Dead Man's Embers

by Mari Strachan

  Behind her, Davey mutters. Then he screams, ‘Down, Ben, keep your head down’, and dives to the floor. It is to do with Ben every time, Non thinks, that much I know, but I feel as if I am circling the meaning without finding my way any nearer to its core.

  Davey’s eyes are closed and he seems to have fallen asleep. She is never there at the start of his attacks but she is never there at the end either; she does not know what his reaction is to finding himself lying under the table. Does it not puzzle him? It is not something she can ask him while the chill of that look is so fresh in her heart. She walks out through the back door, following Herman’s affronted footsteps, and along the path to the far end of the garden and her bad-tempered hens.

  11

  On Wednesday, when they arrive outside a small terraced house in one of Portmadoc’s back streets at that awkward time just before dinner, Non’s first thought is, Whatever am I doing here? The house has a large number thirty painted on the door but the street’s nameplate is overgrown with ivy and impossible to read. It is a wonder they have arrived here at all. Catherine Davies took them in all directions to throw anyone who might be watching off the scent because she was so worried that someone would find out that she was in Port to consult a medium. In a séance. It is hard to believe that such a creature exists in Port, it is such a practical sort of place, full of shops and businesses and ships of all shapes and sizes coming and going in the harbour. Non wonders how Mrs Davies found out about the event, it is hardly the kind of service that is advertised in the Cambrian News. Go with her, Davey had said yesterday, she cannot go on her own, God knows what might happen to her. Go with her and keep an eye on her.

  She knows that Catherine Davies’s illness may be affecting what she thinks and says, so she had, dutifully – there is that word again – trotted down with her mother-in-law to catch the mid-morning train to Port, only to find on the way that Catherine was pretending that the visit to the medium was for the sake of poor Elsie Thomas, and that she had persuaded Elsie that she would find out exactly what happened to her Benjamin if she went along. So, when they reached the station, there was Elsie, sweltering in her best dress made of winter-weight black wool, waiting for them.

  Their first knock on the door of Number Thirty has produced no result.

  ‘Knock harder, Rhiannon,’ Catherine Davies says. She prods Non with her parasol, black in respect to Billy. ‘I wrote a week ago – we are expected.’

  Expected! So this has been arranged, letters through the post back and forth, time taken. This has been on the knitting needles for some time. Non knocks sharply on the door. She does not know anything good about mediums nor these meetings they hold with the dead, these séances. She knows they are all the rage among the well-to-do and the gullible and the heartbroken people left behind without hope by the victims of the War, people who find it difficult to believe their husbands and sons and brothers are dead when they have no bodies to bury and grieve over. She knows they take advantage of desperate people like Elsie.

  The door creaks open. The hinges need a drop of oil – Davey would not have let them get into that state – but Non supposes it is intended to add to the atmosphere. A tiny girl dressed from head to foot in a white filmy costume, as if she has just arrived from the land of the fairy people, gestures them to enter without saying a word. Non wonders if she has the same problem as Osian, but the child allows Elsie Thomas to pat her on the head without screeching the way Osian would have done. The door creaks again as it is closed behind them, and Non finds herself standing much too close to her mother-in-law and an Elsie pungent with sweat inside a narrow hallway lit only by daylight filtering through the fanlight and a mottled mirror which reflects it. She is disconcerted to find that she has no reflection in the mirror, though she can see both Catherine Davies and Elsie, who are behind her – but then she glimpses herself with relief when she moves after the child who now seems to have vanished into the bowels of what had promised to be an ordinary terraced house. It is unsettling; the muggy, fusty smell of a house left unaired for a long time is stifling. Non’s heartbeat is erratic today as it is. She is aware of it. No one should be aware of her heart beating, she thinks, it makes one feel too mortal. The days when she is not aware of the beat of her heart are Non’s good days.

  A door to their left swings open, silently this time, and a disembodied voice cries out. ‘Enter,’ it says in English, though the accent is so strange here in this house in Port’s back streets that Non cannot immediately place it.

