A Small Country

by Siân James

  Grace was a large black hen who lived on terms of great friendship with Mabon, the biggest horse. She roosted on his back and laid her eggs in his manger. No one but Edward seemed to think the affinity particularly remarkable.

  Catrin had a few words with Bella; the other horses were all out working; picked up a couple of eggs and scattered some corn on the floor. ‘That’s the lot, I think,’ she said.

  But, leaving the stable, Catrin didn’t lead the way back towards the house but headed in the opposite direction, towards the old barn: a huge, mellow, half-timbered building now used as a cart house.

  ‘It’s like a church,’ Edward said as they reached it. ‘I wonder if it was ever a church?’

  ‘No, just a barn. Barns were almost as important as churches in the old days, I suppose. It’s beautiful isn’t it? I’ve done several drawings of it; I’ll show them to you some time.’

  She stood just inside the massive door. ‘This is where they used to do the threshing. The wagons came into the barn through that door, unloaded all the sheaves and left by this one. Then, in the winter, the sheaves were brought down from the far ends and threshed by flail, just here. It was the most back-breaking work on the farm, they say, threshing. And the grain was winnowed by being tossed in the air on a huge wooden shovel, we’ve still got one of them in the dairy, have you seen it and the chaff got carried away by the through draught from the doors, both pinned wide open as they are now.’

  Edward, who had received all this information from Tom the previous summer, wondered a little at Catrin’s desire to instruct him; she usually feigned boredom at anything to do with the farm.

  ‘It’s the oldest barn in the district; in the county, I think. Look at the beams. We’ve had people here from the museum in Cardiff. One man said the beams were six or seven hundred years old. Of course the lofts on either side are new, they’re used to store grain and other food for the animals. You have to climb up to one of the lofts to see the roof arches properly.’

  She left her basket of eggs in the pony trap and Edward followed her up the ladder. He had inspected the roof on his last visit.

  ‘It’s a superb barn,’ he said. He hadn’t felt so conscious of its beauty before. ‘Medieval without a doubt. And you can still see the shape of the trees in those cruck beams. When were they felled, I wonder? Where did they grow? Quite near here you can be sure. No one would have wanted to carry those any distance.’

  ‘We were forbidden to come up here when we were little, the ladder is too steep. But I did come up once; I was hiding from Tom and his friend.’

  Edward realized that Catrin was about to tell him something important, that she had brought him up for that sole reason. He saw the pupils of her eyes dilate, with fear or some other emotion. He waited, feeling his heart beating.

  ‘I saw my father up here with Maggie; she was a maid we had then. They were lying on some bags of grain in that corner over there. They didn’t see me.’

  The scene was as clear to Edward as though he’d been shown a photograph of it and he was startled and shocked by the strength of sexual desire it conjured up.

  ‘What did you do?’ he asked, trying to keep his voice steady.

  ‘Nothing. Pretended I hadn’t seen them. Got myself down the ladder again. Ran into the orchard and stayed there until it was dark, trying to understand it. Of course I understood it well enough on one level, but on another it seemed like a nightmare, all out of true.’ He felt her distress. She turned towards him. Her mouth was close to his, her breath touched his cheek.

  ‘And that was when you started hating your father? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?’

  ‘I wanted you to understand. You didn’t understand. You thought I was being hysterical and unjust. Of course I forgot it in time; pushed it to the back of my mind; but lately, over the last few months, I keep remembering it again.’

  ‘How old were you?’

  ‘Nine or ten, I think.’

  ‘Did you tell Tom?’

  ‘Of course not. After a while Maggie left. I don’t know why. Perhaps my mother suspected something.’

  They climbed down the ladder without speaking. Edward was down first and he turned to help Catrin off the last steep step.

  ‘Poor child,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  He wanted to comfort her, but dared not. The previous summer he would have put his arm round her shoulder in the most natural way in the world.

  ‘Please get Rose to invite me to stay with her,’ she said. ‘Please. I want her to tell me what to do. I’ll be swallowed up alive if I stay on here and I can’t think where else I can go.’

