A Small Country

by Siân James

  Then Catrin had stepped out of the borrowed dress, letting it fall to the ground in a heap, and pulled out all the hair pins and shaken down her hair and brushed it and plaited it again.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Lowri had asked. Catrin looked as though she was about to cry.

  ‘What am I going to do?’ she had asked. ‘What will become of me?’

  Lowri was two years older than Catrin, a good-natured, motherly girl.

  ‘Don’t be such a little silly. Nothing is going to become of you, nothing at all. You’ll just stay home here with us until you’re old enough to get married. And your husband will be very rich and important, a doctor perhaps or a member of parliament, and you’ll live in a mansion and have a big motor-car. Now you put your skirt and blouse on quick and come down to the kitchen. Everybody’s out and I’ll make you a nice cup of tea.’

  But Catrin had stayed up in her bedroom crying. She was beautiful, she’d be a fool not to know it, she was different. She wasn’t going to stay at home until some idiot would notice her and ask her to marry him. She was going to use her beauty. She wanted....

  She wasn’t sure what she wanted but she was quite certain that it wasn’t marriage and a quiet life in the country.

  She had always been impatient by nature. As a small child every fine summer day had agitated her, she had insisted on getting up at the first light and going out with the men, even though she had very soon to return to the house to get ready, after breakfast, for a long walk to school. Miss Rees, worried that such a little creature would over-tire herself, used to coax her to stay in with her, even offering to let her wash the kitchen floor, at that time her special treat; but it was no use, Catrin would just point to the iridescent blue outside and run off.

  When a picnic had been promised and had to be postponed, not because of a change in the weather which she had no difficulty in accepting, but because visitors had arrived or for some other ‘trivial’ reason, she would be inconsolable. ‘Tomorrow,’ her mother would say. ‘We’ll go tomorrow, I promise you.’ ‘Today,’ Catrin would shout, stamping her feet or throwing herself on the floor. ‘Today. Today. Today.’

  At sixteen she was still the same. She had made the discovery that she was beautiful and she had no faith in tomorrow. Beauty was as swiftly-passing as a butterfly or a summer day.

  She left school in the July of that year. It wasn’t considered proper that a girl of rising seventeen should cycle along country roads in the short skirts of the school uniform. Anyway, further studying wasn’t thought necessary since girls didn’t go to university.

  That year, however, a girl from the sixth form had won a scholar-ship to an art school and gone to London, and Catrin had seized on that as her most likely chance to escape from home; she had a certain talent in drawing and her mother thought it a lady-like occupation. (She had far more talent for music but unfortunately her mother knew a girl – a nice girl – who had gone to Italy to study singing and she had never returned, had possibly married an Italian and become a Roman Catholic.)

  She had waited, sketching and painting every afternoon, keeping herself aloof from the life around her, until she was eighteen and felt she could justifiably insist on her parents making a decision about her.

  ‘Wait till Tom comes home,’ her mother had said all that year whenever she had broached the subject. ‘We’ll see what Tom thinks about it.’

  She had waited. And before he had arrived, her father had shattered all her chances of leaving home by leaving himself, and she was so full of resentment that she had followed his mistress, the Rhydfelen schoolteacher, out of the chemist’s shop at Llanfryn and shouted abuse at her. The memory of the scene tormented her. For the rest of that day she had remained upstairs with her mother, quite stupefied with shame but not knowing what to do to make amends.

  She was still in that state the next morning when she had been asked to drive Edward to the station to catch his train.

  He had teased her about wanting to leave home and she had lashed out at him, and what happened afterwards would always leave a mark on her for good or ill; she was aware of that from the beginning.

  Her first feelings were that she had been betrayed by a friend she had trusted, but towards evening, other more complicated feelings were beginning to take hold of her, chief amongst them a knowledge that she had been stirred beyond anything she could have imagined.

  Although Tom had not told his mother that he intended to see his father that evening, she seemed to sense that something was in the air. ‘Where has Tom gone?’ she asked Catrin and Miss Rees.

  Neither of them knew.

