Dead Man's Embers

by Mari Strachan

  She opens the back door, lifts out a flapping Herman with her foot as he tries to rush past her into the kitchen, turns around and begins to drag out over the threshold the basket of washing that set in motion whatever memory it was that Davey played out this morning. What was he doing, she wonders as she lugs the basket towards the area where she and Lizzie German wash the clothing every Monday. The way Davey stood and aimed his gun with such concentration had reminded her of something, and it comes to her now that Davey had settled his rifle on his shoulder and aimed and fired it just as she had seen the farmer do when he shot his mad horse all those years ago.

  13

  Lizzie heaves the wooden tub onto the table for Non to scrub the collars and cuffs in it. Non marvels at Lizzie: the woman is thin as a piece of string, and where her strength comes from is a mystery. She could not, she knows, manage without Lizzie German. And Lizzie is glad of the money she earns and the produce Non gives her from her garden every Monday, Lizzie’s own garden being so meagre. Non used to provide salves and decoctions to keep Lizzie’s grandchildren healthy; now she supplies the means and instructions for Lizzie to make her own.

  ‘I must remember to check the pockets in everything this week, Lizzie.’

  Non is still mortified at having last week handed Lizzie a shirt to pound in the big tub which had a bill meticulously made out by Davey, still in its crisp envelope, in the breast pocket. She delves into every shirt’s pocket before rubbing the collar and cuffs with the bar of yellow soap and scrubbing them against the corrugations of the washboard. Lizzie takes each shirt from her, drops it into the big tub from which steam rises lazily into the still morning air, and pounds it with the dolly.

  ‘Look,’ Non says. ‘In his apron pocket this time.’ She waves the envelope at Lizzie and pushes it into her own apron pocket. She gives the front of Davey’s apron a quick rub on the washboard and passes it to Lizzie, to add to the big tub’s load.

  Non is already sweltering and tired though it is barely mid-morning. Davey had left the kitchen by the time she had returned indoors from dragging the wash basket outside into the garden, and he and Wil have long left for the workshop. Gwydion has made his no doubt leisurely way down the hill to Wern Fawr and the library where his work is done, and Meg had to race, as usual, to catch the train to school, complaining as she went. And it is slow, warm work all the way to Barmouth, Non knows, each halt and station with children waiting to board, and then the long walk from the station to the school.

  The first time Non had to attend school was when she was living with Branwen. A little orphan! She remembers kicking the first person she heard calling her that. She had not been exaggerating when she told Gwydion that Branwen had taken in a child who had been left to run wild. When she went to school she found she knew more than the schoolteacher about some subjects and nothing at all about others, which did not make for happy schooldays. She had to spend her days learning tasks she hated: cooking and mending, scrubbing collars and cuffs, and starching loose collars the proper way so that they rubbed the neck of the wearer raw.

  The County School had been an improvement; the whole day was not spent on housekeeping tasks. But what she had learnt there was not to question, not to be curious, to learn by rote: the opposite of everything her father had taught her. When she matriculated – by a miracle, Branwen had said – she became a student teacher, thinking she would have the freedom to teach her pupils the way her father had taught her. By the time she was nineteen she had learnt that there was no place in the world for her father’s daughter.

  And now here she is, doing the cleaning, the washing, the scrubbing, the cooking, the mending in an endless cycle. Because she followed her heart’s desire. She thought that she had found her place in the world at Davey’s side, but she is no longer sure of that. Will she ever have the need or the time again for the many things her father taught her?

  With the back of her hand she sweeps back the strands of hair that are sticking to the sweat on her forehead, leaving a trail of soapsuds, and catches sight of Osian watching the bubbles that rise from the tub where Lizzie is still pounding with more energy than Non ever experiences. He studies the bubbles where his world is captured in rainbow colours, as if he is trying to work out how to climb inside one of them, the way he clambers into his own little world inside the coffins in Davey’s workshop. Lizzie’s dolly beats like a drumstick against the bottom and sides of the wooden tub. Non is certain the wood at the bottom is thinning more rapidly than it should; Lizzie does not know her own strength. She watches the bubbles with Osian as they float up into the air and tremble before vanishing with a pop. The vanishing makes her think of Wil.