  ‘You’ll have to stay with your mother for a time,’ Edward said, his voice sounding quite harsh. He took the basket from her and they walked back to the stable and across the yard to the house.

  Miss Rees met them at the back door. ‘Wherever have you been, Miss Catrin? Doctor’s here and he’s been asking for you. Mr Tom must have got someone to ride over. Go straight up, now.’

  She turned to Edward. ‘Come for your breakfast, Mr Turncliffe. The men are almost finished.’

  But Edward followed Catrin into the hall, watching her taking off her clogs and her print pinafore. She looked pale, pale and exhausted, blue shadows under her eyes, sweat on her upper lip. For the first time her beauty alarmed him.

  He was going to marry Rose in a twelve-month’s time. He loved her. When he was married and settled down he wouldn’t be so affected by lovely young girls like Catrin.

  When Tom came in, Edward had difficulty not to blurt out, I’m afraid I’ve fallen in love with your sister. But all he said was, ‘Tom, I’ve got a thundering headache. I don’t know that I’ll be any help to you today.’

  ‘No, you won’t,’ Tom said, glancing briefly as him. ‘You tired yourself out with all that cycling.’ He poured cream on his porridge and ate it swiftly.

  ‘I’m still determined to quit Oxford,’ he said, then. ‘It seems the obvious thing to do, doesn’t it. I’m needed here: you can tell that.’

  Edward had stopped eating and was looking earnestly at his friend. ‘I’ll certainly miss you,’ he said.

  In a way, though, he felt pleased. He’d leave Hendre Ddu at the end of the week and try to put Tom and his beautiful sister out of his mind.

  ‘I hope you’ll let Catrin go to Art School if you’re going to be here with your mother.’

  Tom turned angrily towards him. ‘Is that so important?’ He wanted Edward to consider his decision, which was by no means as clear-cut as he’d made out.

  ‘I’ve been talking to her this morning, that’s all. Don’t be offended, old chap. She seems rather desperate to get away. I think she’s more affected by your father’s leaving than you give her credit for.’

  Tom grunted and didn’t say another word until he’d finished his breakfast.

  ‘Could you take Mr Turncliffe’s coffee out into the garden?’ he asked Sali, the second maid. ‘I won’t wait to have any more. Doctor Andrews will have a cup with him, perhaps, when he comes down.’

  ‘I hope your headache will soon be better,’ he said then, and left the room.

  Edward went to sit in the rose garden in front of the house, glad to be on his own. In less than a minute, though, Miss Rees was out with him, standing against the white palings, her small eyes closed up against the sun.

  ‘I’m afraid I tired myself out yesterday,’ he told her. ‘I’m not fit for mowing today.’

  ‘Dear, dear,’ she said in her high, sing-song voice. ‘There’s not a bit of need to bother yourself, Mr Turncliffe. We may be glad of some extra help with the turning but that won’t be for a few days yet. The hay harvest has never been a serious affair, you know; even before the machines came, we never fretted ourselves over the hay. Now, the corn is a different matter, isn’t it, the barley and the oats for the animals and the wheat for the house. If we left the wheat to the rain, the bread would be poor for a twelve-month and everybody suffering. B
ut since the corn binder came, of course it’s not the same job at all. Six or seven years ago we’d have as many as forty men cutting and binding, all the people of the little houses who had a row of potatoes on our land and a load of dung, would give so many days, and I’d have forty men to feed, let alone the wives and children.’

  ‘Did you really? You must be glad those times are over.’

  ‘Oh no, not glad; not glad. It’s all different now, you see, the old machines taking us over. Years ago, all the cottagers were sharing in the harvest. It was a good feeling. It gave us a nearness somehow. Now, all we have in the medel is a miserable dozen.’

  ‘The medel is the harvest supper, I suppose.’

  ‘No, no, Mr Turncliffe, the medel is the reap, the men in the reap. And medel rwymo is the binding group, because there’s cutting and binding as you know, and the debt for a row of potatoes and the dung was a day’s cutting, but a day and a half binding. Do you understand me, now? All the cottagers had to have potatoes, you see, for the pigs, the bacon pig for the house and the porker for the rent. And the potato debt was paid in work for the harvest. Not the hay, of course. It was the women who turned the hay, the women did that for the buttermilk and the curds and whey they had from us, and the oat chaff for the bedding and so on. Do you understand me now?’

