by Rosie Thomas
He came rolling over the gate and held out his treasure for them to examine. It was a sheep’s jawbone with all the teeth and fragments of gum clinging to it, smelling ripely. Nothing could have been more fascinating for William. Angharad took a deep breath and gamely bent over it. She was aware of Harry hesitating for an instant and then kneeling down too. His hand reached out, wanting to touch the child’s shoulder, and then withdrew again. William was rattling his jawbone, absorbed, and it was Harry who was struck with shyness. Angharad watched the hunger grow in his face, checked by diffidence, and felt the tremor of old judgements and old values sliding aside to make room for new ones. Perhaps she didn’t know Harry Cotton at all.
‘I’m not very well up on sheep,’ she mumbled in reply to an urgent question of William’s. It was Harry’s hand that reached out for the gruesome object and turned it for the child’s inspection.
Dark heads, close together.
‘Sheep eat grass, don’t they?’ Harry said. ‘See, all the teeth are flat for chewing it, with all the ridges running that way.’
Even their hands are the same shape.
‘Our teeth, and all meat-eating animals’, are pointed for tearing at our food.’
‘So if I ate grass,’ William said, ‘my teeth would be like this?’
‘Oh, definitely.’
‘Huh. I don’t think I’ll bother, actually.’
And then they were both looking up at her, the same intense blue eyes, and William’s face a softer, rounded version of his father’s. Father and son. Angharad felt the heat of the sunlight rippling over the cropped turf, and the wind scented with cut hay, and she smiled. At once the flash of Harry’s old smile answered hers, and all the weariness and bewilderment was gone from his face.
‘Can I keep it, Mum? Please, Mum.’
‘In the back garden. As far from the back door as possible.’
‘That’s no good.’ But they were both laughing now, over William’s head. For an instant all the fear lifted from Angharad and she felt as happy as she had done so many summers ago when she and Harry had ranged in freedom over the empty mountainside.
‘William, d’you want to see something really interesting?’
He looked up at Harry at once, inquisitive. ‘What is it?’
‘Come with me. I saw it on the way down. Follow me along this path, and tread as softly as you can.’
They filed obediently along the path, the arches of bracken brushing at their legs, until Harry turned back to them with his finger at his lips.
‘Shh. Come here, William.’ He reached out for the child and swung him to safety on his shoulders, and then stretched a restraining hand towards Angharad. Looking past him she saw why. Basking in the warmth of the sunlight on the narrow path was an intricate coil of mottled bodies, flat heads and tapering tails.
‘Oh, Harry. Snakes,’ breathed William, as if he had been handed the gold from the end of the rainbow. ‘I want to get down.’
‘Stay where you are,’ Harry advised him. ‘See the V markings at the backs of their heads? They’re adders, and their bite is poisonous.’
Angharad stepped back with her knuckles rammed against her teeth. The vibration disturbed the snakes and slowly they stirred, raising their malevolent heads before they slid one by one into the shelter of the bracken. William watched, transfixed, until the last one had vanished and the green fronds were only stirred by the wind.
‘That was fantastic,’ he breathed. ‘Wait ’til I get home and tell Teck.’
‘William,’ Angharad said, hearing the sharp note of panic in her voice, ‘you are never, do you hear me, to come up here without boots on? I didn’t know there were snakes.’
Harry was grinning at her, delighted, with the mockery and mischief that she remembered so vividly. ‘Afraid of snakes? And you a country girl? They’re very unlikely to hurt you unless you step right on them. Just remember to look where you’re treading in the bracken, that’s all.’
At once the mild green sea around her became a threatening mass of rustles. She took one step and faltered, peering between the sappy stalks.
‘Want me to carry you back to the track?’
‘Just carry William,’ she snapped at him. ‘I’ll take care of myself.’
‘It’s a very rare sight,’ Harry called at her retreating back. ‘We’re very lucky.’