  ‘Won’t be doing Wil’s workclothes much longer is what I hear, missus,’ Lizzie says.

  Non is often surprised by Lizzie’s prescience. She has more clairvoyance in her little finger than that Madame Leblanc had in her whole body. But she has to smile when she thinks again of the journey back from Port, with Catherine Davies in a deep sulk because the spirits had snubbed her when she had taken so much trouble to arrange the whole thing, and Elsie overjoyed that Ben Bach was with her again, repeating over and over that he would not leave now that she had told him to stay where he was. Non thinks, Never again. But she wonders about Madame, who was as shocked as any of them with what happened. The fright might make her give it all up, this fooling of gullible people.

  ‘He’s a good lad, young Wil. Quiet, like his father, but he won’t take no nonsense. He’ll make his way just fine, don’t you fret. O’ course, Meg takes after her mother.’

  ‘I never met Grace. I remember her being talked about when she died,’ Non says. She hands Lizzie a pair of Davey’s trousers after making sure there is nothing in the pockets. ‘What was she really like, Lizzie?’

  ‘Pretty,’ Lizzie says, ‘to look at.’

  Non thinks of the photograph of Grace hanging above the mantelpiece, the photographer’s name embossed on its corner – H Owen, Barmouth. Grace had never lived in this house, but Non had felt obliged to have her photograph there so that her children would not forget her; though Meg was too young when her mother died to have any memories and Wil’s memories are of being smacked for no apparent reason. Grace had been pretty, fair-haired and fine-boned, and so young. ‘I know,’ Non says, more sharply than she means to, ‘I’ve seen her photograph.’

  ‘Ah, but her character don’t show in a picture, do it?’ Lizzie says. ‘Bit too much like your mother-in-law for my liking. A troublemaker.’

  ‘Like Mrs Davies?’ Non is surprised. She has not heard this about Grace from anyone. ‘Grace wasn’t family, was she?’

  ‘No, but she were more like Mrs Davies than Bess and Katie ever were. Odd, isn’t it? Anything else to go in here, missus?’ Lizzie stops heaving the dolly up and down and leans back to ease her spine. ‘Yes, Mrs Davies met her match there. It were quite funny to watch them sometimes.’

  Another photograph that does not tell the truth, Non thinks. It shows someone angelic, soft and tender, who needs to be cosseted and looked after, unlike Non herself with her straight brown hair and brown skin and the dark brown eyes that Branwen used to complain looked right through people and made them feel queer. Davey’s little wren. What did he call Grace, a more rarefied bird altogether?

  ‘Right,’ Lizzie says. ‘Time to put this lot through the mangle.’ One at a time she draws the clothes out and hands them to Non who places them between the rollers and holds them there while Lizzie turns the handle, bending with it and pulling it up round again.

  The ease with which she does the work is beautiful to watch. ‘I’m sure I could do that bit, you know, Lizzie,’ Non says. The work does not seem so onerous, though she is aware that the heat makes her heart beat faster and she has had to increase the number of drops she takes of her tincture again. But she does feel so tired despite the help she receives from Lizzie.

  ‘Harder work than you think, missus,’ Lizzie says. ‘Just you keep pulling them out t�
��other side and put them in the rinsing tub.’

  They work silently until Lizzie says, ‘Them séances, missus, I went to one once. Thought I could talk to my Herman. Load o’ nonsense.’

  Non pulls a shirt from between the rollers and drops it into the rinsing water. ‘I didn’t know that,’ she says. ‘You’ve heard about me going with Mrs Davies and Elsie Thomas to that medium in Port last week, then?’

  ‘Elsie can’t keep anything to herself, can she?’ Lizzie begins to stir the clothes in the rinsing tub with a stout stick. ‘I’d have thought old Mrs Davies’d know that. No good doing anything with Elsie if you want it kept quiet.’ She gives her harsh cackle of a laugh, which reminds Non strongly of her own Herman.

