She opens her eyes with a start. Has she dozed? She looks out at the sea and the lowering sun through the opposite window. Home, she thinks, almost there.
The castle looms above her as she leaves the train and crosses the railway to climb the hill home. The shops are closed, the winding streets quiet. The Saturday evening hush is broken only by the voices of children at play, or by their mothers calling them indoors for their suppers.
She is quite breathless when she arrives at her own house, but that is as usual, neither better nor worse, and she climbs the steps to the front door and pushes it open. Home. She wants to cry for the happiness it brings her despite the worries and problems that await her here.
Gwydion steps through from the kitchen into the hall as she is hanging up her hat on the hat stand. ‘Non! Oh, Non, Non.’ He takes hold of her and shakes her, then hugs her tightly. ‘Where have you been, Non? What happened to you? We’ve been so worried. Davey’s frantic. Are you all right? Oh, Non!’
27
Outside the back door, shaded from the sun, is the only place that is cool. Non stands, leaning lightly against the wall, crushing some of the honeysuckle that scents the air, and surveys her garden. The hens cluck faintly at one another and they are already out of sight, occupying what areas of shade they can find to hide from the relentless sunshine. Her plants are in dire need of water – she forgot to ask anyone specifically to water them every evening when she was away – and now the lemon balm and the mints are paying for her lack of concern. Even from here she can see browning leaves underneath the shrubby tops, and some of the flower heads are drooping. That is the first task, then, although it is entirely the wrong time of day to do it.
She fetches the big watering can from the shed next to the closet and fills it from the cask standing beside the shed. That, too, is almost empty, rain is desperately needed. When she was in London, Angela told her there were rumours that the Government was considering causing explosions in the clouds to bring rain, although Non cannot for the life of her see how that would work. It seems a most unlikely solution; there were never clouds in the sky to explode. She shakes her head. Some people think they can make everything behave the way they want. Some things you just have to let be, some things are stronger than man. Man can’t control everything. Her father used to teach her that, Work with the natural world, Rhiannon, he would say, not against it. She is no longer sure about anything he said, the truth of it, the value of it. But it is difficult to stop thinking about his teaching, it is something she has always done, it has been her one constant all the years of her life. She feels now as if the ground is shifting beneath her feet, as if she is standing on the soft sand of the dunes. She is out of kilter with the way things really are, here at home and in London. She knows that the cause of it is the way her father reared her – Branwen often complained of her upbringing. During the ten years she spent with her father she had settled into ways of thinking and behaving that would never leave her. It was no wonder that she had never felt at home with Branwen – nor with anyone else until she met Davey. She wishes now that she had not become so . . . so pliant when she married Davey, trying to suit his ways instead of staying her own self. But she had wanted to be a good wife to him, and to repay him for loving her. During the War she had been more like her true self again, in order to survive. When Davey returned she had reverted to the role of the good wife who does as her husband tells her and does her utmost not to annoy him – though there are times when she forgets. She sighs. She is not absolutely sure where she belongs, whether there is a place where she can belong.
‘Yoohoo, Non!’ Maggie Ellis bobs up and down beyond the garden wall.
Non lifts the heavy watering can and walks across the garden. She does not want to speak to Maggie this morning, but it is as unavoidable as sunrise and sunset.
‘Have to do everything yourself if you want anything done.’ Maggie nods at the watering can.
‘I forgot to ask anyone to water the plants,’ Non says. ‘They’ve managed everything else.’ But she knows this is not what Maggie wants to talk about. She can see that something else is biting at her.
‘You had everyone in a bit of a tizzy,’ Maggie says.
Non lifts the foliage of the balm and waters the roots, careful not to drop water on the leaves where the sun would scorch.
‘But you’re home, now,’ Maggie says. ‘And no harm done.’ The slight upward inflection invites Non to tell her more.
‘A misunderstanding is all.’ Non does not pause in her task.
