by Iris Gower
‘He would have preferred me to be all white instead of half American Indian,’ Joe said wryly. ‘He can’t forget I was once his batman, his Indian guide. He relied on me when we were fighting Napoleon, respected me. Now?’ He hesitated. ‘You know something? Lloyd has never once used my birth name.’
Llinos’s smile was a little askew. ‘Well, you must admit that Wah-he-joe-tass-e-neen is not the easiest name to say!’ She pushed at Joe’s arm. ‘Even I have difficulty with it.’
‘Ah, now that’s more like my Llinos – the laughter in your eyes, the flash of spirit, that’s what I’ve been missing.’
‘I’m sorry, Joe. I’ve been a misery lately and I know it.’
Joe pinched her cheek. ‘I suppose I have to put up with a nagging wife the way most husbands do!’
‘What cheek!’ She sounded indignant but she knew he was teasing her. Life had not been easy lately, not for either of them. She nestled into Joe’s shoulder, her hand in his, and breathed in the coldness of the day, knowing that the chill would make her father’s pain so much worse. The cold got into his bones, made him ache. Suddenly she wanted to weep for the old Lloyd, the strong, healthy father of her childhood.
As the carriage bumped along the lane towards the town, Llinos stared through the window at the lowering clouds and wished she shared Joe’s firm belief in an afterlife. It would be so comforting to know that her father would one day be at peace in a better place, removed from the coldness and sorrow that his life now often was.
The glistening rooftops of the pottery came into view just as the rain had begun to fall again. In a moment she was transported back to the flooding in what seemed, now, another lifetime.
The banks of the River Tawe had been breached, the buildings of the potteries, nestling cheek by jowl, overwhelmed with the greedy waters of the river. People had died that day. She had almost died.
She glanced at Joe from under her lashes; he had been the one to save her. He had known, as he always did, how much she needed him. In profile, his features were well defined, his jawline strong. The light touched his high cheekbones and he looked for a moment like a man carved out of warm, red stone.
He felt her gaze and looked down at her, his eyebrows lifting. ‘Do I pass muster, then?’
‘Well, just about.’ She smiled. ‘I have no intention of praising you, of feeding your vanity. You must know how handsome you are; you must see it every time you look into a mirror.’
The carriage jerked to a halt. Joe opened the door and, without waiting for the groom to lower the steps, leapt lightly down into the road. He held up his hands and Llinos felt them encircle her waist and then Joe was lifting her onto the pavement.
She stared up at the walls of the Savage Pottery and nestling beside it the edifice, grand and stately, of the Tawe Pottery, still the most successful pottery in the area. It remained so in spite of the fact that much had changed over the years. Most of the residents of Pottery Row who had not died on the night of the terrible flood had moved away, although Celia who lived in the end house was still there. She was very old now, gnarled and bent but as spirited as ever.
The gate to the pottery yard opened. ‘Thanks, Watt,’ Llinos said warmly. Watt had been employed at the Savage Pottery as a child, when his job had been to collect shards of broken pottery, and to carry the debris of the working day to the bin. But now he was a young man, tall for his age and with a maturity about him that touched Llinos’s heart.
‘Your dad’s been asking for you,’ he said quietly. His rough accent had vanished; his closeness with the Savage family, living as he did in Pottery House, had seen to that. ‘He’s not feeling too good.’
Llinos felt guilt hang like a millstone around her neck. She had taken a drive with her husband, needing to be free of the aura of sickness that pervaded the room where her father lay all day, every day, too weak now to even sit in his chair.
‘I’ll go to him.’ She entered the house, aware that Joe was beside her, tall, strong, invincible; but even he, with all his skills, could not take away the shadow of death that hung over the house.
Lloyd was propped up against his pillows, with Meggie holding a cup to his lips. He lifted his head and tried to smile when he saw his daughter, but his flesh was sunken and his cheekbones stood proud against the yellowed skin.
‘Been anywhere nice?’ His voice was weak, faded, as though there was not enough strength in him to give weight to his words.
