by Jenny Nimmo
‘Baby?’ Nia turned to her in surprise.
‘Are you worried about us having another baby?’
‘Oh no! I’m very pleased. I’m sure I’ll like it,’ Nia said, as enthusiastically as she could.
‘Is it T Llr then? Would you like to go back?’
‘That’s impossible.’
‘No, it isn’t, actually! We’ve had an idea, see. You know it’s half term next week? Well, Alun’s going to stay with Gwyn and Mrs Griffiths suggested that you should go too, and Iolo.’
Banished! But what a lucky banishment! ‘Up to T Bryn?’ Nia could scarcely believe it.
‘Would you like that?’
‘They don’t mind?’
‘Of course not. Mrs Griffiths asked specially; she wanted to help me out. I’m going to be so busy with Gareth and his leg when he comes home from hospital.’
Alun was a frequent overnight guest at the Griffiths’ farmhouse, but Nia had never stayed. She had a sneaking feeling that it was her mother who had begged a favour, to keep her out of trouble. She did not care how the situation had come about. She would be going back to the mountain again. She could walk down to T Llr and care for her garden. ‘What about punishment?’ she asked. Surely life could not be so pleasant, not after what she had done.
‘No pocket money for a month, your father says! We’ll have to pay Mrs Bowen for invisible mending.’ Mrs Lloyd sounded almost apologetic. ‘And . . . and could you keep from being a vegetarian while you’re with the Griffithses. We’ll discuss it when you come home.’
‘There’s nothing to discuss, I just am one,’ Nia said. ‘But I can be tactful, you know!’
The lace was never mentioned again and Catrin, such a talented pianist and singer, was never reproached for her sister’s crime. Prodigies are sensitive and Miss Oliver knew that any deterioration in her favourite pupil’s performance would only reflect badly on herself.
Mr Griffiths came to collect Alun, Nia and Iolo the following Saturday afternoon.
Iolo wanted to take two toy boxes, but having been persuaded that Gwyn would happily share his possessions, took only his blue monster.
Nia rolled her canvas in brown paper and tucked a small bag of scraps into a holdall that already contained a muddle of sweaters, socks and underwear.
‘What’ve you got there girl? Not a rolling pin? My wife’s fussy about her pastry!’ Mr Griffiths laughed at his own joke as no one else seemed inclined to do so.
‘It’s my work,’ Nia explained gravely. ‘Something I have to do for school.’
‘I see.’ Mr Griffiths was a little disconcerted by Nia’s sober expression. He was aware of her crime and hoped she wasn’t going to be a problem.
Alun was already in the Land Rover, chatting eagerly to Gwyn. He glanced resentfully at Nia and Iolo when they climbed in beside him. He had never had to share Gwyn with anyone, and regarded the Griffiths’ home as his own, and a refuge from his siblings.
Left-behind Lloyds spilled out of the door on to the pavement, waving and shouting instructions as the Land Rover pulled away from the kerb, even Gareth with his plastered leg and Mr Lloyd in his striped butcher’s apron and funny white hat. Nia wished her father had stayed indoors.
She had to take deep breaths in order to contain her excitement as the Land Rover changed gear and began to ascend the hill out of Pendewi. And then they passed the chapel. She was sitting with her back to it, but she could not resist turning to look into the windows. There was no one there.
Mr Griffiths drove fast; he resented every minute away from his farm. Gwyn called his father ‘demon-driver’ and Nia wondered if the name implied talents other than fast driving. He had, after all, fathered a magician.
They were swinging up a familiar lane now. It rose steep and twisting between hedges sprinkled with hawthorn stars and green buds that would soon be honeysuckle. The windows were open and Nia inhaled the indescribable scent of new growth, of earth disturbed by movement and the sun. Beside the hedge golden celandine were opening and the brook glittered with melting mountain snow. There were crows and curlews tilting in the air and everywhere the great and mysterious rushing of bright grass towards the sky.
‘There’s T Llr!’ Gwyn said.
‘T Llr! T Llr!’ shouted Iolo.
And Nia smiled, light-headed now and incapable of speech. She glimpsed white blossom, a deserted yard and two pigeons on a window sill. Later, she would come and leave a stale crust that Mrs Griffiths would surely give her.
