A Small Country

by Siân James

  He got stuck. He didn’t care to bring seventeen acres of hard land and a small stone cottage into the reckoning, and he couldn’t bring himself to lie about the state of his heart.

  ‘But on the other hand, it would suit me very well,’ he continued abruptly. And he nodded to her and smiled, and hurried from the room. He knew she would accept him.

  And sure enough, she stood before him next morning blushed, and said, ‘My parents and I thank you and we would like to accept your offer.’

  It was what he had expected and wished for, but his heart lurched and his throat burned.

  Before he could say anything, though, Mari-Elen found them – Lowri never managed to escape from her for long. She ran to them; she still hadn’t quite mastered the trick of walking, she ran to them, and fell at their feet.

  ‘Will you come to live with me in Cefn Hebog, sweetheart?’ Josi asked her, swinging her up into his arms. She smiled, jigging herself up and down to show her eagerness, then collapsed on his chest, her lips on his face.

  ‘She’s a lot more enthusiastic than you are,’ he told Lowri. ‘Now, while there’s no one in the kitchen, I think I’ll have a kiss from you as well.’

  ‘Oh, no.’

  He pulled her towards him but she was too shy to kiss him. All the same, she laughed and coloured and the distance between them was bridged.

  For days Lowri was afraid to tell Miss Rees her news, afraid of her anger or scorn. Finally, Josi told her, and to Lowri’s surprise she seemed to have expected it and to think it a good idea.

  She did not, however, waste any time on congratulations.

  ‘Now, Lowri,’ she said as soon as Josi had left the kitchen. ‘The thing I always want you to put first is your duty to Mari-Elen. We won’t talk about her mother; we never have done, and I’m not going to start now, but I know you’ll understand me when I say you must bring the child up with even more than the usual care, to go to chapel and Sunday school and to learn her verses and to love God above everything. Mr Evans is a good religious man at heart, and if you are strong in your faith he will follow your example. Remember that Mari-Elen is half-sister to Mr Tom and Miss Catrin and you must bring her up accordingly. Caring for the animals on the clos and the dairy work and the cleaning are what most farmers’ wives put first, their children fending for themselves quite early, but you mustn’t ever let Mari-Elen go about in rough old clothes and dirty boots, or let her hang about for her meals. Remember that I’m here to help you and I will always have a bit put by for her because she is Mr Tom’s half-sister, so it’s only right and proper she should have everything she needs. You will be a good housewife, I know, because you’ve been trained to do things right. Many times you’ve said to yourself, that old Miss Rees, but you’ll live to thank her, indeed you will. Some girls think that getting married is dressing up in fancy clothes and stopping for a cup of tea at three o’clock; it’s those who get miserable when they wake up to the reality. You have more sense than that. Remember the proverb which is at the back of every tidy wife: a change is as good as a rest. When you’ve been carting out after the cows, now, or scrubbing the dairy, then it’s a rest to do some baking or some ironing, but if you’re foolish enough to sit idle with your hands in your lap, you won’t catch up with yourself all week. But you’ll be all right, I’m sure of it. Even your bread is much better than most girls’, and though we all know that a man cannot live on bread alone, no man can live on shop bread even if it’s brought round to your door twice a week, which it won’t be up there in Cefn Hebog. Another thing, Lowri, while I remember....’

  At the wedding service in Lowri’s chapel, the squat little brown chapel he had gone to as a boy, Josi hadn’t been able to keep his mind off Miriam. She had scorned Christian wedlock, and to him, too, the words seemed empty and faintly ridiculous. He looked at Lowri at his side, a stranger in a new light-coloured dress and blue Sunday hat. When the minister elicited her promise to love, honour and obey, Josi wanted to apologise to her. Who was he that she should obey him, let alone honour, let alone love.

  ‘That was a lot of old nonsense, wasn’t it,’ he whispered to her as soon as he could, squeezing her arm. But her eyes were full of tears. Dear God, he thought with terror, she’s in love with me, is it possible? I’m old enough to be her father and I’ve hardly considered her at all.

  For the rest of the day, while they were at her mother’s, he stayed near her, glancing at her from time to time as though he were an ordinary bridegroom, trying to eat what was put in front of him, smiling when that seemed necessary.

  Lowri’s sisters had all come home for the wedding, there were four girls between Lowri and Megan, the youngest. Lowri’s mother had been in school with Josi. Once plump and pretty, she was now thin and faded with darting, uneasy eyes. She kept on saying how much she was looking forward to a grandson after all the girls she’d had. Her husband was considered one of the most intelligent men in the area; he had been destined for the ministry, but had had to leave college to get married. He was the foreman in the woollen mill at Henblas. They were a respected, hard-working couple.

  Josi wondered why they had let Lowri marry him; it seemed a careless way to dispose of a first-born whom they should have guarded and cherished.

  Miss Rees was the guest of honour, and apart from Josi himself and possibly Lowri seemed the only one less than happy. She was probably thinking of the other wedding almost twenty-five years before, the grand reception at the Grosvenor Hotel afterwards, the other bride. He and Miss Rees were pre-occupied with ghosts. Poor Lowri’s troubles were at least of flesh and blood. I’m frightened as well as you, he wanted to tell her. Of minutes that are black with pain, nights that seem endless, regrets that squeeze at the heart. Miriam.

  He took Lowri’s hand and patted it. He touched the ring on her finger.

  ‘You two can go now,’ Lowri’s mother said. Josi wondered if she was jealous of her daughter, she seemed so intent to embarrass her. Plenty of women had wanted him, perhaps she had. He looked at her coldly.

  ‘Is Sali keeping Mari-Elen tonight?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course not. She’s coming with us. She doesn’t like Sali.’ Josi tightened his grip on Lowri’s hand. She was a good girl.

