Dead Man's Embers

by Mari Strachan

  ‘Is that why Meg came home to us?’ she asks.

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ Wil says. ‘I expect Nain didn’t want trouble a lot more than she wanted to keep Meg. Anyway, they’re all safe now, aren’t they, all the girls? He’s dead. No one was very upset about it, didn’t you notice?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ Non says. She thinks back to Lizzie saying much the same thing. ‘The funeral was rather small. I thought it was because it was just after the War, you know, and everyone was so sad and despondent.’

  The train is slowing; here they are at Port station, the braking engine filling their compartment with steam and smoke and specks of soot. She coughs, and smiles at Wil as she loosens her hand from his grip. He blushes again when he realises he is still holding on to her.

  ‘Shall I walk to the harbour with you?’ she asks.

  ‘Would you like to see the schooner? The David Morris?’

  ‘I think I would, you know, Wil. And then I’ll be able to picture you on the deck sailing the oceans of the world, or in the galley cooking up delicious breakfasts and dinners and suppers for the crew.’

  Wil leaps out of the carriage before the train has completely stopped. ‘Come on then,’ he says, striding ahead of her along the platform and grinning at her over his shoulder.

  16

  The schooner lies in the distance from where Non and Wil enter the harbour; it shimmers in the warm air as if it is a reflection of itself in water, seeming too small and frail a vessel to go sailing across the vast oceans of the world. She wants to hold Wil back, to keep him safe, but watches as he runs off from her, with a quick backward wave, to weave in and out, round and about the wooden crates, the coils of rope, the small hills of shattered slate, damaged before they were loaded, no doubt, until he, too, looks small and frail in the distance.

  Non has arranged to meet him under the town-hall clock in an hour, and promised him a pure white ice cream in a glass dish in Mr Paganuzzi’s new ice cream parlour, as if he were a child still. A treat, a celebration, she thinks, because he is sure to be given the job. And a treat for her in celebration if she is able to do what she really must within the next hour.

  She holds her parasol to shield her head and shoulders from the burning sun. She cannot remember a summer so torrid, she cannot remember being so vastly tired all day, every day, so that each single act or thought requires twice the effort it should take. Her father used to comment from year to year about the changes in the seasons, one spring was never like another spring, and every summer brought more heat, unless it brought more rain. Good for some of my herbs, he used to say on each occasion, but not for others. He had been an old father to her, the last of his children, older than many of the grandfathers she knew; she remembers that he was often tired, and she thinks now that she must have been a worry, even a burden for him. She cannot use the excuse of age for her own tiredness. Is it the heat? Or is it the death her father told her was always at her shoulder creeping ever closer?

  She half sits on a low wall in the shade of the tall house behind it. Such magnificent houses here in Port; there used to be money made from the slates shipped out from here and the many other goods brought in before the slate trade began to decline. The War had hastened the decline. The War had changed everything; she does not think that is an exaggeration. Everything. She tries to steady the rhythm of her breathing, to calm her heartbeat.

  She furls her parasol – not the smartest parasol she had seen on her walk from the train to the harbour with Wil, but not the shabbiest, either. I am putting off what must be done, she thinks. She pulls her bag onto her lap, unclasps it and rummages inside, fingering her purse, the bottle of thyme oil for Osian’s breath, an emergency bottle of Sal Volatile that she had decided to carry with her after the debacle at Number Thirty. The small box she seeks has sunk to the bottom, caught in the folds of her bag’s lining. She frees it and draws it out, admiring the grain of the green leather with which it is made as she unhooks the brass clasp to open the lid. Inside, minute writing on the white lining says John Dalby, Jeweller & Goldsmith, New Bond Street, London; she knows it by heart. Although Non sits in deep shade, the light is strong enough to make the diamond on the ring scintillate at the opening of the lid, as if the sun and the air in this street are all it has been awaiting to bring it to life. The ring waits in its silken nest. Her mother’s betrothal ring.

