by Siân James
‘Tell Nano I won’t be having supper downstairs. Ask her to make me a few sandwiches and get her to send them up here. Beef, I’d like. The underdone bit by the bone. She knows the part I like.’
‘Good. Beef. The underdone bit by the bone. Very good. The table’s laid. Sewin, caught this morning by Davy Wern Isa, that’s the first course, jugged hare to follow because it’s his lordship’s favourite, I can’t eat it, but who cares about that. Then, oh, then we have a choice; blackcurrant tart or raspberry and redcurrant puree. A few sandwiches, then?’
‘Go down now, Tom, there’s a good boy.’
‘Not unless you come, Mam. You don’t have to eat anything, just get dressed and sit at the table with us, that’s all I ask. My first night home.’
‘Tom, I can’t.’
‘I see a succession of little bedroom snacks before us. Edward will be here tomorrow night, have you told Mother? Edward Turncliffe. I’d just like to know, that’s all, whether he’ll be having sandwiches up here with the two of you and whether it’s beef, slightly underdone, that he likes as well. I’d just like to know. Or will he want a bit more than that after cycling from Brecon or wherever it is, and even you perhaps after thirteen or fourteen hours on the hay.’
‘Have you finished? I can’t see...’
‘Nano happens to be sixty-nine, that’s all, and she’s been slaving away for hours.’
‘Do go down, Tom. Please.’
‘I’ll be up later, then, Mam.’
‘I’ll try to get up tomorrow, Tom, I really will. I’m not promising anything, but I’ll do my best. Take the roses out, Catrin, they’re giving me such a headache. Put them in the middle of the table downstairs, Nano will like that. Don’t quarrel any more now, children. Tom is very tired, Catrin, after his journey.’
‘I think this has been the worst evening of my life,’ Tom told Catrin later, as he wished her good night.
He had eaten a very large meal with very little appetite, struggled to make small talk with Nano and the maids without mentioning the one thing on all their minds, endured an hour of his mother’s silent suffering.
‘You’ll have plenty worse than this,’ Catrin had said cheerfully. ‘We’ll make a man of you yet.’
TWO
The next morning, a little before six, Davy Prosser, the oldest of the menservants, called in to see Tom who was having his ‘little breakfast’ in the morning-room. (Little breakfast was a bowl of tea and a hunk of bread. Breakfast – porridge, eggs and bacon – was at nine.)
‘Mr Tom, I’m not at all happy about Briony. Her cough is back and worse than ever, and her yield is down almost to half. Shall we get Parry over?’
It was a mere formality. Briony was one of the mothers of the herd, a valuable pedigree shorthorn. They both knew that the vet had to be fetched, and with no delay. The consultation, rapidly concluded, constituted a transfer of authority; it was the acknow-ledgment of Tom as the new master.
‘How’s Mrs Prosser, Davy? I shall be calling to see her one of these days. Not tonight, though. Mr Turncliffe – you remember my friend Turncliffe – he’s coming later on today. Invited before I knew how things were here. Things are pretty bad here, aren’t they?’
‘Mr Tom, I don’t ask questions.’
‘You’ve got a right to, man. You’ve been here long enough.’
‘Oh yes. Before your mother was married. Years before.’
‘And I’ve always had a special regard for you. You know it very well. You were the one who taught me everything; how to ride, how to plough. And my Sunday School teacher as well, we mustn’t forget that.’
‘Aye indeed, come to think of it. You weren’t so quick in the Sunday School, though, if I remember right. Never unruly, mind, but a bit of a yawn from time to time. Aye indeed.’
‘Anyway, while I’m in charge here, as far as the stock is concerned, what you say goes.’
‘That’s it then. Well, we know where we are now. I’ll send Glyn over to fetch Parry straight after breakfast. And I hope you’ll come to see the Missis when you can. I’ll be over at the hay-field myself later on. What you cutting, Parc-y-Duar? Yes, That’s what I thought. It’s sweet as a nut.’
