The Earth Hums in B Flat

by Mari Strachan

  I push through the gate and latch it behind me. The sheep gather in groups to huddle in the shelter of the stone wall. They jostle and push until they’re squeezed together. Do they sense the coming rain? Maybe there is worse coming. I linger for a moment and watch the sky and the sea merge on the horizon into streamers of grey-green and violet. My feet quicken their pace, across the field and over the stone stile, but they slow again as I approach Brwyn Coch so that they’re barely moving when I reach the cottage.

  I peer through the front window into the parlour. The panes are clear and cold as ice under my palm. But it’s dark inside and difficult to see anything. And what would there be to see? No shelves sagging with books, no fire flickering in the inglenook, no desk balancing towers of exercise books on its polished surface. I try the kitchen front window. I can see the gleam of the tap above the sink under the back window, but that’s all. It is silent here; but not like the grave. The graves and the tombs in the cemetery tell me the stories of the people who lie in them, even if it’s only to tell me a short, short tale like that of Gwion and Nia. This is just an empty house, not a grave I can read or talk to. It may as well be the crumbled heap of stones and slate I saw in my premonition. There’s nothing left here of Mrs Evans and Angharad and Catrin. I have the only thing left; the blotter rocker in my pocket. I take it with me everywhere.

  My stomach begins to hurt. I sit down on the front step and pull my knees into my stomach to ease the pain. Somewhere across the bay in the violet evening are Angharad and Catrin. But not Mrs Evans. She’s a prisoner in Chester; that’s all the way to England. An innocent prisoner. Who knows her secret? I do, and I think Sergeant Jones has guessed. Angharad knows, but does she understand? And did Mrs Evans tell her sister? Miss Cadwalader is stern with Angharad and Catrin. What will they do without their mother? Everyone says that Mrs Evans will go to jail for the rest of her life. Is that true? Everyone except Tada and Sergeant Jones says she deserves it. I look at the flowers in my hand; there’s no reason to leave them here. I keep Mrs Evans and Angharad and Catrin in my heart, the way Mrs Evans asked me to. I’ll write their story into Catrin in the Clouds, and maybe one day, a long, long time in the future, I’ll give it to Catrin so that she’ll understand. Maybe.

  Another spasm shoots through my stomach and I pull my knees tight to it again and wait for the pain to pass. This is how I flew when I was young, this is the way I showed Angharad and Catrin, and poor Guto when he was trying to show me how he flew. Why won’t it work?

  My mind tells me I should go now. Leave Brwyn Coch and never come here again. My stomach pain has eased but when I stand up the inside of my head becomes a merry-go-round of movement and colour. I grab the doorpost and stand up still and straight and shake my head hard to clear the sensation.

  I look straight down over the field to the bay. It’s impossible to see where the water ends and Lln begins. Wraiths of mist curl low over the field. Tada says they rise from water; from bogs and streams, rivers and lakes, even from wet fields. Have these wraiths risen from the stream or from the Reservoir? Some of them float up towards the house, though there’s no breeze to push them along. The biggest is shaped like a man. What if it’s Ifan Evans’s spirit risen from the Reservoir? Before my head can decide anything, my feet begin to run, faster than they’ve ever run before, across the field, over the stile, through the gate, past Penrhiw, past the Reservoir hiding behind the wall, past the Baptism Pool full of sins, down the hill, along the high street, and they don’t stop until I’m standing on my own front doorstep, still holding the bunch of cornflowers. I sink down to sit on the cold slate of the step and dig my knees into my stomach to stop it hurting so much.

  43

  Bethan cried herself to sleep tonight. I leave her hiccupping and snoring as I rise up, up, up into the sky where the air is as soft to rest upon as Mrs Williams Penrhiw’s powdery bosom. Up here, far away from everybody, the night is peaceful; there’s no sound except the hum of the Earth. At school, when I sang the note to Mr Hughes Music he said it was B flat but he laughed when I said it was the note the Earth hummed. He said: You’ll be hearing the music of the spheres next, Gwenni. But he doesn’t know how the Earth’s deep, never-ending note clothes me in rainbow colours, fills my head with all the books ever written, and feeds me with the smell of Mrs Sergeant Jones’s famous vanilla biscuits and the strawberry taste of Instant Whip and the cool slipperiness of glowing red jelly. I could stay up here for ever without the need for anything else in the whole world.