  ‘I think she was too anxious to contact Billy to think about anything else,’ Non says. ‘I don’t know how I got her home, Lizzie. She took to her bed the minute we got back and hasn’t got out of it since.’

  ‘Not well, is she, though,’ Lizzie says.

  Non thinks, So I’m not the only one who can see that. What else does Lizzie see? ‘Well, losing Billy hasn’t helped,’ she says.

  ‘She weren’t well before that,’ Lizzie says. ‘As you know, missus.’ She gives her stick a final twirl through the water and drags the mangle round to make it easier to reach from the rinsing tub, and then she and Non begin the process of lifting and wringing the rinsed clothes and dropping them into the second tub of rinsing water.

  ‘I know,’ Non says. ‘It’s hard to remember it sometimes, though, Lizzie. And she never has got over Billy’s death.’

  ‘I don’t mean to be unkind,’ Lizzie says. ‘But you know, missus, not many people were that sorry to see the back of Billy. Sly and troublesome from the minute he were born, that boy. He were the one took after his mother, not them girls, or your Davey, bless his kind heart.’ She plunges the clothes in and out of the cold water. Her hands are raw-red and swollen, their permanent state, despite the soothing ointments Non has shown her how to make for them.

  With old William Davies’s help Non had managed to avoid Billy as much as possible throughout the long years of the War. She still cannot explain, even to herself, why she had disliked him, except that something about him repulsed her.

  ‘Mrs Davies wants his name to go on the war memorial,’ she says.

  Lizzie stops her work and looks at Non. ‘What?’

  ‘She reasons that the influenza came over from the trenches in France with the returning soldiers and so Billy is a victim of the War, too.’

  ‘I expect she blames your Davey,’ Lizzie says, turning back to the rinsing without waiting for an answer.

  ‘I think you know her better than I do, Lizzie.’

  ‘Known her a long, long time,’ Lizzie says. ‘Here, give me a hand with these now. We’ll soon have them through the mangle and spread out to dry.’ She stands upright and looks to the sky. ‘No danger of rain today.’ She gives her crow-like cackle. ‘So, she didn’t get to talk to Billy at this séance thing?’

  ‘What a nonsense it was, Lizzie, all that way in the heat, and what for?’

  ‘People want to know, don’t they, missus? War Office isn’t much use. All them lost boys out there. Stands to reason their mothers and wives and sisters want to know what happened to them, don’t it?’

  ‘Yes, I know that, Lizzie, I understand that, but the woman was so obviously a fake. How can people be so foolish?’ Belatedly, Non remembers that Lizzie has just told her that she went to a medium to make contact with Herman. The information about how he had died in the internment camp had been just as vague as some of the information that had come back about missing and dead soldiers. At least Davey is alive. Confusion fills her mind like a cloud as she thinks of Davey. She does not know what to think, what to believe. The only thing she is sure of is that she must do something, take some action to help him. If nothing else, she thinks, it is her duty. Her duty!

  ‘I don’t know, though.’ Lizzie shakes her head as she cranks the handle on the mangle, and Non pulls the shirts out the other side, then the aprons, and shakes them out as well as she can and spreads them on the clothesline to bake in the sun. She sighs at the thought of the ironing they will take. Oh, what she would give for just a puff of wind.

  ‘What about that voice that came out of her at the end, then?’ Lizzie bursts out. ‘Elsie told me it were her Ben Bach for sure.’

  Non hears the voice again and sees the look of shock on Madame’s face. She thinks, I don’t know what that was about. She pulls the last apron from between the rollers and shakes it out.

  Lizzie begins to wipe the rollers dry, picking stray bits of lint from them. ‘Ben Bach used to shout like that you know, missus, when he were little. Where am I, Mam, he’d go, used to make the other boys laugh. And old Elsie – well, young Elsie then – she used to run out the back door shouting, You stay where you are, Ben Bach, I’ll find you. Poor Elsie, she should never’ve had him, but there you are. No one ever knew who his father was, don’t think Elsie knew.’ Lizzie gives the mangle a final wipe and sighs. ‘Heart of gold, though, and she lived for that boy. Poor Elsie. At least she’s content now that he’s there, wherever it is, waiting for her to find him.’