  Miss Rees always came to sit with Rachel on a Saturday evening; the custom had started partly as a recognition of the housekeeper’s close part in the family, partly because Rachel, from the early days of her marriage, had always been left alone on that evening.

  It was the only time in the week – except when she went to morning service on a Sunday – that Miss Rees was ever seen without the starched white apron which enveloped her from her double chin to her knees. (‘She’s black underneath,’ Catrin had whispered to Tom on first seeing Nano in the parlour with her mother.) Her best dress was of stiff bombasine with jet beads sewn on the bodice in such serried profusion that it looked like a breastplate. She had bought the dress thirteen years before, when Rachel’s father, old Griffydd Morgan, had died. It always smelt faintly of camphor and peppermints though she hung it out for an airing every Saturday morning when the weather was fine. She wore it every Saturday evening, every Sunday morning, and to five or six funerals a year, nine in ’07 when the winter was particularly hard. It would last her lifetime for sure.

  ‘Where has Tom gone?’ Rachel asked again.

  ‘Where do young men go on these fine Saturday nights, Mrs Evans? I’m always wanting to know, but they’ll never tell me. Young Dan always says he’s going home to see his mother, but when I tease him about the Dijon he’s stuck in his jacket, he blushes like a girl, and when I see his mother in chapel she says she doesn’t see him from one week to the next and why are we working him so hard.’

  ‘Nano, you’re not trying to tell me that Tom has got a sweetheart, are you?’

  ‘I don’t know, I’m sure. It wouldn’t surprise me to know that there’s a young lady somewhere in these parts very anxious to see him again after so long. Six months is a long spell to young people, I do know that.’

  ‘Do you know anything about it, Catrin?’

  Catrin, pleased to see her mother showing a flicker of interest in something outside her own suffering, wished she had the imagination to add some fuel to the tiny spark.

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ she said. ‘Perhaps he has got a girl. I don’t know. He doesn’t talk to me.’

  ‘It’s a pity, isn’t it,’ Miss Rees said. ‘People not talking to people. Now, there are some who say that I talk too much, but what I say is, it’s talking that makes us different from the animals, isn’t it. We can talk and I think we should and then we’d all be the wiser.’

  Miss Rees was silent for a minute while she turned the heel of a sock. She knitted three pairs of long grey socks for each of the men for New Year’s Day, from the thick, oily wool she got from the local mill. (‘I keep their bellies full and their feet dry, only God can give them sense.’) Mrs Evans and Catrin watched her having her way with the heel.

  ‘Now old Dic Pugh was dumb from birth, poor fellow, but he was a wonderful listener, he showed interest and made the right responses – grunts, really, but that sounds disrespectful. I’ve had many a hearty conversation with Dic, he didn’t withhold himself you see, his silence was warm and eloquent. Now Llew Gelly-Deg was a different animal. He had a good speaking voice – a nice baritone in Soar choir, too, but nothing to say and nothing he wanted to hear from one week’s end to another. His wife went back to her parents, eventually, sick of his thin silences, whereas Mati Pugh is still going strong in her seventies, cheerful as a kettle. “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord�
�, I remember that was the text Garfield Roberts took in one of the revival meetings he had on the bank above Henblas bridge, and there’s singing we had that day, do you remember, Mrs Evans? Seven hours we were there altogether. That was a noise, right enough. Some of the little ones started to shout with the excitement of it all. “Let them be,” Garfield Roberts said. “Let them shout, for God’s sake.” There was no keeping them quiet in chapel after that, but everything is quiet and orderly again now in all the chapels, quiet as the grave. I don’t know who said silence is golden but I’m sure it wasn’t the Lord, he had more sense.’

  Catrin had been telling the truth when she told her mother that Tom never talked to her. That night, though, when he came home from Llanfryn — their mother and Miss Rees had long gone to bed — he did.

  She was still sitting at the table; she had undertaken to mend a lace collar for her mother and it was proving a more complicated job than she had expected. He came in and sat opposite her, and when she got up to adjust the light he seemed afraid that she was about to go.

  ‘You’re not going to bed, are you?’ he said. ‘Not yet, surely?’

