The Rocking Stone

by Jill Rutherford

  ‘I don’t know what to say. It’s been a shock. I just never thought . . . but thank you for telling me. It must have been a hard thing to do.’

  ‘It was, but you’re still my sister and under the circumstances I felt you should know my situation, because of – well . . .’

  ‘I won’t tell anyone, don’t worry. I promise.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking of our childhood and how badly treated you were, I didn’t want to treat you badly too. I want you to understand . . . if you can, that is.’

  ‘I’m trying to, Davy. It’s difficult to understand your feelings for another man but I can appreciate the feelings of love and the hurt of love when it’s taken from you.’ My eyes closed involuntarily and I breathed deeply as thoughts about my own life, my own disappointments, surfaced. Eventually, I said, ‘Love is love I suppose, wherever you find it . . . and however you lose it.’ We were silent for a while and then he put his hand over mine.

  ‘Thank you, Kate. Thank you for trying to understand.’

  I took hold of his hand and squeezed it gently.

  ‘My life has been so different to yours, Davy. We share the same parents, but that’s all that binds us really. Isn’t it funny how we could be so different? Same parents, same upbringing, but so different.’

  He sniffed. ‘I suppose so, but as long as you still think of me as your brother and not as some monster you read about in the cheap Sunday newspapers. I wanted you to know that it wasn’t like that. It was beautiful. That much love shared between two people is the most beautiful thing. It makes living worthwhile. There was nothing ugly about it as some people will tell you. We were two human beings in love, how can that be wrong?’

  My heart went out to him as I squeezed his hand again. ‘It’s all right, Davy, love. I don’t think you’re a monster, far from it. You’re Davy, my little brother and always will be. You worry too much about what people will think. If it was right for you – then who am I to say anything different?’

  He swallowed hard. ‘Thank you,’ he said, as his tears welled up. He breathed deeply. ‘Whatever you do, don’t send for the doctor, I don’t want one. I don’t need one. I’m better off alone.’ The sobs started again. He’d done so well. Between sobs, he asked me to go and not to come back. ‘I’m better off alone,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be ungrateful, but really, I can cope better alone. Don’t worry about me.’

  I left him reluctantly. There was nothing else I could do. I was shaking with the shock of it but controlled myself long enough to tell Mrs Mace I didn’t think anything should be done. He didn’t want a doctor and he didn’t want to see me again either. ‘He wants it this way, Mrs Mace. I don’t see any use in going against his wishes. It’s his life and his decision. I’m sorry. I know it’s harder for you because you have to look after him. But I’m worried if a doctor is called he may take him into a mental hospital. That would definitely kill Davy.’

  She looked shocked. ‘I never thought of that, Mrs Mallow. Oh, my word, no, that will not do. I’d never do that to Uncle Davy.’

  I put my hand over hers. ‘Will you be alright?’

  She smiled a wan smile. ‘I suppose so. Thank you for coming. You’ve helped me see the way forward. I didn’t know what to do for the best, but now I do. I’ll give him his privacy and do my best for him. I’ll not call the doctor. Not unless Davy says he wants to.’

  ‘Good luck, Mrs Mace, summon me again if you need to, but he did say he didn’t want to see me again. But I’ll help you if I can.’ With that, I left the distraught woman.

  A few days later, he disappeared from the house. Mrs Mace came to see if I’d seen him, but I hadn’t. She said that he was wearing his best suit, but hadn’t taken his overcoat. ‘It’s cold, Mrs Mallow, freezing, and we’ve been all over the mountain and down to the river and any other place he used to like to walk, but there’s no sign of him. He’s been gone nearly two days.’ She broke down and cried and I tried to comfort her.

  ‘Have you told the police?’

  ‘No! No, I haven’t. I thought about it, but then remembered what you said about taking him away to a mental hospital. I couldn’t do that to him. So, no, it’s just been the family looking. Oh, God help me. Did I do wrong? Should I have called the police?’

  ‘No, not at all. You did the right thing. Davy would not want any fuss made, you know that as well as I do.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right. Sorry, I’m not thinking straight. Davy was such a private man. He hated causing a fuss.’