  I drift above the town. Now and then the clouds part to let moonbeams glance and glint on the roofs below. Almost all the house lights are out. I don’t want to spend time above the town tonight, or fly up into the hills towards Brwyn Coch so I turn and swoop down to the castle, then up and over the Red Dragon waiting in its green and white cage, and out towards the sea. If I could fly across this sea, I could fly for ever. But the watchers see me; the eyes of millions, billions, trillions of shrimps, crabs, fishes, whales, mermaids, monsters are watching, watching to see if I dare to fly away. Tonight the smell of the sea is strong; a stench of fish and seaweed seems to rush towards me. Is this another premonition? Or maybe I’m too close.

  My belly cramps with fear and I begin to plummet towards the water. First my feet, then my legs, touch the cold spray and I land half on top of Bethan and the bed is soaked. I scream and scream. Mam bangs on the wall and shouts, ‘Be quiet, Gwenni, I need my beauty sleep.’

  Then Bethan snorts and wakes and begins to shout, too. ‘Mam, Mam, Gwenni’s wet the bed.’ She heaves herself out of it. ‘You’re disgusting, you stupid baby,’ she says to me.

  I’m lying here, cold and wet, as Mam comes through the door and switches on the light. It’s so bright after the dark of the sky that I can’t open my eyes. I can still smell the fish from the sea; perhaps I’ve brought some back with me, caught in my nightdress.

  ‘Bethan, my own Bethan, your old things have started,’ says Mam. ‘I’ll get you one of my cloths to put on. I’ll have to buy you some proper pads tomorrow.’

  ‘At last,’ says Bethan. ‘But I didn’t think there’d be so much blood.’

  I open my eyes into slits. There’s blood everywhere. All over Bethan, all over me and all over the bed. I can feel it begin to dry and crimp on my arms. I try not to think about it.

  ‘It just looks a lot because Gwenni’s been tossing and turning in it,’ says Mam. ‘But we’ll soon change that old sheet. Gwenni, get out of there.’

  ‘What is it?’ I say. ‘What is it, Mam? Is it the fish?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Gwenni,’ says Mam. ‘It’s Bethan’s old things started.’

  ‘My period,’ says Bethan. She begins to jig about. ‘I’ve started, I’ve started,’ she sings.

  ‘I gave you that pamphlet about it, Gwenni,’ says Mam. A long time ago she gave me a pamphlet from Woman’s Weekly. I thought it was about eggs; I’m sure it didn’t say anything about blood.

  ‘Come on, Gwenni,’ says Mam. ‘I want to get back to my bed. You and Bethan take off those nightdresses, and you strip that sheet off. I’ll have to put those in to soak in some salt right away or that blood will never come off.’ She stops for a second, staring at something we can’t see. ‘It’ll never come off,’ she says. ‘Never. Never.’ She covers her mouth with her hands, then gives her head a little shake; she pulls her blue satin sash tight, tight around her dressing gown and goes out.

  Bethan takes off her nightdress and rubs her arms and legs with it. I turn my back to Buddy Holly and try to take my nightdress off without it touching my face. Bethan’s blood is all over it. I can still smell fish so I narrow my eyes and look all along the bed in case I’ve brought something back with me from the sea. Bethan rolls up her nightdress and throws it on the chair, right on top of Mari the Doll. I hold mine in front of me and try to rub the blood off my arms with its sleeves. Now, as well as the belly cramps I got because I was frightened, I’ve got that old family stomach. I try not to thi
nk about so much blood; I try not to think about the fox with the bleeding wound; I try not to think about the sticky floor at Brwyn Coch; I try not to think about Mrs Llywelyn Pugh and her blood running like a river under the bathroom door.

  ‘Here, Bethan,’ Mam says as she comes through the door. Her hands shake as she gives Bethan a long piece of old towel and a pair of baggy knickers. ‘You’ll have to wear these for now. I’ll get you a proper belt as well as the pads tomorrow.’ Mam pushes Bethan’s blood-stained nightdress and Mari the Doll off the chair and puts a fresh sheet and clean nightdresses on the seat. She wraps her arms around her middle and looks at us. ‘You’ll need a wet flannel, Gwenni,’ she says. ‘You can’t get into a clean nightdress and a clean bed in that state. I suppose I’ll have to get it for you.’

  I stand shivering while Mam goes down to the scullery for the flannel. Bethan is trying to get the cloth folded into the knickers. ‘Just wait until I tell Caroline,’ she says. ‘She thought she was starting last week, but she never did.’

