Dead Man's Embers

by Mari Strachan

  Non knows her sister, she knows all this springs from her anxieties about Arianrhod and her new grandchild, and that Arianrhod’s husband is thinking of moving them all away because he is trying for posts at colleges in Oxford and Cambridge, and is more than likely to be given one soon. He is ambitious, Branwen has told Non. She places her cup in its saucer and goes to her sister and hugs her.

  ‘Get away with you,’ Branwen says. But her voice is softer, less anxious.

  ‘It’ll be a five-minute wonder, this early baby,’ Non says, ‘you’ll see.’

  ‘Prys,’ Branwen says. ‘Her father is so pleased that she’s named the baby for him. He’s telling everyone!’

  ‘Prys Bach,’ Non says. ‘He looks a bit like Old Prys, did you notice?’

  ‘Old Prys!’ And now Branwen smiles, if fleetingly. ‘Don’t let him hear you call him that.’

  The elder Prys had been kind to the little interloper Branwen had brought into their household all those years ago. Non had been fonder of her gentle brother-in-law than of her sister when she had lived with them. ‘It must have been hard for you and Prys to take me in.’ It is a statement rather than a question.

  Branwen becomes serious again. She toys with tongs in the sugar bowl. ‘It wasn’t you, Non, it was the way you’d been brought up. You were . . . well, almost uncontrollable. You’d do as you liked and say what you liked. I didn’t know what to do with you.’

  This is an old refrain, Non knows it well, but it may be an opportunity to question her sister. ‘Why did you take me in, Branwen – immediately, the way you did? One day Father was dead and the next I was living with you is all I remember. Didn’t you take time to consider it?’

  ‘I promised Mother,’ Branwen says. ‘Poor Mother. She had such a bad pregnancy with you. Well, she was far too old to be bearing another child – but it seems Father was one of those men you hear about who won’t take no for an answer. She wanted to be sure you would be looked after. I’d not long had Gwenllian, and she asked me to have you, too.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’ Non reflects that she knows only what her father told her about her mother.

  ‘Well, Mother wanted me to take you straightaway if she died, but of course Father stepped right in and refused to let that happen. I don’t know how he thought he was going to take care of you. And look at the consequences!’

  All these things Non does not know, and here they are all pouring out. It is this baby’s birth that has caused this torrent, she thinks, Prys Bach has opened a floodgate that Branwen has kept tightly closed for years. ‘You never told me any of this, Branwen. Why not?’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Non says. All at once, she feels slightly sorry for herself. ‘Maybe these last few days wouldn’t have been such a shock.’

  Dismay shows in Branwen’s face. ‘What do you mean? What are you talking about, Non?’

  So Non tells her about London, or at least as much as she has told Davey. She does not mention Angela. Lies, she thinks, treachery, perfidy.

  ‘Oh, Non.’ Branwen is horrified.

  ‘Yes, well . . .’ Non says, ‘perhaps I’ll be the way I should be when I’ve stopped taking these drops altogether. But Branwen, why did Father do it? What was he really like? I can’t remember what he was like any more.’

  ‘If I tell you, you probably won’t believe me. You worshipped him.’ She pauses and looks at Non. ‘And I don’t think that’s too strong a word to use.’

  ‘Tell me how you saw him. I only have a child’s memory of him, it’s like thinking of a character in a story I heard a long time ago. Please, Branwen?’

  ‘Arrogant,’ Branwen says. ‘He always thought he was right. And selfish – he always had to have what he wanted. He believed his own stories, that was the trouble, it made him impossible. Poor Mother.’

  ‘I loved his stories,’ Non says.

  ‘But they weren’t true, were they? He was a liar. Everything he told us that I ever found out about was a lie. I expect the rest was, too, the things I didn’t find out about.’