‘Yes, I’ve been for a lovely ride with Joe.’ Llinos untied the strings of her bonnet, giving herself time to swallow the tears that were blurring her vision. ‘We stopped the carriage and stepped out along the promenade for a breath of fresh air.’
She tidied the sheets around him, wanting to help him, pity for him gnawing at her stomach. The tall, strong father figure she had known as a child had vanished for ever. Now all that was left was a sickly old man who wanted to die.
He waved her away. ‘You too, Meggie,’ he said. ‘I’ve had enough of that foul tea, it’s been stewing in the pot for too long.’ His voice was sharp; she knew he did not want pity, he resented it in the way that sick people resent the healthy.
Ignoring his ill humour, she sat down beside him. ‘The medicine the doctor gave you, is it doing any good?’ She tried to speak cheerfully as though her father had nothing more than a slight cold, but she knew he was losing his grip, even on his mind. Slowly, the pain of his legs, damaged in the war with Napoleon, was creeping through him, paralysing his reason as well as his body. Meggie hovered in the door, uncertain whether she should leave or not.
‘Not a bit of good.’ Lloyd made an attempt to smile. ‘The stuff he gives me tastes like poison. He thinks it will kill me off but they can’t get rid of an old soldier that easily.’
His words were an attempt at bravado; he was weary of lying in bed looking at the four walls of his room. He had been an active man, a soldier, and he sometimes wished he had been killed outright by a shot from an enemy musket. Llinos wanted to cry for the strong father she had once known.
Joe entered the room. He had taken off his coat and rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt. He was carrying a heavy silver tray; on it steamed a jug of water. In a pot beside the water was a mixture which only Joe knew the essence of.
Lloyd’s face lightened. ‘Ah, Joe, your medicine is better than all that of the good doctor. Don’t know anything, these fellows. I don’t know what doctors are coming to, they don’t care what they give you. Jones wants me to die out of it and stop being a nuisance to him.’
Joe nodded to Llinos. ‘Go and change out of those damp clothes,’ he spoke gently. ‘We don’t need you here, this is man’s work.’
She rose to her feet. ‘I know when I’m not wanted.’ She left the room, taking the maid with her.
‘Go on, Meggie, I’m sure you’ve plenty to do.’ Once in the warmth and comfort of the drawing room she breathed more easily. She knew she was a coward, knew she should stay and help Joe to nurse her father. But he would feel better soon. Once Joe had finished coating the ulcerated wounds on Lloyd’s legs with the paste he had made the pain would ease. It was not a cure, but then nothing would cure Lloyd, nothing.
The house had grown dark and the maids were already lighting the lamps. The smell of tallow permeated the air and the candles threw shadows that danced in the dark corners of the rooms. Llinos looked up and smiled as Meggie entered the room with a glass of hot cordial.
‘There’s a good girl, I’ll leave this here for a moment and go and change out of these damp clothes.’ She paused. ‘Otherwise my husband will be displeased with me.’ She caught a strange look in the maid’s face before she left the room. Meggie did not make any secret of the fact that she did not like Joe, but, then, how could a girl like her understand that the man inside the foreign exterior was kind and good and honest? She hurried upstairs and quickly cast aside her damp clothes. She opened the drawer and took out a fresh nightgown, smiling at her own actions. There were not many l
adies in her position who dressed themselves without the help of a maid. Perhaps Llinos was regarded as strange in her habits by the servants, but in the difficult days when her father was at war Llinos had known what hardship was. She had learned very well how to fend for herself without the luxury of someone to wait on her.
Even now she was rich, even with her husband’s fortune added to the excellent level of profit made from the pottery, with the house refurbished and with a good, if small, staff of servants, she did not see the necessity of being waited on hand and foot.
She pulled on a warm robe and tied back her long hair. It might be supper time, time when most families dressed for the evening meal, but Llinos was not happy to conform to the mores invented by others. So she hurried down the stairs and pushed open the door to the drawing room. The warmth of it folded around her and she stood for a moment before the window staring outside into the garden. All was darkness, the shadows made deeper by the shimmering light thrown up by the fires of the bottle kilns.