  Catherine Davies pushes her to enter the room first. Non stumbles into a dark void before her eyes become accustomed to the even dimmer light in this room. She can hear the squeak of Elsie Thomas’s asthmatic breath at her shoulder. She must make her some oil of thyme, surely Davey can’t object to that. And some herbs would freshen this room considerably; fresh air would be even better.

  ‘Welcome,’ the sonorous voice says. ‘You are Mrs Davies?’

  Non is about to agree in amazement that she is indeed Mrs Davies when it occurs to her that she is not the Mrs Davies the medium, if this is the medium, is expecting. She stands aside to let Catherine Davies move forward.

  ‘I am Mrs Davies,’ stresses her mother-in-law as if Non has no claim to the name at all. ‘It is I who wrote to you on behalf of my dear friend here who lost her only son in the cruel fields of Flanders and would like to know that he did not suffer.’

  Non is ashamed of the words that enter her mind to describe her mother-in-law.

  ‘I want him come home,’ Elsie says in her broken English. ‘Is all I want.’

  ‘Please,’ the woman says, ‘be seated around this table with me.’

  Non can barely see the table. She takes hold of Elsie’s hand and leads her to sit so that she, Non, is between Elsie and the medium. Catherine Davies is left to take the remaining chair.

  ‘I am Madame Leblanc,’ the medium says. ‘And I am so very familiar with the fields of Flanders and those dear departed who lie beneath them.’

  Madame Leblanc! What is a Frenchwoman doing in Port? Has she sailed in on one of the ships?

  Mrs Davies is having trouble with her chair, though Elsie is seated with her hands clasped together in front of her on the table and her eyes closed looking for all the world as if she is an old hand at this. Non smiles at the thought of the instructions Elsie was given by Catherine Davies during the train journey detailing exactly how she ought to behave once they reached the house.

  ‘Move your chair nearer to Non’s, Elsie,’ Catherine Davies says, pushing Elsie in Non’s direction.

  Elsie does as she is told, as always, and Mrs Davies yanks her chair from beneath the table and manages to sit down. Her bulk must make life difficult for her, especially in this weather. Non can feel sweat running in rivulets down the nape of her neck and between her breasts, but there is little she can do about it. Her heart seems to be drumming beneath her ribcage.

  ‘Please hold the hand of the person next to you. We must form a closed circle. And please – do not speak.’ Madame Leblanc’s accent is more pronounced now. She makes fluttering gestures with her hands, and calls out ‘Esmé, ma chérie.’ The child appears; she draws a curtain of muslin over the doorway, then vanishes into the darkness behind Elsie Thomas.

  ‘My spirit guide will join our circle to open the door for us into the world beyond. But she will not show herself.’

  Elsie tightens her fingers on Non’s hand. Non is furious with Catherine Davies for using Elsie this way and with herself for going along with it once she realised what was happening. They sit in silence for what seems an interminable time. She should get up from her chair and stop the nonsense now, but she doesn’t. What am I afraid of, she wonders, or am I just so heavy with tiredness that I can’t make the effort?

  Madame stirs and announces that someone is there with them. Non experiences a frisson of fear and feels her own fingers tightening on those of Elsie and the medium.

  ‘Billy,’ Catherine Davies cri
es, and Non can hear the longing in her voice. ‘Oh, Billy, speak to me.’

  ‘No, not Billy,’ Madame says. ‘Please . . . quiet . . .’ Her breathing becomes slow and heavy. ‘But a B, yes – young – a boy. A child, yet not a child? Who are you?’

  Ben Bach? Surely not. This is nonsense, it must be nonsense. Has the room become colder? Non shivers.

  ‘It’s Benjamin,’ Catherine Davies says, ‘it’s Ben, Elsie. Talk to him. Ask him if my Billy’s there.’

  Elsie’s breathing becomes squeakier. Does she understand what is going on here?

  ‘Ben Bach,’ she says, her breath wheezing from her lungs.

  Madame slumps in her chair, sliding down on the seat, her chin tucked into her chest. Non thinks, She is a good actress, she is behaving just as I would expect a medium to behave. Will there be a spirit made of smoke appearing in a moment? Madame jerks Non and Catherine towards her as she draws her hands in to her chest.