They passed the white cottage where Gwyn’s strange grandmother lived, with tall plants in every window and a garden full of herbs. Round another bend and then the Land Rover was bouncing off the lane and up the stone track beside T Bryn, a farmhouse much neater than T Llr; the porch freshly painted, the path free of weeds, and flowers beside the stone walls, confined in neat pebble-edged borders.
Gwyn’s mother was waiting by the front door; a shy woman with soft brown hair and eyes to match. She never said much but she had always been kind. She took Iolo’s bundle and would have taken both of Nia’s, but Nia clung to her roll of canvas and said she was quite strong enough to carry her bag, thank you!
Inside the house, everywhere was clean and tidy, warm and bright. Wherever we live, us Lloyds, it will never be as neat as this, Nia thought. And yet this was where a magician lived.
Gwyn and Alun raced up two flights of stairs to Gwyn’s attic room, where they would sleep side by side and share their private thoughts, once again.
Nia and Iolo followed Mrs Griffiths at a more respectful pace, Iolo chewing his monster’s arm and looking apprehensive.
They were shown into a room where forget-me-not curtains fluttered in a window and three rag dolls with faded cheeks and button eyes sat on a white dressing-table. Dolls that looked as though they had been loved once but now were all forlorn because the person who had loved them had left them.
‘It was my Bethan’s room, Gwyn’s sister, you know,’ Mrs Griffiths explained, while Nia stared at the dolls.
Nia was to sleep in a bed covered in bright patchwork, Iolo on a mattress beside her.
‘Can I go now?’ said Iolo, more interested in the outdoors than in bedrooms.
‘Of course,’ Mrs Griffiths smiled. ‘I’ll unpack your things, Iolo. We’ll put your monster on the bed, shall we? There are white rabbits in the orchard.’
‘Aww!’ Iolo rushed out. He wouldn’t leave his monster though.
‘Are they wild?’ Nia asked.
‘Wild?’ Mrs Griffiths looked confused.
‘The rabbits!’ Nia had a vision of Iolo chasing thistledown.
‘Oh, no!’ Mrs Griffiths laughed. ‘They’re in a hutch. We couldn’t have them out and eating our lettuces, could we?’
‘I suppose not,’ Nia said solemnly. ‘I’ll unpack Iolo’s things. I’d like to.’
‘Well, if you want.’ Mrs Griffiths hesitated. ‘I’ll go back to my cooking. I’m not used to cooking for so many. I hope I get it right, cariad.’
Nia liked that. She liked the word ‘cariad ’. It made her feel at home. ‘I expect you will,’ she said, with a smile she had been told was the best part of her.
Quite unexpectedly Mrs Griffiths put her arms round Nia and hugged her quickly. ‘It’s good to have a girl in the house,’ she said.
Nia, taken by surprise, murmured, ‘I’ll try . . .’ but did not know how to finish the sentence, and said instead, ‘Could I go down to T Llr and see my garden?’
‘Well, of course, cariad.’ Mrs Griffiths, a neat plastic-aproned housewife again, rushed out. ‘And visit Gwyn’s Nain,’ she called from the stairs. ‘She’d be pleased to see you.’
Gwyn’s grandmother doesn’t know me, Nia thought. ‘And I’m not going into that poky planty place alone,’ she said to the rag dolls.
The dolls looked sympathetic. They watched Nia unpack her bag and open a drawer in the dressing-table. A dry sweet smell wafted out: roses! Nia opened the wardrobe. There were clothes inside: another
girl’s clothes; a yellow skirt, a grey coat and a blue dress with flowers on it. She began to remember someone: a girl with dark hair and eyes very like herself; a girl in a blue dress picking flowers in the lane. The wardrobe smelt of roses too.
Bethan’s room softly enclosed her, settled smoothly and easily around her, as though she fitted exactly into a space in the dust that had been occupied, only a moment before, by someone else.
Nia unpacked Iolo’s bag and began to lay his clothes in the second drawer, but seeing her reflection in the mirror, paused to loosen her long plaits of dark hair. The girl that now looked out at her belonged in a room with forget-me-not curtains, and the scent of roses. The rag dolls smiled with approval.
