Dead Man's Embers

by Mari Strachan

  ‘Wil’s gone down to the station to meet an order off the five o’clock train,’ he says. ‘And I’m very busy, Non, can’t stop. Did you hear old Evan Williams died? Got to get the coffin made today, in oak, none of the ones at the back will do. Pity the family didn’t care about him as much when he was alive. Funeral tomorrow, because of the weather.’

  ‘No, I didn’t hear,’ Non says. ‘But I’ve been ironing all day. I haven’t seen anyone to talk to.’

  ‘They found him first thing,’ Davey says. ‘Been dead since Sunday night they think. Flies busy already. State he’s in we can’t leave the coffin open.’

  Non knows the man’s daughter, knows things about Evan Williams that Davey won’t know; knows he was unkind, a bully, violent sometimes, not a man his daughter willingly went to visit. Maybe she wants to make sure he is well nailed down in a sturdy oak coffin.

  The letter rustles in her skirt pocket as she turns around to look out of the door. She has read the words so many times that they whirl in her mind. And she has written down the return address in case Davey wants the letter back.

  She had hoped Wil would take Osian off with him to the back of the workshop somewhere, as he usually did when they went there, and keep a watch over him so that she could talk to Davey.

  But Wil is not here and Davey is too busy.

  ‘What can we do to help?’ she asks.

  ‘I don’t need help,’ Davey says. ‘I just need to finish this coffin. Take the boy home. He’ll only hurt himself or damage something without Wil here to look after him. You know how he is.’

  Osian is clumsy in many ways, and yet, watching the intensity with which he examines the different kinds of wood stacked in the workshop, Non knows that he will be at home and safe here amid the aromatic shavings and dusty air. She runs her hand along a piece of wood Davey has shaped and sanded and laid aside while he makes the coffin for old Evan Williams. It is warm and smooth as flesh, a living thing that leaves a sweetness on her hand for her to inhale. Is this what Osian senses, a life in the wood that he awakens with his whittling knife and his dexterity?

  ‘This is lovely, Davey. What is it for?’

  Davey has his back to her, sanding one side of the coffin. The muscles clump in his shoulders. He is as overwound as a stilled clock. He did not use to be like this before the War. He has to hold himself tight to keep everything, whatever everything is, inside him. She thinks, He inherits that kind of control from Catherine Davies. But he never used to exercise it.

  ‘A cabinet to go into the library at Wern Fawr when your nephew’s finished sorting Davison’s books for him.’

  ‘What wood is it?’

  ‘Cherry. He had it brought here ’specially for me to work it. First time I’ve made anything with cherry. See what a fine colour it is, that brown, and how different the grain is compared to the pine and oak?’ Davey, too, strokes the wood, he lifts the piece to breathe in the scent of it. His shoulders relax. ‘It’ll polish to perfection, this.’ His love of his work cannot be disguised. She wishes he did not have to spend so much of his time making coffins, but he is employed by Albert Edwards, Carpenter & Undertaker, and has to do what is needed when it is needed.

  Osian has come out of his hiding place to wander the length of the workbench, stroking and sniffing at the coffin until Davey fetches a small block of light-coloured wood from the woodstore and gives it to him.

  ‘See what you can make out of that,’ he says. ‘It cuts like cheese, that wood.’

  Osian turns the block around, smoothing it with his hands, rubbing it on his cheek, licking it and studying the change of its colour.

  ‘What wood’s that? It’s got no grain at all.’ Non peers at the block.

  ‘Lime. It’s lime.’ Davey is impatient. He really does not want them here. But he is not happy in whatever false world he has made for himself, either.

  Osian has scurried back into one of the upright coffins and taken his knife from his pocket. He will not hurt himself, this is one thing he is not clumsy doing, this working with wood.

  ‘We’ll be off then, Davey,’ Non says. ‘But you should have some rest or you’ll be ill. I’ll make supper ready early tonight so that you can have a longer evening.’

  She will speak to him then, when he is rested. She will ask him about Angela. About Osian. About all the things that have remained hidden.

  ‘I’m off to a meeting tonight, straight from work,’ Davey says. ‘If we’re to have a proper Labour Party branch here, we have to get on with it. It’ll be election time before we know it. We have to be organised.’