  ‘No, I know that now,’ Non says, although she still feels that stories are not necessarily bad for not being true. Is it not the nature of stories to not be true? They must hold a truth, but that is a different thing. In fact, that is their purpose, to hold a truth, rather than to tell the truth. In a flash she understands that all her father’s stories did that. She will see if she can explain this to Branwen. ‘Do you remember his story about Mother’s ring? When I was in London, I went to Burlington House so I could see the place where he’d been given the money to buy the betrothal ring for Mother.’ She holds her hand up to stop Branwen from interrupting. ‘But he’d never been a member there, there was never a collection made that he spent on a ring for Mother. But there is still a truth in—’

  Branwen can wait no longer, ‘You see? You see?’ She leaps to her feet, rocking the table and its cargo. ‘That was a complete fabrication, from beginning to end. A big lie, Non!’ She begins to pace the room. ‘He didn’t buy Mother that ring – it belonged to her grandmother. She gave it to me to keep safe for you, and what a to-do he made about that! And she made sure that the bit of money she had would come to you when he died. He only ever got the income from it or God knows there wouldn’t have been a farthing left for you.’ She paces, window to door, door to window, she thumps the backs of the chairs when she passes them, picks up the cushions and throws them back down again.

  Branwen would smash everything, only then she would have to clear it up again. A picture of her sister furious at her for some misdeed comes into Non’s mind: Branwen had thrown a milk jug and broken a window and had been even more furious at having to clear up the whole mess. Non has a memory of the house shaking, but, she thinks, that is probably a truth rather than the truth. Non does not feel as shocked as she thinks she ought to be at these revelations about her father. Somehow, she must have been aware of much of this, but it never mattered. She ought to be as furious and horrified as Branwen is – after all this time! – but she never knew her mother, only the father in the stories and she loved him. She is glad he did not teach her to be so narrow and constrained in her thoughts and feelings, even though it has made things a bit, well, maybe more than a bit difficult at times.

  ‘And the worst thing,’ Branwen stops pacing, takes hold of the back of her chair by the table and leans towards Non. ‘The very worst thing, Non—’

  ‘Is what?’

  ‘The worst thing is that I think Gwydion is far too like him. He looks like him and he’s so like him in his ways sometimes, Non . . . well, it worries me to death.’

  Non thinks of Gwydion, of his love for her, of his kindness to Meg and Osian, of his passion for Aoife, of his developing political ideals, of his fear of his mother, and does not think he sounds like the self-centred man that Branwen says was her father.

  ‘He’s getting on well with the work at Wern Fawr,’ she says.

  ‘Well, that’s something.’ Branwen nods her head. ‘Yes, that’s good.’

  ‘And he has mentioned that there’s a girl he’s sweet on – Aoife. I expect Prys knows her father quite well—’

  ‘A troublemaker,’ Branwen says. ‘That’s what they say her father is, a troublemaker. Prys thinks he’s a nice man, of course, you know what Prys is like, never a bad word . . .’ Her fingers tap frantically on the back of her chair. ‘I really don’t think there’s anything there, you know, with the girl, nothing serious, thank goodness. They’re going back to Ireland soon anyway, the whole family.’

  This is not the best time for Non to mention Gwydion’s plans. And anyway, he has to tell his mother himself, Non had told him that quite firmly. And the longer the silly boy waits, the harder it is going to be. Branwen has a black and white view of the world that Non does not share. She fears that Branwen will never understand what her son wants to do.

  29

  The walk from Branwen’s house to the back lanes of Llanbadarn is a long on
e of twists and turns and changing views so that Non has passed through seascapes, townscapes and the beauties of the countryside before she stops at the start of a row of small cottages where she has assumed, without really thinking about it until this very moment, that Owen still lives. She had set off early, thinking to avoid the worst of the heat, yet she is hot and dusty, her shoes and the hem of her skirt dirty from the pavements in town and from the packed earth of Plas Crug Road and the path through the cemetery that have brought her here. She looks up the incline along the fronts of the cottages. They are all in the darkest of shade, but their long back gardens, she knows, will be full of herbs and vegetables and flowers, of bees and butterflies busy at their essential work, just like her own garden must be already this morning. Owen’s back garden will be the most productive of all.