‘Ah, your niece had her baby sooner than expected?’
‘The minute I left to come home, it seems,’ Non says. ‘I’m travelling back down tomorrow, so I’ve got a lot to do, Mrs Ellis.’
‘Of course you have.’ Maggie Ellis is still bobbing about, still has not said what she wants to say, but seems reluctant to start upon it. And for that Non is glad.
Pandemonium had broken out last night on her return. Eventually she had found out that on Friday, when everyone at home thought she was still in Aberystwyth and everyone at Aberystwyth thought she was at home, a telegram had arrived from Branwen asking her to return immediately. At home, no one knew what to do, they assumed that she was on the train home from Aberystwyth when the telegram arrived and so had not begun to panic until it was obvious she was not. So, yesterday, when she was sitting on the train from London in the heat of the day, telegrams had gone back and forth between Davey and Branwen. They both knew she had lied to them. But neither knew where she was.
Davey’s relief at her return was more than tinged with anger at her behaviour. Meg had quietly left to spend the evening with a friend from work, Wil had gone to play a game of billiards at the Institute, and Gwydion had taken Osian for a walk with him though it was well past the boy’s bedtime. And Non was left with Davey. Davey had talked to her, no, at her, concerned she could see, and furious, too, wanting to know what she had been thinking of, where she had been.
Even now she cannot believe how calmly she told him half the story. And how he had not questioned it. She told him that she had become anxious about her health, the condition of her heart, that she did not want anyone to worry about it and had conceived this plan to write to a specialist in London she had heard of when visiting Branwen on a previous occasion. Before Davey had time to think of the gaps in this story, she told him the consequences of her visit and what Mr O’Neill – here she had to be careful not to refer to him as Seb – had said about her father’s medicine. Davey was uneasy. He was not at all convinced that this young man would know what he was talking about. What were his qualifications? He wanted Non to take no action until he had been with her to see someone else. There must be other doctors, he said, that would know about these things, they would ask Dr Jones to recommend somebody. He said Non must be exhausted, which was true, and that she should go to bed, for which she was grateful. As she lay in bed she had heard Davey speaking to Meg when she returned, then to Gwydion and Wil in turn, about what had happened.
This morning no one mentioned her absence or her illness. Davey said that he had told Catherine Davies that there would be no Sunday dinner today, which Non hoped would bring the habit to an end. Gwydion looked at her in such a way that she knew he did not entirely believe her story. Meg was uncharacteristically quiet, and Wil gave her a hug, which told her he was pleased she was home, before leaving with his father for the workshop where they had yet another coffin to finish for the next day. Osian was Osian, away in his own world. She could expect nothing else. She wondered if he had as much as noticed that she had not been there. Everything as usual, seemed to be the message. But everything was not as usual, was it? In London she had learnt things about herself and about her father that might change everything.
‘I said, Non,’ Maggie Ellis says, leaning over the wall, ‘I said, have you got any more of that plant I can have for the closet? The honey cart’s been running later and later this past week, my closet is stinking again. I’m sure
to catch something else.’
Non stands up and looks beyond the shed and closet to the far side of her garden where the woody stems of marjoram sticking up from the dry earth have a few green leaves struggling to grow among them. ‘It’s all used up,’ she says. ‘Has Meg been giving you some while I’ve been away?’
‘She said to help myself,’ Maggie says. ‘So I did.’
‘You didn’t notice you’d had it all?’
‘Thought you’d have another clump somewhere, Non.’ Maggie Ellis is not abashed.
‘And you didn’t notice everything was getting just a bit dry?’ Non empties the last of the water from the can into the earth under the lemon balm and begins to pull the browned leaves from their stems.
‘Too much else to worry about, Non.’
Non does not want to know Maggie Ellis’s worries. She does not reply.
‘Everyone’s talking about these tramps,’ Maggie says, reluctant to let the conversation go.
‘Tramps? Well, they’re here every summer. You know that, Mrs Ellis.’