‘Very lucky,’ William echoed, and Harry came cantering down the path with the little boy clinging on and whooping with reckless delight. Once she had regained the safety of the track and saw how pleased with themselves they were, Angharad had to laugh again in spite of herself.
‘I shall never be able to walk here again without waders,’ she groaned. ‘Harry, you’ve ruined it for me.’
‘I would be very sad if I thought that was the truth,’ he said with sudden seriousness, and they were quiet again, remembering.
It was a moment before she realized that William was looking speculatively between them. She glanced down at her watch and forced a lightness into her voice.
‘Supper time, and we’ve got a long way to walk home. Come on, Willum.’
He was about to demur, clutching at his new friend, but Harry said, ‘And I’m going back over that way. Goodbye, William.’ Angharad thanked him silently for his tact. William began to run away down towards Cefn and Harry said in a low voice, ‘I think we should talk, Angharad. We owe each other that, wouldn’t you say? I won’t ask you for anything else, not you or him, if you’re afraid of that. Will you just give me an hour or two, to tell me about you and the child? I have to go away very soon.’ He gestured, hopelessly again. ‘Another bloody film. It would make it easier for me to leave. Not that there’s any reason why you should, of course.’ The bitterness had flooded back too.
Angharad fought the impulse to say, Don’t go. Not so soon. Instead she nodded, quickly. ‘Tomorrow night. You know where I am.’
Then, abruptly because it was hard to leave him, she began to walk away to where William was calling for her. Without looking around, she knew that Harry watched them until the deep hedge around Cae Mawr had swallowed them up.
As she hoisted him down from the last stile before the village, William said suddenly, ‘Did you love Harry when he was your old friend?’
She stopped, seeing the grey wedge of the church tower against the fading blue and the weight of the summer trees shading the lane. A cloud of midges danced in the green chasm ahead of them.
The truth was important. She had learned that from her father.
‘Yes. I did. A long time ago, William. You know that people can love each other in different ways? I loved Harry in a way that wasn’t right for that time. A different way from the way I love you, or Grandpa, or Jamie.’
A different way, and perhaps the only way that will ever truly matter to me. Too early, and too late now.
William saw the flicker in her face and, uncomprehending, wound his arms around her neck until her head came down to his. He kissed her awkwardly and said,
‘I love you.’
It was the first time from his heart, with none of the litany of babyhood.
‘That’s all I want,’ she told him gravely.
Then she swung him down from the stile and they walked home to the little house hand in hand.
Gwyn came with her knitting bag the next evening, to babysit for William. She knew that the restaurant was closed, yet didn’t ask where Angharad was going. Through all the days since the opening of the restaurant they hadn’t spoken of Harry, and Angharad felt the constraint deepening between them. She was afraid to broach the subject in case, however she might struggle to hide it, her bitter regret that Gwyn had kept Harry from her would show and hurt her aunt.
Nor had Angharad told Gwyn that she knew her parents’ story. She had needed time to understand it herself, and to reason out that the bitterness and tragedy of the past should not be allowed to visit itself on the future.
Now Gwyn was watching her as she passed in and out of the tiny living-room.
Angharad had changed her clothes three times, like an adolescent before a date, and the sound of a car slowing outside made her drop her handbag from shaking hands. The car rumbled past, and as Angharad fumbled for the contents of her bag at Gwyn’s feet she felt her aunt’s eyes on her, waiting fearfully for something.
Angharad took a deep breath and put her hands over her aunt’s.
‘I’m going to see Harry Cotton,’ she said gently.
Gwyn flinched, and then her mouth set in a steely, straight line.
‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Why, after so long? You don’t need him, or anything to do with that family. You’ve got your good, kind Jamie, and the boy is happy. I thought you’d forgotten the other one, the way you never spoke of him. And when he came here, looking for you …’
Angharad’s hands tightened, silencing her. That damage was done, and there was nothing to be gained from raking over it.
‘I know why you feel as you do. Dad told me before he died. I should have been allowed to know earlier, and it would have been better to let me decide about the Cottons for myself.’