  ‘Is it only for men, this meeting?’

  ‘Well, you can’t vote, can you?’ Davey says. ‘Not until you’re thirty.’

  ‘I can take an interest,’ Non says. ‘Nancy Graves is a socialist, you know. She’s too young to vote but it didn’t stop her being interested. We talked a lot about it when little Mary Pugh who helped her with the baby and the cleaning and cooking was poorly and I took her some herbs and—’

  ‘Socialist, is she?’ Davey interrupts. ‘D’you think she has any idea what it’s about, socialism? With all that money her family’s got? And that husband of hers with his poetry?’

  ‘Well, he fought in the War like everyone else,’ Non says, having a fondness for poetry.

  ‘You’d think, wouldn’t you—’ Davey bangs his hand down on the workbench, sending a cloud of sawdust into the air. ‘All his fuss about this place – his family here all these years – and when some of the local boys went to complain about conditions and ask him to stand up for them he sent them off with a flea in their ear. Someone told them he made fun of them after, made fun of the way they spoke. They never asked his help again—’ His shoulders slump. ‘You’ve no idea, Non!’

  How did they get here? What wrong turn did the conversation take?

  Davey notices the sawdust settling on the wood he was sanding when she came in and dusts it away, tense and furious again.

  Non looks round for Osian. ‘Come on,’ she says. ‘We’d better be getting home. Meg will be back soon, and Wil, and I expect they’ll both be starving, as usual. Bring your new piece of wood with you.’

  She really does have to do something. And now she has a way to do it. Dear Angela . . . She rehearses the letter she will write. My name is Rhiannon Davies. I hope you do not mind that I am writing to you like this, but . . .

  15

  She had not expected to be on the train to Port again so soon. She looks at Wil seated opposite her, his hair flattened to his head with his father’s haircream each side of his parting, wearing the Sunday clothes that she had pressed yesterday for the occasion. Leaving home and going to sea! But at least he will be coming home with her today, she will be the first to know whether the Master has taken him on, which she is certain he will do because Wil is such an excellent young man, sturdy and sensible beyond his age, anyone can see that and hear it when he speaks to them. And an outstanding reference from Albert Edwards in his pocket.

  And in her own pocket a missive of a different kind altogether, but one that may change her life every bit as much as Wil’s may soon change. She fingers the envelope. She thinks, Don’t be foolish, it is still there.

  She had kept her letter short in the end. Yesterday morning, when everyone else had left the house, she sat at the kitchen table with pen and paper and poured out her story onto the pages, so many of them, and when she finished she pushed them all into the fire and started again. She had written, Dear Angela, I am Davey Davies’s wife. I would like to meet you and talk to you about what happened to Davey during the War. He is such a changed man. I can come to London if you would be willing to see me. Yours sincerely, Rhiannon Davies, and blotted the words after every line so that they would not smudge.

  She took the greatest care with her handwriting, but though it was bold and clear and beautiful for its purpose, it was no match for the lovely hand in the letter to Davey, however hard she tried to curve and curl the letters. Sh
e puzzled for some time, while the unattended fire died back and the breakfast debris remained around her, about how to ask Angela to reply. The postmen knew everyone’s business if it came through the post; one of them might mention it to Davey if she received a letter from London.

  After she re-lit the fire and carried out her morning chores, she sat to sew a button on Wil’s best shirt for the following day, and it occurred to her that she could re-use one of the envelopes in her sewing box in which her dressmaking patterns had come from London. She chose the tidiest of them, which housed a shirt pattern, removed the old stamp and replaced it with two penny ha’penny ones just in case one was not sufficient for such a large envelope, wrote at the bottom of her letter to Angela, P.S. I enclose an envelope with stamps on it for your reply, and folded it all up together into a smaller envelope onto which she wrote the address at the top of Angela’s letter to Davey. This way, she thought, she should be able to receive a reply from Angela without arousing any curiosity whatsoever in anyone. No one paid attention to clothes patterns; that was women’s work.