  Her father’s story of how he had come to buy the ring never tired her. She believed his every word although she now recalls that the detail of the story changed slightly with every telling. Like all the best stories until they are written down; it is the writing down that stops them in their tracks, she thinks. Osian Rhys told her how he had courted her shy and beautiful mother, whose father had a different occupation in every version but was always rich, and had eventually persuaded her to marry him. Here he would sigh in rapture. Amor vincit omnia, Rhiannon, he would say, love conquers all. He told her that he had been in London, the greatest city in England, presenting a paper on his recent voyage of discovery to distant lands where he had come across all manner of new plants and herbs and been taught, and learnt quickly, the ways and means in which they were beneficial to a vast variety of diseases, especially, and here he would pat her on the hand or knee, especially diseases of the heart, and how impressed the Fellows at the Royal Society had been, and how they had made a collection to finance a further voyage, and how he had walked out of the spacious hall and through the grand doors and along the streets where he had been blinded, yes Rhiannon, he would say, blinded by this light that came from the window of a small shop on a street corner, a jeweller’s shop as he saw when he shielded his eyes from the blinding light. Here he would pause, spellbound by the memory of what he had seen. Then, he would give himself a little shake, like a dog, and tell her that the light, the incandescence, came from the most beautiful stone, the most stupendously lovely diamond he had ever seen, held aloft like a beacon in the shop window by the most delicate and exquisite silver setting on a fragile ring of pure gold. He had vowed that if it was the last thing he ever did, he would buy it for her mother, because it was obvious that it had been, and here he would give Non’s hand or knee a squeeze, that it had been made for her, meant for her, she was fated to wear it. And so, he had entered the jeweller’s shop which sparkled and shone like a cave full of treasure, and the jeweller had brought from the window the very ring that Non now holds. The rainbow of light from it eclipsed the other treasures, and – here Osian Rhys would grip Non’s hand or knee so tightly that it was all she could do not to cry out, and say slowly – and its price was exactly the amount of money that had been collected for me at the Royal Society, Rhiannon. Down to the very last guinea.

  And, now, she is going to part with it. Her most treasured possession. She had decided yesterday when she wrote to Angela that she needed to be certain she could finance a visit to London, for which she would need money for the train fare, for other travel in London, for lodging, for food, and for who knew what else. She had also decided that it is a visit she will make whatever Angela replies; Non is sure that it is in London she will find out the truth that will help Davey. He has not mentioned Angela’s letter; she is not sure what this signifies, but she has decided that she needs to know more before she asks him about it. Wil’s revelation about Billy has removed any lingering doubts about what she plans to do. She takes a deep, long breath to calm herself. She makes a final farewell to the ring and closes the lid on it, swings the brass hook up and around to latch it, and drops the tiny box back into her bag.

  She knows where to go. She had noticed the shop with its three golden balls when she was in Port with Catherine Davies and Elsie, and wondered about it. She fastens her bag, unfurls her parasol, pushes herself up from the wall with an effort, and sets off once more.

  This town is big compared to her own, and teeming with people talking at the top of their voices; with children – why are they not at school? – running and shouting; with beggars – begga
rs! – at street corners; with men dressed almost in rags knocking at doors here and there, so many tramps, she thinks; with dogs of all shapes and colours and sizes, fighting and barking and whining; with horses pulling carts with rickety wheels; with new-fangled motor cars and delivery vans chugging their way along the road, raising clouds of dust in their wake; with the mournful hoots of a train in the station; with distant cries and thumps and crashes from the harbour. Between the jostling and the noise and the heat she feels quite faint and is glad to see the name of the street she seeks across the road from her. She thinks, London is going to be a hundred times, no, a thousand times worse than this. Her heart almost fails her at the thought. She quickly furls her parasol and uses it as a walking stick to lean on to cross the street and to fend off the two dogs that swirl around her, yapping at each other, as she crosses.