  In the gloom Non sees Elsie’s moonface turn towards her and she squeezes her hand as reassuringly as she can given that she herself does not know what is happening. Elsie squeezes back. Elsie is not as silly as Catherine Davies, whatever Maggie Ellis may think.

  Non’s mouth turns dry when Madame lifts her head, her eyes staring, the whites gleaming in the dark room, her mouth open wide. Non’s heart thuds in her breast and she hears Elsie struggle to catch her breath as harsh noises come from Madame’s mouth, and then a voice, not Madame’s voice with its French accent, but a boy’s voice calling in Welsh, ‘Mam, Mam. Where am I, Mam?’

  Elsie struggles to stand up. ‘Ben,’ she calls. ‘Ben Bach, you stay where you are.’

  Catherine Davies slips sideways off her chair, falling on the floor like a sack of potatoes. Esmé appears from the darkness at the edges of the room and lights a lamp. As she rises to help her mother-in-law, Non scrabbles in her bag for the oil of thyme she always carries in case Osian has one of his rare breathless attacks, pulls out the stopper and hands the bottle to Elsie to sniff, then turns to Catherine Davies to see the child wave a singeing feather under her nose in an attempt to revive her. Just as Non begins to fear that it is something worse than a faint, Catherine starts to cough and moan.

  How on earth is she going to get the pair of them home? She does not know anyone in Port, she will have to hire a cart to get them to the station, she will need help to lift Catherine Davies. And what else? At least Elsie’s breathing has eased with the thyme. She has not counted on Catherine Davies’s sense of humiliation and shame. As her mother-in-law comes out of her swoon, coughing and spluttering at the smell and smoke from the feather, she looks at Non and says hoarsely, ‘Not a word of this to anyone, Rhiannon. Is that clear?’

  And during all this, Non realises, Madame has not stirred from her chair where she sits looking as astounded as Non feels at her powers to contact the dead.

  12

  Every single morning this last week she has sat in the same chair to watch Davey. And she has learnt nothing. Every morning he has re-enacted the same incident, watching and waiting, finding the strain intolerable to judge from the twitching of his shoulders and the way his finger squeezed ever tighter on his rifle’s trigger, until an attack on his position seemed to take place and he would fall flat onto the flagstones, yelling at Ben to do the same.

  Always Ben, Non thinks. She shivers slightly, gooseflesh rising on her arms despite the heat, at the memory of Wednesday’s debacle at the séance. Catherine Davies would not speak of it on the way home and Elsie would not stop speaking of it. Non does not want to think of it, it was nonsense, she is sure, and yet . . . and yet . . .

  This morning, the large mound of dirty washing in the basket by the door, which she sorted out last night ready for Lizzie German, is what is drawing Davey’s attention. She wonders what it is he sees there in the innocuous pile of bedding and clothing. She feels too tired to even think of the day’s work ahead of her; she has had to increase the intake of her tincture by several drops. Her eyes close. Just for a moment, she thinks. There is no point in wishing the War had never happened, but she does wish it fervently sometimes. She wishes that when she opens her eyes she will find it has all been a terrible dream. But no, here is Davey beneath the table in the throes of his own terrible dream.

  It had been a strange time for them all who were left behind, as if they had gone to sleep one night and found themselves overtaken by a nightmare from which they could not wake. Many families found it difficult to manage without their menfolk – though Non knows of two women who were glad of the respite from the beatings their husbands regularly administered – but Non supposes she was one of the luckier ones. She was lucky that the school wanted her back, having lost so many of its male teachers to the War. She was lucky that Lizzie German was able to look after Osian for her. By then, Lizzie’s Herman had been taken away, and Lizzie was struggling on her own to bring up three small grandchildren whose parents had both died of tuberculosis. Lizzie had been glad of the money Non paid her. And I was lucky, Non thinks, to have old William Davies as an ally. He had protected her from the worst of Catherine Davies’s machinations, and he had kept Billy out of her way. She was lucky, too, that she had all the skills with herbs her father taught her – unused for years, but easily recalled and practised again. Her remedies were popular, women came to her rather than to Dr Jones or Williams the Pharmacist – she does not suppose she was very popular with those two. She wonders, now, if it was one of them who complained to Davey – almost the moment he returned – about her activities, and persuaded him to stop her helping anyone.