Beyond the walls of the Savage Pottery stood the elegant house belonging to her dear friend, Eynon, warm-hearted, generous. He was the man her father believed she should have married. It would have been an eminently sensible match, joining the two potteries together. But it was not to be. In Joe, Llinos had found the only man she could ever love.
The door opened and Meggie bustled into the room, her round face cheerfully rosy, her plump hands carrying a tray with a plate of hot muffins on it.
‘Here, miss, you look frozen, you’ll need something to keep you going until supper is laid. Shall I shut the curtains and build up the fire? You’ll feel more cheerful then.’
Llinos nodded and sank into a chair, taking the glass from the maid. ‘Thank you, Meggie, I appreciate your thoughtfulness.’
The girl hummed brightly as she went about her business. She was deft in spite of her plumpness and soon the fire blazed up the chimney, scattering sweet-smelling sparks of applewood into the room.
‘Your dad’s not looking too good, is he, miss?’ Meggie brushed her cheek leaving a dab of smoke dust across her chin. ‘You know what I think?’ she continued. ‘I think he wants to die out of it.’
Llinos winced at the maid’s bluntness but she nodded, accepting the truth of the words. Meggie continued remorselessly. ‘When you think of it, a dog or a horse would be put out of its misery but a man, a good man like Captain Savage, got to suffer.’
Llinos sipped the cordial, warming her hands around the base of the glass, and swallowed hard, afraid she might cry. She took a deep breath, trying to remove the constriction of tears from her throat.
‘There, all done.’ Meggie had risen and was brushing the dust from her fingers. ‘That’s unless I can get you something else, miss?’
Llinos nodded. ‘Yes, you can bring in some cold food on a tray for my husband. Don’t bother to set up supper in the dining room.’
‘Very good, miss, I’ll tell Cook.’
When she was alone the silence settled around her; dark, like a cloak that covered her head and face. She tried to see pictures in the fire, tried to think bright thoughts, but instead came an unwanted vision of her father moaning in pain as Joe administered to him. All the happiness of the hour she had spent with Joe seemed to have dissipated, drifting away like an ethereal spirit. She smiled suddenly; she was as bad as Joe. Spirits indeed, what next?
She rose and wandered to the table where the book she had been reading earlier still lay, took it up and flicked through the pages trying to find her place. But she could not concentrate. The book was about an intrepid explorer who had walked across the continent of Africa and survived unscathed. It was unreal, far removed from her own small world. She could admire the explorer with one corner of her mind and yet she could not help wondering how his wife and children had fared while he was away finding new worlds.
Putting down the book, she returned to her chair and sighed heavily, knowing she could not rest. She knelt before the fire, tucking her bare feet under her robe. She felt the heat of the flames on her face and closed her eyes.
‘Hey! Not asleep already, surely?’ He had entered the room silently as he always did, leaving the door open behind him. Without turning, eyes still closed, she spoke to him.
‘Come here and give your wife a kiss.’ She felt him kneel beside her and then he took her in his arms. He knew instinctively that she needed to be comforted.
‘Your father is much more comfortable now,’ he said. ‘And remember, Llinos, nature will take its course however much we fret.’
She looked up at him then. ‘I know, but it’s so hard to watch him suffer.’
Joe frowned. She faced him, her hands on his cheeks. ‘What is it?’
‘Let’s talk about it in the morning, when the nightmares no longer ride,’ he said.
Llinos shook her head. ‘No, tell me now, what’s wrong?’
‘He wants me to help him die.’ The words fell like shards of ice and suddenly the room was cold in spite of the blazing fire.
‘Oh, Joe!’
He regarded her steadily. ‘He says I could do it if I wanted to because I have the means.’
Meggie entered the room, a loaded tray balancing precariously on her arm. ‘Supper, miss.’ She stared in suspicion at Joe. She had obviously heard what he had been saying.
‘Thank you, Meggie. Put the tray down there on the table.’
‘Anything else, miss?’ Llinos noticed quite suddenly that the maid never deferred to Joe. She did not even look at him. When she spoke, Llinos was aware of the almost hostile tone of her voice.