  She looked at him with surprise. Of course he was missing Edward and their father, that would explain his sudden desire for her company. Or that he was the worse – or the better – for drink.

  He looked tired and dejected. He’s not handsome, Catrin thought, but he’s got a strong face, a face that has more character when it’s shadowed. When he was a boy, I thought him ugly, his nose was too long; now it’s a good nose, a good head; a head I’d like to draw. Thomas Morgan Evans, Hendre Ddu.

  ‘Do you know the people at The Wheatsheaf?’ he asked her. ‘They came from Swansea. Jack and Elsie Morris. Been at Llanfryn six or seven years. Do you know them?’

  Catrin admitted that she didn’t.

  ‘No, I didn’t think you would. Not the sort of people you’d get to meet, I suppose. Quite a decent little couple. The wife’s from Bristol I think. They’ve only got one child, a daughter, about sixteen, and she’s got herself in the family way.’

  Catrin made no comment. She wondered what possible reason Tom had for relating such a sordid piece of gossip to her, when only a few nights earlier he had seemed to be reproving her for knowing the facts of life.

  ‘The poor old thing,’ he said. To himself, it seemed.

  ‘Won’t she get married, then? She’d be quite a catch, wouldn’t she? The only daughter of a prosperous pub?’

  ‘No, she’s one of these half-witted girls; shapeless, with slightly bulging blue eyes and little plump hands and feet. No one will marry her, that’s for sure. She won’t even tell them who the father is; she just looks bashful, apparently, when they question her. They didn’t notice her condition for months, perhaps she’d forgotten all about the man by the time they did. Let’s hope so.’

  ‘Her parents will look after her, though, won’t they?’

  ‘I suppose so. Her father kept saying that an illegitimate baby will ruin her chances, but the poor thing never had any chances. Who would take advantage of a girl like that, that’s what I’d like to know. Her father thinks it may have been one of the fairground men; I suppose it could have been any of the local louts who’d had too much to drink at the Michaelmas Fair.’

  ‘When is the baby due?’

  ‘No idea. Some time soon. I suppose the baby will be all right. The grandparents will look after it, I suppose. It may be a normal, healthy child.’

  ‘Perhaps the poor thing will be a good mother.’

  ‘She’s half-witted, girl. Simple.’

  They sat in silence for a while, Catrin at a complete loss for words. Should she get up, she wondered, and light herself a lamp? Wish Tom a brusque good night? It was late, well past her usual bedtime.

  But the atmosphere between them seemed charged, somehow, so that she couldn’t bring herself to speak or move.

  ‘Do you understand any of it?’ Tom asked at last. ‘I mean any of it. Father, and so on? Any of it?’

  ‘No, not really,’ Catrin said.

  All the same, she knew she was not being absolutely truthful. Since the encounter with Edward the previous morning, one of life’s mysteries had been briefly, fitfully, illuminated.

  TEN

  Josi, Miriam and the baby left Cambrian Street, Llanfryn at five o’clock on the morning of Midsummer Day. Their scant belongings included the bed and table, cupboard, chairs and mangle which had used up most of the money Josi had taken from the bank before leaving Hendre Ddu, and Miriam’s few things which he had fetched from Rhydfelen the previous day.

  The haulier, old Robin Jones, had done several odd jobs for Josi in the past and had been glad to help him with the move. He seemed to regard Josi and Miriam’s setting out together as the most unremarkable thing in the world. ‘Not many would want to do this for me, Robin bach,’ Josi had said the previous night.

  ‘Why ever not, mun, it’s only a step. I’ve been to England before now,’ he’d said, refusing to recognize the nature of Josi’s thanks.

  Robin knew every farm, hamlet and pub on the way and kept up a lively flow of anecdotes about the more interesting of the inhabitants. Here a schoolmaster, here a publican, here a farmer or a farmer’s wife had written a book or won a chair or found a bag of sovereigns or gone to the dogs. For most of the journey, he and Josi walked on in front to lighten the horses’ load.