  14

  It is too hot to build up the fire but Non has to do so this morning to heat the smoothing irons. The pile of clothing is back in the basket after yesterday’s wash – clean and dry now, and waiting to be ironed. She does not feel up to the work, she is tired – from the heat, from rising so early morning after morning with Davey, from the sheer effort of watching him suffer. Today he had gone through exactly the same scene as he had yesterday: crawled from under the table, stood up ramrod straight, and aimed and shot at someone or something. Whatever Davey was doing, she thinks, was not done in the heat of battle, it was too deliberate. And surely if he had been aiming at a rabbit or bird for the pot, or even at a horse, he would not be re-living it in this way. She does not understand, but she does know that the experience is exhausting Davey. He had left for work ashen-faced and so grim with tension that she wished he could go back to his bed and sleep for a day.

  She shovels coals onto the fire and takes off her coarse apron, giving it a shake as she turns to hang it from the back of the door. The rustle in its pocket reminds her of the bill she stuffed into it yesterday, and she takes the envelope out to put it aside for Davey. She glances at it to see who it is for and sees that it is addressed to Davey, at the workshop. The handwriting is delicate, done with a fine nib and pale ink, the tops and tails of the letters curving and curling. She thinks, Someone has an artistic clerk to send out their bills. Then she notices the postmark. She looks at the envelope for a long time, the fire and her ironing forgotten. Should she see what it is? An envelope postmarked London may hold a clue. And she will be looking for Davey’s sake. She takes out the single sheet of paper inside the neatly cut envelope and reads the words written on it in the beautiful and obviously feminine writing. She knows the name at the end of the letter too well. Angela.

  She lays the letter face down on the table and stares out into the garden through the open door. The hens cluck disconsolately, the bees drone, Herman stands on the threshold with his head on one side and watches her with his bright brown eyes for a while, then flies away. She picks up the sheet of paper and re-reads what is written on it. It has not changed. Davey had told her he had betrayed her with this nurse, this Angela. But the letter says not. In no uncertain terms. She reads the letter once more. I never believed it, she thinks, I never believed Davey could do such a thing. The room revolves around her, faster and faster. She bends forward with her head between her knees until she feels steady. The letter has scrunched in her hand; she smoothes it flat. It must be true, she thinks, it feels true. But . . . Davey has made us live for more than two years as if he had done this thing. Why? Why did he invent such a story? It has made us so unhappy. And yet again, she remembers, there is Osian . . .

  The dying fire sighs in the grate and galvanises
her into action. She shovels more coal on the embers and blows them alight with the bellows. She sets her smoothing irons to heat. The letter has turned everything on its head, but the ironing has to be done. So, she scatters drops of water onto the dry and wrinkled shirts and aprons and trousers and handkerchiefs and blouses and skirts and underclothes from the previous day’s wash and rolls them tight for the dampness to spread through them evenly. Then she takes her first iron from the fire and cleans it and begins to iron the damp articles – on which the words of Angela’s letter seem to be imprinted – until they are free of their wrinkles and creases, then hangs them on the pulley above the range to air. When her iron becomes too cool she swaps it for the hot one waiting on the range, and by the time Osian comes home from school she has ironed all that needs ironing. She is tired, hot, hungry, and still puzzled – she is no nearer the answer to the mystery that the letter presents than she was when she began the ironing.

  She prepares bread and cheese for herself and Osian to eat. ‘We’ll go to meet Tada and Wil from the workshop,’ she tells him. Osian likes being in the workshop amid the sawdust and the scents of the wood – though it is difficult to tell for sure – and she longs to ask Davey about the letter.

  ‘We’ve come to visit you, Osian and I, and to walk you home,’ Non says as she walks in through the workshop door. Osian immediately vanishes into one of the coffins lining the back wall. Davey stops what he is doing and looks towards her, not at her but at something through and beyond her.