She closed the drawer, took one happy look around the room that was to be hers for a week, and went downstairs.
The boys were in the orchard, gathered round a pen where two white rabbits leapt enthusiastically about a pile of fresh dandelion leaves.
Fly bounded out of nowhere, greeting Nia with a display of delighted barking and rolling.
‘I’m going to T Llr,’ Nia called. She was glad no one responded. She wanted the place to herself. Fly was keen to accompany her though. ‘Stay,’ said Nia, rather too severely. ‘You’re Gwyn’s dog now.’
She ran all the way, only slowing her pace when she passed Gwyn’s grandmother in her garden. The old woman was leaning on a hoe, peering at a patch of earth.
‘Bore da,’ said Nia, knowing that the older Mrs Griffiths preferred to hear Welsh.
Mrs Griffiths looked up, her thoughts still with the patch of earth or whatever it was that should or should not be growing there. She wore a big straw hat squashed down over black curls. Her eyes could not be seen.
Receiving no reply to what she had considered a polite greeting, Nia ran on to T Llr. She didn’t linger in the yard where the ghosts of hens gathered into awful emptiness. She didn’t peep into the windows where rooms that she had known would be slowly dying. She ran straight to her wild garden by the stream – and received a great surprise.
Someone had been there. The earth round her poppies was brown and freshly turned; no weeds to strangle the orange gold flowers. And how they had flourished! Divided and replanted they covered the ground in huge brilliant clusters.
‘Oh!’ Nia cried. ‘Who did it?’
Beyond the poppies where thick rushes crept up the bank, someone had built a low stone wall, three layers deep, to keep the weeds at bay, and here and there blue forget-me-nots grew, like tiny pieces of reflected sky.
There was nothing for Nia to do but sit beside her flowers and watch the water.
‘I’ll forget the church and those old yews,’ she muttered, thinking of her canvas, ‘and I’ll make T Llr and my garden.’ She wondered if she could persuade Mrs Griffiths to find yellow cloth. She had a feeling she would be offered a duster.
Happier now, and confident, she walked back to the house and risked a quick peep in her old home. She chose a window overhung with the blossom of two ancient plum trees that curved towards each other from either side. Ghosts of absent furniture stood against the walls; pale shapes on the stained and lived-in wallpaper: a cupboard, a dresser, a silent piano. The only three-dimensional furnishing now was a neat pile of torn paper in a corner. Home for a mouse!
As she stepped away from the window she almost trod on the soldier: a small knitted soldier with a red coat, a stripe of yellow buttons and a tall black hat. Not a Lloyd toy; she knew every one of those. Nia slipped the soldier into her pocket.
The two wood pigeons, bold as brass, were pecking in the yard. If Mr Butcher Lloyd had been there, he would have run for his gun. ‘Wood pigeons are a pest,’ he would say. ‘They’ll get my seed.’ If Mr Lloyd had been there, the pigeons would have left. But this year they would nest in the sycamore tree and there might be four or five pigeons living at T Llr. Nia wished she had remembered the crust.
She wandered out of the yard, closing the big gate out of habit, though now there was no reason to do so.
Nain Griffiths was standing by her garden wall when Nia passed, as though she had been waiting. She was wearing a purple cardigan so bright it was almost shouting and there were pearly pink parrots swinging from her ears.
‘Hello!’ said Nia, over the wall.
‘Bore da Nia,’ returned Gwyn’s grandmother.
‘You know?’ said Nia, astonished.
‘I know my neighbours, don’t I?’ said old Mrs Griffiths.
‘But you knew which one I was; you knew I was Nia. Nobody ever knows me, I’m in the middle, see!’
‘Well, I know you, don’t I?’ The dark and wrinkled face came closer; pink birds quivering under grey-black curls. ‘I don’t know any of the others, but I know you!’
‘Oh!’ Nia stepped back, but not to be outdone she asked, ‘Have you been weeding my garden?’
‘Weeding?’
‘Yes. I’ve got poppies by the stream and someone has been caring for them, doing some gardening there. Was it you?’
‘Don’t you think I’ve got enough to do?’ Gwyn’s grandmother heaved a forkful of stringy weeds above the gate. A shower of mud and leaves flew into the air, some landing on Nia’s head.