‘More of them than ever, they say,’ Maggie says. ‘Not just the usual few. All sorts. Not even Welsh, some of them.’
Non pauses in her gardening. She stands up and stretches her back. She thinks of all the beggars and tramps she saw in London, and the poor man trying to board the train. Did he think he would find more help out in the country than he found in London?
‘Looking for work, do you think?’ she asks Maggie.
‘Work-shy, more like,’ Maggie says. ‘Want something for nothing. Not like they used to be, always grateful for anything we could give them. They knew we were practically as poor as they were.’
It is the War again, Non thinks, all those men with no work, and with no future, after all the terrible things they have been through.
‘I only give to the ones I know,’ Maggie says. ‘Not that I’ve got much to give. But a billycan of tea and a crust of bread I can still manage.’
‘Is anyone helping?’
‘Helping?’ Maggie says. ‘Who is there to help except us? Constable Evans is trying to move them on, the new ones. I don’t know where they all came from, all of a sudden.’
Non knows that she has more than most of her neighbours, but even she would find it hard to feed another mouth on a regular basis. She bends to her plants again. She wonders if the advice Seb gave her is beginning to take effect. She had taken one less drop of her lifeblood again this morning – having completely forgotten to take any last night – and she does not feel so weary. But she is being foolish; she is feeling like this because she sat in the train all yesterday, and had a long rest in bed last night. And because she is home.
She reaches the raspberries. They do not seem to be as affected by the drought of the past three days. She fingers their leaves. She will not need any now for Arianrhod, the baby having safely arrived. She wonders what she can usefully take with her when she travels there tomorrow.
‘Didn’t need the leaves, in the end,’ Maggie Ellis says.
‘Leaves?’ Non struggles to think what Maggie is talking about.
‘The leaves you gave me for my niece – she didn’t want them.’ Maggie shakes her head and looks mournfully at Non. ‘What can you do, Non? I think she’s making a big mistake. But you just can’t tell these young girls anything.’
This is what Maggie has been itching to talk about. Non cannot believe the girl is going to have the baby when there is a way out of the dilemma. She raises her eyebrows at Maggie.
‘You can look, Non,’ Maggie says. ‘But it’s the truth. She had a letter from this man to say he’s leaving his family for her. Can you believe such a thing? That a man could be so . . . so . . . treacherous? To leave a wife and children like that? I said to her, you be careful, my girl, if he can do it once he can do it again.’ She leans right over the wall, squashing the roses flat. ‘Divorce,’ she whispers loudly. ‘He’s getting a divorce. Did you ever hear of such a thing? I don’t know what the world’s coming to, Non, I really don’t.’
Non feels the earth shift beneath her feet, a sensation with which she is becoming familiar. Treachery, betrayal, subterfuge – who is more culpable than she? She is trying to make amends to Davey but her efforts are pushing her deeper into perfidy. The penalty, she thinks, of not staying true to yourself. And she has one other she should speak with, to explain why she had abandoned him. While she is at her sister’s home over the next few days, she must seek out Owen – to explain, to make things right with him, to assuage her guilt for the way she cast him off.
28
Branwen’s house, the house in which Non was brought up after her father’s death, was never home, Non realises. Home was always the place she lived with her father in Trawsfynydd, and now it is the place she shares with Davey and their children, her own place. Branwen’s house stands on the Promenade, looking out to sea. Through the bay window Non can see the span of the seafront, from the pier in the north to nearby Constitution Hill where the red valerian fights its way through the shale of the old quarry. Non had spent hours on Constitution Hill when she lived with Branwen, trying to race the cliff train to the top, sneaking into the camera obscura amid the paying visitors, spying on life in the town below her through its lens, seeing everything at a remove. She senses that she still does that, as if she is watching other people’s lives unfold in a play for which she is the audience, an outsider looking in at it.