  ‘A night or two wouldn’t make any difference.’

  ‘Yes, they would. She’s only one and a half.’

  Josi left Lowri and her mother together. ‘What are you thinking about, Miss Rees?’ he asked the old woman. He found a chair by her side.

  ‘I’m thinking how fond I am of you.’ she said.

  ‘You’re not jealous of me any more. That’s what it is.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right. You see, I never thought you were good enough for her. Now that I see you in your own light, I like you.’

  ‘Well, I’m Mr Tom’s father anyway, so I’ve had my uses.’

  Her laugh rang out. It was a long time since he had heard it and it cheered him.

  Lowri’s grandfather sat by the fire, squat and black and unsmiling. His daughter-in-law had put him in his chapel coat that morning and polished his face with a piece of flannel. He was still angry. He spat into the fire from time to time. Josi took over the tin of tobacco he’d brought for him. At Lowri’s request.

  ‘Are you going to the war?’ the old man asked, puzzled by the gift.

  ‘Too old, man,’ Josi said.

  ‘Too old?’ The old man cleared his throat noisily.

  ‘You think I should fight, do you?’ Josi asked, amiably.

  ‘For the bloody English. No.’ The little man spat squarely into the flames. ‘They wanted me to fight once; against the Russians, I think, or the Turks. Not I. My family fight against the bloody English, not for them. My father burnt his ricks in the tithe war, ready to starve rather than pay the tithes.’

  ‘It was the church you were fighting then.’

  ‘Same thing, church and state. My grandfather was one of ’Becca’s maidens in the hungry forties. They were fighters if you like. Pul
led down all the bloody toll gates. Dressed as ladies, but it couldn’t hide their men’s hearts. Toll gates. Bloody English.’

  ‘Lloyd-George is a good little man to my way of thinking,’ Josi said peaceably, ‘and he’s one of the English now.’

  ‘Turn-coat from the North.’

  ‘Good little man to my way of thinking,’ Josi said again. ‘Not my business, though. Not today.’

  The old man spun round to face him, the light of understanding in his eyes at last.

  ‘You’re the bridegroom, are you?’

  ‘Aye,’ Josi said. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You old ram.’

  ‘Will we tell her about Miriam later on?’ Lowri had asked Josi as they’d tucked Mari-Elen up in her new bedroom that night. She was the only one who had ever mentioned Miriam in his presence.

  And hearing her name spoken, after so long a silence, had a strange effect on him. ‘No,’ he’d said, ‘I don’t think it will be necessary. It would only confuse her.’

  He had felt the pain engulfing him again, but when it had eased a little he had taken Lowri to the other bedroom and closed the door, and the encounter he had only been able to think about with dread was accomplished with some love, some passion.

  She was a sweet, simple girl, still calling him Mr Evans most of the time. She was distantly related to him, her mother was his second cousin, she had the same pretty colouring as the women in his family.

  He would be good to her, see that she never had to work too hard. He would have no qualms about taking whatever he wanted from Hendre Ddu. He still regarded himself as the boss there; he’d take his wages in kind. He certainly didn’t intend to kill himself or have Lowri slave away to make Cefn Hebog self-sufficient.

  Tom had written to say that if he was killed in the war, Hendre Ddu would be his. But he didn’t intend to take it, come what may. If the worst happened, he would let Catrin have it. She and Andrews could live there and let Jâms Llethre and Davy Prosser manage the farm between them. He was sorry that Catrin intended marrying Doctor Andrews, though he had nothing tangible against him. Perhaps she loved him, though he thought it more likely that she didn’t. Some people could do without love, he supposed. Perhaps he could have done without it if Miriam hadn’t come into his life with her acorn-coloured eyes and skin, and her spirit like steel. ‘Like the white blossom on the black thorn,’ he sang softly, longing for her.

  Lowri was unused to sleeping alone. At Hendre Ddu she had slept with Sali and Megan; with Mari-Elen in her cot on the far side of the room; at home she had always slept with at least three of her five sisters. She wished Mari-Elen would wake and cry so that she could fetch her; she was as soft and warm as a puppy. She mustn’t fetch her, though, in case Josi came back to bed.

  ‘Your breasts are lovely,’ he had said earlier, ‘lovely. You mustn’t be shy with me, Lowri. I expect you’ll have a baby yourself quite soon. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she had said. ‘I’d like that. Yes.’

  But what she really longed for was the night he would turn to her and sleep by her side instead of going up to the loft where he had slept as a boy and walking about there until she had fallen asleep. But she knew she mustn’t expect it all at once. She had often seen Miriam Lewis, Rhydfelen, and had thought her beautiful. Not in the same way as Miss Catrin, who turned her beauty on you like a lamp, but in a secret way you could almost miss, a way you could hardly describe; the silence after a blackbird’s song, a blue coil of smoke in the woods, the faint scent of flowers in the night. She didn’t suppose a man could forget a woman like that in a hurry; she would be in his bones.

  So she sighed as she looked at the dipping moon through the small, uncurtained window. Nothing is ever perfect, she said to herself. Nothing is ever quite perfect. Miss Catrin was going to marry Doctor Andrews, she said, but her eyes were empty and hard. I’m the lucky one it seems to me, she told herself. It’s as though I’ve been chosen, somehow.

  The white light of the moon ennobled her plain, good-natured face. She put her hand across the empty space at her side and smiled and fell asleep.

  seren is the book imprint of Poetry Wales Press Ltd Wyndham Street, Bridgend, Wales

  © Siân James, 1979, 1999

  Introduction © Stan Barstow, 1999

  First published in 1979

  This edition published in 1999

  ISBN 978-1-78172-121-6

  A CIP record for this title is available from

  the British Library

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted at any time or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright holder.

  The publisher works with the financial assistance of the Arts Council of Wales