  I never, ever want to have periods.

  John Morris is scrabbling at the back door but Mam shouts at him to go away. He starts yowling instead. Perhaps he can smell the fish, too. Nellie Davies will be opening her window to see what the noise is about in a minute.

  The flannel, when Mam brings it up, is as cold as the seaspray. I rub hard to get the blood off where it’s dried on my arms, and I dab and dab at my legs until the grey flannel turns bright red.

  Bethan has stopped struggling with the knickers and is watching me. ‘Mam, it isn’t me,’ she says. ‘It’s her. Look.’

  She and Mam look at me. I try to cover myself with the flannel. I can feel something warm trickling down the inside of my left thigh, all the way down to my ankle and to the linoleum beneath my feet. I look down. It’s blood.

  ‘It’s not fair,’ says Bethan. ‘Why are all the unfair things happening to me?’

  ‘I don’t want to have old things,’ I say. ‘You can have them.’

  Mam is still watching me and watching the blood, but her eyes are seeing something else. ‘So much of it,’ she says. ‘It bloomed like the roses in her garden.’

  ‘Whose garden?’ says Bethan. ‘What are you talking about now, Mam?’ She pulls off the knickers and cloth and throws them at me. ‘Here,’ she says. ‘It’s just not fair. I should have started first. I’m older than her.’ She snatches her nightdress from the chair and drags it over her head. She looks at Mari the Doll where she’s tumbled on the floor and then she looks at me. ‘Stupid doll,’ she says and kicks Mari the Doll under the bed. ‘What a baby you are, Gwenni.’

  I have to stop the blood running. I pull the knickers on and arrange the cloth inside them. Then I rub my arms and legs dry with a patch of my nightdress that is clear of blood and put on my clean nightdress.

  ‘Change the sheet, Gwenni,’ says Mam. ‘Take the dirty things and put them in some cold water in the sink, and put plenty of salt in with them. I’m going back to bed.’ She leaves the bedroom with a swirl of her dressing gown and a gust of Evening in Paris that mingles with the smell of the fish. I hold my breath and look at Bethan. She’s crying again.

  ‘You made all the mess,’ she says. ‘You clear it up.’ And she folds her arms and stands with her back to me looking at her picture of Buddy Holly and his Crickets, and her shoulders shake and shake.

  44

  I am as limp as Mari the Doll. I thought I would never walk up the hill all the way home without having to lie down in the road. My arms and my legs won’t do what I want them to do and my insides shake like Mam’s hands. How many pints of blood did Edwin say are in the human body? Eight? I don’t think I’ve got any left inside me. It’s lucky Aunty Lol had plenty of pads to give me this morning; Mam was in bed looking at the wall again.

  I lean on the front door to stop my insides shaking and my legs wobbling, but the door creaks open and I stumble backwards into the house. Can I go upstairs out of the way without Mam or Bethan noticing? I’m invisible to them, after all. I squeeze past the hat-stand that takes up half the space at the bottom of the stairs and a stinging smell smacks me in the face. I know what it is but can’t place it for a second. I sniff, not too hard. Perm lotion. Perm lotion? Perm lotion means Aunty Siân.

  The living room doorknob rattles as I turn it but no one in the room hears me except the Toby jugs up on their high shelf who look so bored they only just manage to swivel their eyes to watch me in the doorway. This is like looking at a picture of a happy family. Another picture that tells a lie. John Morris is asleep on Tada’s chair with his head under the cushions, and Bethan is curled up like another cat in Mam’s fireside chair, looking at a magazine. There’s a pile of them on the floor by the chair leg. Aunty Siân always brings magazines with pictures in them that Mam and Bethan like to read. Mam sits on one of the hard chairs with her head covered in rows of pink curlers and Aunty Siân is carefully undoing one of them to test the curl in the hair. She has to stand sideways to do it because her baby bump is so big. She didn’t have a bump at all last time I saw her.

  ‘I think that’s cooked, Magda,’ Aunty Siân says. ‘All we have to do now is put your head under the dryer. Stay there and I’ll pull it over.’ From behind the door she drags Aunty Lol’s great big hairdryer that looks like a machine from outer space and stands it behind Mam’s chair. ‘Bethan,’ she says, ‘you’ll have to get on the chair to plug this into the light. I’m too awkward.’ And she holds both sides of her baby bump with her hands.