‘No, thank you, and please knock before you enter a room, do you understand?’
Meggie looked down at her feet. ‘Yes, miss, sorry, miss.’
‘And it’s Mrs,’ Llinos said. ‘Mrs Mainwaring, please remember that.’
Meggie hurried from the room, her face flushed, tears trembling on her lashes.
‘That was uncharacteristically harsh of you, Llinos,’ Joe said mildly, knowing, in the strange way he had, what had prompted her flash of anger. ‘The girl doesn’t know what to make of me. People gossip about us, still, you must know that. A respectable lady married to a half-breed, what can you expect? In any case, Meggie had her hands full; she would have been hard put to knock on the door and carry the tray.’
‘I think she heard what you said about my father,’ Llinos said. ‘You have to be careful, Joe, you mustn’t say things like that, not when people might misunderstand.’
She looked down at the tray of food, a selection of cold sliced turkey, some minted lamb chops and crusty, buttered bread, and as she stared at the muffins, the butter cooling, she knew she could not eat a thing. She filled a plate and brought it to her husband.
‘Would you like a glass of wine, Joe?’ she asked. He shook his head and she saw him pick a little at the meat. She knew then that he was upset too. She sat at his feet and without looking at him asked him the question that had been trembling on her lips.
‘Joe, you wouldn’t . . . do what Father wanted, would you?’
He did not pretend to misunderstand. ‘Never.’ The words brought a sigh of relief from Llinos but she remained silent, waiting for him to go on.
‘It is not in the Indian philosophy to kill.’ He paused and put down his plate. He had hardly touched his meal. ‘In my homeland, among my tribe, a man knows when he is dying. He will go out into the plains or the mountains and wait for the gentle hand of death to touch him.’
‘But what if he is a man like my father who is too sick to walk?’
‘His relatives will take him wherever he wishes to go. He will be set down in the shade of a rock or a tree, food and drink will be left for him. After that he will be left alone.’
Llinos sighed. There was no way she could implement the Indian way of life, not here in Swansea. Her smile was involuntary as she looked up at Joe.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘It would be impossible in Swansea. What is an act of kindness would be under
stood as an act of cruelty.’
Llinos found herself giggling. ‘To say the least of it! Can you imagine anyone being left in the hills of Wales in weather like this?’
He ruffled her hair. ‘Come along, Llinos, let’s get an early night. It’s high time we were going to bed, don’t you think?’ He rested his hand for a moment on her shoulder and she understood him completely.
She pretended a coyness she did not feel. ‘You want your husbandly rights, is that it?’ Her eyes were lowered and he caught her chin and tipped her face up so that she could not avoid looking at him.
‘I want to make love to the most beautiful woman in the world,’ he said.
She clung to him, hesitating. ‘Should I look in on Father?’
‘He will be asleep. Don’t worry, Llinos. Lloyd is as comfortable as I can make him.’
Together they climbed the stairs, and through the high landing window Llinos could see that the sky had cleared, the stars were abundant, bright. It was going to be a frosty night.
As her husband took her in his arms, she felt his strength, the silkiness of his skin, felt the warmth of his naked body against hers, and she wanted him with a ferocity that never seemed to diminish.
She gasped in pleasure as he came to her, joining them as one. She was lifted on waves of love and delight, her mind, her sense of reason, deserting her. She was all nerve endings; filled with sensations.
Would their loving always be this way? Would their passion ever fade? She touched the silk of his skin with her fingertips, felt along the bones of his spine to the hollow in his back. She arched towards him, wanting the joy to go on and never cease. At last, in a delicious agony of release, she cried out his name.
Afterwards, as the moonlight slanted across the room silvering his hair and highlighting the contours of his face, she kissed her husband, knowing that nothing would ever change between them. Their love was as deep and as lasting as the ocean that divided his land from hers.
The morning sky was leaden with the continued threat of snow as Llinos crossed the yard towards the painting shop. The familiar sounds and smells wrapped around her. She breathed deeply, knowing she loved this world of potting.