Rachel Evans sat up and drank her tea. Miss Rees had opened the curtains and given her the customary sermon. Counting her blessings was the text on that particular morning, with Mr Tom chief among them; strong, handsome, clever at book-learning, serious-minded, loving. If he had faults they were trifling ones like galloping through his allowance, which time would mend. Miss Catrin too, of course, only a bit sharp because of wanting to go to that college, and if it was up to her, Ann Rees, she should go, because nothing came of trying to change anyone’s nature, and Miss Catrin’s heart wasn’t on the farm, that she could say. A beautiful home was next on the list. When Lady Harris had called last she had said she had never seen such exquisite china, not anywhere in the country. Exquisite. That was the word she used. And the linen. No one would credit the pairs of sheets; fine linen, best Egyptian cotton, flannelette, with pillow-slips and bolster cases to match. And tablecloths, drawn thread work, embroidered and plain damask, large and small, enough for Miss Catrin’s bottom drawer and for her daughter’s daughter. Next, the best farm in three parishes.
Rachel closed her eyes at that point.
‘No more, Nano, no more now. I’ll try to get up today, I really will. Edward Turncliffe is coming, isn’t he, and I promised Tom to get up. I must make an effort. Women have been deserted by their husbands before this, I know they have, and without having you to look after them.’
Suddenly, she was in the old woman’s arms and crying as she had not been able to do before.
‘He’s gone, Nano. He’s gone. And he won’t be back, will he, Nano?’
Miss Rees was now quite silent except for the occasional ‘There, there. Come now. Come, come.’
But at last, since the storm showed no signs of abating, she spoke out again. ‘We’ve managed without him before and we’ll manage without him again.’
‘I was never happy, never, never, till I had him.’
‘You were happy enough before you ever saw him.’
‘No. Don’t say that. I wasn’t. No.’
*
At last Rachel grew calmer. ‘Where’s Tom?’ she asked then. ‘Has he gone out already?’
‘Yes. This half-hour or more.’
‘Send him up to me, Nano, when he comes in for breakfast.’
She walked to the mirror on the dressing-table and sat in front of it. She looked ill, haggard, but not as bad as she’d expected. She felt much worse than she looked.
She was turned fifty but her hair was still thick and without a trace of grey. She brushed it, though without much strength, and put it up. She collected her things together to take to the bathroom. Everything was such an effort.
Rachel had never been a beauty nor had she ever possessed the liveliness which does instead. She supposed that would make acceptance of her position a little easier in time. She wouldn’t have bruised vanity to contend with, at any rate. Only heart-break.
She was sitting by the open window in her bedroom when Catrin came in. ‘Nano told me to tell you that Tom isn’t coming in for breakfast. He’s not going to stop. He’s sent for coffee and toast. All the others are tucking in to ham and eggs and grinning like idiots. Shall I come to have breakfast with you instead?’
‘I think I’ll just have coffee and toast like Tom.’
Catrin kissed her mother, then hugged her hard. ‘You look lovely, Mam, pretty and rested.’
‘I’ll make a handsome corpse.’
It was a family joke, what old Prosser, still straight and vigorous in his eighties, used to say. Catrin smiled. Then grew serious again as she noticed her mother’s lips trembling.
‘Coffee and toast, then,’ she said.
Rachel wasn’t swept off her feet into marriage at eighteen or nineteen as were most of her school friends, There was a seriousness about her even at that ag
e which the young men found off-putting. In her twenties she had settled down to being an old maid, to being her father’s companion (her mother had died when she was five, she could hardly remember her), to useful work in the chapel and the local community.
She was twenty-nine when she received and accepted a proposal of marriage from a neighbouring farmer, Jim Reynolds, Dôl Goch, who had lost his wife the previous year. He was a fair bit older than she, but not old; nearer forty than fifty, and the arrangement seemed eminently suitable. The farmer had two children but they were away at school and seemed docile and well-mannered, unlikely to cause trouble. He was comfortably off, not rich like her father, but few people were in that part of the country. The farm house was pleasant enough, not quite what she had been used to, but it was assumed that Reynolds and she would return to Hendre Ddu when her father grew too old to manage it himself, and let Dôl Goch.