  I push the door wide open and drop my satchel and hold my arms out to Aunty Siân.

  ‘Gwenni. Gwenni,’ she says, hugging me sideways. ‘My dear little Gwenni.’ Her baby bump is big and solid, though I’m sure I can feel something move in there. It must be the baby. I pull away in case I squash it. ‘Look at you,’ says Aunty Siân. ‘How pretty you’re getting, Gwenni.’

  Pretty? It’s not a word anyone else has ever used about me. But Aunty Siân means it even when it’s not true.

  ‘Gwenni can stick the dryer plug into the light now that she’s here,’ says Bethan. She picks up her magazine from where she’s laid it on top of the pile.

  ‘Fine,’ says Aunty Siân. ‘And you can put the kettle to boil and make us all a nice cup of tea, Bethan.’ She turns her head so Bethan can’t see her and winks at me. ‘I could do with a sit down and a cuppa.’

  I drag a chair over under the light, click the switch off on the wall, then in the dimness climb the chair, take the bulb out and twist the plug from the hairdryer into the socket.

  ‘Good girl, Gwenni,’ says Aunty Siân. ‘Now let me get this hood over your mam’s head, and you clear the perm stuff away and we can all have a sit down. I expect you could do with a sit down, too, couldn’t you?’

  I could. But I clear the Toni home perm box and all the bits of cotton wool from the table and put them out in the dustbin. I put the dish with the smelly lotion in it into the sink to be washed and turn the tap on over it. It smells even stronger. Maybe I shouldn’t have done that.

  I walk to Tada’s chair past Mam under the dryer. I smile at her, but she looks through me. I don’t know what I’ve done this time. Unless it was having a period before Bethan. But what could I do about that?

  I lift John Morris from Tada’s chair so Aunty Siân can sit down. He doesn’t want to move so he pretends to be dead and I carry him into the scullery with my hands under his fat body; his head and paws hang down one side and his tail and back legs hang down the other. He looks like poor Mrs Llywelyn Pugh’s dead fox but I won’t think about Mrs Llywelyn Pugh and her flowing blood or her dead fox. The scullery floor is hard and cold, and when I lay John Morris down on it he struggles to his feet and turns his back to me.

  ‘Bring in the cake from the bottom of my bag in there, Gwenni,’ calls Aunty Siân. I ease a round, upside-down cake tin from her bag and pull the bottom off. Inside the lid is a pretty doily and on the doily is a tall chocolate cake with thick white butter cream in the
middle and chocolate icing on top. My favourite cake in the whole world.

  I rinse my hands under the tap. Can Ifan Evans’s sins get inside me through my skin? Maybe the smell from the perm lotion will drive his sins away. But I dry my hands quickly on the stripey towel, just in case, and hang the towel on its hook.

  The scullery seems bigger and lighter since Tada distempered it a blue as pale as Mam’s eyes. Or maybe I’m shrinking, like Alice. I wonder if all the faces drowned in the paint; there are patches here and there that could be mouths trying to bite their way through.

  I pick up the tin lid with the cake on it and take it into the living room. The kettle is on the fire and Bethan is laying out cups and saucers on the table.

  Aunty Siân makes a sound like a purring cat as she kicks off her shoes and stretches her legs out to rest her feet on the fender. ‘This is the life,’ she says. ‘I could get used to this. So long as that fire doesn’t start sparking like a firework again. Put Emlyn’s cup out as well, Bethan. He won’t be long, I’m sure.’

  Bethan bangs Tada’s cup on its saucer.

  ‘Bethan,’ says Aunty Siân.

  ‘Sorry,’ says Bethan.

  Bethan takes notice of Aunty Siân. She likes her. Everyone likes Aunty Siân. She must have come on the train this morning; it takes a whole day to perm Mam’s hair. What have Aunty Siân and Mam and Bethan been talking about all day?

  Stuck under the dryer, Mam can’t hear us. But she’s smiling and I can just about hear her humming above the drone of the dryer. Does that mean she’s all right now? I don’t know. Her hands are trembling where they’re clasped together in her lap.

  ‘Cut the cake, Gwenni,’ says Aunty Siân. ‘A small piece for me or I’ll be the size of a house.’ She wriggles her toes against the warmth of the fire. ‘This is nice, isn’t it? Like having a tea party. Your mam always liked a tea party. Maybe it’ll cheer her up a bit.’