by Roy Lewis
‘And you think she might have sat with Sarah Parry?’
‘Doesn’t live far away. Nothing to lose, sir. Except a bit of breath, walking.’
‘It’s downhill now,’ Crow said, and scrambled to his feet.
CHAPTER 7
Treharne Street boasted a better standard of housing than its neighbouring streets. The houses were still terraced, with no front gardens or walls — those houses were in the Crescent where the bank manager lived — but they had front doors that were recessed so that anyone knocking and waiting for a reply had a small narrow porch in which to wait, free from wind and rain. They were useful for people waiting for buses, though it upset the householders who found their front doorsteps getting muddy before it was time to sand and scrub them again. Sand from Porthcawl, gathered on the day of the usual street outing when everyone crowded onto the bus for the thirty mile journey to the beach, one day each year.
Not that Lily Jenkins had sanded her front step for some time. As Dewi Jones knocked for the third time Crow stood in contemplation of the porch. It was rather shabby, where other porches would be bright and shining, and the decorative wall tiles were yellowing, their motif cracked and stained though still discernible as a St George Corpulent engaging in battle with a Dragon distinctly Scrofulent. The brass knocker on the door had not been cleaned in a long while and was badly stained; when Jones knocked yet again the sound echoed as though in an empty house.
‘Won’t do no good, you know.’
Crow turned around in surprise. The fat little woman standing in the street wore an apron around her ample waist and curlers in her hair, pieces of blue plastic caught up in wisps of greying thinning hair.
‘Won’t do you no good ‘cos she hasn’t been out in weeks, hasn’t had visitors in months. Still alive, she is, we know that, because we hear her movin’ about in the mornin’s, getting her cup of tea, and she always takes in the milk. See, gone it is now. I’m Mrs Richards. My husband’s foreman in the garage down the road. Live next door, we do.’
Dewi Jones turned to her.
‘We’d like to have a word with her.’
‘I can see that.’ Mrs Richards spoke to Dewi Jones, but her eyes remained fixed on John Crow, openly curious, staring at his bald, domed head and deep-set eyes with utter fascination. ‘But she won’t answer the door. I tell you, she had a couple of visitors months ago, there was a chap, I remember, didn’t know him, think he was from the council or something, but he was the last and no one’s been in there since. She comes out late afternoons sometimes, does a bit of shopping up the street, you see, and then it’s back in, talk to nobody. Gone funny, you know, that’s what everyone’s saying. . .She didn’t even go around to see Sammy Feeney and that was a surprise.’
‘Feeney?’ Jones said, puzzled by the reference.
‘Well, you know,’ Mrs Richards said, giving him a quick flicker of her little blue eyes before staring again at Crow.
‘She lays you out, don’t she? And when you’re on your last legs she’s around to keep watch, like. Feeney was an old friend, but she didn’t go to him and it’s a fact she hasn’t been to anyone in months. Funny she’s gone. My husband now, he thinks she’s on the way out herself and knows it.’
‘No one’s tried to get in?’
‘Few have shouted through the letter box. No good though. She doesn’t answer, you know.’ She hesitated, glancing again at Dewi Jones. ‘Seen you before. You’re police aren’t you?’
Jones nodded.
‘I got a key, see,’ the woman said almost reflectively.
Crow spoke for the first time.
‘You’ve got a key and you haven’t gone in to see how Mrs Jenkins might be?’
Mrs Richards looked at him as though he were stupid; she bridled a little, folded her arms across her ample bosom.
‘Now look here, not my place to go pokin’ my nose in there. Neighbours all around here, we visit, just knock and go in you know, but if a door’s locked to you, you don’t go using keys to get in. Her house, isn’t it? Her life. Not our business to go pushing in! Up to her it is. But this key, I’ve had it for some time, when she got the flu, it was, from the time I used to do some shoppin’ for her when she was took to her bed. Tell you the truth, I think she probably forgot I had it, really; I forgot myself, in fact, until recent. But seeing you’re police, like, you can have the key, can’t you?’
She held it out in her broad hand to Dewi Jones but she directed her statement at John Crow.