  ‘You go home now and take a rest. I’ll go out myself with my sons and we’ll search for him too. You’re exhausted. I can see that, so you would slow things down. Leave it to me now. I’ll look for him.’

  But I didn’t contact my sons, I went out alone. I had a pretty good idea of where he might be. I remembered the spot on the mountain he particularly loved as he’d taken me there, all those years ago, when he told me about Rhys’s death.

  As I walked up the mountain behind Mrs Mace’s house, a strange feeling of peace took hold of me. It was as if I was outside my body and looking down at myself as I approached the summit and the spot I was looking for. His body was lying in the dip, on its back and his eyes were closed. He’d placed his hands over his chest as he waited to die. He hadn’t eaten for two weeks so his body was weak and I hoped it had not taken him too long. His face was peaceful and I was happy for him. He was out of his misery.

  I kneeled down beside him and bent over and kissed his cold cheek, remembering as I did so the time Aunty Gladys had made Davy and me kiss our mother’s cheek just after she’d died. This time, though, there was no terror, only love. ‘I loved you, Davy,’ I said out loud. ‘I loved you more than you knew. I so wished it could all have been different.’ I felt a calmness come over me which I fancied came from him. He had found peace and I felt happy for him. I didn’t cry. I took strength from him. Davy would not want emotions. For me to remember him with love was enough.

  I didn’t know the name of the man Davy had loved and who had loved him in return, so I couldn’t tell him of Davy’s death. I wondered if he’d ever know and felt powerless and so sad.

  A week later the post mortem said ‘Died from exposure and dehydration’. That was all: so stark and to the point. The life of a human being expressed in five words.

  I had no doubt it was suicide, although the coroner didn’t say so. And I was glad. Davy would not have wanted that and I, of course, didn’t say anything.

  I knew now why he didn’t want me to visit him again. He knew this is what he was going to do and didn’t want me to get caught up in the aftermath.

  I missed him more than I could have imagined. We hadn’t had much contact with each other once we’d grown up, but I realised he had always been part of me. Part of our childhood and the events that shaped us. We didn’t need to see each other often, our bond was always there.

  His funeral was a quiet affair, just his adopted family, me and Tom. Some years ago, he’d expressed a desire to be cremated rather than buried, Mrs Mace said. And he wanted his ashes scattered on the mountain he loved so much. About a week later, his adopted family and I went up behind their house and we took turns in scattering his ashes into the wind. It was a breezy day and they scattered around a large area. He would have loved that.

  *

  Tom came home from the pub as he did every evening and sat in his armchair.

  ‘You know, it’s been a year since Davy died,’ he said, his speech a little slurred and I wondered if he’d had one too many. ‘A year today in fact.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I’m surprised you remembered,’ I said gently, putting his tea on the arm of his chair, as I always did.

  ‘I liked Davy,’ he said and then he looked up at me and smiled, which was so unusual it took me aback for a moment for it was a smile of pure love. After I recovered from my shock, I felt my old love for him seeping up and found myself returning his look of love thinking, is it still there then – deep inside us? Se
conds later, he slumped in the chair.

  ‘Tom,’ I shouted. ‘Tom!’ I shook him, but he just sat there, unable to move or speak. I felt a panic rise up which was unlike me, but this was Tom. My Tom. I shook him again, but it was no use. ‘I’ll get Mr Farmer, Tom, don’t worry, you’ll be all right.’

  I ran next door and Mrs Farmer phoned for the doctor as Mr Farmer ran back with me. ‘It looks like a stroke, Mrs Mallow,’ he said. ‘My father died of one, I know the signs.’

  ‘Oh, my God,’ I said, looking down at Tom, unsure what to do.

  The doctor arrived quickly and confirmed it was a stroke. ‘We can send him to hospital, Mrs Mallow,’ the doctor said, ‘or you can look after him yourself here. There is nothing the hospital can do for him that you cannot. I’m so sorry. I’m afraid it’s serious. He doesn’t have long.’