Rachel’s father, old Griff Morgan, gave his blessing, though rather grudgingly, and the wedding was fixed for the following February, with a honeymoon in Bournemouth before the start of the ploughing.
In the months following her engagement Rachel became a different woman. She acquired a new poise, a spring in her step, authority in her voice. She put off the dark, spinsterlike clothes which, almost without realizing it, she had been wearing for the last few years, and instead adopted the bright, attractive clothes befitting a rich young woman about to be married.
It was at this time that she had met and fallen in love with Josi Evans, Cefn Hebog. She had been in love briefly, with most of the young men who had so rapidly married her friends, but this was the first time that her love had been reciprocated.
Josi was five years younger than Rachel, extremely handsome, dark as a gypsy and with a proud bearing. Indeed he did consider himself as good if not better than any man in the area, which was to say the world, and the fact that his father was a tenant farmer in one of the most inaccessible and barren one-horse farms in North Carmarthenshire did nothing to alter his opinion.
Rachel had been at the dressmaker’s in Llanfryn choosing a pattern for a new dress and her father, who was to have picked her up at eleven, was late. Bored with the little dressmaker’s company, and for some reason strangely restless, she had started to walk towards the King’s Head where her father stabled his horse. Almost immediately it had started to rain quite heavily, so that she had hurried to take shelter in the covered courtyard of the inn. Josi, passing through on the way to get his pony, had noticed her there, a fine figure of a woman, her colour heightened by wind and rain, and with a flourish of his battered old hat had asked if he might take her into the lounge for a cup of tea. She had started to refuse but his eyes, such a vivid blue in the dark face, and the wide, friendly smile, had proved irresistible. ‘Thank you,’ she’d said. That’s how it had begun. (Rachel’s father was often to think, afterwards, how much it had cost him to haggle so long over the little Hereford heifers in the mart that morning.)
Josi knew who Rachel was. Perhaps that made him more ready to fall in love with her. But everybody who knew them at that time agreed that he had fallen in love with her and that he had remained in love for several months, perhaps a year or even two.
Her father, embarrassed about the promise to Jim Reynolds – though that was the least of his worries – taunted Rachel about breaking her word.
‘But he never said he loved me,’ she said, as though that excused everything.
‘He wanted to marry you, girl, to unite two good farms, he wasn’t after a free gift. Fancy words are for those who haven’t anything else to offer.’
It was no good. Rachel would have Josi and the old man had to accept it.
But as he said afterwards, ‘He didn’t marry her for the farm, anyway, because he doesn’t care a snap for it and never will.’
That’s what ultimately damned Josi in his eyes. He could have had his bit of fun with the maids, or the pretty shop girls on market days, if he had cared for the farm, really cared for it. He could work as hard as any man, he was proud of his physical strength, proud of his prowess in driving a straight furrow and of his way with the horses. But he wasn’t affected by the compound interest of farming. He was like a hired hand serving out his time till the next Michaelmas. Abiah Prosser and Davy Wern Isa, and even young Davy, liked to figure things out, they leaned on a gate with him and worried about the quantity of wild oats in the wheat, it had never been so bad, and whether swedes or mangolds would be more profitable for the March and April fodder, while his own son-in-law merely said, ‘You tell me what to do and I’ll get it done’, as though that was some sort of virtue. There was something lacking in the man.
However, Griffydd Morgan kept his forebodings to himself. As for Rachel, she was conscious of nothing outside the closed, warm world of love.
THREE
Tom felt much better after his long, hard day in the hayfield.
His mother wanted him to be a lawyer; she had decided on it when he was quite a small boy – a lawyer was a gentleman – but he had never been wholly in favour of the idea, and it now struck him that if his father had really left for good, then he had an excellent excuse for throwing it over.