  Apart from its golden balls the outside of the shop is plain and shows no indication of what may lie inside it; but she knows what kind of establishment this is. She has a memory of going with her father to just such a place in Liverpool; she had been fascinated then by the variety of goods laid out in the window – watches, chains, ornaments, clocks, and hanging behind them articles of clothing, coats and hats, even one top hat, and rows of boots. Her throat closes up at the memory of them all, the trade in human misery they represented, but she swallows hard, holds herself upright and pushes open the door.

  A bell jangles somewhere in the curtained area behind the counter. The violence of the noise makes her start. She takes another deep and calming breath and sits on the round-bottomed chair beside the counter. When a man appears from behind the curtain she composedly takes the box with the ring in it from her bag and hands it to him. He glances sharply at her, then opens the box. He cannot disguise the gasp he gives, which he quickly turns into a cough. He produces a device from his pocket like a miniature telescope and puts it to his eye and examines the ring from all angles. The light from the diamond seems to Non to blaze in his face. He sets the ring back in its box. He reads the writing on the white silk, examining it closely. He places the box on the counter between them. He purses his little cherub lips and smoothes back his blond hair unnecessarily. He names a price.

  ‘It’s worth a great deal more than that,’ Non says, but she has made a rough calculation of the sum she may need, based more on guesswork than knowledge, and the sum he names, she thinks, will be more than enough. And it will be less money to find when she wants to buy back the ring, it will gather less interest. She will not think now about where the money is to come from to redeem it.

  He shrugs, holds his hands open as if to say, Take it or leave it.

  ‘I’ll take what you offer.’ She lifts the tiny box from its place on the counter, hands it to him and accepts the pile of coins he gives her in return, and the receipt, which she places even more carefully than the money into her purse. Thirty pieces of silver. She knows the story, even if she is not a believer.

  The light out of doors is blinding, the sun at its height, its rays powerful, the shadows cast by the buildings stunted and solid. She glances up at the town-hall clock in its elegant tower. She thought she had spent a lifetime in that shop and it was no time at all. The same two dogs are circling each other and whining in the street, and the old carthorse pulling the brewery dray is still standing outside the The Australia, listing slightly and munching on its oats or whatever food its owner put in its nosebag. And my life is completely changed, she thinks.

  There is one more thing to do, now that she knows she has the means to go to London. She fingers the letter in her skirt pocket; the envelope is becoming just a little creased, just a little furred at its corners.

  She crosses the road, her parasol held high, sidesteps a pile of dog droppings in her way and mounts the steps to the Post Office. There is little chance, she thinks, feeling as if she has taken on the role of a Catherine Davies, there is little chance of anyone I know seeing me here, posting this letter, and wondering what I am doing, why I am not posting it at home. When she hears her name called she turns quickly from the letterbox, hiding the envelope behind her bag, to see Wil running down the street from the direction of the harbour, leaping up and punching the air. She quickly turns to the letterbox and slides the letter into the voracious mouth, before turning back and waving, gaily, at Wil.

  She smoothes her hand down the side of her skirt, down over the empty pocket. Now for their celebration.

  17

  Non is pouring the breakfast tea and trying to work out what the earliest would be when she might reasonably expect a reply from Angela. She thinks that if the reply comes too quickly, by return, it would say that Angela does not want to see her. And why should she, after all? No, she needs Angela to have considered her request and thought about what they might discuss and maybe how she can help before putting pen to paper in reply. I posted it yesterday, she thinks, pausing in the pouring of the tea until Gwydion says, ‘Non?’ and she carries on pouring. Angela should get it today, or maybe tomorrow, say tomorrow, Saturday, so that would give her the weekend to think it over, then she would post her reply on Monday, so I would get it by . . . well, say next Wednesday. Nearly a week, then. She will have to put it out of her head, in the meantime, and think about all she needs to do here to be able to go away suddenly for a few days. She has no idea, yet, how she will manage the going-away.

  The letterbox in the front door rattles open and shut, which makes her spatter golden tea into all the saucers when she starts at the noise. Don’t be foolish, she tells herself, Angela will only get my letter today at the earliest, it cannot possibly be a reply. Unless Angela is psychic like Madame Leblanc.

