‘They haven’t got anything in their heads to talk about.’

  ‘You don’t give them a chance, Gwenni,’ she says. ‘And Edwin’s my boyfriend now.’

  Her boyfriend? I feel a stab of pain in my stomach as the cold from the tombstone creeps through my clothes. My bêtes noires have moved so that they can see Alwenna; they lean on a gravestone on the edge of the path. Alwenna turns so that she’s facing them, and smiles and smiles.

  I stroke the slate beneath me with my palm; it’s been rubbed smooth and silky by all the children who’ve sat on it waiting for something or another to begin in the vestry. Aunty Lol told me she and her friends used to sit on this tombstone while they waited. I can trace some of the letters with my finger but too many of them are worn away for me to work out what they say. Some of the old tombstones tell a long tale of the life of the person buried in them, but I can’t read this story. There must be hundreds of secrets locked away in the tombs and the graves around me.

  ‘I have to talk to you before the Voice of God gets here,’ I say to Alwenna.

  She sighs. ‘What about?’ she says. ‘It’s not more daft ideas, is it? I’m getting fed up with your daft ideas.’

  I shiver; the tombstone must be even colder than I thought underneath me. ‘They’re not daft,’ I say. ‘Listen—’ ‘Be quick, then.’ Alwenna has moved so that she’s half lying on the tombstone now, her arm raised to her hair. Aneurin and Edwin wolf whistle a duet at her from their gravestone. ‘And I’ve got something to tell you,’ she says.

  ‘You two are a nuisance,’ I say to the boys. ‘Go away.’

  ‘They’re only messing about, Gwenni,’ says Alwenna.

  ‘No one would whistle at you, Gwenni Morgan. You’ve got a face like a fox.’ Of the two, Edwin is my greatest bête noire.

  ‘And hair like a fox’s tail,’ says Aneurin. Perhaps they are equally my bête noire.

  They start to chant in unison, ‘Gwenni Fo-ox, Gwenni Fo-ox.’ They clutch their gravestone and double up with laughter. ‘Gwenni Fo-ox.’

  I turn my back on them, and ignore their noise. ‘Listen, Alwenna. I’ve got a really good idea for getting the dead fox away from Mrs Llywelyn Pugh. I had to go and help Mam at the Sale of Work meeting last night and guess what?’

  ‘What?’ says Alwenna. ‘What?’

  ‘Mrs Llywelyn Pugh is going to be at the Singing Festival. She’s helping out with the food this year.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So we can get the fox then. She’s not going to make sandwiches and serve jelly and do the washing up with her dead fox round her neck, is she? She’ll have to take it off and put it down somewhere. That will be our chance.’

  Alwenna stares at me without looking once towards Edwin and Aneurin. ‘You’re doolally,’ she says. ‘You take after your—’ A loud screech makes us both jump.

  The younger children have been playing tick around the graves, flitting about like pale ghosts in the dim light. Now they all stand still as the gravestones and one of them points at the line of bats flying from the vestry’s roof space.

  ‘They’ll dive at your heads and get all tangled up in your hair,’ shouts Edwin.

  ‘No they won’t,’ I yell. ‘He’s lying. Bats don’t do that.’

  But the children are not listening to me. As more and more bats stream from the vestry roof they race around the gravestones, taking great, gulping breaths and screeching like Guto’r Wern when he runs down the hill, their hands clasped around their heads.

  The back door of Chapel House opens and a square of light shines out followed by the acrid smell of burnt potatoes, and Mrs Davies. She waves a blackened, smoking saucepan in our direction. ‘Look what you’ve made me do,’ she shouts at the children. ‘Mr Davies won’t be very pleased when he finds out his supper’s burnt.’ The screeching dies a little. ‘And stop that noise.’ Mrs Davies screeches louder than the children. ‘You sound like a lot of old hens with the fox after them.’

  Edwin and Aneurin collapse on each other and slither down the gravestone to the ground. They laugh and chant, ‘Gwenni Fo-ox, Gwenni Fo-ox.’

  ‘Come out of there,’ Mrs Davies tells the children, ‘or I’ll send Mr Davies out here the minute he’s home.’ The children quieten at that and one by one come from behind the gravestones, their heads drooping.

  ‘Now, then, sit on the vestry steps until the Reverend Roberts comes. And you two.’ She looks at Alwenna and me. ‘You two get down from that tomb. You know it’s disrespectful to sit on it.’ Mrs Davies turns her back on us and goes into Chapel House and slams the door behind her. Above the cemetery the bats swirl to the reverberations. The children clutch their hands to their heads again as they sit obediently on the steps, facing Alwenna and me on the tombstone as if they were watching the Voice of God in the pulpit.

  I turn to Alwenna. ‘Well?’ I say. ‘Don’t you think it’s a good chance?’

  ‘I’m not doing it,’ says Alwenna. ‘It’s a stupid idea. All your ideas are daft. They only ever get me into trouble with people. Anyway, I’ve got better things to do now.’

  ‘Like what?’ I
say.

  Alwenna turns and gives Edwin and Aneurin a little wave. ‘Like going for walks with Edwin,’ she says.

  My stomach begins to ache. Mam will be cross with me for sitting on the cold slate and making myself ill. I look at Alwenna. ‘And what about our investigations?’ I say. ‘What about finding Ifan Evans?’

  Alwenna doesn’t reply. She pulls a face at me and slides off the tombstone, her skirt dragging up and her stocking-tops showing. Stockings to the Band of Hope, even?

  ‘Alwenna?’ I say.

  ‘I tried to tell you,’ she says. ‘They found Ifan Evans teatime. Drowned in the Reservoir. Just think, we’ve been drinking him for days.’

  I can’t speak. I feel the bile burning its way up my throat and I vomit across the tombstone and its worn-out history. A sweet sour smell steams into the air. I hear some of the children on the steps retch in sympathy.

  ‘Gwenni, Gwenni,’ the Voice of God booms from the twilight. ‘Bethan, you’d better walk her home. Your mam will know best what to do for her.’

  PART TWO

  16

  Bethan pushes me into the house, her fist hard in the small of my back. Mam and Tada sit each side of the fire. Tada reads the Daily Herald, his legs stretched out, his feet resting on the fender. One of his grey socks has a hole in the heel that Nain would mend if she knew about it. Mam knits the fuzzy-wuzzy bolero for Aunty Siân’s little Helen that was supposed to be finished for Easter. She has her special cushion in her lap under the knitting; the pink one with the faded red roses on it. For a second, from the doorway of the living room, I see Mam and Tada as if they were a picture in a frame. Blue bits from the fuzzy-wuzzy float in the air like lazy insects. They always make me sneeze; my nose itches as I stand here.