‘You’re that chap from Scotland Yard.’
* * *
Delicacy had to be discarded in discouraging the determined Mrs Richards from entering the house with them. She was remarkably thick-skinned and tenacious, not easily removed from the house once she had set foot in it. Finally, Dewi Jones took her by her red elbow and propelled her out past St George with a firmness bordering on the violent.
She complained bitterly on the pavement about police brutality and she was only wanting to help, then waddled off across the road to tell the other neighbours what she thought of violent police behaviour and it didn’t ought to be allowed because she paid her taxes, didn’t she? And she remembered Dewi Jones when he didn’t have any arse in his trousers.
The house was very quiet when she had gone.
The two policemen walked through the dark passageway with its brown-painted stair banisters and brown-painted wallpaper into the room beyond. It served as a sitting-room, Crow decided; an ancient sagging settee, two easy chairs covered in a brocaded material now considerably faded. Everything was dusty, yet neat, and it was obvious that before Mrs Jenkins had become a complete recluse she had been house-proud. Most Welsh women were, Jones said in an undertone. They walked past the white plastic ducks floating quietly in the glass bowl and entered the kitchen. There was no one there.
No fire burned in the old black-leaded grate and the only food in sight was the loaf of bread on the table and a pot of jam on the Welsh dresser. A bottle of milk stood on the floor by the door leading to the back yard.
‘Upstairs?’ Jones queried. Crow nodded.
They stood at the foot of the stairs and Dewi Jones called out but there was no reply. Crow sniffed at the air; it had the mustiness of disuse, the smell of decay.
‘We’d better go up.’
The stairs proclaimed their presence in loud creaking complaint, and there was a layer of dust on carpet and banisters that marked their progress, hand and foot. On the narrow landing the two men hesitated, Jones called again, there was no reply, but both men heard the creaking of springs, the shifting of a body on a bed. Dewi Jones opened the door to the second room.
For a moment they could see little, for the room was almost in darkness with heavy shades drawn across the window. At last, from the light filtering in from the landing, they were able to make out the woman half-sitting in the bed, propped up against her pillows.
‘Mrs Jenkins? Are you all right?’ Dewi Jones asked, and stepped forward.
Lily Jenkins made no reply.
She stared straight ahead of her, eyes sunken in wrinkled cheeks, wisps of hair hanging from under a black greasy beret pulled down low over her forehead. She was lying under sheets and blankets, but she was not wearing night clothes; her dress, high-buttoned to the throat, was black and of some age. She had been a big, muscular woman but she had wasted away and the fingers that picked at the coverlet were lean and bony, waiting for death. She seemed unaware of the presence of the two policemen.
‘Are you all right, Mrs Jenkins? Do you need a doctor?’
She made no reply, but simply stared vacantly into space, ignoring the two men, even if she were aware of their intrusion into her house. Crow looked around him and shivered. It was strangely cold in this house.
‘I think she does need a doctor. She’s wasting away.’ He hesitated, looking at Jones. ‘It’s obvious we’ll not be able to question her in any way, but I think one of us had better stay with her for the moment. You’d better go and arrang
e for a doctor to come; I’ll wait here till you return.’
Dewi Jones looked doubtfully at Mrs Jenkins, and then again at Crow.
‘You be all right?’
It was a strange question to ask and he seemed immediately confused that he should have asked it, for there was no possibility of physical danger in this room. But the atmosphere in the house had affected him in the way it had affected Crow; Mrs Jenkins had laid out many old men and women in her time but now she was waiting for her own layer-out. It was a cold, uncomfortable, eerie house and her presence itself was unnerving. But Crow smiled faintly, nodded his head.
‘I’ll be all right. Away you go. I’ll wait until you get back. But lock the front door behind you — I don’t want Mrs Richards and the others crowding in here.’
Dewi Jones hesitated, glanced again at Mrs Jenkins, then turned and left the room. His step was heavy on the stairs, and when he banged the door behind him, leaving the house, the echoes seemed to hang for minutes in the still air of the bedroom.