Gwyn’s face was suddenly ugly, distorted with hatred.
‘That man. That monster. He killed your poor mother, you know. As good as murdered her. She was ill, and carrying you, and he forced her out of the place she loved. It broke her heart, and her body. She lived one day after she left Llyn Fair. One day. Angharad.’ Tears glittered in her eyes, softening the ugliness of hatred.
‘I know. It was a terrible thing to do. But no amount of bitterness now will bring any of them back. Father and son aren’t one and the same, Aunty Gwyn. Harry shouldn’t suffer any more for what his father did. He and his sister have suffered enough already.’
Their unity against Joe had driven them closer together, Angharad thought. Too dangerously close, and they lived under the weight of that still.
‘Listen, Aunty Gwyn. I love Harry, and I’ve loved him from the day I first knew him. He didn’t always do the right thing when he was younger, but that doesn’t matter to me. I haven’t always done the right things either. None of us has, not you, or Dad, or anyone. Harry and I have learned by our mistakes. I believe we have a chance of happiness now and I can’t – I won’t – let it go by again. You see, Harry’s got a greater depth of love in him than anyone I’ve ever known. He doesn’t give it easily, but once it’s there, it’s for ever. I believe that love is mine. Please, Aunty Gwyn. Please see that William and I need him.’
Angharad’s voice dropped. ‘I don’t think I can go on without him any longer. It’s been a long, long time.’
She was looking away from her aunt to the curtain over the street door. Another car approached, and this time stopped outside. Harry, with native awareness of the village eyes, would wait for her there.
Gwyn’s hands dropped, and she sighed. ‘Go on, then,’ she said heavily. ‘I can’t understand, but I believe you. Anyone would, seeing that look in your face. Go to your Harry, then. Should you have gone seven years ago?’
Angharad whirled round at the door and ran back to her. She wrapped her arms around the old woman and kissed the top of her bent head. ‘That doesn’t matter, now. Don’t let any of the past matter today. I love you, Gwyn.’
Only the present. Only now, and Harry waiting for her outside.
‘Go on, then,’ Gwyn repeated. She watched the door close, heard the car start up and purr away, and went on sitting, staring into the lamplight. It was a long, long time before she picked up her knitting again.
The car door swung open and Angharad slid into the low seat. The knot of memories unravelled instantly to set her bewilderingly free from all her anxieties. She was fifteen again, joyriding with Harry in Joe Cotton’s white Jaguar; seventeen again, drunk with love and Harry in his grey van bound for their kingdom within the thick walls of Heulfryn Cottage. And she was grown-up too, mistress of herself, with Harry beside her and his remembered hands with the brown fingers loosely curled close to her own.
It wasn’t too late. It wasn’t ever, ever too late. The happiness sang in her head.
She felt Harry pick up the vibrancy at once. Angharad laughed, and he laughed back at her, losing his success-ingrained weariness and impatience, his cynicism and bitterness, and he was Harry again, as she had always loved him.
‘Where to, my love?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t care.’
‘Dinner?’
‘I couldn’t eat a mouthful.’
‘Neither could I.’
He drove to the remote pub on the mountain road where they had gone in their first days together. Nothing had changed. Even the fairylights festooned over the bar were the same, and the boisterous rock-climbers retelling their feats. Angharad felt that she loved them all. They sat in a shadowy corner, and she was so stunned that Harry had to wind her fingers around her glass for her before she could muster the concentratation needed to lift it.
‘Why?’ she asked him. ‘Why do we feel so happy?’
‘Don’t ask,’ he said fiercely. ‘Take it. I want you to talk to me. Tell me about all the years I’ve missed, not being with you, and William.’ His insistence made her almost afraid again, and she shook her head.
‘Not yet. I need another drink. You tell me, first. Tell me about getting famous.’ She smiled at him. ‘I cut out all your film reviews. And all the gossip column stories. I even saw As the Sun was Rising.’
‘With you in the Beast Market with your basket. I could never watch it myself, after it was finished. It reproached me.’