  To Miriam, the journey was a highly emotional experience. She had long got used to the fact that she had taken another woman’s husband, but the fact that she was literally taking him away from his wife, his children and their home seemed to be hitting her for the first time. What right had she to do so? For love? Could love be made responsible for all the upheaval and the hurt? How could Josi bear it? How could he bear to leave a place where he’d been master for over twenty years for a place where he would be a servant? How could he bear to leave his birthplace? ‘That’s Cefn Hebog,’ she’d heard him tell Robin when they’d got a few miles outside Llanfryn. ‘Hard country up there,’ he’d said, a measure of pride in his voice. How could he walk with such an easy step, so complacently surveying the land he knew and loved and was leaving.

  They were really climbing now, the mist-white river far below, wooded hills on each side of them, pink morning light on gnarled oak and ash. At last the mountain plateau where they could see half of Wales, it seemed, spread out before them; round-backed Plynlymon to the North, the ghost of Cader Idris beyond, Prescelly and the Brecon Beacons to the South and East.

  ‘Well, isn’t it a grand day,’ Josi said, walking back a step or two to join her. ‘We’re going down as far as the Drovers Arms before we stop for breakfast. To get some shade for the horses. Look around you now. Isn’t it like the top of the world?’

  But Miriam was in despair. What right had she to find comfort in the beauty of a summer morning? ‘ “And Branwen looked on Ireland and the Island of the Mighty, what she might see of them”,’ she said at last, almost in a whisper. ‘ “Two good islands have been laid waste because of me. She heaved a great sigh and straightway broke her heart”.’

  ‘That’s from the Mabinogion,’ she told Josi after a moment or two.

  ‘I know it,’ he said. ‘Had a sweetheart once, a school-mistress. Very elevating.’

  ‘What became of her?’ Miriam asked. But Josi had returned to Robin and the horses.

  ‘Miriam here, had a lad from the Dolau starting school a while back. Just four years old. She was sitting at his side, showing him a picture-book of animals, getting him to name them for her, breaking him in, you might say. They come to a picture of a sheep; little fellow looks at it and hesitates. We’ve got a slow one here, she thinks. “Dammo,” he said after a bit, “you’ve got me puzzling now. Is it a Clun Forest or a Suffolk? Not one of ours, anyhow.” ’

  The baby slept.

  It was ten o’clock when they halted. The sun was beginning to get hot, larks hung in the sky, when one stopped singing and descended, another began
on the long thrilling ascent so that the song seemed endless. The sky was a golden haze.

  They sat amongst buttercups and purple vetch and long slender grasses the colour of young apples, and ate bread and cheese and drank home-brewed from a stone jar.

  Afterwards, the men took oats to the horses and Miriam nursed the baby. She took off her little sticky garments to let her feel the sun; it was the first time she had been out-of-doors; she waved her small arms about and kicked and lunged, drowning in a sea of air.

  Josi came back alone, Robin bach was smoking his pipe and keeping out of their way for five minutes.

  ‘You look like a gipsy with that scarf over your head and the wagon behind you,’ Josi said.

  Miriam shivered in the warmth of the morning. It was all too much for her. The tender breeze, the lovely grass; every blade was beautiful, every tiny flower. She picked a wild rose, so delicate its colour, shape and smell that she felt overwhelmed. What was its purpose? She crushed it in her hand. Only to ensure the future of the species, only to keep going the wheel of the seasons. It was heart-rending.

  ‘What’s it for, all this beauty?’ she asked Josi.

  ‘It’s for the glory of God,’ he said simply.

  Miriam tossed her head, not angrily but sadly. ‘Listen to that greenfinch calling to its mate in the hawthorn. Such tenderness. Not even a song, just a little, “Here I am”, like you used to tap on my window. And when the fledglings are flown, they’ll go their own ways again. Everything, and all of us, betrayed by the power of the mating drive. It’s the cruelty of God, if you ask me.’

  ‘That too,’ Josi said. ‘You can’t separate the one from the other. Dark and light, light and shade, glory and cruelty; that’s how it is. You mustn’t fight it. It’s no use.’

  She looked at him with awe. To Josi everything was straight-forward. If only I could put my weight on the earth squarely as he does, she thought; make living as simple as breathing in and out. She put her hand on his chest, at the top, where his shirt was open.