Crow stood just inside the door, waiting quietly. There was nothing to be done. As far as he could see Mrs Jenkins was undernourished, half starved. Perhaps she had ‘gone funny’ as Mrs Richards suggested, and was waiting for her time to end. But she needed a doctor and then, probably, hospital. A policeman, asking questions, that was the last thing she needed.
She was still staring in front of her into the darkness.
The air smelled bad, fusty, and thick. Crow left the door open behind him, letting in some light and air, and walked towards the window. He pulled aside the heavy shades, careful not to allow too much light to strike into the room, and tried to open the old-fashioned sash windows. They were firm, could not be moved. He stepped back, let the shades fall back into place, and turned back towards the bed.
The voice startled him, sent a crawling feeling up his spine.
‘I know you.’
The voice had a light quality, dry, the sound of leaves whispering along a wind-blown pavement, scurrying into dark corners and whirling about, clicking and scratching and scraping, but her lips hardly seemed to have moved. But her eyes had; where they had been vacant and staring ahead of her now they were alive, glittering in the dimness, watching Crow as he moved towards her. Her body remained still, her fingers no longer picking at the coverlet, but her eyes were bright, almost excited, eager as a lover’s.
‘Seen you many times, I have. Saw you when it was my brother’s turn, that was the first time, 1933, was it?’
Crow stood still, puzzled for a moment, not knowing what to say but guessing the old woman was lapsing into delirium, was seeing visions.
‘Many times . . .’ Lily Jenkins whispered again. ‘All those people, and most of them was afraid, you see. That’s why I used to sit with them, hold a hand, give a cup of warm milk, sometimes with a little drop of whisky in it, talk to them in the darkness and listen to what they had to say, all their troubles and their worries. Never told on them of course, no matter anyway, they went. But they needed me, you see. Had to have me there. They was afraid, that was it, they was afraid of you. I was, really, first time. But not after. They was afraid of you so I used to sit there between you and them until it was time and they went and you had gone too and then I put them to peace, like, closed their old eyes. But no one sitting with me, now, is there? Don’t need anyone, see. ‘Cos I seen you, already, often enough. Nothin’ to be afraid of in you, is there . . .?’
John Crow was cold. He stood there, incapable of speech as the old woman whispered on, her eyes seeming to burn with a fierce light in the dimness.
‘Never seen you so clear, mind, not so clear as now. You used to be shadowy, hanging about just behind my shoulder somehow, not standing there in front of me. But there it is, different you see, when it’s my turn. That’s what you come to say, isn’t it? I don’t mind. Been too long it has. These last months . . . And now, no one to talk to, except you. No one to tell all those stories to, about my brother, and my uncle, about Tom Thomas and Edwina, and Sally Rees and all those others, their names I nearly forget now, all of them told me things and I never told anyone, except once and that was bad and wrong and I’d never do it again, I promised anyway, but with you it’s different ’cos you don’t tell anyone. And they don’t even see you till now, do they? But nothing to be frightened of, anyway. Your eyes, like, they’re not what they put in paintings . . . You got kind eyes, really, I can see them, all soft and sympathetic, like. I wonder if all those people saw your eyes like that, in the end. Must have helped, if they did. Wouldn’t be afraid no more then, would they, wouldn’t be afraid of you no more . . .’
She thought he was Death.
There had been many occasions during his adult life when John Crow had been made aware of his appearance and of people’s reaction to it. For some, first acquaintance had been a matter of surprise, for others, amusement. His long, bony frame, awkward wrists, skinny body, bald domed head and deep-set eyes beside a prominent nose could hardly be ignored, but this was the first time that anyone had looked at him, seen him, and taken him for the Old Reaper. It was an experience he would rather have missed; it left him cold, shaken, though strangely enough, not annoyed. He had come to terms with his appearance over the years and could accept that people reacted to it; it helped now, but Lily Jenkins still left him disturbed.