Tom was twenty-one years old, and for his age a remarkable realist. While some of his friends, no brighter than he, talked blithely of pegging away and getting a First, Tom knew that he would work fairly consistently and get a Third. He was also aware that he would never become anything but a rather inefficient country solicitor whose heart was in farming. So was the effort really worth it? Capital would have to be raised to buy a practice; one of the small farms would have to be sold, or at least some of the top fields. He’d rather keep them. He was a farmer like his grandfather, old Griffydd Morgan, and that’s what he wanted to be. He derived positive pleasure from the feel of the sweat running down between his shoulder blades, pleasure, too, though not so easily defined, from the dark, gently-rising outline of the land.
He walked home with the other men, but found it difficult to talk to them and was angry with himself on that account. His father never had difficulty in talking to anyone. Why had he been sent away to school and to Oxford?
‘I’m going to Derwen Pool tonight,’ he heard young Glyn telling some of the others. ‘Anyone coming?’
‘I may, later on,’ Tom said, knowing that he wouldn’t go, and that the others would be embarrassed if he did. ‘Good night, now.’
He took his boots off and went through to the parlour. ‘Isn’t Mother down?’ he asked Catrin. He had set great store on her promise.
‘She did get up this morning, but she had a letter by the second post which upset her again. Don’t ask me what it was; she just read it and went back to bed. She won’t say a word to me. Not even to Nano. One cup of tea, nothing else. You see if you can get anything out of her.’
‘I’ll have a bath first. No sign of Ned?’
‘Not yet. What are we going to tell him when he comes?’
‘I don’t know. Let me find out what’s in the letter; we’ll decide afterwards. What’s for supper?’
‘Chicken soup. Lamb’
‘Good.’
‘Mr Tom.’ Nano came out from the kitchen as he was going upstairs. ‘I’ve made some beef tea for Mrs Evans, and if she won’t have it I just want to say that I won’t be held responsible; you’ll have to get Doctor Andrews to see what he says to her. Three times I’ve taken up little bowls of this and that; egg custard, arrowroot, milk jelly and three times I’ve had to bring them down. She’s had nothing all day but some coffee and a small piece of toast for her breakfast. Nothing else all day but a cup of tea. I just want to say that I won’t be held responsible if she doesn’t have the beef tea.’
‘I’ll see to it Nano, as soon as I’ve had a quick scrub.’
He kissed her, as though he was still a boy, and tore upstairs.
‘Hello, Mam, I’m home,’ he called as he passed her door. ‘I’ll be with you now.’
Stretching out in the warm
bath, towelling himself dry afterwards, his spirits soared as they had on the hay-field earlier. He put on the clean shirt Nano had put out for him, his newly pressed trousers, his blazer. He had a different look on his face, though, as he tied his tie and brushed his hair: the dutiful son ready to see his mother.
He knocked on the door and went in. She turned her head to look at him but didn’t smile. He sat on a chair at her bedside.
‘Are you going to let me see the letter?’ he asked, with no preliminaries.
‘There,’ she said, indicating with a slight movement of her head, the white envelope on the bedcover. Tom saw his Father’s large, bold handwriting as he took out the single sheet of paper.
Dear Rachel,
We have been married almost twenty-three years and good years they’ve been for me. Now you have a grown-up son and daughter to help you run your farm and to support you in every way. It’s not for any young girl that I’ve left you, though you’ve been jealous of my very innocent attentions to them from time to time, but for a grown woman, nearly thirty, who has my child and who has no one else. She was the schoolmistress of Rhydfelen school. She gave in her notice, perhaps you remember, saying that she had to return to her family in Carmel. She has no family. At the moment we are in her aunt’s cottage in Llanfryn. We shall soon be moving from the area.
I have very affectionate feelings for you and our children.
I hope Tom will bring me some of my clothes and other necessities.
I have taken £20 from the bank which I will pay back before Michaelmas. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you instead of writing. I meant to and would have except that you haven’t been so well lately, so that somehow I couldn’t get it out.
I don’t know how to end this letter.
Forgive me if you can.
Joshua Evans.
Tom sat at his mother’s bedside, watching the lamp flickering, the blue outside the window turning blue-black, pitch-black.