She watches the glint of the sun on the sea. The ripples on the sea’s surface can barely be called waves, but the tide moves the water constantly back and forth whether there is a wind or breeze or not. It is a little like Arianrhod’s hair, that ripple – how she envied her niece that hair when they were young! She and Branwen had spent the morning with Arianrhod and the baby, Branwen fussing over him, repeating her refrain of, A month too soon, you must wrap him up well. Non had seen a baby who was obviously full-term – he had all his eyelashes and eyebrows – but said nothing when she saw the plea in Arianrhod’s eyes; her wedding had taken place only eight months ago. Despite Branwen’s fears, the birth had not been a breech, but she still insisted that Non should have been there. Arianrhod is twenty-five, Non, she had said, old to bear a first child. And Non had pointed out that she was no midwife, and look, was it not obvious that Arianrhod and the child were in the best of health? She and Branwen had paused and looked at the mother and child, who were bound up in a world of their own for that moment, and Non was caught unawares by the pain of loss for something she had never experienced.
They had walked back along the Promenade and stopped for lunch – Catherine Davies would be pleased to hear that word – with some of Branwen’s acquaintances. Non felt as out of place among them as she had in London. She did not know where she belonged, that was the truth, and she did not know how to find it out – this place where she should be, this place that she believed she had found when she married Davey. I was younger than Arianrhod is, she had thought as she watched the ladies at their lunch, what did I know that was of any use?
This room with its big window had been Non’s favourite when she lived here. This was where she had squabbled with Branwen’s eldest daughter, Gwenllian, who had been a few months older but no match for Non’s waywardness. Arianrhod and Nêst they had both ignored, but all four of them adored the baby Gwydion. Non remembers playing with him, crawling after him around this big room, teaching him bad ways, Branwen had said, telling her off, teaching him to be a disobedient little thing like Non herself.
And look at me now, she thinks, as Branwen brings in a pot of tea and deposits it alongside the cups and saucers on the table in the bay of the window. Non sits and begins to pour milk into their cups, then the tea. Branwen walks about the room, plumping up cushions, shaking the curtains at the window, moving books from the writing table to the shelves against the walls then back again, until Non can stand it no longer.
‘Sit down, Branwen. Whatever is the matter with you?’
‘They kn
ow – did you see them, did you see the looks? They all know, Non.’ Branwen slaps her hand on the table top.
Non had thought it was odd that Branwen was so blind to what was perfectly obvious. They are having to pretend. ‘What does it matter? The baby’s perfect, and Arianrhod is well and happy. That’s all that matters, isn’t it?’
‘That is just typical of you, Non. You don’t care about the . . . the . . . niceties of life. You know – those little things that make life run smoothly?’ Branwen beats a cushion almost viciously; Non can see the dust rise from it and wonders who Branwen thinks it is. ‘I know it wasn’t your fault you were the way you were, Non, but it took me two years – two years! – to stop you telling people your opinion of them. I tried and tried to explain how you have to consider people’s feelings. And all that business about seeing inside them. I will never – never, Non! – forget that time you told Reverend Richards’s wife he had something wrong with his . . . his . . . well, you know. It makes me cringe even now. People still talk about it!’
Non smiles into her teacup. ‘What happened to him?’
‘He died, of course, eventually. But not before he went mad with it, just like that English king, George the something.’ Branwen leans down close to Non. ‘It isn’t funny, Non. And it wasn’t funny then. His poor wife! They had to move away in the end. The shame of it was too much. I don’t know what happened to her after he died, poor woman.’
‘It wasn’t funny that he preached the opposite of what he was apparently doing, Branwen. Was it?’ Not that Non had understood any of that at the time.
‘Oh, you’re impossible.’ Branwen deflates, and sits in the chair opposite Non at the table and glances down at the seafront. ‘You were such a handful. And so righteous. All Father’s fault, the way he brought you up like that. And I know you were right about old Richards – but you have to think about other things, too. His wife, and us. We have to live here, remember?’
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