  Now, as she listens to the train wheels singing their way over the rails, she thinks, I have become good at subterfuge, all that work with the herbs in the War, and Owen – I must put things to rest with Owen – and now this, which will probably lead to more subterfuge. It occurs to her again that she is, though in different ways, as changed from the Non that married Davey as Davey is from the man she had married. She wonders if Davey has remarked the change in her. She realises that Wil has spoken to her and she has not heard what he said.

  This is an important day for him and time to stop thinking about her own troubles. ‘Sorry, Wil,’ she says. ‘I was far away. What did you say?’

  ‘It was only, did Osian show you this little carving he gave me?’ Wil holds out his cupped hand in which rests a carved head and shoulders. ‘I think he thought I was going away today and not coming back. I did try to tell him but he just gave me his blank look. You know.’

  Non peers at the carving and with a jolt of recognition realises that she is seeing herself. She takes it from Wil’s palm. Osian has made it from the block of lime that Davey gave him. As she studies the head her own fierce eyes stare back at her – with no sign of the timidity she sometimes catches in them when she sees herself in the looking glass – the slight frown of concentration between them etched here for ever.

  ‘How does he do it, Non?’ Wil says. ‘Just look, it’s absolutely perfect, he’s got you just right – and, you know, it’s not just how you look, is it?’ He takes the head back from her and draws his forefinger down her carved face. ‘It’s how you are, somehow.’

  ‘He’s a bit of an enigma, little Osian, that’s for sure,’ Non says. ‘You know, you were only a year older than he is now when he came to us. He seems such a baby in many ways compared with the way you were. And yet he produces a thing like this. And there was that soldier he carved that upset you father. That was perfect, too.’

  ‘I didn’t get a look at that,’ Wil says. ‘He’s got dozens of crows he’s done – all Herman, I suppose – under his bed. I’ve never seen him make anything like this before.’ He turns the head around in his hands.

  ‘So you think this is the essence of Non Davies?’ She makes a melancholy face at him. ‘It scares me.’

  Wil laughs at her and stuffs the carving into his jacket pocket. ‘Maybe I can find him a good picture of a ship, and he could make a carving of that. It’s funny to think he’s never seen a ship, Non.’

  ‘It’s a bit hard to take him anywhere when he won’t let you hold on to him,’ Non says. ‘Imagine me with him in Barmouth or Port harbour trying to stop him falling into the water and him screaming his head off because I’m touching him!’

  Wil smiles at her, and she can see from his smile that he understands the difficulties she has with Osian. They are both silent as the train pulls into the station at Talsarnau with much screeching and juddering. Steam hisses from under the engine and coils along the platform past their open window, causing them to clamp their hands over their mouths and noses, and try not to breathe. Wil jumps from his seat and yanks at the leather window strap but the window stubbornly refuses to close. As the train sets off again he flops back into his seat, patting his hair where it has become ruffled by the battle with the window. She imagines him out on the ocean, the wind blowing his hair into tufts just like the ones he is trying to flatten.

  She wants to smooth his hair for him, the way she used to when he was much younger. ‘Why the sea, Wil? Why not farming or just staying with your father, or any other thing? You can’t even swim.’

  ‘I will come back and see you all, you know, Non. Especially you. I’ll miss you more than anyone.’ Wil blushes at his own words.

  ‘Oh, Wil,’ Non says, ‘you know I could never have managed to keep going all those years when your father was away if it wasn’t for you. You and your grandfather.’ It seems to her now that she must have placed a terrible burden on such a young boy.

  ‘You looked after me, Non,’ Wil says, ‘and you didn’t have to. You could have left me to live with Nain, same as Meg.’ He grimaces at Non who laughs at his expression.

  ‘I still don’t understand why you picked the sea,’ she says.

  ‘To see the world,’ Wil says. ‘No, well, I don’t really know, either, Non, but there was a job going and it sounded exciting – hard work, you know, but different to anything else I know about. And I’ve often wondered how people go on in other places, other countries . . .’

  ‘I hope you won’t be sea-sick,’ she says. Or homesick, she thinks. ‘And I can’t imagine you cooking,’ she adds, though she is sure he will do that as competently as he turns his hand to anything else.

  ‘I haven’t got the job yet, Non! I’ll find out a bit more today,’ he says. ‘I don’t think it’s cooking like you do, from what Eddie said. Anyway, I think I have to do lots of other things, too. I don’t mind what I do, really, so long as they take me on.’