  She sets off again up the slope, counting off the cottages until she reaches the fifth. It is as dark and quiet as the others she has just passed; it is difficult to see even the front door, painted a dark brown, as she knows, so that it merges with the shade, and if she did not know it was there she might easily have tripped into the well before the door. When she knocks memories return of how she used to knock three times, pause, then knock twice – a code to let Owen know it was her and no other on the outside. Her face grows hot at the thought of such foolishness.

  As she waits the silence settles around her, the air is perfectly still and the heat, as usual, seems to muffle distant noises. A train she cannot see whistles as it passes along the rails and disturbs her thoughts. She can smell the sharp burn of its clouds of smoke and steam as they appear above the houses lower down the hill.

  She does not hear the door open. Her first encounter with Owen for two and a half years – she cannot believe the amount of time that has elapsed – is a voice that is still familiar to her saying, tentatively, ‘Rhiannon?’

  She turns around to the open door. ‘Hello, Owen,’ she says. That was not all that she had meant to say when she saw him again. But what she had meant to say escapes her; it is as far from her as the seagulls floating up there in the sky as if they were on still water rather than a current of air.

  ‘Still lost in some dream or another, Rhiannon?’ Owen asks.

  Non is not sure how to reply. This is not the reception she has envisaged from the man she had believed was close to her, the man she had thought wanted to be more than a friend to her. He has not even invited her into his house. What is she to do now? She cannot make things right between them standing here on the doorstep!

  Owen stands back from the door as if reading her mind, and her heart gives a little leap that has nothing to do with her lifeblood or Seb O’Neill’s advice, her heart gives a little leap because Owen had always done this, anticipated what she was thinking. It was one of the things that had endeared him to her. He says, ‘Would you like to come in?’

  She walks into the house behind him, and at once feels at home in the long passage that opens straight out through the back door into the garden. It looks like a passage into paradise; it always did. In the garden the plants show no sign of the long summer and the drought it has brought with it. The view is lush and green, the bees drone and butterflies open and close their wings, in ecstasy, where they have settled on the flower heads. Non had almost forgotten the loveliness and peace of this garden, something she cannot completely achieve in her own garden with Maggie Ellis just over the wall. She should do what Owen has done, or maybe it was his parents before him, and grow trees with plants to ramble through them to keep the Maggie Ellises of the world at bay.

  ‘So, what brings you here after such a long absence?’ Owen says as they step through the back entrance into bright sunshine.

  What does he imagine has brought her? Suddenly, she is not entirely certain of her own motives for coming here. She had not thought he could still affect her when she had all but forgotten him. She says, ‘My sister’s youngest girl has just had her first child.’ She cannot remember if she ever mentioned much about her family to him during her visits in the War. Owen merely nods at her and she is tongue-tied again. She looks around the garden and begins to see signs of neglect; the plants are not as well tended as they used to be, they have been allowed to spread and sprawl in a way she thinks is not likely to be good for their medicinal properties. She steps forward and stumbles and sees she has tripped over what she takes at first to be a dead thing, a rabbit perhaps, and then in the same instant sees it is a child’s toy, a stuffed cat or dog, maybe, it is difficult to tell.

  Owen limps to her assistance. He still wears the black and heavy boot on his club foot, the foot that saved him from the carnage to which so many of his friends had succumbed. He helps her back to the path, and she looks at him, asking a question with her eyes that she does not want to put into words.

  ‘I’m married now,’ is his answer.

  Married! Non looks at the toy at her feet, and then at the washing draped over the bigger shrubs further up the garden, bright children’s clothing, a woman’s underclothes, and small items of bedding.

  ‘She brought a child with her. Her husband was killed right at the end of the War. He never saw the boy, and the boy never saw his father.’

  Non cannot think of anything to say. What had she expected – that he would have waited for her, pined for her? Maybe she had been mistaken, maybe Owen had never wanted to be more than a friend to her. She feels her face flush again.

  ‘He’s a dear little soul,’ Owen says. ‘And the odd thing is, he even looks a bit like me.’ He smiles at Non; she had forgotten his smile. ‘We suit each other well, me and Jennet,’ he says. ‘We suit each other, Rhiannon, we both answer a need in the other. I never could work out what your need was.’