  They managed, she thinks, somehow most of the women managed, everyone helping one another. How they all waited for the postman to come on his rounds – in those days it had been one-legged old Peg. Someone would always have news, though the postal service from the battlefields was erratic. There would be nothing from Davey for weeks and then a bundle of half a dozen letters and cards would arrive. He was not the best of letter-writers, but she had expected a little love to appear in his words. Maybe it was because for months he had to write in English to her, and the writing appeared stilted and formal, like that of a stranger. She would have been glad even of those, she thinks, when his letters became less and less frequent and more and more distant.

  A sound startles her from her reverie. Herman is rapping on the window pane with his beak. She has had to leave the window and door closed in the early mornings since Herman’s display last week. Now, the bird’s noise disturbs Davey who crawls to the side of the table nearest to the door and sits in a huddle, staring at the wash basket. He lays his imaginary rifle carefully on the ground at his side and cups both his hands over his eyes. Non edges forward on her seat; she has not seen him do this before. Davey lets his hands drop to his sides, a helpless gesture, and begins to rock slightly back and forth, his eyes closed.

  Was that when the worm had entered the bud, when she thought Davey no longer cared even to write to her? She would not have known if he were alive or dead, she thinks, if it had not been for the occasional mention of his name in other men’s letters home. She had felt the cruelty of that keenly. But as she watches him rock and rock she knows that she had had no notion of what he had been enduring. Who could think of home and the people they loved when they were experiencing the kinds of horrors that Davey was suffering here every morning? She wishes she had known, but she had not.

  And because she had not, she had tried not to think of him. She had tried to assuage her loneliness and longing in ways other than looking ahead to how wonderful it would be when Davey came home again. She had begun to encourage attention from Owen, flirting shamelessly with him. She squirms on her chair at the embarrassment of it, a married woman behaving like a young girl looking for a husband. She knows she was not the only woman to behave in that way – some of the remedies she was asked to provide were proof of that – but that is no excuse, and neither is the knowledge that though she was foolish she did nothing improper. Her association
with Owen never went that far. It had been too easy to allow the monthly visit to Aberystwyth and Owen with her supplies of herbs for the War effort to become more frequent. She had liked Owen from the start, he was a knowledgeable herbalist, and interested in her stories about her father and his work. She had lent him her father’s herbal, and he had been impressed by it. She remembers now that she had felt a little sorry for him, too, there had been a sadness about him that moved her. He had been spared from the War because of his club foot, but he told Non that his family were Quakers and that he would have objected to fighting, anyway. I would have become an ambulance driver or a stretcher-bearer, he had told her. But he had not had the choice. Unlike Davey, she thinks now, Davey had to choose to leave all he loved to go and do his duty. She has not seen or been in contact with Owen since Davey returned, she had pushed away every thought of him – her guilty secret – until Gwydion spoke of meeting him. She should have been more gracious towards Owen, she thinks, he had never been anything other than kind to her. But she no longer remembers how she felt about Owen. Her feelings have been confused since the day Davey confessed his infidelity, and now there is Osian’s likeness to Davey to add to the confusion. She bows her head and closes her eyes. Maybe she should—

  A sudden noise startles her into opening her eyes. Davey is crawling out from beneath the table. She holds her breath for fear of disturbing him. He stands up straight, as if he is in a military parade, settles his rifle on his shoulder, aims it at the basket of dirty washing, squeezes the trigger and staggers back with the recoil, so that Non thinks he will fall over her in her chair. But Davey folds up and sinks to the ground in a heap, banging his forehead on the flagstones. Non leaps from her chair and crouches beside him. His eyes are shut, and his collapse continues slowly until he lies there, fast asleep. He will not want me here when he wakes, Non thinks. She takes a cushion from the fireside chair and lifts his head to slip the cushion beneath it.