‘Sorry!’ said Nia. ‘It was just a guess.’ It was not she who should have apologised she thought, but it was quite evident that old Mrs Griffiths did not regret showering her with mud. Nia began to run up the lane.
‘Pob hwyl!’ Nain Griffiths called after her. ‘Come and see me soon.’
‘Same to you!’ Nia shouted without turning. She didn’t think she would call on Gwyn’s grandmother again, if she could help it.
After lunch, which was shepherd’s pie and much better than Nia expected, the boys announced that they were going to walk up the mountain.
‘And what about Nia?’ Mr Griffiths could have been smiling under his heavy moustache, it was difficult to tell.
‘I might, that is I . . .’ Nia hesitated.
‘Going to help muck out the hens, are you, then?’
‘Well . . .’ Nia began. ‘Someone’s been in the garden at T Llr,’ she said changing the subject. ‘Caring for my plants; building a little wall an’ that.’
Mr Griffiths gaped speechlessly at Nia. It was as if she had said there were wolves in the wood.
Mrs Griffiths was washing up. She didn’t see her husband’s face. ‘I’m afraid I’ve no time for other people’s gardens,’ she said. ‘Perhaps it was Nain?’
‘No,’ said Nia. ‘I asked her.’ She was fascinated by Mr Griffiths’ discomfort.
Shifting away from Nia’s disturbing scrutiny, Mr Griffiths left the kitchen without a word and went out into the yard.
‘Perhaps it was Gwyn?’ Nia persisted.
‘Gwyn’s no gardener,’ Mrs Griffiths replied. ‘His sister was though!’ She suddenly dropped a pan and became quite still, her shoulders hunched and her hands motionless in the soapy water. Nia couldn’t see her expression, but her voice changed pitch and she said, ‘Why don’t you run along now and follow the boys?’
Nia went. Why had her garden caused such a stir?
The boys were wandering up the mountain track, surrounded by ewes and their fat, excitable lambs. The air was full of noisy bleating. Iolo was happily echoing the sounds; he’d abandoned his woolly monster at last.
Nia did not catch up with the boys; she did not intend to. They passed the stone wall where the track rose away from the field and disappeared from sight.
Nia left the track and walked on through the field. She could hear the boys above her, climbing now and shouting to each other.
Nia was in Griffiths’ land, but she knew it well. The mountain had belonged to her mother’s family, the Llrs, and their sheep, for as long as anyone could remember. Her feet fitted well into the hard slanting land. She wandered south, towards the sun, while the voices above her became lost in the chorus of sheep and streams.
She had been walking for a mile up and down, still in the same landscape
, when she came upon a place she could not remember: a valley lay below her, where blossom floated like a cloud among darker trees; an orchard of palest pink apple blossom swept like a crescent moon round a low cottage with a mossy green roof and smoke drifting from the chimney. Perhaps she had never been there in spring; never looked down into the valley; it was the blossom that had made her look.
Nia began to walk down into the trees. The ground became steeper and she was suddenly precipitated into a rushing, sliding descent. Breathless and frightened she caught hold of a branch and saw a path, narrow but well-trodden, that wound between the trees. Someone often came this way. But there was no place for a car or a vehicle of any kind.
On the path her pace became more dignified. She had time to observe the land before her. The wood was ancient: oak and ash trees, their branches dappled with the pale green of leaves not fully grown; delicate rowan and bushy hazel and, now and then, a holly tree, shining dark and dangerous in the distance. And then Nia was in the orchard. The sun was high, sparkling through the bright canopy of blossom. But Nia was cold! She was walking through flowers; tall and dense they covered the ground beneath the apple trees. They were white flowers, huge blooms, like stars on tall stems; their leaves broad spears of emerald.
Nia bent to pick a flower and gasped; it was like touching ice!
Holding the flower cautiously by the stem, Nia moved through the orchard. The cold began to penetrate her shoes and socks, it moved up her body and she began to shiver. She might have been walking through a field of snow.
She emerged from the orchard and came into a garden where the low cottage stood surrounded by wild flowers. It seemed to be utterly deserted. Lost. The silence was profound. Yet smoke still drifted from the chimney.