‘Go on.’ She felt as if she was starving, confronted with a banquet and not knowing where to begin.
Harry gripped her fingers and with their linked hands gestured it all behind him as if it meant nothing at all.
‘I’m not proud of it. Of the films I’ve made, perhaps two have been honest. The rest have been deals. There’s no glamour in it, my darling, for all the stuff in the gossip columns. It’s dirty, and hard, and it affects people in the same way. I’ve got one, two more deals to honour. That’s why I have to leave tomorrow.’
The thought clouded their faces, and they pushed it away again at once.
‘Listen, after that I’m free. No more of that world. Oh, don’t worry. There’s more than enough money to take care of you both.’
Angharad dropped his hands as if they burned her. ‘No. I look after William. We don’t need anything.’
Gently he lifted her hand again and brushed the back of it with his mouth. She was burning once more, a different kind of fire. The friendly pub with its winking lights and brasses was an intrusion.
‘If you should need it. Only if, Angharad. Come on,’ his voice went rough as he saw her face. ‘I don’t think we can stay here any longer.’
They were out in the soft air, and then driving again. Angharad watched the dark towers of the trees sweeping past and the prickle of stars in the night sky between them. The time for decisions, the capability for doing or not doing, was past for both of them. They were borne along together, powerless against the torrent.
When they stopped again Angharad sensed that they were miles from anywhere. The silence that enveloped them was complete, the more impenetrable for the mysterious rustles and the sighs of the wind, and because of the distance from the noise of humanity.
Harry laced her fingers in his and they crossed some rough grass to the dense wall of trees rearing in front of them, then as they came into the blackness Angharad caught the sharp scent and knew that they were in one of the pine forests that blanketed the hills. For an instant it brought back Llyn Fair with its sentinel trees. The ground under their feet was thickly carpeted with fallen needles, as dry and soft as a vast blanket.
They walked in silence until the trees had swallowed them up. The branches overhead were so dense that not a star was visible. The remoteness was eerie, and comforting because it gave them a world that was theirs alone.
‘Tell me about you and William,’ Harry commanded. ‘What happened when he was born
? Who was with you?’
‘Nobody. A medical student with a tired smile, and the nurses. I didn’t want anything, only the baby. I felt that for a long time afterwards. He looked so like you, Harry, from the moment he was born.’
‘Was it very hard for you, being alone?’
‘Not after the beginning. We were lucky.’
‘Jamie took care of you?’
‘Yes.’
They couldn’t talk about Jamie now.
‘I wish I could thank him for that. Tell me some more. About his first birthday. The first time he saw the sea. The elephants at the Zoo.’
He was no more than a darker shape at her side, but the raw hunger in his voice and the clutch of his hand unlocked her tongue. They walked on and on over the soft carpet and she talked, the trivial, affectionate details of their lives tumbling out.
At last, dry-throated and exhausted, she stopped and leaned back against the rough bark of a tree.
‘Thank you,’ Harry said simply. ‘Tell me, do you think it’s possible to love a son you have only seen once, and known for only a few hours? Even though those hours feel more important than all the rest of your life?’
Angharad loved the diffidence in his voice, and the soft side of himself that he was laying bare for her. ‘Yes.’
‘And will you let me love him?’
There was a longer silence and Angharad could just make out his profile turned away from her, a harder-minted version of William’s, painfully waiting. ‘Yes, if you want to.’
‘Of course I do.’ The words were like a whip and in an instant he had turned, drawn her again to him as if he would never let her go. ‘And you, Angharad?’
It was important to be honest now, without pride or pretence. Awkwardly, she said, ‘I think you know that I have always loved you. I couldn’t, can’t, see how that love was going to be replaced. I tried, and it made me sad.’ She heard the low groan in Harry’s throat. He bent so that his forehead rested against hers.
‘It’s so cheap to say I’m sorry that I’m ashamed. But I am sorry. For the way that I was when I was nineteen, and for what Joe did before that, and for what has happened since.’