  I looked at him stupidly, couldn’t take it in. Mrs Farmer came in then. ‘I’ve phoned your children, Mrs Mallow, they are on their way.’ All I could do was look at her.

  ‘She’s in shock,’ I heard the doctor say as if from a long way away. ‘Make her some sweet tea please, Mrs Farmer.’

  He led me to a chair and I sat down hard. Tom? Not long? I didn’t know what to do, surprised at my feebleness. I was all a blur until my sons arrived.

  ‘We’ll put him upstairs,’ I heard Jim say. ‘We’ll look after him, doctor.’

  Somehow, I don’t quite know how, they got Tom upstairs to our bedroom. He’d put on a lot of weight in the past few years. Tom and I had shared the same house and family for fifty years and as estranged as we were, we still shared the same bed. It was habit I suppose. I liked to have him near me, it felt reassuring. I don’t know why he continued to share with me. I liked to think that he felt the same about me, but I didn’t dare ask him in case he decided to decamp into the spare bedroom. I didn’t want to be left alone. And now, Tom lay in our bed like a beached whale and I knew he would soon leave me. I couldn’t understand my reaction. I thought all my love for him had died, but here it was surging up inside me.

  The children stayed with me that night as we sat by his bedside. Megan made tea, but I couldn’t drink anything. I dozed off remembering my love for Tom and our youth. Then someone was shaking me awake and I noticed it was morning.

  ‘Mam,’ Megan said softly, ‘Mam, he going. Hold his hand, he’d like that. Don’t let him die alone.’ I did as I was bid, and for the first time in what seemed a lifetime, I held his hand. Surprisingly, it felt soft, but very cold. His eyes had been shut, but at the touch of my hand in his, he opened his eyes and looked at me and love shone out of them again. It took me by surprise but then I realised I was returning his look of love. It felt so good. We were together again at the end.

  He struggled to say something but it came out like a groan. He took another ragged breath and I put my ear near his mouth. I just made out, ‘Now, you can take off the wallpaper.’ I looked at him as if he had spoken to me in a foreign tongue. ‘Take it off, Kate. Take the wallpaper off.’ He closed his eyes then and stopped breathing: a slow closing of his eyes and an intake of breath that never came out.

  I kissed the back of his hand and the love I had for him surged up from somewhere down in my boots. The power of it took me by surprise. I think he felt that same love for me reasserting itself on his deathbed. That look of love he gave me was from our past, was between just the two of us. As it had been all those years ago, before life got to us and made us into the people we became, not the people we once were.

  He died surrounded by his children and they all surprised me by giving him a kiss on the cheek.

  ‘We’ll take care of everything, Mam,’ Jimmy said. ‘Do you want to be alone with him?’

  I nodded. When they all left, for some strange reason, I took his hand and squeezed it. As if he would answer me. But there was no life there and now it was too late. Oh, Tom. What happened to us?

  I went slowly downstairs and said, ‘I’m just going out for a bit. I’d like to be alone for a while, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Of course not, Mam,’ Meggie said. ‘Don’t worry about anything.’

  I went up to the rocking stone of course. Where else would I go? I needed this time alone to think, to get my shock under control. My thoughts jumped about and made me feel dizzy so I made a big effort to get them under some control.

  I’d never thought of a life without Tom. He was a good man who turned from a simple loving man who was full of optimism and hope for the future into a man who had turned in on himself, who had let life grind him down. There were many men like Tom in Ponty. I could see it in their faces, in their lost, soulless eyes. Years on the dole, without hope, does terrible things to a proud man. I grieved for the man that Tom had been. I grieved for myself and what might have been. For the loss of my independence, confidence and powerlessness over my body.

  That bastard, Dudley.

  I wanted to kill him, to torture him as he had me. The rape was only an afternoon of fun for him, but it was a lifetime of tormented memories for me. The memory of rape never goes away, it just hibernates and comes out to bite you when you least expect it. Over and over the pain comes afresh.

  If only Tom and I could have believed in each other. If we could have talked and not let wedges of doubt and suspicion separate us. If only Tom could have overcome his fear of upsetting his mother. But he couldn’t and I didn’t want to be bitter.