  Non is not sure what her need had been, exactly, either. Someone to assuage the loneliness of being without Davey? She no longer knows. She has no idea what she is doing here visiting this man who has done very well without her. ‘I shouldn’t have come,’ she says, finding her voice at last. ‘I was in Aberystwyth with time to spare and thought I would see how you were.’

  ‘I am as you see,’ Owen says.

  Suddenly Non is reminded of how irritating Owen could be, too, with his enigmatic replies and sayings so that she never quite knew where she was with him. ‘And still tending to your herbs?’ she asks.

  ‘Not as I should,’ he says.

  ‘And still tending the horses?’

  ‘Rhiannon, the horses, if you recall, went to war and as far as I know were slaughtered with all the men that were slaughtered. None of them came back, anyway. It’s something I prefer never to think about.’

  Non knew the horses had been taken, of course she did, Owen had been so unhappy about it, but she had forgotten. Is that how much she had cared for him in reality?

  ‘I’m working at the National Library now. I saw your – what? – cousin, nephew? Gwydion? We were both up there for a meeting. Did he tell you I was asking after you? Is that why you’re here?’

  She manages to both nod and shake her head. Does Owen remember what he told Gwydion?

  ‘I’d just had some good news,’ Owen says, ‘and had a drop too much of Evan Jenkins’s home brew to celebrate before heading off to the meeting. It was a lot stronger than any of us expected.’ He smiles at the memory. ‘Oh, that was a night and a half! Gwydion looks exactly like that picture of your father that was in that herbal you showed me. I thought I was seeing ghosts – the home brew, you know – then Evan told me who he was. Do you remember Evan, Rhiannon?’

  Owen abstained from alcoholic drink when she knew him, his Quaker family chose to do so, as her own family had done, and here he is speaking of having been . . . well . . . drunk on home brew. And she does not remember anyone called Evan Jenkins. She has walked all this way, through the heat and the dust, for nothing, for no reason. But she knows she has no right to feel piqued. ‘I’m glad to see you well, Owen, and happy,’ she says, and is pleased to hear her voice say the words so calmly, as if she mea
nt them, the little niceties of life, Branwen would be proud of her. Or maybe not, given the situation. She turns for the back door to the house, to see a young woman walk through with a small boy in tow. He has a mop of red curls, and freckles on his nose like Owen’s. The boy runs ahead and launches himself into Owen’s arms.

  ‘I’m sorry for his bad manners.’ Jennet, for it must be she, follows the child into the garden.

  Non looks at her in amazement as she comes out of the shadow of the house. She thinks of Owen’s description of his celebration – a night and a half, indeed, she thinks, for Jennet is hugely pregnant.

  She makes her farewells hastily, refusing the offer of tea, or a cold drink if she would prefer. She almost runs down the hill from the cottage. It is done, she thinks, I need never think of Owen again. She has a more pressing thought that meeting Jennet has awoken in her. If, when she has entirely stopped taking her lifeblood, she has the heart of a normal woman, there should be nothing to stop her having a baby – to be sure, if Arianrhod is old at twenty-five to be bearing her first child, then Non is very old already at twenty-nine, but not impossibly old. She is not entirely sure how she feels about the possibility, but her feet give an involuntary little skip as she turns onto the dusty path through the cemetery on her way back to Aberystwyth.

  ‘A baby of my own!’ she says to the gravestones, just to hear how it sounds.

  30

  She is certain it has taken her hours to make the journey home to Branwen’s house. When she had reached the Promenade, with its screaming gulls and milling visitors, she wanted more time to herself to consider this new idea. She had sat on a bench, the wooden slats of the seat burning beneath her thighs, and put up her parasol to provide shade from the sun and inquisitive stares and possible recognition. A baby of her own! The phrase had rung like a bell in her head. But only, she had thought, if Davey remembers that he never had a liaison with Angela and does not need to punish himself – nor her – by refusing to be her husband. There had to be a way to help him remember. She still had not spoken to him about Angela’s letter – and that, she had thought, would be the way to do it. She had looked out over the still sea and felt a calm settle over her that she had not experienced for a long time. Something has changed, she had thought, something has shifted inside me.