  ‘I wouldn’t like to write a paper on it, Miss Rees. It’s bit complicated.’

  ‘A bit complicated? At any rate, it’s not as hard as the Welsh Miss Catrin set you to learn last year, is it? Do you remember any of it, say?’

  ‘Very little, I’m afraid. Those mutations were beyond everything. Pen Fy mhen. Ei ben. The very devil.’

  ‘Here’s the doctor now,’ Miss Rees said. ‘I’ll send out the coffee.’ She went round the fence to the back door. Edward could hear her chuckling as she went.

  Catrin brought the doctor to the garden, introduced the two men, then went back upstairs to her mother.

  Sali carried out the coffee and poured it.

  ‘How is Mrs Evans this morning?’ Edward asked the doctor when Sali had left them.

  Doctor Andrews took out a silver cigarette box and handed it to Edward.

  Edward had an extraordinary feeling of being outside himself, witnessing two men talking over their cups of coffee. It’s a bad business, the doctor would say, shaking his head a little. The other would nod.

  ‘It’s a bad business,’ the doctor said.

  Edward nodded his head sympathetically.

  ‘You’re conversant with the situation, I take it?’

  Edward nodded again.

  He couldn’t keep his mind off Catrin. He thought of the shape of her breasts through her print dress, her cream skin, all softness. Why hadn’t he put his arm around her and kissed her? What was the harm in a kiss? He imagined the touch of her lips, her breath on his.

  ‘It’s a matter of class,’ the doctor was saying. ‘If Joshua Evans was a gentleman the matter would be settled differently. The woman and child would be provided for, there’s no shortage of money, and poor Mrs Evans none the wiser. That’s the way things have always been done.’

  Edward nodded again. Rose and he were respectably married and Catrin being provided for. He picked her up and laid her on the red sofa of their love nest. Her lips opened as he kissed her and the pupils of her eyes dilated. He’d never seen eyes that were truly green before, green as the sea, stormy.

  ‘Still,’ Doctor Andrews said, pushing his coffee cup away from him and stubbing out his cigarette, ‘we can’t sit here all morning, can we, putting the world to rights. I’ve enjoyed meeting you, Mr Turncliffe.’

  Catrin appeared at the door as the doctor was leaving. ‘I’ll come to Llanfryn with you, Doctor, if that’s all right. Are you going straight back?’

  ‘It’ll be a quicker way to get the medicine and a few other things that Miss Rees wants,’ she told Edward. ‘Doctor Andrews has a motor-car. I’ll get a lift back from Arthur, Ty Croes.’

  After she’d gone, Edward sat down again in the garden. It was already hot, too hot. The scent of orange blossom came to him from somewhere, and it was as heavy and artificial as the perfume counter in one of the Kensington stores. The bees climbing into the foxgloves suddenly seemed like old men stumbling into their clubs, and too-sudden love was only lust, he was better without it. Rose was the daughter of his father’s business partner and oldest friend; their marriage would be suitable in every way, he liked her, loved her, wanted to look after her, to protect and cherish her. But....

  ‘Catrin.’

  At first he thought he had spoken aloud, then realized that Rachel Evans was in the garden. He rose to his feet and went towards her. They shook hands.

  ‘I’m so sorry to find you unwell,’ Edward said. ‘Catrin has gone to Llanfryn with the doctor. May I get you some coffee or some tea? Or anything at all?’

  But Miss Rees was already out again with a straw hat and a cushion and a shawl.

  ‘Mrs Evans, bach, you’re looking much better, indeed you are. Almost your old self again. Mr Tom will be so pleased to see you up, he was disappointed yesterday, wasn’t he, Mr Turncliffe? Now have a cushion behind your back, that’s right, and you’ll need this as well. Oh yes, you will. You’ve come straight from bed and it’s light as a feather. Catrin went with Doctor Andrews to get the medicine and she’s bringing a bit of sea fish as well for your dinner. Now I’ll fetch you a little glass of egg and milk. Will you take some egg and milk, Mr Turncliffe? It’s an excellent thing for a headache, or would you prefer barley water? You must have something to keep Mrs Evans company, isn’t it.’