  And what was all that about taking the wallpaper off? Had he gone mad? Had the stroke affected his reason? I couldn’t understand it. Maybe he was feeling guilty at making me keep it and it was praying on his mind in his last moments. But I looked on the upside-down roses as a gift of love from Tom. He has done his best, tried to make amends, but it had just gone wrong. So much of our life had gone wrong. So I decided to keep that damned wallpaper in memory of Tom. He meant well.

  Tom’s funeral went by in a blur and I don’t remember anything except crying throughout it, especially when his coffin was taken away for burial. The pain was hard to bear. And then, afterwards, as the days turned into months and I was alone for the first time in my life, I couldn’t believe how much pain his death caused me. I spent a lot of time up on our rocking stone, thinking, remembering.

  As time went by, the children asked me if I’d like to move into a house with all mod cons. ‘You’ve paid rent on this house for years,’ they said. ‘It’s sub-standard now. You could have your own big kitchen and indoor bathroom with bath and shower and toilet and everything. We’ll all chip in and buy you a nice terraced house wherever you want to go.’ I was touched to the core, and greatly relieved if I’m honest as it got harder every year to cope with the basic conditions in the house, and the steps and stairs.

  I made sure they were not stretching their finances too far and then gladly accepted. ‘But I’m not leaving the Graig,’ I said. ‘This is where I belong.’

  They found me a nice modernised terraced house with three bedrooms, one that had been turned into a bathroom and the two rooms downstairs had been knocked into one long room with an enormous (well, enormous to me) kitchen leading off from it. It was like living in a palace and only a couple of streets away from Graig Street. I was as happy as a cat with a saucer of cream. My granddaughter, Sarah and her fiancé, Mark, were looking for a house of their own and she said they would try and buy my old house and modernise it and put on an extension at the back. It took a while to arrange but they were able to buy it very cheaply; well, who would want to live there in those conditions?

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  I wake up with a start, cold and stiff as I realise with shock that it’s morning. Yesterday’s newspaper is still on my lap. I read the headline once again, even though I know it off by heart now.

  PONTYPRIDD CHRONICLE

  23 August, 1973

  BODY FOUND IN WELL

  A skeleton was found this week at the bottom of a disused well on The Graig, Pontypridd. With the remains was a Miners’ Federation Card dated 1934 in the nam
e of Dudley J. Mallow. Anyone who has information about this person is requested to contact the police.

  I’m still in shock. When the newspaper came through my letter box yesterday, I sat down in my armchair with a cup of tea to read it as I did every week, looked forward to it in fact. But after seeing that headline, I felt as if as electric shock had found its way into my funny bone. Dudley Mallow! Dudley?

  Fear had gripped me then and I started to shake uncontrollably. That coil of hatred I had for him wound itself around my body again, just as it had all those years ago. I’d never wanted to hear his name again, never thought I would. I’m the only person left alive in our family who knew him and I didn’t want to be the person to bring him back to life. But I had no choice, the memories ran through me like a floodgate opening. They ran wild and free, my whole life bumping and tumbling before me.

  What I’ve remembered and what I’ve forgotten I suppose says a lot about me. And where has it got me? I still don’t know if it was Tom who murdered Dudley – because murder it had to be. You don’t fall down a well and then get up and put the cover back on. And the cover must have been replaced all those years ago otherwise he would have been found straight away. Nearly forty years he’s been down there. Well, serves him right!

  If Tom had been the murderer I would have embraced him, kissed him and said thank you. Thank you for giving me back my life.

  Is there anywhere else I could have looked for the answer? Have I forgotten something? But that’s my life as I’ve remembered it. Memory is selective and thank goodness for it otherwise we’d go mad. I’m satisfied with what I’ve remembered and I have to accept the fact that I didn’t know what happened then and I don’t know now.

  I feel drained but unexpectedly elated. My life has had its problems, but so have many others. It could have been worse. My children have been an absolute joy to me, they’ve made everything worthwhile. I’m surrounded by my family and they all care for and look after me. What more could I ask? The past is the past and will have to stay there.