She whispered on in her dry-leaves voice and he hardly heard the words; he saw the shining of her eyes, life in the old husk of her body, and he stood stock-still, listening, not understanding, shaking slightly at the thought of all those people, just names now, who had lived and died over the years and whose memories had been stored up in the mind of Lily Jenkins Secrets. She had sat and comforted them and they had talked about the lusty youth they had seen and lost, about the anxieties that middle age had brought to them, about the souring disappointments of a life slipping by with little or nothing to show, children gone, reason gone, life going. She knew it all, Mrs Jenkins, knew it but had never spoken it.
‘. . . I used to think one time it was like bein’ a Catholic priest and listening to all those confessions just like Father Power in Treorchy Catholic Church and not telling a word about what was said. Proud I was, proud about it, because a lot of people used to ask me, greedy people who wanted something and lonely people who wished they’d heard such words or people who were just curious, but I never said a word to any one of them. Not about Joan Edwards and her goings on, John Willie Monkey taking those bets in the street, or Sergeant Carter’s Christmas chickens from the bookmaker down in Gelli, no, I never said none of it to anyone, not even about Sarah Parry . . .’
She stopped suddenly, for Crow had moved in an involuntary gesture of surprise. Sarah Parry, Gran Parry, Ceinwen Williams’s grandmother. She had been the reason for Crow’s visit and he had almost forgotten it, yet Lily Jenkins had mentioned her name now. The eyes glistened at him in the darkened bedroom and Lily Jenkins seemed to tense under the bedclothes as though she had become aware of his sudden surge of excitement and surprise.
But there was more than a sudden tension on her part: there was a shrinking too, a cowering into the protection of the covering blankets.
‘It was only the once,’ she whispered anxiously, ‘only the once . . . about Sarah Parry, what she told me . . .’
John Crow loomed over her, his face grey and bony, threatening and deathly in the dimness. She felt the threat even though in reality it was not there; she felt Death’s disapproval of her conduct, of the looseness of her tongue and she began to speak quickly but coherently, explaining, arguing . . .
‘Sarah Parry was old and she was dying and she began to ramble like old people do, like I’m doing now when we face you like this. She told me about being a girl in Treherbert when there was hardly any houses and the trees were all on the hillsides like they are coming back now but different trees, pine trees now. And she told me about her husband Tom, good man he was . . . But she was awful worried, she was, those last days about her Ceinwe
n, wondering what would become of her, especially workin’ for that man Martin Evans down in Pentre. And she told me all about it, all about it . . .’
In a voice matching her own for dryness Crow asked huskily ‘What did Sarah Parry tell you? About Ceinwen and Martin Evans?’
Lily Jenkins whimpered like a dog about to be beaten by a threatening master.
‘I didn’t want to talk about it,’ she cried, ‘and now, you want me to. She didn’t tell me much, just hints first, but the whole story later. She talked for a long time, weak she was, lying in bed holding my hand so I could give her strength, she talked about her daughter Annie and what a wayward one she was, married a good man but always gave him trouble, ended up going off with a Yank to America. There’s scandal it was at the time, but it was over and done and Ceinwen was soon with her, lovely child she was, so quiet and good, not like her mother, brazen she was. And then she told me about the way Ceinwen went to London to work and she was sad until Ceinwen wrote to say she had met a lovely man and she was getting married and was bringing her husband home to meet Sarah. She was a bit sad, you know, that Ceinwen should have married without coming for a big splash of a marriage in the chapel back in Treherbert, but the young ones felt they couldn’t wait, see, in love they were, and so they were married in London, in a registry, and they came down a week later to meet Gran Parry. And she recognized him. . .’
‘Recognized him?’
Lily Jenkins quivered. Her hand moved away from the coverlet, brushed a lock of hair, tucked it back into her black beret and nodded. She peered up at Crow, a real terror seizing her now.
‘Aye, well, she recognized him because he was so like his father, you see, and she knew his father, he was a friend of her daughter’s husband, friend of Annie’s husband he was, and a friend of Annie too come to that, and she recognized him and she was upset, she cried for days, and Martin went away and Ceinwen went away too, and then she carne back later when Sarah Parry was poorly and then she stayed with her. But she was so worried when she died, with that Martin Evans back in Pentre and Ceinwen working for him, though Ceinwen was a good girl, never did anything wrong, you know, never since!’