  Meg scrambles from her chair, all notions of being a young lady forgotten in the race to find out what the postman has delivered to them. Non hears her scrabbling at the mat by the front door, then there is a silence, and then her feet can be heard slowly shuffling along the passageway back to the kitchen.

  ‘Nothing too exciting, then?’ Gwydion says.

  ‘It’s for you,’ she says, holding the envelope and staring at it. ‘From Ireland. And it’s taken for ever to get here, just look at the date-stamp.’

  ‘Well, give it to him, then,’ her father says.

  With a scowl on her face and a quick sweep of her arm Meg sends the letter spinning across the table to land in the bread and jam on Gwydion’s plate.

  ‘Meg!’ Non can see that something has upset Meg, but cannot let such behaviour go unremarked. ‘Say sorry to Gwydion for being so careless with his letter.’

  Gwydion is shaking crumbs from the envelope and wiping smears of jam off with a lick of his finger. ‘Don’t worry, Non, it’s what’s on the inside that’s important,’ he says.

  ‘Open it, then,’ Meg says. ‘Who is it from? Is it from her?’ She invests the final word with a sneer.

  ‘That’s enough of that behaviour,’ Davey says. ‘Sit down and drink your tea, Meg.’

  ‘You’re jealous.’ Wil laughs at Meg. ‘As if Gwydion would have you for a sweetheart. You’re too young, and too cross and too silly. And you’ve got freckles.’

  Non gives him a disapproving glance and he has the grace to look sheepish. He is on tenterhooks. He belongs neither with them any more nor on the ship yet. Poor Wil. He ought to be able to enjoy the feeling of pleasure at being given the job he wanted so much without feeling guilty about mentioning it in front of his father. Davey had taken the news in his stride yesterday when Wil told him and shaken Wil’s hand and clapped him on the back and wished him well, and told the rest that they were celebrating that evening. But . . . Non thinks, and sighs. It had not been exactly the kind of celebration Wil might have wished for. They all went to sit outside the castle to hear the oratorio that was the highlight of the day’s Music Festival. Davey felt proprietorial because he and Wil had done all the carpentry for the stages and the seating. Non remembered her father speaking to a visiting colleague about hearing an open-air performance of Mendelssohn’s St Paul
in Germany; for some reason it had ended in an argument she was never likely to forget, because it left her father with a bloodied nose. She wondered if she would discover what it was about the music that had caused such strong feelings, but she did not, unless it was the subject matter – religion always seemed to arouse people to extremes. Meg was inside the grounds all evening, helping, as a result of being a member of Sam Post’s choir, which had performed earlier in the day – maybe the excitement and late night are the cause of her bad temper today. Osian watched flights of birds patterning the sky against the colours of the setting sun. Wil left after half an hour to play billiards at the Institute. It had not been an entirely successful celebration.

  ‘If you just think about it . . .’ Gwydion is waving the letter at Meg. ‘Aoife is still in Aberystwyth, not returned to Ireland yet.’

  Meg looks down at her lap and seems to find a loose thread in her apron pocket that requires her complete attention.

  ‘This,’ Gwydion says, and flaps the pages enough to create a breeze, ‘this is from my friend Idwal who went to Ireland about three months ago.’ He looks at Non. ‘He went to see what the situation really was like out there. I’m not so stupid that I take everything anyone says to me, however much I admire them, without checking things out for myself, Non. But Idwal says Aoife’s father is perfectly right in what he’s told us. That he’s been quite restrained, in fact.’ He sits back in his chair with his arms folded, the letter dangling from between a finger and thumb. ‘Things are moving on fast. Idwal says there’ll be a truce soon.’ He turns to the start of the letter to look at the date. ‘And look, he wrote this before de Valera met with Lloyd George in London. There’s got to be a truce now.’ He waves the letter in Davey’s direction. ‘So, what have you got to say to that, Davey Davies? A free Ireland!’