  ‘We’ll both have some of your lemonade, Nano, a bit later on. You can go now. I know you’ve got too much to do as usual. Do sit, Mr Turncliffe. I hope you’ll be able to stay a good long time with us. It’s wonderful for Tom having you here, he gets very lonely on his own.’

  They sat and talked and afterwards sipped lemonade as though it was a perfectly ordinary morning.

  After dinner, Edward helped with the mowing.

  FIVE

  They finished cutting Waun Hir by seven, so that all the men knocked off at a reasonable hour.

  Rachel Evans sat at the supper table with Edward and her children that evening, the three young people trying not to notice how little she was managing to eat. Instead of eating, she talked. About the farm, about the old days when her grandfather had drained the marshland bordering the river, put the stony heathland, ‘The Top’, under the plough, and planted all the trees. ‘Morgans have lived here ever since the old house was built,’ she told them. ‘Search the church records and you’ll find an Elys Morgan in Hendre Ddu in 1637, a Llwyd Morgan afterwards, another Elys after him. This part of the house was built in 1741. Most of the furniture, made by local craftsmen, came at the same time; this table, these chairs. The clock too. This dresser and the one in the front kitchen.’

  She seemed feverish, talking compulsively, no one able to stop her. Edward broke in to ask appropriate questions which Tom tried to answer, but his mother wouldn’t be deflected; she insisted on answering every time, answering fully, elaborating and then repeating herself.

  They were all relieved when the meal was over and she ready to go back to bed. Catrin went upstairs with her and later went out to the kitchens to help Nano and the girls with the vast quantity of washing-up they had after the men.

  Edward and Tom decided to take a walk as far as Pen Bryn.

  It was a fine, cool evening, the colours just fading from the hills, the sky full of pale yellow clouds. The river sounded close and full.

  ‘I’ve stood here with him hundreds of times,’ Tom said. He kicked the lowest bar of the gate as they reached it.

  Edward sighed. He was thinking of Catrin, imagining her there with them, imagining her arm brushing against him.

  ‘He always said he didn’t care for views. He always said he hated the land. “Go to London,” he was always telling me, “there’s no bloody farms there”. But he stood here all the
same, night after night.’ Tom kicked at the gate again, though more gently. ‘He was a fine figure of a man,’ he said. He spoke as though his father was dead.

  ‘He was,’ Edward agreed, suddenly feeling grateful to the begetter of so much beauty. He thought of Josi Evans, dressed always with some flamboyance in corduroy and flannel and tweed; essentially a countryman, he couldn’t imagine him translated to the city. Whereas Catrin’s looks would fit her for any life she chose. He saw her in London society; graceful, stylish, slightly bohemian; a beauty anywhere, by any standards.

  ‘Even at his age, he turned heads,’ Tom said. ‘Even last Easter in the ploughing competition, I couldn’t help noticing how the women looked at him. It’s more difficult for someone like that to keep on the straight and narrow. It’s easy for other men to preach. They haven’t had the temptations. Roderick the minister, now; a few wisps of sandy hair, no eyebrows, very little chin, what does he know about temptation?’

  ‘He called to see your mother this afternoon? Mr Roderick?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She finds him helpful?’

  ‘Yes. She said he prayed for us all. She likes that sort of thing. There’s no harm in it.’

  ‘Was Catrin there?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so.’

  ‘She isn’t religious?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know. She doesn’t feel much about anything, that’s my opinion. I know you think otherwise.’

  Tom’s despondency suddenly took on an aggrieved edge. ‘You may not have noticed it, Ned, but Catrin’s getting too pretty by half. I don’t mean that she’s beautiful like some women you see around, Professor Warren’s wife, for instance, but she’s eye-catching in a way that makes me worry about her. To be perfectly honest, that’s one of the reasons I don’t want her going away to college. One simply doesn’t know what she might get up to.’

  ‘Your parents might have said the same about you and stopped you going up to Oxford.’

  ‘Men can look after themselves.’