  The trouble is, she thinks, I cannot bear to think about it, I cannot bear the thought of losing Wil, too. ‘Does Eddie know when the ship’s actually leaving?’ she asks.

  ‘When the repairs are done, he said, but he wasn’t sure how long they’d take. A week or two he thought. Maybe they’ll tell me today. If they give me the job.’

  ‘They are sure to give you the job, Wil.’ She had not meant to sound so melancholy.

  ‘Don’t worry, Non.’ Wil leans forward in his seat and takes hold of her hand in an uncharacteristic gesture. ‘There’s something else I want to talk to you about,’ he says, not looking at her.

  He is blushing, as if he is embarrassed. What can he have to say?

  ‘I don’t know how to say it, really, Non,’ he says. ‘But I’ve seen the way you look at Osian and Tada lately, one to the other, when you think no one can see, and all that stuff with the census, and I can guess what you’re thinking.’

  Non tries to pull her hand away, but Wil’s grip is too tight. Has she been as obvious as that?

  Wil leans closer and looks up at her face. ‘Eddie told me something about Uncle Billy he thought I should know,’ he says.

  ‘Billy?’ Non does not know what he is talking about.

  ‘Maybe boys talk about these things more than girls,’ he says. ‘But Eddie said that Uncle Billy got himself into trouble more than once . . . well, I should say he got girls into trouble.’

  ‘Girls?’ She sounds like an echo. She thinks of all the young women she helped during the War who had got into that kind of trouble when their husbands or sweethearts were away fighting. Loneliness was a terrible thing. She knew all about that. But they were women, not girls.

  ‘He liked them really young,’ Wil says. ‘You know, Meg’s age and even younger. I don’t suppose they knew they were expecting till it was too late to do anything about it. Well, you know . . .’ Wil’s face is scarlet.

  Non tries to take her hand from Wil’s again; he is clinging to her so
hard it hurts. This must be much more embarrassing to him than it is for her. Has Wil somehow got to know about the kind of help she gave women during the War? Does he think she helped one of these girls? She is not ashamed of the work she did: she has kept it quiet for the women’s sake. But Davey had been furious when he found out – and, now that she has had time to consider it, she is sure it was Williams the Pharmacist who was to blame, not Dr Jones – and made her promise to stop treating anyone for anything immediately. No more killing, Non, he had said. Killing! She never gave a woman anything harmful after the quickening. But Davey had not been in a state of mind to be argued with.

  ‘And,’ Wil says, ‘Eddie said that Nain has been paying out money on the quiet for the keep of Uncle Billy’s bastards – sorry, Non – for years.’

  Non is speechless. She had never liked Billy; she should have realised why. How is it that Maggie Ellis has never brought it up? Or Lizzie? Is it because they feel sorry for Catherine Davies? Or because they don’t know?

  ‘How does Eddie know all this, Wil?’

  ‘He knew one of the girls. She lived the other side of Port somewhere. He said all the girls were out that way, that Billy didn’t dirty his own doorstep. But, Non,’ Wil is still struggling to explain, ‘I expect that’s why Tada has to keep helping Nain out with the money since Billy died.’

  Non knew Davey was helping out but she had not asked why. It had seemed a generous thing to do after Billy died, that was all.

  ‘Anyway, sorry, Non, but I thought you ought to know that Osian is probably one of Billy’s and that’s why he looks like Tada, like the family really. You’ve seen how Tada looks just like that old picture of Taid, haven’t you?’

  She is stunned that she has not made the connection. She had been too quick to judge Davey. But she had doubted him because she could see no other answer to Osian’s likeness to him. And Davey had prepared her mind for the thought by telling her that . . . that story about Angela. She blinks back tears. To think of Davey shouldering these burdens on his own. If only she had known. But, she thinks, I did ask him and he would not tell me. And he was so forbidding about it and I was such a new wife. She had been following her sister’s adamant instructions on how a wife should behave. She must, Branwen had said, take notice of what her husband said, and do as he told her even when she disagreed with him; that was how wives were expected to behave. She should have known better than to listen to Branwen, but she had so very much wanted to be a good wife.